Aggressive Trait, just bad or underestimated?

[Grey Fox]

Aggressive Trait, just bad or underestimated?

Does it need a boost?

The strength of the Aggressive trait isn't that the melee and mounted units start with Combat I, it's that Combat I leads to Cover (+40% vs Archer), Shock (+40% vs melee) and the slaying promotions.
Which means that a melee unit with an aggressive leader, at 2 Experience, got a 40% higher boost than a non-aggressive unit which is forced to take Combat I before it can take said promotions.

You really miss this when you are not playing as an aggressive leader.


But is this enough? Is the trait balanced? Is it perhaps balanced together with the civs that start with it, so even if Aggressive is perhaps weaker than Raider, it's all good overall?

What do you think?

 

[xAlephx]

Just a quick 2c - Raider's free Commando promotion, to a much wider variety of units, looks even better by those lights, since you'd normally have to take, what, four levels of combat promotions before you can get it?

 

[MayNilad Man]

It gives an edge in early game, in late game, it can be helpful since you can get Immortals running around with one extra promotion, compared to another which is the same level.

Compared to Raider, it still keep it's early game advantage since the barbs don't have roads and your enemies haven't really developed them. However, in late game, the raider promotion gives fresh cannon fodder the very beneficial ability to reinforce the front line, where weakening the enemy counts for more.

 

[xAlephx]

But the extra XP per battle is pretty nice early on.

 

[vorshlumpf]

The extra XP is huge! I try to manage all of battles so that they are near 100%, so I'm doubling my XP gain from this trait.

I've thought that Raider should give a percentage bonus to XP (like 20%), not a flat +1.

 

[Chandrasekhar]

The extra XP is huge! I try to manage all of battles so that they are near 100%, so I'm doubling my XP gain from this trait.

I've thought that Raider should give a percentage bonus to XP (like 20%), not a flat +1.

In that case, it'd only give extra XP if you got 5 xp or more from a battle... seems like it wouldn't come into effect that much.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Here's a thought that's fitting and reduces raider a bit--have it only give an extra XP when attacking.

 

[Kael]

One of my favorite aspects of Aggresive is it helps heroes get up to the heroic strength promotion all the faster (and an extra promotion before their free xp shuts off).

@Nikis-Knight- that used to be impossible since combat result didnt track who initiated the combat. But when I moved the function into the SDK I added that flag, so its really easy to make that change. Do you think its a valuable change?

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Do you think its a valuable change?

Well, I don't have a passionate opinion about the balance of the raider trait one way or another, but it would fit the theme--only getting more experience from attacking rather than defending.
I saw change it if it is easy to do.

 

[much2much]

Definitely better than Homeland promotion.

I think aggressive is a great trait for exactly your reason. Apprenticeship is a no brainer: 10% less military production is nothing, 25% would be a better figure because then it would be a decision to be made at the time. The out of the gate 40% bonii are excellent.

I've been playing with big stacks early game a lot and I would much prefer aggressive in these situations than raider. If you are building up a large force aggressive wins whereas raider is excellent if you have heaps of barbs to fight. If you have the luxury of fighting barbs, and in this game you aren't going to be attacking with warriors. Hunters against weak animals sure but you are camping your warriors in forests for goblins and orcs to attack them. Hence you need a lot of time for raider to affect a large number of units.

 

[Blakmane]

maybe change the exp effect on raider to a unique mechanic, such as a 25% chance to gain 1 xp from pillaging? Not really unbalanced considering how much you can currently make by camping barbs....

and maybe move the '1 xp on successful attack' kael was talking about just then to the aggressive trait.

that'd make them more even.

 

[slowcar]

I think the raider-trait is fine as the leaders who have it are not especially strong. You can take it when you are adaptive but i did it only once and it didn't work that well, philosophical or financial work much better in the late game while aggressive is better in the early.

aggressive is fine as it is i think. it gives an early advantage if you go warrior vs warrior and add apprenticeship in. In fact this advantage is rather big as combat1-warriors have no chance against their fortified counterparts while shock-warriors win at least every second fight.

If something has to be changed its apprenticeship. Compared to vanilla civ the additional promotion is more valuable as you spend a longer time with your warriors. I like the idea of more production-malus, 25% sounds fine with me. Would stop people staying in apprenticeship all the game maybe

 

[onedreamer]

I would still stick to apprenticeship even with a 25% malus because of the costs of the other civics in that line, which are absolutely unbalanced compared to their features.
Maybe the aggressive trait should grant an extra promotion at level 0 and one every 5-6 levels.

 

[Thennorin]

Well, I don't have a passionate opinion about the balance of the raider trait one way or another, but it would fit the theme--only getting more experience from attacking rather than defending.
I saw change it if it is easy to do.

Just to throw in my 2 cents, I don't think the aggressive trait need a boost - I find it useful at all stages of the game. In the mid-late game, it stays powerful when combined with the right civics. It's a very good advantage to have when you're churning out green troops for a war.

However, it's interesting the raider trait got mentioned here as the +1 xp makes it too similar to aggressive, imo. I'd like to see that bonus applied only some of the time. You could argue that raids aren't always successful...

To extend Nikis-Knight's idea, how about only awarding extra xp (1 or 2) when a raider attacks a city & wins a fight? For extra spice, also award extra xp to any unit that loses & manages to withdraw (read: Hippus cav). For raiders, I'd love to see a mechanic that encourages harrying enemy cities, even when you mightn't have enough numbers to overwhelm them. It goes well with the extra gold from pillaging.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

It would be a big change, but I do like the idea of a bonus for withdraw, I agree it is even more in the spirit of of raiders.
XP bonus on every attack for agressive might be a bit high, but every attack on a city would be cool, and it would ensure, more or less, that the bonus came on attacking enemies in their territory rather than yours.

 

[Blakmane]

It would be a big change, but I do like the idea of a bonus for withdraw, I agree it is even more in the spirit of of raiders.
XP bonus on every attack for agressive might be a bit high, but every attack on a city would be cool, and it would ensure, more or less, that the bonus came on attacking enemies in their territory rather than yours.

agreed, but the main point was that aggressive only gets an extra promo while raiders get an arguably better promo, extra pillaging gold, and an XP bonus on every attack and defence.

 

[xanaqui42]

I guess my main comment is that I'd balance the Leaders and/or Civs, not the Traits. The only advantage to balancing traits against each other is to give more options for Adaptive (and to a much lesser degree, Insane), which will tend to make that trait more powerful.

I like Aggressive. In general, I find +1 (useful) promotion to be nice. Yes, in a number of cases (when you're mostly attacking), it's weaker than Raider.

If I were to increase the power of Aggressive, I'd double the speed of building the Training Yard.

 

[Grey Fox]

If I were to increase the power of Aggressive, I'd double the speed of building the Training Yard.

It got double speed of building Training Yard and Stable already.

EDIT: Sorry, I was wrong. It was Shipyard, not Training Yard. Ok I agree, Aggressive probably should increase building speed of the Training Yard

 

[loki1232]

I'd like it if recon units got the aggressive promotion--it would make it much much easier to capture animals.

 

[eerr]

raider-
+1 on attack
+1 on withdrawl?