Qm said
 

"As for 'rush-breaker' units in general, they are basically the same thing as rush units- almost exclusively big tramplers or bless units. If there is something that needs to be fixed here, it's that such a small subsection of units can utterly dominate the early game."

A very good point. As most nations have the ability to implement some type of strategy if they can survive an early rush. But how can you achieve that to which QM alludes?


After some thought, here are 2 possible solutions:

1. Limit the max bless of any unit to 9/4. While some units will still be very very good at 9/4, at least they will not have the benefit of the second "9" bless.

2. Tramplers- eliminate the morale boost of combining tramplers with high morale troops. Cap the trampler's morale
at 8, and do not allow it to be buffed. Make trampling the double edged sword it is intended to be.

In many games I see Elephants fight to the very end, their morale buffed by being combined with some slow moving but high morale infantry, all of which are alive.

Re: Qm said
 

1. This would make a good house rule. I think it's one I'll consider using in future.

2. I agree, actually this is a really good idea I think. This isn't something we can do ourselves, unfortunately. It would be great if the devs could add a unit property that means they can't be mixed with other types of unit in a single group (or the game always considers them to be in a separate group to any other unit types the player may have placed in the same group). This property could then be added to elephants to prevent boosting their morale. It would also be easy to put in their flavour text. "Once panicked, elephants become hard to control and cannot be steadied even if their riders remain confident of victory", or some such.

I like this idea because it leaves the elephants being powerful, but gives them some weakness that can be targetted. Spells such as Panic and Frighten could then easily drive them off (which seems reasonable).

Of course in the meantime we could have a house rule that elephants can't be mixed in with other units, but it would be a bit hard to enforce.

Re: Qm said
 

Hmm. Not a bad idea. Perhaps if animals where unmixable?

Hmm, that would make summon animals a bit of a bother though.

Unless animals were mixable with other animals. But the lion elephant corps feels a bit ridiculous http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Qm said
 

I'm not completely convinced that the early game is broken, especially if the CB Scales mod is used. If you take a large blessing, you're paying the price with an imprisoned pretender and/or crappy scales. I'm against an artifical capping of blessings -- it doesn't add viable strategies, it removes them. Of course, if you're just taking about a house rule, go for it, but if you're talking about something you want to see in a patch or for Dom 4, I'd be against it.

As far as the elephants go -- it seems to me that a 100 gold unit should be pretty devastating. And they are, so I don't quite see the problem. If you're saying that they are too good for their cost, then the simple solution is to raise the cost (in gold or maybe resources). Perhaps to 120 gold, maybe even 150 if you think they're really broken. We shouldn't be making rules that apply only to a specific subset of units. The rules of the game should apply to all units, imo.

At 150 gold, elephants would be so expensive to employ that they had -better- be really effective, or no one would use them.

Re: Qm said
 

I don't think anything so dramatic as "the early game is broken" either, far from it. But a few things can be frustrating for players. An elephant rush is an example - if you are Ulm or some other race with no obvious defences, then the elephants will kill you, and there's nothing you can do about it. Even if your army is worth twice as much gold as theirs.

Now I think it would be a shame to make elephants less good, or to make them cost too much more, because they are mainly good fun as they are. The trouble is that although elephants have a built-in and well-designed weakness - low morale and the tendency to trample your own troops once broken - that weakness can be avoided by what's essentially an exploit, that is mixing the elephants with high-morale infantry. The fact that that works doesn't really make thematic sense.

Kristoffer - I was thinking the same thing about animals. Perhaps you could have a new property "hard-to-control animals" or "easily-panicked animals" (obviously come up with a much better name!), which applies to elephants, but not to lions.

Re: Qm said
 

The problem is not one elephant or 5 elephants, but 50 of them.

I haven't seen this, but this seems to be what it is about. When you pass a critical mass of elephants there is nothing that can stop them and they become worth far more than the 150 you buy them for. Especially since they trample every routing unit, effectively eating up the entire enemy army, regardless of size.

Elephants are supposed to break easily, and devastate the own army if they do. But if you mix them with high morale heavy infantry, they do not rout as easily. This is thematically unsound: elephants that doesn't rout because they know that their brave human friends way back dont care if some of the elephants die or get poked by spears.

