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BattleMaster => Development => Topic started by: Schancke on July 22, 2018, 09:05:10 PM
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Among the April changes were the altering of the archer targeting algorithm.
I assume this was a response to tactics in the stalemate war on East Continent.
It appears that archers now distribute randomly amont available targets, and I believe the game would benefit from further tweaking of this algorithm.
As a Lord of a heavily battered city on Beluaterra I daily see stupid and irrational archer behavior due to this change.
- Archers not shooting at units within range.
- Archers ignoring the huge enemy unit at the gates, and rather aiming for weak units further back - with the added the cost of reduced efficiency.
Is it worth considering making the archer targeting a little more intelligent?
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I intend to make the archer targeting a bit smarter—I just haven't had the chance yet.
At the very least, I'm going to increase the ratio of archer hits to target CS before which archers stop targeting a given unit.
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Not just archers either. MIs are worse due to this change since their range is shorter. Rushing out by themselves only to get crushed XD
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Archers should potentially target all enemy units within range, with chance based on unit size, perhaps with a moderate preference for those within shorter distance. A large mass of peasant rabble or infantry is going to be a more tempting target than a small, charging cavalry unit, even if the latter might pose a greater threat to the archers.
I understand that the motivation is to stop us from sending on a small unit in front as a "pincushion" unit.
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Ah yes.
The pincushion units that have changed warfare.
Another thing to consider is the code that has infantry leave the walls if the attackers don't have infantry. I've seen nation attacks with ONLY archers so the infantry charge out into massed archer fire and get slaughtered. Then send in the infantry attackers the following turn to swarm the walls and take the city without any infantry to fight them. That seems to me to be like a similar...taking advantage of fighting code situation. ;)
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Ah yes.
The pincushion units that have changed warfare.
Another thing to consider is the code that has infantry leave the walls if the attackers don't have infantry. I've seen nation attacks with ONLY archers so the infantry charge out into massed archer fire and get slaughtered. Then send in the infantry attackers the following turn to swarm the walls and take the city without any infantry to fight them. That seems to me to be like a similar...taking advantage of fighting code situation. ;)
Well... I mean, would you rather the infantry just sit idle behind the walls?
And then you leave your archers without support, which it might need. Doesn't really seem like a good tactic to me.
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It seems unlikely to me that that could work if they didn't have the force to take the walls attacking all together. You'd need a lot of archers for the infantry to get seriously slaughtered doing that, and then the most you're getting out of it is maybe lower attacker infantry casualties? At the cost of higher attacker archer casualties...
I suppose we could, perhaps, adjust the code so that if there are no attacking infantry, and no defending archers, the defending infantry just hunker down untargetable behind the walls, and it ends in a stalemate...but without also changing the code so that this would prevent the attacking archers from just walking past unmolested, I don't think it would actually make people happier than what there is now.
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I think this is just a situation of "if it's not broke..."
I mean, unless someone can give battle reports to show something truly egregious.
The closest I've seen is attackers relying heavily on R5 troops, against cities which lack any, allowing the attackers to win from out of reach. But I've never seen such battle reports, and I've only sparsely heard of it. And... I mean, honestly, sounds fairly legit. "attack the fortified location from out of range" seems like pretty basic siege tactics.
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I think this is just a situation of "if it's not broke..."
I mean, unless someone can give battle reports to show something truly egregious.
The closest I've seen is attackers relying heavily on R5 troops, against cities which lack any, allowing the attackers to win from out of reach. But I've never seen such battle reports, and I've only sparsely heard of it. And... I mean, honestly, sounds fairly legit. "attack the fortified location from out of range" seems like pretty basic siege tactics.
It's the tactic OT and co developed on the Colonies to deal with MT after a couple of years of our R4 SF basically slaughtering anything fielded against us. The battle reports were very dull with two or there successive turns of stalemate battles being common. I'd love to know how much they had to invest to get those R5 RCs :)
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That said, yes, I would like for archers to be closer to what they used to be than what they are now, at least for Westgard. XD I really disliked the screen units, though, so I'm happy of the direction of the change. But it'd be better if it was tweaked so that the archers still tried to kill the front row before shooting behind. Now it feels like 50-50 often, which gets the archers slaughtered in melee when really the front waves could have been killed every turn.
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It seems unlikely to me that that could work if they didn't have the force to take the walls attacking all together. You'd need a lot of archers for the infantry to get seriously slaughtered doing that, and then the most you're getting out of it is maybe lower attacker infantry casualties? At the cost of higher attacker archer casualties...
I suppose we could, perhaps, adjust the code so that if there are no attacking infantry, and no defending archers, the defending infantry just hunker down untargetable behind the walls, and it ends in a stalemate...but without also changing the code so that this would prevent the attacking archers from just walking past unmolested, I don't think it would actually make people happier than what there is now.
I used to work well when archers could do a lot of damage to infantry units. Since enemy archers will be doing only 1/4 damage due to the range damage reduction, you can pretty much ignore that and focus on taking out enemy infantry units. It works pretty well against militia units since once they are scattered or retreated, they need more time than players to rally their men. But you do have to attack right away after the battle though.
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I've pushed a very small change on testing that increases the ratio of hits to target combat strength that will trigger archers to stop firing on a given target by a factor of 5. Let's see if that makes a difference.
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Dwi's stable, it's hard to really see the difference in PvP because armies tend to be so archer-heavy anyways on both sides. But thanks. :P
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Dwi's stable, it's hard to really see the difference in PvP because armies tend to be so archer-heavy anyways on both sides. But thanks. :P
Dwilight is testing branch.
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Dwilight is testing branch.
My character page says otherwise.
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Where do you see that?
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Where do you see that?
It's that faded out text that's up at the top right of the game pages when you're playing a character on Dwilight. It currently reads, "stable". I remember noticing it myself last week and thinking it was strange, but then forgot about it.
Actually, now that I've just checked, it also says the same thing on Beluaterra.
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It's that faded out text that's up at the top right of the game pages when you're playing a character on Dwilight. It currently reads, "stable". I remember noticing it myself last week and thinking it was strange, but then forgot about it.
Actually, now that I've just checked, it also says the same thing on Beluaterra.
That has nothing to do with the islands, but with the specific pages. Most all pages are stable versions, even on testing islands. There's a few testing pages only available on testing pages, mostly related to sea travel iirc. That stable/testing/war in the top-right corner is relevant when reporting bugs.
So the character status page I presume Chenier was looking at, only has a stable version, used on both stable and testing islands. Dwilight and BT are still testing islands.
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Ah, that explains it. I thought Dwi was testing too, I thought that was weird.
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Sirion and their allies used the "archer only" attack tactic during the assaults on Oligarch.
Note that there were both infantry and archers defending the city. Approximately 10k of each as I remember.
They would attack in one turn with only archers. Five realms worth of archers so it was 10k or 20k worth of archers. Since there were no infantry units at all, the defending infantry would charge out on turn 1 and get slaughtered by the attacking archers. The defending archers would win the battle in five or six turns, maybe eight, and do heavy damage to the attackers, but the infantry were all scattered.
And militia units don't usually rally immediately, so there were a couple turns where the entire infantry defensive line of the city was gone.
So the next turn Sirion and their allies would attack with what archers were able to rally (maybe 5k or 10k survivors) and their 10k or 20k infantry deploying as far forward as possible to avoid as many archer rounds as possible while they closed with the walls. With little to no infantry to man the walls, the infantry would storm the walls and engage the defending archers in close combat, thereby wiping them out as mass infantry charges always do to archers.
Note that the walls and defenses of Oligarch could handle 20k or 40k attacking force and had done so multiple times. There were enough infantry to repulse their infantry from the walls, and enough archers to kill the enemy at range. The "archer only" attack was designed purely to suck the infantry out so they could be immediately slaughtered on the field rather than holding behind the walls while the archers dueled.
That tactic, and that tactic alone, made holding Oligarch impossible and resulted in the end of Oligarch as a kingdom. Short of that tactic, Oligarch was holding its own with support from the Southern Alliance.
The issue is that any intelligent infantry would have stayed behind the walls and let the defending archers take out the enemy archers rather than charge out of the walls and get cut down. It's a stupid tactic, especially for a turn one action before the attackers have been softened up. I can see the idea behind the defending infantry charging out after there has been a mass infantry battle at the walls...after the attacking infantry have been shattered, and it is time to finish the attacking archers that have been dueling with the defenders the entire battle. But as a turn one tactic, for the defending infantry, to charge out against a fresh and dominant archer-only force when there are defending archers that can kill them in a few turns seems just utterly stupid on the face of it.
And a case could be made that purposefully planning attacks like that, designed to trigger that particular part of the code that sends infantry out when there are no attacking infantry, could be an abuse of the game code.
