Serfs defending themselves (peacetime removal solution)

[Krom]

After reading neighbor topic on a peacetime removal I want to propose this solution:

Serfs should be able to defend themselves against enemy melee units. The idea is that when serf walks past enemy warrior he attacks him and perhaps calls nearby serfs to attack too. Player cannot control that, so he can't use that serf power as an offence force.

Pros:
- Militia rushes can be repelled.
- Town will he much harder to take over.
- Peacetime may be removed
- Single militia in enemy town cannot wreck havoc no longer

Cons:
- We don't have serfs fighting sprites

Issues:
- What to do about archers? serfs should not be lured out by them, yet they need to be able to defend against them somehow, or we get archers rushes. Maybe serfs can pick/throw stones?

[sado1]

- Town will he much harder to take over.

For me it's a downside. I'm not a fan of encouraging camping more. On the other hand, with this implemented we might reduce camping with some other measures.

The idea is worth considering. Not sure if the "single militia" (or knight) case is that bad, it's a part of the game for me, and maybe it shouldn't be touched. It's good that a better player is able to enter enemy city and distract him from the main fight. And that says someone who often had a problem with enemy knights, wandering in my city

[Siegfried]

I'm not sure if this would encourage camping, because I don't think you will keep your troops inside your city. They'd just block everything.

That idea is interesting, and I'd like to contribute with an idea: if you do so, also use the directions of the fighting system, but decrease the direction value by 1. So when a serf stands face to face with a soldier, he can't win. Only if there are additional serfs coming and attacking from the side, there is a small chance of stopping the soldier.

[Krom]

@sado1: I remember how infiltrating with 3 knights into enemies town allowed me to destroy all of his serfs just by blocking Barracks/Inn entrances. I'm not sure this is exactly KaM fun. In my understanding you need to have a force to destroy the town., while right now that force is just some 3-5 militias (blocking barracks, store, school entrances). Thing is - this is not a distraction, this is effectively a defeat. How many times you could rebuild after such enemy entrances?

@Siegfried: I would estimate 2 serf is as strong (or better say as weak) as 1 militia.

[Bence791]

Interesting idea, would be funny to see a knight being killed after being surrounded by serfs taking revenge.

Also I think a solution to the archers problem could be that serfs enter houses as long as an archer is shooting at him. So he goes in, and comes out as well. This could be a solution because archers nearly never infiltrate bases like militia or knights. More than usually they only go in when the enemy lost all his(/her) frontline troops. And this way the recovering procedure might be easier and shorter. (Maybe this could solve the "infiltrating melee soldiers" problem as well?)

[Krom]

@Bence: The core idea is to make the base self-defendable to minimize the damage from single infiltrators. So that the base can standup against smaller forces but still be over-takeable by a larger force (small army). Serfs hiding in houses is not a defense. Enemy can still paralyze the town and prevent it from actually being able to fight back (by recruiting new forces). The only upside is that serfs are in safety - if you be able to repel the attack you need less time to restore (re-hire serfs). This is not radical enough. Militia rush can still destroy a base easily.

[Da Revolution]

I'm not sure whether people will like this change, but it might be worth testing. About the archers, this could work the same as with normal troops i guess. They'll only be attacked when the unit is next to it, so serfs could just ignore them until they are close to them.

[Krom]

Serfs will never be close to archers, the attacker will always shoot from the distance. And that means archer rushes (not as bad as militia rush though). I think we can give it a try for melee and see about archers later

[Da Revolution]

It's almost impossible to have archers before someone else has troops at all.

[Krom]

I'm sure given enough motivation archer rushes strategies will emerge So we better think about countering them in advance.

[sado1]

@sado1: I remember how infiltrating with 3 knights into enemies town allowed me to destroy all of his serfs just by blocking Barracks/Inn entrances. I'm not sure this is exactly KaM fun. In my understanding you need to have a force to destroy the town., while right now that force is just some 3-5 militias (blocking barracks, store, school entrances). Thing is - this is not a distraction, this is effectively a defeat. How many times you could rebuild after such enemy entrances?

I disagree. A lone knight/militia killing serfs can be easily spotted ("Your serfs are being attacked!"), and it doesn't make that much of mayhem in the city as you say (in my opinion) - you just have to train a bit serfs then, it's not that bad. And if you had food problems, it's actually GOOD for your city to be attacked like that, to kill the hungry serfs and replace them with less hungry ones soon. A knight in a city has very little possibility to escape because of all the serfs around in the city - it will get stuck all the time. So you just make a few troops and tell them to attack (follow) the horses, and you can forget about the city for a while.

BTW, in case this gets implemented... how about if, for example, a serf is carrying a sword, then he gets attack power similar to the swordmen? (maybe a bit lower?)

[Bence791]

Or if he carries an axe, he could transform to a militia

[Krom]

@Sado1: You disagree with which statement exactly? I haven't said anything about attackers being hard to spot.

It is good to be attacked when you can fight back. But how do you fight back against early militia? (we are talking about peacetime removal effects mainly). There ain't much serfs around to slow down enemy advance towards Store.

[WollongongWolf]

This makes me wonder what's wrong with towers? Like the need time to build, need food and stones which are already needed a lot early and got a very low range, but perhaps something might be done to get them build quicker (+10 HP per hit of a labourer?). Main issue would be the defence of stonemasons and woodcutters, but they got (pick)-axes, perhaps they can call each others help then (perhaps be as strong as a militia). Farmers will be the main weakness then, and you need a lot of towers, but isn't that what you get when removing peacetime (personally I like peacetime a bit for the fact it's not pure army rushing, you also got to take care of the economy in a lot of cases).

[sado1]

@Krom, I meant the first part of the post. You mentioned there knights being able to kill the city, and as knights can't be done in first 20 minutes, I assumed you also mean that very small armies attacking in the late game (currently: after PT) are something wrong (there, I disagree). Of course, if you try to prevent militia rush with the way you just described, this "small army doing damage to serfs" will be harder, too. Which isn't something I'm happy of, but on the other hand, you can't order serfs to attack the knight - so if the player is cleverly managing his horse, he might not get that much damage from serfs anyway.

About the militia rush, though... what if serfs are very efficient fighting militia, and much much much less efficient against everyone else?