View Full Version : Creative Assembly unit balance vs morale level
well it says it in the title guys, i am a firm beleiver that the level of florins that an army is balanced at needs to be balnced with the moral level at the same florin level.. ok bit of a mouth full let me try and explain.
5k battles .. we have seen here threads relating to 5k battles, in them we have seen statements such as ..
*cav are not as overwhelmingly powerful.
*spears are a lot more usefull vs both cav and swords.
*the paper rock scissors element is much clearer.
*ranged battles are more interesting as money for a3 is not available without inf sacrifices.
plus a lot of others .. but the moral level at 5k is too low and causes some strange effects on occasion, therefore the majority of the community prefer to play at a higher florin level
this brings us to 10k battles .. at 10k the moral is good and units imo do a good job of running at logical points during the battles but at this level you have 2 options you can pump money into your h cav that was v0 at 5k or pump money into your v0/1 inf from 5k .. after looking at this situation the army with the pumped h cav is a much better buy and it is a struggle to find any units that can counter it effectively apart from another h cav unit again .. this leads ppl to not like this level
which again sees another increase to 15k .. at this level of florins you can still have your v1 h cav but you can also afford some inf (spears and even swords) that can match these stronger cav that were unstoppable in the 10k battle .. however at this amount of florins most spears are pretty much made redundant unless playing a 2 max rule as they struggle to find somewhere to do a good job, they suck vs the beefed up MAA and they do not kill the cav fast enough to be usefull.
in conclusion i think the units are most balanced with each others unit stats (not including moral) when they have least upgrades .. which is obviously at the level of 5k .. but the moral is just too fragile at this level and because of this and the above reasons we are left with a community that plays at 15k which really undermines the whole sytem that this game is built on.
for future games that are made i feel it is imperitive CA balance the individual units at a given level and then go one step further and balance this with a good moral level to accompany it, i feel personally that CA are more than capable of balancing the units stats to a sufficient standard (5k battles shows this) but because of there 3d battle inexperiences they struggle to place this balance in line with a decent moral level for the units. Unless they invest in this and begin to understand the game some more i am not convinced this will happen .. imo the best option for them to take is to bring in a facility that will enable us (the MP community) to adjust the moral level in our mp games with the choice of different moral levels included in the battle set up screen. for example instead of having, like at present, "moral on", "moral off (+12)" we would be given more options perhaps "moral on", "moral low (+4)", "moral high (+8)", "moral off (+12)" it is so evident to me that these simple, and i am sure very easy options to implement, would massively increase the appeal and effectiveness of the whole TW game system .
anyway thats all i hope someone is listening - baz
Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe
09-30-2003, 17:31
Much to say about this topic.
Quote[/b] ]well it says it in the title guys, i am a firm beleiver that the level of florins that an army is balanced at needs to be balnced with the moral level at the same florin level.. ok bit of a mouth full let me try and explain.
5k battles .. we have seen here threads relating to 5k battles, in them we have seen statements such as ..
*cav are not as overwhelmingly powerful.
*spears are a lot more usefull vs both cav and swords.
*the paper rock scissors element is much clearer.
*ranged battles are more interesting as money for a3 is not available without inf sacrifices.
plus a lot of others .. but the moral level at 5k is too low and causes some strange effects on occasion, therefore the majority of the community prefer to play at a higher florin level
Hum may I add a few points; I share with my fellow CeltiMordred the opinion that Light HA does not stand a chance in 5k. Who wants to spend 300 on a Turco Horse? Medium HA (faris, szekely...) on the other looks like a bargain... And there is only a 75 fl difference...
Ranged battle are tactically more interesting, but I think there is an issue with the relative cost of say 4 missile in 5k compared to 15k. 4 x bow is a saving in 15k, it's a heavy investment in 5k, due to the discount factor. At 15k missile will be much cheaper than h2h; at 5k it's the opposite. And even if having miss battle at 5k is more fun, I am just not sure the return is there. Some limited increase in misille effectiveness would be helpfull. Cost reduction... Hum... Would screw up the 15k guys http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
Moralewise; yes. But with more training, better unit selection, more experience, armies are staying on the field longer.
I had 30 min + 5k games... I have seen double rush being countered.
Maybe we just need to learn more.
Quote[/b] ]this brings us to 10k battles .. at 10k the moral is good and units imo do a good job of running at logical points during the battles but at this level you have 2 options you can pump money into your h cav that was v0 at 5k or pump money into your v0/1 inf from 5k .. after looking at this situation the army with the pumped h cav is a much better buy and it is a struggle to find any units that can counter it effectively apart from another h cav unit again .. this leads ppl to not like this level
huhum...Suspect you are right, but I have not played enough of those... At 10k, 4 JHI or Swiss Halb are doable. Is it enough? Or is it too much of a bet if a cav army failed to mateerialize?
Quote[/b] ]which again sees another increase to 15k .. at this level of florins you can still have your v1 h cav but you can also afford some inf (spears and even swords) that can match these stronger cav that were unstoppable in the 10k battle .. however at this amount of florins most spears are pretty much made redundant unless playing a 2 max rule as they struggle to find somewhere to do a good job, they suck vs the beefed up MAA and they do not kill the cav fast enough to be usefull.
in conclusion i think the units are most balanced with each others unit stats (not including moral) when they have least upgrades .. which is obviously at the level of 5k .. but the moral is just too fragile at this level and because of this and the above reasons we are left with a community that plays at 15k which really undermines the whole sytem that this game is built on.
15k; spears are dead. Polearms are also useless. All one needs is MS/MAA and CK. Matchup is not an element anymore. Too bad.
Quote[/b] ]for future games that are made i feel it is imperitive CA balance the individual units at a given level and then go one step further and balance this with a good moral level to accompany it, i feel personally that CA are more than capable of balancing the units stats to a sufficient standard (5k battles shows this) but because of there 3d battle inexperiences they struggle to place this balance in line with a decent moral level for the units. Unless they invest in this and begin to understand the game some more i am not convinced this will happen .. imo the best option for them to take is to bring in a facility that will enable us (the MP community) to adjust the moral level in our mp games with the choice of different moral levels included in the battle set up screen. for example instead of having, like at present, "moral on", "moral off (+12)" we would be given more options perhaps "moral on", "moral low (+4)", "moral high (+8)", "moral off (+12)" it is so evident to me that these simple, and i am sure very easy options to implement, would massively increase the appeal and effectiveness of the whole TW game system .
I don't think one of the other option (all units with same valor upgrade) is really a solution. Because valor increase is h2h oriented and we don't need v3 pav x bow. If valor was improving say armor and accuracy for missile, then why not. All units with same valor increase would also requires some tweak with current cost. And if we play a 'v3 game', I bet we'll get a lot of sword (v3 cav not affordable).
Regarding the morale slider. Why is the RPS dead at 15k today?
Partly because sword units can survive a frontal cav charge with pumped up morale. They can because they are cheap to pump up. At 15k, the question is not really the effectiveness of spears vs cav; spears works vs cav. It's just that sword&cav also works. You don't need to have spears because well, the chance your sword rout on impact on a sword charge are pretty low.
If we reduce the cost of spears, it's not going to change the problem much. Spear will still work against cav (but again, at 15k spear works against cav now). The question will be; who is winning between spear and sword? If spear get cheap enough (think 1.0) and get pumped enough cheaply to beat sword, then we won't see sword. Just spear. And cav.
There is a gradient in morale; spears are worse, then sword then cav. Cost difference + upgrade boosting morale screw this gradient.
Upgrade not boosting morale? why not...
IMO, the two questions are; what it takes to stop a cav charge? and how is the sword / spear fight going? (if spears too cheap, they'll win throught pumping up)
Focusing on those two questions, another solution might be to have additional boni /mali depending on match up.
Sword already got a bonus fighting spears, and spears fighting cav. In a sense, with the charge, cav got a bonus against sword. But it's not enough for cav to win vs sword. Maybe we need to pump it up, hoping that contact massive loss will force a rout? Or maybe a more permanent +1 bonus 'a la sword vs spear' so that cav win the fight even without forcing the initial rout?
Other RPS boni / mali to consider; morale one. If spears were immune to additional cav morale penalty, and if sword morale penalty against cav were larger, possibly players would use spears to stop the cav. (more possibly, they would use cav...). That would also help the fact that spears are the lowest morale unit.
Those would make match up more important whatever fl level you are playing, and whatever your "routing tolerance" is.
Have fun,
Louis,
And some people cry about swiping?
Annie
I have only had extremely good experiences with 5k.
In 5k super elite units are just that. JHI and SAP/SP are so expensive you have to form the army around them, and that makes it that much more interesting to use them. But then they will also do a great job against the enemy, something you can't be sure of in 15k.
Hi Baz,
I basically agree with your assesment of the current MP game, and would add a few things:
1) The anti-cav bonus is not as strong as it was in STW. That means the upgrade system can overwhelm the rock, paper, scissors more quickly than it did in STW. The anti-cav bonus is 4 combat points in mtw/vi, and you only need a valor 2 upgrade to equal that.
2) Cav has a tough time killing ranged units with a direct charge. This is evident at 5k, and gets relatively worse as you go up in florins due to the discount given to ranged unit upgrades which increases their hth ability.
3) Ranged unit base cost is relatively high compared to the effectiveness of the ranged weapon. That means at 5k you're hard pressed to stop an all hth army of mostly hth inf if you take ranged units.
4) Ranged unit effectiveness doesn't noticably improve with upgrades.
5) At 15k, swords beat cav, and that's a major alteration of the gameplay one would expect from a rock, paper, scissors perspective.
6) Faction imbalance appears to be greatest at 5k and moderates as you raise florins.
As I recall mtw v1.0 was mostly played at 10k florins. Valor upgrade was priced at 1.5, and 5k x 1.5 x 1.5 = 11.25k. That's close to 10k which is +4 morale on average over the 5k level. MTW v1.1 was played mostly at 15k. Valor upgrade was priced at 1.7, and 5k x 1.7 x 1.7 = 14.45k. Again, on average that's +4 morale above 5k. Since morale was raised by +2 in mtw/vi v2.0, it seems to me that 5K x 1.7 = 8.5k is actually the morale level where most players want to play.
GilJay has posted the readme from the upcoming patch over at .com which includes this statement: "Fixed a bug where cavalry would receive a charge bonus ad infinitum under certain circumstances.". With this change there is a possibility that playbalance in the 8k - 10k range will improve over what it is now in MTW/VI enough to allow a return to the morale level most players chose to play at for almost 9 months in MTW. That level being +2 morale over the 5k level of MTW/VI.
well i was sure we were in a little dead end till R:TW but the readme may well be able to give us a little whiff of hope .. when the patch comes play 8-10k games and see what happens
other than that i hope my previous statements are looked at by the power from above http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif it seems it is pretty much how we all feel here http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
longjohn2
09-30-2003, 22:59
I thought 99,999 was the most popular florin level http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
Mithrandir
09-30-2003, 23:00
Stop playing noobs LJ.
You know I like to buy everything @ v4
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif.
Quote[/b] (Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe @ Sep. 30 2003,11:31)]15k; spears are dead. Polearms are also useless. All one needs is MS/MAA and CK. Matchup is not an element anymore. Too bad.
Have fun,
Louis,
In this form it is just a broad overgeneralisation http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif (duh)
Are we talking about early, high, late or viking battles and what climate: desert, winter or temperate?
It might be true for temperate/high but not for the others.
In viking era spears can be a match against some of the unit types.
In early horse archers rule, there is a lot more in these games than a head-on charge with your sword line.
In late, there are a number of interesting hybrid units (even if some of us might not like them http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif), and the abundace of lancers might make a few spears useful in your army.
And finally, in desert/winter battles you just cannot rely on the MAA/Chiv.Knights combo.
Even in case of temperate/high you forget the longbow, which gives you flexibilty and thus a quite popular unit.
ElmarkOFear
10-01-2003, 00:05
..
well its good to see that LJ has not given up on us yet http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif
Elmo, i like to think of it as an extra bonus from our *routing contracts*
Cheetah, i do agree with you, but if we dont generalise we will be talking here for the rest of our lives http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif for this discussion we are mainly aiming at high period but that is where 90% of mp games are played http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif as you say other areas are not effected as much, but they would still benefit greatly from this discussion in "general" http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smokin.gif
Well the game ever be balanced??? I think not..
The more units they add/get...Will just cause further inbalances....
2 problems do we have them fight as they did in real life??
Or do we make the stats same for swordman/pikes/cavs/spears etc?
What makes it even worse now to balance is u have different number of men in each units.......ie. 100 spearmen fightin 40 CFK....outnumber 2/1 http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mecry.gif
no offense FasT, you wanna talk about unit sizes then make a thread about it, otherwise stick to the title http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif
No offense taken......But unit size does effect what ur askin..As u lose a certain amount of men from each unit its effects moral......
