[EB] EDU Balance Proposals

[-Stormrage-]

we can make exceptions about ELITE skirmishers becuase they are expected to stand and fight in melee thats why they have .26 secondaries and high armour. but archers and lighter skirmishers cannot be expected to stand in the face of a cav charge.


here's the deal:
- 6 morale for light skirmishers and light archers, 7 morale for the heavier trained archers such as bosphorans, imperials, cretans, and syrians.

- +1 attack for all archers (since most EB units got lots of armour and to make up for the lower morale)

- jav damage raised to 16,17,18 ( due to the incredibly high armour of most eb units, even naked units have 4 armour)

P.S another thing i find very weird is that maces and axes have the same lethality as those knives(short swords) skirmishers use as secondary. come on even I know an axe is more lethal then a butter knife.

[Brave Brave Sir Robin]

How did we get to lowering skirmisher morale? They are bad enough already without routing from behind your lines because there are some nakeds in front of them. The only units that may need morale to be lowered would be archer units but I think the solution lies in making heavy archers more expensive rather than lowering morale. Light archers already pretty much insta rout from cavalry charges when properly executed, especially if they have lost 20% or more of their men.

The problem is thus for example. Player 1 is playing as Pontus, Player 2 as Getai. Player 1 takes 5 bosphoran archers and handily wins the missile duel over player 2's 5 dacian archers with about 2/3 of his archers left. Now, the difference in price between a dacian archer unit and a bosphoran unit is about 500 mnai. That means that player 2 has about 2500 extra mnai for other things. We will say that he uses that for an extra unit of cav. What can 2500 mnai get you (for any faction's cavalry)? Light charge cav which dies in droves to missiles or skirmish cav which does the same and won't have any effect charging heavy archers. Meanwhile, 2/3 of those bosphorans are around to finish off their arrows and then act as worthwhile medium infantry. There is no way you can tell me that having an extra about 250 medium infantry is not worth 2500 mnai. Yes you have paid a little extra to kill off his missile units but you have also scored extra infantry in the process. Now you tell me which player you would rather be?

As this is a historically based game, cost is really the one factor we can play with which does not affect that aspect. Playing with armor or morale does, but cost does not.

[-Stormrage-]

I did not understand a word of that, but i understand your concept.

Basically your saying increase heavy archer's price to match heavy infantry. I think that wont solve our problem of people using 2 heavy archers in loose formation to ruin cav charges .

I move :

-lower archer morale to prevent use as medium-heavy infantry and charge disrupters.

-to increase all archer damage by 1.

-to increase jav damage by 10.

(again the reasoning behind this is the amount of armour most eb units have , even nakeds have 4 armour because of a helmet.)

-increase Axe and Mace lethality

[antisocialmunky]

How did we get to lowering skirmisher morale? They are bad enough already without routing from behind your lines because there are some nakeds in front of them. The only units that may need morale to be lowered would be archer units but I think the solution lies in making heavy archers more expensive rather than lowering morale. Light archers already pretty much insta rout from cavalry charges when properly executed, especially if they have lost 20% or more of their men.

The problem is thus for example. Player 1 is playing as Pontus, Player 2 as Getai. Player 1 takes 5 bosphoran archers and handily wins the missile duel over player 2's 5 dacian archers with about 2/3 of his archers left. Now, the difference in price between a dacian archer unit and a bosphoran unit is about 500 mnai. That means that player 2 has about 2500 extra mnai for other things. We will say that he uses that for an extra unit of cav. What can 2500 mnai get you (for any faction's cavalry)? Light charge cav which dies in droves to missiles or skirmish cav which does the same and won't have any effect charging heavy archers. Meanwhile, 2/3 of those bosphorans are around to finish off their arrows and then act as worthwhile medium infantry. There is no way you can tell me that having an extra about 250 medium infantry is not worth 2500 mnai. Yes you have paid a little extra to kill off his missile units but you have also scored extra infantry in the process. Now you tell me which player you would rather be?

As this is a historically based game, cost is really the one factor we can play with which does not affect that aspect. Playing with armor or morale does, but cost does not.

StormRage storms and rages against everything. Under that system, Bosphorans/Imperials should be ~1600 mnai because they melee fairly well. That brings them in line with the high-end line infantry cost (1600).
Syrians/Cretans are alright for their current ~1400 mnai.

Of course, in response, you'll probably need to adjust the cost of the persian archers because those were balanced for the current pricing.