So in short: Elephants are fine at their cost as long as you don't get too many. At that time the game mechanics for trample might make them unbalanced. Especially if used with the silly tactic of mixing them with elites for better morale.

Re: Qm said
 

I think EA Agarthan troglodytes, although obviously less common, are even worse.
50 gold for a 37 health, 7 protection, size 4, 16ap(2 mapmove), MR12, morale 14! trampler who can go toe-to-toe with other large units(2 attacks, attack value 12 at strength 23) is a very nice deal indeed.

Re: Qm said
 

50 elephants would cost 5000 gold as is, and if their cost was raised to 150 each, that army would cost 7500 gold. That's an amazingly expensive army for the early game! For the same cost, you could get ~150 heavy knights. My money is on the knights. 3 lances hitting one elephant will kill it, right?

Perhaps the best thing to do is raise the resource cost on the elephants so that you can't mass them as easily, in addition to possibly raising the gold cost.

As far as it being a silly tactic or an exploit to mix in high morale troops with your elephants... I see what you're saying from a role-playing perspective, but from a gaming perspective, it's not an exploit at all. If you did the same thing with a different kind of low morale troop, there clearly wouldn't be a problem with the strategy. It's only considered silly in this case because of the name and the RL characteristics of the unit in question.

I actually like role playing, even in multiplayer, to a certain extent. But when things like this come up, I take a gaming perspective usually.

Anyway, if you do want to do something like this Kristoffer, I prefer the 'elephants cannot be mixed with other units' thing as opposed to the 'elephants have their morale capped' thing.

Re: Qm said
 

The fact is tramplers were given the low morale because they were not intended to fight to the death. In a way, adding high morale low cost infantry units to their group severely undermines the risk of having them turn on your own army. And it takes no great general to mix the units either.

Rather than raise their cost, and have them continue to fight to the death, I would think the more logical solution is to allow them to rout after they have received substantial damage, and trample their own troops.

That is the double edged sword of using the tramplers. No, I do not think you should be able to just raise the cost and continue to have 72 hp tramplers that fight to the death.

Re: Qm said
 

The main issue, as KO says, is not so much the infantry mixed with small numbers of elephants, it's the elephant hordes so huge they don't even need the moral boost. It's true, the equivalent gold cost in knights could probably easily stop them, but they can't be massed anywhere near as fast, especially with the base game barding costs.

Re: Qm said
 

I don't think that the Troglodytes need to get nerfed. Their trample effect is a lot less effective than size 6 tramplers, and trampling units have the problem that they always storm deep into the enemy ranks. So while their initial attack can kill a handful of units, the volley of hits from the other units surrounding them can easily kill them in one turn. The real problem, like KO and QM already said, are hordes of tramplers that occupy a large part of the battlefield so that they don't draw hits as easily as a loose group of tramplers.

This seems to present the obvious idea how to "fix" this: Make morale mixing dependent on location of the units. A little like standards, units should be inspired by their comrades in their squad around them and may get morale boost through that, but not if they fight the enemy hordes on their own, while the rest of the squad is far away.

I would not raise the gold cost, but I already thought myself that they could use some more resources. LA Arco's elephants are quite resource intensive, but the normal ones can even be massed with sloth scales.

Re: Qm said
 

Why would Ulm be trying to beat an army of tramplers in the field? I play SP, but my understanding was that there were numerous situations in MP where you have to go up against an army that you can't defeat in the field, and that a critical mass of tramplers is just one of them. I'm thinking of an E9N9 Niefel rush in particular. Is it not typical in that case to fight a delaying action instead, trying to raid around his forces and hit him in the pocket book? Giants and elephant hordes cost lots of upkeep, especially in the critical masses under discussion here. Ulm is ideally suited for this kind of stealthy warfare, and going toe-to-toe seems like a bad plan. It's exactly what the tramplers would want you to do.

Edit: actually, this is exactly how I would handle this situation in SP, so maybe the SP/MP distinction isn't relevant here. It's just that, while I enjoy tactical puzzles in SP, I'm hesitant to suggest that the solutions are relevant to MP.

