Ljosalfar archerrush is waaay overpowered!

[Valkrionn]

It's a soft cap. As your unit becomes stronger, you get less experience from weaker units... Since by that point most barbs are weak, you don't get much from them.

 

[Vehem]

It's a soft cap. As your unit becomes stronger, you get less experience from weaker units... Since by that point most barbs are weak, you don't get much from them.

Until the Demon-barbs kick in... They're quite often "not weak", but in most cases you deserve the XP for surviving them.

 

[Uncas]

Archers aren't an auto win button. All they can do is injure the enemy. I think only Golden and Flurries have a high enough damage cap to kill with a ranged attack. You could make the argument that an injured enemy is easy to kill, and that's certainly true. But Ring of Flame, and Tsunami are far more effective ways of weakening the enemy. Archer bombardments pale in comparison to that.

Ljosalfar archers are a little stronger than other races', that's all. The archer issue is a problem for everyone. And with the Austrin Windstones, Scion Blackblood Arrows, and Mechanos Corned powder gunners, I'd be hesitant to call ljosalfar best at ranged attacks.

The "little stronger than other races" you mention, makes a huges difference early game. Try it out yourself before commenting

 

[citizenalex]

Hell yeah! I'm actually kind of happy archers can bombard and gain xp from it. It never made sense to have them only gain xp in close range combat, the unit was in effect playing out of character by doing so.

 

[Rev. Ratspaw]

Hmm... The xp from shooting could probably use a soft-cap, but all in all I don´t think it works that badly, if the original poster wants an Auto-Win button let him have it. *Shrugs*
We all have the opportunity to abuse the shooting xp but the vast majority of us don´t, because it makes for a boring-as-limbo game.

 

[WarKirby]

Soft cap has been implemented. I'm playing with it under 0.51 now.

THe ljosalfar feel pretty fine with it, but then, they have more ranged strength, and extra direct attack on their archers as a backup option. I'm thinking other civ's archers are going to feel a bit underpowered.

 

[Kjara]

Any chance of having archers have a limited number of arrows and have them refill when you enter either your own territory or your own towns--could even have them able to forage for arrow supplies when not moving (but would ideally need more than 1 turn of non-motion to create enough arrows for one barrage). This would greatly slow down offensive farming with them, but keep them useful for that 1-2 barrages before you take a town, and have little to no penalty for defense.

 

[WarKirby]

That seems like it would be rather annoying micromanagement. And didn't archers usually make their own arrows from branches and such if they ran out?

 

[Breez]

IF something like that were to happen, I would rather see Regular archery maintain as is (or as will be before such a thing were implemented) and Archers given a ranged attack that was better than the normal attack, but could only be used in moderation. Such as once before returning to a town with a fletcher or have the special attack have a 4-6 turn "cool down" before reuse.

That sort of thing I would be okay with, even if it meant a slight tuning down of the normal attack so there was no net gain. I would hate to see archers become a huge micromanagement burden. I assume I have quartermasters that take care of trivial things like that and food etc.

 

[Andvare]

That seems like it would be rather annoying micromanagement. And didn't archers usually make their own arrows from branches and such if they ran out?

Not really. Arrows are not that simple to produce. For hunting small game, maybe, for war, no.

 

[Arctic Circle]

I've been doing this with Javelin Throwers, 20 units with ~30-40 exp. Think it will make some difference in future wars..

 

[Solanus]

I think the thing that annoyed me the most with the archer bombardment experience had far more to do with the way that the AI reacted to the archers, specifically the Goblin Forts.

I'd often walk through someone's territory peacefully and swing by one of their cities, and see a blue-glowing Goblin Archer perched atop his Fort, right next to the city. The Civ AI had apparently thought, "What is the ideal place for my next city? How about directly next to an enemy who will be hitting me every stinking turn with his bombarding arrows?" The Goblin Archer quickly gained enough experience that it ran out of promotions to buy with them, and just sat there, as effectively a hero-level unit, unwilling to take advantage of its capabilities. If that Goblin Archer ever got off his butt, he would have probably single-handedly defeated that civ. It normally takes another hero-level unit and/or a small army to dislodge one of those suckers once they've developed to that point.