Balance is many things rolled into one...
LOL....But i know where ur comin from Baz http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/cool.gif
thnx http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif
Well FasT needs a little thought before he replies again
shingenmitch2
10-01-2003, 21:38
Baz,
I gotta agree with FasT... you can't ignore the unit size issue when talking about gamr balance. It is amazing that the game even can play semi-balanced when you think about the factors that go into deciding if a unit is worthy in multiplayer:
> Morale base level (huge cause you're either fleeing or not)
>Attack Strength
>Defense Strength
>Unit Size: 20 - 100 (a tricky one cause the loss of 1 man from 20 unit is 5% loss of strength, loss of 1 man in 100 is only 1% degredation)
>Unit Speed (crucial, but how do you assess? I think we find that fast is good, average speed is useable, slow is almost unuseable.)
>Cav Charge bonus
>Anti Cav bonus
>Shield bonus
>Armor
>Anti Armor bonus
>Ranks
>Pushback... etc...
>Range Capability (and range distance)
>Fear infliction: (cav charge/guns/bombers -- another factor near impossible to quantify impact)
--------------
Then to complicate the whole darn thing is the "Cost per Upgrade Issue"
Well maybe another simple idea is that they balance the game for 10k For MP.....
Thus play MP @ 10k then u know u got the best balance possible...HEEHE only prob is its not gunna happen http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mad.gif
Sliders though r a great idea...If i remember back..AMP mention this.But doesnt look like they gunna implement it though....Maybe in the future who knows http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mecry.gif
If they change unit size to all the same and u was given only 1 chance to upgrade..Im sure the balance would be much better..But as it stands this is not gunna happen http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/angry.gif
ok let me reiterate the subject of this thread .. if you read my intial statement it implies the units within the game are balanced already, therefore there is no need to discuss it here.
this thread is not about unit balance it is about the florin level that they have already made the balance at compared to the moral level at that same florin level .. i thought this was clear but perhaps i am wrong http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif
read again this is clearly not a thread about individual unit balancing which is what unit size relates to.. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif
sorry to seem rude guys .. but threads are always hijacked, i feel i have an important point to make and want to make sure ppl understand instead of going on the same old rants like every other thread.
imagine the game is perfectly balanced at a certain florin level (i know it will never happen) but just imagine .. then imagine that if we move from this florin level where balance is perfect, balance becomes imperfect, due to blah blah blah .. this is why surely to give the game the best chance to be played at this perfect florin level the morale needs to be perfect at that exact same florin level http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smokin.gif
okay okay...Only way round it is moral sliders.......
Or any other idea's?
Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe
10-02-2003, 14:53
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif
I'm going straight into oversimplification and generalization http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
But hopefully on topic http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
The balance (or respect of the Rock Paper Scissor of the game) is somehow linked to the morale level, because morale level is one of the 'axis' of the RPS.
Here is my take on it. Units basically have combat stats (Att, def , anti cav bonus, armor piercing, etc...) and morale stat (morale, elite status, cav / non cav status...).
At equal fl level, for combat stat sword wil beat spears (which is fine), spears (or polearm/halberd) will beat cav with their anticav bonus.... But cav won't beat sword (lower number, slightly lower stat, even if considering higher charge).
Morale wise, again sword will beat spears (with often better status and morale; so far so good), spears will suffer against cav (if flanked, etc... hence another thread on spear not getting specific cav morale modifier), and cav will give sword penalties, possibly routing them.
The problem is cav not winning the fight vs sword in straight hand to hand and having to rely on morale penalty to (hopefully) rout the sword and win their part of the RPS. So morale is a part of 'balance'.
I don't think a morale slider woud really help; if the slider is set high, then we go back to the current 15k situation and spears is not needed. If the slider is set low, then cav will rout sword, and people does not like that; but on the other hand, that would make spears necessary to stop the cav attack.
We can't have it both way; either units stick around, even when charged by cav, and spears are not necessary. Or they rout when charged, and then you need a cav stopper; but you got live with a 'rout when charge' gameplay.
I'd rather go with an extension of some RPS idea already existing in the game; make charge higher for cav (like +4 for all of them) so that sword truly fear getting charged (and spear really enjoy not suffering from cav charge), make spears immune to specific cav morale penalty, maybe increase anti cav bonus (spears +2/+4, halb +4/+1, pike at +2/+6 seems ok), increase sword morale penalty for sword losing against cav.
That's my other idea http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
Louis,
You have to set the average morale level around which the 0 to 8 morale range is centered before balancing the units. The units couldn't have been balanced at equal florins. They must have been done at equal valor, and I would guess it was some low value such as valor 0 or 1.
GAH
Problem in MP is balance alright... noobie balance.
Too many times it happens whereby Vanya joins beeg game, only to have clueless noob allies playing their first game away from mama and facing a wall of grizly veterans that are all in the same clan.
Nothing spells "spanking" quite like that. On occasion, Vanya will get comments from said noobs after the game saying "Oh, Vanya... you are so great and talented... Would you like to marry my daughter?" merely because Vanya racked up a sorry 230 kills thanks to their peasantry routing through Vanya's fickle warriors and being goaded to "join the million man march" to hell.
And on the flip side... nothing spells inbalance more than having a player with no head clutch defeat from the jaws of victory for a grizly veteran team by doing something utterly stoopid like charging His V0 camel general into a unit of swiss pikement thinking "they can win, oh yeah, they can win"
GAH
shingenmitch2
10-03-2003, 14:54
Baz ---
The point is that it ISN'T balanced even at low valor. It is perhaps balanced BETTER, but that is a relative judgement. Thus a hypothetical "what if" seems a bit pointless.
I agree the game would play best at V0 with slightly more morale given to all units -- but that is not to say that V0 doesn't have balance problems besides morale.
That said, I agree they need to chuck out this whole valor purchasing for multi-player. Pick a base valor and balance unit fighting stats and morale stats to that base valor and have multiplayer always play at that valor level. (even the single player campain would be better served to have the unit valor increments severely restricted -- 3-4 steps max)
-------------------------
Louis
RPS should be simple, how they get there may be overly complex to balance (and, yes, the balance must involve both weapon stats and morale stats). However it happens, what needs to occur is this:
>Cav kill swords & archers
>swords kill spears
>spears kill cav.
>archers/range have to be able to cause enough damage against mass charge to be worth buying.
Units that complicate matter severely:
>Halbs/anti-armor units (too easy to become Ashi- super unit: good vs. sword, good vs. spear, good vs. cav.)
>Pikes (are they super spears? then why use spear, what should their weakness be? Perhaps exaggerated spears -- extra good vs. cav., extra bad vs. sword?)
>Archer/sword hybred (either they do both TOO well or suck at both and not worth it... very fine line to walk.)
longjohn2
10-03-2003, 22:38
The real balance of the game is that all units are useful in different circumstances. People who only play battles under one set of circumstances will necessarily see some units as more worthwhile than others.
of course mitch i did say in an ideal world http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif
lj, of course your right but the problem is, we are faced with the dilema that to acheive the best unit balance to make the battleground as fair as possible, we are forced to play at a certain level of florins which then in turn restricts our options when deciding what moral level to play at ..
i am simply trying to suggest that having a morale slider, or, at least having more levels of morale to choose from would give us the ability to play at a morale level we enjoy, not one that nobody really likes but we are forced to play there because the balance is best there .. this brings us back to mitch's point about morale effecting the balance but anyway ..
anyway back to the point again, does everyone agree that having more moral options would be a good implementation?
i have no doubt in my mind that it would help in a cheiving a game one step higher than before http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
Quote[/b] (baz @ Oct. 04 2003,18:33)]anyway back to the point again, does everyone agree that having more moral options would be a good implementation?
Well I dont like the idea of a morale slider/more levels.
As others have said, increasing morale means the overall balance changes and some units rely a lot on their targets rout quickly (especially cavalry)
Some people dont like the current 5k because they want more choice. Im not really sure what they mean by it, but the thing is they wont be convinced to play low florins just because they can get better morale.
Any balance issues that has to be fixed can end up hurting one morale level while helping another.
It will just be another thing along with money level, that the community can mess with so I prefer as few options as possible. I would love to see even less upgrading possible in RTW.
---
About the money level used: IIRC I never saw many 5k games back in 1.0 days. I remember I did host some (after reading a thread about morale here on Org) but dropped it after a couple of days as I could only attract newbies. 10k turned into a standard very quickly..did see a few 7k and 12k too.
If Im not mistaken 10k was the standard in MI for 1.02 games?..maybe that had something to do with it too http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif
People used lots of cheap units that had 3 and 4 valour upgrades which is also the "standard" upgrade level we see in the current 15k games. The few 5k I tried didnt feel that bad although one could feel the lower morale.
I better stop now before it goes off topic http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif
CBR
I don't see morale level and its affect on unit balance as impacting fairness. It does impact how many unit types are useful in a given situation. LongJohn's statement means that unit parity in terms of cost effectiveness for a particular situation is not an objective of the design. However, large imbalance also means few useful units, and ultimately the collapse of the RPS system.
One thing you could do with fatigue and morale settings is to label them "easy", "normal", "hard" and "expert" like the difficulty settings in SP. These designations would be easier to grasp for new players than some numerical slider. I remember LongJohn saying that too many options on fatigue and morale would be confusing to new players, but surely a bit more than the current on and off wouldn't be too hard to grasp. Even a simple "low", "medium" and "high" would be an improvement.
so do you think if at present we had an option to put moral on +4 with the setting "moral medium" or something 5 k games would be played less?
imo 5k games would become standard using this moral level, we dont want to play at 15k, we play there because we are forced to .. i just want to remove this force http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif and we have the power to decide the levels that are used by getting competitions to implement them, then clans and ronins will follow ..
like moving from 10k to 8k in MI, we realised the problem with ashi and other balance at the higher florin so we changed the standard through this very forum, which went was reflected in the foyer.
I don't think players are being forced to play at 15k. They are choosing to play at 15k. I played we/mi on Sunday, and v1.02 is played at 10k with rules. Nothing stopping MTW/VI from being played with rules except the inability to agree on those rules. Host selectable options on fatigue, morale and unit types would allow a player to force a greater variety of conditions and get the game closer to his or her liking, but it's not clear that a better standard would emerge.
i understand that it might not necessarily mean a better standard, but i am sure the veterans would not be playing at 15k with the current morale, surely that says something does it not?
maybe they play 10k now yuuki but when MI was the latest release you must remember the threads about ashis and 10k and after that we played 8k as a standard (my standard anyway http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif ) seriously though all veterans played at 8k from then on, give or take a few http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif
Baz,
I don't think people are playing mtw/vi v2.0 at 15k directly because of morale. Those same people played mtw v1.1 at 15k for 6 months and the morale was 2 points lower, but cav swiping was not widely used during that time. The standard that finally emerged for we/mi v1.02 is 10k max 4, no ashi. That apparently works better than trying to control ashi by playing at 8k. If the rule was no guns, no ashi you can easily play we/mi v1.02 at 7k. I think the strong guns in we/mi v1.02 is probably what made players gravitate to 10k, and in a similar sense the cav swipe may be what has made most players choose 15k in mtw/vi v2.0. Fast killing units effectively lower morale because there is a dynamic morale penalty associated with rate of casualties. So, I agree with you Baz that raising morale should allow playing the game with less money, but unbalance is also a contributing issue. Reducing the kill rate be it fast killing guns, cav swiping or valor pumped offensive units allows playing with less morale.
i agree with your points in general yuuki and i think we have the same idea how the game would improve, at the end of the day we DO play at 15k because of morale otherwise we would be playing at 5k http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif
15k is the lowest amount of florins after 5k where we think the unit balance is acceptable
I don't find MTW/VI v2.0 15k acceptable, and I stopped playing at that florin level over a month ago.
i agree, i tried to influence the CWB with regards to florin level but no one would listen and my idea was shot down. but nevermind http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif
when i said we i mean the community in general.
Well Baz, the community changed the morale level they chose to play at between mtw v1.1 and mtw/vi v2.0 at the expense of degrading the RPS system, and that in the face of cav being weakened in v2.0 by the removal of battlefield upgrades. There were many examples of inf armies beating all cav on steppe in mtw v1.1 at 15k in 1v1 involving good players posted here. There definitely seems to be some kind of inertia associated with an established florin level because mtw/vi v2.0 at 15k is very similar to mtw v1.1 at 25k, and not mtw v1.1 at 15k. However, the underlying problem may be that no single florin level stands out in a very obvious way as the best.
As long as CWB, CWC or the 1v1 ladder uses 15k as default I find it difficult to see how any changes can be done by the community in general.
