damn, after typeing for half an hour, i type my password in incorectly, and when i hit back button, poof, its gone! AHHHHHHHHHHHH. Too much to rewrite.

I will atempt anyway.

First, if game balance is what your looking for, use that botton that says Full Tech Tree. Then every civ will be exactly equal, save for palmy with their tribute bug.

Every RoR player out there complains that Shang is too powerful. Maybe if skill level is equal, but i have always said shang is not too powerful. Take away 35 f vills and they will suck. They have few iron techs, and only a few superunits. They rely on speed. Take if away, and they suck. Tone it down? Maybe. But that 11% penatly thing is dumb, like i said, their uniqueness is speed. No speed = you better have another bonus for me.

This goes for every civ, take anything away and that civ will suck. Add anything and it will be too powerful.

Phow not having comps? Why, thy are lacking superunits in iron as it is, with just scythe, cent, balista tower, AE and juggs. BT and Juggs dont even count. Cents? what civ other than greek or carth or mac, would do cents?

Hittie sucks on water, they need wood for their archers/cats. They cannnot win a sea war against a water civ, and many other civs beat them out on water simply since they are not so wood dependant as hittie.

Palmy is not as bad as you think, they are quite fast actually. I've beaten shang in 1v1 with a palmy, against a similar skill level player with defaults, which i wrote about before i had to rewrite all of this. Sure the game took long, (1 hour plus) but i did win, and the guy didnt suck bad either. (any chalanges? i'd be sure to play shang vs palmy to prove it can be done)

The game is best left alone. I would hate it if you guys were in charge of "ballancing" the game. One solution leads to more problems. Fix the bugs/cheats is all i ask.

Sorry, DAC, gotta disagree with you on about half your points.

First off Shang. It doesn't have to be players of equal skill to notice the difference.

An example -- Now, I have not played enough games with PendragonWRB to be statistically significant, but ask anyone who has played the game with both of us, not necessarily at the same time. Pen is leaps and bounds ahead of me. Now, when we both draw similar civs, I don't stand a chance. I am 0/4 so far. Last time we matched up, I drew Shang, he got Rome. His twelve slingers and a few upgraded clubbers hit me at 12:00 flat. My response? You 4 cav, go hack them up. The next 4 cav appeared within seconds, and barely got there in time to get their sabers sticky. I then flawlessly implemented my "Blow the opportunity" strat, and ran my horsies at the base I had found that turned out to be a few radar houses and a SP. By the time I found him, he was just finishing up his walls. NP, my ST were only about 5 seconds away. My CA were making pincushions out of anything close; my priests were finding willing saboteurs of the decadent Roman despot. I Ironed, and about the time my armada of fire galleys got in range, Bearded_Tim's folks decided it was time to phone him, and he had forgotten to disable call waiting.

Sorry to wax rhapsodic; sometimes I get a little carried away. But my point is that an advanced rookie with Shang can make serious headway against very good players. Shang is indeed too fast. Why do you think there are so many "No Shang" games? You are the only top player I have ever heard say that Shang don't need toning down.

As for Palmy, I like them -- I just wish they were just a little more effectual. As far as a Shang not dusting Palmy in a 1v1, barring random map starting position weirdness, the only way I can see it is if you were playing someone who refused to rush, or were playing a gig map and he could not find you. Sting? Mark_Aurel? Lobby? Sisyph? Sebsoft? Any other 1v1 players like to try Shang against his Palmy?

And I don't know who you are playing to consider Hittie a poor water civ. That extra range brings at least 2 more ranks of ships within firing range before the opponent's galleys close. While any other civs' galleys are jockeying around trying to line up in firing position, Hittie is calmly taking them apart. Then they have the extra range to make sure that your allies get all the resources around any water bigger than a pond.

Well, I have more to say, but don't want this to get so big no one will read it.

Keep your stick on the ice.

[This message has been edited by Thorfinn (edited 07-19-99).]

DAC, this almost doesn't deserve a reply, but...

First, Full Tech is ok, but doesn't give the best flavor of the game.

Second, your comments seem to indicate that the game is balanced now, which NO TOP TIER PLAYER will agree with. FACT is that ANY PLAYER will do better with Shang than with any other civ on RM games. Period. Just look at each top player "best times" and it is obvious. It's silly to even talk about Shang being "balanced" at this point. They are not, end of story. Equal players Shang vs other civ = Shang win 9 out of 10 times. Ill play Shang vs your Palm ANY DAY. Forget it man, no contest! I could hit in tool and you'd be toast, or I could BOOM to 50+ villagers. Reverse it, my Palm vs your Shang, and I lose. Why do you think that all "money" games in tournaments are Shang-fests?? When it counts, the smart pick is Shang.

