Tower issue - Suggestion discussion

[EDMatt]

Hi

I have been playing quite a number of 1v1 games recently and encountered a similar experience in all my games.Often enough when 2 players meet with equal armies and one outmaneuvers the other (keep in mind that this happens very often in quite balanced games) and is able to push to the enemy town he is then forced to face the front line of enemy towers. When this happens in most balanced games you are left with army that is possibly bigger than the enemies at this stage , you are left with 3 choices.

1: Retreat (rather a senseless choice at times as you should be awarded for being victorious in this micro battle and theoretically be good to attack).
2: Charge at the enemy territory (anything can happen if you choose to charge, ambush or good positioned attack can be awaiting you or even more towers).
3: Destroying tower by tower (very time consuming and risky, as it is not so hard to be out microed while trying to destroy enemy towers, as well as enemy being able to rebuild his army to make your advantage insignificant overtime , towers can take up to 30 minutes to destroy if the the opponents both are aware of bowmen micro.)


Let us analyze the information that we have gathered here:

-Player 1 wins the opening battle forcing player 2 to retreat. Player 1 has the advantage of army at this stage.
-Player 1 stumbles upon the enemy towers.
-Player 1 will lose the momentum and significance of his advantage if he decides to retreat, will defiantly lose the advantage if he charges or if he decides to start destroying towers, will give enough time for Player 1 to rebuild his army

In all 3 possibilities Player 1 will lose his advantage as a result of limited possibilities when it comes to entering enemy territory.
I have seen this happen many many times in 1v1 gaming, especially when someone who understands how towers work , places them in the correct position and halts the game for 20 - 30 minutes, at this stage its anyones game.



My suggestion:
There are number of things that can be done to help the situation and I will list them here, but I will mainly only talk about 1 that I find to be the most probable and interesting , one that can add another dimension to this triangle.

debuff of tower -I do not recommend it as towers should be able to stop surprise attacks and backdooring of enemy troops quite efficiently .

Increase range of range units to buildings - Also a nice possibility, but this will just make the boring combination of swords/bowmen for ever more popular , totally taste less and expected choice of army, will be rather repetitive and predictable as Bowmen will now have too many roles to play in the battlefield (bit like making a serf also a farmer and a butcher, everything should have its place in the game).

Deletion of towers from game - Will remove a huge element that is important from the game, making the game less popular for many who like to play defensively, also not recommended.

Adding Catapults to the game : I will try to explain as well as I possibly can how Catapults can be balanced out and added to the game.
First let me point this out , a catapult (in my suggestion) should have only 1 role, shooting enemy buildings down, having high damage against buildings but a rather slow shooting speed , movement speed and low hit-points but yet quite expensive to build , this will insure that the catapult will have to be defended with extreme caution from all sides, as 2 knights that might sneak in to enemy formation should be able to take a catapult down quite comfortably.
So now that the catapult is slow and very fragile, it will have to be escorted literally from 1 point (your barracks) to another (enemy territory ). YOU SHOULD NEVER be able to do that without any opposition , as currently many players simply decide to sit in base behind mass towers with huge economy while outproducing the enemy and giving away the position, the catapult should make them think twice before doing so. This will award the players who decide to push and control the map and those who win micro fights with the ability and choice to efficiently push through enemy territory. But clever flanking and engagement can still ensure security for the defender if he decides to play passive and go for out production, he will have to engage in fights (cannot stay too passive) and try to somehow take down the catapult which will buy him plenty more time. Towers will still protect him well enough if the catapult itself can be taken down, and if it wasn't, small micro battles with archers shooting catapults should still be possible.

Let us take the catapult into consideration a, theoretically battle situation of 1v1:

-Player 1 wins the opening battle forcing player 2 to retreat. Player 1 has the advantage of army at this stage.
-Player 1 stumbles upon the enemy towers.
-Player 1 will build and(or if already built) move it to the enemy towers and start shooting them 1 by 1.


The biggest problem right now in Knights and Merchants is that many players rely on towers to take down enemies main army (and since towers also work as barricade it quickly became increasingly popular and efficient way of making defending in base much more reliable than being offensive on the front line of the enemy base.

Good examples to look at (replays ) are games such as : Pizza vs RomeK
Pizza vs Mullberry
Matt vs Kozchies

What do you think about it guys?

