Re: Trample balance discussion
 

I think that the point isn't to change elephants or other tramplers, like many people here said: some nations rely on them. Instead, I think the best idea is to give some units a boost against elephants.

My suggestion:

For every unit with a weapon over length 3 (all spears/pikes) that is successfully trampled, have that unit deal its base weapon damage to the trampler. After all, a wall of spears or pikes might not stop an elephant dead but certainly the elephant would impale itself in the process of trampling.

This is a soft nerf that makes sense. Elephants will still be powerful, but now there is a decent way to counter or at least slow them down. I mean, what sense does it make to see an elephant crush 10+/- pikemen without getting hurt at all? That's like trying to crush a beehive with your foot and not getting stung.

I think this idea with some modification would be acceptable to many people in regards to the elephant/tramplers question.

Re: Trample balance discussion
 

That's not a bug, it's a feature! :p

But the sound mod also changes that, and the female death-scream. It's a lifesaver, really. And the 247 downloads it has seem to agree with me.

EDIT:
Regarding Deadnature's suggestion: the spearmen would need some kind of attack roll. Furthermore, pikes should be better than glaives, but glaives have higher base damage, not to mention Hammer of the Mountains (base dmg 25!). Dealing (weapon length - 3) damage would probably work better. It wouldn't probably kill, but it would cause lots of morale checks.

Re: Trample balance discussion
 

I like that idea, but I think it should work this way: If a unit with a pike-only-is trampled, that unit rolls an attack-if the attack hits, the pike does triple damage, if it misses, it only does regular damage. Spears, tridents, and the like, do double damage, regular if they miss, whereas weapons like glaives, halberds, that sort of thing, do regular damage if they hit, no damage if they miss.

Re: Trample balance discussion
 

I would suggest that it depends heavily on the morale and numbers of the pikemen. Starving conscripts are likely to break and run from a trampler, instead of holding; and an isolated square of three pikemen wouldn't be very effective no matter how brave they were, since three pikes don't cover a whole lot of frontage.

Units with or close to a *lot* of spear-type weapons, however, gaining some extra repel from this would seem quite reasonable -- with smarter self-preserving tramplers simply refusing to trample, and others getting hit hard.

Edit -- Additionally, similar things should apply to the lance attack; if the horse ain't going to impale himself on a wall of spears, the knight shouldn't be using his lance w/ charge-bonus.

Re: Trample balance discussion
 

They already take the 1 point of damage from rushing units with longer weapons, don't they? Or does that not happen with trample?

Re: Trample balance discussion
 

Blast from the Past.

Alright, I must have gone through a dozen different schemes of various complexities (some requiring four seperate moral checks before doing some attack vs. defense checks). I finally settled on the simplest. First, what my criteria were.

A) It had to make sense "realistically".
B) It couldn't create any new abilities, attributes, etc.
C) It had to be simpler than the mechanics governing missles.
D) It would have to employee similar mechanics to those already used by the game.
E) It had to be readily available to any nation thematically.

For A, the obvious solution to being charged by giant creatures would be long pointy sticks that the creature would have to impale itself on to get to you. Hence, weapon length vs. trampler morale became the dominant theme. As for D, I noticed that while the game has "repel" checks for normal attacks, it has nothing of the sort for trample attacks. This doesn't make sense. Therefore, in order for a unit to trample a square, it must pass the following morale check:

(Trampler Morale)+(Trampler Size)+DRN-(Trampler Fatigue)/10

vs.

(Modified Sum of Weapon Length in Attacked Square)+DRN

The "Sum of Weapon Length" is modified the same way presicion is, all points over 10 are doubled. Note that the moral check is based on the INDIVIDUAL trampler's morale, and no survivor bonus is applied, just a fatigue penalty. Which makes sense, the more tired you are the more daunting the task of avoiding a wall of spikes becomes.

What happens next is simple. If the trampler fails the morale check the unit will simply attack normally with whatever weapon it has (trunk, spear, whatever). If it succeeds it now is vulnerable to "attacks of opportunity", much like a normal soldier who succeeds their morale check vs. a longer weapon. Each unit in the square gets a free attack against the trampler (whose defense is reduce by 2 each time it defends against such an attack) which can cause at most an amount of damage equal to the weapon's length (which symbolizes the creature impaling itself on the long weapon). Plus, each such attack will cause a fatigue hit.