If you think about it, there are critical areas where RoR is not balanced and I tried to address each of them in my post. If they were able to balance the game more, then I think it would be more fun. I'd like to not groan loudly when I get Yam vs Hittite in a DM random civ 1on1 game.

Anyway, not that I think ES will do it, I still think there is a serious case that the game could be balanced w/o changing any of the core code - just some settings. No new units, no major changes, just tweaks in the right spots.

Mr.Fixit

I agree with most of your stuff but not all. For one thing
giving Roman guard towers would be insane! You said that it would be hard to win with towers but doing this would make it extremely more plausable. Checkerboard the map with them every 4 tiles (which im sure someone would find out how to do VERY fast eventually) and no number of anything will save you. Even siege weapons would fall fast to roman legions.

Also taking away Phoenecian's archers is rather dumb. Look at it, they have virtually NO bonus of any kind in bronze (where many civs can win the game) so to compensate, they get all the units and techs in that age (save Architecture.)
On the flipside, Shang have the same deal but they do have bonuses in bronze, luckily they have the crappiest iron so they better win before then or even Palmyra will have a field day

Also, siege units are not too powerfull. In games with little lag you can easily dodge any number of projectiles.
With a little micromanagement you can send a scout or other fast unit in on a kamikaze and when the siege units attack it, the spatter kills everybody. If not, you attack and kill them the old-fasioned way. Cats are not broken. Heli are. No spatter means you can use them wtih any other unit and not worry about hitting your own guys AND they do more
damage per unit of time than any heavy catapult.

Sorry to be so bitchy.

-Local_Yokel

um DAC,Shang has the biggest and best bonus of all, namely cheap villagers which equal quicker times which equals quicker bronze rush, and shang has the full complement of bronze units. To change shang around a bit you could make it so the vills were quicker to come out, but that would stick them in the hole because they would need extra berry pickers.

I am still not sure why people think that Shang have the "crappiest" iron. They have full priests, the second best scythes, full SP upgrades, the third best HHA, cats and helepolis. Granted they are fated to lose the sea, should the game go that far, but so will Bab (for the same reason) and Persia (for resource reasons). Phoenicia fares far worse in iron, not to mention Palmy, Carth and Greek, who have already been "accidentally" exterminated by the Shang.

IMO, the only thing you need to give Shang to grant them übermensch status is Engineering.

Keep your stick on the ice.

Local_Yokel,

Some ideas: giving Rome Guard isn't really that bad. Giving them BTowers would be, no doubt. I've played MANY games trying to use an offensive tower strategy in RM with Roman: it is really, really hard. AND not as effective as doing a standard BroadSword/Cav/ST attack. Towers just are not that strong for offensive until BTowers (actually a great job by ES, IMHO). Adding Guard towers lets Rome have some shot in DM. You could say the same for Minoa (I was considering letting all civs at least get Guard towers...).

I do think that we need to consider the power of Phoe if we tone down Shang. Hands down Phoe is the next fastest civ. In some games, it is sometimes possible to hang with Shang using Phoe now. Given that, if you leave the diversity you have today you are, in effect, making them the next Shang. Also, I really dont see removing compies as an issue here and I think it helps to remove another option for them considering that they hit bronze first in the new balanced game.

Everyone:

My new thought is to reduce Engineering to +1 RA. That is a better tact than removing Engineering from Hittite and serves to balance siege all through RoR.

Thoughts?
Mr.Fixit

[This message has been edited by mrfixit (edited 07-20-99).]

lol, after half an hours work my password is wrong again! I give up!

Dacicus, what browser do you use?

poor dac. try using ctrl+c on your message in case the pass is wrong

Reducing the range of Engineering. Hmmm. Automatically gives civs like Palmy and Mace a much needed boost in Iron. On the flip side, it also boosts Choson, Assy, and Shang.

If you decrease Engineering, you might want to reduce the range of Astrology, as otherwise there isn't much you can do to priests on the back 40 other than flood with fast units and take the conversion losses.

Seriously, if not for the fact that they must take compies quickly I would consider taming down their damage. A Hittite HHA with Alchemy does just under 7 HP per second to a single target. The Cat/HCat does 12/sec to as many as happen to be within blast radius. If you factor in the build cost, 179 sec for a HHA, 218 for a Cat, you are left with the "difficult" decision of 1.2 HHA or 1 Cat. I wonder if the "correct" answer is to just decrease their fire rate. The compie horde would still die in the first volley, but they would not have as much effect on other troops.

One other thing I was always wondering about. How come if you take a ballista with engineering and put it in the top of a tall building, its range gets reduced and its damage is cut in half?

Oh, and one more balance thing. Turn down the volume on ballista, heles and triremes.

Keep your stick on the ice.

To the top!