Can we talk about trample mode?

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
1

I did a test in the scenario editor where I had a huss hit a bunch of close packed envoys. The idea was to look at how bad it is in a circumstance that should be ‘ideal’ - smacking a ##### #### of non heavy infantry. The huss took 21 recoil damage after dealing damage to 3 units in one hit.

Thats a very ideal scenario, so for a more practical test I set 3 huss on 10 skirms. Its not too unusual to see to see a pack of skrims getting charged by a 3 huss shipment. I tested with and without trample and here are the results;:

10 skirms v 3 huss, No Trample - 99/320 hp, 293/320 hp, 263/320 hp

In normal melee mode, the huss win and have a total of abt 68% hp left. Thats the control.

10 skirms v 3huss, Trample - 175/320, 48/320, 0/320

In trample mode the huss win with about 32% hp, one huss actually dies. I made sure the skirms were packed together and made sure the huss got the first hit off to make it as favorable for trample as possible.

So thats some hard numbers for actually how bad it is atm. I know that this sort of thing can become very broken very quickly and is designed as a situational tool at best. That said, if its makes heavy cav outright worse against the thing they counter we are past the point of situational. The argument could be made that trample works better with larger cav armies since the splash stacks, but either way the units would just do a better job in melee mode.

Cav are in a good spot overall and dont really need anything to make them stronger, but if the trample mode is there it may as well be useful. So to kickoff brainstorming, I’m gonna pitch an idea to modify trample with the boundaries that it doesnt change the overall power of cav but is actually worthwhile to use:

Trample Mode*:

Unit speed and damage reduced by 35%. Rate of fire stays at 1.5 and no splash area is gained. Unit can attack while moving. Takes +20% more damage from anticavalry units (Musk, pike, halb, goons).

Basic idea is to make trample mode better at specifically running down LI blobs - constant snare and dps at the cost of taking more damage from anticav units. This should be a little more relevant early on, a little weaker later in the game, and should benefit the glass cannon (Uhlans) and beefy noodle (Lifidi Knights) types of heavy cav evenly.

*A concept to start from. Any goes tho, just wanna get a talk started.

6 Likes
3

Speed reduce is a disaster indeed. In 99% situations trample is worse than normal mode, which can be called a fail design.

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4

At the moment, in the majority of situations, trample mode is unviable; as the transition takes too long and the reward for having splash damage is not worth while.

My suggestion how to fix this, is for the devs to introduce an Age 4 Arsenal tech that fixes this problem. I suggest that this tech changes the speed of the transition to make it instant and increases the speed of the unit to over 5 so that the cavalry will still be faster than most normally infantry. I suggest that this card only works for royal guard units (King’s Life Guard Hussars, Czapka Uhlans, Rumeliots Delis etc.) so it doesn’t become OP. The stance should only reduces the cavalry’s damage by 75% rather than 66.66% it currently does.

Alternatively, this tech could be introduced as a HC card acting similarly to the grenadier’s card “grenade launchers”.

5

Maybe the ideal scenario was to use it on low hp units? like a bunch of really low hp skirms or a pack of 1 hp minutemen in which a huss kills like 4 with one blow

6

I think Trample Mode also needs to be on a completely separate line as a ‘mode’ so it can be used regardless of Stance/Formation.

7

Nobody has that ammount of micro, since most armies are not mono composition. mAybee the AI.

8

I frequently use trample mode to eliminate 1HP-left minutemen in one hit. I find it very useful and satisfying.

1 Like
9

Is it just me or when using trample mode, the cavalry keep reforming their V-formation than attacking

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