The baseline in my head was a squad of 3 spearment (total weapon length 12) should have a "reasonable" chance to parry a low morale elephant, while 3 phalanxes each with length six weapons should stop all but the most determined trampler cold. Meanwhile, isolated and short length weapon fighters should rarely be able to repel even the most uncertain of tramplers.

The match ups.

Mammoth vs. 3 spearmen: The Mammoth has morale 10 and size 6, while the spearmen have modified weapon lengths of 14. Assuming no fatigue, the Mammoth will trample the spearmen 62% of the time. It's enough to blunt a trampler's charge and give the defendants a fighting chance against an amassed Mammoth horde beelining for the capital.

Indie Elephants vs. 3 Spearment: The difference between indie elephants and Mammoths is the elephants have a morale of 8. This means they'll only successfully trample the spearmen 46% of the time.

Indi Elephant vs. Isolate Phalanx (WL6) or 3 short swordsmen (WL2x3)

The Elephant would roll 14 vs 6. A plus 8 difference means it will trample the units 86% of the time. That almost identical to the current situation.

Mammoth vs. 3 Phalanxes (WL6x3)

The Mammoth would still have 16, but 6 times 3 is 18, which would be modified to 26. Thats a deficiet of 10 which only gives the Mammoth a 3% chance of actually trampling.

Finally, SC vs. 3 Phalanxes

I'm assuming a size 6 Commander with 30 morale tries to trample the best anti-trample defense available. Its 36 vs. 26, and the commander will successfully trample 95% of the time. Fortunately, such units don't grow on trees.

Thoughts? Exploits? Understandable?

Re: Trample balance discussion
 

I don't see what the problem is-since we're talking about modifying the game anyway-with just adding a generic, reasonably cheap, size 6 summon that just sits there and doesn't do anything?

Nobody's refuting this, but we've got all these complicated solutions that would take even *more* modding (to the code, requiring Dev time).

Is this a bad idea, a good idea, or is it just being ignored as a solution?

Re: Trample balance discussion
 

Pretty good work on this, looks pretty good. I think the math could be tweaked a bit though. Just seems to me that this might be too severe a change, on the low end.

Though, keeping THAT math how it is, and giving all tramplers a Fear+0 effect might actually strike a good balance.

(EDIT - Oh, and Badger, I think that one is getting largely ignored - it just seems kind of artificial and unappealing.)

<3

Re: Trample balance discussion
 

(Yah, but it's "artificial and unappealing, but can be put into effect in about 5 minutes" vs "probably never gonna happen, ever")

Re: Trample balance discussion
 

Well there are numerous nerfs that don't put weird size 6 blockades into the game and are easier and probably more appealing to people.

Like size 5 eles, resource hikes, cost hikes, increased enc, decreased prot etc.

Re: Trample balance discussion
 

I think we had these discussions before. And elephants are not overpowered. the issue was allowing them to be mixed with infantry boosting their morale.

But elephants cost 100 gold, and 3 10 gold spearmen should really not be a counter to them in general. And I do not think reducing their size or trampling is an answer either.

I have been on the receiving end of an elephant blitz at the hands of a very good player using MA Arcos and backing up the horde of elephants with squads of soul slaying astrologists.

I was playing MA Pangaea(3 order no free spawn), and managed to deal with them just fine. No it is not a fun experience, but neither is ghost riders, earth attacks, disease demons, seeking arrows, mind hunts, etc. And I suffered heavy losses. But when arcos invests many thousand gold in his elephants, you should suffer heavy losses to stop his army.

Re: Trample balance discussion
 

Yes that does seem neat!

Re: Trample balance discussion
 

I don't think there's anything "weird" about them, Sombre--no weirder than summoning up a Crusher or Mechanical men, in any case. Lots of games of this type have magical walls. There's even spells in the game that create castles-one in three seconds-and that's a *lot* more extreme than a single, small, barricade.

Size 5 elephants would be a lot weirder to me.

Re: Trample balance discussion
 

Yep, reducing the size of the elephants (after 2 years :D) seems cheap to me too.

Very much better giving some advantages vs. being trampled at their "natural enemies", IMHO, if ppl (read: devs) feel they are overpowered.

Re: Trample balance discussion
 

They are a lot weirder than a crusher or a mechanical man. Those are fighting units. Even a watcher or monolith /does/ something. What you're proposing is just a big lump of elephant bait. Why would the elephant go attacking that? Why would soliders? Why wouldn't they just go around it? A barricade is not a valid unit. It's the sort of thing you might get in a mod, but no chance it will ever be in the vanilla game.

