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[gameplay] unify Cavalry walk speeds
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Authored by Nescio on Jan 23 2020, 7:21 PM.

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Reviewers
wraitii
borg-
Group Reviewers
Restricted Owners Package(Owns No Changed Paths)
Commits
rP23737: Unify Cavalry walk speeds across citizen/champion/hero variants.
Summary

As pointed out in D2585, basic, advanced, elite, champion, and hero cavalry all have somewhat different walk speed multiplliers, which is confusing and makes comparing and tweaking slightly harder. The values were last changed in D930/rP20230, which replaced absolute movement speed values with relative multipliers.
There is no clear reason why champion cavalry ought to be faster than their citizen counterparts; they have more attack, armour, and health and can't gather, so I'd expect them to be slower rather than faster.

This patch standardizes the walk speed multipliers for all cavalry (to ×2.0, which is nicely rounded in between ×1.85, ×1.95, ×2.25). For comparison, all cavalry benefit equally from the two speed technologies (10% each) and various auras.
As a consequence, mixed cavalry groups (a hero with some champions and citizens) would easier stay together on raids. And yes, cavalry spearmen can still catch ranged cavalry; higher level template modifications are not changed.

Test Plan

Agree this is an improvement.

Event Timeline

Nescio created this revision.Jan 23 2020, 7:21 PM
Nescio added inline comments.
binaries/data/mods/public/simulation/templates/template_unit_hero_cavalry_javelinist.xml
46

Removed this because template_unit_cavalry_ranged_javelinist.xml and template_unit_champion_cavalry_javelinist.xml don't have this either.

Successful build - Chance fights ever on the side of the prudent.

Link to build: https://jenkins.wildfiregames.com/job/docker-differential/1643/display/redirect

I like having champs having the same move speed as their citizen counterparts. As mentioned it is much more realistic and has the additional benefits of making them feel fairer to play against and also easier to balance.

Owners added a subscriber: Restricted Owners Package.Mar 16 2020, 11:13 AM

Successful build - Chance fights ever on the side of the prudent.

Link to build: https://jenkins.wildfiregames.com/job/docker-differential/1857/display/redirect

Stan added a subscriber: Stan.Mar 16 2020, 1:15 PM

Does it make sense for heavy cavalry to move as fast as light cavalry?

Does it make sense for heavy cavalry to move as fast as light cavalry?

A horse is a horse. :)

In 0 A.D. heavy (i.e. melee) is actually faster than light (i.e. ranged) cavalry. The idea of this patch is that cavalry speed is indepent of rank (b, a, e, c, h). However, different cavalry unit types still have different speeds; e.g.

template_unit_champion_cavalry_spearman.xml
template_unit_cavalry_melee_spearman.xml

are 20% faster than cavalry javelinists.

Stan added a comment.Mar 16 2020, 4:50 PM

Does it make sense for heavy cavalry to move as fast as light cavalry?

A horse is a horse. :)

A horse carrying 200K
kg of stuff doesn't move as fast as one carrying 60kg of stuff. Or at least not as long.

But indeed it's very strange for very light cavlary to go slower.

Stan edited reviewers, added: Restricted Owners Package; removed: Restricted Owners Package, ValihrAnt.Mar 18 2020, 12:24 PM

In my opinion that cav should be slower than basic cavs, as @Stan said, if we want to make a realistic game that cav should be slower. But is a fact that if we change that, cavalry heavy would be even less used, so maybe we should buff it a bit.

Greetings.

@Feldfeld, any opinions on this?

It looks good to me. Only small grey area for me is that citizen cavalry is slightly faster as a result (x1.95 to x2.0) but at this point it's just nitpicking, I don't think it will have noticeable effect to balance.

@Everyone: if you agree, please click “Accept Revision”.
@borg-, @wraitii, any opinions on this?

wraitii accepted this revision.Jun 4 2020, 1:35 PM

Seems like a good idea to me, indeed.

This revision is now accepted and ready to land.Jun 4 2020, 1:35 PM
borg- added a comment.EditedJun 4 2020, 2:08 PM

I full agree with all changes.

borg- accepted this revision.Jun 4 2020, 2:21 PM
This revision was automatically updated to reflect the committed changes.