Imperator: Rome

Imperator: Rome

The Bronze Age v 0.5.3 for v1.4.2 (Moved to CK3)
Crunbum 11 Jul, 2019 @ 11:41am
Balancing unit types further.
So, as not to spam in the comments, with that silly limit of 1000 characters per post, I figured I'd throw it there. Here are my opinions on today's changes to unit type strength you made, and also on what could be changed further, to make each units more distinct.

Skirmishers are fine balance-wise, though i wonder what is the reasoning behind them taking less morale damage? I'd sooner have put them with more morale damage taken but also less strength damage taken since they're basically hit and run units and so they shouldn't engage for as long as frontline cohorts, and thus should take less damage, but at the cost of, well, not being able to hold a line for as long as spearmen or axemen can.

Both Spearmen and Axemen seem to be in a good spot. I was using the latter this playthrough because i had military traditions tailored for them (Metal Age Invaders), but as any state with bonuses to spearmen i would have probably used those. However, I think Axemen are still just a small bit too cheap now, for the punch they now pack, and it'd be better if they costed 9 gold instead of 8 but either way, its no biggie, especially with copper being as sparse as it currently is - their limited availabilty warrants them being a slight bit overtuned.

Archers were clearly overnerfed, with the strength & morale dmg taken, and are currently a bit too overshadowed by Skirmishers except as a clear counter to them. I'm not sure here, but maybe remove the strength damage taken malus and possibly increase their effectiveness vs horse archers to +25% from +10%?

Heavy Cavalry should probably be given a buff number-wise, but also an increase in price. Their bonuses vs other units are fine, perhaps even a little bit too high right now, but I was thinking about giving them "increased morale damage done"?

You know, cavalry charges and all, even if they didn't have stirrups back in the bronze age. Perhaps throw in a -10% damage taken too (morale and strength both), since they're "heavy" after all. But again, those would have to mean raising their gold price further (18 gold seems like a good spot) and lowering their current boni vs other units slightly/giving them a more pronounced weakness than -10% vs horse archers and spearmen (perhaps a mix of both). But, after all, they don't get any bonuses from traditions unlike other units (as far as I've seen), so perhaps they wouldn't really need those nerfs.

Light Cavalry seems perfectly fine performance-wise, especially since everyone and their mother kept using spearmen against me...

Chariots I haven't really seen a way to build, other than sometimes getting them due to
a random scorned family rising an army that has them inside. However, balance wise, I think they could use a good + %increased morale damage done,but also some increased strength damage taken, since chariots were historically very reliant on the force of their momentum, but if they were stopped and encircled it'd often spell their doom. They were also expensive, and very much so, so perhaps making them much better across the board but massively raising their price, to say, 18 gold, could also be an option? Just throwing ideas here.

Horse Archers or steppe horses I similarly haven't seen, but assuming they make it into the mod at some point, I think they should be a 9 gold unit, and get a slight performance nerf, as they seem a bit overtuned number wise right now. That way there could be four clear price tiers, with each unit having a clear role and specialty:

4 gold units :

Archers : Cheap counter to skirmishers and Horse Archers.

Skirmishers : Cheap killer of all infantry

6 gold units :

Spearmen : Defensive frontline infantry and cheap-ish anti-cav unit,

Light Cavalry : Quick, high manuever unit that counters both 4 gold units and HA but requires horses to build and is itself hard countered by spearmen, who AI likes to spam.

9 gold units :

Axemen : Elite, high-damage and reasonably durable frontline infantry that kills anything but horses (even skirmishers slightly, but they're much cheaper in comparison)

Horse Archers : A hard-ish counter to all other expensive, 9 and 18 gold units.

18 gold units :

Heavy Cavalry : The elephant of the bronze age, that kills everything 1vs1 (should even win slightly vs spearmen when considering the innate buffs to the morale dmg and the reduced dmg taken it'd get), but is prohibitvely expensive and takes up a lot of supply limit per unit.

Chariots : The "Quick battle win or quick batlle loss" unit, which would essentially bet everything on whether it can crush the enemy morale quickly enough to rout or stackwipe them, but would be relatively weak (for its huge price) when it fails at said task.

Also, this is a bit off-topic, but I think with 600 men/cohort, armies are still a fair bit too large, especially when multiple local power tribes run around with 15-20k armies in the early game. Its just my personal preference but reducing unit size to 400/unit, combined with cutting manpower production from freemen by half but not touching the base would, I think, somewhat alleviate the doomstack problem.
Last edited by Crunbum; 11 Jul, 2019 @ 11:59am
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Showing 1-6 of 6 comments
Svanley  [developer] 12 Jul, 2019 @ 1:36pm 
Hey, thanks so much for all the feedback, balancing wouldn't be possible without your feedback! The points you bring up make a lot of sense and I'm definetly gonna take a long look at the unit balance, probably sometime next week.
Spartytheknight 14 Jul, 2019 @ 6:14am 
Should there be no heavy or light cavalry in this mod? Were horses strong enough for human riders not introduced after 1400 BC by the nomads from the steppes? The chariots were king of the bronze age.

