View Full Version : Will the Patch Address Unit Balance Issues? (Spearmen, Gunpowder and
The power of Spearmen vs Swordsmen needs looking at. It ruins the "rock paper scissors" model if we keep Spearmen this effective. Maybe simply raise Spearmen cost?
Additionally, like in Shogun, gunpowder units seem to be weak and need a tweak. And I believe the consensus at this Forum is cavalry could move a tad faster.
Finally, unless it's just me, I think javelins need to be looked at. They don't seem to throw unless you're at an extremely close range...sometimes they don't work at all.
Austaro
[This message has been edited by Austaro (edited 09-20-2002).]
Yoko Kono
09-20-2002, 19:37
units like the spanish jinettes and kerns only throw really close but when on skirmish they just run
take them out of skirmish mode and they should fire but keep an eye on them to make sure they do fall back
ElmarkOFear
09-20-2002, 22:55
You do have to baby sit the jav throwers more. I use the murabitin units and have to constantly watch over them to make sure they are not standing around. If you put them in skirmish mode, they will normally run back instead of throwing even when they are fully protected by a strong frontline of troops.
RageMonsta
09-20-2002, 23:21
Leave the guns as they are please, we dont need a repeat of the last patch where we had Sam Warriors running around with Thomson machine guns...
These guns are supposed to good against armour be poor in the wet and slow to reload....so keep em that way....do you not realise they rarely even had triggers and you would light a match and wait for it to burn to the charge...One shot then they were club men....upgrade...if it does we will lose 90% of the on-line players who have returned.
The bows need upgrading a little ...maybe more kills per volley unless against armour upgrades....in STW/MI/WE horse archers could kill 4 per volley now they may kill 10/12 per 28 shots each.thats half the power...the same goes for foot archers..x bow can remain the same speed as they were slow but they also seem to have little effect when being used.
I will state again ..
Agincourt....18 thousand arrows in the first minute...devastation of the enemy/fields of dead...
MTW..a slight graze that needs a plaster!
have the programmers ever played this game...have they never heard of the word 'rusher'?....they have created hundreds on-line..time to settle this for the sake of your die hard supporters...
Good job the on-line progammer wasnt a Doctor he would have lost hundreds of patients from his lack luster performance..unless CA gave him no chance....after all who are to complain.
Soapyfrog
09-20-2002, 23:42
How do you rush in MTW?
Attack?
Sounds good to me.
Maybe more arrows for the archers. That way the rate of killing wouldn't become too fast, but the archers would have the potantial to really hurt the pike units which is what they are supposed to do. As is is now, archers are not very useful in multiplayer.
MagyarKhans Cham
09-21-2002, 00:51
some little things pissed of my Khan lately and for 2 days he is rampaging with a superpowerrush army over the twm fields.
powerrushes excist. one of its main problems is. your battleline is faster broken than archery can inflict at least that much damage that they pay themselves back.
if a player uses a balanced army of lets say
1 hcav general (knights or whatever)
1 horsearcher
4 archers (alba or whatever)
3 additional combat cav
7 footcombat units
than under equal circumstances and with equal skilled players that army will loose against in a lets say 8k battle
1 hcav general
4 combat cav (alan and mounted sergeants)
11 footunits
when buying archery u buy units that need time to inflict damage to pay themselves back. in addition they use up 1 unitslot.
we should be happy with teh 4 limit formula teh game has now. but in my Khans opinion this aint enuf unless players find ways to restrict the things mentioned above.
there is nothing wrong with a rush, but a blind executed rush should be counterable by other good players.
still people may consider this as whining or whatever. i myself noticed that some of these people silently uses a part of the unbalanced thinsg as well and only start complaining when everyone "finds" the unbalanced gaps.
so to all who uses the powerarmies and beat up 8 of 10 people they fight dont automatically consider yourself a topplayer. or u should state before the game that u go on brute force.
this story is similar to what koc said weeks ago. our Khan has it seen enuf in practice by now and feels sad about.
lets see how the patch handles these things
Longjohn? your comment please...
