Some thoughts on unit stats/tech tree (Greek)

[zhuge]

I miss having strong winds and bad weather which really made a difference in S:TW. I still remember waiting for a lull in the weather where my archers would be able to inflict more casualties across bridge battles. Also recall that heavy rains used to reduce visibility and therefore range.
Sadly, I don't notice this much in R:TW (the wind factor isn't there I believe but I'm less sure about the rain factor). These might have been taken away just like the "only the first few rows of archers can fire" rule, which would have been a pity.
I doubt if we can easily fix these issues though if the exe hasn't been hardcoded to factor in wind and rain variables...
Anyway it would be nice to bring back the wind factor with arrows being affected a bit more than sling bullets.

Slingers currently have a missile rating of 4, melee of 3 and have 40 ammo at 80 range. I feel any nerfs we apply to archers should also be partially applied to slingers. They may have less missile rating than archers but having more ammo makes up for it and from what I've seen while Rhodian Slingers are brutally effective even regular, garden variety slingers can easily take out a whole grunt unit standing still in the town square and then some.

[Kraxis]

Slingers currently have a missile rating of 4, melee of 3 and have 40 ammo at 80 range. I feel any nerfs we apply to archers should also be partially applied to slingers. They may have less missile rating than archers but having more ammo makes up for it and from what I've seen while Rhodian Slingers are brutally effective even regular, garden variety slingers can easily take out a whole grunt unit standing still in the town square and then some.

Honestly, slingers should be good. They were and are. They could carry a lot of ammo obviously, so that is perfectly ok. Should they hit you in the side where the shield can't help then you are going down, so that is ok too. Against a shielded front they aren't all that dangerous, and a unit can certainly survive the attack. If anything slingers should have the same range as archers as they were reputedly better in that department, and often they were used as archer-hunters. Hardly possible with worse range.

Both archers and slingers should cause significant casualties if they hit the unshielded side and rear.

[zhuge]

Honestly, slingers should be good. They were and are.

Ok. But if they are going to share roughly the same ranged attack rating as archers then they should have their cost and upkeep increased... if we stick with increasing archer cost to 290 and upkeep to 200 as discussed previously, slingers are getting off a bit easy for a cost of 150 and an upkeep of 170. They might not have fire ammo and having slings and bullets instead of bows and arrows does sound a tad cheaper. However they also carry small shields and still have to undergo some sort of training so IMHO, a slight hike in cost/upkeep would serve balance purposes better.

[Red Harvest]

Ok. But if they are going to share roughly the same ranged attack rating as archers then they should have their cost and upkeep increased... if we stick with increasing archer cost to 290 and upkeep to 200 as discussed previously, slingers are getting off a bit easy for a cost of 150 and an upkeep of 170. They might not have fire ammo and having slings and bullets instead of bows and arrows does sound a tad cheaper. However they also carry small shields and still have to undergo some sort of training so IMHO, a slight hike in cost/upkeep would serve balance purposes better.

Slingers should be very cheap in upkeep. Most would have gotten their initial "training" as a kid. Their military training shouldn't be that difficult and their choice of weaponry makes for very inexpensive ammo, easier to get than bronze or iron arrowheads plus the rest of the arrow. Slings are much easier to make than bows. They use daggers for close in work, no armour and the smallest possible shield. The vanilla slingers use fired clay projectiles, vs. lead bullets for the balearics and rhodians. But for everyday use (practice) they could sling all sorts of small stones.

They are fairly well handicapped with a range of 80 vs. 120 for vanilla archers. That cuts their firing time almost in half when the enemy rushes them (because they will start falling back when the enemy hits about 30 yds or so.) So I'm not sure why vanilla archers should get both higher missile attack and the range advantage in the current game. That really piles it on for archery vs. slings.