Qm said

[Xietor]

"As for 'rush-breaker' units in general, they are basically the same thing as rush units- almost exclusively big tramplers or bless units. If there is something that needs to be fixed here, it's that such a small subsection of units can utterly dominate the early game."

A very good point. As most nations have the ability to implement some type of strategy if they can survive an early rush. But how can you achieve that to which QM alludes?


After some thought, here are 2 possible solutions:

1. Limit the max bless of any unit to 9/4. While some units will still be very very good at 9/4, at least they will not have the benefit of the second "9" bless.

2. Tramplers- eliminate the morale boost of combining tramplers with high morale troops. Cap the trampler's morale
at 8, and do not allow it to be buffed. Make trampling the double edged sword it is intended to be.

In many games I see Elephants fight to the very end, their morale buffed by being combined with some slow moving but high morale infantry, all of which are alive.

[llamabeast]

1. This would make a good house rule. I think it's one I'll consider using in future.

2. I agree, actually this is a really good idea I think. This isn't something we can do ourselves, unfortunately. It would be great if the devs could add a unit property that means they can't be mixed with other types of unit in a single group (or the game always considers them to be in a separate group to any other unit types the player may have placed in the same group). This property could then be added to elephants to prevent boosting their morale. It would also be easy to put in their flavour text. "Once panicked, elephants become hard to control and cannot be steadied even if their riders remain confident of victory", or some such.

I like this idea because it leaves the elephants being powerful, but gives them some weakness that can be targetted. Spells such as Panic and Frighten could then easily drive them off (which seems reasonable).

Of course in the meantime we could have a house rule that elephants can't be mixed in with other units, but it would be a bit hard to enforce.

[Kristoffer O]

Hmm. Not a bad idea. Perhaps if animals where unmixable?

Hmm, that would make summon animals a bit of a bother though.

Unless animals were mixable with other animals. But the lion elephant corps feels a bit ridiculous http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[CUnknown]

I'm not completely convinced that the early game is broken, especially if the CB Scales mod is used. If you take a large blessing, you're paying the price with an imprisoned pretender and/or crappy scales. I'm against an artifical capping of blessings -- it doesn't add viable strategies, it removes them. Of course, if you're just taking about a house rule, go for it, but if you're talking about something you want to see in a patch or for Dom 4, I'd be against it.

As far as the elephants go -- it seems to me that a 100 gold unit should be pretty devastating. And they are, so I don't quite see the problem. If you're saying that they are too good for their cost, then the simple solution is to raise the cost (in gold or maybe resources). Perhaps to 120 gold, maybe even 150 if you think they're really broken. We shouldn't be making rules that apply only to a specific subset of units. The rules of the game should apply to all units, imo.

At 150 gold, elephants would be so expensive to employ that they had -better- be really effective, or no one would use them.

[llamabeast]

I don't think anything so dramatic as "the early game is broken" either, far from it. But a few things can be frustrating for players. An elephant rush is an example - if you are Ulm or some other race with no obvious defences, then the elephants will kill you, and there's nothing you can do about it. Even if your army is worth twice as much gold as theirs.

Now I think it would be a shame to make elephants less good, or to make them cost too much more, because they are mainly good fun as they are. The trouble is that although elephants have a built-in and well-designed weakness - low morale and the tendency to trample your own troops once broken - that weakness can be avoided by what's essentially an exploit, that is mixing the elephants with high-morale infantry. The fact that that works doesn't really make thematic sense.

Kristoffer - I was thinking the same thing about animals. Perhaps you could have a new property "hard-to-control animals" or "easily-panicked animals" (obviously come up with a much better name!), which applies to elephants, but not to lions.

[Kristoffer O]

The problem is not one elephant or 5 elephants, but 50 of them.

I haven't seen this, but this seems to be what it is about. When you pass a critical mass of elephants there is nothing that can stop them and they become worth far more than the 150 you buy them for. Especially since they trample every routing unit, effectively eating up the entire enemy army, regardless of size.

Elephants are supposed to break easily, and devastate the own army if they do. But if you mix them with high morale heavy infantry, they do not rout as easily. This is thematically unsound: elephants that doesn't rout because they know that their brave human friends way back dont care if some of the elephants die or get poked by spears.

So in short: Elephants are fine at their cost as long as you don't get too many. At that time the game mechanics for trample might make them unbalanced. Especially if used with the silly tactic of mixing them with elites for better morale.

[Shovah32]

I think EA Agarthan troglodytes, although obviously less common, are even worse.
50 gold for a 37 health, 7 protection, size 4, 16ap(2 mapmove), MR12, morale 14! trampler who can go toe-to-toe with other large units(2 attacks, attack value 12 at strength 23) is a very nice deal indeed.

[CUnknown]

50 elephants would cost 5000 gold as is, and if their cost was raised to 150 each, that army would cost 7500 gold. That's an amazingly expensive army for the early game! For the same cost, you could get ~150 heavy knights. My money is on the knights. 3 lances hitting one elephant will kill it, right?

Perhaps the best thing to do is raise the resource cost on the elephants so that you can't mass them as easily, in addition to possibly raising the gold cost.

As far as it being a silly tactic or an exploit to mix in high morale troops with your elephants... I see what you're saying from a role-playing perspective, but from a gaming perspective, it's not an exploit at all. If you did the same thing with a different kind of low morale troop, there clearly wouldn't be a problem with the strategy. It's only considered silly in this case because of the name and the RL characteristics of the unit in question.

I actually like role playing, even in multiplayer, to a certain extent. But when things like this come up, I take a gaming perspective usually.

Anyway, if you do want to do something like this Kristoffer, I prefer the 'elephants cannot be mixed with other units' thing as opposed to the 'elephants have their morale capped' thing.

[Xietor]

The fact is tramplers were given the low morale because they were not intended to fight to the death. In a way, adding high morale low cost infantry units to their group severely undermines the risk of having them turn on your own army. And it takes no great general to mix the units either.

Rather than raise their cost, and have them continue to fight to the death, I would think the more logical solution is to allow them to rout after they have received substantial damage, and trample their own troops.

That is the double edged sword of using the tramplers. No, I do not think you should be able to just raise the cost and continue to have 72 hp tramplers that fight to the death.

