Hypothetical Concept to make ranged units more beginner-friendly

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

Disclaimer

The reson why I make this topic is a long-time observation that ranged unit types aren’t beginner-friendly in aoe2. This has many reasons, but here I want to focus on the most obvious one.
They are just too fragile. They die like flies if you just look away a few seconds in critical moments.
And that’s what I want to tackle here.

Note it’s a hypothetical concept. It’s not final values. It’s just there to give a conceptional idea what could be done to the ranged units, not that it must be done or even in that fashion.

There are 2 common themes I will follow in most of the adjustments. First is a cost adjustment of the units so their cost and gold ratio fits their role in the game better. Second is usually an increasement of HP, but a reduction of sheer DPS of the units, at least when factoring in the cost. It’s an attempted tweak to make the units a bit more “forgiving” for small mistakes but also less snowbally than currently.
The target is to make them more appealing for beginners but not buffing them for the top players. Potetnially even slightly nerf them at the highest level of play.

I only look at the current common ranged units (except EA). The UUs I don’t touch. Probably some of the UUs might benefit from a similar adjustment, but imo most of them are in a decent spot and those who aren’t probably need a buff anyways independently from this concept.

Archers

Archers just get a little bit more expensive but get a bit more HP in the exchange. Their higher cost is also reflected in a slightly higher training time. The bonus against Spearmen is reduced. To give spearmen a bit more chance to be useful against the famous archer + scout combo.

Archers
Training Time 35 s => 40 s
Cost 45 G, 25 W => 50 G,25 W
HP 30 HP => 40 HP
Bonus against Spearmen 3 => 1
Xbows
Training Time 27 s => 35 s
Cost 45 G, 25 W => 50 G,25 W
HP 35 HP => 50 HP
Bonus against Spearmen 3 => 1
Arbs
Training Time 27 s => 30 s
Cost 45 G, 25 W => 50 G,25 W
HP 40 HP => 60 HP
Bonus against Spearmen 3 => 2
Bonus against Cavalry Archers - => 2

The Arbs now get an extra bonus against Cavalry archers that negates the Parthian Tactics armor effect. To make CA less dominant against the standard archer line in the very lategame. Cav Archers + Light Cav should still stay the best lategame army comp. But now Arbs can at least do some work against the CA if you micro them well.

Cavalry Archers

Currently CA have a kinda hard time. Imo this comes mostly because of the very low base accuracy before Thumb Ring is in. This is tackled by my proposed change. At the same time they become more expensive (especially in terms of gold) and get some extra HP which allows them to take a bit of damage even before Bloodlines is in. Heavy CA now get even more base accuracy so they become an option for Thumbring missing Civs in the lategame.

Cavalry Archer
Accuracy 50% => 75%
Cost 60 G, 40 W => 75 G,35 W
HP 50 HP => 70 HP
Bonus against Spearmen 2 => 1
Heavy Cavalry Archer
Accuracy 50% => 85%
Cost 60 G, 40 W => 75 G,35 W
HP 60 HP => 80 HP
Bonus against Spearmen 4 => 3

Hand Cannoneer

Hand Cannoneers are a bit tricky. As they are mostly only a ranged option in the lategame for many Cavalry Civs. They are fairly cheap to tech in and still have quite high damage output. Especially, they work often better against heavily armored units than arbs there. At the same time the high gold cost of the HC makes the transition sometimes really awkward as Heavy Cavalry also burns very fast through your gold.
The idea is to take away a bit of this armor breaking damage in exchange for reducing the Gold cost. This should make the HC again a bit worse against heavily armored units such as Cavalry in comparison to the Archer line. The strength against Infantry is maintained for the most part, but the Bonus damage is more split between all infantry and spearmen to at least give some other Infantry like eagles or the milita line a small chance to overcome the HC threat with sheer numbers again. The reduction in accuracy is again to make HCs less effective in a micro battle against Arbs which should win this because of their higher Gold ratio.

Hand Cannoneer
Cost 50 G, 45 F => 35 G,45 F
Attack 17 => 13
Bonus Damage against Infantry 10 => 5
Bonus Damage against Spearmen 1 => 6
ROF 3.45 => 3
HP 40 HP => 50 HP
Accuracy 75% => 50%

Skirmishers

Lastly from the Archery Range we also come to the ranged counter in the Skirmisher. The Skirmisher losses some of his armor in exchange for more bonus damage. This is intentional to make the ranged unit powerspikes less oppressive. Atm Xbows counter feulals skimrs and Arbs counter castle age Elite Skirms. This is intended to end this nonsense and keep the skirms from one age below at least partially suitable to deal with the ranged units from one age above. The archer line powerspikes have recently already lead to oppressive and very snowbally games and this is one way to adress the issue.

