What is about decreasing Bantu's +100% population limit?

Originally posted by Danhoby:

What is about decreasing Bantu's +100% population limit?

Can be considered for Beta, but it's not clear how much the value of the bonus really matters. Once the Bantu player has mil 1 (or maybe mil 2) does it even matter whether the bonus is 100% vs, say, 80%? I'm not sure.

Worth discussing.

Standard: low pro
Nomad: high inter

Just downloaded and tried a few games with Hockeystar and MrWhippy.
1v1 std.

Comments:
1. We got a few OOS (with both players). Re-starting helped.

2. A ruin nerf would be appreciated: 20+20 or 25+15 both sound OK.

3. Generally the feel of the game is more like "Old RON", which is a good thing I think.

4. Maya is much more playable :)

Roachy

@roachy

1) OOS is pretty yikes unless something was changed to get it to work. If it's OOS'ing without any changes that's a really bad sign D:

2) It sounds like 20+15 is most likely where we're heading, but it's still being discussed.

4) I'm surprised you felt much difference to be honest! The Maya changes so far are pretty small but it's nonetheless good to hear it being well-received.

0. OK, I reckon I've played >20 games now with the patch. Basically, I think the balance is ok.

1. So got some more OOS when I disabled the patch. Then I got more OOS when I re-enaabled the patch! It seems I have to restart RON a couple of times.

2. 20+15 is good. Thinking about it: 20 will nerf OP lakota in nomad...

3. Ele's have been nerfed considerably.

4. Maya more playable. But, perhaps increase the wood discount by ~5%.

5. Is it possible to fix "random nations" so it really is random? Not just the same 6 nation pairs... Also, to stop the repetition of getting the same few nations again and again...

@roachy

0) I'm so happy to hear you've actually been using the patch so much!!! So far it's been a real struggle to get enough playtesting done - so thanks for taking the time.

1) The OOS still sounds a little worrying. When you say you're disabling / enabling the patch, are you just using the button to load/unload it in the mod manager? Or are you actually moving the mod files? There's a bug with the mod manager that basically makes complex mods like this one not unload if you only press the button - you have to actually move the files out of the folder (or nest them into an extra "dummy" folder so that the game doesn't load them - which also makes it much easier to reload the mod again later!).

2) Yep, hitting Lakota slightly is one of the reasons that 20 for the base number is nice. Did you have any feedback on what you think the Spanish counterparts should be (if the base numbers are 20 +15)? Right now 30 +15 (no extra science boost) or 30 +20 are what we're leaning towards.

3) Yeah, they're much weaker in T&P than EE because the object masks ("unit masks") that apply to them are very significant nerfs - in EE they're absolutely crazy compared to what they were originally intended to be. dave says that back in T&P they were actually still good units, so it might just be that it'll take players a while to re-learn how to use the units optimally. Obviously we can buff them in the future if needed though!

4) With Maya I'm a little worried about over-buffing and ending up with weird edge-cases where they're weirdly strong in a specific circumstance. Giving them another small buff or two (like what you've suggested) is on the agenda, but I'd like to wait for more playtesting data before we include it in the patch.

5) I've heard of this concept a few times before but not in much detail. At this point I'm familiar with almost every gameplay-related file in RoN and haven't seen anywhere to change it (so I'm doubtful I can change it unfortunately), but could you explain exactly how the rng/pairing works?

Hi MHLoopy,

~25 std games with CBP now...

0) Testing is fun!
Mr Whippy and I are very even in skill ... so its easy to spot un-balance :)

1) Sounds fine. No OOS once the patch / or EE is stable.

2) Spanish: no strong feelings on the ruin buff, but I wouldn't go too hard... they are not that bad in 1v1 std.

5) There are two aspects:
5a) Kag is the expert. Tell him a nation, and he can tell you the 6 other nations that they will always vs in 1v1 random vs random. For example, inca is always vs indians, bantu, british, greeks, lakota or russians.

5b) The second aspect is that at present I am only getting french, indian, korea, maya, and one or two others. This slowly evolves with time... IE next week (or so) I will be getting a new group of nations...

6) Inca feedback:
The inti clubmen / macemen are too fast. They are NOT normal LI, they are melee units!
They could almost keep up with my French HC and club them to death!!

7) Can you please create a new patch with a ruin nerf (any ruin nerf would be an improvement) - and we will test it.
Also, we can then provide feedback to the Spanish ruin bonus question.

Roachy

5) Very interesting. I'll continue to look at what can be done about it with just mods, but as I said it's unfortunately unlikely I can change that without getting into the game's source code.

6) Definitely unexpected feedback, as you're the first person to flag that change! Would you say that they're also too fast in normal EE as well? I wouldn't have expected 2 movement speed to make them significantly better given that they're melee, but certainly feedback noted and I'll flag it as something for other players to try to include in their playtesting.

