We need to know what the devs are going to do with the ranged damage. The game before was balanced around a 50% reduction gnomes we’re still the strongest range class overall as the should be. I don’t think it hurts the game to implement this such that lower range races aren’t getting 0’ed before their men even start charging the battlefield.

If we are thinking about an acuracy rating for races during both range and melee I’m all for it, let’s have that discussion then, for range start at 50% and let’s say orcs, dwarfs, less accurate put them at 45% let’s say gnomes and humans ok accuracy 50% and elves the obvious winner 60%

Add entropy. Make ranged anywhere between 40-65% accurate, regardless of race. More realistic, when the arrows fly, they sometimes get lucky sometimes hit the ground.

It's a -1 for me. Especially to jump straight to -50%, then we might as well rename the game Orcferr because the only winners will be those that field melee armies. If there was to be a ranged nerf it should be incremental to see how it goes, maybe start at -10% or -20%.

It's already not a very good idea for anyone to go too heavy on ranged, because there is a counter to that strat, which is what I'm playing = dwarf heavy on shieldbearers. If I run 50% shieldbearers then anyone attacking or defending against me gets zero ranged attack. If they're too invested in ranged, it's an easy win for me.

Every race has these kind of weaknesses and strengths, can't just completely cripple 2 races so the other 3 can dominate.

There's also talk to add armor to Orc units, making them even stronger in melee. So we should nerf ranged for all and buff melee even more for orcs? That's not really balancing anything.

    Lord Thane

    +100 for me. -50% is the historical baseline from which all other balance is derived. You have so so so much more to balance with a 50% ranged damage increase. You are not jumping straight to -50%, you are jumping straight to +50%.

    Not to mention that Gnomes destroyed orcs even with -50% range.

    Edit:

    There's also talk to add armor to Orc units, making them even stronger in melee. So we should nerf ranged for all and buff melee even more for orcs? That's not really balancing anything.

    All this talk is non-sense because it was predicated on a round with infinite resources and double range damage. Where orcs were rightfully being clobbered. Of course people's baselines for balance are out of whack. We're gonna nerf Gnomes now in the early game and say they're fine in the late game? I can't wrap my head around this.

    Edit 2: I could speak more of how doing a 2(?) unit ATC as Dwarf isn't a real-world counter to range, but ya, i'm sure you know that. Or will if you try it over a period of longer than a few attacks. Dwarfs are not versatile for this.

      50% long range was the old way with the thought behind it being not every projectile hits. No need to over complicate the issue. No need to have elves hit more because they’re highly trained and more accurate. They already just do more damage.

        trupheus ok then let’s not mess with accuracy give all races random from 40-60% with entropy as suggested. I don’t like it would rather it just blanket 50%halving call it a day.

        @Lord Thane what your saying does not make sence in my smooth brain, it ALWAYS was 50% range as Jules is saying and gnomes were crushing orcs all the time gnomes would crush a lot of races almost every race in the early game. I’m glad we are looking at that but this is just baseline reductions to get the game back to where it was a functioning battle system.

        50% range is how the game was balanced before, and it makes a lot of sense when you think how many arrows would actually hit

          • Leo

            • Post #7
            • Edited

            Below BR is why range needs nerf. Gnome is on def. against 999million with problably 611m

            Also notice we don't know how much more could've been wiped over 999 million. Maybe 1.5 billion would've been wiped.

            We managed to kill : 91.904.827 Catapult 611.625.000 Infantry 611.625.000 Militia 611.625.000 Rider 611.625.000 Rock thrower 152.959.273 Balista

            But we lost : 999.999.999 Shadow Warrior 999.999.999 Rusher 999.999.999 Slother 999.999.999 Wolf Master 999.999.999 Slinger 999.999.999 Axe Thrower

              Leo that battle report looks perfect to me. An all melee army against an all range army, equal numbers of units, but the ranged units are 10X more costly and powerful than the melee attacker units. Of course the army that costs 10X to build and gets the first round of attacks should win. Even if we nerfed them 50% they should win = economics of a unit that costs 100gp to build vs a unit that costs 1gp.

              Going off the game guide there's no mention of a ranged nerf, and we're not building general shadows version of the game, so it will need consensus.

                We'll prolly get s better idea of how things are balanced in this mini round, where we can see real economies and earned armies at play.

                  • Jules

                    • Post #10
                    • Edited

                    Lord Thane

                    Then you need to do these changes immediately:

                    • Nerf early game gnome, we only have 72-96 hours out of prot to figure this out and get this done on the accelerated tech timeline. HARD nerf. They were already the best early
                    • BUFF SW. Start at double armor? No point in hiding when you just die in range.
                    • BUFF Mage armor. Again, 2 armor and is going nowhere vs a range buff.

                    These are the things off the top of my head that are immediately broken by a range buff. Broken, not balanced.

                      Leo gnome was the most broken race with those armies. Cats are a 5 unit war machine. Balista are a 4 unit war machine. Those two combined are almost twice the unit of any army sent at them. Nothing was going to stand a chance other than another gnome. Especially not the race that is known to be weak against LR damage.