Skirmisher
Pierce Armor 3 PA => 2 PA
Bonus against Archers 3 => 6
Bonus against Cavalry Archers 0 => 3
Bonus Against Spearmen 3 => 4
HP 30 HP => 40 HP
Elite Skirmisher
Pierce Armor 4 PA => 3 PA
Bonus against Archers 4 => 7
Bonus against Cavalry Archers 2 => 4
Bonus Against Spearmen 3 => 5
HP 35 HP => 50 HP
Imperial Skirmisher
Pierce Armor 5 PA => 3 PA
Bonus against Archers 5 => 8
Bonus against Cavalry Archers 3 => 5
Bonus Against Spearmen 3 => 5
HP 35 HP => 60 HP

Unfortunately it’s not enough to only adjust the Range units. One big issue is their vulnerability to siege. At the highest level people can dodge the mangonel shots quite well, but that’s rarely the case for lower ranked players. The idea is to give the siege more reliable damage output but less ability to vipe out entire armies in only one single hit. It’s basically the same formula as with the Range units. Increasing the Health but reducing the damage output.

Mangonel

The Mangonels become a bit cheaper on the wood side. This is mainly a tweak to increase the Gold ratio and reduce the pop efficiency at the same time. Mangonels have always been the highest profile siege unit in castle age and therefore should have this reflected in their Gold ratio. The damage of an individual Mangonel hit is reduced by a lot. But at the same time the Blast Radius is increased by a lot, too. Making it way harder to evade all of that mangonel damage. It’s still a very revarding Skill, but less snowbally as it used to be.
If this is enough to make the ranged units more viable at lower levels needs to be tested. In theory it should help as the xbow armies would survive 2 direct hits in most cases. But ofc it’s hard to estimate wether this is enough time for lower ranked players to get their units out of the danger zone.

Mangonel
HP 50 HP => 60 HP
Cost 135 G, 160 W => 135 G, 120 W
Damage 40 => 15
Bonus against Archers 0 => 7
Bonus against Siege 12 => 8
Bonus against Buildings 35 => 30
Bonus against Hussite Wagons 40 => 25
Blast Radius 1 => 1.75
Training Time 46 s => 40 s
Onager
HP 60 HP => 80 HP
Cost 135 G, 160 W => 135 G, 120 W
Damage 50 => 20
Bonus against Archers 0 => 8
Bonus against Siege 12 => 10
Bonus against Buildings 40 => 35
Bonus against Hussite Wagons 50 => 30
Blast Radius 1.25 => 2
Training Time 46 s => 40 s
Siege Onager
HP 70 HP => 90 HP
Cost 135 G, 160 W => 135 G, 120 W
Damage 75 => 25
Bonus against Archers 0 => 8
Bonus against Siege 12 => 10
Bonus against Buildings 60 => 50
Bonus against Hussite Wagons 75 => 40
Blast Radius 1.5 => 2.25
Training Time 46 s => 40 s

The lower pop efficiency of the Mangonel line is also crucial cause with the higher blast radius it makes them even more of a “snowball” unit which is partially compensated by the lower pop efficiency.

Scorpions

Like Mangonels, scorpions can be devastating against certain unit types, especially when massed. The issue of the Scorpion was most of the time it’s clunkyness paired with the weakness against the Mangonels. Both is adressed here with higher speed and HP. Also scorpions, as they are quite bad against Buiildings, now receive a bit of Siege Class Armor, so they can deal a bit better with siege counter units like the mangudai or magyar huszar.
The scorpions now receive a bonus damage against cavalry, to make them less oppressive against archers and infantry but more viable against cavalry which has usually way higher HP. Scorpions would also be affected by Ballistics.

Scorpion
HP 40 HP => 50 HP
Cost 75 G, 75 W => 60 G, 75 W
Damage 12 => 9
Bonus against Cavalry 0 => 5
Bonus against Elephants 6 => 2
Siege Armor 0 => 2
Speed 0.65 => 0.75
Training Time 30 s => 27 s
Heavy Scorpion
HP 50 HP => 60 HP
Cost 75 G, 75 W => 60 G, 75 W
Damage 16 => 11
Bonus against Cavalry 0 => 7
Bonus against Elephants 8 => 3
Siege Armor 0 => 3
Speed 0.65 => 0.75
Training Time 30 s => 27 s
Pierce Armor 8 => 9

This would make Scorpions more of an option against Cavalry Archers for a lot of civs that currently struggle agianst them especially in the lategame.At keast that’s one intention behind it.

One final note: I intenionally didn’t touch stuff like ROF (for the most units) and frame delay. As the topic isn’t about changing how the units feel when handling but indeed just about some raw interactions. I don’t want to bring more topic crossover with this than neccesary. Maybe it would even be easier to adjust with changing these values. But the idea of this thread is to adjust it without touching how the units generally “behave”.

3 Likes
2

we really dont need huge overhauls of the game like this
if you change this much just make a new game

9 Likes
3

The only changed that seems fine to me is the training time of the archer line: 40s → 35s → 30s

4

I really love this change. So that foot archer can somehow comparable with CA

1 Like
5

Yeah, this really is more of a complete rework of a third of the game instead of a tweak.

Just one example, mangos (the only tool to kill TCs in castle age, pretty much) will only deal about half as much damage to TCs. They will also be pretty much useless against Kts, and Monks will not need sanctity to survive a hit anymore (and will survive 2 hits with sanctity). Those changes basicially mean that there are no tools to pressure TCs anymore.
This alone will make AoE2 a completly different game. Without mangos ever beeing a threat, 4 or 5 TC booms are suddenly kinda reasonable.

