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Buff Elephant Archer
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Authored by elexis on May 6 2017, 10:46 PM.

Details

Summary

Up to Alpha 21, elephant archers inherited the archer cavalry template.
Hence the units had ridiculous walking animations due to their speed and many other properties which fit to cavalry but not to elephants.
These were removed:

rP18286 reduced the walk speed inherited from cavalry drastically for consitency with war elephants.
rP18363 removed the capturing ability for consistency with war elephants.
rP18453 removed the gathering ability.
rP19333 gave the elephant archer a large passability class, which means it wasn't possible anymore to mass hundred of them in one place.

However this reduced their combat use drastically and we never see it anymore in games.
It was planned to buff them last release but it fell under the table.
With these new properties, it should receive a use case that is different from regular archer cavalry and thus add to the set of valid choices,
requiring the player to decide wisely which units to train.

This is how 2x attac kspeed would look like. (There are 2 soldiers sitting on the animal, but only one of them has the attacker animation). So instead increasing attack damage and attack speed both by 50%.

Test Plan

Start an SP game with two players on a tiny map. Use Alt+D to open the developer overlay and enable the "change perspective" feature.
Use the "gift from the gods" cheat for both players to quickly train units for both players.
Start some battles of 40 cavalry and 20 archer elephants. The outcome shouldn't be too decisive.

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Event Timeline

elexis created this revision.May 6 2017, 10:46 PM
elexis edited the summary of this revision. (Show Details)May 6 2017, 10:49 PM
elexis updated this revision to Diff 1696.May 6 2017, 10:50 PM

Fix a wrong factor

Vulcan added a subscriber: Vulcan.May 6 2017, 11:33 PM

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borg- edited edge metadata.May 7 2017, 3:30 AM
This comment was removed by borg-.
fatherbushido edited edge metadata.May 7 2017, 8:20 AM

Sooner or later, it should be defined what that unit is ;-)
Until that, it's ok for me.

binaries/data/mods/public/simulation/templates/units/maur_elephant_archer_b.xml
8 ↗(On Diff #1696)

I would just just let the Pierce modification
(As it makes mor sense for techs/auras)

9 ↗(On Diff #1696)

PrepareTime too perhaps.

18 ↗(On Diff #1696)

Don't use relative templates imo (even if they are better) (waiting for them to be int again).

41 ↗(On Diff #1696)

Why not.
If so, don't use relative template.
(Even more with 2.0)

Grugnas edited edge metadata.May 7 2017, 12:49 PM

I'd say that the proposed armor level looks not coherent with the attributes of the other elephants, pheraps an agreement can be found whenever the planned elephants technologies are implemented.

borg- added a comment.May 15 2017, 6:12 PM

I agree with Grugnas about armor.

With the changes he was really good, but still very vulnerable. Obviously he can not have the same armor as other elephants, he needs only a small buff.

elexis updated this revision to Diff 1976.May 16 2017, 5:09 PM

Add 1 hack and 2 pierce armor as requested by borg-, but also add 20 metal cost and 5 metal loot.

This way 1 ele archer costs 200 food 20 metal 80 wood for 10pierce dmg * 0.75s at 72m range with 240hp and 3 pierce armor.
Notice since it's twice as effective per population cost, while costing metal and being slow, it becomes more a late-game unit than a rush unit.

Also this should still fix the balancing only for the next release(s) until we get stuff like trample damage.

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elexis updated this revision to Diff 1995.May 17 2017, 1:05 PM

Don't use relative templates for Cost and Loot as recommended by fatherbushido, refs D268.

fatherbushido accepted this revision.May 17 2017, 1:20 PM
fatherbushido added inline comments.
binaries/data/mods/public/simulation/templates/units/maur_elephant_archer_b.xml
6 ↗(On Diff #1995)

add 0.0, matter of taste :p (I don't really care personally)

21 ↗(On Diff #1995)

nuke .0

This revision is now accepted and ready to land.May 17 2017, 1:20 PM

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This revision was automatically updated to reflect the committed changes.