[Krom]

I your described scenario, imagine yourself on defending players side - how would you have a chance to fight back after loosing the fight in the middle? if Offender already has more soldiers at your doorstep and a few catapults

I don't see a big difference between a proposed catapult and 10 xbows.

What kind of damage and rate of fire catapult is intended to have?

[EDMatt]

I your described scenario, imagine yourself on defending players side - how would you have a chance to fight back after loosing the fight in the middle? if Offender already has more soldiers at your doorstep and a few catapults

I don't see a big difference between a proposed catapult and 10 xbows.

What kind of damage and rate of fire catapult is intended to have?

So the offender has built (lets take for example) 3 catapults, 5 wood 5 iron for each catapult.
That means that his iron unit production has halted and therefor has not produced iron units and little bit of leather (since wood makes weapons) and militia, this now has brought me back into the game and gave me a possibility to train more sword fighters (around 7) and more leather/militia. I now have the chance to counterattack and being able to possibly even destroy the very thing that the enmy took so much time to invest on, catapults, which will bring me right back into the game.

10 xbows will take a long time to take down an enemy building and also it is rather simple to outshoot an xbow because of the time they take to destroy a building (out shooting it with range of course. ). The most important factor in this equation time to take down towers while in position.

as for damage rate, I am not an expert in number when it comes to knights and merchants but I would imagine it to be much much faster than range or melee attack. 3 catapults should take almost no time to destroy it.

I will try to upload some pictures to better illustrate the situation.

[dicsoupcan]

I really think this is not a good solution against towers, there has to be a better way. If the catapult destroys tower very fast towers will become completely useless and it is better to just remove towers from the game. But if the catapult is destroying the tower too slow no one will make them.

I assume the catapults are meant to destroy towers pretty fast and thus it renders tower useless. If we keep the TPR costs of 5 timber and 5 iron abrs it is not even expensive if you can just easily destroy any tower you want. timber can de be easily massed and with 5 timber you cn make only 2 militia and haveone leftover timber, for 5 ironbars you only lose 1 swordfighter + 1 pikeman/crossbowman. And people tend to forget you can trade for more ironbars in the market so you basically do not give up very much for a huge gain.

Offcourse they move slow and are fragile but if you are able to push your enemy into his base how is he going to stop you from getting the catapult in range? that means that you have lost after the very first fight you have made with hardly any chance to come back. This means the gameplay changes in get as many weapons as you can before pt ends, do not care about your city since after the first fight the game is already decided.

plus you will get stupid shenannigans like this as defenses, because this will fill in the role that towers (note, not mass towers) do and that is buying yourself some time to recover and maybe get a comeback:

2013-06-25_00005.jpg

[Siegfried]

Before I elaborate, there is one question that I want to ask about your scenario:

you describe that player A defeats player B on the battlefield but then has to stop because of B's towers.
Where exactly is the problem do you see the problem? Is it the fact that you haven't won the match at this point? Is it that you see it as a pure delay because the enemy won't come back either way? Or do you fear the towers can be a changing factor and B might win if A loses too many troops in fighting them down?

I understand your suggestion with the catapult in a way, that a catapult will take down a tower very fast with maybe 3 strikes. I think that's a bad suggestion. Let me elaborate:

My analysis
I see the problem with towers in the fact, that they are superweapons. Therefore they don't fit the game at all. Like ballistae didn't fit.

The superpower comes from the fact that they kill a soldier with one shot. So it's really just that. If they hit, the soldier dies. If they miss, nothing has happened at all.
To counter that superpower, there have been introduced a lot of limitations that made the situation even worse than better. There is a high chance to miss. They deplete. If recruit goes eating, they are useless. All those things are needed because towers are too strong if they hit.

And that's why I don't like the idea with the catapult either. It's just a second superweapon that was solely introduced to balance the first superpower. But you will face the same problems with balancing them. Shall they attack other buildings? How fast do they go? How many hitpoints do they have? It guess it will be very hard to find values that make them useful but not overpowered. Just think of the marketplace and how hard it is to balance things.