And thats not even going into how much other matchups will change. Or what all the other proposed changes will mean for the game.

2 Likes
6

A bit exaggerative, no?

And i know to see the difference between “we don’t need” and “I don’t want”. It’s actually surprisingly often people of the ladder use exactly this kind of phrasing. But it only makes it more obvious.

MAybe it’s also time to show some Reasoning behind this whole Idea. I got the impression that something needs to be done for beginners using the ranged units when I watched SOTLs video:

It’s already on the right timestamp. SOTL “advertises” Britons as the best Archer Civ for beginners with a 47 % winrate.And that’s actually a huge issue. Cause whoever watches that video will immediately ask himself “why should I learn this if the “best civ” of that class is already in a disadvantage?” .
We need easy to learn archer civs that encourage beginners to learn playing archers and be motivated to learn how to use them well. Especially we need more people who since DE came out more and more pivoted towards Knight play as it was just the stronger choice to be encouraged to now also learn how to play archers.

And that’s where the bigger overhaul comes into action. We small liitle adjustments we won’t be able to convince anybody to try something they already discarded. It needs to be a changer to achieve the intended effect to give it a new try cause something major has changed about these units what probably can make them feel better to use.

As i figured out quite fast, the issue wasn’t really that there wouln’t be good archer civs that could be played kinda straight forward. Civs like Britons, Mayans, Vikings, Ethiopians, Dravidians… have quite simplle gameplans. It’s the ranged units themselves that make it hard to get used to for beginners as they need practically permanent attention to be useful as they die so easy to basically everything.
And that’s exactly what’s tackled in this approach.

I don’t see why Mangonels should be good against this stuff tbh. I intentionally pushed the mangos to be more an anti-archer specialist. The Scorpions get bonus against Cavalry btw, you an try to use them against Knights. Also your selctive Cherrypick probably intenionally doesn’t mention the reduction in Cost and HP boost that compensates some of the reduced damage output.

I think killing TCs should be more the utility for Rams, shouldn’t it? Mangonels still can pressure TCs, probably even more effective due to the bigger blast radius. It just doesn’t "eats* the TC as fast as it used to.

As you can’t effectively pressure more than 1 TC with mangos at once against a reasonably well defending opponent, it’s actually quite common to see people adding MORE TCs when mango pushed. Not the other way around. So wouldn’t change anything there tbh…
Mango pushing is usually the most effective if the opponent has the same or just 1 TC more than you.

I’m curious to hear your concerns. I’m here to answer them. I put a lot of thinking into this and am curious if there are some potential issues I haven’t thought off so far with that concept that could have any negative impact on the game experience.

That mangonels lose a bit of their current various utility is absolutely intended. It’s intended that Rams and Scorpions take over some of the current mangonel utilty and therefore see more play.
I already thought about a small change to Rams but imo that mangos deal less damage against them can already make them more useful in the midgame.

I also think when some change in this direction happens that makes the ranged units a bit more beginner-friendly there would no need to nerf Knights anymore, as then there would hopefully be more emphasis on picking archher civs on the lower levels and the Knight play dominance in the lower sections of the ladder would be reduced.

7

And they arn’t. Mangos lose to monks with redemption, pretty hard. But at least you need to have either sanctity or luck right now. And you still need to be careful, as 2 mangos can still turn and kill your monk. Mangos lose to kts hard, too. But at least they can add some damage. They can help and arn’t just utter trash against them.

The reduced wood cost is nothing to write home about and more HP does not help at all (unless we are talking about 100%+ increase ofc). You get one chance to shot at the kts thats closing in one you, no matter how much HP you have. You get converted, no matter how much HP you have. I can only see it doing something vs vills attacking you, but tbh, the change from oneshotting vills to 3shotting is clearly not worth 10 extra HP.

Have you ever tried to do this? If you dont have a massive, i mean MASSIVE, army lead, 5 vills will ungarrison behind your ram and kill it very quickly. To kill TCs, you need to have either an oppressive amount of +2 kts or mangos.

The reason you add TCs is not because its somehow a counter to the mango, but because you need to replace the ressource access (often gold) that was taken away by the mango push in the first place. And since you dont have the army lead (otherwise you would just clean the push) you need TCs to protect your expanding eco.
Mango pushes are a race against time. You set yourself behind in vill count, and need to push to offset the lead your opponent gets. This works because if he has to give up TCs, he loses more res than his additional vills bring in.
However, if you half the damage your mango does to TCs (and make it more vulnerable to enemy monks and kts at the same time), this push is a lot weaker. You need twice as many mangos now to destroy ressources at the same rate. So yes, a lot would change.

I doubt you are, tbh. I only voiced one of the many and your reply was that im cherrypicking, along with a lot if “i think” that has nothing to do with the actual game thats beeing played.

1 Like
8

I actually countered your argument that you want to use the mangos against boomy opponents with the obsevable reality that it’s actually the opposite. Mango pushes are often counterplayed by adding more eco, not the other way around.
I think I got a fair point here.