It is a vicious circle really, if you want a lot of people for a tournament you dont want to experiment with drastic changes in money. Think Monsta had the guts to try 12k for his 2v2 tournament and thats about it.
Main problem is that people dont like changes.
13 months of MTW as we still have STW veterans who complain about some balance issues basically because MTW is not like STW. You try and count the number of times the word "polearm" is used...
Many months ago I convinced a few people to do a 5k 2v2. Unfortunately my pc (I was the host) crashed while we were still shooting at each other. When I came back my ally said "I dont like 5k" He couldnt give any reasons for it, he just didnt like it. I'm very sure why he didnt like it: he suddenly couldnt buy his 8 heavy cav (4 of them Lancers) and now had to buy a completely new and different army.
And just look at how much the custom maps are used...the community did a great job there.
It will be interesting to see how the patch is received as it looks like it will make some changes to the current gameplay/balance.
When RTW comes out people are suddenly facing new unit types. Now of course CA can have made mistakes and some units are over or underpowered but I wonder what people are gonna say about the chariots, elephants (and I sure hope you can defeat them by more than just burning pigs!http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif and javelin armed skirmishers (yes not a new unit but no one played mongol era anyway in MI and was too expensive in MTW MP and if CA follows the trend of using a historically theme they have to be more useful in RTW)
Will people frantically try to pick the best STW-like units they can find, while cursing at CA for making another game with 100+ units and then typing in 15000 denarii for their next 1v1 game or will they actually try something else?
No I must say Im a bit disappointed with the community so far. Apparently the only way they can learn the gameplay in a new total war version is by forcing them. Less upgrades to buy and no fancy host settings is what I want.
Gah
CBR
Quote[/b] (CBR @ Oct. 08 2003,09:11)]As long as CWB, CWC or the 1v1 ladder uses 15k as default I find it difficult to see how any changes can be done by the community in general.
I see your point.
Perhaps there should be tournaments and ladders at 5k too. Just like there are several weightclasses of boxers.
shingenmitch2
10-08-2003, 17:04
Hi CB
I agree there is inertia in changing and the inertia, at least for me, is increasing.
I think peeps are tired of all the changes (S:TW, S:TW 0.2, MIWE:TW, MIWE ver. 2, M:TW, M:TW ver 2, VI:TW... and on and on.)
Every time there is a change you need to relearn the whole damn game to find how each tweak has affected everything... army composition, what beats what in what circumstance, what I can afford in this situation... as it is ... if there was never a change, there are pretty much too many units to figure out how to use each on best....
I know this continual relearning has grown a bit old for me.
I also think that the game has become so much about finding which unit is best in a given circumstance at a particular florin level that the real fun of on the battlefield maneuver has been really beaten down.
You might lose even before the game starts because of poor upgrade choices and I'm not sure that such an emphasis on this is fun for anyone...
I always go back to Chess when making comparisons, but when you lose at that you always know it was because of game play and not cause the other guy started with a big advantage...
...I like the 15000 florins for the CWB only because on the CWB you have to use 2 max and the same army for the attack and for the def.
Quote[/b] (Paolai @ Oct. 08 2003,19:07)]...I like the 15000 florins for the CWB only because on the CWB you have to use 2 max and the same army for the attack and for the def.
I would say that with the max 2 rule, the overpowered 16 cav army is gone and therefore the need for playing at 15k is really not there.
And playing at 5k means you dont have to worry about massive amounts of cavalry as there are no money for it. There is no real need for a max 2 rule. Only rule that I could think of would be to have a min 3 missile or something as rushing might be too good in a 1v1...
CBR
Mitch
For me I dont have any problems with lots of units as there are still only a limited number of unit types. Its when you have all the upgrades it suddenly gets very annoying.
I mean Im interested in playing a battle and not a game. I want tactics and not number crunching.
I can understand that one can get tired of the changes. I just want to cut down on the silly upgrades and shifting balance issues because people use different money levels.
CBR
Jochi Khan
10-08-2003, 20:53
It would be interesting to see what would happen if.....(Set the florin level)....you picked your Faction..picked your units..No valour upgrade..No weapons upgrade..No armour upgrade.
You play with what you choose. Perhaps then the game would be played on a more level playing field.
I know a lot of the community would not like this because it would do away with the overpowered units but surely it would make the game more interesting.
I am no expert but I do not see the fun in a mass cav charge or whaever to wipe out an opponent for example.
......Jochi
ElmarkOFear
10-08-2003, 22:48
..
Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe
10-09-2003, 00:16
Quote[/b] (ElmarkOFear @ Oct. 08 2003,17:48)]If you were to limit upgrades severely or even do away with them altogether, it will ruin the game for most, because most players like the "gamey" feel to their games. The unknown, the ability to surprise the enemy by making unusual choices in troops/upgrades. Eliminate this and you will lose a lot of players because all the game will be alike. The only thing that allows players to pick unique units now is the higher florin levels.
Oddly enough I have the exact opposite feeling...
Right now, 15k allows to upgrade swords enough to make spears irrelevant. I follow logfiles closely, 15k armies in high lush / temperate are overwhelmingly identical. Clone after clone of armies with as a minimum 6 swords and 6 cav. There is no unknown and no surprise there; it's pretty much always the same. Once in a while we have marginal change on a couple of units. Like a couple of longbows, or a couple of HA, or even sometimes a couple of polearm / spears...
So I don't buy the 'you will lose a lot of players because all the games will be alike'. Wake up Elmo All the games are ALREADY alike at 15k I don't remember the last time I've been surprised by an army composition
Ah wait, yes I remember some guys brought some spears That was a surprise
I would like to believe your point Elmo, but it's not happening.
I see way more variety in 5k armies.
If you are a pessimist; one might think that's only because an optimal army has not been found yet, but that at 5k, just like at 15k, there is an horrible 2 dimension army that break the RPS balance and the game is doomed.
If you are an optimist; balanced armies are possibly optimal, but a complete unbalance might also win the day. and depending on the battlefiled, your opponent, factions, era, etc, you can take bet on ennemy army composition and try some unbalanced armies to counter it.
Your ennemy take byz in high?
At 15k; who cares, go 6 cav 6 sword 2 missile 2 whatever (preferably, another couple of cav or sword) and go for it.
At 5k; well maybe it'll be sword heavy so lot of cav is an option and are very likely to rout barney. But maybe the byz will second guess you and come with some boosted spearmen or cav, or all cav, and only minimal sword. In which case, second the second guess and well... hum bring a balanced army so that you can face with reasonnable chance whatever the other general will throw at you...With the risk of facing a severe unbalance army?
For me to limit upgrade is not about gamey/ non gamey and surprise... I don't mind that. It's about balance between the different arms in the game.
Louis,
ElmarkOFear
10-09-2003, 00:50
..
Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe
10-09-2003, 02:07
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif Elmo
Ok I answer the rest of your post, and even possibly go back on topic (sorry Baz http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif ), but it's going to be a long way....
Baz question (if I got it well) is; can we get a decent morale and RPS balance at the same time?
Decent morale suggest a Florin level discussion. So the question change to ; is there a florin level with RPS armies (or viable balanced armies) which do not rout as fast as Elmo's?
5k might be an answer; but for many the morale level is too low and punitive. It's unlikely to get accepted, and on top of that who wants to agree with CBR? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
Any other florin level in between? To be seen, but not likely.
Personnaly, I don't believe fl level is a correct answer. I think the RPS is broken because the different bonus each arm (spear/ sword/ cav) enjoy against each other are not big enough.
Combat wise; spear bonus against cav is not big enough. Cav Charge bonus vs sword is not big enough.
Moralewise; if units are pumped up enough, even cav morale effect is not enough (it get good enough when units are half depleted and tired). Cav neeeds to get more fear in swords, and spears shall be immune to that (arguable if flanked http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif ).
The lack of RPS difference and bonus between different arms is particularly damaging for the sword/ spear relationship. Cavalry are likely to be always usefull; speed is a nice strategic advantage.
But for sword and spears, as the bonus they have vs cav or vs each other are small, it's easy to make up for those bonuses with upgrades.
Depending on their relative cost and power, you may end up with a situation where spears rule (MTW 1.0) or swords rule (VI 2.0).
Now, back to the limit on unmber of upgrade idea; IMO, it does not adress the issue of there is not enough difference between Rock, Paper and Scissors.
Like 5k, it might be a solution, but more by accident than by design.
In the current state of the game, 5k is the best chance to get a RPS back. If something needs to be changed in the system, IMO, it may not be the upgrade system, but rather to increase the difference between all the special bonus units enjoy vs each other (anticav bonus, charge, etc...).
Louis,
PS: BTW, I am all for super units I like super units One of the great fun of 5k is that Elite expensive units; JHI, SAP, Chiv Foot Knight, Chiv Knights, etc, are really better than the rest. They really feel Elite. Sure they cost twice the price of the regular unit you have in your army, but you feel they can actually do something worth that.
When you see a couple of Lancers, or a couple of SAP in ennemy rank, you know you have to watch them very carefully....
ElmarkOFear
10-09-2003, 02:50
..
Quote[/b] ]LJ - "The real balance of the game is that all units are useful in different circumstances. People who only play battles under one set of circumstances will necessarily see some units as more worthwhile than others."
Quote[/b] ]CBR - "I'm very sure why he didnt like it: he suddenly couldnt buy his 8 heavy cav (4 of them Lancers) and now had to buy a completely new and different army"
and precisely why balancing the current game is near to impossible. different people like different units, tactics, and have different styles. so it is better for all that there are less sets of circumstances(i.e. remove florin/upgrade option --> fixed florin and # of upgrade)? Most are comfortable with 15k now, some 20k, a couple 99k, and one or two 5k to 7k. I see there must be a reason for it. And it has gotta to do with the level of morale at 15k.. most like the feel at 15k because the units dont stay too long nor rout too early. At 15k, most armies are predictable and there are complaints that game get boring. But if u look at it in another way.. if it becomes totally RPS balanced, all will be bringing a 'balanced' armies (equal number of spear/cav/sword/missiles) because they are most effective.. *yawn* I think it is even more boring than now. At least for now I see more variety of totally different armies like the turkish 12-missiles, german/egyptian all-cav, all-swords, half-cav half-sword, half-pikes half-gun, as well as good-mix-of-RPS armies. Only the mongol is understrength imo.. a disappointment given their historical background.
Quote[/b] ]CBR - "No I must say Im a bit disappointed with the community so far. Apparently the only way they can learn the gameplay in a new total war version is by forcing them. Less upgrades to buy and no fancy host settings is what I want."
I dont know what you mean by forcing the community to learn the gameplay.. are you dictating the type of gameplay deem fun, and thereafter educating the crowd to accept it? Its a strange logic but I find it more logical that gameplays evolve from the gaming system.
Quote[/b] ]Elmo - "If you were to limit upgrades severely or even do away with them altogether, it will ruin the game for most, because most players like the "gamey" feel to their games. The unknown, the ability to surprise the enemy by making unusual choices in troops/upgrades. Eliminate this and you will lose a lot of players because all the game will be alike. The only thing that allows players to pick unique units now is the higher florin levels."
without the upgrades i wouldnt be able to get my arq v4a2 or xbow v4a2 http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif
Quote[/b] ]Louis - "Personnaly, I don't believe fl level is a correct answer. I think the RPS is broken because the different bonus each arm (spear/ sword/ cav) enjoy against each other are not big enough. Combat wise; spear bonus against cav is not big enough. Cav Charge bonus vs sword is not big enough"
Quote[/b] ]Louis - "BTW, I am all for super units I like super units One of the great fun of 5k is that Elite expensive units; JHI, SAP, Chiv Foot Knight, Chiv Knights, etc, are really better than the rest. They really feel Elite. Sure they cost twice the price of the regular unit you have in your army, but you feel they can actually do something worth that."
same thinking here.
ok how about this ..
the only reason ppl play at different florin levels is to increase or decrease the morale, as bad side effect unit balance is altered .. so surely a better system would be to have morale variable and florin fixed, given that the units are fairly balanced at that level (the perfect world http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif ) .. just a thought.
Elmo
Quote[/b] ]it will ruin the game for most, because most players like the "gamey" feel to their games
Maybe there is a majority that likes the "gamey" feel but I dont see them posting on org or com. I see more people who wants to reduce the amount of upgrading.
Quote[/b] ]The unknown, the ability to surprise the enemy by making unusual choices in troops/upgrades
In STW you might have been able to surprise more as upgrading were too cheap but I know more about MTW so lets look at that. In 15k I would say the standard is something like v3 cmaa, v4 fmaa, v4 ms and v2 orderfoot. Cavalry comes in knights with either one weapon or one valour. How can someone surprise you? I have seen v4 cmaa, v3 orderfoot and v2 chiv knights...actually have seen one newbie with a v3 chiv knight general. Yes at first I guess people were surprised by the upgraded handgunners but after a few battles its no longer a surprise that they came as v4 + some weapon/armour.