[quantum_mechani]

The main issue, as KO says, is not so much the infantry mixed with small numbers of elephants, it's the elephant hordes so huge they don't even need the moral boost. It's true, the equivalent gold cost in knights could probably easily stop them, but they can't be massed anywhere near as fast, especially with the base game barding costs.

[lch]

I don't think that the Troglodytes need to get nerfed. Their trample effect is a lot less effective than size 6 tramplers, and trampling units have the problem that they always storm deep into the enemy ranks. So while their initial attack can kill a handful of units, the volley of hits from the other units surrounding them can easily kill them in one turn. The real problem, like KO and QM already said, are hordes of tramplers that occupy a large part of the battlefield so that they don't draw hits as easily as a loose group of tramplers.


Kristoffer O said:
Elephants are supposed to break easily, and devastate the own army if they do. But if you mix them with high morale heavy infantry, they do not rout as easily. This is thematically unsound: elephants that doesn't rout because they know that their brave human friends way back dont care if some of the elephants die or get poked by spears.


This seems to present the obvious idea how to "fix" this: Make morale mixing dependent on location of the units. A little like standards, units should be inspired by their comrades in their squad around them and may get morale boost through that, but not if they fight the enemy hordes on their own, while the rest of the squad is far away.


CUnknown said:
Perhaps the best thing to do is raise the resource cost on the elephants so that you can't mass them as easily, in addition to possibly raising the gold cost.


I would not raise the gold cost, but I already thought myself that they could use some more resources. LA Arco's elephants are quite resource intensive, but the normal ones can even be massed with sloth scales.

[MaxWilson]

Why would Ulm be trying to beat an army of tramplers in the field? I play SP, but my understanding was that there were numerous situations in MP where you have to go up against an army that you can't defeat in the field, and that a critical mass of tramplers is just one of them. I'm thinking of an E9N9 Niefel rush in particular. Is it not typical in that case to fight a delaying action instead, trying to raid around his forces and hit him in the pocket book? Giants and elephant hordes cost lots of upkeep, especially in the critical masses under discussion here. Ulm is ideally suited for this kind of stealthy warfare, and going toe-to-toe seems like a bad plan. It's exactly what the tramplers would want you to do.

Edit: actually, this is exactly how I would handle this situation in SP, so maybe the SP/MP distinction isn't relevant here. It's just that, while I enjoy tactical puzzles in SP, I'm hesitant to suggest that the solutions are relevant to MP.

-Max

[Shovah32]

The reason Arcos elephants are so resource intensive is their armour. Rather than tough, unroutable killing machines you get unroutable killing machines that are practically impossible to kill without magic.

edit(max posted while i was typing):
Ive been hit by an elephant rush as ulm in multiplayer and avoiding them is not an option. With high resource, mapmove 1 troops and not enough provinces to mass any cheaper indies(i think i had maybe 6-7 provinces when i got attacked) i was doomed from the moment they hit me. I took a few elephants out in the final battle in my capitol by trapping them in the gate with the bonds of fire spell(if thats the name, cant remember) and hitting them with about 15-20 maul and flail troops but in the end they just ran through and killed my mages and that was me dead. Raiding round them early on is simply not an option because they can simply divert for a turn and kill your raiders/take your capitol and kill them with a second force while cutting off all of your income. The reason nations like ulm are particularly vunerable is that they have very weak early magic, very weak troops vrs tramplers(few, small, heavily armoured troops) and only a few troops who are too slow to out-maneuver anybody.

[krpeters]

Thoughts on elephants & morale:

An easy way (for the programmers) to eliminate the "combining infantry with elephants" bug would be to weight a squad's morale by each unit's (original) hp. So it would take 7 heavy infantry to balance out one elephant's low morale... at which point the whole advantage of using elephants (high attack, low resource) would be eliminated.

Regarding the huge effectiveness of an elephant rush... I've used this strategy often, it does seem unfair that smaller squads get pasted. Keep in mind, though, that the effectiveness depends on concentration. If that 50 elephant squad breaks off into two 25 elephant squads, a moderate (100) sized light-infantry contingent can take them. So when you see the elephants coming, get out of their way, then charge into the enemy's territory (how many 50 elephant squads can he have?) and force him to chase you.

Alternatively, the problem of so many elephants in a single squad could be addressed by changing the squad rules limiting units in a squad by hp. A rating "50" commander would be able to lead 500 hp-units of troops -- 62 vaetti, or 7 elephants. Forcing the elephants into many squads could disorganize them sufficiently. (How is a single commander herding 50 elephants in the first place???!!!)

[quantum_mechani]

MaxWilson said:
Why would Ulm be trying to beat an army of tramplers in the field? I play SP, but my understanding was that there were numerous situations in MP where you have to go up against an army that you can't defeat in the field, and that a critical mass of tramplers is just one of them. I'm thinking of an E9N9 Niefel rush in particular. Is it not typical in that case to fight a delaying action instead, trying to raid around his forces and hit him in the pocket book? Giants and elephant hordes cost lots of upkeep, especially in the critical masses under discussion here. Ulm is ideally suited for this kind of stealthy warfare, and going toe-to-toe seems like a bad plan. It's exactly what the tramplers would want you to do.

Edit: actually, this is exactly how I would handle this situation in SP, so maybe the SP/MP distinction isn't relevant here. It's just that, while I enjoy tactical puzzles in SP, I'm hesitant to suggest that the solutions are relevant to MP.

-Max

Raiding to avoid confrontation with a superior army is a very powerful tool, but it isn't a cure-all. In the early game, your mages at the capital need to be at least enough deterrent that the enemy doesn't simply beeline right there and take it. With Ulm vs early elephant horde, this usually isn't the case.

What I would like to see for elephants is periodic squad numbers/average morale value independent morale checks. If whenever an elephant hit it had a chance to trigger such a morale check for the whole squad, that would greatly reduce the incentive for giant mega-squads. It could be an ability like any other (called panic or something) and could probably be thematic with some other units too.

[lch]

Or make elephants afraid of size 1 units... like Markatas. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Gandalf Parker]

I like that. It fits. And it goes with the rock-paper-scissors thing. Make a unit which some think is a waste, useful in breaking what some think is too powerful an option.