I also like my idea of increasing cavalry sizes for things like cheap javelin cav as well as non-elite cav. I think that'll solve some problems with under powered non-lancers and non-routing archers since outnumbering is a big deal. You may also feel it useful to take the 'disciplined' and other tags off the ones that do to increase morale decay.

[-Stormrage-]

Cav is not cheap, worthless javelin cav costs atleast 2300. increasng jav cav is an interesting suggestion.

[Kival]

I also like my idea of increasing cavalry sizes for things like cheap javelin cav as well as non-elite cav. I think that'll solve some problems with under powered non-lancers and non-routing archers since outnumbering is a big deal. You may also feel it useful to take the 'disciplined' and other tags off the ones that do to increase morale decay.

That sounds like a really interesting idea. It would not overpower the (higher tier) lancer-cavalry but give more value to the other cav units... this could also increase the use of elite non-lancer cav which lack any use for their costs at the moment.

Cav is not cheap, worthless javelin cav costs atleast 2300. increasng jav cav is an interesting suggestion.

What are you speaking about? 2,3k is the cost for the heavier javelin cav but not for the usual light cav.

[-Stormrage-]

usual light cav costs 1.9k while the light cav with javs cost 2.3k and javs are worthless.

[antisocialmunky]

I think the Akonistai on horses is like 1.4k. That unit is actually fairly decent as harass cav.

@Stormrage - are you sure some of the problems you are running into aren't due to your internet connection? Its hard to micro units when its lagging so bad.

[-Stormrage-]

what problems asm?

i am merely giving suggestions to get EB as fair and balanced as possible.

You should re-read my previous posts.

[antisocialmunky]

Joke.

Also, it seems that Mak may very well be unplayable against nakeds due to phalanx kill rates.

[Kival]

Also, it seems that Mak may very well be unplayable against nakeds due to phalanx kill rates.

Would you care to elaborate?

@stormrage

I'm not sure about which faction you're speaking here but most have javelin-cavalry which costs less.

[antisocialmunky]

Pez have 12 morale, the bare minimum to deal with scary (anything less is a bad/bad/bad idea). You need about 14 morale to really really be reasonably safe against routing until its all gone to hell. Phalanx vs phalanx features massive kill rates that drive morale into the toilet. That + nakeds makes it so pez is weak.

I also noticed that Pez, merc Pez, and the KH equivalent aren't disciplined. That seems very odd when they are the professional line and file Successor Infantry. It also may be useful to make silvershields carry an eagle of some sort. They did have a tendency to fight to the last.


Observations form testing:
-Mak elites are definitely a little too expensive. :[
-On the plus side, melee cav is definitely really good. The big aspis 3 shield cav are fairly missile resistant if you park them still to get the double shield bonus for a total of 16 armor from the front.
-I'm wondering if it is a good idea to tweak cav so they are 2 HP. Right now they just die like flies in melee (for cost against archers lol?). It may actually be worth giving them more attack bonus due to them being above the enemy. Alternatively, increase the - vs cav value for short weapon armed infantry dudes. I think increasing the penalty against cav is the best bet of making cav more useful.
-Lonchophoroi die to Cretans if you use the secondary. That's retarded. I mean that's just kinda sad. Either the secondary is just terrible or something else is seriously wrong...
-Increasing the size of the lowest tier of unarmored javelin cav may be useful. Not the medium sized ones. I think you need to increase javelin damage from cavalry since in real life they would ride up and throw to increase the speed of the projectile by like 30 MPH. Its crap right now. Maybe something like 30-50% bonus for cavalry javelins.

[Kival]

I see; you were speaking about phalanx vs phalanx in combination with scary infantry. I like your other ideas, too, though I'm not sure if too high morale/disciplined etc. would not make a phalanx too invulnerable to flanking.

[The Celtic Viking]

I think the skirm cav idea is one definitely worth trying out.

What are you speaking about? 2,3k is the cost for the heavier javelin cav but not for the usual light cav.

IIRC Thraikian Hippeis cost 2.3k, and they're not especially heavy.

[Kival]

IIIRC Thraikian Hippeis cost 2.3k, and they're not especially heavy.

Yeah, I was not precise: Medium armored javelin cav was meant by "heavier" like "heavier than light". Light skirmisher cav cost (mostly?) less than 2k: Leuce Epos, hippakontistai, arabian light cavalry, iberian and cantabrian light cav, etc.