The thing is that the current level of surprise in MTW is really only max 1 valour (2 combat points) and many times its only 1 combat point coming from a weapon upgrade.
I see that level of surprise in 5k battles too as some people take v1 fmaa or give one or two upgrades to some spears but the best way of surprising your enemy is by unit selection: he doesnt know how much im going to focus on cavalry..will I buy only 4 feudal knight or will I get a couple of chiv knights instead. Can I expect to face order foot or only chiv sgts..or will he try with smaller but more elite units? I see more variety in low money games with few upgrades but focus on unit selection than the high money games with few units used and lots of upgrades where most are no-brainer upgrades anyway.
CBR
Quote[/b] (Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe @ Oct. 09 2003,03:07)]Personnaly, I don't believe fl level is a correct answer. I think the RPS is broken because the different bonus each arm (spear/ sword/ cav) enjoy against each other are not big enough.
Combat wise; spear bonus against cav is not big enough. Cav Charge bonus vs sword is not big enough.
The game might need a few fixes but I would not want swords to get better versus spears. The problem with any RPS system is that what if one only brings lots of rocks and paper?.
Making spears better versus cav doesnt change the fact that the sword/cav army is too powerful....especially at higher florins.
But RTW will have another balance so no need to go into details about something we dont know anything about yet.
CBR
ElmarkOFear
10-09-2003, 15:40
..
The basic problem is that spears are cr*p. Changing the florin level wont help. This can be only fixed by the devs. What players can do is to play at relatively high florin levels (which allows good spears) and put max v2 on sword/axe units (to prevent the sword-cav balance to turn in favour of swords).
tootee:
Quote[/b] ]and precisely why balancing the current game is near to impossible. different people like different units, tactics, and have different styles
And people can have different styles and different units without the need for high amount of florins. Thats the whole idea behind having so many different units and factions.
Quote[/b] ]At 15k, most armies are predictable and there are complaints that game get boring. But if u look at it in another way.. if it becomes totally RPS balanced, all will be bringing a 'balanced' armies (equal number of spear/cav/sword/missiles) because they are most effective.. *yawn*
And Im not in favor of any unhistorically but oh so perfect balanced RPS system but we have some different unittypes that makes the tactics a bit more interesting.... if they are actually used. If playing at high money levels most units and even some unittypes will simply not be used.
Quote[/b] ]I dont know what you mean by forcing the community to learn the gameplay.. are you dictating the type of gameplay deem fun, and thereafter educating the crowd to accept it? Its a strange logic but I find it more logical that gameplays evolve from the gaming system.
There are 2 ways you can do it: Top-Down or Bottom-Up approach.
For SP CA knows what units to make and what units to leave out, even if it was in an earlier version. They of course have to think about balance and gameplay but the idea is to get that historical flavor while still have it balanced. They will tweak things to have the gameplay in a certain way. That is essentially the Top-Down approach.
For MP its suddenly different. Although we have the same units and factions we dont get everything so to speak. Units in SP have both a training cost AND upkeep cost. One example: chivalric sgts cost 300 and have 62 in upkeep, crossbows cost 200 and have 22 in upkeep. And we suddenly have individual upgrading of units as well as hosts being able to pick very high amounts of money. All in all the result is very difficult to predict and lots of potiential balance problems..and I would call that Bottom-Up.
Oh well long rant.. The thing is that the game is designed for a certain gameplay but is ruined by the "freedom" hosts have. For some that freedom is precisely what they want and some people want even more advanced host options.
And this is just my opinion..but I want to play Roman/ancient warfare when I buy RTW. I have no interest in any "gamey" features if that creates unhistorical units/gameplay..some of that doesnt even take that long before you have figured out all the best super units..just takes a few looks at the stats and host with enough money for the upgrades.
When it comes to current money level. I can understand why people went from 10k to 15k and more when 1.1 got out as cavalry is just way too powerful at that level. But I still cant understand why people used 10k as a standard in 1.0 ..and as I cant remember me playing any 5k unless I hosted them myself, Im very much inclined to say that people practically started with high florins.
Of course the elite units were more expensive and, as people always falls for IIRC someone called The Tiger Tank syndrome, they want as many super units as possible.
The longest infantry fights I have had has been in 5k (and I guess the 10k upgraded spears battles in 1.0) simply because I have spears and not just shock/swords in the frontline. I dont even need high morale for that.
Quote[/b] ]without the upgrades i wouldnt be able to get my arq v4a2 or xbow v4a2
If you want such upgrades its because you play at high florins and then take a look at the enemy foot: v3 cmaa or v4 fmaa or v 4 mil sgts. So all in all you havent changed relative combat power by that much... I mean it could just as well be a v1a2 arq against v0 cmaa?
I dont want to cut all upgrades but I see a problem with some units getting nearly all you can give them, while others have only one weapon upgrade.
And having high money games with lots of upgrading will always kill many units while removing some of the differences among other units: you take a look at all the cmaa, fmaa, militia sgts, janissary infantry, longbows, arqs, handgunners and vikings (did I miss anyone?) Most of them have been upgraded to get nearly same kind of combat stats which to me is plain boring and one-dimensional.
Think that was about it..
CBR
Orda Khan
10-09-2003, 20:08
Totally agree CBR you are spot on...Though I seem to remember playing my first MTW battle at 7 or 8k. I hasten to add that I played only one game during the first 3 months of MTW.
I honestly think it's too late now, people will not change
......Orda
CBR i have no arguement against ya point on that the units relative strength will be maintained relatively similiar. in fact when i do my match up, I look at the difference between the unit's sum combat factors instead of their absoulte value.
I could get an arq@v1a2 vs cmaa@v0, but i dont because the morale for both units are too low for my liking.
to me its not an issue of playing at too high a florin level, or low level.. its more of an issue of getting to an acceptable overall morale level for the armies so that the units fight and rout with a 'right' feel.
of course playing at too low or too high a florin level will make some units totally worthless, e.g. at 999999 (not 99999) florins, there is no point getting a v4w3a3 cmaa, when i can afford a v4w3a3 van.guard or JHF.
Quote[/b] (ElmarkOFear @ Oct. 09 2003,17:40)]Maybe at your time of day, there are people who prefer 5k games . . I believe that is when most of the mental hospitals give their patients recreation time and let them get online to play MTW/VI.
Elmo that is very naughty thing to say...
Elmark,
You are supposed to be able to readily see and make correct matchups. The invisible pumping of unit stats you are advocating depends on trickery to win. Original STW didn't have any invisible upgrades. Also, surprise can come in not knowing what units your opponent will take. Good balance means being able to field a wide variety of units without being disadvantaged. It doesn't mean an all missle army is equal to an all cav army. If the game adheres to RPS, your all missle army looses to all cav very easily.
The players who exploited the game imbalances have to share the responsibility for driving the game into the corner it's in now. I can say that I wasn't part of that. I never used a lancer in over 1000 mtw v1.1 games. I never used the Byz faction except once in a cwc game. I never used a handgunner. I never fielded all cav except once in a 4v4 where my side decided to try 4 all cav armies. I always included spears or halbs and ranged units in my armies. However, I have to say that by August I had to give up on spears in mtw/vi v2.0 at 15k.
The problem with 5k games is not 6 to 8 cav. You can counter that with anti-cav inf. The problem, besides the fact that a player may feel morale is too low, is that ranged units are very expensive and therefore you can be at a disadvantage if your opponent has less ranged units than you. However, my 5k online experience has been good, and the reason is that the group I play with is not out to exploit the unbalance.
BTW, handgunner stats were not lowered as far as I know. Their cost was increased by 25 florins as were several other units which is the minimum cost adjustment that can be made. Chiv, Hospitaller and Teutonic knights were also increased by 25, and lancers went up by 50 as I recall. I didn't notice the upgrade discount change since I never use the unit. Are hangunners supposed to be excellent swordsmen with morale higher than knights?
Whatever system RTW incorporates for MP we can see from experience that standards tend to get established early and are very hard to change later.
From just plain gaming point of view, actually the pumped up handgunners(a cool dude till the cost increase in 2.0) and arq are really fun to play with. They have superb holding power just by putting them to hold ground hold formation, due to high defence point and good morale, and cheaper than any spear of similiar effect. especially effective if protected on both flanks. And at end game they do good too.
That said, are they really dominating? naah. They give variety to gameplays.. used properly they rock, use unwisely they are just plain wasting of unit slots for good MAA or MS or cav.
I'm no rigid support for historical accuracy.. as long as the game is fun.. i dont mind a camel that kill missiles like bugs and lose easily to any horse.
On the point of hidden upgrades and the "supposely able to readily see and make correct matchups".. my opinion is its much more fun with hidden upgrades. Its not much more fun when we can readily size-up the units individually.. compared to one where you have to consider the net cost of the visible enemy.. only the experienced can tell at one glance at the opponent army that the apparant cost doesnt add up.. there must be some upgrades somewhere.. cav? the foot units? it just add another dimension to decision making.. I think it really enhance my gaming experience. Trickery is part of the art of war.
ElmarkOFear
10-10-2003, 07:39
..
Actually Elmo, VI improved the missile accuracy.. so missiles are more worthy that in MTW. Thus missiles are worth to buy, esp for the turkish army. But u r still right that the foot rush more than negate the improvement made to missiles in general.
Quote[/b] (ElmarkOFear @ Oct. 10 2003,08:39)]
Elmo:
Quote[/b] ]Handgunners lost 1 unit of defense and were increased by 25 florins base cost. Also their upgrade percentages were increased in patch
Cost was increased from 175 to 200 and that was it. I just checked 1.1 stats and nothing else was changed..neither defense or cost reduction and upgrading seemed to work in same way.
Quote[/b] ]So now spears arent worth a hoot, no missile units are worth buying besides longbow and pavs and you see the sword/cav armies which people complain about today. You may get the type of game you want, but it seems the community does not like it much since I have noticed fewer and fewer players in MTW/VI these days
Huh? And where do you see us wanting the game to be like it is today? Why do you think we are talking about other florins levels or about what types of options we want for RTW? Is that because we like the current things or because we want changes?
Quote[/b] ]Seems to be fewer and fewer members posting here as well
Yes some has lost interest in the game while others post on .Net instead
Quote[/b] ]I just left the MTW lobby, there were 12 players online, I have never seen that few during this time. Its a shame really.
Some people were already using the patch, that could be the reason.
CBR
Elmark,
"Their only advantage was when you could save them til the end of the game, then they became pretty powerful due to their guns. Very few people had a problem with them, but unfortunately the few who did were also the ones who were able to make suggestions during the patching."
Yes they became pretty powerful. Where is this idea that only a few people could make suggestions coming from? Everyone who posts here could make suggestions, and many did. There wasn't any other logistical path for making suggestions except by posting here or at .com. I certainly didn't get what I wanted. Of all the suggestions I made for VI v2.0 only one was incorporated. In mtw v1.1, also one suggestion of mine made it into the game. None of the ideas that came out of the we/mi v1.02 beta made it into mtw v1.0 except possibly variable unit sizes which I was not in favor of. You can thank lack of participation back in Sept of 2002 by the MP vets in two very important SP threads on spears vs cav and swords vs cav for what happened to spears in MP in mtw v1.1. You can thank the MP rants that archers are were too weak for the ranged unit discounts. All you have to do is look at the solution that was applied to archers and you see why it's not enough to just rant. LongJohn posted here last year that he went online back in Sept 2002 and saw people using a lot of Alan Merc cav. Guess what? When mtw v1.1 was released Alan Merc cav were more expensive.
That's right Elm. I used v0a3 pav arbs and I told anyone who wanted to know that's what I used. It was a way to get a ranged aspect into the game back in Nov and Dec 2002 when most vets were posting here that there was no ranged aspect to the game. Practically all the vets I ran into back then were trying to play MTW the way STW was played and it didn't work.
I'm not taking the blame for how the game turned out.
Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe
10-10-2003, 15:28
Quote[/b] (ElmarkOFear @ Oct. 08 2003,21:50)]Louis: I agree, agreeing with CBR is not agreeable LOL
So increase: cavalry bonus vs. swords & missile, swords bonus vs. spears, spears bonus vs. cavalry. Missile units no hand-to-hand bonus, but keep morale penalty to units being fired upon.
What about units with "vs. armored troop" bonuses? They might tend to break the overall rock/paper/scissors.