I had always thought that the elephants were more susceptable to the rain-of-arrows morale check also. It always seemed as if I had little problem with elephants if I had lots of slingers, so boosting slingers vs elephants might be worth doing also. Or make elephants hate flyers.

[CUnknown]

lch said:


This seems to present the obvious idea how to "fix" this: Make morale mixing dependent on location of the units. A little like standards, units should be inspired by their comrades in their squad around them and may get morale boost through that, but not if they fight the enemy hordes on their own, while the rest of the squad is far away.




QM said:


What I would like to see for elephants is periodic squad numbers/average morale value independent morale checks. If whenever an elephant hit it had a chance to trigger such a morale check for the whole squad, that would greatly reduce the incentive for giant mega-squads. It could be an ability like any other (called panic or something) and could probably be thematic with some other units too.



I really like both of these potential fixes a lot more than morale capping, preventing the mixing of elephants and other units, or even my own suggestion of just raising their gold or resource cost.

Great ideas, guys!

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

How much supply does 50 elephants take, 300? If the effect of starvation was a bit more dramatic than it is right now, you'd have a counter tactic right there.

[Edi]

If animal leadership were a separate category of leadership, that would solve the problem nicely since you would need specialized commanders to handle the elephants, which means falling behind on research or something else.

[Xietor]

Having animal leadership may unfairly penalize Pangaea however.

Maybe requiring Elephant Handlers to handle elephants would work, and give them a leadership of 10. And it is very thematic as well. The average leader likely would have no clue how to handle them in battle. It would require specialized training.

[Jazzepi]

Lazy_Perfectionist said:
How much supply does 50 elephants take, 300? If the effect of starvation was a bit more dramatic than it is right now, you'd have a counter tactic right there.



I've always found starvation isn't a huge issue for armies on the march. Once you're in the opponent's capital there's always enough supplies, because of the huge population, despite the scales.

Jazzepi

[Kristoffer O]

Xietor said:
Having animal leadership may unfairly penalize Pangaea however.

Maybe requiring Elephant Handlers to handle elephants would work, and give them a leadership of 10. And it is very thematic as well. The average leader likely would have no clue how to handle them in battle. It would require specialized training.



Actually there is a howdah with crew and another guy who sits on the neck of the elephant with a wedge and a hammer ready to split the elephants skull, should she go berserk. So the elephant is full of handlers. That aside it might be a good idea.

One could make it a commander without command ability, but that would make it quite rare, since most people would prefer a smart mage to a stupid beast http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Pangaea could easily get animal leadership on most commanders without thematic repercussions http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Velusion]

Kristoffer O said:

Pangaea could easily get animal leadership on most commanders without thematic repercussions http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif



I like this idea. There are lots of "handeler" leaders that don't get built very often because you don't really need them (Abysian Serpent Handlers, Pythium Hydra Trainers). If you HAD to have these leaders to handle wild animals it would be thematic and help with the elephant problem.

You might also want to increase the power of some of the other animals thought to help make up for the limitations if you do this (not the elephants though).

[Xietor]

Hmmm,

way off topic, but if we had animal leadership, might a certain lion that pangaea could summon at conj 4 have animal leadership rather than being a magic being?

One of the issues pangaea has with its summons(vine ogres, Kithaironic Lions(should get 2 not 1 btw)(mated pair thing), is requiring magic leadership for them.

Having Pangaea's Commanders have master animal leadership(and switching vine ogres/vinemen to animal leadership) would allow them to lead the legions of vinemen, wolves(call of the wild)lions etc.

[Kristoffer O]

Sounds reasonable.

[sum1lost]

Kristoffer O said:
Sounds reasonable.


Wouldn't that possibly result in other nations not being able to use vinemen as effectively?

[Kristoffer O]

Vinemen are magical, and that was not to change anyway. Just the Kith Leo.

[Xietor]

Vinemen=can only be led by a gardener http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

[quantum_mechani]

Animal leadership would be nice to have for a number of reasons... I take it this would be a JK level change, right?

[llamabeast]

So do we feel this would help with the elephant issue? I've lost track of exactly why.

I guess perhaps animal leaders would not generally also be human leaders - so it would be harder to mix elephants with infantry. But still definitely doable with a Sceptre of Authority or whatever it's called (cheap low-level fire item).

Also you could have less elephants per group. Would this make much difference. It's not completely obvious to me, but I don't have a lot of elephanty experience.

[Velusion]

Xietor said:

Having Pangaea's Commanders have master animal leadership(and switching vine ogres/vinemen to animal leadership) would allow them to lead the legions of vinemen, wolves(call of the wild)lions etc.



Vinemen aren't animals. Why not just give Pangaea animal AND magical leadership abilities?

Of course - this change is pretty far reaching, assuming we are all talking about what I'm thinking. Namely requiring anything marked "animal" to be lead by a leader with an appropriate ability (Beast-Mastery?). Are we talking about a game wide change or just a localized fix for elephants?

IF it is game wide many nations would need to be changed to insure that some leader of theirs could actually control summoned animals.

This also would innately make animals weaker - as they would be limited as to who could lead them. One easy way to counter this is to slightly buff most of the animal spells/recruits (decreasing gems/gold cost, increasing the amount summoned, making them stronger). Another thought it to make most summoned animals come with a leader (aka call of the Wilds).

This would be a sorta big undertaking but I think would be a good overall change.

[Velusion]

llamabeast said:
So do we feel this would help with the elephant issue? I've lost track of exactly why.

I guess perhaps animal leaders would not generally also be human leaders - so it would be harder to mix elephants with infantry. But still definitely doable with a Sceptre of Authority or whatever it's called (cheap low-level fire item).

Also you could have less elephants per group. Would this make much difference. It's not completely obvious to me, but I don't have a lot of elephanty experience.



Recruitable leaders that can control animals might be limited to only manage 10-15 animals. This would make their squads smaller so they will be easier to break via morale.

[Sandman]

About the animal leadership idea... Bandar Log has elephants, and all their other recruitables are animals as well.

[Wick]

Another approach would be shapeshifting like the Black Hunters. When the Mahout is killed the elephant would be split into it's own squad.

