Currently the game does NOT incorporate fractional damage. Instead whenever armor equals or exceeds in coming attack power the damage received os always at a 1.
For examples: feudal zhuge nu with their 4 arrow damage and 3 burst volleys vs an early knight’s 3 + 1 range armor will inflict 3 damage to the knight every 3 burst volleys. The same is true with zhuge nu vs a house which has 50 eange armor; the zhuge nu will inflict 3 damage per 3 burst volleys.
I desire the devs enact a radical change that will absolutely revolutionized gameplay:
MAKE UNITS/BUILDINGS TAKE FRACTIONAL DAMAGE WHEN ARMOR EQUAL OR EXCEEDS INCOMING ATTACK. (Preferably 0.1 damage)
This change along would completely overhaul how range units exploit current armor system. No longer would archers burn houses and towers down or destroy siege or units like zhuge nu invalidate armored units that SHOULD be their weakness. This would also greatly increase that value of blacksmith upgrades and alike.
LASTLY this would lead to greater respects for the counter system!!!
Imagine a magonel that can safely sit at a minimum of 3 tiles away from a massive blop of enemy non HC range units and would effectively take to zero damage for all range attacks less than 20. This would put the range units on a contrast dodge shuffle while they either jump on the mangonel with melee units or proper siege.
Imagine china NOT being able to sit in feudal and ultra mass zhuge nu that would melt thru a respectable set of knights/MAA (with this correction you xould also afford to give the zhuge nu a proper heavy damage bonus upgrade at some age…)
And the actual one of the worst offenders of armor abuse is the English longbows… if you’ve played this game then you know…
That seems like a huge overhaul for no benefit. If they really wanted such cases to do basically no damage they could have just upped the health and armor and damage values of everything in the game. With much higher values, the 1 damage would be functionally the same as your proposed system.
Also, this is how it works in pretty much every RTS game with armor, so it would become much less intuitive.
You’d have to demonstrate how the 3 examples of benefits are "no benefit "‽
And not all RTS work with NO fractional damage.
Also your proposed alternative would not accomplish what i suggested without also requiring damage itself increases along with armor in order to JUST make min of 1 damage become irrelevant. Basically You’d have to increase all damage all hp and all armor by a factor of 10 to make the minimum 1 damage do the same as what i proposed. Otherwise simply increasing the HP would make it take longer for all units to destory.
You can agree or disagree or like or dislike whatever you want, but your example clearly demonstrates you don’t/didn’t understand the impact I described.
I know we get in trouble for calling ppl out… but i can use edit too to change my response… you gonna pretend you didn’t originally write what i responded to??? You do that and get whatever satisfaction you’re after.
Another reason your ADJUSTED alternative would not be favorable is players like quant numbers: SMALL, round* numbers. Having an feudal age archer with 700hp isnt in the least bit attractive nor does it give off the idea of a vulnerable unit EVEN IF horsemen have 1200hp (lulz) and 180 attack damage.
All this besides the point…
The current system gives great deference to range units and IS the reason many many times now the devs have adjust armor and HP to better regulate the disparities. This change would be moot on clear damage scenarios; however it would extremely impact those scenarios where damage SHOULD be zero.
Nor is this concept of zero damage or effectively zero damage obscure to this game since one of the tooltips that STILL pops up when loading a game is " melee infantry can parry an attack". So allegedly the idea is already in the game? However not consistently.
Proof of the impact. 15 feudal age zhuge nu with +1 range attack vs 1 castle age knight with +2 range armor would result in that knight being bodyblocked and deleted in 6 burst volleys. It would resolve in the same exact way even if the zhuge nu had no +1 range attack.
The +2 range armor is MEANINGLESS in this scenario and even worse than MEANINGLESS its a loss of 525 resources for a set of upgrades that prove MEANINGLESS in said scenario.
This is the abuse that zhuge and alike exploit all the time vs heavy units, siege and buildings.
Having LESS than 1 fractional damage (down to 0.1 damage) would invert the above described scenario from the knight being creamed in 6 volleys to that 1 knight RIGHTFULLY cleaning up ALL those zhuge nu (unless they ran away). Like the zhuge nu tool tips says!!!
In conjunction with my suggested change they could re- include range damage as viable SIEGE via incendiary arrow tech granting a bonus fire damage vs siege ships and buildings.
