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[Proposal] Melee Cavalry Mov Speed and Attack Rate rebalance.
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Authored by Grugnas on Apr 9 2017, 1:22 PM.

Details

Summary

This proposal should fix the issue of the early Spear Cavalry rush and improve the Spear Cavalry role in direct combat at same time.

While in the current state Sword Cavalry has superiority in any type of engage, its role is moved in order to be effective against infantry and relatively weak against spear cavalry increasing its movement speed for an effective outflank.
N.B. Sword Cavalry DPS is still higher than Spear cavalry and, despite the Spear Cavalry stats improvement, Sword Cavalry still has chance to win by giving an higher relevance to the engage technique.

While in the current state of game Spear Cavalry lose to infantry melee (yes, swordmen included) despite their high stats, reducing their Attack Rate from 3,5 seconds to 3 seconds will create an interesting counter system between melee infantry and Spear Cavalry (Sword infantry > Spear Infantry > Spear Cavalry > Sword Infantry).
Because Spear Cavalry will still be in disadvantage in a melee cavalry combat despite the attack rate boost, spear cavalry has now a 1.25x bonus against cavalry.
While Spear Cavalry movement speed is now decreased in order to reduce the power of a early phase rush, the Sword Cavalry movement speed has been increased giving a chance to retreat whenever a melee Cavalry combat is going on.
A capture point decrease whenever the Cavalry Breeding technology is unlocked is planned for all cavalry types too.

Test Plan

Spear Cavalry movement speed decrease. attack rate ipmrovement and 1.25x bonus vs cavalry added.
Sword Cavalry movement speed increased.

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Event Timeline

Grugnas created this revision.Apr 9 2017, 1:22 PM
borg- edited edge metadata.EditedApr 10 2017, 8:47 PM

I did some testing, and now he can hit sword cavalry. Against cavalry skimisher, above 10x10 he takes a big beating. We talked a lot about it, we even thought about raising the bonus a little from 1.25x to maybe 1.50x or something like that. After long conversations we came to common sense that 1.25x would be more interesting, because skimisher cavalry is slower, has a low range and can miss your shots with ease, it is only right that you have a more powerful atack.

Another fear I have is that by lowering his attack speed to 3000, he would get even stronger against other units overall, and that happened, but it was really a very small change that could be countered by his slowing down now, Making it more vulnerable against all types of unit and defense structures. And you will have the change of hiding your women faster now. So I think in fact 3000 is ok, it seems a little more realistic too, it was very slow before.

On the speed of the sword cavalry, in my opinion, I think it should be keep the same, okay, now they can lose to spearman cavalry, so it would be fair to be a bit faster but I think the change would not be So significant for This, and make them even stronger in their raidings.

The same thing happened with the champion chivalry, the problem with them is also not a small difference between them, but I think they are already very strong and resilient, they do not need to be so fast, and you can still leave them faster with Some upgrades, so I think they should have the same speed as the normal sword and spearman cavalry, 20/20 or 20/21. Is more realistc too , because they are heavier.

Grugnas updated this revision to Diff 1410.Apr 21 2017, 6:41 PM

updated to fit the PrepareTime entry introduction.

Owners added a subscriber: Restricted Owners Package.Apr 21 2017, 6:41 PM
Grugnas updated this revision to Diff 1411.Apr 21 2017, 6:46 PM
Vulcan added a subscriber: Vulcan.Apr 21 2017, 11:26 PM

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borg- accepted this revision.May 25 2017, 4:30 PM
This revision is now accepted and ready to land.May 25 2017, 4:30 PM
fatherbushido added inline comments.
binaries/data/mods/public/simulation/templates/template_unit_cavalry_melee_spearman.xml
13

still can't agree with that as that's unit design was mainly to counter infantry

fatherbushido added inline comments.May 25 2017, 4:58 PM
binaries/data/mods/public/simulation/templates/template_unit_cavalry_melee_spearman.xml
7–14

Changing that is ok but then change the damage stats.

30

change not really relevant imo (outside of a Run speed cleaning).

An unit dying to an infantry swordsman in a 1v1 fight doesn't really seems to counter infantry at all. If you also consider that swordsman cavalry, higher in dps than spear cavalry, struggles to units like slingers, i can't really figure out the current role of spear cavalry other than women slayer.

fatherbushido edited edge metadata.May 25 2017, 7:41 PM
In D307#22419, @Grugnas wrote:

An unit dying to an infantry swordsman in a 1v1 fight doesn't really seems to counter infantry at all. If you also consider that swordsman cavalry, higher in dps than spear cavalry, struggles to units like slingers, i can't really figure out the current role of spear cavalry other than women slayer.

I don't see the point of the comment.
And testing 1 unit against 1 provides just that information and nothing else.

borg- added a comment.EditedMay 25 2017, 8:17 PM

Historically they were also used to hit other cavalry. I think it's important that the game has a cavalry counter other cavalry, some times spermans and others soldiers cant beat cavalry.

