Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!

[mac5732]

I don't have a problem with the changes in MP play. BUT... a lot of us play mostly SP and weakening or cutting back on the more stronger races DOES AFFECT play in SP. SP needs super races for us sp players to go up against. I know there will be those who disagree, BUT.. MP is not the only style gamers play.. SP must be taken into account as well and to weaken races in order to balance MP just unbalances SP to point its no longer fun to play.. Therefore, I would like to see the changes where MP is affected.. as an option leaving SP untouched or at least slightly modified. This way both MP and SP players could at least be pairable. You can't affect l without affecting the other... IMHO

[JimMorrison]

Originally Posted by mac5732

I know there will be those who disagree, BUT.. MP is not the only style gamers play.. SP must be taken into account as well and to weaken races in order to balance MP just unbalances SP to point its no longer fun to play..

Well, another voice for this side of the coin.

When most balancing is done through cost increases, I have 1 question, and an elegant solution.

First, do you already play with all AI on Impossible?

If not, then you can already rebalance cost increases by increasing difficulty. If you do play exclusively on Impossible, then I would think that the best solution overall would be to allow MP balancing to continue to take place largely through cost changes in units, but to ask for another difficulty level to be implemented. Of all of the changes that are requested for the game, adding another step to the difficulty scale should be utterly trivial.

Though, I would hope that even a minuscule amount of AI direction as to gem searching and gem use, would go a LONG way to making the computer more fearsome. For example, if they got some sort of mild, free, Arcane Probing effect in their dominion (not the mage hunting part, just the site finding part), it would automate their site searching in a way that they could compete in gem income more readily, and actually cast more globals/rituals.

[rdonj]

(ignore this post)

[rdonj]

As to the yumi debate. I went and looked up longbows and got a hit from wikipedia with ranges to compare against the Yumi.

Now, the bottom site you listed stated that the Yumi has a "killing range" of 30 meters, and a maximum range of 380 meters. Comparing this to what wikipedia has to say, a 160-180 lb english longbow had a range between 165 and 228 meters, and that "An archer could hit a person at 165 m (180 yards) "part of the time" and could always hit an army." (not cited). Someone with a Mary Rose replica longbow was able to shoot an arrow as far as 328 meters(cited). The article also states "The longbow had a long range and high accuracy, but not both at the same time. Modern champion archers maintain that a hit cannot be guaranteed on an individual target at more than 75 m (80 yards) with any bow whatsoever." (not cited)

Though a lot of that information is uncited, even the highest figure for the longbow is lower than that of the yumi, and that one is cited.

Also what must be considered is what is actually meant in the teppou article by "killing range". This sounds like an incredibly useless sort of figure to me. Is it the range at which an archer is considered more than likely to kill the enemy? Is it the range at which an archer is more than likely to hit an enemy with a shot that will disable them? Is it the range at which they are more than likely to penetrate the opponents armor? Hit them? To me it sounds most likely to be the first option. An effective range of 50 meters as is stated in the other article you linked is believable for shooting directly at a target rather than volleying. Personally, I struggle to land arrows accurately at 40 meters with a modern compound bow, but I am a terrible archer and have not spent a lifetime learning how to shoot.

[zzcat]

"effective killing range" just means "effective range". That is the range you may really do some serious damage with the bow. Refering to "The Evolution Of Weapons And Warfare"(T.N.Dupuy, 1986), English longbow has an effective range about 250 yards. Others have their estimation between 180 and 250.

Again, the accuracy of point-blank shooting does little in a battle. volleying rain of arrows to an army is the only thing to do in most of the time. Anyway, as we know, the standard distance between the mato and the archer is only 28 meters.

I think it's not polite to discuss OT content in this thread. Perhaps we should stop here or move to other place.

[AreaOfEffect]

Maybe I don't play enough early-age games, but my most recent view of Yomi makes me believe that they can be extremely competitive as-is. My personal feeling is that a few elements within the faction overshadow the multitude of weapons and tactics they have at their disposal. The first being the Dia Oni's physical chassis and the other being throw flames.

[VedalkenBear]

Originally Posted by zzcat

I think you are talking about Mongol horsemen, not samurai

This shows that you don't know the origins of the samurai. As I state above, Samurai began as _exactly_ the mounted archer that Mongol horsemen were. After all, the actual _training_ of the samurai was known as the 'Way of Horse and Bow'. Note what is present in that, and what is missing.

If you think of a samurai as a dismounted warrior wielding the katana, you are thinking of someone that only existed from the middle of the 1500s on. Samurai certainly existed in Japan for 500 years before that, and it is arguable for how long before that 'proto-samurai' existed (at least 200 years, in some people's estimate).

Please try to refer to the period when you say the word 'samurai', because it makes a very large difference. At different times, they were horse archers (before ~1530), highly pragmatic elite dismounted swordsmen (~1530-1600), and highly idealistic administrators (1600-1868).

If you would like to read a good book on the history of the samurai, you can check out Farris's Heavenly Warriors.

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by AreaOfEffect

Maybe I don't play enough early-age games, but my most recent view of Yomi makes me believe that they can be extremely competitive as-is. My personal feeling is that a few elements within the faction overshadow the multitude of weapons and tactics they have at their disposal. The first being the Dia Oni's physical chassis and the other being throw flames.

No, there are a dozen races I can win with, but Yomi has too many weakneses. If you don't even script the flame throwing yomis - they *won't*. Aka, I've seen them just close to combat without tossing flames- on more than one occassion. Really pathetic.

Kristoffer tried yomi, I think to get a feel of how bad they were, and had his clock cleaned - like immediately.

Yomi just needs a few tweaks - and it could be a fun and interesting race... Why do yomi ghosts *not* need undead leadership by the way....

One of the niggling little annoyances - now I readily agree you can't impose that on the nation - but I do think demon priests should be undead.

[Trumanator]

Whenever I've played Yomi I never have issues with them not throwing flames. The thing is though that their precision is so abysmal that the Ao Onis tend to be better, because their cold attack is melee. Plus they're cheaper, for about the same stats IIRC. The demon priest is supposed to be a priest FOR the demons, not a demon himself.

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by Trumanator

Whenever I've played Yomi I never have issues with them not throwing flames. The thing is though that their precision is so abysmal that the Ao Onis tend to be better, because their cold attack is melee. Plus they're cheaper, for about the same stats IIRC. The demon priest is supposed to be a priest FOR the demons, not a demon himself.

I understand, I've heard the arguments before. Bless me father My that was a pleasant lunch.

My point I was trying to make is that usually ghosts require undead leadership or they go poof. I haven't observed that behaviour in onis.

And you can't really put it on them, as it would be a significant weakness.