Or for laughs use linked shapeshifting like Mahout -> 1st Guy in Howdah -> 2nd Guy...

[sum1lost]

Or the elephant dies and you get a bunch of little mahouts running around!

[Wahnsinniger]

I have no real experience in MP games yet, so I can't comment on the Van-rush problem.

However, maybe the issue with Elephants (and Argathian Trogs) is the trample ability. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Trample doesn't take into account the enemies' weapons at all, does it? This doesn't seem right, as a normal attack always has to check if the enemy has a longer weapon that can repel you. Trampling is attacking with your body like a weapon with zero length!

I've never actually heard/read/seen in Real Life about the effectiveness of say, a wall of spears, in stopping an elephants charge, but in many games they assume that long weapons can often stop a large charging enemy. Perhaps Trample should take into account the weapon length and the number of enemies that try to "stop it" before successfully charging into the square. (Trampler Size and Strength would also probably be taken into account)

Yeah, one lone militia with a spear isnt' gonna stop a charging elephant, but a wall of pikemen several ranks deep would probably be able to convince an elephant not to run amok through their ranks.

So maybe the issue isn't morale, it isn't gold cost, perhaps its the Trample istelf. I doubt this is mod-able, thus in the meantime, for this and other rush problems, just Don't Allow Rushes in your MP games!

[lch]

Wahnsinniger said:
However, maybe the issue with Elephants (and Argathian Trogs) is the trample ability. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Trample doesn't take into account the enemies' weapons at all, does it?


You roll for defense against trampling. I don't think that repel works against it - it would make sense, but only for long (length 4+) weapons, IMHO. Trampling takes lots of fatigue and makes the attacker vulnerable because he is surrounded by enemies after he is finished trampling for one round, so I don't think it's too powerful. The problem is a stampede of trampling elephants... Wait, that's a problem in real life, too. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[thejeff]

The problem with the animal leadership fix, is that if you limit animal leadership to special commanders then does every nation get one? Just those with recruitable animals? Or national animal summons?
If the point is to not be able to mix it seems you'd have to have special animal leaders. I guess if you also added an indy elephant handler to the indy provinces with Elephants it could work.

If the point is to keep elephant squads small, then the other animal summons, many of which rely on a large number of weak creatures become even more underpowered. And the animal commanders from Call of the Winds/Wild become even better. All the elephant squads will be led by Black Hawks...

I like the idea of repel working against trampling. It'll hurt elephants a lot and other tramplers (especially pretenders) less or not at all.

[llamabeast]

I was thinking the same things as thejeff. It could easily become a messy and confusing fix. Lots of special cases, like Bandar Log and the Black Hawks, will make it much less useful.

Personally I would imagine that a better approach would be along the lines of giving the elephants some special morale rules. Perhaps someting like QM suggests. Perhaps the threshold for being damaged causing a morale check should be lower, and perhaps all morale checks for units involving elephants should be at the elephant's morale, rather than the average. This could all be built into an "Easily Panicked" attribute that would be given to elephants and might apply to other units too (although I can't think of any at the moment).

I also think the idea of using repel against elephants sounds good. Actually I would say improving the effect of pikemen and longspears would be a major improvement to the game in general. It seems funny that they are not particularly good even against cavalry. But that is a whole separate issue I guess.

[Edratman]

Just out of curiosity, how often do you see a 50 elephant rush in MP? I'm a SP solely, but amassing 50 elephants is very expensive and quite time consuming. I've never even considered accumulating that many.

[lch]

Rather than adding more hassles to the game through additional micromanagement of animals, another counter like Repel would be a good compromise, I think. Some humans already have those.

Edratman, if you base your whole expansion on elephants then it is possible to have that many after a couple of turns. You only need 5-10 elephants to take on any indy province, so you don't need conventional troops. Get Order 3, maybe some sloth to make up for it, only produce elephants and build another fort in case you can't produce your elephants fast enough.

[krpeters]

Xietor said:
Having animal leadership may unfairly penalize Pangaea however.




If we had a seperate animal leadership category, shouldn't all of Pangaea's commanders automatically get animal leadership? That would be very thematic.

The animal leadership category is a good idea anyway. Nature mages should get a bonus (much as death mages get undead leadership)

[TwoBits]

Remember, we're talking early game rush issues here. It'll take a few turns to research Conj 3 (for Call of the Winds/Call of the Wild) before that uber animal commander could be available to summon, presuming the said rusher goes straight for it, without researching anything else first. So even if your black-hawk/werewolf leader had an animal command rating of 40, he wouldn't be available for a while anyway.

By mid and late game, that 50+ elephant/chariot horde will be just so much expensive barbecue, unless backed up by some serious magic (I can see how a load of elephants with Army of Lead might be very problematic, for example). An army of archers with Fire Arrows set to "fire at large enemy monsters" should melt them away pretty fast, etc..

At least that's my two pence worth.


On the topic of a bless rush, here's my idea for a future patch/Dom 4 change - make the effectiveness of the bless dependent on a combination of the dominion level plus the casting priest level.

If the total is negative (say a level one priest operating in minus two dominion = total of one), your sacreds only get the +2 moral bonus.

At neutral, you get the moral bonus, plus the level 4 bonuses (+2 attack for Fire, etc.).

You'd need say a total of 5 or so (think a first level priest in a province with positive dominion of 4, or a third level priest in a dominion 2 province) to unlock that level 9 bless goodness.

This way, a quick bless-rush might not be possible. The attacker would need to pause more often, while preaching or spend money on temples. That, or forgo his bad-*** bless while moving into enemy territory/dominion.

Thematically, this makes sense. Surely a God's blessing should be more potent in a province where his belief is strong. Or where he has a mighty priest of the faith in operation.

Also, it might encourage ways to creatively boost priest levels (think unique items, Crystal Shields, Power of the Spheres, etc.) too.

Plus, it makes the whole 'dominion' part of Dominions that much more important (imagine that Helheim player debating whether to go for that double-9 bless, or instead choose to pump up his dominion to make his lesser bless more viable).

I like them two cents!

