MP Losing Appeal

[Puzz3D]

So you want to nerf archers even more.. !!!

Not at all. In Samurai Wars, 10 volleys from an archer unit will kill 30 warrior monks on flat ground. That's half the unit, and the 10 volleys can be delivered in 40 seconds. On top of that, the archers carry 36 arrows which means potentially they can kill 105 warrior monks which is nearly 2 full units. The archer unit costs 400 and the warrior monk unit costs 1000. This kill rate I'm describing is the same against any unit that has armor = 1 of which there are several. The archers are less effective against units of higher armor, but still cost effective against several of those units. The ranged unit effectiveness in combination with the fatigue definitely deters rushing which makes for an interesting skirmish phase to the battles. This skirmish phase doesn't last for a long time like it did in MTW because the ranged units consume their ammo more quickly, and the ranged units suffer a higher casualty rate when skirmishing. Balancing the ranged units is quite important in Total War battles because if they are too strong it becomes a shooting game, and if they are too weak it becomes a rushing game.

I was asked what some of the differences were between the old and new battle engines, so I posted some of the differences. I don't expect any of these old features to be brought back, although some attempt has been made to bring back the "squeezed too tight" combat penalty which is an important feature because is means you have to keep your units separated for maximum effectiveness.

I suppose an argument can be made that archers don't have to be able to see what they are shooting at, but it seems to me a man would fire more accurately if he did see what he's shooting at. Removing the line of sight penalties to accuracy means it doesn't matter what shape the archer unit takes. It's hard to view this as an improvement to the tactics of using ranged weapons if you've played the older game. For instance, in the old engine you could get a significant advantage over an enemy ranged unit by using enfilade fire because the unit that was enfiladed could not return fire as effectively as the unit delivering it. In the new engine, their is no tactical advantage to such a maneuver because the enfiladed unit returns fire just as effectively. In fact, there is a disadvantage in maneuvering into a position to deliver enfilade fire because your unit will incur fatigue moving and may also come under fire as it moves into position. It's simply pointless to even try the maneuver, and I'm not sure it's worth doing even if it gives you a height advantage.

In any case, I don't expect these old features that involve analytical calculations on individual men to be brought back because it would have too much impact on framerate. If the battle mechanics problems and the lag issue can be solved in the next patch, Palamedes might have a chance to do some good playbalancing in that patch and one after that. I believe there should be a patch after the next one so that multiplayer feedback can be used to improve the playbalance. That might make the gameplay attractive enough for players who liked the older gameplay.

However, as you can see it takes CA a long time to produce a patch so it's very costly for them. They are not inclined to make patches simply to improve playbalance. The most favorable situation for MP is to have a serious bug in the SP campaign that requires another patch to fix which allows MP playbalance adjustments to be made in that patch. This is what happened with the MTW/VI v2.01 patch. The "all kings die at age 56" bug was the reason the v2.01 patch got the go ahead, but even then the programmers had to do it on their own time for no pay. Of course, that was under Activision. SEGA seems to be more willing to approve patches, but even with SEGA there is a limit because as you can see the RTW v1.5 SP campaign was left with the civil war bug and the battles engine left with the "butt spike" issue.