5k florin battles suck!

[ElmarkOFear]

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[CBR]

What?? Do CBR understand Elmo right...Elmo calls CBR boring AND a cav lover??

Ok looks like you asked for a long rant Elmo ;-)

CBR said:
"And what is wrong with spears then?"

And I cant get an answer there? We are getting a patch soon and if we ever are going to get some balance changes, we sure need to come with something that looks like facts. Statements like "Lancers are overpowered at 5k even worse than at 15k" or "Spears do NOT work fine at 5k" is not good enough to convince CA to make changes... I think.

But maybe its too late and we cant get any changes in the patch...I still like facts..only way to discuss things.

I see spears being used (and used a lot) in 5k and I like to use them..maybe going back to 1.0 costs would be nice but I dont consider spears to be crap. But I would love more details Elmo.

Lancers..no I havent played Late very much but I have tried Lancers twice. I didnt hear anyone yell at me No doubt that they are very good but Elmo they cost 850 florins I also have played with them in the Valour 3 only games we played several months ago (22-25k so army setup is same as 5k just with higher morale) But dont listen to me Elmo...Im biased

I was starting to experiment with all cav armies (about 8 units all/mostly knights) as the more standard 12 cav 4 missile didnt feel as powerful as Im used to in 15k. But havent played enough to come with any conclusions. My first try with a 9 horse army was...well lets just say I didnt have to save a replay.

Im interested in facts and examples..am I asking for too much?

Elmo said:

Quote[/b] ]"He is looking for reality and that will make a very boring game indeed. Most battles, from ancient times to today, were won by having the most men, machines, or better technology and not because of great battlefield tactics."

Yes lots of battles were won because of that. Just play SP and its the same thing: You always try to make sure the battle is won before it starts by having superior numbers etc etc.

But come on Elmo..we dont play MP like that do we? We have equal amount of florins and the better a unit gets the more expensive it becomes. We want fair battles where both sides have an equal chance of winning. We can also find battles like that in history.. I see no problems in wanting realism and still having balanced armies/battles.

Quote[/b] ]"The Romans won because they had a huge army, better weapons, and better organization than their enemy, so for RTW, nobody should be able to beat the Roman army, because that did not happen historically. Well, if reality is what you want, this is the way it should be, making this a very boring MP experience"

The Romans lost lots of battles and eventually the Roman empire was destroyed. We are not fighting a war in MP. We are figting hypothetical battles.

Take a look at the units in MTW. Better quality costs money. 5k is perfect example of quality versus quantity: if you want the best units only they will be 60 and 40 men units and you might not even be able to buy 16 units. If you want a balanced battle between a Roman army and the typical stereotype barbarian army you would most likely see more barbarians than romans, either because Romans cant buy max (20) units or because the barbarians in general have larger units.

Quote[/b] ]"Lots of units are being used in low florin games but not in high florin games." Yes, thank you for supporting my statement that low florin games are better for troubleshooting (even though I know you didn't mean too) LOL

Erm.. but no matter how many 5k battles you play and fix errors at that level, the problems are different in 15k. That was what I meant: In 5k you can use more units but its not the same in 15k so there must be some fundamentally different, therefore 5k is not some perfect level where you can fix all errors and 10k or 15k or whatever will suddenly be perfect.

If you want to balance at a certain florin level you need to see the problems there and not in some other level. Hope thats clear enough now.

Quote[/b] ]Yes, we are aware of your love for the cav unit and distaste for anything which might be able to balance this unit vs spears or swords. Unfortunately, most people believe in this imbalance, and have stopped playing or limited their playing because of it. This belief makes the imbalance a fact. Choose to do nothing about it, and for RTW there will be even less of an MP game then there currently is

Oh we are getting nasty now are we?

