About units balance

[egglord]

Hi, thanks for creating this awesome mod. I really like it. Here is some feedback about units balance in this mod. After spending some time playing this mod, I found there are some units are way to strong for how cheap they cost. There are units with 20+ damage and 20+ defense with a super cheap upkeep. Shield value is kinda over inflated, a lot of amazon units have a shield value over 10 while roman legionary cohort don't nearly have as much. General bodyguard for Amazon factions are also super strong, can easily kite down 5+ melee brigades without losing a single unit. As a player who likes to play a challenging late game, it kinda hard to keep the game entertaining with so many powerful units I can use. Can you guys make an option for us who want the game to be more challenging. I think the new unit stats in this mod should be on par with the units in the vanilla game.

[parthian shot]

Thank you for your feedback.

If you can offer specific number vs. the value you think it is best, the dev team would be more than happy to take a look at it.

The Amazons are vulnerable just as the legionnaires, and also you need to keep in mind that there are many vanilla units configuration which are grossly inaccurate.

We have spent a great deal of time calibrating missile value in terms of range, hit power, and accuracy, also a great amount of time has been put into armor and hitpoints, but we can not say that is as accurate as the missile configurations. So any feedback to make them better are more than welcome.

[parthian shot]

Also regarding the upkeep. In Amazons Total War mod there are five kinds of military units

- Militia
- Regular
- Mercenary
- Goddess Theocrats
- Rebel/Renegade

Militia and rebel are the lowest in cost spectrum
Mercenary is the highest
The Theocrats are similar to Knights Templar, these are religious orders formed into combat units, they ranged from message dispatcher, scouts, missionary, to pathfinders. Their equipment are good if not great, but their upkeep reflects the cost needed for training (training ammo for example) and food (soldier and horse if mounted), but not much else.

[egglord]

Thanks for the replies. From what my observation in vanilla version of the game, units with a large shield usually have a shield value of 5, and units with a small shield usually have a shield value of 2. I think unless there is a unit with a huge shield, the value shouldn't go over 5. For armor value, what I see in the original game is cloth armor = 0 armor, light armor = 2-4 armor, medium armor = 7-9 armor, heavy armor = 11-13 armor, only super heavy armor will go over 18. Considering how little amazon warriors wear, most of them should be in the 0-4 range with a few will go over 7. And for units upkeep, in the vanilla game I think it's something like this, militia = 100 upkeep, regular = 130-200, elites = 200+. I saw there is a British wagon with an upkeep of only 30, that unit definitely can be a little more expensive to maintain. Right now, I feel amazon units are a lot more superior than the units in the vanilla game. For players like me, it can become a kinda boring to see my army facerolling my enemies in every battle when my enemies don't have enough amazon warriors in their armies.
Above are what I have in my mind right now. I like this mod, and want to see this mod to become better. If you guys need more information from me, I will be glad to help.

[parthian shot]

Thanks for the replies. From what my observation in vanilla version of the game, units with a large shield usually have a shield value of 5, and units with a small shield usually have a shield value of 2. I think unless there is a unit with a huge shield, the value shouldn't go over 5. For armor value, what I see in the original game is cloth armor = 0 armor, light armor = 2-4 armor, medium armor = 7-9 armor, heavy armor = 11-13 armor, only super heavy armor will go over 18. Considering how little amazon warriors wear, most of them should be in the 0-4 range with a few will go over 7. And for units upkeep, in the vanilla game I think it's something like this, militia = 100 upkeep, regular = 130-200, elites = 200+. I saw there is a British wagon with an upkeep of only 30, that unit definitely can be a little more expensive to maintain. Right now, I feel amazon units are a lot more superior than the units in the vanilla game. For players like me, it can become a kinda boring to see my army facerolling my enemies in every battle when my enemies don't have enough amazon warriors in their armies.
Above are what I have in my mind right now. I like this mod, and want to see this mod to become better. If you guys need more information from me, I will be glad to help.

What you have mentioned actually have been addressed several times.

