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[gameplay] Balance pike again
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Authored by borg- on Jan 18 2021, 11:29 PM.

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Balancing
Summary

In the forum there is a discussion about pikeman being very weak in attack, especially against ram. A woman does more damage to rams than pikes. What the patch does is to double the hack damage of the piquemans and decrease armor by 2.

Test Plan

Test pike vs rams and other units.

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Event Timeline

borg- created this revision.Jan 18 2021, 11:29 PM
borg- requested review of this revision.Jan 18 2021, 11:29 PM
borg- retitled this revision from [gameplay] Balancep pike again to [gameplay] Balance pike again.Jan 19 2021, 12:55 AM
borg- added a subscriber: Feldfeld.
wraitii accepted this revision.Jan 19 2021, 9:32 AM

Think this looks alright.
It remains awkward IMO that Macedonians/Ptolemies start with a pikeman, because that means we can't actually have that units have too weird stats.

This revision is now accepted and ready to land.Jan 19 2021, 9:32 AM

Do you think it is balanced?
+40% total attack increase vs. -20% effective health decrease?
That means they are now about 20% stronger in 1v1 melee combat...

While I understand the reasoning behind it, I'm unsure about it, since it changes the pikeman's effectiveness against about everything, not just rams, so I would recommend postponing this to A25.

While I understand the reasoning behind it, I'm unsure about it, since it changes the pikeman's effectiveness against about everything, not just rams, so I would recommend postponing this to A25.

If the sole purpose of this patch is enhancing their effectiveness against rams, we could give them a special multiplier against them.

Factions with pikemen also have other units, including swordsmen.

borg- added a comment.Jan 19 2021, 5:39 PM

If the sole purpose of this patch is enhancing their effectiveness against rams, we could give them a special multiplier against them.

bonus vs rams does not make sense. Pikes are very tank and little attack, which doesn't make much historical sense, the goal of the patch is also to harmonize these values.

Hm, Pikemen are actually much better javalineer-cavalry counter than spearmen because of their range of 8, which makes microing around them harder, particularly if supported by archers (e.g Ptolemy have a really good combo).
I wonder if this diff wouldn't make Ptolemy OP against javalineer-cavalry civs (most civs).

Well maybe we can lower the hack ttack from 4 to 3. it was still less efficient than a woman, but better than the current state.

wraitii removed a reviewer: wraitii.EditedJan 20 2021, 1:04 PM

Yeah after some more thinking I'm changing my mind on this, it's probably a change that will make Ptolemy too strong.
Pikemen are extremely useless against rams, but to be honest spearmen are also pretty bad. Rams are quite resilient, though champ swordsmen wreck them.
I think the only civ that actually kinda lacks a decent counter (assuming spearmen are "decent") is Ptolemians, and they do have a swordsman at the military colony.

The fact that women have a DPS that's actually really good compared to CS in general should probably be fixed by buffing melee damage somehow / nerfing women a bit.

This revision now requires review to proceed.Jan 20 2021, 1:04 PM
borg- updated this revision to Diff 15590.Jan 20 2021, 11:27 PM

@wraitii. Smaller hack attack compared to the previous patch.

borg- abandoned this revision.Jul 29 2022, 5:17 PM