Mercenaries in m-play

[Fullbordad]

Hi, going to post some fast forwarded (not going to make 1h videos here) m-play videos, and rant about an issue I've had with it when playing.

As the game stands now there is really no point in building your own weapons industry. The mercenaries are too cheap and easy to obtain with the steady income you will get from the stone and iron industry.

Since spamming out horsearchers for early harrasment on the opponents workers to later go for the arabian swordsmen gives you more troops both early and end-game. I can't see the point in even trying to create your own weapons and troops.

Even if you by some chance get a weapon industry working, you will probebly have been under constant assault for a while and will have a much smaller industry then your opponent.

Some solutions to this would be to either make the mercs more expensive or just fix the market so that if I keep selling tons of stone, the gold I get per sold unit decreases. You could also remove the gold cost on weapon manufactories and make the production of them faster. Making place for a more diverse tactical setting.

I'll upload some of my recorded footage here to show my point, would be nice if I got some ideas on how to make better videos too. Cheers!

Video 1 (1v1):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQnsIgSSWyM&feature=youtu.be

Video 2 (2v2):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYrip8padYA

[Perfect Femcell]

you just seem like a bad player :/

[Marlowe-33]

Originally posted by BrendanLand:

you just seem like a bad player :/

Said the Pro :/

[Com783]

Just set the game to "20 min peace" and in that time, you are able to make an enclosed castle with ~50 European units. But only if you are "good" of course in playing the game...

[Fullbordad]

Originally posted by BrendanLand:

you just seem like a bad player :/

I applaud your constructive and helpful comment!

Originally posted by Com783:

Just set the game to "20 min peace" and in that time, you are able to make an enclosed castle with ~50 European units. But only if you are "good" of course in playing the game...

Well by that logic I could make the PT one hour long and have 300 European units. It still wont remove the fact that with the merc camp and selling iron/stone I would have a bigger, stronger and alot faster army.

Even if I get the enclosed castle filled with european units I will still have suffered huge harrasment from the opponent and will probebly be economicaly behind them

[Mezisophon]

The mercenaries are cheap and quik to get yes, but weapon production units are stronger and gives you more army value/gold than mercenaries. Meaning that if your opponent goes heavy into weapons and you only produce mercenaries, you better win fast or he will have the upper hand later on.

[Horoai]

Mercs are weaker than regular troops and more expensive once you got your industry going, some even if you buy weapons. They are very situational and many mercs aren't even direct combat units.
At the same time, you don't need that many workshops to get enough weapons and the refining rate is damn high in SHC2.

Plus, stone already sells for unproportionally little gold compared to other goods.

[Fullbordad]

Originally posted by Kempshaw:

The mercenaries are cheap and quik to get yes, but weapon production units are stronger and gives you more army value/gold than mercenaries. Meaning that if your opponent goes heavy into weapons and you only produce mercenaries, you better win fast or he will have the upper hand later on.

Originally posted by Yggdrasil:

Mercs are weaker than regular troops and more expensive once you got your industry going, some even if you buy weapons. They are very situational and many mercs aren't even direct combat units.
At the same time, you don't need that many workshops to get enough weapons and the refining rate is damn high in SHC2.

Plus, stone already sells for unproportionally little gold compared to other goods.

The thing is that if we exlude the one-small-bottleneck-entrence maps the iron resource is usually in a spot which is very easily harrased be horsearchers, making the whole production line extremely hard to maintain without mercs. And if you go for both mercs and weapon production you will still have fewer units then your opponent.

I can agree on the fact that if the PT is set on 20mins+ it would be a valid tactic, but I don't think you should have to sit quietly for so long before a game can actually start.

I don't know about the cost on buying weapons but if that's cheaper then hiring mercs then the problem still stands. Why would you want to create a weapon industry then unless you aim for the match to be two hours long?

[discombobulated1]

if you sale iron 20 gold if u sale armour 80 theres 1 reason to build

[Horoai]

Weapons are rather expensive - iron/wood is not:

10g worth of wood are worth 160g of spear, bows. 1:16

40g iron are 160g worth of swords, maces, armors. 1:4

40g iron are 120g pikes (no idea why this anomaly). 1:3

I agree that iron is usually too risky to get or not even on the map in the first place but you could call this a map balance issue. However, even without iron going for mercs and weapon production will actually give you more units because you get more troops with more damage and HP per coin.

Additionally, I don't see how you play without barrack troops. Mercs don't have any heavy units or crossbowmen and spearmen&macemen are invalueable as vanguard now. Pikemen have the same crazy AoE as Dervish but cost only 1/14th!
Edit: Just tested it
~5 pikemen = 1 Dervish AoE damage wise, trading ability cooldown for being stationary. Pikemen deal additional damage when attacked in melee.
Pikemen have about twice as much health
Both are ~equally fast (unless Dervish uses charge ability)



And finally, you don't need that many workshops in order to produce enough weapons for your army - even less if you mix mercs and barrack troops. 4 workshops of the same type is usually overkill unless you spam but that one unit for some reason.

Perhaps if it was a little easier to get production going early on. Let's say if they reduced gold price of woodbased workshops (spears and bows)? Or increase the price of Mercenary post to match that of 3-4 workshops?

[Mezisophon]

Originally posted by Fullbordad:

The thing is that if we exlude the one-small-bottleneck-entrence maps the iron resource is usually in a spot which is very easily harrased be horsearchers, making the whole production line extremely hard to maintain without mercs. And if you go for both mercs and weapon production you will still have fewer units then your opponent.

If your opponent is harassing you, you definately need mercs to defend yes. But if your question is wether mercs are imbalanced or not, you can not look at it in the same way.

When you buy weapon production you buy an investment. Initially you pay gold and wood without any return, but as the game progresses you will get a better army than your opponent who only make mercs.

A key concept here is that it is easier to defend than to attack. So a lot of the time it will become a booming game with both players sitting in their castle building themselves up.

If the game is very open with constant attacking/harassing then it might be best to make mercs all the way. Maybe in your scenario that was the case. But it doesnt mean that mercs are always better. Its a time and place for both options.

[CatPerson]

The mercenaries are cheap and quik to get yes, but weapon production units are stronger and gives you more army value/gold than mercenaries.

Try a cluster of 18-25 of those whirling dervish guys against most other different units and see how weak you think the mercs are.

Some of the merc units are weak, of course, but the strong ones could really use a big jump in gold cost, or something, to prevent being able to spam them out if one goes for "tax high and sell everything for gooooold" strategy.

[Horoai]

Originally posted by CatPerson:

Try a cluster of 18-25 of those whirling dervish guys and see how weak you think the mercs are.

^ see above.

[CatPerson]

The only combat issue I have with those guys is if you select them while they're still in "whirly" action, they won't respond to a command to move, even after they're done spinning (you have to select them again when they stop). :D

[discombobulated1]

Originally posted by CatPerson:

The only combat issue I have with those guys is if you select them while they're still in "whirly" action, they won't respond to a command to move, even after they're done spinning (you have to select them again when they stop). :D

above the building window theres a stop sign

[CatPerson]

But that still requires another step/button press, yes? I'd rather they finish their animation and then move on their own to march to where the others are going. Maybe I'm missing something, I'll look again.