[1.0.9p] 'Runaway Train' Strategy

Good post this

You can get a run away train faster than that. Customize soveign to start with war staff, and annex all neighbours using soveign. I consider this slightly gamey as the sov. design is fundamentally unbalanced, so alternatively: Start with a standard sov, research equipment and arcane weapons. Equip heroes with spears and cast arcane weapons -> instant attack 14. This is slighly harder in 1.09p, so you need a small modification. So far adding enough cannon-fodder to exhaust counter-attacks has done it. Even peasant (or especially peasants) are excellent cannonfodder, but you may need armored cannonfodder later

I would suggest making sure the players are better balanced across the map would solve the problem. The current setup where AIs are spawned right next to you, makes for silly rush strategies like this.

i like to tech to spear and nice leather armor, spam full leather troops with big spear and set them to auto explore. They will actually solo counquer entire civs because the AI dosen't belive in heavy armor.

Healing 10HP with this early healing spell is too much imho. I would reduce the healed HP and int. should have an effect. (more int. = more healing power)

Warstaff has been removed from sovereign creation as of 1.09p.  Yay!  It should also appear much later on the tech tree, or not have the 15 attack strength (and introduce greater warstaff at 15 for the late game)

Spears should be reduced slightly.  9 is too high I think.  8 might be OK.  7 versus a 6 attack with a shield seems too watered down.

Perhaps Oak Spears have 8 attack, and Boar Spears appear a little later in the tech tree with a 9 attack?  Boar Spears also take 1 more material to build currently, so this would justify the difference in attack value.  Otherwise, I'd suggest that Oak spears use materials, boar spears use metal, to make them sufficiently different in unit design.

I'm finding that two heroes in full leather (breastplate, armlets, helmet) and a spear can take on a fair number of monsters at once successfully.  Especially once they pick up a few levels (assuming you focus on Str, with some addition to Dex).  Con isn't a big deal if you can avoid damage in the first place.

I'm sure Brad will continue to tweak the enemy AI so cities are harder to push over as we go along.  The main thing I'm seeing at the moment is that Enemy AI players are having problems expanding, due to the monsters and perhaps lack of materials onhand.  Once Brad gets some better logic in place so the AI players can protect their pioneers and new cities, plus make sure they have plenty of materials onhand, I expect that to change.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but in my current game monster killing has become a bit of a chore, since the AI players aren't wiping them out, leaving them for my heroes to deal with.  I will say that my heroes feel quite heroic at the moment, but I'd still like our 'old' customization' options back (speed, move, dodge, accuracy, etc.).  I am beginning to see the slightly tougher monsters finally, as of winter 174... I'd say the monster frequency is fine AS LONG AS the enemy AI is dealing with them as well.

Simultaneous combat will of course change battle tactics.  I look forward to it.  In the meantime, my '3 attacks, kill front line, fall back one square so enemy can't counterattack' strategy seems to be working nicely...

Monster bashing _is_ a chore. Especially when I still dont feel I can rely on auto-resolve.

For weapon-balance: Someone else suggested raising the attack of all other weapons instead. I think I agree with that. There are some general problems with the way armor works, but if we can make sure available attack is better than available armor, it will sort-of work. Here is a simple suggestion: Add +2 attack to all initial weapons except spears and war staff. Club to attack 5, dagger to attack 6, short sword to attack 9, mace to attack 12. That should fix it. Spears will no longer be an automatic shoice, other weapons will be better, but note the better ones also require iron, and are much more expensive for heroes. Spears will only be a good cheap starting weapon, or the fallback for players with no iron.

Damnit, all I can hear in my head when I see this post is that Soul Asylum song.

Well, I like long term gameplay since I'm more a "citybuilder" type. For me, I focus merely on tech research and when the enemy want to attack me, I reasearch warfare and boost my training. Normaly, since I dont build strong army at first, I have a lot of ressource to spend later game. But, on the other hand, the AI is getting better and the monster too so it's kinda cool for me.

Spears also have high damage due to being two handed.

Shields need to be more effective. A Sword and Shield wielder should be> Spear wielder since swords are infact, more expensive. A unit with a shield should at least be able to greatly nullify the added damage from two handed weapons. I'd say make shields have the equivalant armor as the appropriate chest-piece. IE, light shields should have armor 3, maybe heavy shields armor 4 or 5.

Just sayin!  Having a 9 attack in the early game (plus str bonuses) makes spider/bear/bandit hunting easier than it should be.  Plus, you can't just compare light plate to something that is available earlier much earlier in the tech tree.  Spears become available in one jump.  Light plate takes two or three techs to get to...

Spears are available at the same time as padded armor, wooden shield, greaves and leather cap (so total 6 def).  A 9 attack, even with no STR bonus, has no problem versus a 6 defense... not to mention it costs about 126 gildar currently to buy said armor and shield, versus the 25 for the spear.

Introducing a tougher spear down the road to 'combat' the light plate makes more sense to me. 

"A. Weapon Balance

The weapons are not currently balanced (although much better than they were) and items such as oak spears and war staffs are over-powered. These need nerfing. Weapons and armour need to give more subtle bonuses because even though my 10/3 spearmen are going up against 6/2 soldiers, the battles are not even close - yet they should be." OP

I made a very good rebalance mod for the 1.08 days where any staff would give a low attack compared to a knife or sword, but it would also give a little defense. This worked very well as you could make simple peasants that were good in large packs, but not invincible like the warstaff and spear units we see now. As you get better techs, the incentive to use staves should decrease due to the better use of swords in combination with shields, and the prevalence of other two handed weapons.

Staves should be the mainstay of a magically based strategy that doesn't focus on warfare, but uses these pions as a basic defense.

When the game is more balanced this idea will seem more necessary of course.

What we need is a new stat for weapons - armour piercing.  Bring on the whole slashing/blunt/piercing debate!

Blunt weapons would damage armour (and yes cause armour to disintegrate over time), slashing weapons would do the most damage to unarmoured, piercing would be good for breaking through tough armour.

So a spear could have 2 armour piercing.  This effectively reduces an opponents armour rating by 2 while you are attacking with a spear.

Later on you could have iron-tipped spear which requires metal.  This could obviously have a higher, say 4? armour piercing stat.

Anyhow, obviously those numbers would need to be balanced, but you get my point.  Lets diversify weaponry so that its not all just bigger number=better.  Instead allow tactics where iron swords are less useful against plate mail, but highly effective against leather or unarmoured.  Spears are awesome for breaking through plate, but maybe have a lower accuracy to balance it?  Whatever.

Suddenly, combat requires tactics and good weapon selection.  As it should.

While I do not disagree, ths is beyond the scope of possible as we look at rebalancing for 1.1.

Doesn't the weapon mod also rebalance the weapon besides making them more interesting with different abilities. I haven't tried it myself, but perhaps that is a usefull way forward.