DragonIce84
09-21-2002, 01:27
Yeah, I've only played twice online, but yesterday, I lost, badly, to an all foottroop army. My ally did even worse.
I hope that CA only balances purchasing costs for MP.
I hope the game stats are not adjusted unless to bring the results closer to reality. I would like to believe that my troops are performing as they would in real life.
I'm curious, in your opionion, which is more important:
The Rock, Papers, Scissors matchup,
or
Historical Accuracy
Note that I'm *NOT* saying whether I believe MTW is historically accurate or not (that's another entire discussion). I'm merely putting up a hypothetical question.
From a gameplay standpoint, having the rock-papers-scissors paradigm is very nice. However, that ususally doesn't occur in the Real World. Military history is a hobby of mine, and it's quite clear that in many periods that there wasn't a rock-papers-scissors setup. For example, take WW2. Planes kill tanks which kill infantry. Infantry didn't kill planes very well, not even anti-aircraft guns were very good at that during the time-period. Another modern example: Subs kill ships good. Ships kill land-based targets good. Land-based units don't kill subs very good. Obviously someone could come up with better examples.
So I'm curious, are players more interested in a good "balance" of rock-papers-scissors, or in seeing how the real units fared in realistic combat settings?
Cousin Zoidfarb
09-21-2002, 03:12
I agree that spears are too powerful.
Historically, spears are only effective in tight formation, this would be disrupted when they charged, so I think they should eliminate the charge bonus of spear units and pikes as well. These would relegate them to mostly defensive units, which makes more sense. They should also have poor morale as they are generally conscripted peasants and lack the elan of the nobility of the period.
IMO, rock, paper and scissors is much more important than historical accuracy.
First and foremost this is a game and the primary focus should be on having fun.
Imbalance in some units or areas of the game can effect the fun factor, because only a limited amount of uber units will be used unless there's some tweaking, so the more we strive for balance amongst the units the more fun the game will be.
P.S. I'm a realist...the perfectly balanced computer game will never exist. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to aim for it http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif
Austaro
quote
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I agree that spears are too powerful.
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They ware very powerful. Someone posted this excelent link here. http://www.niderost.com/pages/Battle_of_Marignano.htm
quote
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I'm curious, in your opionion, which is more important:
The Rock, Papers, Scissors matchup,
or
Historical Accuracy
--------------
I had a second thought, I shoose the Historical Accuracy AND Fun, otherwise I would play WC3. Historical Accuracy AND Fun are not contradictory
[This message has been edited by todorp (edited 09-21-2002).]
MagyarKhans Cham,
The only way you can stop 4 cav and 12 inf from beating 4 cav, 4 ranged and 8 inf is to make the ranged weapons better. It's tricky to balance, and can turn the game into a projectile war which isn't any better as WE/MI v102 demonstrated.
I don't think some extra arrows for archers will hurt either the multiplayer or the single player balance. As soon as I get crossbows in single player, I don't make archers anymore. Maybe that's the intent. What it translates into in Multiplayer is 30 kills or less for an archer unit in a non-rushing situation. You can't justify taking up one of the 16 unit slots for 30 kills max.
Both cav and ranged are support units in MTW. The power in MTW is in the inf. In WE/MI v103 we had a parity of power among the cav, ranged and inf unit types. It took a lot of work to get v103 to that state. The v103 multiplayer games are great and in hundreds of battles over the summer I never had an unenjoyable game, but it's not suitable for single player because we had to gut the yari ashigaru. LongJohn already said there will be only minor adjustments made to the units in MTW. So, that's why I only ask for minor adjustments.
If you are facing players online who are taking 12 or 16 inf and rushing, you just have to shift to that kind of army yourself. My solution is to not play people who play like that. They can bask in the false attitude that they are great players. I don't care.
So the mass infantry rush can't be beaten by a "balanced" (cav, missile, melee) army in version 1.00?
BertrandDuGuesclin
09-21-2002, 19:49
Quote Originally posted by hoof:
So I'm curious, are players more interested in a good "balance" of rock-papers-scissors, or in seeing how the real units fared in realistic combat settings?[/QUOTE]
I don't realy care about history all I want is a nice game. I'd like to see that one can win with playing different styles. I've been testing myself a bit too and I too figured out some of the unbalanced units. Personally I'd like to see that it matters more HOW you use the units instead of WHICH units you choose.