Well I like cav but I also love the all foot army. And that is better in 5k than in 15k..and Im talking about a real all foot army...not that upgraded handgunner thingie It really depends on terrain, plan, allies and what mood Im in. I find the 5k game a lot more forgiving when it comes to unit choice compared to 15k. No that doesnt mean everything goes in 5k and that doesnt mean we couldnt do with a few changes.

I can only speak for myself and I pretty much left MTW because I got tired of the cav/sword nonsense in 15k. Only thing that keeps it alive for me is the 5k and some historical battles that I hope will be increase my fun a bit.

And we might see the same problems in RTW if CA doesnt change the way upgrading works or the community changes its attitude...and right now CA is my only hope.

In STW you had very few units, only one or two of each type. In MTW we have a lot more and RTW will be the same. You cant give all these units some special unique ability, so the main reason why you should buy the cheap ones is simply becuase you dont have money to buy only the best units. And that means playing at low florins/denari.

In STW you played with upgrades while in MTW you play with unit choice. From playing Yuuki in 5k MTW I already know he uses 4 Orderfoot as standard. If it was STW it would have been 4 Yari Samurai v5..or something like that. In MTW 5k I will have to look at other units to "surprise" him. In STW I would be looking at how to change some upgrades (and of course change unit setup too..just not many units to pick from)

In another thread you said this

"By "Gamey" I mean the ability to upgrade units that normally would be slaughtered by another type of unit to where they could fight evenly with them"

Instead of upgrading why cant it be the ability to buy different units? Yes you might not be able to get everything but that really depends on unit choice. I have no problems with loads of units to pick from.

If you want some spears that kick ass couldnt you just buy say swiss pikes instead of buying 2 more upgrades for your yari samurai? Buy Lancers instead of upgrades for your heavy cavalry?

But its not an option really. Like it or not we will have 150 units in RTW and each faction about 20 unique units. The more units, the more special formations the more detail the better it gets IMO because we are already getting a very different game than STW. And the more units to pick from the better

Quote[/b] ]Which is nice if you want to be a big fish in a little pond, but not if you would rather be a little fish in a big pond.

Well it seems like Elmo doesnt want to swim in same pond as CBR


CBR

[ElmarkOFear]

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[Puzz3D]

Well here are some facts:

v0 feudal knights (425) loose to v0 spearmen (150).
v0 feudal knights (425) loose to v0 feudal sergeants (200).
v0 feudal sergeants (200) loose to v0 chiv knights (675).
v0 chiv knights (675) loose to v0 chiv sergeants (300).
v0 chiv sergeants (300) loose to v0 lancers (850).
v0 lancers (850) loose to v0 order foot (400).

The spears do beat the cav head on until the cav gets to 3x the cost of the spear. An exception seems to be on the low end where even a basic 150 florin spearmen can beat a 425 florin feudal knight. I suppose the MP game would work better if it required cav at 4x the cost to beat the spear. Even then I would expect a spear that got charged in the side or back to loose to the cav. The spear should have to be facing the cav to have a chance. Maybe the problem in actual battles is the difficulty of keeping the spears facing the cav threat. The cav can keep moving around to new angles of attack, and the spears have to keep responding to those moves.

Elmark,

How did you manage to maneuver into a loosing situation with a 725 florin swiss pike (19 att/def combat points) vs a 578 florin alan cav (8 att/def combat points)? That matchup is so much in favor of the pikes I'd be surprised if the pikes loose more than 2 men in defeating the alan. I think they must have actually been peasants that you thought were swiss pikes. I wouldn't put much stock in the winning/loosing text message. That mesage seems to bear little relationship to which unit is suffering the most casualties. The thing is it will take a long time for the pike to kill the cav unit.

BTW, your idea of using teh general's vices and virtues in the MP game to adjust combat and morale is very interesting because you could get different combinations of combat ability and morale which is how SP works. I was thinking of something much simpler where combat and morale tracked each other as they do now with valor upgrades, and even eliminating the combat adjustment as unnecessary. I think I'd leave in the individual weapon and armor upgrades to provide some unit diversity since they don't provide such large changes in unit ability that the basic rps between units is overwhelmed.