-Max

Re: Qm said
 

The reason Arcos elephants are so resource intensive is their armour. Rather than tough, unroutable killing machines you get unroutable killing machines that are practically impossible to kill without magic.

edit(max posted while i was typing):
Ive been hit by an elephant rush as ulm in multiplayer and avoiding them is not an option. With high resource, mapmove 1 troops and not enough provinces to mass any cheaper indies(i think i had maybe 6-7 provinces when i got attacked) i was doomed from the moment they hit me. I took a few elephants out in the final battle in my capitol by trapping them in the gate with the bonds of fire spell(if thats the name, cant remember) and hitting them with about 15-20 maul and flail troops but in the end they just ran through and killed my mages and that was me dead. Raiding round them early on is simply not an option because they can simply divert for a turn and kill your raiders/take your capitol and kill them with a second force while cutting off all of your income. The reason nations like ulm are particularly vunerable is that they have very weak early magic, very weak troops vrs tramplers(few, small, heavily armoured troops) and only a few troops who are too slow to out-maneuver anybody.

Re: Qm said
 

Thoughts on elephants & morale:

An easy way (for the programmers) to eliminate the "combining infantry with elephants" bug would be to weight a squad's morale by each unit's (original) hp. So it would take 7 heavy infantry to balance out one elephant's low morale... at which point the whole advantage of using elephants (high attack, low resource) would be eliminated.

Regarding the huge effectiveness of an elephant rush... I've used this strategy often, it does seem unfair that smaller squads get pasted. Keep in mind, though, that the effectiveness depends on concentration. If that 50 elephant squad breaks off into two 25 elephant squads, a moderate (100) sized light-infantry contingent can take them. So when you see the elephants coming, get out of their way, then charge into the enemy's territory (how many 50 elephant squads can he have?) and force him to chase you.

Alternatively, the problem of so many elephants in a single squad could be addressed by changing the squad rules limiting units in a squad by hp. A rating "50" commander would be able to lead 500 hp-units of troops -- 62 vaetti, or 7 elephants. Forcing the elephants into many squads could disorganize them sufficiently. (How is a single commander herding 50 elephants in the first place???!!!)

Re: Qm said
 

Raiding to avoid confrontation with a superior army is a very powerful tool, but it isn't a cure-all. In the early game, your mages at the capital need to be at least enough deterrent that the enemy doesn't simply beeline right there and take it. With Ulm vs early elephant horde, this usually isn't the case.

What I would like to see for elephants is periodic squad numbers/average morale value independent morale checks. If whenever an elephant hit it had a chance to trigger such a morale check for the whole squad, that would greatly reduce the incentive for giant mega-squads. It could be an ability like any other (called panic or something) and could probably be thematic with some other units too.

Re: Qm said
 

Or make elephants afraid of size 1 units... like Markatas. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Qm said
 

I like that. It fits. And it goes with the rock-paper-scissors thing. Make a unit which some think is a waste, useful in breaking what some think is too powerful an option.

I had always thought that the elephants were more susceptable to the rain-of-arrows morale check also. It always seemed as if I had little problem with elephants if I had lots of slingers, so boosting slingers vs elephants might be worth doing also. Or make elephants hate flyers.

Re: Qm said
 

lch said:


QM said:

I really like both of these potential fixes a lot more than morale capping, preventing the mixing of elephants and other units, or even my own suggestion of just raising their gold or resource cost.

Great ideas, guys!

Re: Qm said
 

How much supply does 50 elephants take, 300? If the effect of starvation was a bit more dramatic than it is right now, you'd have a counter tactic right there.

Re: Qm said
 

If animal leadership were a separate category of leadership, that would solve the problem nicely since you would need specialized commanders to handle the elephants, which means falling behind on research or something else.

Re: Qm said
 

Having animal leadership may unfairly penalize Pangaea however.

Maybe requiring Elephant Handlers to handle elephants would work, and give them a leadership of 10. And it is very thematic as well. The average leader likely would have no clue how to handle them in battle. It would require specialized training.

Re: Qm said
 

I've always found starvation isn't a huge issue for armies on the march. Once you're in the opponent's capital there's always enough supplies, because of the huge population, despite the scales.