We did a lot of testing, and we came to an agreement that would need that little bonus against cavalry for the objectiv to be reached.

borg- added a comment.EditedMay 25 2017, 8:35 PM

But there is one thing I would change, I think that all cavalry should have the same speed of cavalry skimishers (17.5)

It is a good speed for 3 reasons:
1- the chance of the player to defend himself better, using his infantry and also greater changes to garrison women for example.
2- When you have a good amount of champion chivalry. You simply run to your opponent trying to convert everything you see ahead of you, and will easily be shot down. (because you speed, even faster with speed upgrades).
3- More realistic. Why light cavalry have 17.5 and heavy (champions) have 20+?

fatherbushido added a comment.EditedMay 25 2017, 8:44 PM
In D307#22475, @borg- wrote:

But there is one thing I would change, I think that all cavalry should have the same speed of cavalry skimishers (17.5)

It is a good speed for two reasons:
1- the chance of the player to defend himself better, using his infantry and also greater changes to garrison women for example.
2- When you have a good amount of champion chivalry. You simply run to your opponent trying to convert everything you see ahead of you, and will easily be shot down. (because you speed, even faster with speed upgrades).

Sure, discussions are welcome. (with a global pov)

In D307#22419, @Grugnas wrote:

An unit dying to an infantry swordsman in a 1v1 fight doesn't really seems to counter infantry at all. If you also consider that swordsman cavalry, higher in dps than spear cavalry, struggles to units like slingers, i can't really figure out the current role of spear cavalry other than women slayer.

I don't see the point of the comment.
And testing 1 unit against 1 provides just that information and nothing else.

Since sword cavalry is a wiser choice over spear cavalry in any situation and it makes the spear cavalry just a surplus unit.

In D307#22480, @Grugnas wrote:
In D307#22419, @Grugnas wrote:

An unit dying to an infantry swordsman in a 1v1 fight doesn't really seems to counter infantry at all. If you also consider that swordsman cavalry, higher in dps than spear cavalry, struggles to units like slingers, i can't really figure out the current role of spear cavalry other than women slayer.

I don't see the point of the comment.
And testing 1 unit against 1 provides just that information and nothing else.

Since sword cavalry is a wiser choice over spear cavalry in any situation and it makes the spear cavalry just a surplus unit.

That's at least not true from the cost point of view. But it's pointless to have a ping pong discussion. Instead, let's discuss about that with a global view (design, code, dev, future, feature, orderliness, policy, mp, hardcore player, sp, flavour, history,...)

borg- added a comment.EditedMay 25 2017, 9:06 PM

What do you guys think about the change in speed to 17.5? I find it more coherent and realistic.

We could have a discussion on IRC if everyone agrees, what do you think? Would be interesting and we would have to agree more quickly on all these proposals

In D307#22475, @borg- wrote:

But there is one thing I would change, I think that all cavalry should have the same speed of cavalry skimishers (17.5)

It is a good speed for 3 reasons:
1- the chance of the player to defend himself better, using his infantry and also greater changes to garrison women for example.
2- When you have a good amount of champion chivalry. You simply run to your opponent trying to convert everything you see ahead of you, and will easily be shot down. (because you speed, even faster with speed upgrades).
3- More realistic. Why light cavalry have 17.5 and heavy (champions) have 20+?

I mostly agree with you.
For 3) Agree. Explanation: in fact, it's mainly that light cavalry is ranged and heavy is melee, so to avoid hit and run uncounterable tactic, there is that counter intuitive workaround (which is indeed really weird). The fast speed is also an abstraction of that old -now missing feature aka charge.
For 2) fully agree. We have really hoovercav/
For 1) agree too.

(Elements to consider also: perhaps a planned slowing of all units and also a unit motion rewrite.)

Hard to find a good solution.

In D307#22487, @borg- wrote:

What do you guys think about the change in speed to 17.5? I find it more coherent and realistic.

We could have a discussion on IRC if everyone agrees, what do you think? Would be interesting and we would have to agree more quickly on all these proposals

Sure we could do that tommorow. With a slower speed, I wouldn't care about raising the dps.

fatherbushido requested changes to this revision.Jun 5 2017, 3:06 PM
This revision now requires changes to proceed.Jun 5 2017, 3:06 PM
In D307#22487, @borg- wrote:

What do you guys think about the change in speed to 17.5? I find it more coherent and realistic.

We could have a discussion on IRC if everyone agrees, what do you think? Would be interesting and we would have to agree more quickly on all these proposals

Sure we could do that tommorow. With a slower speed, I wouldn't care about raising the dps.

Reducing movement speed and increasing spear cavalry dps (against cavalry only) is the porpouse of this patch.

Grugnas updated this revision to Diff 2692.Jun 26 2017, 11:33 AM
Grugnas edited edge metadata.

patch update

fatherbushido requested changes to this revision.Jun 26 2017, 11:36 AM
This revision now requires changes to proceed.Jun 26 2017, 11:36 AM

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fatherbushido abandoned this revision.Aug 2 2017, 9:09 PM

(feel free to reopen/update if it's still relevant)