PRI#6: No speed penalty for elven cavalry in the woods IMPLEMENTED

[Anchar]

No speed penalty for elven cavalry in the woods.

Isn't that too powerful? The elves already had a fast early game, but now with most maps 45% full of jungle, the elves lead the way in capturing the centers too much. At the moment, I have to learn by heart in a random game where there are forests on the map in order to use scouts alternating them with 1 moveable units or completely abandon the cavalry at the beginning of the game.

Maybe we should lock it up behind technology? Or remove the penalty for scouts (after all, they are scouts)?

If the whole point is that this is logical (after all, elves are forest dwellers), then why don't dwarves walk on mountains, humans don't accelerate on roads, lizards don't accelerate on sands, orcs on volcanoes and swamps? And if so, why is the number of these tiles not balanced?( )

If we draw an analogy with the undead, then this is not so effective for her, since her speed on the water drops a lot, which sometimes does not turn out so well for them, and also given that the undead now have many disadvantages.

I'm honestly surprised this isn't on any priority lists. What do you think of this? I am wrong? Is it normal that all cavalry except the elven has become an analogue of the infantry? After all, this plays into the hands of not only the elves, but also the human and dwarves with their towers for 9 maximum against the undead, which now cannot get anywhere.

[makazuwr32]

All scouts will get extra movement on roads and additional charge ability for extra speed (up to +3 speed).

6+3 speed +70% movement in forests vs 5+2 speed without penalty will make things better.

As for extra things - dwarves have ram cavalry which can move through mountains and tunnels, and scalefolks have snakemen who have speed 6 on sand - on foot units! By the way main dwelling place for scalefolks is swamp while for orcs is mountains.

[Stratego (dev)]

please on all proved balance problems suggest instant solution (at least i am not sure what u mean by "will" but if later than the next update than not good here).

also not all maps have roads.

[makazuwr32]

+3 speed is from ability. on roads they will get another bonus on top and that might result in 12-14 speed for cav.

I am in middle of planning that part as well so i will propose solution once i will get better concept.

[Anchar]

I agree that roads are very rarely used by mapmakers, unlike forests. Every self-respecting map maker considers it his duty to litter the map with forests by half, if not more. Unless someone personally remakes them manually or someone does the generation of roads by analogy with the centers (both are unlikely to happen)

[Stratego (dev)]

Anchar: what is the priority of this?
Makaw: when u think u have idea what to suggest?

if too high prior or lasts long than we can simply remove (temporarily) the scouts from being affected - seems not a bad idea at the first place.

others? ideas?

[makazuwr32]

well i am working on more preset multiplayer maps and now i am using road tiles much more than before.

Khebesiris Borderlands maps set by the way has good amount of roads.

[makazuwr32]

Anchar: what is the priority of this?
Makaw: when u think u have idea what to suggest?

if too high prior or lasts long than we can simply remove (temporarily) the scouts from being affected - seems not a bad idea at the first place.

others? ideas?

Not sure since i have at once in work:
cavalry improvements
dwarven naval fleet
casters whom savra requested
around 50 new units here and there
buildings update - workers+laborers planning, fortifications, walls, factories, megas

in total more than 100 projects. once i find proper idea somewhere i am working on that part.

[Stratego (dev)]

Anchar: what is the priority of this?
Makaw: when u think u have idea what to suggest?

if too high prior or lasts long than we can simply remove (temporarily) the scouts from being affected - seems not a bad idea at the first place.

others? ideas?

Not sure since i have at once in work:
cavalry improvements
dwarven naval fleet
casters whom savra requested
around 50 new units here and there
buildings update - workers+laborers planning, fortifications, walls, factories, megas

in total more than 100 projects. once i find proper idea somewhere i am working on that part.

ok , no problem, than we will make a quick solution until you get there.

[Anchar]

Anchar: what is the priority of this?

I don't know, I'm just surprised it doesn't seem important to everyone else. If you meant that I would give a priority number, then I think that somewhere around 3-5, but I would like to see someone else's opinion.

[Stratego (dev)]

ok, others?

@Savra @Vladneral @Aral_Yaren @Jerryqian39

[makazuwr32]

for now i can agree to slightly increase for non-elven light cavalry specifically movement speed in forests. They will still have penalty but smaller than normal cavalry.

Does that sound good?

[Stratego (dev)]

for me yes, but i will wait for the others' thoughts.

[makazuwr32]

Actually we set too high penalty in forests - 34%.
let us change it to 70% for every land cavalry except deer riders and glade tiger riders.