Jazzepi

Re: Qm said
 

Actually there is a howdah with crew and another guy who sits on the neck of the elephant with a wedge and a hammer ready to split the elephants skull, should she go berserk. So the elephant is full of handlers. That aside it might be a good idea.

One could make it a commander without command ability, but that would make it quite rare, since most people would prefer a smart mage to a stupid beast http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Pangaea could easily get animal leadership on most commanders without thematic repercussions http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Qm said
 

I like this idea. There are lots of "handeler" leaders that don't get built very often because you don't really need them (Abysian Serpent Handlers, Pythium Hydra Trainers). If you HAD to have these leaders to handle wild animals it would be thematic and help with the elephant problem.

You might also want to increase the power of some of the other animals thought to help make up for the limitations if you do this (not the elephants though).

Re: Qm said
 

Hmmm,

way off topic, but if we had animal leadership, might a certain lion that pangaea could summon at conj 4 have animal leadership rather than being a magic being?

One of the issues pangaea has with its summons(vine ogres, Kithaironic Lions(should get 2 not 1 btw)(mated pair thing), is requiring magic leadership for them.

Having Pangaea's Commanders have master animal leadership(and switching vine ogres/vinemen to animal leadership) would allow them to lead the legions of vinemen, wolves(call of the wild)lions etc.

Re: Qm said
 

Sounds reasonable.

Re: Qm said
 

Wouldn't that possibly result in other nations not being able to use vinemen as effectively?

Re: Qm said
 

Vinemen are magical, and that was not to change anyway. Just the Kith Leo.

Re: Qm said
 

Vinemen=can only be led by a gardener http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Qm said
 

Animal leadership would be nice to have for a number of reasons... I take it this would be a JK level change, right?

Re: Qm said
 

So do we feel this would help with the elephant issue? I've lost track of exactly why.

I guess perhaps animal leaders would not generally also be human leaders - so it would be harder to mix elephants with infantry. But still definitely doable with a Sceptre of Authority or whatever it's called (cheap low-level fire item).

Also you could have less elephants per group. Would this make much difference. It's not completely obvious to me, but I don't have a lot of elephanty experience.

Re: Qm said
 

Vinemen aren't animals. Why not just give Pangaea animal AND magical leadership abilities?

Of course - this change is pretty far reaching, assuming we are all talking about what I'm thinking. Namely requiring anything marked "animal" to be lead by a leader with an appropriate ability (Beast-Mastery?). Are we talking about a game wide change or just a localized fix for elephants?

IF it is game wide many nations would need to be changed to insure that some leader of theirs could actually control summoned animals.

This also would innately make animals weaker - as they would be limited as to who could lead them. One easy way to counter this is to slightly buff most of the animal spells/recruits (decreasing gems/gold cost, increasing the amount summoned, making them stronger). Another thought it to make most summoned animals come with a leader (aka call of the Wilds).

This would be a sorta big undertaking but I think would be a good overall change.

Re: Qm said
 

Recruitable leaders that can control animals might be limited to only manage 10-15 animals. This would make their squads smaller so they will be easier to break via morale.

Re: Qm said
 

About the animal leadership idea... Bandar Log has elephants, and all their other recruitables are animals as well.

Re: Qm said
 

Another approach would be shapeshifting like the Black Hunters. When the Mahout is killed the elephant would be split into it's own squad.

Or for laughs use linked shapeshifting like Mahout -> 1st Guy in Howdah -> 2nd Guy...

Re: Qm said
 

Or the elephant dies and you get a bunch of little mahouts running around!

Re: Qm said
 

I have no real experience in MP games yet, so I can't comment on the Van-rush problem.

However, maybe the issue with Elephants (and Argathian Trogs) is the trample ability. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Trample doesn't take into account the enemies' weapons at all, does it? This doesn't seem right, as a normal attack always has to check if the enemy has a longer weapon that can repel you. Trampling is attacking with your body like a weapon with zero length!

I've never actually heard/read/seen in Real Life about the effectiveness of say, a wall of spears, in stopping an elephants charge, but in many games they assume that long weapons can often stop a large charging enemy. Perhaps Trample should take into account the weapon length and the number of enemies that try to "stop it" before successfully charging into the square. (Trampler Size and Strength would also probably be taken into account)

Yeah, one lone militia with a spear isnt' gonna stop a charging elephant, but a wall of pikemen several ranks deep would probably be able to convince an elephant not to run amok through their ranks.