It's also a pain when you would have Scouts (or whatever) on auto-explore stop near a Goblin Fort, and then just sit there like numbnuts for turns on end, while they take piddly damage, fortify until healed, take piddly damage, fortify until healed, lather, rinse, repeat. Easy enough to deal with as a human player (see red note, move unit away, heal manually), but again, the other civs would just hand out free XP to every Goblin Archer on the map. Didn't help that I almost never saw the other civs ever actually deal with Goblin Forts (but more than happy to try and swoop in to take the lair exploration once I cleared the defenders).

 

[WarKirby]

Goblin archers are being nerfed in patch C. We generally agreed that they're becoming a bit too powerful .They'll be losing defensive bonuses entirely, so they'll still be a 5 defense unit, but not an 11 defense unit or so, tanks to being fortified in a hilltop fort.

 

[Iceciro]

Sounds good to me.

 

[Castar]

Personally, My solution to this whole issue, would be to reduce the defensive strength of archers to the same as warriors (3), and remove their hill/city defence bonus, but increase the defence bonus of the Wall Defender promotion to 50% to represent them pelting the helpless enemy as they clmb siege ladders. I've always found it silly that archers get a bonus in defending a city with no walls

Then make ranged attacks FAR more powerful, and remove the damage cap. Essentially, forcing archers to rely on their ranged attacks, and be poor in direct combat. I'd also give them a reduced chance to defend the stack.

going on how real warfare works here. Archers don't stand and take the brunt of te attack. They pelt the enemy from a distance. When the enemy gets in close, it's your swords/axes/spearmen that do the fighting, and act as a meat shield. The way civ does things in this regard has always irked me. This approach would force a balance of ranged and melee troops to defend a city.]

But that is a rather deep and fundamental change. Perhaps I'll try it in a module sometime

I read this and it made a lot of sense, actually, and I started thinking (dangerous!), so I'm going to be bold here and propose some ideas which probably won't work because of things I haven't thought about because I'm not an expert player

Archery

• What WK said: on an open plain, with a bunch of axemen or even warriors rushing archers, where do archers get their big advantage from? Sure, they can launch a volley or two, but that's what first strikes are for. Make archers 3/3, 3/5 just doesn't make sense. Similarly, make Longbowmen a 5 instead of a 6. On an open plain, without defensive measures, Longbowmen should be cut down by Champions. Crossbows are fine I guess, a point more or less won't matter all that much. Give all bows a small city defense bonus and a large Wall Defender bonus.
• Rework ranged damage as follows: archery units do weak ranged damage, i'd say no more than 1 for a basic archer, but remove damage caps for all archery units. Include a defense against ranged damage in the Wall Defender promo, without inducing a cap. This way, archers will whittle down any target with enough numbers and/or enough time, but will have a very distinct advantage defending cities.
• Leave the ranged XP as is (soft cap wouldn't even be nescessary I guess). Infinite XP-gain is now impossible anyways due to the eventual lethality of ranged attacks.

Siege

• Not really what this thread is about, but I thought of this while thinking of illogical archer mechanics so I'll include them anyways
• Buy our brand new catapults! Now with laser-guided rocks capable of distinguishing between a wall and the archers on it! Seriously, I don't understand why siege weapons have a seperate ranged and bombard mode. When you're hitting the walls, you're hitting the archers, and vice versa. They're catapults and cannons, not laser guided missiles...
• Hence, combine bombard and ranged in one action (if not possible, dirty fix: remove the bombard action, add a check on the ranged action that triggers bombard if the targetted square has a hostile city).
• Scale ranged damage similarly to archers (again: no damage cap), but add a collateral percentage (not too low, ranged damage would be low as-is, percentage will lower it further).
• These changes (combined with the archery changes) would make siege a much better offensive weapon than archers, but relying on siege for defense will not work for long.

