Pathfinders are too much powerful?

[Kossatx]

Hi, I think pathfinders are too much powerful. They gain experience very easy exploring the map, so they become an extremely powerful unit in the early game. Playing in emperor difficulty it is the key in wars for human player.

Moderator Action: Moved to General Balance subforum. - Recursive

 

[Closed Sky]

Playing immortal and deity they are not needed at all during early wars or barbarian hunting, they die easily and often enough to them in fact. It's good they become useful later, for me around renaissance when they are back into homeland having movement and medic promotions along with the ability to cross mountains for flanking bonus, otherwise they would be completely useless after exploration is done.

 

[wabab]

If anything, Pathfinders/Scouts are too weak (unless fully upgraded with Authority policy). They should come with the chance to withdraw on being attacked.

 

[Closed Sky]

If anything, Pathfinders/Scouts are too weak (unless fully upgraded with Authority policy). They should come with the chance to withdraw on being attacked.

On the other hand, I would never say they are too weak. On coastal starts I build second one nearly everytime. They are the most useful and flexible unit early. Upgraded with ruins and survivalism three they can solo barb camps but not hunt ruins at the same time. Or, with trailblazer path, they can swim through deserts and embark without sailing to get free stuff from ruins but can easily be ambushed by barbs and killed. Perfect balance if you ask me.

 

[JamesNinelives]

On the other hand, I would never say they are too weak. On coastal starts I build second one nearly everytime. They are the most useful and flexible unit early. Upgraded with ruins and survivalism three they can solo barb camps but not hunt ruins at the same time. Or, with trailblazer path, they can swim through deserts and embark without sailing to get free stuff from ruins but can easily be ambushed by barbs and killed. Perfect balance if you ask me.

I tend to agree. Pathfinders can be really good but it's easy to get too confident with them and loose a highly-promoted unit with poor placement. Getting a high-level recon unit is possible fairly early but holding onto it isn't guaranteed. I think the balance is OK. That said, I would find them very annoying playing PvP.

If any changes were made I would suggest maybe toning their mobility down and making them a bit tougher to compensate. They can be ultra-mobile but squishy which the AI has a hard time dealing with and doesn't use very well itself. The AI does struggle to make good use of highly-promoted units in general, but pathfinders can be easier to get to a high level (at least for me).

 

[azum4roll]

What are they "too much powerful" at? Exploring? Pillaging? Attacking? Defending? I don't see any problem with them other than the pillaging bit, and only on covered areas or desert.

 

[JamesNinelives]

They're only really strong with promotions under their belt, in which case it makes sense that they would be really good at exploring (that's their job). They are pretty mediocre on offense, and decent but not that strong on defense IMO.

So the one that stands out to me is pillaging. It's not too hard to find a spot that's not currently guarded on someone's border, dash in, pillage, and dash out. And repeat.

They aren't as good in flat grassland/plains, but there's enough desert and/or foliage around to get a lot of use out of this strategy, particularly early on. It does depend on keeping your pathfinder alive long enough for it to have the relevant promotions though.

 

[CppMaster]

They are pretty mediocre on offense, and decent but not that strong on defense IMO.

How are they mediocre on offence? Aren't they the worst units for attacking almost always? I'm not counting civilian units, of course.

 

[pineappledan]

They're not very good pillagers, considering you have to have an extremely high-promoted pathfinder, or else 1 pillage takes 1/2 of their entire movepool

 

[Stalker0]

I've never found the pathfinder too OP, only the "super fast scout ruin" makes it OP.

 

[JamesNinelives]

How are they mediocre on offence? Aren't they the worst units for attacking almost always?

I tend towards understatement. That is more of less what I meant by 'mediocre'

 

[Heinz_Guderian]

I've never found the pathfinder too OP, only the "super fast scout ruin" makes it OP.

Yeah and that is usually just one unit. Not everything has to be 100% balanced for the game to be balanced.

 

[CppMaster]

Yeah and that is usually just one unit. Not everything has to be 100% balanced for the game to be balanced.

But it better be, right?

 

[Heinz_Guderian]

If the game was a multiplayer game primarily (or even had a community playing a lot of MP at all) then yeah maybe. I think striving for perfect balance often removes a lot of fun elements and synergy mechanics etc, at least if balance is deemed as the paramount aspect of developing the mod.

 

[Closed Sky]

I think striving for perfect balance often removes a lot of fun elements and synergy mechanics

No. Try Shoshone against Songhai. one has zero niches, the other several. You can even go Tradition witth songhai with mandekalu as knights now, get gold from barbs and production from ub and invest in wondrs, then kill someone for puppets. tradition would appreciate production on rivers like hell, same with progress for free city connections. and they have still auth as the strongest highlight . with shoshone you don't have uu, borders work against authority and are not needed for tadition or progress, and you have ui that is worse than normal tiles with pantheon and on awful tech. balance is not civs equals in everything in every start, but having at least one strong avenue and one backup option. Having more more for certain civs is okkay. Having less for some is not.

 

[Rekk]

borders work against authority and are not needed for tadition or progress

This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of their UA. The extra city tiles are extremely strong; it doesn't interact negatively with Authority until the Industrial era, and you can be greedy with settling locations with any policy tree (this helps satellite cities in Tradition to be decent off the bat, since you get immediate access to resources in second rings.

I pick Progress for Shoshone unless I don't have enough room to expand, at which I choose tradition. There is no need for authority as Shoshone's entire kit is meant for taking large amounts of land through aggressive settling, then defending it. Early on, you have a ton of land in which to maneuver and keep your combat strength bonus.

As a Civilization, they are not fundamentally broken.

 

[Closed Sky]

Show me your succesful deity shoshone play as tradition or progress on standard settings and I'll accept I misunderstand them.

As a civilization they are fundamentally not changed since vanilla while everything else was dramatically.

 

[DeAnno]

I don't really like the high fragility of Pathfinders particularly, especially vs. Barbs on higher difficulties. There are numerous situations where quite reasonable looking scouting gets barbs coming out of the fog and your pathfinder dead before 20 turns are passed, it's quite vulnerable to basically any misfortune before the second promotion unless you keep it near your warrior.

This has led me to the kind of degenerate strat of having it circle around with the warrior for a while (you usually put the pathfinder on the outer edge but not too far away) and focusing on doing mini-tributes of CS over everything else. But I think shooting your initial pathfinder off far should be reasonable too, and it's particularly annoying that if you hug the coast unaided that often results in death.

That first pathfinder being so useful with all the XP makes this worse, as it's extremely swingy if you get to keep it or it randomly gets eaten. If it dies it's basically dead forever, since a new pathfinder will never really catch up to where it should be, the initial XP is gone and it will only get going slowly. I think overall I wish the first pathfinder was worse and all the ones after were better (maybe more condensed promotions but at the same time less XP from recon), but barring that I wish the first pathfinder was more resilient against dying (maybe lessen the innate barb penalty?) If you wanted to be wild you could also have it be a hero unit where if it dies the next pathfinder you build keeps the XP but that sounds hard to code.

 

[Closed Sky]

I don't really like the high fragility of Pathfinders particularly

And I like it. Ruins are so powerful it's good trade off. Barbs would be free xp, cs influence and culture without threat to pathfinders.

 

[DeAnno]

Ruins are so powerful it's good trade off.

I don't play with ruins. I agree with ruins on it's less of a problem. (Because it very usually gets the Pathfinder upgraded quickly or to level 3 quickly, either of which makes it safe.)