[Skomatth]

What kinda rows were they in? Hold formation? double click or click behind?

[Puzz3D]

Everything was in their default number of rows with the spears in hold formation, and direct frontal attack. Cav or any unit set in wide formation and wrapping around is a problem for spears, and I think you have to use several spear units in combination to prevent it. A single spear unit is pretty vulnerable to flank attack or wrap around from high mobility cav. The chiv knight can easily defeat the order foot with a well executed wrap around without swiping.

[ElmarkOFear]

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[ElmarkOFear]

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[Puzz3D]

Fatigue does affect combat ability,

-2 atk when quite tired
-3 atk, -1 def very tired
-4 atk, -2 def exhausted
-6 atk, -3 def totally exhausted

Also,

-2 morale when very tired (The Strategy Guide says -3)
-6 morale when exhausted
-8 morale when totally exhausted


F2 is the key to take .tga screen shots from within the game. They are saved in the tga folder as I recall.

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

Quote[/b] (ElmarkOFear @ Sep. 07 2003,15:23)]The other night I played a 5k game in late era. Seems the enemy army had some val 2 alan cav and charged my pavs, I hit them with my swiss pikemen val0, arm1 and the pikemen were losing the battle until I sent in MY alan cav unit to flank. So 5k pikes are not the cav stopper some think they are, given their expense.

Hum.... What are you trying to say Elmo?





Are you surprised by your own men being defeated and routing now?

Give a credit to those swiss, they engage a fight with the ennemy and have not ran on sight, despite their General's reputation.



Louis,

[ElmarkOFear]

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[baz]

i have been following this converstaion carefully and it is a shame that you guys seem to play a bit later than me these days. i have seen here many points on which everybody has agreed upon, and, i might add, that they are points that we have been discussing for a long time.
At these low florins you all seem to beleive that the game is fundamentally better than at 15k without taking morale into consideration .. a +6 morale option would of worked very well but we did not get it with VI. Also i notice you say missile battles become a little more exciting due to your budget not accomodating armour upgrades .. moving pavs to late and having plain arbs and xbows still in high would of been a good move for VI but we did not get it.
i see this discusion as very good but unfortunately am unable to give any input due to being a 5k virgin but what i do see here is you can identify problems quite well but does anyone have any ideas how we can implement them? (because listing them in the VI balancing thread did not seem to help).
I also notice that shigenmitch suggested the morale would be better at around 10k but how would this effect the gameplay compared to 15k? any ideas?

sorry if im butting in guys

[TosaInu]

Konnichiwa baz san,

'Easy' really. If there's interest in a type of game by at least 2 players, then it pays to create an extra stat. The game can support extra stats or a manager can be used to swap the default one. Both methods have cons and pros.

It would of course be much better if general parameters like fatigue, gamespeed and morale could be adjusted by a slider or advanced settings menu in the build host screen.

Adjusting the morale with X points for all units (or even depending on the type of unit) can be done in less than 1 minute in the CA Excel worksheet. A manual refinement can be done afterwards (for example byz inf?).

[Puzz3D]

I think the +2 morale of v2.0 did help the gameplay at 5k compared to v1.1, but there are still lots of issues at 5k. The renewed interest by some of us in 5k is due to that improvement and the +2 morale bringing out a strong sword/cav bias in the 15k game. Maybe that's an inprovement over the cav bias in v1.1 at 15k. The player community was playing v1.1 predominatly at 15k. On average that's +4 morale over a 5k game. It's a mystery why most players are playing v2.0 at 15k, but wouldn't play v1.1 at 25k which is the next +2 morale step up.

