Laborers, Palisade Gates and Wooden Bridges PARTIALLY IMPLEMENTED

[Aral_Yaren]

1. They can build palisade wall but without its pair, palisade gate. Adding palisade gates to their job-descs imho is complementary,

2. In the case where Laborers are to make some of Workers' jobs in lesser degrees (here I mean stone wall and gate vs palisade wall and gate), they cannot build wooden bridge (comp. Worker with both stone and wooden bridge). It'd be comparative additions for their usages (3 turn without Ambidextria, 2 turns with it), and it's not much, seeing how easily wooden bridges are to be taken down. And let alone front-liner Laborers who build it are already fragile with just 8 hp - so it's moderate.

Keep safe and take care of health, folks!

[phoenixffyrnig]

I like these ideas. Maybe labourers should get an upgrade too, more HP so not 1 hit kills so easily

[makazuwr32]

I think laborers are affected by some tech that gives bonus armor for them, no?

[Endru1241]

Yes, Tight fabric - but it won't help that much with 8hp.

Maybe just increase hp ?

As for adding budings:
Palisade gate would be buildable in 1 turn too (with current stats), effectively removing any need to ever build normal palisade wall.
Bridge - that would be build in 3/3 turns, but still as I doubt many people ever build stone bridge - it would actually give full advantage of crossing water infrastructure to laborers.
Right now they already can build row boats, that allows passage to infantry.

So imho : to add palisade gate it would need to be nerfed compared to palisade wall. But how if it's already one-shotted by anti-building infantry?
Bridge would need to be more nerfed in usage (doesn't allow passage of some super heavy units or so), but it's not a good idea to limit its usage, looking at amount of maps using it as it is.

[Aral_Yaren]

Indeed, potentially palisade gate overshadow palisade wall. Yet the latter's usefulness is already overshadowed by frisian barricade, both in SP and let alone in MP (honestly I never see any players build palisade wall, even our new players - if all, one encircled his town around with stone wall). And also that palisade wall cannot be passed through by friendly units, after investing some turns Laborers building it.

Wooden bridges - I see the reason. And the idea that wooden bridge cannot be passed by siege units is fair imho, putting stone bridge into much usefulness. Perhaps also raising stone bridge defenses, like hp or armor to emphasis its role more?

As for row boat, I remembered that I'd seen once that it could not allow non foot unit to pass through where two lands separated with a single line of water tiles was connected with the unit. Is that the way?

As for raising Laborers' hp - I'm sorry I'm against it. They are already cheap assistant-builders for Workers and taking them down easily is the way to counter its turn-cost, mainly in early to mid-game when seemingly not much forces around. But if there would be a tech to raise their hp (along with attack maybe? +2 hp and +4 atk?), I'm delighted in accord to say, "ILO finally rest as Mayday is finally over".

[makazuwr32]

Workers have a tech to upgrade them into better ones with +5 hp so i see no reason why laborers can't be affected by same tech or similar one at least (with lower bonus health alas — up to 12 hp).

[Endru1241]

Sure worker upgrade could be affecting laborers too, but I'd rather go for more hp - at least +4hp (maybe with some +2 to attack - it's not very useful anyway), because honestly 10 hp is just not enough.
But going for consistency - it would need to be an upgrade, so image is needed.

As for balancing buildings - I honestly don't want to mess wooden bridge functionality.
And frisian horse is much better than palisade no matter how you look at it.
But few other things would have to be changed too.
Actually I have an idea to make worker build things longer (mainly it was supposed to affect ships and siege - around +50% amount of actions increase), but I am not sure if not go all in and affect all defensive structures too.
Maybe along with some hp increase for the latter (and bonus vs them in siege machines).

But even without it maybe Frisian horse needs to be constructed like wolf hole 3/2 by laborer, 2/1 by worker.
Palisade gate could be lowered to 2/2, so all would have clear function - best barricade - frisian horse, cheap barricade - palisade wall, functional barricade - palisade gate, but then again after tower manning watch tower supercedes palisade gate.
It's better to go with overhaul.

Also - sorry for earlier mistake - bridge would indeed be constructed in 3/2.
I had some leftover value in my calc sheet.

[phoenixffyrnig]

Actually I have an idea to make worker build things longer (mainly it was supposed to affect ships and siege - around +50% amount of actions increase), but I am not sure if not go all in and affect all defensive structures.

This is I think the second time I have seen you mention this recently Endru. A very interesting idea! Part of me wants to recoil in horror because I use a lot of constructs in my gameplay, the other part of me thinks this could shift the onus from the worker to the warrior, and solve a few other issues too.

Could also help with a bit of balancing - If construct A was considered underpowered or underused, then obviously an increase of <50%, if construct B is OP, then >50%.

Gotta be honest, this idea both scares and arouses me

[Endru1241]

I actually started looking at sheet with stats and make some calculations.
It looks quite good with making a solid rule - ranged siege and siege ships - construction actions by ambidexteria worker being 3x cost and for the rest - galleys, ships and siege with melee range and utility (tranports) - 2x cost. For towers and defensive structures - straight decrease of construction mend by 33% (so mostly +50% actions).

Aside from some sharper decreases in especially cheap to construct units (siege tower) it would mostly come as +50% turn increase.
But I think of leaving factories untouched.

Naturally if needed some units can be slightly exempted from this rule (e.g. I'll probably leave trireme with current 11 turns, even if by rebalanced to 6 cost calc it should take 12).

[Endru1241]

I have added palisade gates to be buildable by laborers (and legionaries).
Frisian horse got a little harder to build, so it would take 2 turns.

Bridge is halted, as I have no idea how to balance it now.