Mages

• Heck, while I'm at it, why not rework mages too
• Mages are squishy. Imo, every normal magic user should be a 0/1 unit. I'd say even Archmages.
• Mages can hurt you from far away. Every mage should have a ranged attack (again, no cap). Adepts shouldn't have a very high one, maybe 2 or 3, but this should increase dramatically with Mages and through the roof with Archmages. These units require time and effort to get, you can't spam them.
• UU magic users would have to be looked at, of course. An affinity mechanic for ranged damage for the D'Tesh mages would, for example, be totally . .. .. .. .ing sweet

The AI

• ...would have to know how to react to a bunch of archers pelting it do death. This is a given with just about any solution for anything, naturally
• Other than that, these changes should make the basic AI archers-SoD actually quite a bit more dangerous. 10-20 archers in a city (or next to your city), will now be a danger even if the AI is too chicken to actually (normally) attack with them and just sits there pelting whatever is next to it with arrows, as it usually does.

So, quite a bit more involved than just XP-tweaking, but all of this makes sense to me from a logical point of view. It also makes ranged attacks more of a strategy, instead of just a situational tactic. Maybe some more experienced players can tell me how they don't make sense from a gameplay point of view. From the coders perspective, there is the serious amount of tweaking, the reworking of the ranged siege attack and probably the most difficult: re-doing any and all promotions and upgrades that give bonusses to ranged damage/bombard. I might try a hand on this myself, but I don't know anything about Civ's/FF's codebase so it would likely take me a while to figure it all out.

 

[Humakty]

In the game I'm playing now, I haven't exploited the turff, and it seems quite nice as it is now, anyway, I don't think I'll take the time to exploit this, as I have an easier way to make ubber units if I want to :
option : new random seed on reload / save / fight at bad odds (for boatloads of XP)
if fight = win : continue gaming
if fight = loose : load
Rince Repeat.

 

[Castar]

If you are willing to take the time to do that, why not just enter world builder and give your units boatloads of XP? :/

 

[Vehem]

What WK said: on an open plain, with a bunch of axemen or even warriors rushing archers, where do archers get their big advantage from? Sure, they can launch a volley or two, but that's what first strikes are for. Make archers 3/3, 3/5 just doesn't make sense.

I'd be tempted to go 3/4 - keeps them as a defensive unit on par with Axemen in the open, but not intrinsically better. Also the drop in city-defensive strength from losing 2 points of raw strength would be fairly massive and bring them back to the "less than useful" category, which I'd like to avoid.

===

I actually think the main reason that we're seeing problems with Archers is that the AI is very keen to use them now and it works very well. The downside is that it really is slowing down or even preventing early game warfare rather than making it competitive.

 

[Castar]

Also the drop in city-defensive strength from losing 2 points of raw strength would be fairly massive and bring them back to the "less than useful" category, which I'd like to avoid.

This would be countered by a heavy rescaling of the Wall Defender promotion. You could even go so far as making it a 100% bonus (for example, I actually forgot what it is atm ).

Also added mage ideas... perhaps this needs a seperate thread.

 

[WarKirby]

I'd be tempted to go 3/4 - keeps them as a defensive unit on par with Axemen in the open, but not intrinsically better. Also the drop in city-defensive strength from losing 2 points of raw strength would be fairly massive and bring them back to the "less than useful" category, which I'd like to avoid.

I'd argue that with far higher damage caps, the effective usefulness of ranged attacks skyrocketing would easily make up for the lack of direct combat strength they'd suffer.


I see it like this:

Axeman vs Archer -Axeman should win
Archer and Axeman vs Axeman and Axeman - the former should win

Effectively, they'd become exceptionally powerful support tools, working well in synergy with melee units. Strengthening their peripheral/support mechanics like ranged attacks and defensive strikes, while weakening the core defensive strength. Generally, the idea being to encourage diversity. Building both melee and archery units in balanced amounts would work far better, for both offensive and defensive warfare, than spamming hundreds of either single type.

It's probably something that would make an interesting module to start with.

===

I actually think the main reason that we're seeing problems with Archers is that the AI is very keen to use them now and it works very well. The downside is that it really is slowing down or even preventing early game warfare rather than making it competitive.

Not only keen, but able. We recently noticed that the AI is getting 25% upgrade costs, across the board, on all difficulties. As soon as they hit archery, they have a vast army of archers instantly, and can continue making them as fast as they can crank out warriors and spend miniscule amounts upgrading them (which the AI apparently loves doing)