Huh? I said armor, health, and damage from the beginning though. You’d obviously have to increase all three in tandem.
Yeah that’s maybe a good point. I don’t think it really matters though if something has 70 or 700 health.
Is that still in? Hadn’t noticed it since the beta. Even in the beta though that was outdated. Testing showed it never happening. Don’t really see what that has to do with this anyway.
I don’t think anyone is arguing there wouldn’t be an impact. I just pointed out that IF this was even something they wanted to do, they could have done so without changing the system from what people are already used to from other RTS games.
It also presupposes that ranged units getting to do one damage to everything is even a problem.
The thing is that for balance and aesthetics, if fractional damage from arrows or melee is allowed, units like the English Man-at-Arms would be almost invulnerable in castle age (8/8 armor) against archers, villagers, or even urban centers, which apart from messing with the balance, It wouldn’t look very unrealistic either. I mean, having to shoot 1500 arrows with 100% accuracy (150 HP in castle age) to kill a single man-at-arms, well, thats the thing.
Of course, I do not discard that idea, fractionary damage or nule damage could result for types of units that are really almost invulnerable against certain attacks (Like a Bunker or a Tank) but they still do not exist in the Aoe4 time frame, or well, i cant figure one right now, but they could possible exist. Possibly if we create something like “A mountain” or a “100% Metal gate” for a special unit in the Editor for a campaign, it could work, instead as like Age of Mithology, were those objects have 9999999 HP to compensate.
ABOUT THE ARROWS DESTROYING HOUSES:
The problem is that the technology “Incendiary arrows” already exists, and therefore it is necessary for archers to be able to destroy buildings “visually”. On the other hand, even without that tech, in real life buildings do burn if an arrow falls on some flammable material and the building is on fire. Let us also consider that the buildings of the Middle Ages were not made of Bricks or cement, they were made of “Wood”, a spark could set them on fire. It is still necessary that the archers do “some” damage to them.
On the other hand, what did look ugly in Aoe2 and was already corrected in Aoe4, was when the archers could destroy stone walls with bowshots. Happily, neither archers nor melee units can attack stone walls anymore.
As I understand it, in the BETA of the game (Whose mechanics is preserved in the Campaign) the Incendiary Arrows tech caused +3 damage vs buildings and siegue machines, but now it is the technology of 5 BIG UNIVERSITY that is dedicated to archers (infantry, cavalry, siege and gunpowder each have their own), and its bonus is to increase the power of archers and crossbowmen, it fills that niche.
Personally, I think that since archers in the imperial age are overwhelmed by gunpowder units (handcanonners), it would be good to reconsider giving archers and crossbowmen the +3 anti-building and siege bonus that "Incendiary Arrows" gave, while retains +20% damage.
In castle age we have proper counters to men at arms even the great english man at arms. A plus 8 range armor chad MAA will die to a plus 23 crossbow in 11 volleys which is only 1 extra volley than a standard MAA with bsm upgrades. And i argue armored units that match or exceed the incoming dmg should be impervious as it is realistic to having clad armor that cannot be pierced by inferior arrowheads.
So let it take 1500 subpar arrows to kill a well upgraded MAA this will force proper responses which is to make the counter unit or at the very minimum UPGRADE your arrow damage (castle age archers have plus 9 with full bsm attack upgrades).
And for Home TC protection make springald towers which have +40 range dmg!!
Lastly it doesnt have to be 0.1 fractional damage (though i prefer it is to greatly influence the need for more damage) but fractions of 0.2 all the way up to 0.6 could more generously enforce the need for upgrades forms of damage.
It might have been cool, but at this stage of the game, the balance will be completely thrown off to a point where devs will be basically creating a new game based on AOE4 graphics and controls if they commit to the idea.
I don’t follow how the balance would be thrown off completely? Especially since range units piercing armor that equals or exceeds damage isn’t balanced and has been one of the main issues driving patch adjustments with range armor.
Range vs buildings would change
Non HC range vs siege would change
And the FEW examples of unit vs unit combat when attack and armor equals or favors armor (archer type vs heavy units with upgraded* armor).
Melee units by default have higher damage and are unlikely to be impact by this suggested change. So all melee attacks would virtually be unchanged.