Re: Trample balance discussion
 

Are you familiar at all with the concept of field fortifications? How about breaking up a charge? Armies made field works all the time-especially good armies, like the Roman legions.

It's weird *not* to include them. It's weird *not* to do *anything* that works-not to mention pompous and suicidal. Ideally, soldiers should be able to dig pitfalls and spread caltrops, or just set up a bunch of spiked mounds-elephants are only very dangerous to an army when it has to face them out in the field, not when the opposing army's dug in. Elephants aren't modern tanks, afterall.

Since soldiers can't do that in the game, it should be allowable by magic.

The reason the elephants would attack them is because they'd be there. Why *wouldn't* they attack them? They're in the way.

If you need the summons to attack, for whatever reason, they certainly could do that. Just give each one 2 pike attacks per round, maybe a crossbow too, and up the cost to 5-6 Earth gems.

Re: Trample balance discussion
 

Again, I have no issue with them in terms of 'realism' I just think a size 6 lump of crud as a unit doesn't actually work in the game.

Anyway it isn't going to be put in the game, so I don't mind :]

Re: Trample balance discussion
 

Mmh, wouldn't adding the "barricade" start again all the warmachines and catapults and trebutchets etc. discussion? It's a thing I really wouldn't like to see :D Expecially as I personally don't feel the need of all that boring stuff :angel

Re: Trample balance discussion
 

But that those litte barricades are so "not extreme" makes them weird in my eyes. I can imagine some powerful wizard to summon a bunch of demons or earth spirits whatever to build some enormous citadel for him.
But I dont think that a mage of some self-esteem would even bother to "summon" some field barricades.

Also I don't think it would really work with the current games mechanics.
You cant make barricades that stop only elephants but not infantry or thugs. Would be kind of nice for archer nations though.

I'd much more like to see pikemen being able to repel them or deal damage if they're trampled.

Re: Trample balance discussion
 

I seriously doubt that *any* of these suggestions are going to be added to the game-and Sombre, you're not Kristoffer or Johan that I've noticed, so you have approximately as much clue as the rest of us to what's going to be added. Saying that something is or isn't going to be added is just unnecessarily discouraging, and pointless, so I don't know why you're wasting your time.

Illuminated One: How is it that a mage isn't so self important/self aggrandizing as to toss a bunch of pebbles across a field, with Earth Shard, but is too classy to create a wall of earth to stop an elephant from running him over? That argument doesn't even make any sense.

For that matter, why *shouldn't* barricades stop other troops too? They could still go around them, ofcourse, being smaller than elephants, and it would be good balance to allow other troops to tear them down. It's meant to be effective against elephants and other large tramplers, it's not meant to be an "anti-elephants only" spell.

Re: Trample balance discussion
 

"I doubt any of these suggestions will be added" followed by "Saying that something is or isn't going to be added is (bad)"? Huh?

As for wasting my time,.. that's a strange thing for you to say to me. You often post at great length about things which clearly aren't going to be added. I'm not sure why you think I'm wasting my time and you aren't, when all I'm doing is shelving an argument about this because it's pointless. I'm not trying to be rude or discourage you, but I don't have to be KO or JK to make an educated guess.

Size makes no difference in the ability of a unit to 'go around' an enemy that's 'blocking' it. As units the fortifications will be targeted and aggressively sought out and attacked, not simply chopped at because they're in the way. You'll end up with a throng of guys surrounding it trying to get at it and attack while mages bomb it (and the troops around it) with spells.

Re: Trample balance discussion
 

I'm not saying it's bad, I'm just saying that it's pointless, and the only reason I'm saying it is that it's potentially harmful, in that it might give some of the newer people the impression that you know what you're talking about when you're just guessing.

And I post ideas, as I've stated before, in the full awareness that a lot of them probably will never make it into the game. I do it because it's fun, because I'm hoping to give other people ideas, and on the slim chance that they *might* go into the game.

Your third comment is helpful, in that it actually gives reasons why being able to make such units might not be a good idea.

I won't bother replying to comments that they're "boring", since that's purely a matter of opinion--and ofcourse, things can always be made more interesting/engaging, with a little creative thought.

Re: Trample balance discussion
 

There's still a big difference in parttaking in a battle (even if it comes to only throwing a bunch of low level spells around) and building field fortifications.
In many medieval cultures the first is honorable and worthy of men and nobles while the latter is a work of the slaves and the peasants.

