It's a little frustrating when women do more damage to siege engines than pikemen.
This patch increases the attack base hack damage of pikemen from 1 to 2.
Differential D2972
[gameplay] Increase hack damage of pikemen borg- on Aug 25 2020, 2:50 AM. Authored by
Details
It's a little frustrating when women do more damage to siege engines than pikemen. This patch increases the attack base hack damage of pikemen from 1 to 2. No need.
Diff Detail
Event TimelineComment Actions Yes, this is a good idea. Alternately use "a secondary attack" such as using the pike as a "lever" ;-)
Comment Actions
Given that pikemen already have by far the lowest damage per second of any soldier, I'm not sure the pierce damage reduction is an improvement, why not simply increase the damage, e.g. 2 hack + 4 pierce? (2 + 4) / 2 = 3 is still a lot less than the next weakest unit, i.e. spearmen: (3 + 2.5) / 1 = 5.5. Comment Actions Yes it would :-). Once we have D368, I would like to suggest that spears and pikes could have thrust, lever, and swing attacks (swing, perhaps, only if it is like the chinese ge with a head designed for swinging). Comment Actions For the patch proposal yes, it is an improvement, -33% pierce and + 100% hack attack. Not only better against siege but against all units. Comment Actions
That's not exactly true: a few entities (e.g. cavalry swordsman) have higher hack than pierce armour, therefore this patch makes pikemen slightly less effective against those. Comment Actions 2/3 is a good number for you?
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2+3 is better than 1+3, though I'd prefer 2+4, 2+5, or 2+6, which would still result in a damage per second less than that of spearmen (4 vs 5.5).
Yes, that's what's characteristic of pikemen in 0 A.D. Comment Actions I never really understood why Spearmen dealt so much pierce armour, effectively making them ranged units, damage-wise, which was always rather annoying to balance. I'd actually support moving them more towards Hack, if necessary adding some multipliers. Overall though this seems like a minor change and if you guys say it helps, I'd say let's go. Comment Actions Personally I'd favour splitting pierce into pierce (e.g. arrows) and thrust (e.g. spears), which would allow units countering each other via difference in armour levels, but that's rather a major change and outside the scope of this patch. Comment Actions I do not understand too. the pikemen were a vulnerable unit from a ranged attacks, but an armored unit attacking vs melee. I think it's fair to decrease your piercing armor and increase your attack slightly. Comment Actions
Actually I proposed raising the pierce damage a bit too. Anyway, the proposed hack damage increase is better than the current status quo. Comment Actions Anything that increases the role of melee is a plus for me. My comments:
That said, I like indeed pikemen getting some love, it's sad to see all ranged when in reality most big battles of antiquity had the majority of units as pikemen (or swords). Skirmishers (slingers count as skirmishers in my book) and cavalry still had an important role though, so in the future some balance patch that makes them very good in tactical positions but vulnerable head to head with infantry would be nice. This patch looks good to me. Small sanity check, this maintains the balance between pikemen and spearmen right (armor v damage)? Comment Actions What about giving them an attack bonus vs siege? They are already the strongest infantry unit in the game by far due to how tanky they are. Giving them the attack bonus would make them a little bit better vs siege while not buffing them too much. Comment Actions Pikemen have five additional resistance levels, yes, which is equivalent to c. +70% health, making them harder to kill. However, they have by far the lowest damage per second: Swordsman: (5.5 + 0) / 0.75 = 7.3 Spearman: (3 + 2.5) / 1 = 5.5 Pikeman (proposed): (2 + 3) / 2 = 2.5 Pikeman (current): (1 + 3) / 2 = 2 The change does not seem excessive; I'd actually favour increasing it by even more.
Hard bonus attacks are ugly and ought to be avoided, in my opinion. Comment Actions As I mentioned earlier, I think we should reduce the pikeman armor a little bit, so that the new attack can be balanced. Giving a bonus is not a good solution, he would still have 1 attack, which is unpreparable. What about armour 9 vs melee, 8 vs pierce? Maybe I'm wrong, but it was a unit more vulnerable to projectiles. Comment Actions
If you mean if spearmen best pikemen, yes, one-on-one a spearman always wins. For larger numbers the outcome is less predictable, due to units focussing on the nearest foe, and also promotion, therefore I wrote a scenario and did a bit of testing, with the +1 hack damage change: Comment Actions As mentioned by @ValihrAnt, pikeman is a great unit, specially with ranger units, better than spearmen or swordmen ofc. it doesn't seem bad or unbalanced, it doesn't seem bad that they are stronger, some civilizations can take good advantage of it. what cannot happen is the extremely strong unit to the point of ruining gameplay. Rome may have a best sword inf of the game or iber with slings. Some "specially" units dont seems a problem with me. Comment Actions
current pikeman : 1 hack / 2 s = 0.5 hack/s proposed pikeman : 2 hack / 2 s = 1 hack/s female citizen : 2 hack / 1 s = 2 hack/s |