7) Done! https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2360314180

6) Just looking at some info:
HC speed is 30?
Inti clubmen is 31?
Hence inti clubmen are now faster than HC?
I really think horses should be faster than men with clubs!
Also, if we start clubbing horses to death, then the animal welfare people will not be happy.

7) Thanks: I will test tomorrow.

One more comment:
8) Militia thoughts:
Militia in V is too expensive and hence rarely used.
Militia in VII is ridiculously expensive and hence extremely rarely used.
Can we reduce the cost?

6) My main frame of reference on the speed was compared to the Aztec UUs which remain +1 ms faster at each age compared to the Inca UUs, except that those units also have the benefit of 6 range vs 0 range. Obviously the Inca UUs are more powerful once they do get in range, but they're still just modestly stronger light infantry (and going to be injured by ranged units in the time spent closing the gap into melee).

Another factor to consider is that the effective speed of infantry is lower than cavalry for infantry that come in groups of 3, since the infantry slow each other down slightly by getting in each other's way (imperfect example: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/145060579982180352/799043587547070494/2021-01-14_09-30-02.mp4 ). 31 speed 3-man infantry will rarely be able to catch a 30 speed cav because they'll be tripping over each other.

Lastly on this point, the Inca UUs still lose fights to melee cav - particularly against heavy cav the fight is not even close despite their small HP buff in CBP: https://i.imgur.com/8hMQIRH.jpg (each age II cav fought a full HP Inti Clubmen squad and this was their remaining HP). Heavy cav can reliably survive two 1v1s against the equivalent Inca UU.

If more players bring it up as a point of concern we'll look at rolling back the increase to their movement speed in CBP - otherwise it would be the MHLoppy balance patch not the Community balance patch :P

8) They're slightly unconventional in their technical implementation, but I think it should be technically possible to do so I'll discuss it with the others. The units are legitimately quite powerful though (close to the power of the same-age gunpowder/modern infantry), so I would consider it risky to reduce the cost too significantly unless we also nerf the units (which could be considered as well, I suppose). Right now Minutemen are 300f / 300m and Partisans are 600f / 600m - what kind of reduction would you consider reasonable?

I imagine that if they were reduced to something like 2/3 cost (200/200 and 400/400), we could see them used heavily in fights in friendly territory to make fights lopsided (probably not desirable, given that their range makes them harder to kill or kite than militia).

One more thing roachy! Jatin has spontaneously decided to do showmatches in a few days, so we're pushing the ruins change (same numbers as the test version) into the live patch as Alpha 5. No need to use that link anymore, although you will need to update your local copy of the mod to get the updated version.

Ahh, kewl!

8) Militia in V and VII.
My experience with Korea (free militia) is that they are most useful for raid defence - vs marauding HA and armoured cars.
They can be used to stop a city falling (say if you have 5 farms and 2 mines = 15 militia) in V, but it is only a temporary measure. Basically, you loose half your food production and all your metal... your mil unit production is reduced... the city will fall eventually...
Just to attract community attention: I think reduce the cost by 10%. They can be further refined in future if they are still underutilized due to cost.

9) The danger of buffing LI in II and III.
Actually, my biggest concern is that we are changing the character of the game...
To me, it is fundamental that in each age a "single unit dominates".
Hence... if you are losing in age III, then try to age IV... so the enemy units are obselete.
For example, the classic battle is a III seige attack with lots of crossbowmen...
a big attack... that takes your city... as you age to IV... you upgrade to LI.... and roll them back!!!

Keeps the game on a knife-edge :)

By making LI stronger in II and III... any step in that direction... spoils the "age up and dominate" meta.

8) Minutemen didn't get much support for a change when I brought it up, although Partisans got fairly heavy support for a cost reduction. Off the back of that, I'm tentatively putting a reduction of the latter to 500/500 onto the list of things to change but leaving Minutemen as-is for now. We'll likely revisit again in the future, and possibly consider moving them down to e.g. 280/280 and 480/480 respectively (also has the benefit of looking neat compared to Militia's 80!).

9) prolaze brought up a similar point in internal feedback, and it's something I've also considered myself to a lesser degree before as well (which is why the units have only quite trivial buffs so far). I think there's likely a space we can hit where the archers are still better than LI until guns are in play, but where we can still buff the age II/III LI enough to make them not-terrible. Right now I'm just not sure where that is in terms of what form the buff should take, so am awaiting more feedback (especially from playtesting).

For example I think if they got +1 damage in age II/III they would probably still be weak units, but marginally more useful compared to using the same resources to build LC instead. Or maybe their damage modifier against archers could go up instead (e.g. by 10%), which would reward players that are able to micro effectively against the enemy army (being able to get LI in range of archers without them dying to cav / HI). Or maybe some other buff entirely - still working on the specifics!

Overall I'm optimistic about a buff that still keeps the tradeoff of "archers better pre-IV, but weaker in IV", and it's something we'll try to factor in.