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As someone who oocly told the general of Sirion to do that exact move, let me tell you why I told him to do it. At the time, Sirion couldn't breach the city at all. Oligarch had 4 infantry RCs and 1 archer RC. With so many infantry guarding the city, it was not possible for Sirion+allies to breach the city with their noble count at the time. Their issue wasn't that they were not bringing enough CS. They were. The problem was how broken militias were. The biggest problem with militia units are that despite the game losing many players, militias were not nerfed at all. Back in the days when we had realms that had more than 50 characters, militias were nice addition to your defense. Now with less people around, militias are pretty much your main source of defense. Some realms have more militia CS in one region than their entire mobile army CS at this point. The game never was designed to be played with so few people. The battle system is utterly broken because we lack people. Archers are doing so well because with so few people to recruit infantry, you can just mow them down with archers before they even get near you. If we have double the number, we wouldn't be seeing archers dominating the game to this degree. Anyway back to where I began, since militias were so problematic, the only way to siege the city was to screw militias over first by using their predictable pattern against them.
As for the tactic, not sure why you think it would be an abuse. They have no commander. That is why they can't be placed where you want. They should be weakened a lot more than now to match the game's reduced noble count/mobile CS. Otherwise there should be different ways to besiege fortified regions. The game doesn't provide any other alternative but to use the dumb behaviour against itself.
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I agree completely and I have written a number of lengthy posts about why I consider that to be a serious problem along with suggestions to help lessen or correct it.
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Sirion and their allies used the "archer only" attack tactic during the assaults on Oligarch.
Note that there were both infantry and archers defending the city. Approximately 10k of each as I remember.
They would attack in one turn with only archers. Five realms worth of archers so it was 10k or 20k worth of archers. Since there were no infantry units at all, the defending infantry would charge out on turn 1 and get slaughtered by the attacking archers. The defending archers would win the battle in five or six turns, maybe eight, and do heavy damage to the attackers, but the infantry were all scattered.
And militia units don't usually rally immediately, so there were a couple turns where the entire infantry defensive line of the city was gone.
So the next turn Sirion and their allies would attack with what archers were able to rally (maybe 5k or 10k survivors) and their 10k or 20k infantry deploying as far forward as possible to avoid as many archer rounds as possible while they closed with the walls. With little to no infantry to man the walls, the infantry would storm the walls and engage the defending archers in close combat, thereby wiping them out as mass infantry charges always do to archers.
Note that the walls and defenses of Oligarch could handle 20k or 40k attacking force and had done so multiple times. There were enough infantry to repulse their infantry from the walls, and enough archers to kill the enemy at range. The "archer only" attack was designed purely to suck the infantry out so they could be immediately slaughtered on the field rather than holding behind the walls while the archers dueled.
That tactic, and that tactic alone, made holding Oligarch impossible and resulted in the end of Oligarch as a kingdom. Short of that tactic, Oligarch was holding its own with support from the Southern Alliance.
The issue is that any intelligent infantry would have stayed behind the walls and let the defending archers take out the enemy archers rather than charge out of the walls and get cut down. It's a stupid tactic, especially for a turn one action before the attackers have been softened up. I can see the idea behind the defending infantry charging out after there has been a mass infantry battle at the walls...after the attacking infantry have been shattered, and it is time to finish the attacking archers that have been dueling with the defenders the entire battle. But as a turn one tactic, for the defending infantry, to charge out against a fresh and dominant archer-only force when there are defending archers that can kill them in a few turns seems just utterly stupid on the face of it.
And a case could be made that purposefully planning attacks like that, designed to trigger that particular part of the code that sends infantry out when there are no attacking infantry, could be an abuse of the game code.
So where was your mobile army?
Militia should not be able to defend cities along against vast armies. If the attackers get creative to defeat militia forces, kudos to them. If you had a lesser infantry:archer ratio in your militia, and a lesser militia:mobile ratio in general, the "problem" you are describing, which really mostly has to do with militia rallying, would just not occur whatsoever.
Oligarch deserved to die. Not because of anything the players did or did not do, I wasn't there, I have no opinion on the realm. But I'm completely opposed to the idea of cities being virtually invincible. If a mobile army attacks with a great number advantage, they *should* win. Militias and wall are there to make cities require more effort to overtake, not to make them impossible to conquer.
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The problem was how broken militias were. The biggest problem with militia units are that despite the game losing many players, militias were not nerfed at all. Back in the days when we had realms that had more than 50 characters, militias were nice addition to your defense. Now with less people around, militias are pretty much your main source of defense. Some realms have more militia CS in one region than their entire mobile army CS at this point. The game never was designed to be played with so few people. The battle system is utterly broken because we lack people.
This. Exactly this. There have been some recent changes to moderate militia since the timeperiod being discussed, but I think we may still need more.
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https://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php/topic,8257.msg165596.html
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The mobile army was in Oligarch at the time. Somewhere in the 5k to 10k range as I remember. There were around a dozen active players at the time.
It could not win in a stand up fight against the 20k to 30k armies of three or four dozen nobles the North was sending at the time, but it could raid and stuff like that.
Along with the 20k militia, it could hold the city against even the mega 30k armies and four dozen nobles the North was bringing against it.
And when the beaten Northern armies went back home to refit, we could go out and retake regions or raid for food and gold and the like.
Oligarch was a very rich city which could grow a lot of food inside its walls, and we had support from the Southern Alliance. Mostly economic and food related. Though we did see the occasional Southern Army rolling through after Sirion called all of their allies into the field against us. It generally made us a very hard nut to crack.
Then Sirion used the archer-only abuse to suck the infantry out to get slaughtered, and threw enough wounding magic scrolls at the nobility to keep half of the nobles in comas for a week or two at a time. Then they would attack with their infantry when we only had a handful of remaining nobles to rally and there was just no way to fight them at all. They could sack the city for days at a time with their constant magic attacks against the nobility while burning the walls and economy down and basically making it impossible for our players to even play the game. That's the real reason Oligarch was abandoned in the end. Sirion did that two or three times in a row, and there was just no way to play the game against them. The game just wasn't designed with those tactics in mind and it gave Sirion an overwhelming advantage that simply could not be played against.
Very similar to what Sirion did with the portal event that stripped the walls from Perdan City and the surround regions, erased their best recruitment centers, and gave walls to Sirion allied regions. That has been partially dealt with via a responding portal event to return at least the walls, but it's endemic of the effects of magic in what is supposed to be a low-magic continent. That is another subject though.
The main thing I was focusing on is the archer-only tactic they used in drawing out the infantry by abusing the code that sends infantry out to charge after the attacking infantry is decimated. It's really odd because there used to be code that kept the infantry on the walls for several turns before ALLOWING them to charge out. I remember old battles where they wouldn't charge until turn 8 or 9. Now they charge on the opening turn against intact archer squads. It just makes no sense when that happens.
Much like the "suicide squad" tactic used to suck all of the archers to attack a single suicide squad deployed ahead of the army.
Basically, I take notice of tactics that change the way entire wars are fought. Some of them are just smart tactics. Some of them are abuses of unintended side-effects. And just like we need to find a way of balancing militias against the new, smaller player base.
The Southern Alliance ran into that issue actually. We could smash Northern armies again and again in the field, but taking a city was nearly impossible even with our entire army. And then 5k and 10k militia units started appearing out of no where when we marched into their regions, and that made things difficult for us. Basically, militia is an issue we need to deal with. It is too powerful for the present player base. And if we're being honest, many very small realms with three or four nobles are basically depending on militia to survive. I don't think that was ever the intention of the militia system.
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The mobile army was in Oligarch at the time. Somewhere in the 5k to 10k range as I remember. There were around a dozen active players at the time.
It could not win in a stand up fight against the 20k to 30k armies of three or four dozen nobles the North was sending at the time, but it could raid and stuff like that.
Along with the 20k militia, it could hold the city against even the mega 30k armies and four dozen nobles the North was bringing against it.
And when the beaten Northern armies went back home to refit, we could go out and retake regions or raid for food and gold and the like.
Oligarch was a very rich city which could grow a lot of food inside its walls, and we had support from the Southern Alliance. Mostly economic and food related. Though we did see the occasional Southern Army rolling through after Sirion called all of their allies into the field against us. It generally made us a very hard nut to crack.
There is your problem. Oligarch being able to fend off 30k CS with the help of militia units mainly. That was never the case back in the days. 12 nobles fending off 30+ nobles not because of walls but because of militia units. The game has tried to balance itself in many ways but it has failed mostly. To name a few:
1) Large realms making a lot less gold due to region restrictions. Small realms can generate gold efficiently. More so when you only have a city. Then you can milk the damn thing. Which doesn't make much sense but it is there to discourage realms from getting too big. This should probably be fixed to encourage realms to be more dense even if they are big. As long as they can keep the density, realms should still generate gold efficiently but for now that is not the case.
