Trample balance discussion

[Xietor]

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.

[Adept]

Originally Posted by JimMorrison

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.
<3

Yes that does seem neat!

[HoneyBadger]

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.

[Tifone]

Yep, reducing the size of the elephants (after 2 years ) 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.

[Sombre]

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

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.

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.

[HoneyBadger]

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.

[Sombre]

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 :]

[Tifone]

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 Expecially as I personally don't feel the need of all that boring stuff

[Illuminated One]

Originally Posted by HoneyBagder

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.

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.

[HoneyBadger]

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.