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Topic: Fix Barbarians' early training disadvantage

GunChleoc
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Posted at: 2017-11-29, 12:48

At the start of a game, everybody can start training right away, provided that they have the buildings to collect the food. Not so for Barbarians, they have to wait until they have trained a master brewer.

How about using beer instead of strong beer for the first level of evade training, then strong beer for the second level?


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WorldSavior
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Posted at: 2017-11-29, 13:47

GunChleoc wrote:

At the start of a game, everybody can start training right away, provided that they have the buildings to collect the food. Not so for Barbarians, they have to wait until they have trained a master brewer.

How about using beer instead of strong beer for the first level of evade training, then strong beer for the second level?

I like the idea, but i would like to make a suggestion to improve that even more: It could be possible that training evade 1 requires beer or strong beer, and beer would always be prefered... (That could also be a new idea for snack production of the big inn - and maybe even the inn - right?)

I think that your idea wouldn't have serious disadvantages and it wouldn't even be that bad for the balancing...


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einstein13
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Posted at: 2017-11-29, 14:28

I agree with that. Now Barbarians has to produce some regular beer to gain some experience for the brewer and then they can produce strong beer and evade. It is proved (last tournament game: me and GunChleoc) that takes more time than evading for other tribes.

But if we compare all 3 tribes, we will see:

  • Barbarians has to gain experience on casual beer production, then produce strong beer, then evade soldiers
  • Empire has to build arena, then Colloseum
  • Atlaneans has to micromanage in their training center, because soldiers are waiting for tabards

So every tribe has something different to cope with. But for sure Barbarians should be the easiest ones to win in the very early game! As I remember, that was the main goal for them.


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SirVer

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Posted at: 2017-11-29, 14:47

Fwiw, the original idea of the barbarians was that they could mass produce lvl0 soldiers until their training kicks in. They are the only tribe that can produce lvl0 soldiers with one iron only, so these are much cheaper. I really like the idea that the trainings dynamic is different for all tribes, but if it is too weak, we need to change something. I wonder if we can make their lvl0 soldiers a bit stronger instead.


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king_of_nowhere
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Posted at: 2017-11-29, 17:38

barbarians cannot train soldiers, but they can produce new soldiers with a coal mine, an iron mine, a hunter, a gamekeeper, a tavern, a smelting works and an ax factory. They can start training new soldiers much faster than everyone else can start upgrading theirs. I've seen worldsavior's rush in glacier lake, and I can't imagine how much stronger it would be if it was made with promoted soldiers.

I am in favor of reducing the cost of promoting the brewer and the blacksmith - if it wasn't done already in some older version - but letting barbarians rush with promoted soldiers seem exaggerated. they don't need more early game strenght.


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WorldSavior
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Posted at: 2017-11-29, 17:39

einstein13 wrote:

I agree with that. Now Barbarians has to produce some regular beer to gain some experience for the brewer and then they can produce strong beer and evade. It is proved (last tournament game: me and GunChleoc) that takes more time than evading for other tribes.

Yes, but barbarian ev-2-soldiers are much weaker than other ev-2-soldiers anyway... (But this is not even a big problem, i guess..)

Edit: And they are much more expensive than other ev-2-soldiers

einstein13 wrote:

  • Atlaneans has to micromanage in their training center, because soldiers are waiting for tabards

How? face-wink.png

SirVer wrote:

Fwiw, the original idea of the barbarians was that they could mass produce lvl0 soldiers until their training kicks in. They are the only tribe that can produce lvl0 soldiers with one iron only,

... that's not completely correct... face-wink.png

so these are much cheaper.

... but yes, it's true that they are much cheaper

I really like the idea that the trainings dynamic is different for all tribes, but if it is too weak, we need to change something.

I'm not sure if barbarians are too weak on small maps

I wonder if we can make their lvl0 soldiers a bit stronger instead.

Couldn't make this them too strong?

Edited: 2017-11-29, 18:49

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king_of_nowhere
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Posted at: 2017-11-29, 18:03

SirVer wrote:

I wonder if we can make their lvl0 soldiers a bit stronger instead.

we already made their level 10 stronger than they were. Now they are as strong as atlanteans. So the idea with barbarians is to use your starting wood and your cheap soldiers to make a rush with numbers and gain more land, until your training kicks in, at this point your soldiers are just as good and somewhat more expensive.I admit I don't have much practice with barbarians. tando is a good player and he uses them often. I've seen worldsavior make a very well executed rush with barbarians. I'd ask them what is the current state of the art for barbarian balance.


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GunChleoc
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Posted at: 2017-11-29, 18:54

I like the idea of requiring less xp for the brewer. There was nothing that I needed the beer for, since mining resources were plenty. So, I had to increase economy demand just to keep him working chugging out lots of useless beer.

I think the blacksmith xp are OK - I didn't even manage to get beyond an ax factory in this game anyway. Of course, my mind can be changed on that.

The strategy with just building a barracks and mass-producing needs to be tested though, to make sure we don't make them overpowered.


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WorldSavior
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Posted at: 2017-11-29, 20:04

GunChleoc wrote:

I like the idea of requiring less xp for the brewer. There was nothing that I needed the beer for, since mining resources were plenty.

Yeah, on little maps this is suboptimal, and even on big maps...

So, I had to increase economy demand just to keep him working chugging out lots of useless beer.

In fact brewers ignore the economy settings if they need experience (in micro breweries) - i don't like that. Maybe it would make more sense to increase the default settings of the beer as much as it would be necessary...


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GunChleoc
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Posted at: 2017-11-29, 21:01

WorldSavior wrote:

In fact brewers ignore the economy settings if they need experience (in micro breweries) - i don't like that. Maybe it would make more sense to increase the default settings of the beer as much as it would be necessary...

Not easy to do, since that also depends on the starting condition.

Edited: 2017-11-29, 21:02

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