2) You have a problem when your primary defense relies on your immobile militia units. The game needs to separate actual soldiers from militias. Actual stationary soldiers need to be limited harshly depending on your noble count while remaining militias need to be treated as guardsmen or 'police' if we are to use our existing mechanics and make police units perform a lot worse than they are now. Militias were never meant to be your 1st line of defense. Your first line of defense should be your own army. Your last line of defense is your peasants which devastate your realm from even using it once. It is quite lenient on its punishment for using it at the moment. War in BM is essentially a joke at the moment because most people rely on non-controllable units to defend them rather than actual people. Too many artificial garbage prevent realm deaths. I get why they want to do so but it is at a point where it is hurting more to have them around than not due to some extreme cases. Maybe these extreme cases need to be addressed by implementing some kind of cap on how many peasants can spawn. At the moment big cities are too difficult to siege when that city happens to be your capital and your realm is small enough to summon them endlessly.
3) Sirion with their allies brought more than most realms in the game could bring to siege the city yet they still failed. That is a problem when the game's biggest CS army is not enough to bring a single city. It is just a failed design that needs to be corrected. At that time, Oligarch had too many layered defenses. You bring the city down with everything you have then you get pushed out by peasants who had more CS than most of the realms on the continent put together. And let me tell you that I am not a big fan of Sirion and their allies. You complain about how unfair it was for them to use such a tactic to draw out militia units but in fact you should be complaining about how flawed the game is since it forced some players result to abuse the game to siege one damn city. When all traditional methods fail, all you have left in your hands are non traditional ones. I really hope the game will provide more ways to siege a city or balance the broken system because simply put militias are bloody broken and they need to be fixed ASAP. That will help the dev team's plan of shrinking realms down quickly. Militias are just way too outdated and they need to be updated accordingly as we no longer are playing the game someone of us joined a decade+ ago. With only 400 players, Militias need to be weakened to 1/5 since the game is using the same militia system from the time when it had 2000 players.
Then Sirion used the archer-only abuse to suck the infantry out to get slaughtered, and threw enough wounding magic scrolls at the nobility to keep half of the nobles in comas for a week or two at a time. Then they would attack with their infantry when we only had a handful of remaining nobles to rally and there was just no way to fight them at all. They could sack the city for days at a time with their constant magic attacks against the nobility while burning the walls and economy down and basically making it impossible for our players to even play the game. That's the real reason Oligarch was abandoned in the end. Sirion did that two or three times in a row, and there was just no way to play the game against them. The game just wasn't designed with those tactics in mind and it gave Sirion an overwhelming advantage that simply could not be played against.
When someone is attacking your realm with 3 times the number of people no wonder they are overwhelming. Oligarch lasted more than it should have because the system was broken. Without having any allies, it was inevitable that one day Oligarch would come to an end. Oligarch was abusing both militias and peasants. Can't really blame someone for doing the same.
Very similar to what Sirion did with the portal event that stripped the walls from Perdan City and the surround regions, erased their best recruitment centers, and gave walls to Sirion allied regions. That has been partially dealt with via a responding portal event to return at least the walls, but it's endemic of the effects of magic in what is supposed to be a low-magic continent. That is another subject though.
Whoever did the portal event probably had a vendetta against Perdan. Because portal events should have never had so much impact on the game especially on EC. The devs had somewhat deviated from the BM's theme of having low magic. Magic has run rampant recently and I hope it gets reduced soon meaning no more silly portal events on EC at least. It is getting ridiculous. We are apparently playing a high fantasy game when it is supposed to be a low fantasy game.
The main thing I was focusing on is the archer-only tactic they used in drawing out the infantry by abusing the code that sends infantry out to charge after the attacking infantry is decimated. It's really odd because there used to be code that kept the infantry on the walls for several turns before ALLOWING them to charge out. I remember old battles where they wouldn't charge until turn 8 or 9. Now they charge on the opening turn against intact archer squads. It just makes no sense when that happens.
Much like the "suicide squad" tactic used to suck all of the archers to attack a single suicide squad deployed ahead of the army.
Basically, I take notice of tactics that change the way entire wars are fought. Some of them are just smart tactics. Some of them are abuses of unintended side-effects. And just like we need to find a way of balancing militias against the new, smaller player base.
Some people are just more observant than others and noticed how units react during sieges. You need to think why people had to result to the way of luring infantry units out of the walls. You didn't notice the difference before because you've never seen realms attacking cities with just archers. For a very long time, archers were useless. Only in the past 2-3 years, they started to be more useful thanks to many buffs they received. With losing so many people, we are also seeing archers being more effective. Being able to attack every round is always better than walking toward your target for 4 rounds then attacking. It is just more efficient to have many archers. That is why you are now seeing buffs to infantry. Maybe cavalry units need to be buffed so they take a lot less archer hits. Then they might actually start to be a great counter to archers.
The Southern Alliance ran into that issue actually. We could smash Northern armies again and again in the field, but taking a city was nearly impossible even with our entire army. And then 5k and 10k militia units started appearing out of no where when we marched into their regions, and that made things difficult for us. Basically, militia is an issue we need to deal with. It is too powerful for the present player base. And if we're being honest, many very small realms with three or four nobles are basically depending on militia to survive. I don't think that was ever the intention of the militia system.
Peasant militias are too significant. They need to be reduced. Those random militias you encountered are probably from regions hating your realm. The problem is there are too many coming out all of sudden. If the dev team wants to really utilize this feature then they will need to slash off 0 from every region's population to limit the number of peasants that are showing up because there are just too many spawning when regions hate you. Looting is starting to be less viable and realms really need to have more diplomats when we are lacking players to even lead troops.
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I will elaborate on a few points mentioned here:
1) Initially Oligarch had around 40k militia which held off anything
2) Then we gained more nobles, lowered the militia to 12k and used the rest of the gold to field mobile army.
3) Our noble count reached same as Sirion and we were winning battles even in the open field
4) Sirion's allies entered beating us back and we lost some nobles because of it and raised militia back to 20k or so with a 10k mobile force
5) Everytime we left the city, because Commonyr and Greatbridge were hateful now, we faced 5-6k peasant militia. This caused us to lose more nobles as we were stuck in the city mostly
6) More militia, less mobile again and then about 3 occurances of peasant militia?
In summary, Oligarch for the half of its time didn't fully rely on militia but on mobile force. There were several issues overall though:
1) Peasant militia is overpowered and its effects too easy to repair before the enemy brings the next wave of attack
2) There was too much magic used against Oligarch.
3) The spawning of peasant militia upon arrival due to hateful ruins everything for smaller realms. You get stuck in your own regions.
The archer opening siege is one I don't see as an abuse though. Ranged attacks make sense. It's a strategy Zakky and I fleshed out at the time after tye fall of Taselak, so in that sense I helped defeat Oligarch I fear.
Oligarch as a single realm can field 40k militia no problem. One the one hand it makes sense that the largest city is nearly impossible to take, but on the other hand militia is powerful and has little downsides.
I would support initiatives like increasing the rate at which militia walks away for instance, to strengthen the idea of them being more temporary.
I would also once more beg that the peasant militia rising up due to hateful to be removed and peasant militia called by rulers to be weakened somehow.
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I see you didn't read what I wrote.
First off, I said we need to rebalance mlitia to make it less powerful. Using very similar arguments. The current size of militias compared to the current player base is...out of balance. And we see that far more now than ever in the past.
Secondly, Oligarch had allies in the Southern Alliance who were aiding Oligarch in many ways. Gold. Food. And even some military aid. And I will remind you that Oligarch was winning the Sirion Civil War before Sirion called in all of her allies to protect her. Then, absolutely, the war turned against us. That is when the Southern Alliance began seriously aiding us and there is no way the realm could have held without that aid. I have been very up front with that point.
In much the same way that Highmarch never could have held against the Northern Alliance without the Southern Alliance funding their military and marching to fight with them, Oligarch never could have held without Southern Alliance support.
Oligarch abused no rules. We simply had a well-layered defense with the strongest walls, devoted nobles, and enough money and food coming into our realm from the South to keep us operating far better than a single city could otherwise maintain. Do you really think we could have maintained a 20k CS militia AND had the money to fund an equal sized mobile army that kept...what was it...FIVE other realms on their toes for months on the resources of a single city? Sorry. No. That did not happen. I was the banker of Oligarch. I know what I speak of.
Yes, in the last month or two we were down to a 5k to 10k mobile army. After Sirion pulled their trick with the archer-opening to suck all the infantry out (both noble and militia I will note), and the magic scrolls to keep our nobles wounded, we never fully recovered. When they pulled the same attack again and again, it put the nail in the coffin of Oligarch. It's not fun not being able to play a game because the enemy is using magic to keep your nobles wounded for a week or more at a time. And the archer-opening that causes infantry to rush out and be slaughtered is just a cheap abuse of a system that was never designed for a pure archer force.