Re: Trample balance discussion
 

I do know what I'm talking about. That's the point of an educated guess. Observation, previous experience and understanding of the mechanics of dom3 lead me to make my statement. I wouldn't make a statement like that if I had just arrived here and had no idea what was going on.

Re: Trample balance discussion
 

Illuminated One: That might possibly be the case-if you discount that most of the early Roman armies were citizens, or that their commanders were generally nobles and landowners-but that's not from any prejudices against the type of work involved, it's that they type of work involved was dirty and hard and dangerous. The Romans-again-used engineers and skilled craftspeople on the field, when their own soldiers weren't up to a particular task, and then they trained the soldiers better. They didn't assign peasants or unskilled slaves to do anything other than unskilled labour.

In any case, I assure you that, in all likelyhood, they would have made exceptions for people who could do that kind of work *with the power of their minds*.

And who says mages weren't of the "peasant" class? With the Church being pretty hard on pagan and heretical rulers and all, with the excommunicating and the cruisading and the witch-burning, mages were more likely to be peasants than nobility, or atleast not shout to the world that they had powers of witchcraft and demonology at their fingertips.

Re: Trample balance discussion
 

I understand that it's an educated guess-and I respect your opinion, Sombre, I even share it, that yes it's unlikely to go into the game-but you were framing it as a statement, not a guess. It's either one or the other.

A lot of people on these boards, who haven't spent as much time here as you or I have, might look at your stats, and your statement, and assume that you had inside knowledge of what Illwinter's policies were, or even that you were in a position to make those decisions, yourself.

That's where I took exception to what you said, and the way you said it, not at the fact that you *are* very knowledgeable, that you *do* have a lot of experience and know what you're talking about, and that you probably *are* correct.

Re: Trample balance discussion
 

Instead of creating the fortifications in advance, you could have mages create them on the battlefield.

I don't think it would be difficult to mod, it could be pretty much a clone of the earth elemental spell. Call it 'wall of earth', and give it more range. Make the earth elemental clone immobile and give it a bit more HP. It's fine that the enemy attacks it, that's them tearing it down. You could have the walls shrink like elementals, or just get destroyed when they get to zero HP.

You could make a 'wall of thorns' nature spell too (with poison thorns), 'wall of ice' (cold aura), 'wall of magma' (with heat and fire shield), etc.

If you spammed enough of the spell you could make the battlefield impassible or at least difficult to navigate. The effect wouldn't really be a wall unless you had a line of mages spanning the whole width of the battlefield. But it might give you the effect you're looking for.

Re: Trample balance discussion
 

A few opinions from a guy without the experiences of the gurus here :happy:

I think barricades would only make battles longer and boring, making soldiers go and attack a barricade over and over. Wouldn't it be terribly annoying to see your Dragon set on "Fire large enemy monsters" fire and attack the barricade instead of the enemy's elephants??

Also, wouldn't that be an mindless, immobile (so not retreating) and high-hp and prot unit? vfb has suggested a summonable one, but I think that the ability to summon lots of these would be easily exploited to make battles end just by turn limit. The discussion about this has gone on fire many times before (NTJedi, are you there? :D) and such a thing would bring it to the extreme.

On a final note, I'd say it doesn't seem to me that it would fit dom3's spirit a lot. The battles on dom3 have always been mostly furious battles between soldiers, mages and so on. THere are just a few, limited immobile pretenders. Starting to put in the cauldron immoblie structures on every battlefield seems just unthematic to me and distorting the nature of the game's furious battles.

Obviously just my opinions ^^

Re: Trample balance discussion
 

It all depends on how the immobile units work--as in: their stats. If they've got 60 Hp each, and 30 Prot, obviously they become a major factor in the game, but if-for example-you only gave them 1 Hp and just enough Prot that it would require the elephants to do a Crit to destroy them, then that only slows the elephant down for a limited amount of time-and other units can easily remove them in a single shot. And they can still be flown over (by empowered elephants).

And these things would be immobile gem-sinks. You couldn't move them to any other Province-which is why I suggested they be summons. If you make them combat castings, they become a whole lot more powerful. If they're summons, then they have to be permanently assigned to a single Province, which all makes them *very* niche.