The shield value is misleading, because the Amazon Total War mod follows the Balanced Unit Modeling (or Parthian Shot's Laws among the dev team members), if a unit has only frontal armor, that armor value is translated as "shield" value, simply because there is no other way to express a frontal armor in RTW game engine, so the shield value means anything protecting the soldier from attacks from front or side, but not from the back.

What is mentioned above is one of reasons that, unlike the vanilla, this mod can not assign protection or armor value by armor or shield classification alone (i.e. heavy, light, or medium).

If you take the Pathfinder Unit as an example, they have no torso protection but they do have helmet, upper-arm/shoulder protection, and they also wear greaves armor, if their shield is in place, their are very well protected from the front and the side. Even though they appear to be naked. As I once mentioned in a reply, review your Amazon Pathfinder in a custom battle and you will find the front is better protected with shield guarding forward, than most units.

I would also recommend that perhaps you need to explore more of the Amazons units, only some of them are light units, there are actually very heavily armored units.

As far as the up keep cost, the horde wagon is cheap because that is someone's home on wheels. Celtic people and the PIE (proto indo-european) share some of the most common symbol, that is the spokes of a wheel. They are people of migration, using wagons for many thousands of years before they settle down on the British Isle. So the cost of constructing the wagon might be expensive, but the governing body does not have to pay for it. That is also the reason why they are considered "peasant", or militia units. For the forms of governments in 300-200BC do not obligate themselves to pay for all the expenditures, for such units, the maintenance is the responsibility of the owner of the wagon, not his or her liege lord. If you are familiar with the history or anthropology of Volkswanderung, you will see that we did not invent this concept.

As to what you stated, "it can become a kinda boring to see my army facerolling my enemies in every battle when my enemies don't have enough amazon warriors in their armies." Unfortunately, it is not true at all. Because that experience you described is only a "momentary" translation of some battles. Like someone is saying that Rome Total War is boring, because it is only hoplite against legionnaire. But you and I both know it is a lot more than that.

The stereotypes is that many players played this mod is only playing non-Amazon factions, the mod is much broader than that, there were neo-Amazons factions, there were Amazon factions, and there are anti-Amazon factions. I can say now that, in 8.0B release, almost every faction has some trump card units up their sleeves. But the ultimate configuration is one of the Amazon Cults which will destroy them all, assume you read the factional descriptions. BTW, the mod is set up if the player don't play an Amazon faction, or a neo-Amazon faction, that ultimate configuration will not manifest itself in the mod at all, on most campaigns.

These are the generalization of tiers of cultural development in Amazons Total War

Tier One

simple light units both Amazons and none Amazons, general units, conventional missile units

Tier Two

some light artillery units, horde wagon, chariot units

Tier Three

Elephants, and light wagons

Tier Four

Minefields, some elite mobile artillery, mobile battle towers, heavy wagons, elite chariots, and Linked Armored Cavalry

Tier Five

Thermite weapons with multiple platforms.

I think, from what you have described to me, you have not reached beyond Tier #2.

[egglord]

Sry I didnt read the faction descriptions, if the goal of this mod is to let the whole world keeps pumping out amazon units, then my bad for not reading the faction descriptions. My reason for posting this post is because I feel there is something isnt right in the gameplay of this mod. Like horde wagon, a decent unit that only costs 30 to maintain, if I play a faction that has this unit, what I will do is to simply mass this unit because the upkeep cost of this unit makes other units less attractive to build. Another example is spetum plumbatarri, as powerful as urban cohort, fairly easy to get and only costs 120 to maintain, what i did in my thermodon amazon campaign was to mass this unit + general bodyguard, facerolling everything around me easily. These units just make other units in the game less attractive to build, and also make the my enemies who don't mass these units weak to play against. What I was trying to say in my op is I hope you guys can nerf these units in some way, like cost more to maintain, so I don't feel like I have to build these units simply because they are too good to not use.