There is a learning curve to 5k since you have to be more aware of the morale level of the units you purchase. All the spears are at the low end of the morale scale, and you have to be fairly careful with how you use them or else you can easily end up with even order foot at morale 2 routing at 97 men, and that's the best spear unit which sets you back 400 florins to purchase. There are other low morale units such as halbardiers which are probably very hard to use effectively at 5k, and I believe CBR is trying to use them to see what he can do with them. I tend to stick to higher morale units such as feudal knights (8) for cav, cmaa (4) for swords, fanatics (8), but spears (2) are on the low end of the morale scale. You really don't have any choice because they are too expensive to upgrade. You can purchase a feudal sergeant (2) at 200 and upgrade it to v1 bringing it up to morale 4 and costing 340 florins, but I find it inferior to the v0 order foot in battle.

No time to go on right now, but one other point is that, although archers are a bit more effective in 5k, they are relatively a lot more expensive than in 15k games since you cannot take advantage of the discounted upgrades. Some factions that depend on combo ranged/sword units may be suffering at 5k.

Also, we tried 6k 4v4 games and CBR took his the 12 cav army which was very effective which it isn't at 5k. KenchInda and AMP were in one of those test games and they agreed on the point that the cav was already starting to dominate at 6k at least in these team games. I don't know about 1v1 games. You could handle this with rules about how many cav you can take, but I know some of the people I play with don't want to get into trying to enforce rules. Ultimately, what I'll probably do is play CBR's MPWars mod as much as I can once he finishes it.

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

There are some very interesting trade off taking place at 5k. Some units which are seldom used at 15k get a real chance at 5k.

Yep spears are the low end of the morale scale, which is why I think making spears immune to specific cav morale impact would be helpfull (see other thread not to far away).

But you can also find some nice spears, like Almughavars, Muwahid or Dismounted Nobles in viking era with somehow good morale. Upgraded nubian might also do the trick. Swiss Pike comes to mind in late.

Halberd/ polearm can do a good job too... CFK are good, and so are JHI. Swiss halb are Ok too. Billmen and Halberds are likely to be not good enough.

One of the good news is that highly elite units really feel elite now When I pay substantial money to get a couple of JHI, they really shine now. At 15k, they run for cover not to be overkilled by v4 MS.... Feudal Foot Knights do have a role now. They do feel different than a 40 size CMAA. In some sense, units are less vanilla.

Missile wars feel better; but only marginally so... True, it's very positive that pav does not get those annoying armor upgrade anymore. But outcome of missile war feel somehow secondary to melee and how fast some games can be played.

The rock paper scissor is much more satisfying at 5k. When Fl goes up, one is able to buy more heavy cav, and that's an issue. At 5k, 4 Chivalric Knight is half your budget. Most settle for the less potent Feudal Knight. At 10k, you can afford those CK... And then some other crusader knights. I got to try an anticav army at 10k and sees how it goes.
So I think, at 10k, gameplay is likely to be heavily centered on heavy cav.

I got mixed feeling with +6 morale over 5k. Would CMAA be able to resist cav charge then? Would spears become useless again? To be tested

Louis,

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

Quote[/b] (ElmarkOFear @ Sep. 08 2003,19:55)]LOL Sim I forgot about my "Bad Attacker", "Bad Defender", "Cowardice", and "Public Drunk" vices Now I understand their loss hehe Darn, how could I have missed that?

Hum... Elmo... Was that one of your late small unit size game?

I like the look of small unit sized, but I got to say that it is likely to make spears less effective with possible lower rank support bonus.

I bet you play small size cause you are a veiled pony lover and wants to give your horsies an additional chance by fudging unit size

Louis,

[baz]

so would anyone be interested in some modified stats? with perhaps plus 4/6 morale? would this make the 5k game any better?
i get the idea that cav starts to become dominant at 5k+ but at 10k is the situation better than at 15k? i am guessing you have to decide whether to pay for good cav or good inf, if you pick good cav then your inf will get steamrollered by it .. but do spears still do a job to prevent this?

at the moment i think without a morale increase the 5k games wont take off, i wonder if 10k games possible could.