Hi
Well increase cavalry bonus vs sword and missile (ie charge), sure I think it would be interesting, spear bonus vs cavalry might be a good idea too (although we may want to consider both the combat bonus, and possibly also a morale bonus). Swords are doing good enough vs spears without additional bonus.
The vs. armored bonus? I think it's more a question of unit balance than a question of RPS balance. The AP bonus does not turn ghazi in a anti cav units. It's very neat on halberd/ JHI/ billmen units and help their anti cav. It's ok on some sword units like Ghazi / Aby guard/ Gallow . It's only a problem when that turns those sword units in cav killer... Think Militia Sergeant.
For Mitch;
Polearm can be turned into a RPS breaker; as it is today it's not. I think that increasing charge (vs which polearm are not protected) is likely to make their life more exciting http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif and would promote some polearm / spear complementarity.
Hybrid and discount bonus; I don't see a big issue there http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif. Hybrid are sword first. Some tweaking might be required in a few special case... But I don't see that as a major issue. Maybe I'm biased http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
Cheetah;
Spears are cr*p? I think this can be solved by fl level... At 15k it's not so much that spears are not good that their purpose can be filled by sword units. A spear v2 will hold cav nicely, in this sense they work; the problem is that for the same cost you can have a sword unit basically doing the same thing and winning against spear. Changing the cost of spears is not a solution; it might just reversed us to 1.0.
At a lower fl level the relative cost of units change. sword can't hold cav anymore -> spears become necessary, and you can't buy the 2 valor upgrade differential easily which would make up for an anticav upgrade.
Louis,
ElmarkOFear
10-10-2003, 16:40
..
Quote[/b] (Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe @ Oct. 10 2003,09:28)][quote=ElmarkOFear,Oct. 08 2003,21:50]
Cheetah;
Spears are cr*p? I think this can be solved by fl level... At 15k it's not so much that spears are not good that their purpose can be filled by sword units. A spear v2 will hold cav nicely, in this sense they work; the problem is that for the same cost you can have a sword unit basically doing the same thing and winning against spear. Changing the cost of spears is not a solution; it might just reversed us to 1.0.
That is why I have suggested to put a max v2 on sword/axe units.
Quote[/b] (Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe @ Oct. 10 2003,09:28)][quote=ElmarkOFear,Oct. 08 2003,21:50]
At a lower fl level the relative cost of units change. sword can't hold cav anymore -> spears become necessary, and you can't buy the 2 valor upgrade differential easily which would make up for an anticav upgrade.
Louis,
The morale at this level becomes unacceptable to many players including myself http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif Besides at 5k cavs are still the most powerful units.
Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe
10-10-2003, 17:17
Quote[/b] (Cheetah @ Oct. 10 2003,12:01)]
Quote[/b] (Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe @ Oct. 10 2003,09:28)][quote=ElmarkOFear,Oct. 08 2003,21:50]
Cheetah;
Spears are cr*p? I think this can be solved by fl level... At 15k it's not so much that spears are not good that their purpose can be filled by sword units. A spear v2 will hold cav nicely, in this sense they work; the problem is that for the same cost you can have a sword unit basically doing the same thing and winning against spear. Changing the cost of spears is not a solution; it might just reversed us to 1.0.
That is why I have suggested to put a max v2 on sword/axe units.
This a very worthy consideration (http://www.totalwar.org/cgi-bin/forum/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=18;t=8417)
Unfortunately, nobody seemed to support it or even interested in discussing it back then... But be sure I agree with you http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif. It's one path to explore.
Louis,
ElmarkOFear
10-10-2003, 17:18
..
Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe
10-10-2003, 17:26
Quote[/b] (ElmarkOFear @ Oct. 10 2003,11:40)]3. Cavalry need to get a charge bonus vs. sword units, but should not be able to attack 2+ sword units at once and rout them immediately. Numbers do matter in battle and a single unit of cavalry could kill quite a few with its initial charge, but if it attacks more than one isolated sword unit, head on, it should not be able to win due to sheer numbers and losing its charge momentum.
4. Accuracy of regular archer units should be increased very slightly. Regular archers are ineffective currently. I am not sure if archer accuracy is done on a unit per unit basis or if it is a global value. If it is done globally, it needs to be changed to a unit per unit stat. Also, reduce the holding ability of a few missile units (pavise cross/arbs) when facing a horse or sword charge.
I think the charge bonus vs sword already exist; it's called charge. Sure, today it's not a cav only bonus vs sword, but as spears cancelled charge bonus, it's pretty much a bonus vs sword (and well also other cav http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif ).
I also think increasing the charge bonus will reduce the holding ability of pav vs cav. Would not change it vs sword though... But the major sillyness is really against cav.
Increasing the charge bonus for cav is doable in a mod. I'd be interested in testing that.
Louis,
PS; also accuracy for archer... hum... Instead of increasing accuracy, I'd like archer to be able to hit moving target... On standing target, I kind of like the way it is now.
Quote[/b] (Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe @ Oct. 10 2003,11:17)]
Quote[/b] ]That is why I have suggested to put a max v2 on sword/axe units.
This a very worthy consideration (http://www.totalwar.org/cgi-bin/forum/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=18;t=8417)
Unfortunately, nobody seemed to support it or even interested in discussing it back then... But be sure I agree with you http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif. It's one path to explore.
Louis,
Thx the link Louis
Whoa I have not even noticed this thread http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/eek.gif My only excuse that I was away in june for a month http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wacko.gif
I will host such games soon, stay tuned
Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe
10-10-2003, 18:27
Quote[/b] (ElmarkOFear @ Oct. 10 2003,11:40)]Any statements such as these which would give us an idea of what the perfect game for you would be blanceing-wise: You do not have to know what the RTW system will be to make global statements. For me the following changes for RTW would be ideal:
[...]
9. Gunpowder units should be changed by increasing their range for any handgunner type units or changing their stats back to where these units can take up the sword and fight well hand to hand. That is why handgunners were good at holding in pre-patch MTW. They were given the armor of a gothic knight and could use a sword.
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/shock.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/eek.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/shock.gif
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif
The glorious Elmo's handgunners legion; that's not going to be a pretty sight http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
Maybe they shall also correct the Organ Gun for RTW. And lower the reload rate for culverin. Roman Culverin were very slow to fire. Actually Roman enginneer are still waiting for the 1st big BOOM our of Roman culverin. Very very slow indeed.
Louis,
Elmark,
Hmm. Maybe I should dumb down my posts. Do you remember LongJohn's response to me after I made my first suggestions in his thread for the v1.1 mtw patch? He said the suggestions were not backed by strong enough arguments to warrant a change. When I reiterated that sentiment many months later to some vets who were asking for changes without strong supportive arguments, they hit the roof and told me to shut up. Good luck to them getting their suggestions implemented.
I've never said to eliminate the weapon and armor upgrades. Some unpredictability is good, and it seems to me that the majority of players like those upgrade options. My main concern is that breaking down of the RPS degrades the gameplay. As long as the upgrades are not too extreme, I don't see any problem with them. My own use of a3 on pav arbs was not to trick anyone but only to contribute to my strategy which was to win the shootout, and I never attemped to conceal what I was doing. I never used the v0w1 thing on cav to maximize benefit from the battlefield upgrades, and I never pumped my arbs to turn them into anti-cav units.
The majority of the MP players don't seem to care that the RPS has broken down in VI v2.0 at 15k. I wasn't the only one who saw hangunners as breaking the RPS, and that was why the price increase was suggested. What threw a monkey wrench in there was the global +2 morale. Handgunners didn't need more morale, and lower morale units like fmaa, cmaa and ms benefited more from the morale increase. The very first thought that hit me when I saw the +2 morale was that ms were going to be a super unit at 15k. With the arbs gone to late era, the battlefield upgrade which benefitted small units like cav the most removed and the +2 morale which boosted units like cmaa, fmaa and nearly ms to fight to the last man, the game shifted to a more hth inf based game. I'm sure Longjohn was trying to help out the low florin game by increasing morale and it did, but the 15k didn't need more morale. The spear/cav/sword balance is satisfactory to the SP players. So, it was very unlikely that anything statwise would be changed there, and I don't think it was changed. MP got cost adjustments and unit avalability changes. Almost all the suggested balance changes for VI v2.0 were made based on experience with mtw v1.1 at 15k. I didn't see a body of MP experience being built up at some lower florin level from which suggested changes could be drawn, but it did occur to me that lower florins should have been investigated more.
The gameplay changes have lurched along with LongJohn trying to satisfy a multitute of players as best he can. In the end, I think we do have a better MP game in mtw/vi, and hopefully RTW will benefit. The quest for the exceptionally well balanced MP game is like searching for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It's not a trivial thing to balance something like this. What we have is a construction set, and the upgrades + discounts on some units create a constantly shifting balance at different florin levels. It doesn't really matter that handgunners have lost ground in the arms race. They are just replaced by some other better unit at a particular florin level. Find out what it is and use it.
I can tolerate a substantial amount of imbalance and still enjoy playing, but when it gets to the point that two of the four groups of units in the RPS are no longer useful that's it fo me. I don't see balanced armies as boring. I see them as versatile and providing more combinations of factors. For instance, chess is interesting for the interaction of pieces that move in several different ways. If you eliminated half of the chess piece types, the game would loose something in terms of tactical richness.
One thing I know is that VI v2.0 is not being played at 15k for morale reasons. The morale was increased between mtw v1.1 and VI v2.0, but the florin level didn't change. Something else is going on here besides preference for a particular morale level. Watch what happens in VI v2.01 now that the swipe is removed. Roll on 15k. I hope the players have fun with their swords and two light cav for chasing routers.
Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe
10-10-2003, 18:44
Quote[/b] (ElmarkOFear @ Oct. 10 2003,11:40)]1. Eliminate valour (or whatever RTW has) and replace it with a "morale only" upgrade, or get rid of the weapon/armor upgrades and just have valour. Morale should be one area that is a hidden upgrade because you could never tell how hard a man would fight in battle. Peasants fought to the death sometimes because their families lives were in jeopardy. Just because they were a peasant did NOT mean they all would run every time.
2. If weapon/armor upgrades are kept for RTW, then find a way to show them to everyone, so those that want to know may see what upgrades the enemy has used. This would be historically accurate, because you could see by the armor they had how defensive they could be, you could also tell how good they would be able to attack by the type of weapon they have and how they held/handled it in battle. Bigger banners like in STW would help to show valour (or morale if they elimnated valour). The weapon/armor upgrades (if kept for RTW) could be shown in the unit description you now get when you place your cursor over the enemy unit.
The whole discussion on shall upgrade be visible or not is largely OT http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif... So CBR, Yuuki and Elmo just start another topic... Anyway Baz will come and get you http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
... get you and me too...
I really don't mind seeing or not seeing upgrades. One can argue that equipement upgrade shall be visible as those parts were visible (ho... those guys got a nice shiny armor).
I've always thought about valor upgrade, and the little flag as a reputation thingy. Sure on the field, one never knows if it will stay or run, but some units had a reputation well know from all other (oh... the 10th legion, those guys must be good...).
You can justify and argue those points both ways...
But whether it's there or not, honestly, I don't mind (and most of the time, I forget to check http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif ... just when I have to pick units to shoot on http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif ).
Now Baz, please spare me http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
Louis,
Louis,
Is that us on our knees in your sig? Isn't my last paragraph on topic....SWISH
ElmarkOFear
10-10-2003, 19:29
..
Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe
10-10-2003, 19:54
Nah.... It's not working... You can't post two pages of OT stuff and then finish with a disclaimer http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
Baz will get you, enough said http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
And me too... will he forgive me for posting this;
http://www.masters-of-photography.com/artchive/b/bruegel/death.jpg
You see the pic in my sig somewhere in there....
Now, just in case this is enough to save me from Baz wrath, let's get back on track;
Yes, Elmo, bonuses vs troop would help to restore part of the RPS. The good news is that most of them already exist. But it's not independant from florin level and morale, as cavalry use morale penalty to win its part of the RPS vs sword more than its 'inner strenght'.
See?
Louis,
ElmarkOFear
10-10-2003, 20:42
..
Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe
10-10-2003, 20:56
Haha
You forgot the usual disclaimer to bring your post back on topic
Louis,
ElmarkOFear
10-10-2003, 22:08
..
im disapointed in all of you http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif good show guys best reading ive done here for a while http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
I personally like the 15k games best even in v2.01.
Of course it has some problems but IMO it is most balanced florin level. Yes maybe if you do a h2h test you can see that 15k swords will beat 15k cav but what makes cav scissors (if swords are paper) is cav's manueverability and in games between two good players I have always seen the player with more cav has advantage (think of 8 inf 4-5 cav vs 6 inf 6-7 cav). Do you think the player with more swords will win? If so why not show it to me when I use more cav? (Not trying to be arrogant here, I just want to see http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif )
Yes maybe it is quite unrealistic if knights cannot beat inf h2h but still more cav gives more advantage. But it has a limit I think. With the new changes to the game all cav or 12 cav armies are less dangerous and if the strength of cav is just like as it is now in 15k unrealistic all cav armies will not be able to rule as it did with v1.0-1.1 (swipe + valor gain), v2.0 (swipe).
