Conversions are fine in lategame, they’re just OP in the early game.
That’s why there needs to be a tech needed to convert elephants. Perfectly addresses the issue.
Yeah but maybe elephants are a late game units. When Vietnamese suddenly switch secretly into mass elephants it’s hard to counter.
If elephants gets harder to convert, elephants civs gonna be OP at Castle age.
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Then they get the tech, it costs like 1.75 monks, and then you’re golden like normal.
im kinda split on this, hate the bugs that come with all qol features and some aren’t even that useful. the farm one would be neat if it works with custom farm size like 2x2 or 4x4 so this feature might not even work for some mods
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Nah gating the ability to convert elephants behind a tech doesn’t make sense gameplay wise or thematically. They’re meant to be hard countered by Monks. If conversions are that big of a problem what if elephants were control locked for x number of seconds after a successful conversion before the converting player can use them? At least this way the converting player can’t use them straight away and the other player has a small window to convert them back if they wish to do so.
Does it make any less sense than Siege units taking a tech to convert?
Yes, they’re meant to be countered, but not so hard that they become completely unviable. They’re clearly much too weak early on.
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Heavy Scorpion HP 55 → 60
Heavy Scorpion armor 0/8 → 1/8
HP and armor buff seems useless. To improve heavy scorpion survivability I’d better give them:
- 10 “Siege Unit” armor.
- Increase speed to 0.7
Main enemies of scorpions are bombard cannons and onagers.
Both of them have bonus damage against “Siege Unit” armor class. Bombard cannon is also faster then scorpion (0.7 vs 0.65 speed)
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So I’d thought of this too, and while I do think this would be a good change so that onagers and BC don’t hard counter scorpions as much, there’s a technical problem.
mangudai and magyar huszar also have bonus dmg vs the siege unit armor class, and there bonus is less than 10.
perhaps you’d need to introduce another armor class, but I think you’d want to reduce the bonus dmg scorpions take from onagers and bombard cannons while also not affecting the magyar huszar and mangudai.
That technical hurdle aside, I agree. bombard cannons and onagers will still do well, but on the margins it’ll help. post pup a scorpion should survive a hit from a bombard cannon with 1 hp. 60 hp +1 melee armor, vs 40 melee atk +20. 59 damage. If you reduce that bonus damage by 10 then scorpions would instead take only 49 dmg. So no you could have a slightly damaged scorpion survive when it’d otherwise be destroyed. Similar logic for onagers.
I think the speed is also a decent idea. too much speed and they’re just a better archer, but .7 vs an archers .96 is still quite a difference. Bombard cannons speed is .7 so it’s not unprecedented or anything.
moving some gold cost to wood could also help. Sure bombard cannons and onagers will still do well, but if you’re losing less gold, then it won’t hurt as much. maybe 80w 70g. that’d be very close to the wood to gold ratio of the onager, so i don’t think that’s ridiculous either.
I am a bit concerned with these incremental buffs. There’s something that’s really holding the scorpion back, and if that’s addressed on 3rd, 4th, 5th, change, then everything else might be an overbuff.
I feel this was done in reverse with the steppe lancer. It was broken on release, then they destroyed the unit with nerfs. Then re-buffed it. I think the single largest problem was how closely they stacked, followed by their gold efficiency. But because I assume the devs, did not well understand the underlying reasons why the steppe lancer was so good, they nerfed everything all at once.
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I think making longswordsman/champions less vulnerable (-15 dmg from onagers/bombard) to blast dmg helps them form a good combo with scorpions.
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I’m not necessarily opposed to that…IDK how you do it tho from a technical standpoint. I don’t think you could do it with the standard armor classes. I think it’d have to be similar to how royal heirs works.
Siege units are more expansive, slower to produce, more difficult to micro, need more protection from other military units and have a more specific utility.
Elephants are cheaper, faster to produce and there are good VS every single units including bulding.
Monks are already long to produce. To counter elephants with monks you need at least 2 or 3 monasteries. At Castle age it’s a lot, so imagine you see need an additional tech + ennemy bring an onager, you must choose between Redemption or the new tech.
