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Recently reading the post about buff stacking opness made me realise one of the main problems, stacking armour and increasing survivality


So i suddenly got this idea, how about remove ignore armour of flailman and instead give it armour break ability of thracian fallax, that way its more realistic and the more hit flailman gives, the more damage it does, but useless against unarmoured

I was making a post about flailmen and macemen to suggest something similar, but since this discussion was opened here, let's go:

godOfKings wrote: ↑Mon Jan 17, 2022 5:21 pm Recently reading the post about buff stacking opness made me realise one of the main problems, stacking armour and increasing survivality

I really don't think stacking armor is the current problem, in fact, I think it's quite the opposite, armor stacking is leagues behind the damage+action stacking, and as such, units are too easily killable if the enemy has buffers.

On the case of flailmen specifically, I think they are way too strong right now, and will become even more with the elite flailman upgrade that's coming. The reasons why I think they are too strong are:

1. They deal too much damage early game
2. They deal too much damage late game
3. Their base survivability is basically irrelevant if they are only used for their damage, becase siege towers, mantlets, elephants, etc. can protect them quite well.
4. They can 2-shot almost any flesh and blood unit in the game that aren't elephants, so a single action boost on them = 1 turn kill
5. For the same turn cost, they can instakill a light cavalry by turn 2, and kill almost any other early unit in a single attack, making them very effective in early skirmishes.

The only thing that is currently keeping them somewhat balanced is the fact that they are able to kill zerks with 2 attacks, and so are the best counter to an early zerk rush apart from zerking back, but with zerks out of the TC roster next patch, flailmen will become even stronger in comparison.

On the other hand, macemen are not that strong in comparison, because even in the case of heavy infantry, against which they have a huge bonus, flailmen will often still deal more damage due to the high armor of heavy infantry in general. Their primary usage right now is against siege machines, since their bonuses against those are way higher than those of flailmen, and usually they don't have a lot of melee armor (and even then, samurais are considerably better in that job too, specially after upgrading to hatamoto, and scale better with damage due to having 2 actions)

godOfKings wrote: ↑Mon Jan 17, 2022 5:21 pm So i suddenly got this idea, how about remove ignore armour of flailman and instead give it armour break ability of thracian fallax, that way its more realistic and the more hit flailman gives, the more damage it does, but useless against unarmoured

I like the idea of them having armor break, but that doesn't do any good for them in the first attack, so I had these ideas in mid:

1. Make macemen and flailmen a more durable.
2. Remove the BYPASS_ARMOR spec of flailmen (though leaving ATTACK_COUNTER_QUARTERED would make sense)
3. Greatly reduce flailmen attack, and reduce macemen attack a little bit.
4. Give macemen a weapon effect that affects any [medium armored] or [heavy armored] enemy (with way higher damage against [heavy armored]), is not affected by armor, and scales with attack, instead of ability power.
5. Give flailmen that same weapon effect (with a lowered damage, either by using a weaker version of the effect or by reducing their attack to be lower than that of macemen), but also give then another weapon effect, that affects any [shield bearer] or [big shield bearer] enemy (with higher damage against [big shield bearer]), is also not affected by armor, and also scales with attack instead of ability power.
6. Increase macemen bonuses against structures and such to account for the reduced base damage
7. Maybe, like GoK suggested, also apply armor break, with a stronger armor break for macemen and a weaker one for flailmen?
8. Make flailman a [shield bearer] to match visual of the unit, since now they won't be one-shotting each other for having that category.

If flailman no longer ignores armor, its base damage against most units will already reduce as a result though

godOfKings wrote: ↑Mon Jan 17, 2022 8:30 pm If flailman no longer ignores armor, its base damage against most units will already reduce as a result though

But would become too weak against heavy armored targets, which should be their main target (and would still be too strong against lightly armored targets in the early game).

Using weapon effects for that would keep part of the armor ignoring part of his damage, but that part would only really matter against [heavy armored], [shield bearer] or [big shield bearer] units, instead of having that directly in his attack ignoring any armor of any target, and that would allow a reduction in their base damage, to reduce its early game damage, and an increase to its durability, to not be as squishy as they are right now.

godOfKings wrote: ↑Mon Jan 17, 2022 5:21 pm Recently reading the post about buff stacking opness made me realise one of the main problems, stacking armour and increasing survivality


So i suddenly got this idea, how about remove ignore armour of flailman and instead give it armour break ability of thracian fallax, that way its more realistic and the more hit flailman gives, the more damage it does, but useless against unarmoured

While it's true, that flailmen totally ignoring armor bother me, making such change doesn't seem like anything but a nerf.
With proportion of attack to resilience flailmen are obviously strongly offense oriented, just like Celtic Warriors.
And comparing to them either in damage capabilities or defense - they seem very similar per cost.