Also. I will note that I have played this game for over a decade. In all that time, I have never led an infantry unit into battle. I have taken Cavalry. I have lately used Mixed-Infantry and ranged special forces. But since the very beginning, I have always used archers predominantly. Archers have always been useful. One of my characters killed the King of Kthon with an archer unit in battle. That was the better part of a decade ago. And I can't count how many nobles I've wounded or units I've wiped out in battle over the years. Yes, an archer unit requires an infantry to survive in most cases. You simply can't lay down enough fire to kill an infantry unit before it runs over you. Or at least you couldn't in the past. You relied on the infantry line to hold while you filled the enemy full of arrows. The standard archer opening where the archers started in front while the infantry moved forward under your arrows is a time-honored tactic that has controlled battlefields for over a decade. Heck, I remember archer units fleeing from battle en masse when the infantry started advancing. That doesn't happen as much now as it used to.
It's the balance of forces with each type of unit contributing to the battle that makes the game interesting. The Cavalry charge. The infantry wall. The archer swarms. The special forces doing their fun stuff on the fringes. The mixed infantry that does a bit of everything and contributes everywhere. It's a balance that has worked in interesting ways for over a decade. And I have always been on the ranged side of that balance, with one or two forays into the cavalry game for fun.
Gathering five realms worth of archers into a single battle line and then marching into battle without infantry support so they can suck the militia and noble infantry units out into the open and slaughtering them before they can even reach the archers is something I never saw in the old days. It simply wasn't a viable tactic. Perhaps it is this boosting of archer units you talk about that made it possible? If so, I certainly agree that it is time to rebalance the infantry versus archer game to be more...realistic.
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I remember Perdan PMW forces. They employed full Infantry army against Nivemus in the past war with such ruthless effectiveness. Infantry Charge, you name it, you have it as part of Marshal opening setting. I could not beat Perdan infantry attacks till we were given breather to build those top quality recruitment centers. However in much recent times, archers have taken over the role. My character in Nivemus used to command the biggest infantry unit in battles, now he changes to ranged units, so are many other characters. Can't blame them if archers and ranged so powerful nowadays. Still remember Range 5 Special Forces? That do quite a damage. Infantry charge is previous fashion in battlefields, now it is Archer Opening now.
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@Medron, to the best of my knowledge even at the end we received very little financial support? Then I assume this was after I paused? Till then we always survived without aid.
I should add that in total we've spent atleast 60k+ family wealth to support Oligarch. We were running at improved taxes for almost the entire duration of the war.
As to inf vs archers. Keep in mind that a while ago the archer bug that reduced archer damaged by factor 3 was fixes. So archers now are much stronger than in the past.
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Oligarch abused no rules.
You abused no rules. They abused no rules. However, you used some broken tactics to keep Oligarch alive long after it should have fallen if the game were more properly balanced. Therefore, when they did break it, it makes sense that it was also with a broken tactic.
The broken tactic they used is one that is easy to see in a single battle, which makes it easy to criticize. However, all the broken tactics described in this thread—on both sides—need to be reined in. Off the top of my head, those are:
- Drawing infantry out from behind walls with an archer-only attacking force
- Peasant militias being too powerful, too easy to spawn, and too little damaging to the region/realm
- Militia in general being too strong and too reliable
- Magic on the EC
I'd be happy to have others remind me of any that I've missed.
I want to be absolutely clear that I do not consider either Oligarch and its allies, nor Sirion and its allies, to have done anything wrong in this. The fault, to the extent that there is fault here, lies with us, the developers, who allowed these imbalances to continue to exist, and the way forward lies not in trying to assign blame or decide whose behaviour was less acceptable, but in determining how we can make things better balanced and more fun for the future.
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Basically, I take notice of tactics that change the way entire wars are fought. Some of them are just smart tactics. Some of them are abuses of unintended side-effects. And just like we need to find a way of balancing militias against the new, smaller player base.
The Southern Alliance ran into that issue actually. We could smash Northern armies again and again in the field, but taking a city was nearly impossible even with our entire army. And then 5k and 10k militia units started appearing out of no where when we marched into their regions, and that made things difficult for us. Basically, militia is an issue we need to deal with. It is too powerful for the present player base. And if we're being honest, many very small realms with three or four nobles are basically depending on militia to survive. I don't think that was ever the intention of the militia system.
They didn't appear out of nowhere. That was the result of weeks/months of hard work which put Brigdha at great personal risk for an outcome that's far from reliable. And the main benefit of those militia wasn't that they held territory but rather that they broke up the coordination of SA advances and greatly diminished the stability of those regions if they were captured.
The thing to remember with militia is that gold spent on maintaining them can't be spent on mobile force so a realm which places all its emphasis on a strong defensive position sacrifices mobility. Yes that can stop a city from being captured as easily as attackers might want - though note that Oligarch fell and in spectacular fashion - but it also makes the defending realm fairly irrelevant.
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I agree with all the points Anaris made.
Those are the issues I think should be addressed.
There are probably others, but those would stick high on my list right now.
8)
Would it be possible to make militia archers go scattergories when it comes to targeting enemies while noble-led archers are more accurate and focused? I don't know how the code handles them, so don't know if they can be separated in that way, but if they can that may be a good idea.
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Anaris's four points are a great place to start.
I understand the concept behind hateful spawning peasants but with peasant militias being too strong, they can stop small realms from leaving their border at all. Basing the number of peasants purely based on population is a bad design as numbers of each region are too high compared to what normal realms can field unless you are entering wastelands.
I don't remember who mentioned it but someone mentioned an idea involving a garrison. Instead of having militias maybe we should have that. Give each region a maximum number of garrison and make it not based on region's population or gold. Just set it to maybe at most 3k CS except maybe border regions to 5k CS.
As for archer drawing out infantry, we have to approach this carefully. If you let infantry just sit in the front row, archers in the back can just shoot them down until they wipe infantry out. Same for R5 SF shooting them down. Maybe fortification level lowering the range of enemy archers might help to force archers to move forward (maybe lv of fort / 3 rounding down might be good. That will reduce R4 archer's range against fort 5 to R3 so they will shoot from the middle which is within your defending archers' range). Infantry not leaving the wall until the number of men drops to a certain level might help too.
But in general, there needs to be more ways to siege a city. Can't just frontal assault all the time. I wish there was a way to implement supply lines. So you can literally starve a city. Kinda hard when you can just buy food and bringing them instantaneously.
Summoning peasant militia should be your last option. You shouldn't be able to use it more than once per war I feel. Once you press that you should pretty much be out of the war. Devastating your regions(preventing regions from recovering lost stats until they disband) + disabling RCs(emptying+not refilling) until peasants disappear might be a good start.
As for magic, please for the love of god, let's not do more portal events on EC. So sick of so called random events that screw a certain realm over. If portal events are going to stay then they should purely be RP stuff. No in game impact whatsoever. Scrolls need to be reduced on EC so we don't see people spamming 10 scrolls before a battle. I don't mind seeing magic steed/weapon/armor ones but other ones are just crazy. Reviving dead heroes, severely injuring nobles etc... those got to go from EC at least.
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Would it be possible to make militia archers go scattergories when it comes to targeting enemies while noble-led archers are more accurate and focused? I don't know how the code handles them, so don't know if they can be separated in that way, but if they can that may be a good idea.
It's possible—and I like the idea, and possibly also increasing the focus-fire for higher-training units—but not as trivial as just adjusting the ratios.
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I think it is just better to make all archers do that instead of just militia units but assign the ratio 3 ways - units closeby, units farther away, and the ground(missed arrows). Depending on training, maybe adjust the ratio so there are less ratio leaning toward missed. I'd just slash militia unit's morale(cap at 50 and set to police) and CS in general. Maybe upon becoming militia units they lose 50% of their stats or something while pay is doubled.
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I still don't really see "archers drawing out infantry" as being a problem. What else are they to do? If the infantry stays behind the walls, they get hammered without retaliating. But if they reach the archers in melee, they can quickly make ground meat out of them. If you just end the battle there after a turn or two, it doesn't change anything, it just makes the battles take more days instead of battle turns.
But seriously, if 20k CS archers attack a city with 10k CS of archer militia and 10k CS of infantry militia, with lvl 5 walls, I fully expect the militia to win. From what I was described, I'd still expect it to win.
If 50k CS of archers attack a city that has the same composition, though, then yea, the militia should lose. But you know what, if 50k CS of infantry attack the same thing, they should win too.
All in all, though, the main issue was that militia would not rally right away.
If a realm is afraid of enemies drawing out infantry with pure archer armies, there's a number of really simple fixes. First of all is: don't rely on militia so much. Second is: be mindful of your militia composition. Archer militia would shine behind walls in an archery duel. lvl 5 walls reduce incoming damage significantly. A smallish archer garrison could fend off much larger forces.
It's all kind of rock-paper-scissors, though. And thus, in the end, player choices, and mistakes. A purely archer army is in no way invincible.
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Then you've obviously never seen it in action.