So maybe the issue isn't morale, it isn't gold cost, perhaps its the Trample istelf. I doubt this is mod-able, thus in the meantime, for this and other rush problems, just Don't Allow Rushes in your MP games!

Re: Qm said
 

You roll for defense against trampling. I don't think that repel works against it - it would make sense, but only for long (length 4+) weapons, IMHO. Trampling takes lots of fatigue and makes the attacker vulnerable because he is surrounded by enemies after he is finished trampling for one round, so I don't think it's too powerful. The problem is a stampede of trampling elephants... Wait, that's a problem in real life, too. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Qm said
 

The problem with the animal leadership fix, is that if you limit animal leadership to special commanders then does every nation get one? Just those with recruitable animals? Or national animal summons?
If the point is to not be able to mix it seems you'd have to have special animal leaders. I guess if you also added an indy elephant handler to the indy provinces with Elephants it could work.

If the point is to keep elephant squads small, then the other animal summons, many of which rely on a large number of weak creatures become even more underpowered. And the animal commanders from Call of the Winds/Wild become even better. All the elephant squads will be led by Black Hawks...

I like the idea of repel working against trampling. It'll hurt elephants a lot and other tramplers (especially pretenders) less or not at all.

Re: Qm said
 

I was thinking the same things as thejeff. It could easily become a messy and confusing fix. Lots of special cases, like Bandar Log and the Black Hawks, will make it much less useful.

Personally I would imagine that a better approach would be along the lines of giving the elephants some special morale rules. Perhaps someting like QM suggests. Perhaps the threshold for being damaged causing a morale check should be lower, and perhaps all morale checks for units involving elephants should be at the elephant's morale, rather than the average. This could all be built into an "Easily Panicked" attribute that would be given to elephants and might apply to other units too (although I can't think of any at the moment).

I also think the idea of using repel against elephants sounds good. Actually I would say improving the effect of pikemen and longspears would be a major improvement to the game in general. It seems funny that they are not particularly good even against cavalry. But that is a whole separate issue I guess.

Re: Qm said
 

Just out of curiosity, how often do you see a 50 elephant rush in MP? I'm a SP solely, but amassing 50 elephants is very expensive and quite time consuming. I've never even considered accumulating that many.

Re: Qm said
 

Rather than adding more hassles to the game through additional micromanagement of animals, another counter like Repel would be a good compromise, I think. Some humans already have those.

Edratman, if you base your whole expansion on elephants then it is possible to have that many after a couple of turns. You only need 5-10 elephants to take on any indy province, so you don't need conventional troops. Get Order 3, maybe some sloth to make up for it, only produce elephants and build another fort in case you can't produce your elephants fast enough.

Re: Qm said
 

If we had a seperate animal leadership category, shouldn't all of Pangaea's commanders automatically get animal leadership? That would be very thematic.

The animal leadership category is a good idea anyway. Nature mages should get a bonus (much as death mages get undead leadership)

Re: Qm said
 

Remember, we're talking early game rush issues here. It'll take a few turns to research Conj 3 (for Call of the Winds/Call of the Wild) before that uber animal commander could be available to summon, presuming the said rusher goes straight for it, without researching anything else first. So even if your black-hawk/werewolf leader had an animal command rating of 40, he wouldn't be available for a while anyway.

By mid and late game, that 50+ elephant/chariot horde will be just so much expensive barbecue, unless backed up by some serious magic (I can see how a load of elephants with Army of Lead might be very problematic, for example). An army of archers with Fire Arrows set to "fire at large enemy monsters" should melt them away pretty fast, etc..

At least that's my two pence worth.


On the topic of a bless rush, here's my idea for a future patch/Dom 4 change - make the effectiveness of the bless dependent on a combination of the dominion level plus the casting priest level.

If the total is negative (say a level one priest operating in minus two dominion = total of one), your sacreds only get the +2 moral bonus.

At neutral, you get the moral bonus, plus the level 4 bonuses (+2 attack for Fire, etc.).