[Stratego (dev)]

ok i changed it to 0.7

here is all current to check tru:

Code: Select all

               
             {"terrainType":"TERRAINS_PLAINSWALKABLE", "modifier":1},
             {"terrainType":"TERRAINS_FORESTWALKABLE", "modifier":0.7},
	      {"terrainType":"TERRAINS_SHALLOWSAILABLE", "modifier":0.4},
	      {"terrainType":"TERRAINS_ICEWALKABLE", "modifier":0.35},
	       {"terrainType":"TERRAINS_SWAMPWALKABLE", "modifier":0.25},
             {"terrainType":"TERRAINS_DESERTWALKABLE", "modifier":0.8},
             {"terrainType":"TERRAINS_SNOWWALKABLE", "modifier":0.8}

[Aral_Yaren]

Like Leader said: it's not great issue after land cav charge update. Elven strong in the woods after all. And again, Leader suggestion is acceptable.

(If the planned charge is universal then it's ok - currently only Ud and Human light cav that have ability iirc).

[makazuwr32]

Like Leader said: it's not great issue after land cav charge update. Elven strong in the woods after all. And again, Leader suggestion is acceptable.

(If the planned charge is universal then it's ok - currently only Ud and Human light cav that have ability iirc).

Nono. It will be additional ability so humans and undeads will have both this ability and their native one.
This ability will not cost action, but will just give extra speed at some penalty - for example no counter spec action - and will have some cooldown (around 3-5 turns).

[Anchar]

To be honest, even before the forest update, all the scouts were perfectly balanced, the elves were perfectly in the lead in capturing the centers thanks to faster infantry (which is accelerated throughout the area, which is not logical (maybe then remove it?)), I don't understand why it was necessary to do this forest update for cavalry at all and ignore it already fast and strong elves. I have already written why the acceleration of elves is LOGICALLY delusional.

As for the rework of maps, the maps will never be balanced by tiles, the fact that Makazuvr will make a couple of maps with roads does not cancel the presence of a bunch of other maps in any way.

I would be in favor of a full return of the speed of the scouts, not 0.7.

[makazuwr32]

Reason behind that change is to give for infantry advantage when moving through forests over cavalry.

It is not the question between "elven cavalry and non-elven cavalry" balance but between "land cavalry and land infantry" balance.
Before cavalry had speed advantage in every single possible place over infantry, especially in forest where you can't speed up your infantry via wagons.
Now infantry can escape from cavalry through forests.

Also i must add that light cav except dwarves (and all elven/scalefolk cavalry) will get extra +1 permanent speed. For light cav with tiers it will not require any extra techs — just via simple leveling. For light cav without tiers it will require extra techs (in case of elves 3 techs — land, water, air, will not affect glades).

So maxed non-elven light cavalry with speed 7 at base and 10 under charge will not fall back too much behind deer riders.

In general i am against completely removing speed penalty in forests for light cav units unless unicorns will also be affected by it (so after addition of charge ability elven unicorns will get unhindered speed 10 for even heaviest cav units in forest). Some extra increase after testing is fine though — maybe up to 0.75-0.8 values, not higher though.

[Anchar]

Reason is because to give for infantry advantage when moving through forests over cavalry.

It is not the question between "elven cavalry and non-elven cavalry" balance but between "land cavalry and land infantry" balance.
Before cavalry had speed advantage in every single possible place over infantry, especially in forest where you can't speed up your infantry via wagons.
Now infantry can escape from cavalry through forests.

Also i must add that light cav (and all elven/scalefolk cavalry) will get extra +1 speed. For light cav with tiers it will not require any extra techs — just via simple leveling. For light cav without tiers it will require extra techs (in case of elves 3 techs — land, water, air, will not affect glades).

So maxed non-elven light cavalry with speed 7 at base and 10 under charge will not fall back too much behind deer riders.

In general i am against completely removing speed penalty in forests for light cav units unless unicorns will also be affected by it (so after addition of charge ability elven unicorns will get unhindered speed 10 for even heaviest cav units in forest). Some extra increase after testing is fine though — maybe up to 0.75-0.8 values, not higher though.

I don't see the point in giving expensive cavalry 4+ moves such an advantage over cheap 2+ infantry, given that infantry has spearmen and infantry can hide in endless towers against which cavalry is useless.

