btw, looking at the code, it appears ranged troops SHOULD be doing less damage beyond 4 spaces. i used the wrong variable when calculating the penalties and so the missing functionality is actually a bug.

fixing this does lead into the swapping Arbs & Marks abilities suggestion tho.

Once ranged troops are fixed (so there is a damage % penalty when shooting further than 4 spaces), Marks will become even more powerful due to no penalty. Arbs will become even less desireable.

Switching them solves both problems. Marks are still very strong, and great in Melee too, but still have penalties at distance, and Arbs are no longer great at melee, and even though they have the smallest range they fire at full strength for their full range, which no other ranged troop would do. this makes both Marks & Arbs usefull.

Yes, marks are supermans indeed, especially in towers, and they are affordable too, which makes them the core of any army.
So in this game there is only one winning strategy which is based on 80% marks and few other troops.
Any unit in the game have a different unit to be able to beat it, as for marks, they are only stopable using marks. Furthermore being the best unit in the game make them the only choice for winning.

As for the rest of the troops they are prety well balanced on the same level. when you change the level then the game becomes unbalanced again. For instance a squerie can beat around 2.5 scouts. I think the difference should be decreased a bit. It should not be able to kill more that 1.7-2.0 scouts.

My very small set of tweeking:
- all range should have range penalty after 2 hexas. For marks should be after 4-5.
- towers defence/attack should be decereased by 10 each and range bonus by 1.
- Marks health should be decreased to 100, and the damage to 15-25.
- the difference between rival types on 2 adiacent levels should not be more than 1.8. So I think the health of level 1 and 2 units should be increased a bit(level 1 should be increased a bit more).
- Falcs and pikes special abillities should be risen up.
Falcs could have "50% chance of doing 75% more damage" or "30% chance of doing 100% more damage", but I preffer the first one cause falcs ususaly are not going to do more then 2-3 hits before dying.
Pikes should have +75% damage to rival attack type.
- Arbs should have health at leats as falcs health, or even more like squeries. They already have a smaller damage. That should be enough.

Last Edited : Monday, 28 September 2009 - 05:54

Requiem,
So has the bug fix (changes) mentioned above been implemented?

Not yet, because once that is fixed, Marks become even more powerful. So I want to get a solution to that first.

Noone has really commented on my suggestion, instead of just making it weaker (which does nothing for game play and means Arbs are still useless)

I like special abillities. Marksmen should have a special ability too and it is obviuos what that should be considering the name.

Arbs have (5-2)*5% = 15% penalties at full range. eliminating that will make them a bit better but still useless because of their low health.

I really like using the Arbs early in the game, but they are a bit limited, and the other player going for ballista or Marks first win out in the end. They should definitely be made a little stronger so people will use them. I like the no range penalty. I would say make them more equivalent to the Barbarian crossbow masters in range and power. It is a little frustrating that there are only two strategies that win, all ballistas or all marks. Of course if your opponent goes all Marks its over. I think the Marks defense should be reduced especially since they have the range bonus. Someone with a bow and arrow shouldn't be able to defend against a sword or pointed stick at close range, gesh!!

Yeap, i agree with lothar on the last point. Swapping the ability of marks and arbs will actually make marks even harder to kill. The solution is quite simple, i think. Increase the defenses of melees so that they won't die that easily when charging towards the fronts.

Ahhh..that's the same as suggesting to lower the attack of marks. Heh.

But seriously, that's the only solution to reduce the power of both marks and ballista. Leave arbs as it is. Nobody use it just like nobody really actually deploy those basic armies. If you want, might as well increase its range to 6 or 7 so that it "attracts" more people to use it.

lowering marks attack or increasing mele defence will fix the problem only for battle, but not for camps and duels.
For instance, a mark does 250-300 damage and if you put it in a tower does 400-600 to a high level unit.

the other big problem regarding marks is that you can have them starting with turn 6-7 in a camp. I like better the old system when to be able to upgared your barrack to marks you should have built upgrades for archers, arbs, ballis(tech tree).

Last Edited : Monday, 28 September 2009 - 13:07

The problem with Marks is really their position at the top of the food chain. Every other animal (unit) has a predator (nemesis unit) that kicks ass against it.
However, because Marksmen are missile, at least melee units of the next level down (Cav, Knights, Mace) can close with and destroy it. Giving Marksmen the arbelester's special ability actually makes them more powerful (incredibly powerful because they have no superior(e.g. paper wraps stone) unit in melee combat). It would mean that only ballis and other marks are much use against them.

I recommend - change things a little, check the play balance, tweak. If you make the change too big, players that have invested a lot of gold in ballis or marks are going to moan.

So, how about, you fix the code, reduce attack by 2 and damage by 5% for each hex beyond 4? Towers, etc to increase this threshold, so unit in a tower would suffer no reduction until the range is 7.

This will give a 8 attack, 20% reduction to ballis at their extreme range. Because this is the range they most often fight at, this is probably the most you can change in one hit without pissing off all the balli owners.

Don't apply this to marksmen (because it is their special ability, as laur pointed out), but do tweak their defence down (to 15, say, same as balli's attack) and health down (to 90, same as a heavy cavalry - it really doesn't make sense to me for a ranged unit to have more health than any of the top of the line melee units. Per gold piece spent you will still get more health buying marks than you will buying ballis) *risk of moaning from marks owners*

This will hardly affect the arbs (because they only get 5% reduction at their extreme range). If they really are unpopular, tweak up their att/def or health a little.