[parthian shot]

Sry I didnt read the faction descriptions, if the goal of this mod is to let the whole world keeps pumping out amazon units, then my bad for not reading the faction descriptions. My reason for posting this post is because I feel there is something isnt right in the gameplay of this mod. Like horde wagon, a decent unit that only costs 30 to maintain, if I play a faction that has this unit, what I will do is to simply mass this unit because the upkeep cost of this unit makes other units less attractive to build. Another example is spetum plumbatarri, as powerful as urban cohort, fairly easy to get and only costs 120 to maintain, what i did in my thermodon amazon campaign was to mass this unit + general bodyguard, facerolling everything around me easily. These units just make other units in the game less attractive to build, and also make the my enemies who don't mass these units weak to play against. What I was trying to say in my op is I hope you guys can nerf these units in some way, like cost more to maintain, so I don't feel like I have to build these units simply because they are too good to not use.

On recruiting one or two units....

If you as a player decides to recruit only one "attractive" unit en masse, there will be more powerful units which can eat up these lower level units for supper.

On Horde Wagon....

Like I already explained, horde wagon is recruited from migratory horde, so the maintenance and upkeep is based on a horde unit cost.

On "Amazon Units"....

And I also explained that the mod has more than just Amazon units, like the Linked Armored Cavalry, or Mobile Battle Tower. or War Wagon, or Mobile Artillery. Unless you take any units with a female operative as an "Amazons unit", then yes, but they are not from the Amazon factions. So you might want to clarify your point further for people like me to understand.

[egglord]

I guess it's just we have different preferences in design. Maybe I have played too much starcraft, because in high level play of starcraft, most of the units have a role from beginning to the end of the game, high tier units are good only because they give players more options, therefore players can have a strategic advantage over their opponents. But high tier units are not much better than lower tier units in terms of raw fighting power, some tier 3 units get eaten alive by tier 1 units, such like battlecruisers vs marines, thors vs zerglings. So usually, i build many different units in starcraft instead of massing one or two obviously superior units. also this way I feel a game can be more dynamic and interesting. Maybe the units design in starcraft won't fit into this game tho, well, anyway, that's what i think. Oh, i forgot to answer ur question, sry for using these confusing words. By amazon units, i mean any units from this mod, i feel many of them are just superior than the ones in vanilla game and make the ones in vanilla kinda obsolete.

[egglord]

Btw,you guys are going to port this mod to rome 2? I think i saw it somewhere when i was browsing this forum. thats awesome, really looking forward to it.

[parthian shot]

Yes, we already have animation ready for warscape, but would like to wait and see better utilities became available. Currently it is not as straight forward as we would like them to be.

[egglord]

Great, I'm not a graphic designer nor an animator, but I have some experience in programming. I can help u guys after my final exams, if you guys need an extra hand.

[parthian shot]

That would be great, we can use people who would like to test out features, and go from there. Our experience is, if a team mate can not test, that person can not do anything.

We have an animation lead, her name is Pea

We have a QA and R&D lead, her name is Bibi, who is also on leave because of her schedule. One of the reasons we are not working on Rome II.

And we have a script lead, her name is Cel.

Hope you don't have problem working with girls.

We have 7 dev team members and 7 campaign testers, most of them are on and off the test schedule. So if you would like to help out the campaign test, that would be even better.

[parthian shot]

Here are the tests needed to be done...

- Amazonia raising an army behind the enemy line.
- German Quest against primary target.
- New Far East Celt script
- Libyan marshal promotion

We also need proof readers, plus people who can publish load screen as well as intro/promotional video.

[egglord]

testing eh, ok i'll do some testing after my final exams. btw when i was checking the units descriptions for thyssagetae amazons militia horse archer and libyan amazons female militia warband, their pictures are missing.

[parthian shot]

testing eh, ok i'll do some testing after my final exams. btw when i was checking the units descriptions for thyssagetae amazons militia horse archer and libyan amazons female militia warband, their pictures are missing.

Pictures as in unit information?