What about less florin games?? In 1v1 all cav armies will be too powerful. And also for example who would buy pavs in 5k 1v1 games??? If 5k becomes standard then all we will see is rush armies also in team games.
I also have a problem with understanding people's problem with spears in 15k. According to the paper-scisor rock logic they should beat cav but be beaten by swords right? Can't a v2 Chivalric Seargant beat v1 Chiv Knight easily? And it is cheaper The problem with spears is morale IMO and in 15k you can upgrade them enough not to rout vs cav. I've heard from 5k guys that they love spears at 5k I think because they also use them well vs swords. But doesn't this also break the pap-sc-rock logic???? How can it be even argued that spears are better at 5k???? Spears need to be good vs cav and they WILL be better vs cav if their valor is higher NOT when it is the same. In 5k v0 spears face v0 cav but in 15k it is v2 or 3 vs v1. Spears do have a use in 15k, but maybe people do not take them simply because it is less fun playing with them. (I mean think: spears about 800 fl can beat cav about 1100, so in theory u can simply take spears instead of cav, place them well to fight against cav, and spend the excess florins to make swords better. In theory if you don't do mistakes you can win)
Some people said that they are tired of seeing same armies over and over in 15k, there is more variety in 5k etc... etc... I also can't understand this. Units that are logical to take for a 5k game are more limited as morale becomes a big factor. Many low morale units are left out.
15k games rule
Quote[/b] ]Yes maybe if you do a h2h test you can see that 15k swords will beat 15k cav but what makes cav scissors (if swords are paper) is cav's manueverability and in games between two good players I have always seen the player with more cav has advantage (think of 8 inf 4-5 cav vs 6 inf 6-7 cav).
Quote[/b] ]In 1v1 all cav armies will be too powerful.
i agree that cav's h2h weakness vs swords are somewhat offset by their manoeuvrability, and how this is exploited depends on how good the player is. this is especially so in 1v1. however i dont see an all cav armies as too powerful in 1v1. camping with an all sword army at one corner take away their advantage.. then again many see camping as dishonourable.. so in a 'fair' 1v1, cav usefulness is no less or no more that a sword imo.. but technically i dont see how an all cav can beat an all infantry in small space.
Quote[/b] ]I also have a problem with understanding people's problem with spears in 15k. According to the paper-scisor rock logic they should beat cav but be beaten by swords right? Can't a v2 Chivalric Seargant beat v1 Chiv Knight easily? And it is cheaper The problem with spears is morale IMO and in 15k you can upgrade them enough not to rout vs cav.
Quote[/b] ](I mean think: spears about 800 fl can beat cav about 1100, so in theory u can simply take spears instead of cav, place them well to fight against cav, and spend the excess florins to make swords better. In theory if you don't do mistakes you can win)
think of it this way:
1. spear at same florin level as cav in h2h beat cav.. but spear @ 800 is 50-50 vs cav @ 1100 (chi.sgt vs chi.knight).
2. spear is less mobile than cav.
3. spear is weak vs sword.
4. although spear has good holding power with defend @ 7 points, their flanks need to be protected in order for them to last because of their low morale. and they need to be in hold-formation hold ground.
5. spear weak attacking power mean it is not effective as a flanking unit compared to swords or swiss halb.
a spear advantage can be more easily negated compared to other units - it cant chase cav, and its pretty useless anti-cav if cav dont attack them straight on.
in its use as a blocking-holding-delaying unit vs swords (where people put spear @ centre of foot formation), enemy swords can just choose not to attack and ignore the spear, and combo on other units.. u can attack that sword which ignore you with ya spear, but the spear just doesnt having enough killing power to be meaningful in that melee, while ya one sword get combo by 2.
all in all, i would rather buy a 800 swords/axe/cav to fill up a unit slot than to waste it on a spear. of course its another different story for spear heavy army with swords and missile camping on a hill at a corner of map...
another wolf who does not read topic titles http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif
goto the 5k thread if you want to rant about that http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif
The trouble is that there is no reason to take spears in 15k because swords take over their job in the RPS. At least at 5k cav beats swords, so a mostly sword army will have a counter army. The spears stand up longer to swords in 5k because they are not facing a sword that is 2 or 3 valor points above them, but swords still beat spears in 5k with the possible exception of order foot which is considerably more expensive than a sword. There is room to put +1 valor on swords in 5k which will then certainly beat order foot. The spears do stand up to cav in 5k as long as they are not flanked. However, it looks like there is a rush problem in 5k because ranged is too expensive.
Look at it this way. The community chose 15k as the standard in v1.1 and it was still the standard in v2.0 after the battlefield upgrade was removed and morale increased by +2. The swipe has been removed in v2.01, so how can 15k still be optimum with all these changes since v1.1? 15k is probably being chosen in v2.01 because it was the standard in v2.0 and v1.1 before that, and not because it's where the game is most balanced. All these changes have weakened cav since v1.1, but there were multiple replays posted here months ago of inf armies beating all cav armies in v1.1 1v1 at 15k on steppe with top players running the tests. However, you certainly give up the initiative with an inf based army vs a cav based army, and have to play defensively.
When you see 2 of the 4 components of the RPS dropping out at 15k, that's an indication of imbalance. If there is a florin level that brings back 3 of the 4, then that's a more balanced place to play the game. I don't think the florin range between 5k and 15k has been fully investigated. There is a slim possibility that all 4 RPS components are useable at some level because the relative cost of ranged goes down as the florin level goes up.
Quote[/b] ]i agree that cav's h2h weakness vs swords are somewhat offset by their manoeuvrability, and how this is exploited depends on how good the player is. this is especially so in 1v1. however i dont see an all cav armies as too powerful in 1v1. camping with an all sword army at one corner take away their advantage.. then again many see camping as dishonourable.. so in a 'fair' 1v1, cav usefulness is no less or no more that a sword imo.. but technically i dont see how an all cav can beat an all infantry in small space.
Well camping will give an unfair advantage to the camper on many other occasions too, for example if camper has many missiles. It is indeed dishonorable and I just do not play with the player again if I see he corner camps in 1v1. So swords having an advantage in camping isn't something to consider when comparing it to cav IMO anyway.
Quote[/b] ]1. spear at same florin level as cav in h2h beat cav.. but spear @ 800 is 50-50 vs cav @ 1100 (chi.sgt vs chi.knight).
M8 are you sure that it is 50-50???? No it is 100-0 favoring the spears. A v2 Chivalric Seargant stats (costs 867) is 2 att 11 def against cav. A V1 Chivlaric Knights (costs 1147) stats is 6 att 6 def. 100 men vs 40 men... This means spears will kill them way before even they lose half of its unit. V1 CK has no chance vs V2 Chic Seargant. Maybe if the cav user is a single line user and this may surround the spear unit and the spear unit might lose more men if it stands while getting surrounded. But who says you have to use them at hold formation vs cav? Just use them at engage at will. They will 100% win easily.
Quote[/b] ]2. spear is less mobile than cav.
As it should be. Would you rather want to see them equily mobile with cav? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif
Quote[/b] ]3. spear is weak vs sword.
As it should be. According to paper-scissor-rock they should lose vs swords. If they didn't, wouldn't they become super units which beat all???
Quote[/b] ]4. although spear has good holding power with defend @ 7 points, their flanks need to be protected in order for them to last because of their low morale. and they need to be in hold-formation hold ground.
Well you shouldn't let any of your units get flanked anyway. Is swords getting flanked better than spears getting flanked?
No they don't have to be at hold formation/hold ground. They kill cav quicker if they are at engage at will. I suggest you test it. Vs swords however yes they need to be at hold formation just to stand for longer until help arrives. If it doesn't they will lose and rout and this is pretty logical for me.
Quote[/b] ]5. spear weak attacking power mean it is not effective as a flanking unit compared to swords or swiss halb.
As it should be. Were they ever used as flanking units in history???
Quote[/b] ]a spear advantage can be more easily negated compared to other units - it cant chase cav, and its pretty useless anti-cav if cav dont attack them straight on.
Yes spears do not kill as fast as other anti cav units BUT... For the logic I have said in my previous post you don't have to attack cavalry anyway, you can just stay defensively vs it and manuever spears against cav manuever. If cav doesn't attack then you can just wait your spears too. Your swords will win: Remember??? You had extra amount of florins left to make them stronger.
Quote[/b] ]in its use as a blocking-holding-delaying unit vs swords (where people put spear @ centre of foot formation), enemy swords can just choose not to attack and ignore the spear, and combo on other units.. u can attack that sword which ignore you with ya spear, but the spear just doesnt having enough killing power to be meaningful in that melee, while ya one sword get combo by 2.
How can you choose not to attack spears if you are the attacker and spears are the first row? In 5k v0 spears has a chance vs v0 swords and this breaks wthe sword-scissor-rock again. In 15k however spears has less chance vs swords as it should be http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
Quote[/b] ]all in all, i would rather buy a 800 swords/axe/cav to fill up a unit slot than to waste it on a spear.
Actually what unit to take depends on what you will face. If I was to face a sword/spear army I'd take swords instead of 800 florins. But against a normal balanced army 800 florins spears will just perform fine if you use them wisely. I don't take spears though. Not because they are weak, but as I said for me it is no fun playing with them therefore I don't take 'em.
Quote[/b] ]of course its another different story for spear heavy army with swords and missile camping on a hill at a corner of map...
Corner camping is really a different story http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif
i think the main point here is that at 15k, a sword units beats a cav of equal value~ well there it is a fact that makes 15k balance bad.
lets move on ..
Hehe 2 replies while I was posting http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif
Quote[/b] ]another wolf who does not read topic titles
goto the 5k thread if you want to rant about that
Yes I read the topic, but I also read the messages http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif which were quite relevant to what I wrote http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
Quote[/b] ]The trouble is that there is no reason to take spears in 15k because swords take over their job in the RPS. At least at 5k cav beats swords, so a mostly sword army will have a counter army. The spears stand up longer to swords in 5k because they are not facing a sword that is 2 or 3 valor points above them, but swords still beat spears in 5k with the possible exception of order foot which is considerably more expensive than a sword. There is room to put +1 valor on swords in 5k which will then certainly beat order foot. The spears do stand up to cav in 5k as long as they are not flanked. However, it looks like there is a rush problem in 5k because ranged is too expensive.
Yes maybe swords took over their job but IMO they can only succeed if the cav user does not use cav well and just engages all cav frontally. And IMO this is a good thing. It makes skill more important. One needs to use and manuever cav better and use its speed and manuever advantages. Afterall as I said, for me not only the h2h power of cav makes them scissors. If it would games would be more boring and would require less skill and noobs would perform better. In less florins however cav becomes more powerful as the valor difference against swords is less and this will again lead to overpowered cav armies.
In 5k not all swords beat all spears which is a problem too IMO. If there is a room for +1 valor for swords then there is also for spears. Yes they would be slighly more expensive but who cares? They will almost be like superb units who will have a fair chance vs swords and will beat cav if flanks are not threatened. So they will deserve those extra florins spent.
If used at v0 however they will stand for sometime vs v1 swords, and they will even have a chance vs v0 swords. But cav which charges in a thin line surrounding 2 of its flanks will cause a problem to it. They might rout. This might be possible for team games where there is a narrow space. But what about 1v1s???
In 5k spear + cav are good units and swords are worse... This isn't a perfect paper-scissor-rock combo, actually it is worse than that of 15k.
Quote[/b] ]Look at it this way. The community chose 15k as the standard in v1.1 and it was still the standard in v2.0 after the battlefield upgrade was removed and morale increased by +2. The swipe has been removed in v2.01, so how can 15k still be optimum with all these changes since v1.1? 15k is probably being chosen in v2.01 because it was the standard in v2.0 and v1.1 before that, and not because it's where the game is most balanced. All these changes have weakened cav since v1.1, but there were multiple replays posted here months ago of inf armies beating all cav armies in v1.1 1v1 at 15k on steppe with top players running the tests. However, you certainly give up the initiative with an inf based army vs a cav based army, and have to play defensively.
What changed the gamplay for 15k is not +2 morale IMO. Yes it helped to the early routing problem of some low morale units but how much? Is it the difference really that big? The morale is not the only thing to be considered when thinking about balance. IMO what made some people complain about cav vs swords was caused by the removal of valor gain. +2 morale is only a small factor. And how many people actually used swipe in 1.1 anyway?
