[NFP] A couple small balance issues

[GunsGermsandSteel]

1. Barbians getting Quadriemes from the beginning of the game. I had a real issue with a Marathon paced game with a barbarian encampment at a spot I wanted to put an early city. With one and then a second quadrime camping out they were far to advanced for slingers to clear out and then a challenge for archers. I feel like barbarians shouldn't even have Quadriemes until Classical. Not early ancient.

2. Varu. I've been pretty roughly handled by AI spammed Varu a couple times. They are very difficult to kill because of their already high combat stats and their abilities which lowers adjacent enemies attack. While archers are a workable counter they run through spearmen and well every type of contemporary melee unit. The intended balance with these units is be their high production (and they very well may be balanced in player vs player matches), but since the AI has such quick production a spammed varu army can and has overran me. Or atleast all my experienced melee units. Essentially it's a balance problem because it can be very difficult to go on the offensive against India in the early game. It could really be a problem if they are your next door neighbor and are already spamming cities near you.

 

[Sostratus]

1. Barbians getting Quadriemes from the beginning of the game. I had a real issue with a Marathon paced game with a barbarian encampment at a spot I wanted to put an early city. With one and then a second quadrime camping out they were far to advanced for slingers to clear out and then a challenge for archers. I feel like barbarians shouldn't even have Quadriemes until Classical. Not early ancient.

2. Varu. I've been pretty roughly handled by AI spammed Varu a couple times. They are very difficult to kill because of their already high combat stats and their abilities which lowers adjacent enemies attack. While archers are a workable counter they run through spearmen and well every type of contemporary melee unit. The intended balance with these units is be their high production (and they very well may be balanced in player vs player matches), but since the AI has such quick production a spammed varu army can and has overran me. Or atleast all my experienced melee units. Essentially it's a balance problem because it can be very difficult to go on the offensive against India in the early game. It could really be a problem if they are your next door neighbor and are already spamming cities near you.

1) This is a great situation to apply the barb horseman treatment. If they didn’t get quads then their ships wouldn’t be a threat to land units at all. I think they should start weaker because accounting for the ranged penalty vs ships they are brutal units to fight a swarm of in the ancient era. Or just don’t let them pop quads until the classical so they don’t build up such an armada early game- that’s probably the real issue. From turn 1 they just get produced with no counter. And the AI and city states won’t kill them either. They just infest.

2) Your problem is that spear men suck even compared to horses and the Varu are more like slow knights. I’ve tried to address that issue in my simple balance mod via making spears 30 strength. For the most part it does the job.

 

[Aurelesk]

Hopefully, the Galley is now 30 CS so it can deal better against Quadrireme. But it is a mystery why the barbarians do not produce a Galley in the first place (that Galley will work as Scout). After all, the Caravel behaves like this.

Shouldn't the Barbarians units linked to era and not related to player progress? After all, era is shortened when most civilizations are advanced. I hate it when a horde of Crossbowmzn is just at my border because the AI is focusing on this technology while I am in classical era.

Is it me but are the barbarians tougher? I tend to not build a military to lure the AI to declare war against me so I could do a surprise counterattack (1 turn left from production to unit). That way I could grab a couple a city without any or too much grievance penalty. But now, I believe that once the Scout spot your city, it seems it didn't need to fully come back to his camp to start the barbarians horde. Previously, I could prevent to either see my city or comeback, but now I don't know I failed, got unlucky or if there is a surprise change of behavior of the Barbarians. I really feel they go to the player with the lesser military strength.

2) Your problem is that spear men suck even compared to horses and the Varu are more like slow knights. I’ve tried to address that issue in my simple balance mod via making spears 30 strength. For the most part it does the job.

Even if there is a balance issue, I tend to think that Combat Strength rise to quickly in the early game, while the unit being surprisingly really costly to produce but somehow too cheap to upgrade. Knight is a really good value if you produced Heavy Chariot and then upgrade them. If you produce them, it is already too late. The edge is clearly in favor to conquest. I feel like the Swordsman should be at 30 CS and 60 Production, and add a Longswordsman at 40 CS and 115 Production in the Khevsur / Samurai slot (Musketman at 50 CS and 180P, add a Rifleman at 60 CS and 250P at Redcoat slot and so on, the strength of Melee should be "a unit avalaible at each era"). I must admit I tried to come up with something, but never managed to find something good enough.

 

[Revanchist]

Varu are one of the few good bonuses India has

 

[GunsGermsandSteel]

Varu are one of the few good bonuses India has

Like I said, the balance mechanism is that they have high production cost. In a human vs human game, or if you are playing as India vs the AI Varu are pretty balanced. The issue comes into play in that the AI has major production "cheats" so they can spam Varu.

@Sostratus
I agree that spearmen suck. I rarely build them. Just pointing out the intended melee counter is ineffective and that I have tried to counter them with the intended counter. How I usually end up beating them is with archers. But not before they've wiped out our ran off my experienced melee units. I've "worked around" India before as a neighbor by playing defensively. Recently though I HAD to be offensive against them due to the map setup and how aggressively Chandragupta was settling. I ended up retiring because I had essentially lost the fight against a horde of early varus.

@Aurelesk
That's my point, Barbarians spawn with melee class Caravels once the come out but have quadriemes from very early in the game? I also agree about the teching issue. I've even had problems with barbarians getting Archers before me depending on what I was teching for. More than once barbarians and their high tech units in my backdoor have been more of an nuisance for me than other civs. Barbarians sometimes spam units way faster than I would expect. Seems to be random

 

[Laurana Kanan]

Easy fix - set BarbarianFree to False/0 for TECH_SHIPBUILDING.