                        @Lord Thane

                        The biggest challenge I have with not nerfing range is the concept that EVERY ARROW MUST HIT. Now it doesn’t seem logical.

                        Start with 25% nerf and see how things go. Add some entropy.

                        Make life make sense again.

                          saadht it's pretty much the same thing I already tried with casualty caps, which was shut down. My reasoning for phased casualty caps was to have fewer casualties for ranged because it's like "thinning the ranks", then slightly more casualties for short range, then highest casualties for melee.

                          Except this just penalizes ranged units while giving nothing else back as a balance. Every short range throw of an axe still hits, every melee swing of a sword still hits.

                          To me the lack of a mentioning of a ranged nerf in the guide would indicate as much that the ranged attacks are already nerfed with a lower attack damage. Which is the same thing as removing 50% damage. The archer was supposed to have 6 ranged attack, but it's listed as 3 to account for missed arrows. It's functionally the same thing, since if we're nerfing it by half then all we'd do is go in to each unit and cut their attack # by however much - give rock throwers a 0.5 ranged attack, etc.

                            @Lord Thane

                            This is my OCD.

                            Long range is less accurate than short range, which in turn is less accurate than melee. Of course when you strike somebody close to you, your chances of missing are less. I cannot understand how 100% of the arrows are hitting. I would also support SR being 90% accurate only. So LR 75%, SR 90%, melee 100%.

                            As for ranged doing less damage in the game guide, let's not forget mages at 7 ranged damage. I don't believe it's already built in, I just believe it's so that you get all phases of battle. You should ideally build a balanced army that should have LR and Melee, and if possible, also SR. Otherwise, run elf, 100% mages, and rule the world.

                              saadht it's not 100% of arrows hitting though. That idea is just a construct in your mind. Just like in my mind the damage done by the archer is a result of the entire long battle - they aren't just shooting 1 arrow that does 3 damage and then dying. They're shooting dozens of arrows which cumulatively = their ranged attack #. Same for short and melee range, the attack # is just that units ability to produce damage during its lifetime in the battle.

                              Decisive battles with massive enemy casualties at range has been a thing since forever - just look up what the English did with their Longbowmen when they were first deployed - completely wrecked the enemy.

                              For point 2, like I mentioned before there are many counters to the idea of running 100% range. For me, merely running 50% shieldbearers completely nullifies your 100% mage army, leaving the other half of my army to walk in and freely take the win. If a player was found to be running 100% ranged, and someone wanted them broken, they can easily ally with a dwarf to break them.

                              And it's not like only one race has great range, Humans and Gnomes are decent too. Dwarf has its method of dealing, and for Orc they should build a large contingent of ranged unit if they plan to attack a range heavy enemy, or deploy diplomacy to have an ally break the ranged units via shield line. Enemies are only defending with 70-80% now per the castle rule too, making it even easier to break a stronghold.

                                  Lord Thane

                                  Yes but how can it be exact without entropy? Have you ever seen conceptual battles where EXACTLY 2 arrows hit the target and 2 miss every time? A defined ranged attack implies this.

                                  How about ranged with entropy can be between 75%-100% with entropy, SR can be 90%-100% with entropy, and melee with 100%?

                                  The distance should create some uncertainty.

                                      saadht that's still just a construct in your mind. If we do ranged at 75% we can do short range at 75% too, and melee at 75%. It makes no difference to realism, it's just skewing the rules to tip the balance of gameplay.

                                      It's not 2 arrows getting shot, like it's not a guy with a sword swinging and hitting every time. It's what damage they can do in a given battle. That's really all there is to it, it's simple, neat, easy, and makes sense. As much sense as any game. Some games would call it damage per minute, some would do damage per hit, whatever, it's just a number that shows what it can do in a battle.

                                      If we say a sword man can do 5 damage, and a archer can do 5 damage, that's all there is to it. There isn't the archer shooting 1 arrow and hitting 100% of the time, there doesn't need to be entropy of some kind, there's randomness elsewhere to create some realism. The damage is just what a unit can do in a battle.

                                      So what we're really talking about is saying "we don't like that the archer gets to shoot the sword man before the sword man can make a hit". That's the whole point to having the archer in the first place. So we're to say "ok, now the archer can only do 2.5 damage now, so we can give the sword man a chance to kill the archer". And that's all the convo is really about, giving the sword man a handicap so he can kill the archer - whether it makes sense or whether we know if it's fair or not.

                                      I wonder what the numbers would look like if we figured out the cost of 1 attack point for each phase of battle for each race. I bet it would get extra interesting to see the costs after removing half the attack points from ranged units only.

                                        sigh

                                        Fine. Gen Shadow nerfed range for a reason though. I just can't communicate what it was.

                                          saadht

                                          I'm not even convinced it was Gen Shadow. I want to say it happened between round 3 and 4. Round 4 is when the elves got super fucked.

                                            4 days later

                                            saadht every melee might not hit but glancing blows. Sometimes you would miss sometimes it's not a hard hit ect. Don't forget just because it's melee doesn't mean it should do the max melee damage if you want to add in the fact range don't hit everytime then you have to add in the chance of swinging a sword or ax and missing or not having a killing blow... it's works both ways with this.