[gamegeek2]

I was thinking 60 men for all light cavalry, including light horse archers (especially the ones with shitty charge).

Other things

-There will definitely NOT be an axe or mace lethality increase. Statistically, it´s fine as is. I do intend to buff axemen in other ways. For example I fully intend to lower the cost of Eastern axemen or give them the ¨barbarian bonus. I also think raising the unit size of Teceitos to 100 is a good idea.
-Considering reducing Marian and Imperial heavy cost reduction to only -15%, still quite high.
-Almost certainly making all elite phalanxes veteran level. Also considering lowering Pezhetairoi to 100 men, for reasons already discussed, so they dont completely maul Pantodapoi as much but are more affordable as a well disciplined phalanx. Would allow players to recreate alexandrian armies more effecitvely.
-Considering 2 additional jav attack for skirmishers instead of 1, and giving this bonus to Peltastai Makedonikoi as well (they have no skirmisher bonus ATM but they are Peltastai, this seems a mistake. They would end up being about the same as Ambakaro in skirmishing quality).
-Considering giving slingers 80 men.
-Definitely going to depower Dosidataskeli a bit, not too much though.
-Hypaspist cost will likely be lowered

Also, there seems to be a failure to notice that Remi Mairepos have better morale, 2 more defense, 1 more attack (2 for sword) and 3 more charge than Brihentin, but also have very hardy. They can be run around like Prodromoi and still hit hard. They also have shields, small ones but still a useful attribute.

Since we will use 2.1 for next month´s tourney, I have a syggested ruleset for civilized and steppe armies:

CIVILIZED ARMY COMPOSITION:
-7 cavalry max, of which 3 can be heavy cavalry. Assuming 20 unit armies, this is guaranteed to not produce an army with any greater than 25% cavalry, which is the maximum I´ve heard of for the ancient world. Heavy cavalry was rarely even half of an army´s cavalry in this period: an army heavy on cavalry would almost certainly not have more than half heavy cavalry.
-8 phalanx max
-7 skirmisher max - does NOT include skirmisher cavalry
-7 archer max, of which 3 may be heavy archers - DOES include horse archers, DOES influde slingers
-5 non-factional max

STEPPE ARMY COMPOSITION
-No maximum of cavalry
-5 skirmishers max
-Phalanx use prohibited
-Maximum of 10 infantry units
-2 nonfactional cavalry max
-4 nonfactional infantry max

FACTION EXCEPTIONS

--- SABA ---
Is permitted to use 40,000 mnai if it does not field elephants (not sure about this one)

--- ROMANS ---
Not permitted to use phalanx mercenaries

--- SAUROMATAE ---
May use up to 8 nonfactional infantry while using a steppe army composition

ALL FAIRPLAY RULES AND CHEVRON RESTRICTIONS APPLY, CURRENT FACTIONAL UNIT LISTS APPLY

[antisocialmunky]

I like it.

-I'm kinda curious, why are Persians are sized 100 and the other Iranian and Steppe foot archers are standard sized. Is this because of population densities for that part of the world? I mean, under your new ruleset, they would be the only ones with 100 sized archers that are spammable.
- Hypaspists - They are royal guard probably on par with KH elite hoplites. Since KH Thorakitai Hoplites use a heavy AP sword, why don't you give them the same AP sword and make them an high-end, take all comers in defense, cut through almost anything super flexible unit. After all, all the other greek 1500+ (Samnites + Pedites) sword armed units have AP. Would make them worth their cost. nvm, diff sword model
- What do you think about some more cav melee increase? Lonchrophoroi dying to a unit of Cretans in melee is kinda pathetic.
- I disagree with making the elite phalanxes 'veteran' level. They should be where they are and they cost accordingly. The main issue with the old uber expensive units was that they can in too small of numbers. :\ There's not real problem with them at size 100 and ~3K.
- Pez at 100 was an idea I supported. However, its not really and issue right now. I think phalanx are remarkably not imbalance. The main issue is discipline currently because it causes them to lose morale and chain rout like crazy. I mean, I wouldn't be against that. I don't know about Hysteroi though. I really like them as a 120 unit especially since its recruited from a wider pop base, basically its
-Oh yes, can we get AP back on falxs, Getai is throughly uninteresting. Like Sweboz without AP.

Don't forget Lusto and Carthage rules.