And to actually make any use of armor break - flailmen would need to be either much sturdier or have something like no counter.
Which is probably what could actually be done for too UP falxmen.

b2198 wrote: ↑Mon Jan 17, 2022 7:21 pm I was making a post about flailmen and macemen to suggest something similar, but since this discussion was opened here, let's go:

godOfKings wrote: ↑Mon Jan 17, 2022 5:21 pm Recently reading the post about buff stacking opness made me realise one of the main problems, stacking armour and increasing survivality

I really don't think stacking armor is the current problem, in fact, I think it's quite the opposite, armor stacking is leagues behind the damage+action stacking, and as such, units are too easily killable if the enemy has buffers.

On the case of flailmen specifically, I think they are way too strong right now, and will become even more with the elite flailman upgrade that's coming. The reasons why I think they are too strong are:

1. They deal too much damage early game
2. They deal too much damage late game
3. Their base survivability is basically irrelevant if they are only used for their damage, becase siege towers, mantlets, elephants, etc. can protect them quite well.
4. They can 2-shot almost any flesh and blood unit in the game that aren't elephants, so a single action boost on them = 1 turn kill
5. For the same turn cost, they can instakill a light cavalry by turn 2, and kill almost any other early unit in a single attack, making them very effective in early skirmishes.

The only thing that is currently keeping them somewhat balanced is the fact that they are able to kill zerks with 2 attacks, and so are the best counter to an early zerk rush apart from zerking back, but with zerks out of the TC roster next patch, flailmen will become even stronger in comparison.

On the other hand, macemen are not that strong in comparison, because even in the case of heavy infantry, against which they have a huge bonus, flailmen will often still deal more damage due to the high armor of heavy infantry in general. Their primary usage right now is against siege machines, since their bonuses against those are way higher than those of flailmen, and usually they don't have a lot of melee armor (and even then, samurais are considerably better in that job too, specially after upgrading to hatamoto, and scale better with damage due to having 2 actions)

When mentioning early game - survivability cannot be disregarded.
They are non-shielded, so take more damage from archers, along with one of the worst categories and low HP - glass cannon.
That is exactly their weak point, that balances things out in early game.
Maybe not enough, but still - shouldn't be skipped.

For late game almost all medium infantry doesn't have any place in open field and protecting siege machines are readily available, so indeed - then relevance drops significantly.
Although not fully - if enemy disregards archers, because they deal miniscule damage vs all those sieges - they could be massacred by most medium infantry, including of course flailmen, which double as quite good heavy cavalry dealer.
So even single point of forcing enemy to produce some units is still valid.

Attack is however calculated with endgame in mind, so things can be varied with upgrade - e.g. lowering initial power to 12, upg. to 15.

godOfKings wrote: ↑Mon Jan 17, 2022 5:21 pm So i suddenly got this idea, how about remove ignore armour of flailman and instead give it armour break ability of thracian fallax, that way its more realistic and the more hit flailman gives, the more damage it does, but useless against unarmoured

I like the idea of them having armor break, but that doesn't do any good for them in the first attack, so I had these ideas in mid:

1. Make macemen and flailmen a more durable.
2. Remove the BYPASS_ARMOR spec of flailmen (though leaving ATTACK_COUNTER_QUARTERED would make sense)
3. Greatly reduce flailmen attack, and reduce macemen attack a little bit.
4. Give macemen a weapon effect that affects any [medium armored] or [heavy armored] enemy (with way higher damage against [heavy armored]), is not affected by armor, and scales with attack, instead of ability power.
5. Give flailmen that same weapon effect (with a lowered damage, either by using a weaker version of the effect or by reducing their attack to be lower than that of macemen), but also give then another weapon effect, that affects any [shield bearer] or [big shield bearer] enemy (with higher damage against [big shield bearer]), is also not affected by armor, and also scales with attack instead of ability power.
6. Increase macemen bonuses against structures and such to account for the reduced base damage
7. Maybe, like GoK suggested, also apply armor break, with a stronger armor break for macemen and a weaker one for flailmen?
8. Make flailman a [shield bearer] to match visual of the unit, since now they won't be one-shotting each other for having that category.

The problem here though is that it wouldn't represent what flailmen was supposed to be.
Unit of men using destructive, but unwieldy weapons. So unwieldy, that nobody in their right mind would waste time on it. They somehow managed though.
Imho - such mindset, training and some kind of purpose could be effective way to deal damage on average at least partially ignoring armor.
Kind reminder - they had 20 freaking attack and with the same bypass armor spec. Plus 75% additional damage on Medium Infantry (Cheap Melee back then), Buildings, Siege and assorted Heavy Infantry (Spartan, Shielder, Defender)
Only along with that - no counter (which was boosted to reduced counter damage) and only 2 speed, making them reliant completely on transportation.