Last Edited : Monday, 28 September 2009 - 17:03

swapping the capabilities of marks and arbs is not very realistic... A marksmen carries only a long bow...which gives him longer range... his skill(which you pay for...20k)is why a mark is deadly accurate...they should be a powerful force... they however (like an archer) do not carry a sword or shield...nor do they wear armor... that is because they are not intended to be used in melee style combat... They are sharp shooters... so switching their capabilities with arbs, is simply taking them out of character...

I think most agree on one thing...Marks are too powerful and have taken over the game...making many other types of troops some what worthless...I think the solution is simple...lower just the attack damage a mark can do...tweek it down just a bit... by doing this it will kill less of the opponents stack...which leaves the opponent with more of a retaliation force to counter the marks attack... for example... if you use a 10 stack of marks to attack a 10 stack of knights... it will kill 3-4 knights... so tweek it down so it only kills 2 knights... this leaves 8 knights to retaliate still... therefore...if you use a ton of expensive marks...you will also have to spend more on palisides/buildings/other troops to protect them as well... marks should have privaleges of use but come at an extreme high cost... the cost now is high and thats good...the movement is good...and the range is good... the only problem is they are too powerful... if they were equal in attack power with bali then the only advantage they would have over bali is defense and some movement...for this reason i would drop the range of bali to 7 making them equal in range with marks...

by lowering a marks attack power...it gives melee troops more value in the game...it balances things out more...

What I would definitely try to avoid is sudden steps in anything's power.

For example, Marksmen's max range is 7. At range 7, they are 100% affective. At range 8, 0% effective.

This means that at the moment, I can place a balli at range 8 and attack the marksman with no retal.

Having the power of ranged units tend towards 0 at extreme range would avoid this problem, because although the marksmen would do no damage, the balli would only do 20% damage. At a range of 7, marks would do 100% damage, ballis 40% but this is the marksman's ideal range, taking maximum benefit of his special ability.

If you take the balli's special ability into consideration and assumed an 10 pop marksman, the figures would be more like this:
Range Marks Balli
. 4 . . . 100% 150%
. 5 . . . 100% 120%
. 6 . . . 100% . 90%
. 7 . . . 100% . 60%
. 8 . . . . . 0% . 30%
. 9 . . . . . 0% . . 0%

Last Edited : Monday, 28 September 2009 - 17:32

so what your saying still gives them too much power... why bother selecting melee troops at all... all marks a few comms and a few cats can take out anything...
by lowering the attack power of a mark it balances things out more..giving other types of troops a use in the game... i do understand and like your idea on how bali are more destructive at closer range...it is realistic...and i agree that marks should remain 100% at any range...afterall they are sharp shooters... but as of now marks are just too powerful...

Last Edited : Monday, 28 September 2009 - 17:52

yes, this was the concern of making all other ranged units do less damage at a distance. the increased power of marks.

this would mean the only way to kill marks would be with melee troops, or get ranged troops much closer.

so perhaps we need to make marks weaker, but also more costly since they are so powerful against melee and also all of the ranged troops.

made some changes. please check the notice board

Ouch - the change to ballis not being able to move and fire is harsh - basically they are now a defensive or seige weapon.

But I suppose it makes sense. Glad I'm only in one campaign at the moment, otherwise would be bothered by this.

Approve of the other changes, but still feel that marks still have too many hit points - they are missile troops - why should they have more HP than the top-of-line melee troops?

the hit points troops have are proportial to their cost/production. since you produce so few Marks, their hit points are higher.

Marks are the highest troop in the Medi class, and so should be the best. Much like Demigods for Demons.

But marksmen are ranged troops and their hit points should be compared, cost for cost, with other ranged troops, not with melee units. If you spent 20,000 gold on ballistas, you'd only get 889 hit points (20% less).

Marksmen now have the defensive advantage over ballistas of being able to run away from melee units and fire at the same time, in addition to their 2 greater movement points, so you have to bear this in mind when deciding on the correct health.

The cost in question is the points not gold cost.
Marks are 450, Bali are 300 and Arbs are 125 and Archers 50.

So from Archers costing 9x less, 9x Archers Health = 108.
Arbs are 3.6x cheaper and so 3.6 x 35 = 126.
Bali are 1.5x cheaper and so 1.5 x 60 = 90.

Bali are weaker tho as they are war-machines with +50% ranged protection. So they are actually stronger against ranged attacks (equivalent of 180), but weaker vs melee attacks.

So overall, a health of approx 110 for Marks is mathematically sound.

The calculation appears the same for points and gold (as it should be), but gold is more relevant, because the only way to increase your gold income beyond 6350 is conquest, wheras you can increase your points income by building or upgrading barracks.

Going (slightly) off topic here, I'm playing my first duel using demons ~ by accident ~ and the main things that I've noticed are:

1) How much weaker demon basics are than medi (my opponent has medi).

2) The fact that (except for Boulder Demons) there are no demon ranged - so every attack takes retal & there are no "free hit" troop types.

I know that demons have flying troops that make defence a nightmare but they still take casualties every attack ~ unlike the ranged troops in the barb & medi types.

What (if any) special attributes do demons have that negates this? And if there isn't anything what can be done?

Higher level troops are pretty awesome but they are more expensive and take more points than their medi equivalents...