If horsemen get nerfed

[Slowpoke]

Then 1 spear could basically take down an army of horses. This is a bad idea.

Not at all. How exactly do you take an army of 4 movement horses at 2 movement? You can't. If your ENTIRE army is cavalry then yeah it's a problem since you have no way of attacking the spearman. But having an entire army of horsemen is and should be silly.

 

[LordTC]

Nice idea, but an extremely steep penalty might be better. Total prohibitions usually just frustrate players.

The problem with this is the attitude of "Lets get rid of total prohibitions then complain when the AI makes stupid attacks that should have been banned by the game". A total prohibition is better because in practice its the same except that it doesn't introduce problems with the AI being allowed to do something stupid and ending up choosing to do so.

 

[LordTC]

Iron Working and swords are more powerful on Deity than horses are. But the only reason for this is that you are strongly encouraged to do a warrior rush, so you often attack the enemy with 5 warriors, 4 or 5 of which survive, then you get iron working, upgrade and have an army of swords ready to go. Doing a horse rush usually involves building a settler first. So you don't have an instant army via gold you have to actually build your horses.

I think my suggestion of making iron working equally easy to get as horseback riding is probably wrong just because warriors upgrade to swords.

 

[The Tollan]

Would slightly increasing the strength of spearmen and pikemen (possibly with slight costs increases) cause any serious game imbalances?

Some have already discussed the idea but I was wondering how many here considered these units already useful enough or whether they are relatively ineffective.

These options could still be by nerfs to horsemen if still necessary for balance (probably mainly city attack or a very slight other nerf).

Another thing to mention (might have already been mentioned) is that the open terrain defense penalty is quite large and helps horsemen. Perhaps a substantial reduction of this penalty would help balance some? I think the penalty is ok but it is quite large.

 

[milk steak]

Looks like they're nerfing Horsemen in the next patch:

* Melee horse units combat value lowered, and now receive a penalty when attacking cities. (Added 11/18)

http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/sh...xt-Patch-(Update-11-18)&p=1267383#post1267383

 

[Soronery]

-.-
great now horses are useless.

 

[Slowpoke]

ugh, now I have to rebalance it

 

[Gort]

-.-
great now horses are useless.

Not useless, they now do the same thing as tanks!

Oh wait. Tanks are also useless.

That's probably a bit on the strong side, to be honest. They're really there to get around the melee units and kill the ranged guys.

 

[Lanstro]

Even a 10 strength 3 move horse would still have its uses, and I doubt the patch is going to nerf them that far.

 

[The Tollan]

The description in that post mentions "melee horse units."

I doubt this actually includes knights but technically could.

I think that this change, "•Open terrain penalty lowered" will be helpful to the game. Good to keep the penalty but not so extreme.

 

[Putmalk]

They nerfed them the exact way my mod did that I uploaded two months ago.

Time to delete that mod. >.>

 

[kossmikman]

Even with the nerf, horsmen are still useful for grabbing any ranged unit or worker left behind by the enemy.

 

[pi-r8]

The description in that post mentions "melee horse units."

I doubt this actually includes knights but technically could.

I think that this change, "•Open terrain penalty lowered" will be helpful to the game. Good to keep the penalty but not so extreme.

"melee horse units" means everything except for chariot archers, camel archers, and keshiks. I wouldn't mind a slight nerf to knights and cavalry, also.

 

[Biz_]

just get rid of the stupid withdrawal system

 

[HiroProtagonist]

I find the instant heal for horsemen coupled with their ability to attack and retreat in the same move a bit overpowered. It seems that I rarely loose horsemen when attacking cities as they almost always get a promotion to pull them back from the brink of destruction. One solution would be to raise the cost of the promotion. A better solution might be to build some randomness into the instant heal promotion. Instead of instantly healing there could be a chance that the unit would only get a partial heal, no heal, or even a chance the HM would be eliminated. Another option for randomness is that there would be a chance the man heals but the horse does not and the unit becomes an unmounted horseman (warrior which could be upgraded to HM if horse resources are available)

 

[wurstburst]

Hopefully, in conjunction with this change, we'll get a more cohesive tech path for horse units. If the tech path now goes horse->knight->lance-> calvary, and get's to the lancers without having to research gunpowder (why that makes any sense, I'll never understand, since they are decidedly not a gunpowder unit), I'll be happy, even with a slight nerf to unit strength.

As it is, you get pretty badly stalled at knights and need to jump over to riflemen at that point. It would be nice to be able to make the change to lance before that is ready.

Unfortunately the tech tree as it's currently structured isn't very conducive to this. We'll see if they managed to rework this as part of their upgrade path fixes.

 

[The Great Apple]

I'm predicting -1 ST and -25% against cities. They will still be strong in the open field, but no longer so crazy.

 

[Izmir Stinger]

Removing the "death fields" penalty is the only nerf they need. Their speed allows them to capitalize on that too much. Once it is gone, their power will be reigned in.

 

[Deep_Blue]

Other: Less effective against cities.

 

[Yzman]

Seems like they are nerfing them almost exactly how people recommended.