My idea
My idea to balance towers tries to take away the superpower of the tower without making them entirely useless. All fighting is a matter of time. The more your soldier gets hit, the more likely it is for him to die. So there is always a little time to react. Towers should obey the same principle. So I suggest:
each stone does not kill a soldier, but just kills one lifepoint

If you do this, you need to introduce some changes:
- increase hit probability to say 9/10
- let the tower use one stone for 3 missiles (just like a butcher makes 3 sausages out of 1 pig)
- increase fire rate by a factor of 2

The consequences are:
- you can use micro to counter towers!!
So it's not entirely random whether your soldier dies, but it is a matter of your own skill. A horse can be hit by 3 stones and then moved out of a towers range without dying. So you need 5 horses to empty a tower with good skills and you don't lose any of your precious horses if you're good enough in handling them.
- the tower kills 4-5 soldiers in average (15 missiles, most troops have 3 lifepoints) if they just move into its range, but it takes 50% more time until they are dead (with the increased fire rate). So overall, the tower is still useful and needed because it's the only defense you have apart from troops (that are rather meant for offense).
- a tower kills an archer with 1 missile, but that's a side effect that is not unwanted. First of all, because you can attack a tower from outside its range. And second of all therefore tower provide a better protection for your serfs from archery.
- a tower is less effective against cavalry (4 lp), so there is no need to decrease hit probability against horses.

[pawel95]

I am for the catapult implementation because I see in this idea big possibilities to improve the Gamesystem in Multiplayergames.
Like already mentioned this would prevent "noob playing" like 12 towers per m²
I dont think even it could bring any problems on maps like GoldenCliffs or bigger maps with 3vs3 or 4vs4 maps.

Catapults can be ""easily"" destroyed by like 2-4 hits and are 1/3 slower than melee units. So this isnt a big argument to make mass catapults or have a big advantage against players.
The only problem I can see is in 1vs1 games. It will bring us propably back to the "no PT game" back. The guy that has like 4 milita more will win, because look. You have a catapult and like small army, but the enemy has like no army in PT because of gold problems.
In normal games, towers are like a way to get like ~5 Min for getting some soldiers.

A catapult makes like 25 damage/shot. One shot is fired every 3 seconds. So the tower would be exactly destroyed after 30 seconds, which is a small time for sure. So in 1vs1 games the one player is dead because of that "new unit".

However I thought about Romeks original idea: "Add catapults to the game and make them attack only towers."
Soooo the question that I tried to answer in my head was: How would it really work in kam games? We need to test it, because what would happen when the towerspamer had like 20 builders(normal amount of good player) and would repair the tower permanently. So the Catapult is shooting the whole time and when the defender could make somhow some bowmen/xbows, he could normaly defend his base like up to here.
The Bowmen won´t kill the labours and the catapult is shooting on the tower,but not at the labours without any way to get huge advantage out of that.

When I just imagine everything could happen,but I think testing doesn´t hurt anyone. The most important thing is to have a good setting for the radius of shooting. Not that players will be to able, to get their whole army infront of their shooting catapults. So a small radius (not too small) would be a perfect way to start the testing in my point of view.

[dicsoupcan]

The Bowmen won´t kill the labours and the catapult is shooting on the tower,but not at the labours without any way to get huge advantage out of that.

If you put a squad of bowmen next to your catapult they will surely shoot and kill all labourers trying to repair the tower, and besides that be able to prevent enemy ranged units from harming your catapult.

[Ben]

Matt has written a very thorough post, and I thank him for his time spent making his point clear.

I agree that towers can be very annoying to take out, and they come at very little cost in long games (1:30+ gametime) and even with the growingly popular 70 minute PT. However, I do not see why a player should win right after the first battle. In the scenario described, player A should be able to control the map with his larger force. He can perhaps extend beyond his towers by building a few extra woodcutters, or go for nearby extra resources. With this economy boost, player A should be able to outproduce player B. However, if player A gives up map control, does not focus on production, and just sits around while player B is rebuilding his army, then A really isn't deserving of a victory.

This is just a theory. In some team maps, it is very important to have quick access to your allies; which can be cut off by an aggressive opponent (anti camping). However, there is often much more map in the hands of camper in teamgames, so they can just continue to spam towers like crazy.

[sado1]

OK, I got a different idea. Instead of catas, what if we make it possible, to kill recruit in the towers with ranged units? Of course it needs to be hard enough to do that. And also, this would probably need something like a switch for disabling recruits going to a tower, or else we'll kill defending player's army production like that.