The other point I made is talking about that this should be the play for actually adding rams instead of mangonels. There you got the argument of that rams don’t really work very well that way currently:

Which I generally agree with. Maybe not the numbers, but yes. Also Observed that Rams, when actually used (and there are already situations wherr rams > mangos currently) they are usually only used together with Knights and not xbows. Which I also thought about already but don’t have a solution yet. Imo the reason for this it that the Knights can jump way better on the ungarrisoned vills than the bows which would potentially be exposed to TC fire then.
For me the logical conclusion would be to make rams more usable in these situations. Not the other way around. As to me it looks like rams were absolutely intended to do exactly this job, destroying greedy opponents bases.

Both against Monks and Knights you usually add respective tools to your mangos anyways, so I don’t see a good point here. Ofc Monks without sanctity dieing to mangos wouldn’t be a thing anymore. But it’s rather niche. Also with the mangos being cheaper the monks counter will in general be less effective, especially as you wouldn’t be able to use converted mangos to snipe others of the opponents anymore. So it’s a nerf on the counter mechanics of both ends.
Against Knights it’s actually intended that Mangos lose some power. I don’t think a group of 5 mangos should be capable of killing an entire Knight army. It’s an absurd mechanic that’s currently in the game which shouldn’t be there. Cavalry is probably the best counter to Mangonels in the Game and with this current mango design this is partially already negated in maps like Black Forest where full Mango + BBC armies can completely vipe out entire opponent armies.

It’s a 14 % cost decrease. It’s definitely something we should reflect 11.

And you shouldn’t. There are Knight counter units. Mangos aren’t. They in fact should be hard-countered by knights.
Mangos aren’t a power unit, they are a support unit that adds special utility against archers and buildings.

We have at least 3 types of different siege units in castle age. Each of them should have is distinctive role and utility to add. I am against the current dominance of Mangos there. Let’s add some diversity. Let’s give rams and scorpions their individual spots where they can shine.

9

You actually didnt, because I already pointed out that in the cases you are talking about, the TCs are not added as economic buildings but as defensive ones. Just go and watch any of those games you mention and check if the TC actually produces…They are not the counter to the mango push, but the best bad option if you can’t contest with army.
But thats actually beside the point, even. Because how mango pushes are handled now has nothing to do with how they might be handled if we completly rework the game, as you suggest. You can’t just cut the damage a unit does in half and expect stuff to go down in a similar way.

And I agree with this, if we put the changes you proposed in the game. But you see the problem there, dont you? You wanted to rework Xbow, CA, Skirm, HC, Scorp and Mango. However, now you also need to rework rams to fill the mangos spot. And others will surely follow; im rather sure that the scouts vs. archers interaction will change a lot too, so the complete feudal rework is right around the corner. Im not even saying that the changes you propose are bad per se. But as TwerDefender pointed out, those changes and the subsequent ones needed to fill the empty spots you created will just make for a new game.

14% reduced cost and a 50% reduction in damage. I hope you see why I dont think the -14% are worth mentioning.

I think thats bad game design your intending. Counters should exist, but they shouldn’t be binary. For example, right now, 6kts and a mango can win vs 8 kts if your mango gets a good hit in. It brings skill to the matchup. Similarly, you cant just make 1 kts and clear up 3 mangos, you will need at least 2 to consistantly do it. Similar to scout v monks, scouts counter monks but you cant use a scout to kill 3+ monks, you will get converted before you clean them up.

As you correctly mention, mangos are already hard countered by kts. I just dont see any reason to make this counter even more extreme. Just like skirms are countered by kts, but can fight them if they have bad numbers and bad upgrades (try running an upgraded kts into 10 +2 skirms), mangos beeing countered by kts is fine but they need at least some chance to fight back.

Again, i dont want to discuss every single change here, because the paragraphs we already wrote could be repeated for most of the changes you propose (eg you realise that feudal skirms without armor now counter CA, do you? So this interaction needs another rework, too). And thats not even talking about civ specific interactions yet! Eg there are already civs that can use scorps well (khmer comes to mind), with the buff to them you propose (i think its fair to call it an overall buff), what will stop a ball of heavy scorps?

And for what? You didn’t mention overall balance, you just wanted a more beginner friendly game. But that can be achieved by UI changes, better tutorials and so on without creating a completly new game.

2 Likes
10

a bit. ### this is an overhaul of basically all ranged units and it’s so drastic that it wouldnt be the same game anymore in my opinion.

this is such selective data picking. Firstly Britons arent the archer civ with the highest winrate, secondly a winrate of 47% is basically ideal, this corresponds to an elo difference of 22.

that’s what Britons are

archers are harder to play than knights for a few reasons:
archers die to +2 knights
archers cant take out buildings
archers can’t pick fights

none of this gets adressed by your changes. this means that any player needs to add at least one extra unit to their comp to win, which is harder for micro and macro.
compare this to knights: if you find a hole, send a few into their woodline eco. while your opponent chases you can take out production buildings with your main army

mangonels should be able to kill TCs. with your changes a direct hit by a mangonel also doesn’t kill another mangonel anymore, and with the bigger blast radius you can’t dodge shots either. so you completely destroyed mango vs mango fights. (also what’s with the random change to the bonus vs husite wagons?)