::)
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As to inf vs archers. Keep in mind that a while ago the archer bug that reduced archer damaged by factor 3 was fixes. So archers now are much stronger than in the past.
So the only strategy is for infantry to reach archers lines faster, aggressive front setting. Still have to do something with range 5 but maybe in future if we have Speed statistics to track for the unit types(cavalry, infantry, archer, mixed infantry, special force) to determine who can move faster in battles.
I think it is just better to make all archers do that instead of just militia units but assign the ratio 3 ways - units closeby, units farther away, and the ground(missed arrows). Depending on training, maybe adjust the ratio so there are less ratio leaning toward missed. I'd just slash militia unit's morale(cap at 50 and set to police) and CS in general. Maybe upon becoming militia units they lose 50% of their stats or something while pay is doubled.
I agree, better reduce the efficiency. Maybe make the efficiency of unit correlated with character Leadership skill. The higher your Leadership skill, the more better performance your unit will act in battles. Militia unit without leaders or unit commander should have some missed arrows.
@Chenier. The lone or few infantry units who act as tank to take in all damages that archers give, so that his team archers can fight back. Perhaps with cavalry horse riders at back ready to pounce in to finish the rest of the opposing side. This method was utilized by Kurlock(Thanks Zakky) when Sandalak won the War Islands 2 rounds ago. It was further utilized or improved in Sirion and allies versus Oligarch battles.
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Then you've obviously never seen it in action.
::)
I haven't, but if you've got battle reports to share...
But changes nothing to the fact that city sieges are too hard to begin with anyways. If they found a way to make an overwhelming army win when it wouldn't have, kudos to them. Overwhelming armies should win. If a realm gets ganked by all of its neighbors, it SHOULD die. And I really loathe that all of the game's changes over the last few years seem to make it so that this is the ONLY way to kill a realm, or even just take a city in general.
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Yeah...I can see an overwhelming army winning.
But..30k defenses versus 30k to maybe 40k attackers does not an overwhelming attacking army make. Especially when the defenders are behind level 5 walls.
That makes them a suicide squad, not an overwhelming army.
Remember the standard rule of needing DOUBLE the CS to take a city.
If your alliance of four or five nations has to take advantage of weaknesses in the combat AI and rains of magic to wound the defending nobility and stop their players from being able to play the game at all, just to beat a single nation, then you need to find a better way to play the game.
(Though I will grant once again that Oligarch was receiving support from outside which allowed us to work at a higher peak efficiency than a single nation, truly alone, could have. That did make us much more resilient to the normal attrition of war. Also, only one of Sirion's allies had a truly impressive mobile force. The others were also rans which wouldn't have meant much on their own.)
Oligarch was sending a 10k to 20k army into the field during the Sirion Civil War.
Sirion could normally deploy a 10k to 20k army of their own, which Oligarch handily trounced again and again.
Epollyon could do 10k to 20k as I remember when Sirion called them in and made it a more general war.
The rest maybe provided 5k or 6k each.
It was enough to push Oligarch back, but it wasn't an overwhelming advantage when the city walls were factored in.
Now once again, I do agree that militias need to be toned back. Right now they are handled, and recruited like, standard military units. They simply don't have leaders. They cost a similar amount to train and deploy as noble-led units. They are...the same. That makes it easy for a very small realm to deploy a lot of militia to hold city walls.
What if, instead of treating them like organized, and trained soldiers that simply act like normal military units, we treated the militia as a more untrained reserve? Remember that the modern militia idea of trained soldiers with firearms that can fight and win against a trained military is...well...very modern American in style. But in the medieval world, no peasant had the time to learn how to use a bow and arrow. Only trained men at arms did. And they followed a noble, or were lesser nobility themselves.
What if we treated militia units more like peasant armies? Make them based on the population of the region, with each region lord able to increase or decrease the size of the militia by shifting a setting that would increase or decrease their impact on the economy, but with a finite limit to how large they can be based on that population. And limit them to more infantry-style tactics. Like the peasant armies.
Also, we already have the peasant armies in the code, so I'm thinking that might not be too difficult to implement as coding goes.
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Yeah...I can see an overwhelming army winning.
But..30k defenses versus 30k to maybe 40k attackers does not an overwhelming attacking army make. Especially when the defenders are behind level 5 walls.
That makes them a suicide squad, not an overwhelming army.
Remember the standard rule of needing DOUBLE the CS to take a city.
If your alliance of four or five nations has to take advantage of weaknesses in the combat AI and rains of magic to wound the defending nobility and stop their players from being able to play the game at all, just to beat a single nation, then you need to find a better way to play the game.
(Though I will grant once again that Oligarch was receiving support from outside which allowed us to work at a higher peak efficiency than a single nation, truly alone, could have. That did make us much more resilient to the normal attrition of war. Also, only one of Sirion's allies had a truly impressive mobile force. The others were also rans which wouldn't have meant much on their own.)
But you are making a statement based on a flawed assumption. You don't need x2 to siege a city. That is to siege a city safely and that tactic was used when people mostly fielded infantry. Like I said multiple times (yet you don't seem to understand why your statement is flawed), we no longer have enough people to field 60k CS. Even with many realms putting together their armies they can hardly field anything close to it. Yet it is easy to put 20-30k CS of militia in a city granted the city is rich enough. That is why we are having this discussion of fixing the problem. From Anaris' comment, he clearly understands the flaw of the current system and will most likely work on a solution that will at least lessen some of the issues. You are constantly talking about how Oligarch's fall was unfair but it is the other way around. It was unfair for the realm to last so long behind the walls relying on militias. It was okay when Oligarch had 20+ nobles, fielding 20k CS army but once the realm was down to 12 nobles with 10k CS, it should have fallen relatively quickly. Yet thanks to the broken militia system and the addition of poorly thought out peasant militia system in an attempt to forcely keep realms alive, it just turned the whole thing into a !@#$ show that dragged on for too many months. I am just grateful that all the problems are finally being recognized and will be worked on. Maybe by the time this year, we will no longer see people relying too heavily on militias to keep them alive.
Oligarch was sending a 10k to 20k army into the field during the Sirion Civil War.
Sirion could normally deploy a 10k to 20k army of their own, which Oligarch handily trounced again and again.
Epollyon could do 10k to 20k as I remember when Sirion called them in and made it a more general war.
The rest maybe provided 5k or 6k each.
It was enough to push Oligarch back, but it wasn't an overwhelming advantage when the city walls were factored in.
Now once again, I do agree that militias need to be toned back. Right now they are handled, and recruited like, standard military units. They simply don't have leaders. They cost a similar amount to train and deploy as noble-led units. They are...the same. That makes it easy for a very small realm to deploy a lot of militia to hold city walls.
That is what kept Oligarch longer than it should have. Hopefully this problem will be fixed so small realms die when they should.
What if, instead of treating them like organized, and trained soldiers that simply act like normal military units, we treated the militia as a more untrained reserve? Remember that the modern militia idea of trained soldiers with firearms that can fight and win against a trained military is...well...very modern American in style. But in the medieval world, no peasant had the time to learn how to use a bow and arrow. Only trained men at arms did. And they followed a noble, or were lesser nobility themselves.
What if we treated militia units more like peasant armies? Make them based on the population of the region, with each region lord able to increase or decrease the size of the militia by shifting a setting that would increase or decrease their impact on the economy, but with a finite limit to how large they can be based on that population. And limit them to more infantry-style tactics. Like the peasant armies.
Also, we already have the peasant armies in the code, so I'm thinking that might not be too difficult to implement as coding goes.
I think units set to militia should be treated like retired soldiers. Maybe they should become weaker every passing weak and after about 21~42 days (which is a year in BM time) they all disappear. But until they disappear, they are paid the same despite them becoming weaker over time to discourage people from putting too many of them. Or maybe there should be something like CS limit based on your mobile CS or noble count.
If devs really want small realms that are active and full of people, basing it on # of nobles will certainly help them survive. But again, militias need to be weakened considerably.
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You are accurate that 60k armies are rather hard to get together.
I've never seen one in all my years. The largest armies I've ever seen are the 40k armies that Sirion's Northern Alliance has been pushing around over the last year. And I've been in a lot of wars. Most large armies in my experience are around 20k, and that has stayed true for the last decade.
The difference is that those armies are increasingly being made up of smaller numbers of larger units as the player base shrinks. I remember a time when 30 men was a good standard unit. Now if you can't recruit to 60 men you are a poor piker. The income is simply going to fewer people so each unit is getting stronger. But at the same time, less money is going to the nobles now since regions don't generate as much income for small numbers of nobles. So a lot of gold is lost to inefficiency. But it still results in smaller numbers of more powerful units.