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If your enemy can afford siege, you can afford pikes. If you fail to properly prepare for your enemies attack, that’s your fault. The fact it would now be possible to make a tactical mistake like this against elephants is indicative of good balance.
The fact early game elephants are completely imbalanced and terrible means they should be made better, and the most sensible way to do this is by making monks worse.
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And you can afford few monks to convert pikes and converted elephants. Monks are difficult enough to play and don’t need a nerf. If you think elephants are weak, nerfing monks is not the solution.
According to SOTL’s video, Heavy Scorpion now survive 1 direct BBC hit as well as mangonel hit. Getting 10 siege armor won’t make any more difference for these 2 units.
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For the first one, you’re going from (temporarily) saving 175 wood to saving 25 wood. Seems like a nerf to me
For the second one, farms will provide less food overall, but the bonus comes before researching the farm techs. Might be helpful for the earliest farms, but if you are getting the farming techs (something that the current bonus encourages), this would be a nerf.
For the third one, remember that Sicilians started with 50% less bonus damage. That got reduced because it made their cavalry too strong. Also, Sicilians are listed as an infantry civ (which hasn’t really been reflected by their gameplay all that much, but whatever). Archers can be countered without bonus damage (either by knights when numbers are small, or siege when they aren’t). Infantry (excluding spears) are usually dealt with without any bonus damage. Cavalry are usually countered by units with bonus damage (or monks).
I suspect that Bulgarians will often want to attack in Feudal Age, especially on open maps. Also, Kreposts can basically be treated like a cheaper castle in (early) castle age, which gives it offensive and defensive purposes. But given a choice between a second stable and building a Krepost, I’d rather build the Krepost. Konniks are harder to deal with than knight are, and I only need one stable for the techs.
The hp and armor buff is just enough to ensure they survive a direct hit from most bombard cannons. The present buff is enough to guarantee that they survive a direct hit from a mangonel blast. Your proposed buff wouldn’t be enough to guarantee survival against a Onager buff (unless it was combined with the buff the PUP was supposed to include), though it would give them a chance of survival. SO will still completely destroy scorpions (even with both the PUP buffs and your proposed buff). That said, I think that one of the purposes of this buff was to make them a little less vulnerable to melee units (including ranged infantry units). So against Bombard cannons, heavy scorpions are still hard-countered, but are no longer one-shotted (which is a significant improvement). Mangonels are still much the same against heavy scorpions, so best to hold the scorpions back if you see mangonels. And other counters are typically fast-moving melee units, who are more affected by the +1 armor.
For reference:
Mangonels deal 40 + 12 + 5X1 extra shots (so 52-57 to enemy siege units on a direct hit, assuming no armor)
Onagers deal 50 + 12 + 7X1 extra shots (62-69 to enemy siege on a direct hit)
Siege Onagers deal 75 + 12 + 9X1 extra shots (87-96 to enemy siege on a direct hit)
Note that onagers deal melee damage (so the PUP buff of 1 melee armor will apply)
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I find it strange that no one in this post has commented on the auto farm placement in the pup:
I find it stranger how you didn’t see post 39 of this thread. The creator of that video himself posted it.
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You don’t even have to do that. They’ll be balanced even without any compensatory buff.
Nah, its gotta build atleast as fast as towers or be clearly superior in some other way. Cant have something that takes longer to build, has only hp equal to a Byzantine tower, allows several vills to surround it and still be that expensive.
These are great changes, although I’d still keep spear addition.
This is ok if Hauberk gets cheaper back to 400 food, 300 gold
Plenty of OG bonuses were terribly imbalanced and there’s absolutely no need to stick with the percentages just for the sake of it after the civ has a received an early castle age buff in the form of steppe lancers.
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It is a bit too cheap, it feels bonus rather than Tech if it become that cheap.
I also believe +3/+1 armor bonus is more appropriate than +1/+2 armor for historical hauberk gear.
He’s reducing 1 p.armor which is huge. Extra melee armor isn’t that much valuable to justify that high cost.
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