[llamabeast]

I'm not sure that elephants would be barbecue by the time you researched Conj 3. I think they stay powerful a fair way into the game. They have so many hit points that killing them takes a lot of firepower. And the trouble is, you can't make them stand still. No matter how many troops you have you only have two or three rounds before they are plowing into your army, and then you're stuffed.

Speaking from limited experience though, I must admit.

[Sombre]

I like you're idea about bless, TwoBits. I agree with llama regarding the heffalumps though. I don't think that animal leadership is the way to go with them either - I think making def more effective against them to encourage the use of lighter, agile troops/cavalry and giving higher encumbrance to the 'problem' tramplers like Trogs and Heffalumps is the way to go, personally.

[Wahnsinniger]

Animal Leadership is a good idea, especially if it forces players to buy the seldom used "Trainer" commanders (i.e. for salamanders and such). However, this seems like a very round-about way to try to fix elephant rushes, and I'm not sure why it even fixes it. (I personally think my Trample suggestion is better)

The Bless based on Dominion is a great idea, since a bunch of global enchantments and other stuff is already directly based on dominion strength. It probably should be a little simplier system though, just based on inside dominion/outside dominion. Priest level really shouldn't affect it, since that already determines if you can use Blessing vs Diving Blessing, and with some nations having weak priests, it could virtually destroy any Bless strategies they have.

[Ewierl]

thejeff said:
The problem with the animal leadership fix, is that if you limit animal leadership to special commanders then does every nation get one? Just those with recruitable animals? Or national animal summons?



I agree with those who think Nature magic should increase Animal Leadership, if the latter is going to exist. Maybe water too, so that underwater nations don't get stuck with unleadable Krakens. But this does seem like a top-heavy solution.

Repel vs. trampling seems both good and bad; it makes sense for the spearman to get a jab in, but doesn't make sense for the spearman to actually make the charging elephant skid to a halt. Maybe a sort of partial-repel where you can't actually stop the trampler, but can get an advance hit? This too seems like an unwieldy solution.

Also, agree with those who don't think Elephants are useless by Conj 3. Generally, elephants become useless when you can field MR-or-lose spells in enough numbers to stop them... and the mage numbers can be harder to match than the research, when 30 elephants come charging into your lines 2 rounds into the combat.

[llamabeast]

It seems increasingly to me that morale-based solutions to elephants are probably the best approach, giving them some kind of special morale rules. They make the most thematic sense as well.

Pikes should perhaps be able to get a jab in, but I think you're right that it makes no sense for them to stop an elephant/heffalump http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif in its tracks.

[TwoBits]

My point about Conj 3 was this - if you needed a special animal-command leader (say, recruitable national commanders would typically have Animal-10, regular unit-0 = no mixing
animals with high moral infantry for example), the potential rusher would not have an uber-animal commander (black hawk/werewolf with animal leadership of 20+) until they researched Conj 3.

Granted, a pack of 10 elephants is still pretty scary in the first year, but that would be the maximum size of the squad (w/o an experienced leader), and it would have no high moral stiffening available. Putting together that 20+ horde would have to wait until Conj 3 and the summoning (w/ gem cost - and perhaps Call of the Winds should be increased to more than 5 air gems?) of a better animal-leader.

----

Regarding the bless-rush option, I definitely think a higher level priest should be able to impart a better blessing, being that much more "in tight" with God. Nations with great sacreds but crappy priests will just have to put that much more care into pretender design (perhaps spending more points on Dominion, and less on their killer magic paths).

Again, just my two pesos.

[TwoBits]

Now that I think about it though, while an 'animal-leadership' rating might tame elephants/mammoths/ to some extent, it doesn't necessarily solve the problem of a trampler rush.

Many nations can put together a rush based on chariots, troglodytes, or minotaurs. While you might categorize the later two as animals of a sort, where do chariots fit in? With the right scales, they can be just as nasty as elephants - they're cheaper, and often have better moral and protection to boot (I scoff at your slings and arrows!).

Maybe units with long weapons DO need a bonus against tramplers (heck, and charge bonus units while we're at it!). It would give us a reason to actually buy those pike-men/spear-men...

[thejeff]

There's a long way between Black Hawks at Conjuration3 and when normal armies aren't useful any more.
You could use your animal leaders with 10 elephants to expand and push research in Conjuration. Should be able to get there within the first year and have a nice backlog of elephants waiting for a leader.
(On the gripping hand, do any of the elephant nation even have Nature magic and income? Arcosephale, though only N1 right? )


More importantly, even if it addressed the elephant rush problem, it introduces all sorts of micromanagement and unforeseen hassles. Does every nation get animal leaders? Do no animal leaders have regular (or magical?) leadership? What about the ape nations? Do they only have animal leadership? So they can't use independents? Nature mages should get animal leadership. But then you can mix elephants and regular troops. Unless no nature mages can lead regular troops. Do indy elephants come with animal commanders? Are the various summon animals (pack of wolves/bears/lions, etc) spells now even more useless?

In general, the problem is tramplers, particularly elephants and this fix addresses animals in general.

I like the repel idea better. It's more specific to the problem.

[MaxWilson]

It's easier to find a counter to chariots/minotaurs, because more nations have access to size 4 creatures than size 6, and chariots can't trample anything of size 4 or bigger. That way, you can at least put up a front line with archers behind it, whereas elephants just trample all over your whole army. (And of course they do more damage, since trample damage is (8 + 2*size difference) AP.)

That said, I'm not entirely convinced that you can't delay an elephant horde for a few rounds with the right tactical placement. Tramplers do great against large masses of troops, but tend to spend a lot of movement chasing down stragglers. Break your 300-man army up into 20 15-man squads and see how much time that buys you. I doubt it would win the battle vs. a large horde, but it might let you inflict a few more casualties.

-Max

[Ironhawk]

All we really need to do to fix elephants is to drop thier protection. It's really as simple as that, guys. Drop thier prot to like 5-6... maybe 7 and you will see a radical difference in thier usability. Instead of just plowing unstoppably through any number of troops, they will get cut down by arrows and the hordes of the troops that surround them after a trample. If they are unsupported by infantry to take heat off them on the ground and archers to counter-attack the enemy shooters, they will be cut to ribbons -- as it should be.

