Mangudai costs 120 food and 40 gold but if you wanna make two of them with ovoo then price changes to 130 food and 30 gold (and the additional stone of course). Trader also costs 74 gold and 74 wood if you make 2x with ovoo instead of 75/75 with single unit. With silver tree it becomes 74/36 if you make two units compared 75/37 if you just make one of them.
I’m not quite sure some of this is a bug. But let’s break it down using your amounts (I’m not sure of them at this moment, so let’s assume they are correct—I believe you!)
Mangudai:
-Single: 120f, 40g
-Ovoo 2x: 130f, 30g, + stone
Trader:
-Single: 75g, 75w
-Ovoo 2x: 74g, 74w + stone
Trader (Silver Tree):
-Single: 75g, 37w
-Ovoo 2x: 74g, 36w, + stone
I’m not on the Balance team, so I can’t speak to how these costs were arrived at. But would you think every unit should have the same reduction (%?) in Gold and Wood when producing 2x at the Ovoo, and only add in Stone? Or should there be variable costs per balance, type of unit, etc?
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My two cents:
Assuming there’s no strong balance reason for differing the prices, I would like to see the Ovoo 2x have the exact same food/wood/gold cost as the regular single unit.
It would be difficult to mentally keep track of all the unit prices AND the Ovoo 2x if they were adjusted.
The stone price (most of the time) appears to be equal to the sum of the food, wood, and gold prices of the unit, but I think it maybe doesn’t need to be.
My suggestion for balance-related adjustments to the Ovoo 2x prices would be to adjust ONLY the stone price up/down, while keeping the other food/wood/gold prices equal to the single unit version.
I think the 2x cost should be the cost of producing one unit plus the sum of the resources in stone. This seems to be the case for most units and it feels very intuitive (“You replace the second units costs with stone”).
In cases where this rule is considered unbalanced, which I believe as of now should only be Villagers, it can be adjusted.
Although I have never seen a pro go for the 2x Villager (50 food, 150 stone), making me believe that the stone cost could safely be dropped to 100 but I see this as a low priority adjustment. The inconsistent unit prices (Mangudai and Traders) should be fixed first. For the Traders I guess it’s just an off-by-one error and the Mangudai cost could be an artifact from previous iterations of the unit.
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Exact costs of one unit + 75% of the whole original costs (sumed up) in stone
100% seems for me a little bit too much
Thanks all! I’ll forward this feedback to the balance team. Appreciate the discussion!
That’s all, it’s the only unit that has a different cost for being produced 2x with stone than any other unit. Maybe it’s intended, doesn’t look like it since everything else has the same costs
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I think its pretty hard to find a balance cost for mangudai. At the moment there is almost no use to them since they mainly have downsides to regular archers (much higher cost, less range, not a lot more damage or hp to compensate). There is hardly any case which justifies building the only (beside the khan) unique unit of the mongols.
In general mongols are just a fast producing, fast moving infantry civ when played at its best. Horsemen are not worth it, their knights have nothing better compared to others, mangudai are just worse archers.
I think they should either increase the stats of mangudai or make them cheaper. Same for Horsemen.
Well, mangudai is not meant to be face to face unit against enemy army. Consider the mobility together with ability to shoot while moving their main power. You want to use them to raid enemy economy. Hit an run or just command them run through enemy base. Against melee units they can out run any opponent unit while shoot them if being chased. You don’t want to see mangudai stay still even a second.
1vs1 matches they can make the different if the game stretches to late eras as they become powerful enough really sweep villagers quickly just by running through base. 2vs2 etc. bigger matches mangudai is mongol player’s main weapon to harrash others as the maps are usually largers.
I would not make it any cheaper at this moment. I have been easily spamming only mangudais in online if game goes to late game. ~100 villagers/traders can easily support spam of 100 mangudais even if you waste them straight against enemy armies.