Also mangonels are now pretty much useless at killing villagers

not exclusively. now a simple woodline or a bit of a wall just makes your TC pretty safe. also rams are just as squishy against ranged melee units, or any other melee unit for that matter. castle age ram pushes are the exception, not the norm.

no, this is the wrong way round. with this many changes you will create tons of issues. if you propose such radical changes, it’s on you to make sure they dont break the game.

not a bit, 80% of it

it only works if you attack ground, so it rewards skill.

even in other hard counter situations the countered unit has a chance: monk vs light cav, skirm vs archer etc the countered unit can still win through luck, or walls, or micro

12

No, they are added as economi buildings. You repair the pressured TC, you make a few knights and/or your own siege to threaten the opponent siege, so he can’t contiouously pressure. You boom behind. You go to stone.
Then you make a castle which gives the needed protection.

It’s indeed a more economic approach.

I don’t think so. As I mentioned one of the big issues with ram pushaes was always how they are countered by mangos. Now I changed mangos to deal less damage against Siege. Which naturally helps the rams being usefeul.
Also for me is the question why you try tro project the indepentently probably benefitial adjustment of rams into this topic. It has nothing to do with the topic here. My concept doesn’t change anything about this

First, it’s not 50%. Second it’s only against buldings which are larger than the increased blast area (yes you can then hit multiple buildings at once with better damage output). And you can even do this with the TCs. you can target more towards the edge to damage also stuff that’s there at the same time. Stuff like repair villagers for example. So I heavily disagree with this cherry-picked interaction.
It’s a tweak to mangonels. There will be situaions where it makes them better and others where they perform less. And as I now see how much resiatance there is about a change to a utility which should be more suited for the usage of rams, I think it’s definetely the right call to reduce that specific utilty and give the Rams a chance there. The utiltiy isn’t gone, it’s just less damage output that you get against TCs. The biggest amount of damage you get from this play is the vill idle time anyways, so the actual damage output is imo not the determining factor for the mango pushes.

You try to make it look like the only changes made would be a slight cost reduction and a damage decrease. BUt the way bigger change is the way higher blast radius which needed to be compensated by lower damage output. Also the small increase in HP makes mango pushes easier to execute as the mangos are then a bit easier to defend. This is actuallly not too small of a factor. It’s common theme that mango pushers lose their mangos against other mangos and/or cavalry and lose their pushing power. This would be harder to do, giving the mango pusher more ability to keep the pressure up.

Your take is very weird. You talk about counters but you basically insist on the Mangos/Oagers being actually uncounterable on closed maps once they have gotten that mass too one-shot everything. At least with a minimum amount of pikes in front to block the opponents. I prefer a “non-binary” counter mechanic all the time over a “no-counter” mechainc once something has reached a “critical mass”.

Just add pikes to your mangos like normal people. I don’t know why you want your mangos to counter Knights, but the from the game design intended matchup is that Knight counter mangos and you need something to protect your mangos against it.
Mangos aren’t supposed to be standalone units, they are Siege.

Skirms were always intended to counter CA. I see my changes to CA overall as a buff as it makes them usable in lower numbers without TR or Bloodlines.
Maybe the feudal skirms deal a bit better with them then. But that’s absolutely fine in my opinion. Skirms aren’t a good unit and they lack the mobility to keep track with the CA.

Really? How does this help someone who just hasn’t the APM to always look over his archers so they don’t get mangoed down?
I think it’s an absuird mechanic where just looking away 1 second from a spot can cost you your entire army. That’s just ridiculous.
What should be written in this hypothetical tutorial? “Look at your archers at all time”?
Maybe there is no “good” teutorial for this as it’s nothing you can really “learn”. If you’re not fast enough to manage both at once in the current game design you just can’t play archers effecitvely. That’s the reality. And it’s no lack of tutorials. It’s a physical restriction.

No, I just made them less depending on single encounters. I think it will be even more revarding then to be good at that cause there would be way less luck and surprise effect involved.
I mean people all the time complain about how coustillier just bust through everything with their charge, But Mangonels do to other mangonels and a lot of other units the same. They just kill stuff in the blink of a second. With a single hit. And that’s absolutely intended to be changed. As i said in the beginning I want to make ranged unit play a bit more forgiving so beginners can acually use them. And the mangonel tweak is a big part of exactly that change.
It’s a different way they interact. And in my opinion it’s only benefitial for the game experience how I want to tweak it as it adds more interaction to these kind of fights. Even at the highest level.

And they still can. Just a bit slower.

Well, atm the game is actually closer to be broken. Arabia has become a total cavalry feast. Basically every map favorizes certain army types. The game is on the edge of being divided in a way that civ picking will shortly become a necessity on most maps. Including Arabia.
The proposed changes would actually lead to a bit more healthier interaction of ranged vs melee units as with the lower damage output in exchnage for higher HP per cost the ranged units would naturally be less effective on situations where they can’t be attacked well like on chokepoints but better on open fields when paired with a good compostion partner. As they wouldn’t die as fast.

I made everything sure it doesn’t break the game. And so far I can’t see any indicator it would.
But maybe you can find something breaking. I’m curious.You seem very motivated to construct something which you can bring forward. Just keep trying.

What about the Knights player skill on narrow pathways? I want machups that revard skill, yes. But it needs to revard both sides. You were speaking about binary counter mechanics before hand. What about binary micro?