[Warhammer]

Historically elephants were done in by their morale. They also tended to not be coordinated extraordinarily well. How about reducing the maximum number of elephants in a squad? Come up with some number and the player is forced to have more commanders. With the smaller squads, more morale checks will be made, which will force them back on their own army.

Thematically, you could have the limit be based upon a size factor. With smaller troops, they are in a more compact area making them easier to control. The larger the size, the more area they take up making them more difficult to control.

[RamsHead]

As I was saying last night on IRC, I think animal leadership would be a bad idea. It would most likely make it more difficult to use animals, many which are rarely used already. It can also have unforeseen consequences and unbalance other things in the process. For example, when Machaka's riders die, they become animal spiders. Will all of Machaka's commanders have animal leadership? Will I have to haul around some other commander so I can keep using the spiders? If the problem is elephants than I think the solution should stick to elephants.

[DrPraetorious]

But the lion elephant corps feels a bit ridiculous



Ridiculously *awesome*, you mean!

Actually, question - if I have a mixed unit of undead and normal units, and my last undead leader routs, does the entire unit rout or just the undead?

My biggest problem with messing around with animals is that all of the Bandar are animals. OTOH, the bandar are supposed to be pretty weird, so they could have their own crazy morale rules.

How's about this -
* Animals are not figured into squad morale, as with mindless or berserk units.
* When an animal is injured (or otherwise hit with morale damage) the squad morale is not influenced.
* Whenever an animal suffers a morale hit, all *animals* on your side take the morale hit. Alternately - all animals in a certain size-dependent radius could take the morale hit, but this might be CPU intensive or something.

This would mean, for example, that you could "let loose the dogs of war!" and any humans in the same unit wouldn't care if the dogs got killed.

It would also mean that a mixed force of elephants couldn't be stiffened *either* by spiking it with phalanxes, or by arbitrarily splitting it up into smaller groups (each of which might break individually but the whole group wouldn't.)

Finally, it would mean that all humans are racist against Vanara.

[DenStoreFrelser]

DrPraetorious' idea of splitting animals off from sentient creatures seems pretty good. If you do this, the elephants will always have abysmal morale (Unless you put them in a group with other, braver animals...). If you also add animal trainer commanders with standard abilities that only affects animals, you allow players to continue to use elephants against each other without resorting to silly uses of heavy infantry.

I don't think Bandar units should be seen as animals in this regard, as they appear to be intelligent enough to be considered people, except maybe the markatas. Pangea seems like a more likely candidate for special rules. I guess it wouldn't break the game to just give animal standard effects to their leaders, but that would "force" you to send dryads and the like to the front lines.

Also, if you do implement animal leadership, you might want to consider having units require their own size in leadership. I'm sure you can think of a decent excuse for this, and it would reduce the increase in power for cheap animal summoning spells.

[MaxWilson]

Kind of a tangent, but do weapons on a trampler, e.g. the long spears on LA Arco's elephants, actually do any good? If they get repel attempts that's nice, otherwise they seem kind of useless.

-Max

[Kristoffer O]

Repel and attack when meeting a size 6 monster. Not very useful, but a bonus.

[Sombre]

They don't repel smaller enemies?

[Kristoffer O]

They do.

[Endoperez]

Sorry for jumping in so late. I've been busy all week, but thankfully I have free time every now and then, and can follow these discussions.

I'd rather have "hard to lead" unit ability that makes a unit take more than 1 leadership slot. E.g. leading 1 elephant is like leading 3 men, so a 60 ldr commander can only lead 20 elephants, so the squad sizes are smaller except if you use high-ldr commanders, which are national and leave you with one less mage and have to be protected.

Taskmasters etc would be able to ignore this command.

Of course, this is also complicated in the programming department. It's just a suggestion, I don't expect it to get implemented.

<< Endoperez >>

[thejeff]

Make leadership dependent on size?

[Zath]

The training of war horses and elephants have historically been focused on suppressing the natural instincts of these animals to flee when struck by weapons or startled by noise and large crowds. Training an animal to trample opponents is especially difficult, since they must charge through what they perceive as solid obstacles. All the above factors can be modeled in game with a similar mechanism to repel: force tramplers to pass a morale check for each square they trample, and make them attack with their normal weapon if they fail this check. The difficulty of this morale check can be adjusted based on any number of factors that the designers find suitable. For example, the mechanism could be setup as:

Trample Roll = Morale - 1 per every 20% HP loss on unit
Fear Roll = 5 + 1 per every 6 hostile size points in adjacent squares

If Trample Roll > Fear Roll, then trampling succeeds, otherwise attack with normal weapon and end turn. What qualifies as "adjacent squares" must be further defined of course, but just using the 8 immediately adjacent squares may well suffice. A system like this would make some roleplaying sense, and it should mitigate the problem of trampling rushers without completely negating the effectiveness of these units in a combined arms battle. Swarms of cheap infantry could be used to freeze tramplers in place and whittle them down slowly. This can be countered by using archers or shock infantry to cut through the chaff, which will in turn be vulnerable to other counter-counters, etc. etc.

[MaxWilson]

Mod +1.

-Max

[Chris_Byler]

I think the best fix would be to adjust the rules for mixed squads so that the cowards in the squad can break before the braver troops.

Instead of having the squad share morale and break as a whole, it could have partial breaks where everyone with morale less than X panics and runs. The braver members of the squad continue fighting, until they take enough casualties for the squad's "rout number" to exceed their morale as well. If there were troops with drastically different morale (like mammoths and wingless), half breaks would be pretty common. Fear, standards that only cover part of the squad, and Battle Fright could also cause part of a squad to flee while other parts fight on.

That would make combining cowardly tramplers + brave other troops dangerous - the tramplers might break first and trample their braver comrades on their way off the battlefield. Cowards would remain cowardly even when surrounded by braver allies - it takes something like a standard or Sermon of Courage to really improve their morale.

That might require enough changes to the morale system to make it more of a Dom4 thing than something that could be done in a patch, though.


In the short term maybe elephants just need to cost more resources. They may not wear much equipment, but the effort involved in catching or breeding an elephant and then training it for war is far from trivial in its own right (*much* harder than doing the same for a horse). A high resource cost would make it difficult to accumulate elephants quickly, especially without productivity. Training a large force of elephants would take years.