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http://ecole.sables.free.fr/Personnage/Duguesclin/duguesclin6.jpg
connétable de France
né à La Motte-Bröons (Côtes d'Armor) vers 1320,
mort en 1380 à Chateauneuf de Randon (Lozère).
Austaro,
If the rush bunches up you can beat it, but, in the hands of a skilled player, I don't see a balanced army stopping it. You've got to be able to counter every inf unit that is coming at you. If the rusher is individually managing his 16 units, you are eventually going to run out of units to effectively counter him because the ranged units are not going to be up to the hth task. The rush army can present a wider front than the balanced army, and those extra inf units are going to be coming around your flanks or squirting though a whole in your line if you try to match the width of his front.
The game is similar to STW except the cav is better and the ranged is weaker in MTW, and, it seems to me, the units fight longer. Fatigue can work against the rusher in some situations, and despite my earlier call for reduced fatigue, I would not like to see fatigue changed now.
So what's the solution to mass infantry rushers?
One thing bad that I notice about multiplayer is we start too close to each other.
You could defend high ground. You could take a highly mobile army, and make the rusher chase you all over the map. You could drop down from 4 to 2 ranged units, but will have to rush if your opponent shows up with 4 ranged. You could take highly defensive inf units in the hope that the extra time they will hold is enough for your ranged units to have enough of an effect to rout some enemy units. You can manually target low armored units with your ranged units.
hoof, Jagger and todorp, I'm with you.
History isn't in the way. It shows the way.
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COGITOERGOVINCO
Ermmm... why should something be made at odds with reality just to fit some contrived r/p/s logic? If you want spearmen made more expensive for multiplayer, that's one thing, but as a single player only fan I'd rather have the unit stats left alone or only tweaked if there's a good argument that they bear no resemblance to historical fact.
Historical fact is important for single player maybe, but in multi player, there is nothing remotely historical going on. Turkey and Byzantium vs Spain and England? Crusade units being the core of almost every catholic army?
In multiplayer, we need to concentrate on gameplay over realism (within reason), or it will just end up completely unbalanced and who is going to want to play a game of all infantry rushing?
We need seperate multiplayer and single player prices.
[This message has been edited by Action (edited 09-21-2002).]
Michael the Great
09-22-2002, 01:38
MAN! WTF is wrong with you?!?!
I thought this game is supposed to simulate s relisticaly as possible the actual medieval wars(and it does a very good job-clearely the best strat game around),and NOT JUST TO PUT SOME ILOGIC unit relationships,in fact,some paper/rock/scissors really existed,but clearly not the way you want it.
Definetly,historical accuracy is the most important!(if you don't agree,then just go and play WC3).
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Io,Mihai-Voda,din mila lui Dumnezeu,domn al Tarii Romanesti,Tarii Ardealului si a toata tara Moldovei.
Yeah, becuase in real life armies were composed entirely of swordsmen who fought in long 2 man thick rows. This game isn't realistic at all, except in very general sense.
Quote Originally posted by RageMonsta:
I will state again ..
Agincourt....18 thousand arrows in the first minute...devastation of the enemy/fields of dead...
MTW..a slight graze that needs a plaster!
have the programmers ever played this game...have they never heard of the word 'rusher'?....they have created hundreds on-line..time to settle this for the sake of your die hard supporters...
[/QUOTE]
Yes, the missile troops are nothing like they were in medieval times, especially the longbowmen and archers - they are nowhere near as effective or deadly as they were.
Honestly, I field armies with NO missile troops, usually no artillery even on defense, and only 2-3 cav units. The rest are spear and shock because of the way MTW's units are coded right now. There's just no point to wasting the florin and unit slots on units that just aren't going to kill much if anything.
Quote Originally posted by Austaro:
So what's the solution to mass infantry rushers?
One thing bad that I notice about multiplayer is we start too close to each other. [/QUOTE]
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