*wink to lothar* - at least it works huh. hehe.

another thing to keep in mind... with the seige rule of no moving and attacking... if a person puts up a tower and puts a cat in it... you cant build a tower and put a cat in to destroy the opponents tower...if you try... your tower w/ cat(that cant fire same turn) is just a sitting duck...

my personal opinion is the seige rule of no moving and attacking changes this game completely... lowering the movement of bal/rams/cats considerably may have worked better... their slower movement would require them to be supported by other troops...especially when retreating...

req, you mentioned one turn doesn't equal one day... how doesn't it in a 1 turn per day game?

Last Edited : Wednesday, 30 September 2009 - 19:30

If only this rule are changed before i sold everything in my castle.....urgh

each turn is a representation of a small amount of time. how long between playing the turns is irrelevant really.

indeed, its the same problem with any updates. it happens midway through all existing games. cant be avoided. and often warning doesnt help, or it alerts players so that they can quickly exploit the change before it happens.

such is the nature of persistant gaming and updates.

well being the game turn changes once every 24 hrs...that small amount of time equals 1 day...

i hope you don't think i'm just trying to be a jerk here... i'm just pointing out the effects of these changes...and how they are changing the game...

another example... if someone puts up a few towers in their castle and puts cats in them and a few bali... it will be quite difficult for the opponent trying to attack to use their seige weapons... they will have to put their seige weapons in harms way a turn before they can use them... may as well hang out in your castle without making melee troops until the second half of the camp when you need to grab points...

Last Edited : Wednesday, 30 September 2009 - 20:30

Req, when did anyone ever build their rams when they got to the castle gates? The answer would be never. Nobody in their right mind would run up to the gate with all of the various battering rams components in their arms, take their time assembling it and then finally start pounding away hours later. They were always pre-built before the attack and pushed/roled into position to immediately start pounding at the door.

I understand your reasoning with cats being unable to move and attack and even ballista to some extent, but with rams it just doesn't apply historically or in playing this game at all.

its not waiting to build, its waiting to attack.

it takes time for the people to change positions, set the thing up, and get it to actually attack.

compared to a swordsman or archer, who could attack 20 times by the time a bali or ram could attack once, there is a big gap between moving and actually doing damage for any war-machine.

I imagine some rams were actually just pushed by the men to ram into the wall while moving.

I could make arguements against there being a significant time for setting up or positioning the men such as the fact that some rams were simply pushed into the gate as Lothar said or that rams with a hanging arm would usually be pre-armed and ready to swing when first moved into position.

I could make those arguements and i guess i did, but in the reality of this game it doesn't matter. Without being able to move and attack in a turn a ram is the next thing to useless. Before being able to attack they'll be severely weakened or even destroyed by cats and melee. The upgrades take nothing from the fact that it would almost always take two turn before being able to start attacking on the third (which is the same as two turns of suffering attacks). That's the real point here, but since i know from long experience that you almost never change your mind when you've decided something about this game i'm not going to even bother trying to argue anymore. There's just no point other than to waste time.

in reality rams are slow, but they loose no time for setting up or positioning and they are very precise and do lots of damage. Comparing to cats which are very unprecise. So I see no point for setting up a ram once you have it built. Maybe only the first time when you have to unload it from your cart. But once the fight begin you just move it and attack different walls and doors(even if that is a barrack door) without any fetching.

No one will use rams, cause once you have it next to a door your oppoonnet will deploy a cat and shoot your ram, and once you are next to barrack door your opponent will deploy a high level unit and destroy 80% of your ram and the rest of 20% with some small unit.

So what I would like to see so I can use them, is:
- rams doing much more damage than a cat(even if that means a very big penalty for long distance for cats)
- not sufering "move and attack penalty" (or suffering but only the first time whan you unload it if you can do that).

and saying again, arbs are still useless.

every unit in this game should have a reason to be used, otherwise they are only nice pictures.

PS.
Actualy, in history only rams and human shoulders are used do destroy a barrack door and then kill everything inside with mele troops. Cats are used only for destroying walls, only by mistake they can destroy a building inside a castle cause they are very unprecise.

Last Edited : Thursday, 1 October 2009 - 00:47

what if war-machines can attack after moving, but only attack at 50% strength.

that way you can still use them, but not as effective if you move them first.

I had to ask this. Since ballista are siege machinese, Does a cat cause lots of damage to them and vice versa? Just like a cat to a cat. And a dog to a dog....monkey to a monkey...


p/s - to be frank, these changes brought another problem up. Now a comm is so useful and powerful now that they can just build the walls or palisades. With the already very slow cat, it will now be slowed even further...haha...so lets just work on the wok, so that we can cook korean food instead

Last Edited : Thursday, 1 October 2009 - 02:43

does the changes to the rams make them anymore effective or is everyone still going to skip them alltogether and go for cats? Arbs... still... useless?

I like the idea of the siege machines being able to attack at 50% efficiency after moving. This will keep you from having to have 4 times the amount of resources to destroy a castle.

The way it is you can build cats inside your castle and just kill the assaulting cats as they come, without ever having to worry about losing any barracks. Given that you know they are on the way of course and how many of them there are.

Req, I think that is a good compromise.

Done.

they now do 50% damage if they move before attacking.

well thats much better...thanks

lol, now it work not in my favor again...oh well...
By the way, does melee now deal double damage to siege machines too? I thought it is only to range?

p/s - and the changes apply to all 3 - ballista, rams, and cat? or just cat?

Last Edited : Thursday, 1 October 2009 - 06:01

I understand your point of view Req because you are indeed right that ballistas and catapults had to be build up when presented on a battlefield.

But on a historical battlefield the siege weapons were always build up before the battle started, which meant that most of the time the seige weapons we're actually the first weapons to attack during a fight. After the seige weapons had attacked the bowmen usually follewed, and after that the cavalry and foot soldiers fought eachother. My point here is that they were fighting eachother at the same time, because this game is turn-based they are never able to really fight and move at the same time (retal takes this away, but only for a small amount). This means that you will not be able to react to the changes on the battle field very fast. In fact, it takes 1 day, just the same amount of time it takes to build up your seige weapons according to the new change.

Anyway my point is that it would be best, looking at history if seige weapons were able to attack first. I can agree with the movement-non attack thing, but then i feel that the seige weapons should have more range.

these seige weapons are pre-built, but still require many men to move them into position. once into position, those men have to set the thing up to fire/attack, which takes time.
certainly alot more time than it takes a man to swing a sword or fire an arrow. that is why it takes a turn.
a turn is not a day, its a small amount of time in terms of combat.

i was actually going to suggest that both Cats & Bali have a range of 9, since they are weaker if they move and attack.
this gives them 3 extra range over marks & archers.
longbowman are still 7, but they suffer from the distance penalty.

I am not sure but the cat still can't attack and move in the same turn in PG. Not sure bout campaign though.
And i also believe their range is good enough already. Extending it to 9, will bring back the question of cat being able to strike too fast. So what's the point of reducing its speed in the first place? And it will also make defending a castle very easy. I will just build towers surrounding my castle and defend from there because i can be very sure that the opponents will surely let me have one free shot if they were to attack.