And really, how likely is it that the people of a sloth-3 province are going to bother to take the trouble to raise and train even one elephant, let alone several? That would be far too much work.

[OmikronWarrior]

Hmmm... This discussion interests me. I think I have a "solution" thats going to make a lot of sense with out ripping apart the game (like adding animal command would). I'm going to work on the math, but it basically involves adding some morale checks modified by weapon length and HP.

[OmikronWarrior]

Alright, I must have gone through a dozen different schemes of various complexities (some requiring four seperate moral checks before doing some attack vs. defense checks). I finally settled on the simplest. First, what my criteria were.

A) It had to make sense "realistically".
B) It couldn't create any new abilities, attributes, etc.
C) It had to be simpler than the mechanics governing missles.
D) It would have to employee similar mechanics to those already used by the game.
E) It had to be readily available to any nation thematically.

For A, the obvious solution to being charged by giant creatures would be long pointy sticks that the creature would have to impale itself on to get to you. Hence, weapon length vs. trampler morale became the dominant theme. As for D, I noticed that while the game has "repel" checks for normal attacks, it has nothing of the sort for trample attacks. This doesn't make sense. Therefore, in order for a unit to trample a square, it must pass the following morale check:

(Trampler Morale)+(Trampler Size)+DRN-(Trampler Fatigue)/10

vs.

(Modified Sum of Weapon Length in Attacked Square)+DRN

The "Sum of Weapon Length" is modified the same way presicion is, all points over 10 are doubled. Note that the moral check is based on the INDIVIDUAL trampler's morale, and no survivor bonus is applied, just a fatigue penalty. Which makes sense, the more tired you are the more daunting the task of avoiding a wall of spikes becomes.

What happens next is simple. If the trampler fails the morale check the unit will simply attack normally with whatever weapon it has (trunk, spear, whatever). If it succeeds it now is vulnerable to "attacks of opportunity", much like a normal soldier who succeeds their morale check vs. a longer weapon. Each unit in the square gets a free attack against the trampler (whose defense is reduce by 2 each time it defends against such an attack) which can cause at most an amount of damage equal to the weapon's length (which symbolizes the creature impaling itself on the long weapon). Plus, each such attack will cause a fatigue hit.



The baseline in my head was a squad of 3 spearment (total weapon length 12) should have a "reasonable" chance to parry a low morale elephant, while 3 phalanxes each with length six weapons should stop all but the most determined trampler cold. Meanwhile, isolated and short length weapon fighters should rarely be able to repel even the most uncertain of tramplers.

The match ups.

Mammoth vs. 3 spearmen: The Mammoth has morale 10 and size 6, while the spearmen have modified weapon lengths of 14. Assuming no fatigue, the Mammoth will trample the spearmen 62% of the time. It's enough to blunt a trampler's charge and give the defendants a fighting chance against an amassed Mammoth horde beelining for the capital.

Indie Elephants vs. 3 Spearment: The difference between indie elephants and Mammoths is the elephants have a morale of 8. This means they'll only successfully trample the spearmen 46% of the time.

Indi Elephant vs. Isolate Phalanx (WL6) or 3 short swordsmen (WL2x3)

The Elephant would roll 14 vs 6. A plus 8 difference means it will trample the units 86% of the time. That almost identical to the current situation.

Mammoth vs. 3 Phalanxes (WL6x3)

The Mammoth would still have 16, but 6 times 3 is 18, which would be modified to 26. Thats a deficiet of 10 which only gives the Mammoth a 3% chance of actually trampling.

Finally, SC vs. 3 Phalanxes

I'm assuming a size 6 Commander with 30 morale tries to trample the best anti-trample defense available. Its 36 vs. 26, and the commander will successfully trample 95% of the time. Fortunately, such units don't grow on trees.

Thoughts? Exploits? Understandable?

[Wahnsinniger]

I don't recall/understand what the current system is, but pretty cool and well-thought out. Though it does seem that perhaps the percentages could stand to be slightly higher. (A Mammoth vs 3 Phalanxes should probably have more than 3% Chance. Perhaps add defender fatigue in there as well?)

I don't know if it balances well, but I do like the Weapon Length over 10 doubled though. A good analogy would be building a brick wall against a current of water. The first brick or two would impede it, but only by a marginal amount. But once there's enough bricks, each one would cut the area the water could go through by such a percentage that it would really start to add up (i.e. doubled)

[OmikronWarrior]

The current system is the trampler does 10 + (2xsize) of armor piercing damage to every unit in the square it "tramples". Actually, the defender gets to escape if they beat a defense check vs. 10 with fatigue penalties to their defense, but absolutely must take at least 1 point of damage no matter what. Assuming units have a defense of 10 (which is the game's baseline), they'll get trampled roughly half the time. And with an elephant trampling, thats 22 ap damage, which is death for most infantry.

Beyond the game imbalances that such a system imposes, it just doesn't makes sense to me that a unit can ignore a wall of spears (the most effective military formation through out ancient history) and attack with impunity. And I see Length 6 weapons as being as long as an elephant itself. 3% may be a bit low, but it still makes sense and makes the system very workable.

I considered making the defenders pass a morale check to see if they'd stay "in formation" (including a "chicken game" check where whoever rolled the lower morale would "flinch" and loose, but the reward for the trampler winning was being impaled upon the sticks, so no good there), but ultimately I decided such systems were too complicated with out providing a real improvement for the gameplay. As for fatigue, how would you calculate the fatigue distribution over multiple units? And for that matter, does the defending unit being tired somehow make a row of spears seem less intimidating? No, fatigue will still come in play when a trampled defender attempts their "attack of opportunity" while being trampled.

[Wahnsinniger]

Well, I guess the fatigue doesn't fit realisticly, but It'd hopefully make the numbers more balanced...

In any case, it'll make lesser used Spearmen-type units more useful. Thus you could probably rush a player with a bunch of tramplers, since they'll doubtfully have spearmen units in their normal army, but it gives them a chance to amass some in an attempt to stop you.

Props.

[MaxWilson]

OmikronWarrior said:
Actually, the defender gets to escape if they beat a defense check vs. 10 with fatigue penalties to their defense, but absolutely must take at least 1 point of damage no matter what.