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

+4/+6 is certainly worth looking at

Regarding cav... I am not sure It's really dominant. One can build effective anti cav army. But it's definitly stronger than in 15k, in the sense that now sword get routed if not protected.

I kind of wonder if cav would not be more dominant at 10k. Heavy cav is very easy to buy at those level.

Well, that just means we got to play more 5k / 7k / 10k games and see with which setting we are happy with. It's very likely different people will feel better with different fl level, but we'll see.

Louis,

[shingenmitch2]

Elmo
hehe, this post is tad late as it responds to a post way back in here, but i gotta comment:

"What it comes down to, is that CBR believes there should be no upgrading possible and all the units available should, as closely as possible, accurately reflect their "real world" counterparts.

He is looking for reality and that will make a very boring game indeed. Most battles, from ancient times to today, were won by having the most men, machines, or better technology and not because of great battlefield tactics. "

Yes and no. I totally agree about battlefield technology and numbers being the greatest factors in war victory...

I must totally disagree with the idea that a game (and particularly this game) would be boring without having unit upgrades.

Case in point 1: chess -- not a single upgrade, yet one of the most dynamic and challenging games.

Case in point 2: Go -- every friggin stone is exactly the same, yet like chess, it is a strategy fest.

Total War is similar to chess. The main thing about chess is that every unit has its own particular strengths and weakness. It is exactly the clarity of a Rook moving one way and the Bishop clearly another is what creates the strategy in chess. If I could upgrade --without my opponent knowing-- my Bishop to be a Knight so that it could "jump" , this wouldn't add strategy or challenge to the game. Instead it destroys strategy by ruining the clarity of match-ups, you never know what to expect because anything could happen -- so why bother think out my move? If I can't upgrade a peasant to kill a Chiv Knight, it will never hurt M:TW. In fact, preventing that can only make the game better.

The other important point to chess is that not every unit can be a Queen, and this is also important to total war... limiting the number of "uber" units. It is not the fact that the Lancer exists that is a problem... only if every unit or a majority of units were Lancers is there a problem. Balance comes from units doing what they're supposed to and having propper proportions to their numbers.

The current system for picking & upgrading units in Total War does neither.


--------------------------------------------
If upgrades are necessary, then here are 3 methods that would be better (these probably apply more to the single play than the multi. I've previously laid out how I think the Multi player unit picking needs to happen):

Method 1. A unit can gain 3 ranks on itself (ie. poor peasant, decent pesant, and good peasant -- the top peasant being no better than 1.5x to 2x better than the lowest.) In real combat , experience will rarely make a unit better than twice as good as an exactly similar unit (in training, tactics and equipment).

The real disparities between units -- as Elms points out -- come from differing equipment and tactics driven by that equipment (i.e. a tank beats infantry/ a hoplite beats naked bushman) -- the other way disparities arise is through concentration of numbers and suprise -- but these are only tangentially related to combat experience.

In old shoggy, Valor could make a unit upto 24x better than its lowest version -- unbelieveably stupid The designers thought that since the cost of unit went up proportionally that this was okay -- HAHAHAHA....Even now in M:TW through Valor, arms and armor, the increase I can get is still in the neighborhood of 6x --- way too much. Simply doubling a unit's strength is a HUGE power increase.

Method 2: Once a unit is eligible to upgrade, it "changes" into the next class of unit... ie. peasant becomes urban militia which becomes Mil. Sgt., etc... thus the unit upgrades, but through training and reequipping.

Method 3: mix methods 1 &2

[CBR]

Hm time for some spamming.

Hello Baz..you are always welcome here


About the 10k thing:

Well to make story short...cav cav cav heh. Its just no problem buying loads of cav and the foot doesnt have the morale for it. And spears will already be running into the problem of the combination of cav/sword. But I do think 10k is better than 8k..not sure though.


About morale for 5k:

The more I play 5k the more I get used to it and the more I love it...simple as that. If we really should get a morale increase then I would say it had to be +2 only. +6 is like valour 4 in 1.1 and is just way too much.