You'd need say a total of 5 or so (think a first level priest in a province with positive dominion of 4, or a third level priest in a dominion 2 province) to unlock that level 9 bless goodness.

This way, a quick bless-rush might not be possible. The attacker would need to pause more often, while preaching or spend money on temples. That, or forgo his bad-*** bless while moving into enemy territory/dominion.

Thematically, this makes sense. Surely a God's blessing should be more potent in a province where his belief is strong. Or where he has a mighty priest of the faith in operation.

Also, it might encourage ways to creatively boost priest levels (think unique items, Crystal Shields, Power of the Spheres, etc.) too.

Plus, it makes the whole 'dominion' part of Dominions that much more important (imagine that Helheim player debating whether to go for that double-9 bless, or instead choose to pump up his dominion to make his lesser bless more viable).

I like them two cents!

Re: Qm said
 

I'm not sure that elephants would be barbecue by the time you researched Conj 3. I think they stay powerful a fair way into the game. They have so many hit points that killing them takes a lot of firepower. And the trouble is, you can't make them stand still. No matter how many troops you have you only have two or three rounds before they are plowing into your army, and then you're stuffed.

Speaking from limited experience though, I must admit.

Re: Qm said
 

I like you're idea about bless, TwoBits. I agree with llama regarding the heffalumps though. I don't think that animal leadership is the way to go with them either - I think making def more effective against them to encourage the use of lighter, agile troops/cavalry and giving higher encumbrance to the 'problem' tramplers like Trogs and Heffalumps is the way to go, personally.

Re: Qm said
 

Animal Leadership is a good idea, especially if it forces players to buy the seldom used "Trainer" commanders (i.e. for salamanders and such). However, this seems like a very round-about way to try to fix elephant rushes, and I'm not sure why it even fixes it. (I personally think my Trample suggestion is better)

The Bless based on Dominion is a great idea, since a bunch of global enchantments and other stuff is already directly based on dominion strength. It probably should be a little simplier system though, just based on inside dominion/outside dominion. Priest level really shouldn't affect it, since that already determines if you can use Blessing vs Diving Blessing, and with some nations having weak priests, it could virtually destroy any Bless strategies they have.

Re: Qm said
 

I agree with those who think Nature magic should increase Animal Leadership, if the latter is going to exist. Maybe water too, so that underwater nations don't get stuck with unleadable Krakens. But this does seem like a top-heavy solution.

Repel vs. trampling seems both good and bad; it makes sense for the spearman to get a jab in, but doesn't make sense for the spearman to actually make the charging elephant skid to a halt. Maybe a sort of partial-repel where you can't actually stop the trampler, but can get an advance hit? This too seems like an unwieldy solution.

Also, agree with those who don't think Elephants are useless by Conj 3. Generally, elephants become useless when you can field MR-or-lose spells in enough numbers to stop them... and the mage numbers can be harder to match than the research, when 30 elephants come charging into your lines 2 rounds into the combat.

Re: Qm said
 

It seems increasingly to me that morale-based solutions to elephants are probably the best approach, giving them some kind of special morale rules. They make the most thematic sense as well.

Pikes should perhaps be able to get a jab in, but I think you're right that it makes no sense for them to stop an elephant/heffalump http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif in its tracks.

Re: Qm said
 

My point about Conj 3 was this - if you needed a special animal-command leader (say, recruitable national commanders would typically have Animal-10, regular unit-0 = no mixing
animals with high moral infantry for example), the potential rusher would not have an uber-animal commander (black hawk/werewolf with animal leadership of 20+) until they researched Conj 3.

Granted, a pack of 10 elephants is still pretty scary in the first year, but that would be the maximum size of the squad (w/o an experienced leader), and it would have no high moral stiffening available. Putting together that 20+ horde would have to wait until Conj 3 and the summoning (w/ gem cost - and perhaps Call of the Winds should be increased to more than 5 air gems?) of a better animal-leader.

----

Regarding the bless-rush option, I definitely think a higher level priest should be able to impart a better blessing, being that much more "in tight" with God. Nations with great sacreds but crappy priests will just have to put that much more care into pretender design (perhaps spending more points on Dominion, and less on their killer magic paths).

Again, just my two pesos.