In 5k discussions faction balance seems to be the thing that is mentioned less, but it is most important IMO. The playing style of Catholic factions is almost the same anyway, but other factions' styles especially the Muslims' is very different and it adds great fun to the game. For me 15k seems to be the amount that is close to balance. Florin amounts of 5k and also too high florins changes this balance very much.
Also all the changes required from the devs and done by the devs were thought for 15k anyway. Barneys, lancers etc...
To my liking the current strength of cav is fine and it is good for an all cav army lose against an all inf army. If the opposite is true cav is simply the super unit. I like it more this way when 5-6 or 7 cav is useful and skill is required to use them well. I'd like to repeat myself: More cav. vs more swords is still good up to certain amount (up to let's say 7-8 cav) and gives advantage if used well. And I think that these changes were what were needed to do against the old overpowered cav.
Quote[/b] ]When you see 2 of the 4 components of the RPS dropping out at 15k, that's an indication of imbalance. If there is a florin level that brings back 3 of the 4, then that's a more balanced place to play the game. I don't think the florin range between 5k and 15k has been fully investigated. There is a slim possibility that all 4 RPS components are useable at some level because the relative cost of ranged goes down as the florin level goes up.
How many components of RPS are in for 5k games?
IMO the amount which has most of these components is 15k (Cav good up to some amount and will give advantage if used well, spears can beat cav at a lower cost and swords beat spears)
Edit: LOL another reply. Anyway I think I wrote my opinions about that anyway. Use cav wisely http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif Not only for frontal charges http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/pat.gif
Kanuni,
About my point 1, you are right, I am confused there.
About my points 2 and 3, that is the characteristic of spears as is.. not an arguement for them to be otherwise.
About my point 4, it does matter, because spears have much lower morale. Swords will last longer under similiar situation compared to spears. Its not an arguement about flanking.. its about a weakness of spear compare to sword.
About point 5. Talk about just gameplay. If you have a situation whereby one foot unit has an opportunity to flank enemy.. my point is, I will prefer it to be a sword than a spear.
Quote[/b] ]
Yes spears do not kill as fast as other anti cav units BUT... For the logic I have said in my previous post you don't have to attack cavalry anyway, you can just stay defensively vs it and manuever spears against cav manuever. If cav doesn't attack then you can just wait your spears too. Your swords will win: Remember??? You had extra amount of florins left to make them stronger
thats my point.. spears are reactive unit.. they go where cav go.. and they are slow compared to cav.
example, for 6 swords, if u substitute two spears for swords, u have on average 180 florins more for the remaining 4 swords, which typically u can only upgrade two swords by one weapon.. it isnt much stronger compared to one without.. whereas ya substitute spears are much weaker than the standard 15k swords. u wanna bet which side will last longer? Also there is the option to ignore ya spear.. i can get my two swords on ya 'stronger' sword.. ya sword will die quicker than my sword which is attacked by the spear, going by stats and experience.
if u substitute two spears for cav, my cav @ 800, although much weaker than typical swords and the spear @ 800, its speed and high charge make it more relevant at the closing phase of the battle.. sure, ya spears can stay put and watch my cav.. but ya foot and my foot will be 50-50, i'm quite sure a cav is more useful than anything to close the battle.
and for two armies that are identical, except one has 2 x spear@v2, the other has 2 x fmaa@v3, well.. just by h2h matchup, i would say the latter has a slightly better chance of winning.
Quote[/b] ]How can you choose not to attack spears if you are the attacker and spears are the first row?
that is linear thinking...
therefore all in all, my point is there are better reasons to justify a cav or sword @ 800 florins, than getting a 800 florins spear.
lets do some number crunching http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/dizzy.gif
Round-robin matchup analysis for aux unit @ 15k
================================================
PS: Attack point adjusted to reflect size advantage, rank bonus, cav charge/multiple kill during charge phase, etc.
For size advantage, attack point is modified by size ratio to reflect multiple attack in one cycle. Smaller unit is not modified.
For spear rank bonus, on average + 1 added to attack.
For cav higher cav charge, reasonable to +1 to attack.
For cav having multiple kill in one cycle vs cmaa during charge phase due to push back, reasonable to +1 to attack.
Is there any bonus for sword vs spear/polearm?
Subjects
--------
Chi.Sgt @ v2 = 867 @ morale 4 (non-elite)
Chi.Knight @ v0w1 = 897 @ morale 8 (elite)
FMAA @ 3v = 859 @ morale 8 (elite)
Chi.Sgt matchup
---------------
vs cav --> 2 + 11 --adj--> (2+1)x(100/40) + 11 --> 7.5 + 11 = 18.5
vs fmaa --> 1 + 7 --adj--> (1+1)x(100/60) + 7 --> 3.3 + 7 = 10.3
Chi.Knight matchup
------------------
vs fmaa --> 6 + 5 --adj--> (6+1+1) + 5 --> 8 + 5 = 13
vs cs --> 6 + 5 --adj--> (6+1) + 5 --> 7 + 5 = 12
FMAA matchup
------------
vs cav --> 6 + 7 --adj--> 6x(60/40) + 7 --> 9 + 7 = 16
vs cs --> 6 + 7 --adj--> 7? + 7 = 13/14
RPS Difference
--------------------
cs vs chi.knight = 5.5
chi.knight vs fmaa = -3
fmaa vs cs = 2.7/3.7
Average combat points
---------------------
cs = 14.4
chi.knight = 12.5
fmaa = 15
Intangible
----------
1. cs is non-elite
2. cs -4 morale level difference?
3. cav mobility.. how to quantify? +4, +6 .. +10?
Conclusion
----------
There is no RPS in h2h. Get fmaa@v3 for aux role as anti- cav or anti-spear.
Would like to do an analysis for 5k game but what are the typical matchup?
Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe
10-13-2003, 14:19
Hi Kanuni,
To start with, i'll try to sum up some points already made in the thread; hope I won't sum it up wrong...
1/ Balance is understood as Rock Paper Scissor balance. There is no doubt (even for you) that as it is RPS does not exist at 15k anymore.
Baz question is; can we achieve RPS balance without sacrifying morale?
2/ in this thread, so far several ways of achieving that has been discussed; 5k games (but then many feel morale has been sacrified), v2 upgrade limit, and also stat change to increase cav charge / spear bonus against cav, ie, all boni that increase the effectiveness of one component against its favorite target, etc...
I personnally don't favor 5k as the best solution. But that the easiest one to implement.
Also, my short answer to Baz is; part of the RPS relies on morale; cavalry need to rout sword to win. So, I have no heop alltogether that we can have RPS and a game where sword does not get routed fast by cav, because well, that's what is supposed to happen, and it is 'morale sacrifice' to many.
Now, to your points;
Quote[/b] ] personally like the 15k games best even in v2.01.
Of course it has some problems but IMO it is most balanced florin level. Yes maybe if you do a h2h test you can see that 15k swords will beat 15k cav but what makes cav scissors (if swords are paper) is cav's manueverability and in games between two good players I have always seen the player with more cav has advantage (think of 8 inf 4-5 cav vs 6 inf 6-7 cav). Do you think the player with more swords will win? If so why not show it to me when I use more cav? (Not trying to be arrogant here, I just want to see )
The question is not so much 8 sword / 5 cav vs 6 sword / 7 cav but 4 sword / 4 spears / 4 cav. Both sword / cav will win.
Also, you play mainly 1v1. Even on the smallest steppe, you have room for some movement. When you go 4v4, you have considerably less room. You can nearly draw a line of sword across the map.
Show it to me... Kanuni... That's the kind of question that does not get solved on one game or even 10 games... and not one specific player against another... 500 games played by 50 players; and then we'll see if 6 sword / 7 cav is really better than 8 sword/ 5 cav. But for me it's beside the point; the problem is not how much P or how much S, but rather why is there no R whatsoever.
Quote[/b] ]Yes maybe it is quite unrealistic if knights cannot beat inf h2h but still more cav gives more advantage. But it has a limit I think. With the new changes to the game all cav or 12 cav armies are less dangerous and if the strength of cav is just like as it is now in 15k unrealistic all cav armies will not be able to rule as it did with v1.0-1.1 (swipe + valor gain), v2.0 (swipe).
What about less florin games?? In 1v1 all cav armies will be too powerful. And also for example who would buy pavs in 5k 1v1 games??? If 5k becomes standard then all we will see is rush armies also in team games.
There is a balance missile / rush issue at 5k... see 5k thread... Still quite easy to solve... But see 5k thread.
Quote[/b] ]I also have a problem with understanding people's problem with spears in 15k. According to the paper-scisor rock logic they should beat cav but be beaten by swords right? Can't a v2 Chivalric Seargant beat v1 Chiv Knight easily? And it is cheaper The problem with spears is morale IMO and in 15k you can upgrade them enough not to rout vs cav. I've heard from 5k guys that they love spears at 5k I think because they also use them well vs swords. But doesn't this also break the pap-sc-rock logic???? How can it be even argued that spears are better at 5k???? Spears need to be good vs cav and they WILL be better vs cav if their valor is higher NOT when it is the same. In 5k v0 spears face v0 cav but in 15k it is v2 or 3 vs v1. Spears do have a use in 15k, but maybe people do not take them simply because it is less fun playing with them. (I mean think: spears about 800 fl can beat cav about 1100, so in theory u can simply take spears instead of cav, place them well to fight against cav, and spend the excess florins to make swords better. In theory if you don't do mistakes you can win)
Basically we agree on a few things in 15k. Yes at 15k spears work and can get Chiv Knight. I'm going to quote myself here answering Cheetah:
Quote[/b] ]Spears are cr*p? I think this can be solved by fl level... At 15k it's not so much that spears are not good that their purpose can be filled by sword units. A spear v2 will hold cav nicely, in this sense they work; the problem is that for the same cost you can have a sword unit basically doing the same thing and winning against spear. Changing the cost of spears is not a solution; it might just reversed us to 1.0.
At a lower fl level the relative cost of units change. sword can't hold cav anymore -> spears become necessary, and you can't buy the 2 valor upgrade differential easily which would make up for an anticav upgrade.
No question; spearsv2 win vs cavv1 at 15k. But when you have v2 spears, you also have v4 sword... And those also win.... The problem is not so much spears. Spears just do fine. It's the sword part who breaks the RPS. You got it wrong when you think it's merely a question of sword vs cav; it's more a question of ;what is the difference in behavior between a sword and a spear vs cav at 15k?
Answer; not much, and when you know that on top, sword will trash spears in h2h, then you feel why there is no room for spears in 15k.
Also, playing with spears at 15k is not a question of fun, it's a question of efficiency; basically when you take spear you lose some slot you could have given to either cav, or sword, which both would perform better.
Quote[/b] ]Some people said that they are tired of seeing same armies over and over in 15k, there is more variety in 5k etc... etc... I also can't understand this. Units that are logical to take for a 5k game are more limited as morale becomes a big factor. Many low morale units are left out.
Again, I'd say let's talk about that in the 5k topic.
It's not so much the number of units (although, I woud argue that... variety in 15k is just... well... non existent), that a larger variety in the TYPE of units.
I don't quite get your answer to Baz, Kanuni.
Do you agree RPS is dead at 15k or not? What do you propose to restore it? Or do you even care about it and you are happy with a sword / cav game?
Louis,
Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe
10-13-2003, 14:42
Here we go again...
This time I don't quote the whole post Kanuni, I hope you won't mind http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
Quote[/b] ]In 5k not all swords beat all spears which is a problem too IMO. If there is a room for +1 valor for swords then there is also for spears. Yes they would be slighly more expensive but who cares? They will almost be like superb units who will have a fair chance vs swords and will beat cav if flanks are not threatened. So they will deserve those extra florins spent.
If used at v0 however they will stand for sometime vs v1 swords, and they will even have a chance vs v0 swords. But cav which charges in a thin line surrounding 2 of its flanks will cause a problem to it. They might rout. This might be possible for team games where there is a narrow space. But what about 1v1s???
In 5k spear + cav are good units and swords are worse... This isn't a perfect paper-scissor-rock combo, actually it is worse than that of 15k.
Spears beat sword at 5k? Where have you seen that happening? I'd be interested in seeing replay of that...
Worse than 15k would mean that in the RPS, we would have only 1 elements, ie all cav, all sword, all spears. Even if we have only 2 elements then it's just equal to 15k. Actaully so far I see all elements. But that might be because ppl have not optimized 5k yet.... But that's OT...
Quote[/b] ]In 5k discussions faction balance seems to be the thing that is mentioned less, but it is most important IMO. The playing style of Catholic factions is almost the same anyway, but other factions' styles especially the Muslims' is very different and it adds great fun to the game. For me 15k seems to be the amount that is close to balance. Florin amounts of 5k and also too high florins changes this balance very much.
