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.