What you've failed to notice is that I've agreed that militias are a problem. They've been a major issue for most wars of conquest for at least the last couple years. The only way to break a realm is to surround and starve it out, but if it has allies selling it food and sending money, you can't do that. Oligarch ran into that issue while trying to take the Sirion City near it during the Sirion Civil War. Oligarch could beat the Sirions every day of the week in the field but couldn't break the city. Then Sirion ran into it when they tried to break Oligarch. The Southern Alliance ran into it while they were rolling over everything north of Highmarch. And Sirion is probably going to run into it soon with Perdan. Lots of wars over the last couple years at least have seen this problem.
I don't agree that it is unfair for the militias to do what they do. They've done it for every realm for years now. That's an equal fairness. Or perhaps an equal unfairness.
What I want is the game mechanics fixed so realms don't abuse them, while fixing the militia issue so it balances things better for all nations. I want equal fairness for all so everybody can have fun playing without unreasonable or unrealistic battles being fought that tug at the willing sense of belief we all put into this game.
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about 21~42 days (which is a year in BM time)
That's not a year, it's a season or two.
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That's not a year, it's a season or two.
oh right. So 84 days is a year. That is actually decently long. Almost 3 months. Not sure you want people to keep lots of militia units for that long.
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You are accurate that 60k armies are rather hard to get together.
I've never seen one in all my years. The largest armies I've ever seen are the 40k armies that Sirion's Northern Alliance has been pushing around over the last year. And I've been in a lot of wars. Most large armies in my experience are around 20k, and that has stayed true for the last decade.
40k CS is pretty big but there were ones a lot bigger over the years. If you haven't seen anything bigger than 40k CS, you probably missed few big battles that happened. Here are a couple examples:
http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Lapallanch_Family/Zakilevo/Epic_Battle_of_Oberndorf (http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Lapallanch_Family/Zakilevo/Epic_Battle_of_Oberndorf)
http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Lapallanch_Family/Kurlock/First_Siege_of_Taselak_City (http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Lapallanch_Family/Kurlock/First_Siege_of_Taselak_City)
http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Lapallanch_Family/Kurlock/Second_Siege_of_Taselak_City (http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Lapallanch_Family/Kurlock/Second_Siege_of_Taselak_City)
With the game's reduced noble count, it is harder put together 40k CS since we now only have 1 character per continent.
The difference is that those armies are increasingly being made up of smaller numbers of larger units as the player base shrinks. I remember a time when 30 men was a good standard unit. Now if you can't recruit to 60 men you are a poor piker. The income is simply going to fewer people so each unit is getting stronger. But at the same time, less money is going to the nobles now since regions don't generate as much income for small numbers of nobles. So a lot of gold is lost to inefficiency. But it still results in smaller numbers of more powerful units.
What you've failed to notice is that I've agreed that militias are a problem. They've been a major issue for most wars of conquest for at least the last couple years. The only way to break a realm is to surround and starve it out, but if it has allies selling it food and sending money, you can't do that. Oligarch ran into that issue while trying to take the Sirion City near it during the Sirion Civil War. Oligarch could beat the Sirions every day of the week in the field but couldn't break the city. Then Sirion ran into it when they tried to break Oligarch. The Southern Alliance ran into it while they were rolling over everything north of Highmarch. And Sirion is probably going to run into it soon with Perdan. Lots of wars over the last couple years at least have seen this problem.
I don't agree that it is unfair for the militias to do what they do. They've done it for every realm for years now. That's an equal fairness. Or perhaps an equal unfairness.
What I want is the game mechanics fixed so realms don't abuse them, while fixing the militia issue so it balances things better for all nations. I want equal fairness for all so everybody can have fun playing without unreasonable or unrealistic battles being fought that tug at the willing sense of belief we all put into this game.
The game will always have some flaws. When people discover them, they will use it to their advantage. That is just human nature. Maybe I am getting a wrong idea here but you seem to want people to have a very simplistic approach to the warfare aspect of the game. You want people to bring an army and just clash it head on. Maybe once militias(both normal and peasant) are not as problematic as they are now, we might see new changes.
I don't really see any good approach to the current problem of baiting infantry out with archers. To be honest, it is pretty easy to counter it. You can usually see it coming. The biggest issue was that Oligarch at the time only had archers while relying completely on militia infantry to hold the walls.
With new archer changes, they will no longer just shoot what is in front of them so baiting out infantry units isn't as efficient anyway. Overall, the game needs a better siege mechanic so sieging is not as simplistic and headache inducing. Maybe once that market system change comes, we will actually see cities starve again.
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And once again you either fail to understand what I'm saying or purposefully make stuff up about me.
One of my first actions as a player in this game was a young player in Tara when we and Cagil built the alliance that would later dominate the Atamaran continent. I saw some rather amazing battles there. But even then, Cagil rarely sent out more than 20k at a time. We had another 5 or 6k. Maybe 10k in Foda. The entire alliance may have approached 40k marching strength when we brought soap and water to the screaming goatworshipers not long after. But I don't remember us being any larger than that. And later on, at the height of Tara's power in the end days of Atamara as I and others were tearing down the alliance we'd built and starting the largest civil war in the bloody game, we still didn't go past 20k in size.
I remember seeing reports or rumors of 50k armies on some continents and just shaking my head. That's just not a size that is generally supportable.
Beluaterra and Dwilight realms have rarely gone much over 20k or so in deployable army sizes. Usually once a nation gets big enough to support anything over that, they generally split into two nations because some rich duke wants more or the realm is so spread out they can't hold it all. It's just the way things work. On the continents I've played on of course.
The war islands get rather interesting, but I haven't played on them for a long time. I prefer role playing and politics to straight up powergaming and such.
As for your continued untrue statements about me.
I obviously don't want a simplistic bash and bash war approach. That you would even suggest that is my goal says far more about you than it says about me.
And Oligarch had far more than just archers. They had a mix of archers and infantry, like most realms do. Because just archers without an infantry wall seriously do not work. You cannot win a battle that way under any normal or rational circumstance.
As for how to fix the archer pull infantry issue. Simple really. In concept of course. And previously talked about by me in this thread.
1) Have Archers flee in panic if they don't have an infantry wall in front of them. The way they used to and it appears maybe don't do as much anymore.
2) Have Infantry hold to the walls for longer when battles start, like they used to in my experience. Of course, nobody tried the archer only attack in the old days, so maybe this would have happened back then too. I do remember many battles in the past where the infantry would hold to the ramparts until usually turn 8 or 9 and then sally forth to attack what remained of the enemy. That used to be the standard I saw in city battles all the time.
Those two things, both using code that exists now and more tweaking it rather than going wholesale addition to the battle code, would help to curtail the tactic and make the battles more realistic.
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You are overlooking the fact how wars were fought back in the days. We are seeing more SFs and higher quality units than ever before. Back in the days RC stats weren't as high as now so CS was lower. Not to mention the number of men you could command with your petty income. Now with less people around, people can field larger units. AT was using the old system for most of its lifespan until few years before it closed down. Other islands got the changes that created the current power inflation on the other hand. The only realm on Dwilight that ever got over 30k was Astrum I think? LN might have done it at some point as well but I wasn't there to witness it so can't say much. Dwilight was different in the regard that it only allowed 1 character. AT on the other hand mostly allowed 2 characters.
As for Oligarch, let's not joke about Oligarch having more than just archers. You guys only had archers when the whole archer drawing out infantry happened. Why do you think I even told General of Sirion to do that in the first place? Only 2 people commanded infantry out of 12 nobles Oligarch had while the rest commanded archers. All your other infantry were militia units.
They already panic and flee when there is no infantry. If you are suggesting that archers need to stay behind infantry all the time you are making one of the most used marshal settings obsolete. I think the game should stick with archers staying on the field until infantry units start to slaughter them.
Infantry units are holding the walls just fine. That is why I used to add an infantry unit or to and put them in the rear while putting all my archers in the front to decimate infantry militia units. The mechanics haven't changed much over the years and people just didn't attack with only archers because archers were utterly garbage.
It is simple really. You just need few cavalry units to counter the whole archer tactic. If you don't have one like Oligarch, that then yeah you are probably forced to do that with infantry.
You can make infantry hold the walls all you want but at the end there are always ways to work around the newly added mechanics. If infantry units hold walls longer, I'd just put cavalry in the front along with archers and shoot the hell out of all your units since they won't leave the walls. When they finally do, my cavalry units will smash what little is left of your infantry.
Like I said, unless we get an option to fully control our unit behavior over 20 rounds - doubt any dev would want to grant people that option since that would be too complicated for most of our players - you will always have an issue with unit behaviors.
You need to see a bigger picture than one incident that broke your realm. You need to understand the whole archer only tactic wouldn't have happened if the city was siegable through different ways. If Oligarch could only put 5k militia units at most, why would they have bothered sending only archers to draw out infantry? It is a result of multiple factors not just people exploiting some broken behavioural pattern of dumb infantry code. It is not that simple. It happened due to multiple factors coming together.