I think you’re just too much into mangonels. Mangonels are Siege units, again. They aren’t supposed to be a mono-unit army comp. And in general I don’t think there should be anyof those.
You also can’t beat TKs with any reasonable amount of halberdiers. There are just units that are so dominating in one category that they need to have super-hardcounters from other categories. And the mangonels (and btw also BBCs) are just two units which need to be countered super heavily by cavalry otherwise they would be completely oppressive.
That’s just how Balance works.

You might not like it, but SO are currently completely broken on maps like BF. And you try to argue taking away a part of that brokenness (that they counter cavalry there) would actually break the game.
Which is quite of a weird take.
You speak about balance but you actually defend unbalanced mechanics.
Also quite weird.

For me it doesn’t look like you want to actually have a balanced game. It seems you want to have broken counter mechanics that you can abuse to your advantage.

13

So you claim that sometimes player do 3TC boom, get mangopushed, add even more TCs as they lose some to the pressure AND they keep the TCs actually running?
Mind linking an example of what you’re talking about? Because its difficult to talk about stuff that happens in your head.

The reason rams are not used vs TCs are not mangos. Mango defense is important when it comes to ram vs castles, but with TCs, its really just the fact that you cant defend the ram vs the vills who are there anyway, and the fact that those vills clear rams super easy.
And ofc this is not independent. If you would care to read my first reply, the problem with nerfing mangos is that mangos are the only thing that can kill TCs (without a huge army lead). So nerfing mango buffs TCs to the point where rams need a rework.

Its funny how you call it “cherry picking” when I not only focus on the single most important siege to building in castle age, but also mentioned in my first post that this just serves as one of many examples of how your changes mess up the game. Pls read and understand my first post before your write more insulting stuff.

Wrong, unless we are talking about palisades (in which case its irrelevant, because a 2 tile gap is enough. You can just ground attack between two buildings, you know? And then both take damage, its amazing.

This is wrong. Most of the time, the vills arn’t even idled in a mango push, they just farm behind the TC.

First, its funny how you make the “kts dive mangos in castle age” into a “SO in a BF teamgame” point. Second, its funny how you forget that BBC counter SO. Third, its funny how you forget that blockprinting monks counter SO. Fourth, its funny how you forget that mass towers+trebs counter SO. Fifth, its really funny how you have no problem with a single kts beeing able to 5+ mangos, but you find it weird when 20+SO with halb protection in a confied space are hard to kill (not impossible, with good timing) with mass cav.

But you know that pikes are countered by kts, right? :wink:
My point is, if you invest into 4+ mangos (which you will need, after your changes, to have meaningful dps), you simply cant have enough pikes to outmass the enemy kts. Right now, the reason pike+mangos somewhat works is because the mangos can actually participate in the fight. They can weaken the charging kts, meaning your pikes have an easier job. I find it so weird how you pretend to argue that without your changes mangos without support would be anything but useless. Even right now, you cant push with JUST mangos. You need spears, monks, archers, kts…anything to defend them. But they can at least participate in the game. So the thing you want is actually the current game state…

Making the game easier to play makes it easier to focus in the unit interactions. There is no need to dumb down unit interactions if you want to help beginners. I would much prefer the fixed woodline pathing so you would not have to constantly check for vills going idle, for example. Let the player who can micro have their micro battle, and get rid of the annoying stuff rather than keeping the annoying stuff and getting rid of interesting unit interactions.

14

Well then let’s go ahead and start nerfing scouts and knights so they aren’t as dumbed down as they currently are.
Make Cavalry have less HP and more Attack, then it’s equally tricky to use cav as Archers.
Let’s make the game better by making it hard to get into for everybody!

Are you recognizing that your “arguments” always come back this way against you?
It’s cause you don’t look for prober objective arguments but only for arguments that subjectively from a very shallow angles let look like they would defy something I say. But you don’t reflect that they are actually bting you in the back as they are even more relevant in argueing against your own position.

Give me some real arguments please. That’s too easy.

And btw

Actually right the opposite. I think occasionally bugging out vills on ressources is actually a nice tool to benefit faster players. Better than viping out armies in a blink of an eye. Cause it’s a more “smooth” learning curve, allowing players to continouusly increease their play level without having an initial “mountain” to climb before getting the first “good” experiences. The idea of “by hanging the cherries higher people get more motivated to get them” is just wrong. Especially if there are grapes always hanging in the right hight and only need to be picked up. People will just pick the grapes, not the cherries.

And it’s the same actually with you. When I say you can use Rams for killing enemy TCs you just claim they wouldn’t be viable for that. But that’s actually not true. They are just not as rewarding and you need to support them with your other military which you occasionally have to bring into the TC range where they can be targeted. But you don’t even want to give this a try, you want to stay by your easy grapes which is the mango push.
You know you can garrison your weak units in the rams and wait until the rams are attacked by vills, then ungarrison the rams to kill the ungarrisoned vills? Have you ever tried that?
You just claim it wouldn’t work, but you most likely never even gave it a shot, cause you want to keep your easy to get grapes, the harder to execute ram push you don’t even give a chance, cause the cherries hang to high for you. You say there wouldn’t be an alternative to the Mango push. But that’s just wrong, you just don’t want to use it, as you are happy with how “easy” it is currently.

