this test is flawed, because once the warlord has 3 stacks of manticores
Ofcourse it's flawed. I even said so above. and when I did the original tests I pointed out that in a real game, same as above, getting those armies there would be challenging.
It started, iirc, in another discussion where someone said Manticores were OP and had *no* counters whatsoever.
I was pointing out that cost wise, their equivalent is more than enough to destroy them, and it is. In those tests, iirc, more than half the Pikes were still around.
I was making the case then, as now, for a different combat system.
On default settings i think it is a bit too easy to get massed T4, I also think the point where you need more than 1 or 2 stacks arrives very quickly, and in an mp game this means you are now leapfrogging quite early on. Add in a 3rd stack and you need to baby step the 3 stack to avoid stack splitting.
edit: I tend to play larger maps these days, with very slow city growth and research, so realistically, even beelining for it, I'd get Manticores researched about turn 70.
I found that a bit annoying personally, so I was proposing either an expanded adjacent hex rule (adjacent hex plus one, with a delay for armies not on the adjacent hex, of a turn, provided they have mp OR allow them even without mp but apply a "fatigued" buff on them. Getting complicated already) or a variable unit size system, as detailed above. AH+1 would alos mean larger battlefields, so things like long range and speed come more into play, but still allow counter formations to be formed. In AoW3 it is possible to hit the opponent on the very first turn of combat.
Because in the above, being able to *easily* (in this case, 1 stack) bring 24 Pikes to 6 Manticores makes things much more interesting.
So yeah, we are agreed, that the concentrated firepower of Manticores, along with their mobility, is slightly too advantageous to be countered by their natural counter.
Having a variable stack size system like would mean that T1 units would actually be very useful even in the late game.
EDIT:
In addition to:
- Expanded adjacent hex rule;
- Variable unit stack sizes
I also proposed limited resources for specialist units. This gets quite fiddly, but I was thinking along the lines of *requiring* something like a spring of life to even produce Manticores. basically, a MCU that unlocks "mounts." It gets fiddly because then you need to justify every mount, from Ponies to Eagles to Gryphons to Manticores, and adjust the racial lineups to account for the cases where a race can't build cavalry.
Entire unit lineup would have top be redesigned for this to make sense, which is why I never made such a mod. That, and I am lazy with modding
.
If a game were designed form the beginning with rare resources required for T4 units and abilities, it could work.
We do have "command" (?) resource now in Planetfall so this could be a natural limiter.
Also, it appears the way the maps are now designed, namely:
- the sector system;
- not every sector being able to hold a city(and therefore fewer cities overall, and requiring more map control for resources);
- unit recruitment occurring in cities
means, I believe/hope, that the rate of recruitment will be lower than in AoW3.
Add in production overflow and it should mean, if I understand things right, that lower level unit massing should be more viable.
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