Previously, hand-to-hand cavalry was useless, any rush of cavalry ended up with them dying under spearmen and towers in which archers were sitting. The maximum for which hand-to-hand cavalry was needed was to catch up with archers in the early stages of the game, but as soon as the tower defense was built, the number of cavalry was reduced from small to units.Now the cavalry will never catch up with any archers, and because of the forests, it can only give you a loss of 4 moves on an ambush of spearmen, cavalry is now something like a shield that sometimes accelerates on flat terrain but is also killed by anti-cavalry, unlike a shield. As for the long-range cavalry, it was produced only in order to come faster from the rear and have more lives, but it was compensated by the cost. The cavalry was not more powerful than the infantry, rather they, along with the infantry, were equally small against the background of archers.

I don't care who gets what in 2 years, I could keep silent if the start of the game was broken on all races, without fictional LOGIC for elves and everyone would suffer the same, I remember Alexander threatened to make all races reskin each other, I would agree to make all scouts reskin without raptors lancers and forest elves, because any change in them breaks the start of the game, as raptor orcs used to break, so now forest elves break. As for the rest of the cavalry, I don't care, they were previously only a small group of sabotage (just as the infantrymen were a small group of defense), let them continue to cosplay the infantry, but I think the scouts should be balanced separately or destroyed for everyone equally, moreover, the elves will not lose much at the expense of infantry at 4 speeds.

[Jerryqian39]

elf is in fact a early game race,will will not be able to win if the game process into medium game and elf do not have a tc advantage.mid game means when player got skirmisher that are can one shot most elf Archer.Other race only need to have a building defence to be able to stop elf from attacking and kill elf Archer with skirmisher wagon combo.and snipe the demolisher with Archer.So deer scout are the tool used by elf to get advantage is early game and even though it do not have prenatal in woods it is not a big problem.
With deerscout elf can have a speed advantage of 2 turn in medium map.with that elf can get a 2- 4 tc but elf can't hold the Tc if it is far away from it's base due to weak stats. so that is not entirely a problem.

[makazuwr32]

...

I don't see the point in giving expensive cavalry 4+ moves such an advantage over cheap 2+ infantry, given that infantry has spearmen and infantry can hide in endless towers against which cavalry is useless.

Previously, hand-to-hand cavalry was useless, any rush of cavalry ended up with them dying under spearmen and towers in which archers were sitting. The maximum for which hand-to-hand cavalry was needed was to catch up with archers in the early stages of the game, but as soon as the tower defense was built, the number of cavalry was reduced from small to units.Now the cavalry will never catch up with any archers, and because of the forests, it can only give you a loss of 4 moves on an ambush of spearmen, cavalry is now something like a shield that sometimes accelerates on flat terrain but is also killed by anti-cavalry, unlike a shield. As for the long-range cavalry, it was produced only in order to come faster from the rear and have more lives, but it was compensated by the cost. The cavalry was not more powerful than the infantry, rather they, along with the infantry, were equally small against the background of archers.

We will work on buildings update this year for sure.
Towers will become either cheap and thin or costly and tough.
Cheap towers will be manageable to deal with by using even cavalry. Especially since 2 races will get anti-building cavalry — orcs and scalefolks (alas that cav will not be presented in tc for balancing reasons).

As for situations aka "something with archers" — as we discussed already with exception of elven archers who ARE SUPPOSED to be best ones (and because elves have poor melee) all other archers are much more weak when compared to melee units from the same race.

In general regular cavalry is not supposed to TANK billions and billions and billions of damage as for example olog hais vs wolves. It is not heavy armored infantry with tower shield.
Its role is for assaulting. Either as first strike against infantry of enemy or when you break enemy frontline to get into that hole and wreak chaos behind. And we will further improve this aspect quite soon — within 2-3 updates — with mentioned above charge ability, furthermore speed buff on roads and some exclusive to cavalry buffs for even further increase of their speed and damage.

Some races — humans, elves for example — would be able to get for 1 turn 12+ speed on some their cav units (18 on roads).
That will be MOOOOOOORREEEEEE than enough to use cavalry for sudden strikes.

[makazuwr32]

In conclusion:
No speed penalty in forests for light cavalry as general rule will NOT be a thing.
Elves as race who must have 2 major advantages — speed and range — will keep both of them. Speed advantage anyway is not that useful once you have captured all tcs and now you need to protect them.

Land light cavalry and land regular cavalry (not heavy or giant cavalry though) will get charge abilities to speed up themselves once in a while for some penalty (most likely for no counter spec).

Light cavalry will get extra speed one way or another (exception are dwarves here).