If you would stand behind your argument that the “dumb down” is bad for learning encouragement you would need to be happy about all changes that make your own playstyles harder, so you have to climb the higher mountains.
Instead it’s only you demanding it for others to climb the higher mountains whilst you pick the easy path.

15

Id love to! But i realized its pointless, because you are just gonna make up shit without the slightest prove (like that players just add more TCs AND KEEP PRODUCING when defending a mango push), so I really dont see the point in giving even more arguments as to why your changes would make the game worse.

Prove it. Show me a game where rams do sucessfully push a TC (without overwhelming army lead). Either do that or shut up. But dont make up scenarios that simply dont work in reality and insult me by implying i would not know that you can garrison units in rams. But I am curious, what units would you garrison in your rams to defend them vs the vills? And then show me a game of this happening. Then we are talking.

Well you are obviously entilted to have your opinion. But i hope you are not surprised to hear that I can’t take any suggestions serious when they come from someone who litteraly wants bugs to stay in the game.

16

It’s only pointless if you only try to argue against something cause then it’s most of the time that your arguments will actually turn against you.
Try to argue for your own position then it becomes a good discussion.
Your whole approach is the attempt to defeat me. But with this approach you are basically focing me to defeat you as you don’t bring forward any own points to argue with. It necesarily becomes a personal battle between us instead of a discussion about a topic. Don’t try to defeat me. Try to establish your own coherent perspective.

Why should this be possible without an overwhealming army lead? I mean you literally destroy the opponent eco. You want this without investing much into your own army?
That’s actually quite unreasonable.
I know that’s a common theme with the current mango pushes (and as I said my proposal actually doesn’t change that much). But then it’s unreasonable to actually eat the TCs at that speed if you don’t want to invest that much into the army. You want to Hoang to win? Well that’s just not a reasonable thing in the first place.
Siege is intended to be only viable with good army support.
I have nothing against pressuring with Mangos and this will stay viable with my proposed changes. It only changes that you can eat the TCs as fast Hoang style with that kind of low investment into your army.

And the reason you want to mangonel push atm is also clear, as it usually gives a lot of value. So tuning that down just a bit is actually quite a reasonable adjustment. The reason we usually see the mango pushes isn’t because rams would be completely terrible for that. It’s just that Mangos usually just give a way better value. I recently even posted a buildorder for a cuman ram push. And when testing that I was actually quite surprised how well the rams do against TCs with tower support. Yes you need about 3 rams to really threaten a TC, but when you have that + some support it gets increasingly difficult for the opponent to deal with that.
Yes it’s more expensive than mango pushes. But mango pushes are also a bit too cheap considering that you can do them with 2-3 TCs behind. It’s a lot of value with very low investment. But my concept wouldn’t even change that much. It would only reduce the value if you make a mango push all-in. And then youself state that Rams are acutlly a viable alternative. So, what’s the problem?

Do you know that a lot of “features” we have in the game actually came from “bugs”? Like Onager cuts?
Yes, I do think that villagers bugging out is actually a feature that benefits the players who care about their eco. It can become a difference maker even at the highest level of play. And as you said:

Everything. There are features that can be used as difference makers. Others like the mentioned “easy to use” abilities of units aren’t good for this as they lead to a “skill gap” where certain unit types only get viable from a certain skill level. This isn’t good game design if it’s like this. It only leads to a discrepancy between pro and ladder experience. But it’s quite crucial for the game this doesn’t drifts apart too much.

17

Honestly you got two big problems.

The first is that you take honest critique as an attack.
The very first reply to your lengthy suggestions was a very simple “no, thats too much change”. While i agree with this comment, i thought it was a bit under-elaborated. So I tried to show why such big changes can or rather will lead to unintended consequences that require further changes and shake up the game to its core until its no longer the same.
This is not an attack on you, but an explanation as to why your concept should not be implemented and why smoother, smaller steps are the better way.

Your second problem is that you talk about what is going on in your head way too much, and about the game that is actually beeing played way too little. Nearly every critique you counter with made up scenarios that never happen in real games. Just show us games where the stuff you mention happens! And if you can’t find them, ask yourself: Why not? Might it be that you are wrong and unsupported mango pushes do in fact NOT happen?

1 Like
18

You again only try to “win” here. You accuse me of taking thinks too personally. But at the same time you assess me having problems. Are you aware of this?
I’m sorry, but when you have this disrepancy between your claims and your actions you can’t be seen as “honest”.

I don’t know what you’re talking about. Cause I only use stuff from my own experience here. I sometimes go into some specific details, also trying to explain stuff to others they seemingly haven’t understood yet.
It’s imo the better way than staying on a shallow metalevel and only coppypasting the same stuff others write all the time. Ofc this would allow to actually prove me wrong if I was. Quite often I made already the mistake of not exactly phrasing out the situations I speak about and/or claiming certain stuff would never work when I actually mean that it’s usually not feasible and rarely does even when it should.

That I don’t show off video examples usually is just cause lack of time. I just share my insight and you will see what I talk about when it actually happens. There is no need to find the video material for what I’m talking about cause it occurs frequently enough on pro level to see.