[Romek]

I want to put some pictures to show main problem with towers :






As you guys can see there is totaly no chance to destroy that towers with archers or x bows. That means when someone will decide to camp you have no chance to strike him. KaM right now it is a defensive game. Attackers dont have many posibilities now. If We will compare 2 players on the same level with similar armys most of time defender will win it for sure. There is no point to attack. And I am not talking about battles in cities but about battles in other spots at map. In city situation looks even worst - because of towers advantage. I want to say that now it is extremly hard to kill a guy who know how to play if the guy decide to camp. That catapult can be the only option to give advantage for the attacker. That idea can be really nice because it will force players to leave their bases and do not tower spam. I can agree that balancing that thing will be hard job. And i dont want to put random numbers here about how to balance it. What i am sure now it should have more range then xbows/archers - something like 2-5, It can be made only after PT (like a troops), It will be slow (maybe even slower then in TPR). I am not sure about time production - it depends how strong that thing will be.

I can agree that this idea is controversial but I think it is worth to try
Sorry for bad english - I tried my best.

[dicsoupcan]

I agree that in cases like that catapults will help you, but what if you have cases like this?

2013-06-25_00007.jpg

2013-06-25_00006.jpg

2013-06-25_00008.jpg

And i think these cases will be more common when catapults are being implemented since they can only attack towers, i know i used barracks here but markets or storehouses or every building will fit for it rendering catapults useless. there is a better chance to strike but that chance is not much larger then normal. You just replace the towers by a mix of a barricade and towers.

[Romek]

Yeah i see but if you will made barricade like on that pictures the enemy can destroy it easy because you cant protect that barricade with your archers/crossbowmans.

[dicsoupcan]

even if it is less effective, you still can. But it still serves the purpose of buying valuable time.

[EDMatt]

Before I elaborate, there is one question that I want to ask about your scenario:

you describe that player A defeats player B on the battlefield but then has to stop because of B's towers.
Where exactly is the problem do you see the problem? Is it the fact that you haven't won the match at this point? Is it that you see it as a pure delay because the enemy won't come back either way? Or do you fear the towers can be a changing factor and B might win if A loses too many troops in fighting them down?

I feel like in every topic you bring a nice set of questions to challenge ones suggestions , and often enough rightly so. I will try to answer your questions .
when one encounters a line of towers, it usually means that he would have to tower dive to see what is behind the towers, and if there is range on the frontline such as on romeks post (picture that he attached) , it is impossible to send 1 or 2 militia to scout it and so you are forced to tower dive or try to micro your way through to destroy the tower which will be very difficult

keep in mind that you have no idea what is behind the towers, as there could be more towers, so basically player A Made a good move and defeated many soldiers and is forced to give the advantage away by sending the extra soldiers that he has left over to the towers to equalize the situation and often enough it is crippling his army, more so if there is another line of towers behind , player A has an advantage and is forced to give it away.
As we all know also that Knights and Merchants exapnsion is not realistic in most games as there is a limit to how much more you can expand, any further and there is no difference in production,

An even more extreme example is the following
Player A decides to go for a big base and block his entrances with towers and narrow only passages are created this way.
Both players scout the map with few militia
Player B comes to the enemy frontline, and can see a barricade followed by towers behind it.
Keep in mind Player A has a lategame advantage and with no passages or good possition for player B to take into Players A territory, whatever happens , Player A will be at an advantage.

[EDMatt]

Matt has written a very thorough post, and I thank him for his time spent making his point clear.

I agree that towers can be very annoying to take out, and they come at very little cost in long games (1:30+ gametime) and even with the growingly popular 70 minute PT. However, I do not see why a player should win right after the first battle. In the scenario described, player A should be able to control the map with his larger force. He can perhaps extend beyond his towers by building a few extra woodcutters, or go for nearby extra resources. With this economy boost, player A should be able to outproduce player B. However, if player A gives up map control, does not focus on production, and just sits around while player B is rebuilding his army, then A really isn't deserving of a victory.

This is just a theory. In some team maps, it is very important to have quick access to your allies; which can be cut off by an aggressive opponent (anti camping). However, there is often much more map in the hands of camper in teamgames, so they can just continue to spam towers like crazy.

It will take too long for that advantage to kick in, as we all know woodcutters plant and farms that grow grain take alot of time. nothing is stopping both players from expanding (one can expand within his base especially when alot of rock has been depleted), also not to mention the limit that there is for exapnding your base, once you go over the limit (which is around 5 pig farms) , you will no longer benefit from any more pigfarms enough to be worth the time/resources to build .