We did play several valour 3 games in 1.1 and they were nice but I still felt and I think Yuuki too that some units were just fighting too long. Valour 3 in 1.1 is +4 morale for VI.

But in lots of battles I think the current morale in 5k is working great. To quote an old and wise Jedi "You must unlearn what you have learned." MTW is not STW and 15k MTW is not 5k MTW.

I lost all battles the first day I played MTW..maybe even first week lol but that didnt stop me from playing the game nor think about the need to buy more valour. I just learned to play the game. And I really think 5k is a very good game but it does take time to get used to.

If you want super morale units then buy feudal/chivalric footknights..they are actually quite nice in 5k. Spears might have low morale but with flanks protected they actually do hold nicely..they dont really hold longer in 15k because they get killed quicker against the higher valour shockfoot.

Yes you need to support units better so they dont run but people always talk so much skill so here is the chance to use it

And about cav being overpowered in 5k. Well what is there to say..I have really tried to come up with some abusive cav heavy/all cav armies and they just dont feel that strong..except if enemy takes loads of archers/swords with no spears.

But until we start seeing tournaments using 5k or a change in the current tournaments/ladders then 5k (with or without morale increase) will never take off. I have encountered increasing interest in 5k in the foyer and I think it will improve even more.

A mod with perfect balance and gameplay wont do much good I think. There are lots of opinions about how to balance the game and lots of people just dont want to try anything different..they just want to keep on playing what they are used too. And how to convince people to download it a mod...because its balanced?..not enough to sell a mod to the masses heh.


CBR

[ElmarkOFear]

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[Vanya]

GAH

"He who claims it sucks has clearly been blown away."
-- Vanya

GAH

[ElmarkOFear]

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[Vanya]

Quote[/b] (ElmarkOFear @ Sep. 12 2003,16:02)]Vanya Will you be among us come RTW's release? The game isn't the same without some of our more colorful veteran players from STW.

GAH

Vanya plans to be there. Definitely.

Vanya's war dog (er, pet) enjoys watching the slaughter from the comfort and safety of Vanya's lap. Vanya is certain the beast will find RTW equally enjoyable, if not more.

Of course, things get kinda dicey when the dog wants to eat the grapefruit Vanya sports as a head... Vanya has to always be careful to avoid using processed meat products like SPAM as a surrogate head when the dog is around.

Vanya ponders... what is the status of Elmo's Nike contract? Still a solid revenue-earner for Elmo? Has Elmo taken other contracts, like perhaps Adidas, on the side?

GAH

[ElmarkOFear]

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[baz]

*routs*

[ElmarkOFear]

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[RTKLamorak]

nice thread guys always fun to follow sadly, i then quickly get hallucinations of the devs sitting on piles of money jabbing us with hot forks from there high horses, oh wait thats a flashback not hallucination . what a truely marvolous game it coulda been anyways im sorry to butt in with my negative attitude, just wanted to say hi really

[ElmarkOFear]

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[Kraxis]

To get the discussion back on track I will join in here.

I have only recently come back on the MP arena (after a large driver problem for my graphic card). And when I noticed there wa this 5k experiment going on, I jumped at it. I have always wanted to play at lower florins, but few have had the interest.

The battles I have fought have all been great so far, despite the fact I had only one low valour battle under my belt (a battle for the MP campaign with Shadeswolf).
Now a few really good units can become the main part of the army, like my 2 Swiss Pikemen in a recent victory. Before everybody was strong enough and had money enough to have plenty of everything.

Ranged, the fight also seems more fun since I noticed in another fight that supporting archers (Szekely in this case) actually helped by lowering the enemy morale when firing in a melee.
Also in the previous fight I almost lost an entire unit of pavs to archery very fast due to no armour upgrades.

All in all the game seems more pleasant to play, and more historical. When both are combined I dare to say we all should rejoice.