Re: Trample balance discussion
 

@HoneyBadger

Ok, for some mages it might be ok if they did some digging, but then again for most mages I can't see why anyone would want to waste a mage +gems for something a bunch of soldiers with picks and shovels could do as well.
There are possibilities to couter elephants with magic allready (Bonds of Fire, Paralyze). Well I don't know how powerful these are in a real game but then I think it sucks to be forced to use your mages to counter something that could be easily countered by mundane means.
However it occured to me that you could also give some infantry commanders (say ulm's siege engineer) the ability to domsummon barricades which would indeed make sense imo.

Still I don't think it would work very vell in battles as long as units can't differentiate between enemies and obstacles. And while a wooden pallisade torn down by elephants makes sense a couple of spearmen stabbing the palisade to death while under enemy fire does not.

Re: Trample balance discussion
 

Well, inevitably it's an abstraction. It has to be, considering the confines of the game. The mage you use to cast the spell, you can assume is the engineer overseeing the work, and the earth gems, special resources and terrain features utilized in the project. Making it cost earth gems, rather than just resources, is again a way to balance this out.

And you're absolutely right, there *are* other ways to stop Elephant Rushes. Good ways, infact, but not always ways that are effective or useable early in the game, for certain Nations.

As far as it cutting into turn limits (which I agree are kind of short, atleast for me), I'm aware of the problem, and there are things that can be done to mitigate the problem (like making them 1 hit=1 kill). Elephants themselves, though, with all their HP, and the possibility of regeneration, are just as much of a potential battle-lengthener as a bunch of barriers would be.

And there are some *really* interesting things that could be done with these kinds of units-Ice, Poison, and Fire have already been mentioned by vfb, but how about phantasmal wall (etherial), wall of clouds (flying), wall of shadows (stronger in darkness-as a deterrant to undead, for Nations which lack other undead/darkness deterrants), etc. (how about a spell that spammed a bunch of blinking walls?) and all the different immobile monster "walls" that could still attack, but couldn't otherwise move?

There's a lot of creative stuff that can be done with this.

Re: Trample balance discussion
 

You are correct Gandalf. Slingers are cheap, and hordes of them generally defeat elephants. Even if they make it through the missiles, there are usually enough to force a morale check.

Re: Trample balance discussion
 

Funnily enough, independent provinces containing elephants often contain slingers, as well.

Re: Trample balance discussion
 

I think the only problem with sizing up creatures is that in every story or myth the creatures are all different sizes. I have books where dragons are huge and can crush an elephant by landing on it and there are others where dragons are smaller than horses. Golems can range in size as well from huge to tiny. I do agree there should be more than 6 sizes. Huh i kinda forgot where i was goin with this. nvm

Re: Trample balance discussion
 

Yeah, I think this one is the real point of the discussion. :)

Re: Trample balance discussion
 

How do you suppose those ancient soldiers dealt with palisades that were in their way, other than to tear them down?

Re: Trample balance discussion
 

Went around them.

Re: Trample balance discussion
 

Well, if they were actual fortification stretching across the field, you'd tear them down. If there was just a block of palisades in the middle you'd go around them to get at the other soldiers.

I'm just envisioning the front rank breaking and the attacking army milling around trying to destroy the abandoned barricade while still having arrows and spells rained down on them.

Re: Trample balance discussion
 

Yeah, that's definitely what would happen.

It's a nice idea HB, but can't be done in the Dom3 engine, because soldiers would always stop to attack every bit of palisade before moving on to fight the real threats.

Re: Trample balance discussion
 

Well, don't forget, there will be arrows and spells raining down from the attackers' side as well-not to mention, this is designed to stop elephants, so likely, the other side is going to *have* elephants-remember, this is niche, and meant to be too expensive to be used for anything *other* than as a niche effect. If soldiers stop to destroy them, they might be slowed for a little while, but they're still destroying a very expensive, pretty fragile, hard to replace unit.
More valuable by far than the average PD unit. They're not destroying every spare bit of scrapwood on the field, like a bunch of mindless maniacs, they're destroying earth gems, and a mage's time.

Re: Trample balance discussion
 

If it's a barricade it makes no sense. But if it's an "Elephant totem" or something, it could be justified I guess.

Re: Trample balance discussion
 

Every unit is a "barricade" in some sense-some are just moving, fighting barricades. And I wouldn't mind if this one had some fighting ability, that's optional. The point is that a cheap-but not free, or good-size 6 summon would stop elephants from running rampant.

You could call it "Dumbo's last stop mini bar-and-grille" for all I care :)

Semantics seem to be a "barricade" here, anyway...