1) Militias playing too big of a role in defense
2) Archers being too strong - To be honest I think archers should be really strong for the first couple rounds then lose their effectiveness as they run out of arrows or maybe we can get WIP Anaris suggested which will resolve most of these old issues ::)
3) Oligarch lacking cavalry to stop archers
4) Sirion's reliance on archers (Their army was at 7:3 archer to infantry ratio at the time).
5) Sieging with infantry not as effective - sieging with siege engines is probably one of the dumbest way to take a city when siege engines are hard to comeby and you need x2 the infantry to effectively siege the walls.
I just hope we will get more tools to work with. Apparently the tools we have aren't really efficient at getting the job done.
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You are accurate that 60k armies are rather hard to get together.
I've never seen one in all my years. The largest armies I've ever seen are the 40k armies that Sirion's Northern Alliance has been pushing around over the last year. And I've been in a lot of wars. Most large armies in my experience are around 20k, and that has stayed true for the last decade.
The difference is that those armies are increasingly being made up of smaller numbers of larger units as the player base shrinks. I remember a time when 30 men was a good standard unit. Now if you can't recruit to 60 men you are a poor piker. The income is simply going to fewer people so each unit is getting stronger. But at the same time, less money is going to the nobles now since regions don't generate as much income for small numbers of nobles. So a lot of gold is lost to inefficiency. But it still results in smaller numbers of more powerful units.
What you've failed to notice is that I've agreed that militias are a problem. They've been a major issue for most wars of conquest for at least the last couple years. The only way to break a realm is to surround and starve it out, but if it has allies selling it food and sending money, you can't do that. Oligarch ran into that issue while trying to take the Sirion City near it during the Sirion Civil War. Oligarch could beat the Sirions every day of the week in the field but couldn't break the city. Then Sirion ran into it when they tried to break Oligarch. The Southern Alliance ran into it while they were rolling over everything north of Highmarch. And Sirion is probably going to run into it soon with Perdan. Lots of wars over the last couple years at least have seen this problem.
I don't agree that it is unfair for the militias to do what they do. They've done it for every realm for years now. That's an equal fairness. Or perhaps an equal unfairness.
What I want is the game mechanics fixed so realms don't abuse them, while fixing the militia issue so it balances things better for all nations. I want equal fairness for all so everybody can have fun playing without unreasonable or unrealistic battles being fought that tug at the willing sense of belief we all put into this game.
We used to have a lot more players, who could play twice as many nobles, in realms with much greater tax efficiency. Before estates, because reduced capital radius.
Now, you basically have one 200 man unit instead of four 60 men units, the latter having much more CS than the former not only because it's more men, but because the CS/man is much higher pre-60 than post-100.
Meanwhile, nothing has changed for militia. Heck, people use more of it than they used to. Which further means less gold for mobile units.
5) Sieging with infantry not as effective - sieging with siege engines is probably one of the dumbest way to take a city when siege engines are hard to comeby and you need x2 the infantry to effectively siege the walls.
I just hope we will get more tools to work with. Apparently the tools we have aren't really efficient at getting the job done.
People used to siege with a lot of siege engines. Now people don't want them at all anymore. I'm not sure what changed the meta, but maybe we should buff siege engines?
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In the medium-to-long-term, I'd like to buff both walls and siege engines.
This is all still very nebulous, but I have Ideas about changes to the system that would make it effectively impossible to take a defended city without a significant number of siege engines. One is to make the height of the walls affect archer fire—in both directions. So, for instance, every 2 levels of wall would increase the range of archers atop the wall by 1 line, and reduce the effective range of archers shooting up it by 1 line. This would mean that with range 4 archers on both sides, in a city with level 5 walls, the archers on top of the wall would be able to hit the archers below 4 lines before they'd be able to hit the defenders.
But as I say, that's all still very nebulous, and none of it is in my short-term plans.
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People used to siege with a lot of siege engines. Now people don't want them at all anymore. I'm not sure what changed the meta, but maybe we should buff siege engines?
Archers changed the meta. It was actually a lot easier to siege a city with archers than with siege engines. Archers could weaken enemy infantry units before the infantry line hit the city wall. Before archers became useful, people would do front infantry to get to the walls ASAP. The problem before was that infantry was too good. Maybe with that armour change on infantry, maybe they will make a huge return since 25% is rather significant.
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Would it be possible to make militia archers go scattergories when it comes to targeting enemies while noble-led archers are more accurate and focused? I don't know how the code handles them, so don't know if they can be separated in that way, but if they can that may be a good idea.
For the case for my character currently in Ete City, that would not be fitting. The city gets hit by between 2 - 15 k CS of rogues every turn. Every soldier is a veteran by any measure.
Both militia and noble commended units just keep wasting their arrows on enemies in the back lines (at very reduced efficiency)- allowing the front units to advance and climb the walls.
Why would they do that?
To top it off, archer militia often can't find targets within their range the first turn
EDIT: Did not read about the recent changes - I am eagerly anticipating tomorrow mornings battle!
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In the medium-to-long-term, I'd like to buff both walls and siege engines.
This is all still very nebulous, but I have Ideas about changes to the system that would make it effectively impossible to take a defended city without a significant number of siege engines. One is to make the height of the walls affect archer fire—in both directions. So, for instance, every 2 levels of wall would increase the range of archers atop the wall by 1 line, and reduce the effective range of archers shooting up it by 1 line. This would mean that with range 4 archers on both sides, in a city with level 5 walls, the archers on top of the wall would be able to hit the archers below 4 lines before they'd be able to hit the defenders.
But as I say, that's all still very nebulous, and none of it is in my short-term plans.
I don't mind seeing walls granting extra range but SEs definitely need to compensate for their crappiness. I think infantry should have built in SE that will allow them to scale walls but actually buying one should increase the effectiveness by a lot. Maybe explosive charges should be changed a bit so units carrying those can punch a hole or something. Or at least add a way to damage the walls from a range with trebuchets.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIeAXKAAKv4 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIeAXKAAKv4)
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Maybe militia could get a generic debuff, combined with a buff against rogues? So that they are weaker against human armies than they currently are, but at least just as strong against rogues as they currently are? Mobile troops should always be strongest, though, because otherwise that will incite some realms to dump even more gold into militia at the expense of the players.
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Maybe militia could get a generic debuff, combined with a buff against rogues? So that they are weaker against human armies than they currently are, but at least just as strong against rogues as they currently are? Mobile troops should always be strongest, though, because otherwise that will incite some realms to dump even more gold into militia at the expense of the players.
They need to be nerfed and that's it. They should be worse against both humans and rogues. Being worse against rogues will help both BT and Dwi to shed some realms.
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They need to be nerfed and that's it. They should be worse against both humans and rogues. Being worse against rogues will help both BT and Dwi to shed some realms.
Given how rogue prone those continents are, not having effective militias would mean everyone would have to squat their capitals just in case a huge horde comes in. I don't think that's an improvement.
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Given how rogue prone those continents are, not having effective militias would mean everyone would have to squat their capitals just in case a huge horde comes in. I don't think that's an improvement.
That is what those continents need. They need to achieve 3 noble to 1 region ratio. People are still resisting.
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That is what those continents need. They need to achieve 3 noble to 1 region ratio. People are still resisting.
Yea... if BT ends up with nothing but Thalmarkin, OS, and Angmar, I don't care how dense those realms would become, that's not an improvement.
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They need to be nerfed and that's it. They should be worse against both humans and rogues. Being worse against rogues will help both BT and Dwi to shed some realms.
They are already !@#$ vs rogues:
- Don't fire on enemies within range the first turn
- Sprays missiles among available targets on the row furthest back.
Hell, this morning they did not even bother to fight the rogues, but let the monsters kill peasants, the undead hurt production and damage the fortifications. I assume that is a bug, though.
@Anaris: If the recent update was about increasing the ratio of units to target the enemy on the front line before moving on to targets further back, I do not notice much difference.
In the most recent battle, the front line unit suffered only about 15 % casualties the first round...quite far from an overkill.
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@Anaris: If the recent update was about increasing the ratio of units to target the enemy on the front line before moving on to targets further back, I do not notice much difference.
In the most recent battle, the front line unit suffered only about 15 % casualties the first round...quite far from an overkill.
Maybe it's his way of saying time to grab infantry.
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Interesting that you've notice no battle being fought too.
10K worth of Rogues just marched into the capital of Nothoi on Beluaterra, fought no battle, and immediately started a TO.
Fully defended city with both militia and noble regiments in house BTW. And level 5 walls.
I think we've got a bug here...
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Interesting that you've notice no battle being fought too.
10K worth of Rogues just marched into the capital of Nothoi on Beluaterra, fought no battle, and immediately started a TO.
Fully defended city with both militia and noble regiments in house BTW. And level 5 walls.
I think we've got a bug here...
Once that bug gets fixed you guys will be fighting those rogues without the wall XD
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I've been wanting to trim out the militia a little bit.
Though I was hoping the general could just hand some of the larger units over to nobles for a bit better use.