[egglord]

ya the detailed ones

[egglord]

and carthaginian maiden militia has 0 dmg

[parthian shot]

and carthaginian maiden militia has 0 dmg

That is a different problem, the maiden militia has one weapon, both for throwing (missile) and for close quarter combat at the animation level, there is a bug in the game engine where such configuration would get one of the two (missile or close quarter attack) ended up with a zero if the animation is only used for one of the two (missile vs. cqb). It does not really affect the combat of the unit, you can test this out yourself.

We could create a special maiden militia animation to overcome this issue, but the game engine only allows 255 models for combat animation and doing so will take away a very valuable spot, we only have one remaining I believe.

[Alavaria]

Another example is spetum plumbatarri, as powerful as urban cohort, fairly easy to get and only costs 120 to maintain, what i did in my thermodon amazon campaign was to mass this unit + general bodyguard, facerolling everything around me easily. These units just make other units in the game less attractive to build, and also make the my enemies who don't mass these units weak to play against.

They are quite handy for assaults, I was initially going to do something like what you planned, but there's actually much better ways to murder everyone...

Both of those units are short ranged. Now some units (Amazon Ballista Cavalry) have a similar AP ranged attack with high stat (22+) that are also much higher ranged (170 as opposed to 70 or 80). However, there are also units which have even more range (170 all the way to 240+) and/or even higher attack stat (40+, up to 64)

On recruiting one or two units....

If you as a player decides to recruit only one "attractive" unit en masse, there will be more powerful units which can eat up these lower level units for supper.

Oddly enough, after taking Halicarnassus, on the next turn the script created the (otherwise unbuildable) pantheon building. I say oddly because wasn't there supposed to be some conditions to trigger that? I have been holding pergamon for a while, it never got the pantheon.

It lets you train (2 turns for a unit) the Amazon Pathfinder unit, which has a hilarious combination of being mounted (no messy carriages or whatever, just amazons on horses), having a ranged attack of 64 (which pretty much instakills anyone it hits, I think), a range of 240 which is larger than any non-artillery I can get (the firebomb carriage ballista unit has 250) and carries a ton of ammunition (They use the portable ballistae to shoot thermite bombs). They are also pretty well defended against most ranged attacks except stuff like artillery (or other thermite weapons).


Since the script also gives you three units of the Pathfinders, I tested them out on a Macedonian stack. The whole stack died without killing anyone.

[The shield value is misleading, because the Amazon Total War mod follows the Balanced Unit Modeling (or Parthian Shot's Laws among the dev team members), if a unit has only frontal armor, that armor value is translated as "shield" value, simply because there is no other way to express a frontal armor in RTW game engine, so the shield value means anything protecting the soldier from attacks from front or side, but not from the back.

What is mentioned above is one of reasons that, unlike the vanilla, this mod can not assign protection or armor value by armor or shield classification alone (i.e. heavy, light, or medium).

Ironically, when facing ranged attacks that are armor piercing (and there are quite a lot of them), having shield stat is much better than having armor stat. The amusing implication of this is that if you add armor to your back, this makes your frontal defenses more easily penetrated by lead darts, lead case, stone block etc (these are some of the armor piercing attacks I see).

Actually, this is most noticeable when comparing the Amazon Line Plumbatarii Cohort with the Armenian version. The Armenian faction has a "heavier" Plumbatarii cohort, with back armor etc. However, this means they have less shield value. If you take these two units and have them fight, the "heavier" Armenian one will lose because both of them shoot armor-piercing darts and have armor piercing melee weapons.



(Oh my, the Geothe Ballista Elephant has range of 290... sadly you cannot target ranged attacks from it, only set to "fire at will" which can be a little bothersome due to friendly fire. Any enemy trying to close with it will suffer terribly though, they can defend themselves.)

[Alavaria]

Hmm, apparently (like in vanilla RTW I guess?) if you play on Hard Campaign and also use Huge unit sizes, the AI will cheerfully turn the whole world into a depopulated wasteland and charge you with masses of its lowest tier units.