I have never talked about unsupported mango pushes. I only talked about that you need less military support for mango pushes than for ram pushes. And that (if both players act well) the most damage from these pushes is usally idle time (though I should have actually said eco damage. Cause stuff like deleted farms, TC idle time and repair cost is a huge part of that too). And most of that actually doesn’t change in anyways with my concept.

Also, just got aware that you completely ignored I said from the very beginning that this isn’t meant to be a definitive concept. I tried to make it as well rounded as possible, but actually said from the beginning that’s not to be seen as that. It’s about trying to fix a discrepancy of the skill requirements between the most commonly chosen main unit lines. The numbers I gave to it are set to build on coherent whole concept, but have never be claimed as a demand or whish. It’s only about seeing an issue, looking for a concept to solving it and trying to apply it in a coherent way. But you respond to it as if it was a specific patch request, which it isn’t.
The crucial parts are the ones which I write in the beginning and in between the numbers.

I also want to assess you a bit hypocricy here as on one end you say “that’s too much change at once” but on the other you go into specific strategic concepts you claim as being single-handedly removed. The game has so many dependencies that if you want to change a specific complex without having too much impact on other stuff it necesarily requires you to go through all the different interactions and look for solutions to keep them in an overall similar spot. This means every change that isn’t completely superficial like changing some cost of units or so will either become quite big or change some specific other interaction as side effect.
You can’t criticize both at the same time, you need to decide what, Otherwise your only statement is “I am against any change.” What I acutally would accept. You are not required to bring forward any arguments supporting this position neither argueing against any change idea. As you basically implied yourself, it’s actually me who needs to make a point of first “there’s an issue” and then ofc “there are possible concepts we can generally approach to fix that issue without harming the game in different ways”.

There’s actually no need to take over any defendant role here as if the topic isn’t inherently convincing, it won’t have any impact in the game anyways. And even if the thread would lead to an awareness for it it’s very, very unlikely devs would chose to make it the way I proposed here. They would do their own thing.

What we haven’t talket about yet (but I actually expected) is that with the mangonel change the big “badabooms” wouldn’t be possible anymore with single mangonel shots.
And my position to this is that while I underatnd this is super entertaining for the viewers
A) Because of the btter micro it has become more rare anyways
B) It should never have become a thing as it’s basically only for the specific interaction between foot archers and mangonels. And this caused a necesary disbalance between the two main lines as cavalry doesn’t has this kind of interaction with any other unit. The rng and luck factor of single encounters is a too big drawback for the archer play in general if you can lose all you built up over a 20-30 minute game as army in one second of not paying attention.
There’s nothing against mangos countering archers, especially mass archers. I think it’s a good mechanic. But the single-encounter volatilty is a huge drawback for archer play in general. An interaction that’s otherwise unprecedented in the whole game.
The badabooms aren’t gone entirely though, it’s just you need more mangonels to perform them then which allows for more possible counterplay.

19

What you do is just appeal to authority. If you refer to games that nobody but you saw, and you refuse to show them (dont bullshit about not having time, thats literally seconds to upload), then they might as well just happen in your head; there is no way for me to know, and, funnily enough, there isn’t even a way for you to know :wink:

Appeal to authority is always bad, but its worse if you are NOT an autority. If the Viper says “yeah you can push TCs with rams”, then i might still be sceptical but at least its coming from arguably the best strategist this game has ever seen. But if a random dude on the internet does the same thing, its not one bit convincing.

1 Like
20

most people enjoy mangonel fights. more than doubling their blast area while more than halfing their damage will make this unit not worth microing, removing a skill aspect and removing a fun aspect of this game. If this is intentional, you are intending to do something bad.

about 50%. that’s a huge nerf.

that’s just not true. archers were considered so dominant that the xbow and arb upgrade had their price increased. if this has gone too far then a sensible suggestions is slightly reducing the cost of those upgrades, not overhauling all ranged units.

ask any pro, and they will tell you that
-never has the game been this well balanced
-most civs have a place in the meta
-most civs are viable on arabia
of course some civs will excel, but the situation is as good as can be. (recent civs additions excluded)

this is just not how the game works. again ask any pro what they want in a ranged unit. they answer dps over everything. tankiness just isn’t as important, because if your ranged units get into melee you have already misplayed

outside of black forest and other meme maps, it is a skill to pick a chokepoint and forcing a fight there as the archer player or to pull a player out of a choke by attacking elsewhere/raiding etc. in the open the knight player can dodge mangonel shots, use staggered formation etc.

at no point did i suggest that mangonels should be a monounit comp. they certainly aren’t at the moment

halberdiers can beat the TKs by not engaging, they are way faster. in this case the teuton player has wasted a ton of resources on a useless unit.
mangonels and BBC are already countered super heavily by cavalry. a single scout can kill a mangonel or BBC, even without taking damage in most cases.

the game isn’t balanced around black forest. loads of units become completely unviable on a super closed map like this.
but i think you are showing your true colour now: you want the game’s balance to revolve around BF

thankfully i think even you realize that an overhaul like this cannot be taken serious sicne you call it hypothetical