Chariot Heavy Armor (mycanean)
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/71/99/65/719965dfe7fe726440e4e889c7e2c0e1.jpg

Last edited by Spartytheknight; 14 Jul, 2019 @ 6:27am
Crunbum 14 Jul, 2019 @ 7:02am 
Originally posted by Spartytheknight:
Should there be no heavy or light cavalry in this mod? Were horses strong enough for human riders not introduced after 1400 BC by the nomads from the steppes? The chariots were king of the bronze age.

Chariot Heavy Armor (mycanean)
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/71/99/65/719965dfe7fe726440e4e889c7e2c0e1.jpg

I.. guess you're right?

But then what? The one thing that'd make sense is to tie the horse trade good to chariot recruitment instead and remove or remake the existing cavalry units, perhaps into various types of infantry and maybe an additional kind of chariot? Because otherwise there'd not be enough troop types in the mod.

That could be interesting in it's own right. Perhaps a distinction should be made between troop types based on their level of equipment, so they would come in two variants each? Currently it's not really that clear whether "Spearmen" for example, represent an untrained militia with pointy sticks, or a proper, at least somewhat armoured and equipped force. Same thing with axemen, are they a mob of people employing civilian, axe-like tools repurposed to axe like weapons, or are they armed with proper armour, axes and shields?
Svanley  [developer] 14 Jul, 2019 @ 7:13am 
From what I have read horses were used from early on in the northern steppe. Dont seem like it meant cavalry charges but instead mobile infantry more like dragoons.
Last edited by Svanley; 14 Jul, 2019 @ 7:20am
Spartytheknight 14 Jul, 2019 @ 2:34pm 
Originally posted by Crunbum:
Originally posted by Spartytheknight:
Should there be no heavy or light cavalry in this mod? Were horses strong enough for human riders not introduced after 1400 BC by the nomads from the steppes? The chariots were king of the bronze age.

Chariot Heavy Armor (mycanean)
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/71/99/65/719965dfe7fe726440e4e889c7e2c0e1.jpg

I.. guess you're right?

But then what? The one thing that'd make sense is to tie the horse trade good to chariot recruitment instead and remove or remake the existing cavalry units, perhaps into various types of infantry and maybe an additional kind of chariot? Because otherwise there'd not be enough troop types in the mod.

That could be interesting in it's own right. Perhaps a distinction should be made between troop types based on their level of equipment, so they would come in two variants each? Currently it's not really that clear whether "Spearmen" for example, represent an untrained militia with pointy sticks, or a proper, at least somewhat armoured and equipped force. Same thing with axemen, are they a mob of people employing civilian, axe-like tools repurposed to axe like weapons, or are they armed with proper armour, axes and shields?

maybe tie horses to chariots? Tie bronze and horses for heavy chariots?

They had light troop transport chariots, archer chariots, and the heavy chariots with scythes with an armored spearman and a shield bearer. The light transport chariots could be merged with the cavalry used just for mobile infantry too. And they can just be regular infantry with higher maneuver?

For the infantry, they had infantry with copper weapons (egypt until after the end of the middle kingdom), bronze swords (seen in places like Mycenae), axes, maces

Maybe discipline/experience can be used to represent untrained militia vs a professional force.

Crunbum 15 Jul, 2019 @ 4:03am 
Originally posted by Spartytheknight:

maybe tie horses to chariots? Tie bronze and horses for heavy chariots?

They had light troop transport chariots, archer chariots, and the heavy chariots with scythes with an armored spearman and a shield bearer. The light transport chariots could be merged with the cavalry used just for mobile infantry too. And they can just be regular infantry with higher maneuver?

For the infantry, they had infantry with copper weapons (egypt until after the end of the middle kingdom), bronze swords (seen in places like Mycenae), axes, maces

Maybe discipline/experience can be used to represent untrained militia vs a professional force.

It's sadly currently impossible to make a unit type require more than one type of trade good to recruit.

Aren't scythed chariots a much later invention than 3000 BC tho, like 2500 years later, give or take? Light troop transport chariots would not really perform visibly different than infantry, besides higher on-map speed and manuever, so having them in would be kind of weird. I think just a "chariots" and "heavy chariots" distinction would fit the game better and be easier to understand.

They did have those kinds of weapons, yes, but the most widely-used were the spear and the axe, and the other two were kind of not on the same level, or am I wrong? Besides, a unit called Macemen or Swordsmen would not really bring any significant strategic choice to the game that is not properly represented in the stats of the spearmen and the axemen.

Discipline/Experience can't really be used to represent that, since in the case of the former, every troop would be a professional lategame, and with the latter, troops would stop being militia after one battle or a few months of drilling, which is fine but it still doesn't represent the qualitative difference in equipment used between a mob and a proper military, which is pretty huge and, imho, warrants them being split into different unit types, with different stats.
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