Thinning them out this way was not the plan I had in mind...
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Maybe it's his way of saying time to grab infantry.
It should be done in a RP-event.
Like "All archer RCs on the Beluaterra are suffering from a contagious variant of Parkinsons disease" :D
Not objecting against adjusting efficiency of archers, but I think we should try to keep as much realistic begaviour in battle as possible.
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It is very realistic. All archers aren't very good at shooting arrows. ;)
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I am still annoyed by this issue. It leads to obviously unnatural behaviour in battle.
The aim of the implementation on new archer targeting was to cancel out the tactic applied in EC war with putting a single cannon fodder at front to preserve the rest, resulting in an overkill on that unit.
Now, front unit will only we dealt 10-20% damage before the archers pick targets further back. Archers will even advance and break the ranks to hit units further back, than to hold ground and attack enemies within range.
Also, if a small unit is deployed furthest down at the back of the enemies line, it will receive a massive overkill. In this way, the changes implemented corrected one wrong by adding several.
If the aim of this targeting was to annul the tactics in EC war, I suggest the algorithm is revisited to reduce the unwanted effects.
If I am mistaken, and the aim was to reduce archers efficiency in general, a more generak nerf e.g. on damage dealt would be preferred by me.
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Since the whole battle code will be rewritten at some point (maybe in several years), not sure changing the whole algorithm would be worth it.
Try to adapt this new system. This defintely makes ranged units less reliable so why not switch over to good old pure infantry army tactic of the old? Once you can close the gap, you can make a short work of enemy archers.
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I have played this game for over ten years.
I've never seen any realm using only infantry.
I in fact have never LED an infantry unit. I've used mostly archers since the beginning. I currently have some range 5 special forces, some range 3 mixed infantry, and have commanded cavalry numerous times in the past. But never infantry. Why? It didn't interest me, so I didn't.
The point is, that I've never seen any realm rely purely on infantry. The average I've seen is between one third and two thirds of a nation's army is infantry, the rest is archers, and then a few nobles messing around with the other possibilities.
Perdan and Astrum are two realms that partially break this. Perdan has very powerful special forces recruiting centers, even after the admins erased the MOST powerful one during the Walls and Recruiting Center Destruction Portal Stone Event. And Astrum has the best Mixed Infantry RCs in the game. So both of those realms have a higher percentage of SF or MI in their lines of battle. But even there I see plenty of standard infantry and archers walking around.
Yes, the infantry and the archers are the most basic force used by the vast majority of nobles. But there's never been any time that I've played when only one of those was used. ;)
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I have played this game for over ten years.
I've never seen any realm using only infantry.
I in fact have never LED an infantry unit. I've used mostly archers since the beginning. I currently have some range 5 special forces, some range 3 mixed infantry, and have commanded cavalry numerous times in the past. But never infantry. Why? It didn't interest me, so I didn't.
The point is, that I've never seen any realm rely purely on infantry. The average I've seen is between one third and two thirds of a nation's army is infantry, the rest is archers, and then a few nobles messing around with the other possibilities.
Perdan and Astrum are two realms that partially break this. Perdan has very powerful special forces recruiting centers, even after the admins erased the MOST powerful one during the Walls and Recruiting Center Destruction Portal Stone Event. And Astrum has the best Mixed Infantry RCs in the game. So both of those realms have a higher percentage of SF or MI in their lines of battle. But even there I see plenty of standard infantry and archers walking around.
Yes, the infantry and the archers are the most basic force used by the vast majority of nobles. But there's never been any time that I've played when only one of those was used. ;)
You've missed a big portion of BM history man. There were few realms known for their infantry armies. Even until around 2013 it was still a thing.
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I have played this game for over ten years.
I've never seen any realm using only infantry.
I in fact have never LED an infantry unit. I've used mostly archers since the beginning. I currently have some range 5 special forces, some range 3 mixed infantry, and have commanded cavalry numerous times in the past. But never infantry. Why? It didn't interest me, so I didn't.
The point is, that I've never seen any realm rely purely on infantry. The average I've seen is between one third and two thirds of a nation's army is infantry, the rest is archers, and then a few nobles messing around with the other possibilities.
Perdan and Astrum are two realms that partially break this. Perdan has very powerful special forces recruiting centers, even after the admins erased the MOST powerful one during the Walls and Recruiting Center Destruction Portal Stone Event. And Astrum has the best Mixed Infantry RCs in the game. So both of those realms have a higher percentage of SF or MI in their lines of battle. But even there I see plenty of standard infantry and archers walking around.
Yes, the infantry and the archers are the most basic force used by the vast majority of nobles. But there's never been any time that I've played when only one of those was used. ;)
XD
Westgard has good RCs of every kind, but not really exceptional ones. Oh, maybe no cav centers. And maybe some really, really good melee ones.
But we've got like 24k cs split into two mobile armies of about 10k CS each (other 4k CS is mobile that doesn't tag along).
One army is 100% R5 SF.
The other army is 25% R5 SF and 75% R4 archers. (estimated, I'm not their marshal so I can't check).
I've not seen another realm as lopsided for ranged combat, but I've nonetheless seen a number of realms that are still very lopsided for it.
Westgard hard it worst of all, but in general, leading infantry sucks. You hit the front line in one battle, then your unit takes huge damage, and you have to go back to your capital right away. Sometimes, it gets destroyed without even reaching the front. But if your realm overwhelmingly won the battle, odds are all the archers are fresh. They can keep fighting. Again. And again. And again. And again. Also less chance of wounds and capture. As long as the army wins, you can keep on fighting until wear and tear or gold or morale becomes an issue.
And that's how Selena Chénier became a 33 year old character with 894 honour, while those who really tried hard to lead infantry did not (and eventually gave up on it).
I wouldn't mind if infantry got an additional armor bonus against archers on top of what they already got, if it meant archers could better target the front line.
Heck, could it work based on training? If the attacking archers average 100 training, then they have a high chance of shooting exactly as many arrows as needed on the front row before targeting the second, and the lower the training, the closer the odds of it being what it currently is? With the current tweaks, it's not too bad anymore, but it's still sometimes annoying against monster armies.
Alternatively... hmm... could we grant a tickbox to the marshals? "Should archers overkill the front row: yes/no"? Marshals who tick the box use the old system, where all ranged troops fire on the front row only. Those who don't use the new system. This would actually sound perfect to me. Give them choice. Then screen units are easy to bypass by using the new system, but it's an actual tactical choice, so maybe sometimes they'd want to expose themselves to that risk anyways.
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I have played this game for over ten years.
I've never seen any realm using only infantry.
I in fact have never LED an infantry unit. I've used mostly archers since the beginning. I currently have some range 5 special forces, some range 3 mixed infantry, and have commanded cavalry numerous times in the past. But never infantry. Why? It didn't interest me, so I didn't.
The point is, that I've never seen any realm rely purely on infantry. The average I've seen is between one third and two thirds of a nation's army is infantry, the rest is archers, and then a few nobles messing around with the other possibilities.
Perdan and Astrum are two realms that partially break this. Perdan has very powerful special forces recruiting centers, even after the admins erased the MOST powerful one during the Walls and Recruiting Center Destruction Portal Stone Event. And Astrum has the best Mixed Infantry RCs in the game. So both of those realms have a higher percentage of SF or MI in their lines of battle. But even there I see plenty of standard infantry and archers walking around.
Yes, the infantry and the archers are the most basic force used by the vast majority of nobles. But there's never been any time that I've played when only one of those was used. ;)
Arcaea on FEI continent historically had rubbish archer centers, so while we did field archers we didn't expect much of them, and yes had to rely on massive amounts of infantry. It worked for us only because of an exceptional group of realm leaders that enabled us to have an extremely high character count.
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Oh yes.
Some realms are known for their infantry. And some are known for their archers.
I've never seen a realm myself that uses only one of them.
Though there is a note above that one is ranged SF and archers. When you get someone capable of putting together SF centers that good. Very expensive that is, and so are the SF themselves. You're looking at a serious richman army there. ;)
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Westgard isn't known for good RCs. They have lots of decent ones but none are considered exceptional like Chenier said.
Astrum once ran an army mostly made out of R5 SFs and MIs. 32k CS of moving doom. Grinded 300k CS of monsters in 10 days. 150k behind Eidulb and another 150k just outside of it. Lots of fun.
But this happened before the ranged nerf. Ranged units are still good I'd say. Their attack pattern doesn't make any logical sense but this is a game not a real world battle simulator. Balance > Logic here ma man.
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I was part of that Monster Mash myself. 200 Mixed infantry with 100% armor and 95% weapons with range of 3.
I was part of the wall with the ranged 5 SF behind me. I still have many of those men now on that character.
It is still scary to see that force in action when going up against monsters or undead, even after the archer nerf. It's very hard for even monsters to actually KILL soldiers arrayed one hundred strong with 100% armor.