So if anything - I'd split flailmen damage in half, only one getting more damage from attack, but second part ignoring armor.
I really hoped for Ignore Half Armor spec or armor ignore unit parameter though.

Endru1241 wrote: ↑Tue Jan 18, 2022 7:38 pm When mentioning early game - survivability cannot be disregarded.
They are non-shielded, so take more damage from archers, along with one of the worst categories and low HP - glass cannon.
That is exactly their weak point, that balances things out in early game.
Maybe not enough, but still - shouldn't be skipped.

Yeah, that's true, I mentioned being classified as [shield bearer] mostly for visual consistency. And yeah, unless someone is rushing mantlets very early in the game, their survivability does matter there, specially against archers and slingers, and I didn't consider that.

Endru1241 wrote: ↑Tue Jan 18, 2022 7:38 pm For late game almost all medium infantry doesn't have any place in open field and protecting siege machines are readily available, so indeed - then relevance drops significantly.
Although not fully - if enemy disregards archers, because they deal miniscule damage vs all those sieges - they could be massacred by most medium infantry, including of course flailmen, which double as quite good heavy cavalry dealer.
So even single point of forcing enemy to produce some units is still valid.

Their relevance does drop in open field, but at this point in the game most infantry battles are fought inside siege towers or with wagon charges, so (even more so since 1.149) medium infantry still have a lot of relevance late game.

Endru1241 wrote: ↑Tue Jan 18, 2022 7:38 pm Attack is however calculated with endgame in mind, so things can be varied with upgrade - e.g. lowering initial power to 12, upg. to 15.

Would be an improvement, I guess.

Endru1241 wrote: ↑Tue Jan 18, 2022 7:38 pm The problem here though is that it wouldn't represent what flailmen was supposed to be.
Unit of men using destructive, but unwieldy weapons. So unwieldy, that nobody in their right mind would waste time on it. They somehow managed though.

Imho - such mindset, training and some kind of purpose could be effective way to deal damage on average at least partially ignoring armor.

Hm, that makes sense.

Endru1241 wrote: ↑Tue Jan 18, 2022 7:38 pm Kind reminder - they had 20 freaking attack and with the same bypass armor spec. Plus 75% additional damage on Medium Infantry (Cheap Melee back then), Buildings, Siege and assorted Heavy Infantry (Spartan, Shielder, Defender)
Only along with that - no counter (which was boosted to reduced counter damage) and only 2 speed, making them reliant completely on transportation.

o.O Yeah, they're waaay less op than that currently (but still too strong for the little investment you need to get them imo).

Endru1241 wrote: ↑Tue Jan 18, 2022 7:38 pm So if anything - I'd split flailmen damage in half, only one getting more damage from attack, but second part ignoring armor.
I really hoped for Ignore Half Armor spec or armor ignore unit parameter though.

Yeah, I suggested using a weapon effect precisely due to that current limitation of either ignoring 0 or 100% of the armor. Why not scale the armor ignoring part with attack too, though?

b2198 wrote: ↑Tue Jan 18, 2022 9:11 pm

Endru1241 wrote: ↑Tue Jan 18, 2022 7:38 pm So if anything - I'd split flailmen damage in half, only one getting more damage from attack, but second part ignoring armor.
I really hoped for Ignore Half Armor spec or armor ignore unit parameter though.

Yeah, I suggested using a weapon effect precisely due to that current limitation of either ignoring 0 or 100% of the armor. Why not scale the armor ignoring part with attack too, though?

To avoid increasing damage twice as much when buffed, from tech, etc.

Endru1241 wrote: ↑Tue Jan 18, 2022 9:15 pm To avoid increasing damage twice as much when buffed, from tech, etc.

Well, you could do something really weird and unintuitive for players, like giving a bonus to normal attack against EVERYTHING of -0.5 (with other bonuses halved) and make the weapon effect also have a bonus of -0.5 against everything (and other bonuses halved), to make the total scaling 1.0*attack XD

(You probably got it, but just to avoid possible confusion by whoever is reading this: that was a joke, this would be really unintuitive for everyone involved and also for everyone not involved, so not a good idea XD)

b2198 wrote: ↑Tue Jan 18, 2022 9:28 pm

Endru1241 wrote: ↑Tue Jan 18, 2022 9:15 pm To avoid increasing damage twice as much when buffed, from tech, etc.

Well, you could do something really weird and unintuitive for players, like giving a bonus to normal attack against EVERYTHING of -0.5 (with other bonuses halved) and make the weapon effect also have a bonus of -0.5 against everything (and other bonuses halved), to make the total scaling 1.0*attack XD

(You probably got it, but just to avoid possible confusion by whoever is reading this: that was a joke, this would be really unintuitive for everyone involved and also for everyone not involved, so not a good idea XD)

Doesn't work.
I tried it once.
Negative bonuses only work for effect damage.
For attacks it always max(0, bonus value in json).