Cavalry in general will get speed buff on roads (but amount will depend on type, light cav will get highest one).

Speed penalty for cavalry in forest will be kept for all land cav except deer and glade tiger cavalry.

[Anchar]

Well, all this time I was essentially waiting for the opinion of Jerryqian (as a fan of playing on the undead, not on elves). If this is not a problem for most players, then do what you want, it looks like I was wrong.

[Jerryqian39]

Well, all this time I was essentially waiting for the opinion of Jerryqian (as a fan of playing on the undead, not on elves). If this is not a problem for most players, then do what you want, it looks like I was wrong.

Sorry I did not relpy until now I was a bit busy
Well in the end elf are rather week now.or felt to be week as player really need to position their unit well to prevent the elf unit from death.infact every race can out range elf with wagon and easily kill elf unit.so elf can only rely on their early game strength
PS now Cavalry has less movement penalty in woods

[makazuwr32]

Well, all this time I was essentially waiting for the opinion of Jerryqian (as a fan of playing on the undead, not on elves). If this is not a problem for most players, then do what you want, it looks like I was wrong.

I have only 2 races right now for whom i do not like to play — orcs and scalefolks.
Orcs because they are still alex orcs.
Scalefolks because they are still in development.
For other 4 races i have pretty fine knowledge (not on the level of most active players though).

And in general elves right now indeed are very weak and require lots of planning, on par if not even surpassing micromanagement for undeads. This advantage is one of few that allows them in current situations to not be wiped off the map way too fast.

[Vladneral]

Elves are weak ? 0_o

I dont know there it comes from. The most agile race - agility is the key of possibilities. That race that can easy strike your back line and destroy most important targets. Many damage just not area - to only one target. With right position planned logistic - that pretty strong race. And in late game also.

That could be my favorite race if not much more random aspects for this race than fot others.

About cavalry - if map is small, small-medium i try play without cavalry use because of glave dancer. So lose much almost always to them in expansion.
On maps with large forest areas other races most likely will lose to elves if opponents have the same skill lvl.

How fix it ? Hmmm... Add "charge through the forest" ability maybe that will remove penalty to speed for scout cavalry in the forest. Make it with long couldown like 4-5 turns. Here i have no much ideas yet tbh.

For now i think make penalty lower is enough we will see and think - is it really enough with time and new changes.

[makazuwr32]

Against same skill player elves will have very hard time to deal with. I did not say that they are weak but due to being glassy they have quite hard time.

As i mentioned already all non-heavy cav will get extra charge ability for bonus speed.

[DreJaDe]

Elves are weak ? 0_o

I dont know there it comes from. The most agile race - agility is the key of possibilities. That race that can easy strike your back line and destroy most important targets. Many damage just not area - to only one target. With right position planned logistic - that pretty strong race. And in late game also.

That could be my favorite race if not much more random aspects for this race than fot others.

About cavalry - if map is small, small-medium i try play without cavalry use because of glave dancer. So lose much almost always to them in expansion.
On maps with large forest areas other races most likely will lose to elves if opponents have the same skill lvl.

How fix it ? Hmmm... Add "charge through the forest" ability maybe that will remove penalty to speed for scout cavalry in the forest. Make it with long couldown like 4-5 turns. Here i have no much ideas yet tbh.

For now i think make penalty lower is enough we will see and think - is it really enough with time and new changes.

I think you're a bit older of a player of AOF. You should know that elves, can't attack the back lines if their enemy is just as competent.

This was my complain a long ago after all, although the people working for AOF thinks that Elves have that advantage, like the mongols of RL. That doesn't really work in the game where the map has limits.

Basically, all race could simply use their advantage to secure everything and defeat elves. All to more with this fast constructed building that most races have to deny elven attack. That's just one example.

The only real way to play elves is to fight fairly. Front to front.

There's only a few times where that was possible. That is when magic arrows was OP. I can just slip some of my fast units to their backs and rain magic arrows to destroy their buildings. Or even the sword dancer. Well, they are gone.

[Savra]

Sword dancer isn't, lol.

But I must say, elves could use some early game stuff, eg light siege, or cheaper ones, as well as some other additional things.

If we had a function that made it so that cool downs don't reset on transform, mostly all melee foot elves could get a researchable ability to summon 1 wolf per unit (only once though, like ambush for scaledfolks), with the possibility of either a structure or other unit having the ability to grant those units the ability to summon another.

Glades may have they're own version of this also.

@Stratego (dev), any thoughts on this as well as others?