[Brave Brave Sir Robin]

Agree with many of these changes except for the following:
The Saba change is still not going to make people play as them so I don't think it's worthwhile.
Please don't downgrade the elite phalangites. They historically were and should be an elite and are priced accordingly. One unit of these does not bankrupt an army.
I don't think that slingers should get 80 men. They already murder cavalry, I'd hate to see what they would do if there were more men in the unit.
Lastly, not sure why you would raise the archer limit. I have no particular problem with it, I was just wondering your reasoning.

Also what would classify as heavy archers? I would assume Persian Heavies and everything above? i.e. Bophorans, Cretans, Imperials, and Syrians

Last also: Hypaspists are fine as is, their sword is .225 lethality which is great. However, they are a bit pricy compared to other elites that AS, Epirus or Maks can get like Thracians, Orca, etc and that is the main problem. Also the Peltasti Makedonikai have a shortsword and cost even more. They need help from the pricing department too.

[Kival]

-Oh yes, can we get AP back on falxs, Getai is throughly uninteresting. Like Sweboz without AP.

Yeah. Perhaps the lethality could be decreased to compensate it though I would not say they are uninteresting ;-).

[Lazy O]

Well at least we are making progress, that is a very plausible ruleset, though unlesss you are saka i do not see what difference the cavalry rules would male, and I strongly disagree with increasing cavalry sizes, already we play on large, they are too cumbersome moving about.

[Vega]

Gamegeek rules sounds good, but there were phalanx in camilian and polybian era, we was discusing about removing phalanx because they didnt exist in marian and imperial era :DD

[Brave Brave Sir Robin]

Well that would be hoplite phalanx not phalangite phalanx. But I digress...

[-Stormrage-]

There is also the issue of people maxing out their heavy cav limit by bringing a general and 2 catas. The general shouldnt be classified as heavy cavalry or maybe the heavy cav limit should be increased to 4 to make up for the popular use of Generals on horseback.

GG: Can Axemen get a boost to their armour. right now they got 1 armour which will get them killed in melee by almost any unit.

These new rules are not to my liking. First, Some Factions have cheaper heavy cav then other meaning they can afford to bring more heavy cav, but with the restrictions both you and your opponent can bring the SAME amount of heavy cavalry, so its impossible for the faction with cheap heavy cavalry to get an advantage.
Second, Increasing archer limit to 7 was good but you ruined it when you said there was a heavy archer limit of 3. Give us the ability to bring as much heavies as we want. and What happened to the pricing heavy archers like heavy infantry idea. someone suggested 1.6k.


Why all these restrictions i thought we agreed to a "anything goes tourney" if someone brings to much cav his infantry and archer funds will run low, and if someone brings too much archers then he wont have slots for infantry.

Edit: The rule about saba getting 40k is very interesting but when i play with saba i feel like i have Extra money to spend .

[Lazy O]

I do not think even with 1 chevron Saba can utilize 40k. And storm, heavy cav limit was not increased. GG2 did not say that.

And the 3 heavy archer limit sorta fixes the problem of archer balance and them being used as heavy infantry.

[-Stormrage-]

how about giving saba ability of 2 chevron use.

[Lazy O]

Yea lets just make our rules so ******* complicated, even the 5 out of 100 people I tell about this and agree go away because of the damn rules, Good Idea!!

[-Stormrage-]

Yea lets just make our rules so fucking complicated, even the 5 out of 100 people I tell about this and agree go away because of the damn rules, Good Idea!!

So your saying we need to get rid of rules.
This is exactly what the "anything goes tourney" is about. why are you fighting against it in the other forum.

[Lazy O]

We need rules, I was saying that at present, they are alreayd too complicated.

[antisocialmunky]

Well at least we are making progress, that is a very plausible ruleset, though unlesss you are saka i do not see what difference the cavalry rules would male, and I strongly disagree with increasing cavalry sizes, already we play on large, they are too cumbersome moving about.

... we used to play on huge because it was the best balanced.

The cav size bump would be mostly for lightly equipped cavalry and it'd buff special units for luso, numidia, and HAs. The main failing in the rules is the bumping up of archers it basically forces barb armies into the scary ball. Your skirms are toast and so are any cavalry you bring. If you're going to do this, you should consider bumping up slinger sizes an extra notch for barbs above what you will end up with kinda like you did for their archers, if only to soak up damage.

I don't like having a 'heavy' archer classification tbh. You should figure out another way of doing it like decreasing size maybe?

[gamegeek2]

One more rule: generals do not count towards the heavy cav or caav limit.