That's what the manual claims, but in fact I have had trampled units with high protection fail to take any damage at all.

-Max

[Chris_Byler]

OmikronWarrior said:
The current system is the trampler does 10 + (2xsize) of armor piercing damage to every unit in the square it "tramples". Actually, the defender gets to escape if they beat a defense check vs. 10 with fatigue penalties to their defense, but absolutely must take at least 1 point of damage no matter what. Assuming units have a defense of 10 (which is the game's baseline), they'll get trampled roughly half the time. And with an elephant trampling, thats 22 ap damage, which is death for most infantry.


Well, maybe before we get into adjusting specific units, let alone making new rules, we might consider just tweaking those numbers a bit. 10 attack for trample seems a bit high to me - how hard is it really to see where the elephant is going and be somewhere else? Even a few points less of "trample effective attack" will lead to more units getting out of the way and fewer getting stepped on... while the trampler still ends up tired and surrounded. A little less damage could make more units survive the first trample, too (meaning you have to trample them again, which is time consuming and fatiguing). At 8+size*2 ap, some heavily armored tough guys like Ulm could have a decent chance to survive the first trample.

Repelling elephants doesn't make much sense to me. If an elephant is heading for your phalanx, you should get out of its way and stab it as it goes by, or after it is past you, not stand there until it snaps your spear like a toothpick.


P.S. Maybe the "must take 1 damage" only applies to people *hit* by the trample (and not lucky/ethereal)? "No matter how heavy your armor, an elephant stepping on you will do *some* damage" makes sense; "An elephant rushing into your square will damage you even if you get out of the way in time" doesn't. Even heavily armored troops could beat 10 attack some of the time.

[MaxWilson]

Note that it's not 10 + (size*2) AP. It's 10 + ((size of attacker - size of defender)*2) AP. That means an elephant will usually have an 18 AP attack, which is survivable by tough Ulmish guys, as you noted.

About the minimum 1 damage: I thought so at one point too, so I specifically paid attention to IIRC a PD commander when he was getting trampled. No Ethereal, no Luck, and it was definitely the same guy. No damage. It's hard to tell exactly how much damage is taken during a trample because of the displacement, so I don't know how common it is to be undamaged, but I know it happens.

-Max

[Ewierl]

Chris_Byler said:
Well, maybe before we get into adjusting specific units, let alone making new rules, we might consider just tweaking those numbers a bit. 10 attack for trample seems a bit high to me - how hard is it really to see where the elephant is going and be somewhere else?



Here's a question I've never been quite sure of: once an elephant gets past the front lines, it can hit troops that have no free spaces to dodge into. Do they just get crunched, or do they dodge "through" the elephant?

[krpeters]

On the subject of long pointy sticks:

The repell idea makes sense as the best way to stop tramplers. It also would make weapon length more important in the game, esp. if my idea of allowing all units to trample were implemented.

There's no need to make the system complicated. Simply do a "size vs. length" check. A size 6 elephant vs. a length 4 spear, do the 2d5 thing, if the elephant's roll plus size is greater than the spearman's roll plus length, the elephant gets to trample, if not, not.

Spearmen would get stomped with moderate frequency by elephants, but not much by trample-enabled cavalry. Swordsmen, on the other hand, would have to watch out for cavalry. Which adds to the rock-papers-scissors thing (swordsmen beat spearmen beat cavalry)

Jotun would become way cool with this trample rule... which giants should be!

[Wahnsinniger]

Hmmm....everyone could trample....Not sure how that would balance, but that would add a whole new level of cool when your Knights Break through the enemy lines a square or two before ramming their lance into someone.

[Kristoffer O]

> Do they just get crunched, or do they dodge "through" the elephant?

They jump to one of the closest free spaces. In large battles, that can be a very long jump http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[krpeters]

I guess they get thrown a long way but luckily land on their feet http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

With regards to balancing tramplers... when there's only a few on the board, they tend to get surrounded and pulled down quickly. When there's a lot, they tend to form a "wall" that is much more powerful. In itself it's a good thing, but it seems a bit too strong and needs to get toned down somehow.

If the repel idea isn't liked, the reducing quantity per squad (via making leadership take size into account) would make it harder to accumulate large masses of tramplers. (Leadership 40 = 80 halflings, 40 humans, or 6 elephants)

Reducing elephants per squad would make it somewhat harder to mass huge hordes, and greatly increase the likelihood of a rout by at least some of them.

[Chris_Byler]

The simpler suggestion of increasing their resource cost (to represent the difficult task of catching/breeding and then training an elephant, not to mention the expense of feeding it while you are training it, and the expense of a proper howdah and harness) would also make it more difficult to mass huge hordes of elephants. But alone, it doesn't address the "elephant plus hoplites" problem.

As a quick fix I favor higher rescost, but ultimately I'd like to see parts of squads allowed to rout while their braver squadmates fight on. Even if I have to wait for Dom4 to see it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Lord_Bob]

The simplest way to limit "unit mixing" with elephants from a mod point of view is to make elephants "magical" and create "Elephant Commander" with nice morale for elephants for the elephant/mammoth using nations and give them magical command. This is hardly abusable... someone who can deal with large numbers of massive mammoths probably isn't going to take any lip from a flying snake either. Elephant morale should probably be raised to 9 or something.

[thejeff]

How does that limit unit mixing?
As long as those nations have mages with any regular command, no one will bother with the Elephant Commander.
Send out a mage (you have to use a fortress turn to recruit the Elephant Commander, anyway). Say 15 elephants mixed with 10 high morale regular troops is enough to boost morale.

[Cor2]

another possible solution to masses of elephants is adding a large guttony rating. Make them consume 60 points of food.

the elephants and their elite keepers will starve if you mass to many. Diseased elephants may not be much concelation to those on the wrong end of an elephant rush.

[Lord_Bob]

If they have the gold to build all the mages required, I say let them. It's a great idea.

Mages don't cost much more than a commander anyway.

It would also allow a group of 20 elephants to be routed.

How many elephants do you need to kill to get your first rout check with 5 60+ group of elephants all mixed with each other?

With smaller groups (forced) at least SOMEBODY will make a route check.