Also all the changes required from the devs and done by the devs were thought for 15k anyway. Barneys, lancers etc...
5k discussion... Here is the relevant topic; 5k sucks (http://www.totalwar.org/cgi-bin/forum/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=18;t=7484;st=100)
Yes faction balance is a concern... Write about it there. the funny thing is that some thinks change to 5k favours Muslim faction a lot http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
Quote[/b] ]How many components of RPS are in for 5k games?
IMO the amount which has most of these components is 15k (Cav good up to some amount and will give advantage if used well, spears can beat cav at a lower cost and swords beat spears)
So far, in 5k we see spears, polearms, sword, cav. We see missile but there are concerns about it (see 5k topic). Also some concern about the light HA (the medium HA looks good enough). So basically we see everything.
I don't remember the last time I saw a convincing spear army in 15k. I have stats on logfile, tracking repartition of units by era / faction etc....
Guess what the % of spears used in high 15k game? And I have a statistic anomaly with a vet increasing the % spear stat playing balanced (ie 4 / 4 / 4 / 4) army just to make a point... So? how much?
If you think people are wrong at 15k and shall use spear more, then prove them wrong and get 4 spears in your army for the next 50 games, and let me know how it goes.
Louis,
Louis,
One way I see that can be done @ 15k, if it is not already suggested, is to make cav 60-man unit and increase combat pt by 1 (to attack or defence), and improve spear morale by +2.
In that case, by my previous post analysis, the RPS difference will be
RPS Difference
--------------------
cs vs chi.knight = 3
chi.knight vs fmaa = 1
fmaa vs cs = 2.7/3.7
Average combat points
---------------------
cs = 13
chi.knight = 13.5
fmaa = 15
the RPS is restored, and although the advantage of cav vs sword is +1 (2 pt less compared to the other two), it is more than compensated by cav mobility.
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/confused.gif
tootee,
Swords do get a hidden +1 attack vs spears since mtw v1.1. Nice analysis you made. As I recall from we/mi where all units were 60 men, 4 points of charge was roughly equivalent to 1 point of attack.
longjohn2
10-13-2003, 21:32
It sounds to me like the problem is the insistance on playing 4 v 4 on standard sized maps designed for 1 v 1. In a straight up slugfest, then the points that cavalry pay for manoeuvrability are going to be wasted, as are points spent countering them.
The game offers a variety of situations to play in, and different units are optimum in different conditions. If you only play one set of conditions, then only a few units will be optimal
Chasing some mythical optimal balance for one specific set of conditions will just destroy it for all other conditions
Skomatth
10-13-2003, 22:51
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif
edit: http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif for elmo's post
ElmarkOFear
10-13-2003, 22:52
..
Skomatth
10-14-2003, 04:13
Quote[/b] ]Chasing some mythical optimal balance for one specific set of conditions will just destroy it for all other conditions
We're seeking unit-unit balance (not an "overall" balance, like cav are too strong) that doesn't exist because of upgrades, and not for a specific set of conditions. The base stats are relatively fine, but since most don't like the morale at that florin level we have to upgrade. However, upgrading changed the rps balance that we need (swords beating cav). Chiv knights should always beat CMAA in an relatively equal setting. If you want 99k type morale it shouldn't change the rps system, it should change the morale. Sure cav will dominate steppe, and inf hilly terrain but the balance should be figured out unit to unit until it's right and then never changed from there for the sake of morale.
Well Sko the balance was figured out, and it wasn't done at 15k. Morale is part of the RPS, and part of the reason that a 40 man cav knight can beat a 60 man sword and that in turn can beat a 100 man spear. The morale level has to be set before balancing can be done. If morale level is changed, balance will change. I don't agree that players are forced to play at 15k. That's a choice players are making, and dropping back to 10k would represent less than a -2 morale change on average.
ok now we are back on subject .. Puzz from reading your post you are disagreeing with me in that you feel a morale level has to be made and then balance on that particular level. what i ma asking about is a fixed florin level with the morale being the variable. How much does morale actually effect the fighting ability of units? Is it the fact that morale affects the fighting ability too much for the game to handle?
Basically from reading, it is logical to me that morale should effect fighting ability to a certain extent ie. for flanking and rearing, but should it effect a units performance so much that it effects the outcome of simple 1 unit vs 1 unit match ups? and then therefore making moral a deciding factor in the rock scissors paper structure? would it be better for units to have bigger stat bonuses rather than charge bonuses? lots of questions and i dont think we can get concrete answers to these.
this has all become very complicated and i am trying to see some positives from this discussion, perhaps some tests can be done by upping the morale level to see how much it effects the match up between a cav and a sword, whilst keeping the stats the same .. but i think we all agree apart from CBR maybe that a moral slider with 3-4 options would give us more flexibility in future TW games. CBR http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif
anyway the patch is out for 2.01, which does seem to play at lower florins so we will see what develops http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
EDIT: typos all over the place
MizuKokami
10-14-2003, 11:06
wow, an awful lot of post to get to the end of this topic. well, here's my two cents worth. baz, i don't feel that morale should be a separate control for hosts for the sake of balance, as the morale of men is a matter of training, valor, battle conditions, and many other variables. controlling morale with a slider wouldn't so much balance the game, as it would only mean that my v2 cs's would just suffer more casualties to the v4 ms's before they finnally routed. and, being smaller and more beat up when they did rout, would be less effective all around when and if i did manage to rally. the imbalance that exsists in this game is not really a matter of morale, as morale is effected by the imbalances that exsist.
i do however agree with the morale slider for a different reason, as morale being either on or off is hardly a choice at all.
as for the issues of balance, they are, and have allways been a matter of what you can get for what you spend. when i spend 1000 on a unit, i expect it to be able to beat a unit that only cost 500. exceptions being the various unit type bonuses, like chargeing your 1000 florin cav into a 500florin anti cav. the imbalance comes from the exploitation of cheap troops, with cheap upgrades.
someone mentioned armor upgrades being a factor in unbalance. it is so only because the armor upgrades don't take into account that armor upgrades from unit to unit was a matter of armor types, not just a matter of defense increaseing...ie, when you upgrade your archer's armor, you are going from leather armor to studded leather. when you upgrade you cs's armor, you are going from chain shirts to full chain. so the increase of defense that the cs'es get with an armor upgrade should be considerably more then the increase of the archer's upgrade.
as for playing battles at set levels of florins, great, it works. but when i play at 5k, or 99,999k, i want the game to be balanced. same with rules. we shouldn't have to make up rules to bring balance to the game, and all generals should bring to battle any one of the types of units at his or her disposal.
which brings me to my not so humble belief in what may bring balance to the game. no longer buy upgrades, but be granted a certain allowance of upgrades. in other words, the host decides something like, each army gets 20 points each of armor, weapon, and valor upgrades to devide however he sees fit between each unit of men he has. certain units are upgraded to begin with, as chivaric knights allready have the second best armor available for the period, so they could only be upgraded once when it came down to armor.
Konnichiwa,
I'm all for sliders (or advanced hosting menu where the user can enter integers of his liking for about anything), and perhaps the most important one will be one for morale (adjust routing treshold).
Creating a whole new stat would solve the problems too. 'Distribution' of custom stats still doesn't seem to be optimal (though MTW does do it better than STW) and creating one is rather 'complex'. Just adding +2 or -2 morale to all units isn't that hard, but there's a 'pitfal' of let's change that too. Not that this is bad, not at all, but chances are rather high that a 5 minute job turns into hours if not days and then moves up to later and never.
A slider will allow immediate let's try this games, no need to do complicated things, no problems about distribution, dare I say no 'fear' for the unknown?. All that you have to do is push the button at your fingertips when building the hostserver.
Other important sliders are gamespeed and fatigue/recovery.
My humble experience with modding/playing is that major problems are caused by tieing one thing up with the other (I guess that there are some performance reasons to use variables for more than 1 purpose). Adding valour to units to get desired morale and thus also changing melee and defense of units is an example of that. Using two or more will allow to make the same default game, while it also allows the user to adjust this or that without (large ) unwanted changes of other things as well.
On the topic of one default stat,I agree that the overall morale feel should be created before balancing. Good overall morale feel seems to be different for several players. Yet another reason to add a slider.
Just for learning purposes: we once made a unit in STW that could kill 2 entire armies (basically a 60 men pumped SuperKensai) were it not for its extremely low morale. It routed when it came near to even the lowest enemy unit. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
I've seen several other, less extreme, examples. Morale alone already influences the outcome of 1vs1 matchups. +2 morale and even +4 does it subtly. The +2 or +4 combat that comes with it makes larger changes.
I guess that cavalry will become weaker vs swords when morale gets increased. Simply because part of cavalry power comes from dealing fear (no more swipe). Just adding sliders may not be enough, an easy way to adjust and distribute the stats (and that includes the currently hardcoded ones) seems required too. Again, making changes isn't too straightforward at the moment. One hits his nose against one wall or the other.
Above discusses 'freedom'. There's of course also something like tourneys and ladders. This is not the topic to discuss what is and what isn't good, but means are required to 'enforce' (un)official ladder/tourney settings. I guess that organizers of ladders/tourneys should be able to submit a working statset to the server and obtain some kind of certificate/fingerprint. I guess some kind of OK code should be send to the orginizer for each match played to confirm.
Edit: code.
Baz,
My view that morale is tied to balancing comes from working on we/mi v102 and v103 stats. Morale is one of the factors that determines how long a unit fights; the other being rate of casualties. If units rout quickly, there is less time to use flanking tactics after units engage, and less time to come to the aid of an ally in a team game after he engages. If units fight too long, a local tactical advantage is negated by enemy units or allies being able to come from great distances to assist. The map essentially shrinks in size. A simple example would be a cav attack on a ranged unit failing because an enemy spear can come from so far away that you wouldn't consider it as defending that ranged unit and kill the cav before the ranged unit routs. This was a major consideration in we/mi since you could not disengage a unit, although you could manually rout it and rally it later. A more complex example would be doubleteaming of an enemy army in a team game. The higher the morale, the more independent an army can operate from it's allies, but taken too far can transform doubleteaming into a loosing strategy since the attackers will get flanked by an entire enemy army before they break the single army they were attacking. If morale is too low, then allies have to stay very close together to avoid one of them from simply running away due to a quick doubleteam, and armies have to stay in a more compact arrangement than they do at higher morale somewhat limiting what you can do geometrically with angles of attack by individual units. So to my mind, morale plays a part in the balance of the offensive vs defensive aspects of the gameplay, and to what extent you can spread your formation which enhances the geometrical aspect of the gameplay up to a point.
Now in mtw/vi there is a complicating factor and that is variable unit sizes. I don't have the stats in front of me, but the trend seems to be high morale for small sized units, medium morale for medium sized units and low morale for large sized units. For example, if you do tests on chiv knight vs cmaa, you can see the cav tends to run out of men unless it routs the cmaa. This means the cav has to rout the larger unit during the charge or soon after. Certainly, cav knights should be able to make frontal charges on non anti-cav inf, and not be relegated to only flanking tactics. One thing we did in we/mi was to stretch the anti-cav bonus as much as possible by transfering a lot of the cav's power to its charge and this gave a stronger RPS. I think a stronger RPS helps minimize the contribution that morale has to make to balance. I'm still surprised at how much difference +2 morale made to the gameplay of mtw/vi.
There is also the morale effect of ranged units to consider. Raising morale reduces this aspect of their effectiveness, and means they have to generate more casualties to maintain their value. Of course, the present game tries to handle this by the upgrade discounts. I think the ranged units are the most difficult ones to balance, and that came out of my we/mi stat experience as well. The we/mi v102 missed the mark on guns despite a tremendous amount of time spent on them and required another time consuming go around in the v103 to finally get them properly adjusted.
I do think more control over the morale setting and the fatigue by the host is desireable, and +2 steps on morale would be nice so that the community can find the optimum place to play the game. These very suggestions have been in CA's hands since Nov 2001 and were two of many ideas that came out of the work on the we/mi v102 stat. The downside is possibly greater division over where to play the game, but, if the number of online players increased as a result of more flexibility in game settings, you wouldn't have fewer opponents to play, you'd probably have more.
great, just what i wanted a nice couple of posts giving nice summaries, and there si nothing i do not agree with .. the only against reason for these sliders would be the different preferences that ppl and clans would have .. but as it is already stated that is down to tourney organizers alike to be sensible and choose a good standard that will be followed by the rest.
as 15k is with the CWB today http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
I still don't understand why there can't be several classes of a competition.
Three classes for instance.
5k
10k
15k
Then people could learn each class and perhaps not ignore the non-15k games anymore. Diversity is always a boon.
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