ZP: The Zoi Patch

[[Armag] diarouga]

Musk/gren vs aztecs?

[deleted_user0]

nah shouldnt get rid of heavy infantry tag. it makes them special. they should get a bonus vs heavy infantry instead. they should be heavy infantry specialized at killing heavy infantry and buildings. because grenades are good vs tightly packed slow moving formations, aka heavy infantry such as musketeers, pikemen or halbediers. while they are less effective units that fought spaced out, like light infantry skirmishers and such.

[dansil92]

Musk/gren vs aztecs?

Yes? Mace have a fire animation and low base damage... They are cheap but mass slowly because they are so wood heavy. Puma lose to both and coyotes lose to musks and even more so when they are backed by splash damage. Also helps take down the aztec fb quickly and that can hurt an aztec build a lot. Age 3 is different once erks hit the scene obviously

Im not saying vs. Garja i would mass grens lol but vs sergeant through lt (the majority of players) it works really well

[Hazza54321]

Mace would just kite both tbh

[Dsy]

I dont know why are 10 responds to grens. I mean its good some people agree, but everyone knows they useless in pvp.
List could go on with halbs, tashunke prowlers.
Lots of stuffs useless in pvp and would be 1 min to change them to viable without making any problems.

Its just people in the balance team dont want to see any changes in contents. They want to see only the same units in games and maintain the ban hammer on others.

[[Armag] diarouga]

Lots of stuffs useless in pvp and would be 1 min to change them to viable without making any problems.

It would take 1 min to change them while making the game unbalanced.
Honestly, it's quite obvious when you think about it, there are 2 scenarios:
1) The unit is too weak, and thus you only use it as a surprise (which is the current state, grens are still okish vs Russia, and natives too on some maps like Cascade).
2) The unit is good, and thus you use it, and the civs that can abuse the buffed units gets an underserved buff. For instance, Brit would be good at abusing grens, Dutch great at spamming halbs, and TAD/TWC civs would get fucked...

[Dsy]

Yes if you overbuff units thats a bad scenario.
But its strange that you dont mention that if they stay useless it contains the same radical decision but in opposite direction...

There is a middle ground where they are viable but not op. And its not even hard to get there.
Its just lacking of willing from the team. Bureaucracy as always.

[[Armag] diarouga]

Yes if you overbuff units thats a bad scenario.
But its strange that you dont mention that if they stay useless it contains the same radical decision but in opposite direction...

Yes but that is not really an issue, since the game is still balanced and playable at high level. Tbh we just can't buff everything... What's the next step?
Buff advanced market so that you can get 500w and make the shipment pay for itself?
Buff advanced plantation and make plantations free?
Tbh, creating new units or new shipments would be the same lol. It just changes the game too much.

There is a middle ground where they are viable but not op. And its not even hard to get there.
Its just lacking of willing from the team. Bureaucracy as always.

Well, I'd argue that this middle ground is very hard to find, because people don't want to change as you say, so they won't test new stuffs and thus won't make the new units, unless the unit becomes op.
Anyway, even if we reached perfect balance (which would be very hard to do), that would give more options to some civs, and thus buff that civ.

[Dsy]

I made a change in 1 minute balance halbs.
Attack damage increased from 25 to 30.
Is it more viable? Definitely.
Is it broken (op)? Definitely NO.

[scarm]

You are basically saying: "Just balance it", which is kinda naive. In Reality the situation diarouga is describing is often more accurate for balancing issues, especially for stuff that is meant to be usefull in niche situations. Finding a point at which spies, grens, halbs etc are "viable" but not optimal in too many cases is really not as easy as you make it out to be and requires tons of testing. The question is, is it worth it to invest that much time into those units? They are sometimes used in fringes cases anyways, they are inherently flawed by design (halbs being slow just sucks in an rts, there is no way around that; etc) and honestly we only want those units to be viable because we played aoe 3 for houndreds or thousands of hours and are kinda bored and want new content, but how long will viable grens or tashunkes really be fun? And you can always go for troll builds vs friends for fun anyways.

edit: And i personally still think it even is important for a game to have less useful content or "noobtraps" so to speak, because learning what is good and whats not and experimenting is what many people enjoy when playing and learning a game.

[[Armag] diarouga]

I made a change in 1 minute balance halbs.
Attack damage increased from 25 to 30.
Is it more viable? Definitely.

Definitely.

Is it broken (op)? Definitely NO.

No, they're still shit, and I would still never train a halb.
So what was the point of this change? Halbs are still not viable, and all you accomplished was making the EP change list even longer and even more complicated, congratulations!

[Dsy]

I made a change in 1 minute balance halbs.
Attack damage increased from 25 to 30.
Is it more viable? Definitely.

Definitely.

Is it broken (op)? Definitely NO.

No, they're still shit, and I would still never train a halb.
So what was the point of this change? Halbs are still not viable, and all you accomplished was making the EP change list even longer and even more complicated, congratulations!

I directly was aiming to make change minimal in meta.
I used unit cost effectivity calculator.

with old stats vet musk vs vet halbs
197 vs 179 melee score vs infantry
590 vs 358 melee score vs cavalry

With 30 damage halbs have
214 score vs infantry
428 score vs cavalry

So my point was at starting point (since everyone decided to not want to see halbs) buff them minorly to be cost effective in 1 way.
Now in melee vs melee combat they more cost effective vs musks at least.
Thats meant to be a starting point for a very conservative community.

[[Armag] diarouga]

Thing is, this change is useless, and that would make the EP change list even longer, which is not the goal.

[Garja]

Actually buffing halb attack can be pretty dangerous, as the unit is not bad after several upgrades. At least Dutch halbs (and Dutch don't have musks too).

[Kaiserklein]

Lol 8 halb shipment popping right on top of your stuff would be super scary actually. Though the unit would still suck besides that cause it would get kited to death regardless of its attack

[[Armag] diarouga]

Yea true, didn't think about that, they could become the new urumi and a halb shipment popping would be scary...

[deleted_user0]

give halb 4.5 or 5 speed. gj. you're done.

[[Armag] diarouga]

give halb 4.5 or 5 speed. gj. you're done.

lol

[duckzilla]

4.5 speed would be nice actually. At least they could run away from skirms then.
Doppels already get that speed anyway (combined with area dmg and a final speed of up to 6.75) and are not overpowered.

[Hazza54321]

sign of weakness, running away with more speed, go charge them!

[deleted_user0]

4.5 speed would be nice actually. At least they could run away from skirms then.
Doppels already get that speed anyway (combined with area dmg and a final speed of up to 6.75) and are not overpowered.

the closest thing to halbediers is the chang dao unit, and it has 5 speed. It's not overpowered at all, but still a solid unit. 4 speed halbs is a complete joke. upping their speed would probably require a nerf to the dutch halb speed card though.

[momuuu]

Halbs have pretty great stats though. And heres the thing, if you make them as good as chandaos you have a viable unit that will disrupt the balance badly.

[[Armag] diarouga]

Halbs have pretty great stats though. And heres the thing, if you make them as good as chandaos you have a viable unit that will disrupt the balance badly.

Yea, changdoa/huss/skirm would rape Germany with the EP Dutch economy.

[deleted_user0]

Halbs have pretty great stats though. And heres the thing, if you make them as good as chandaos you have a viable unit that will disrupt the balance badly.

changdaos also have good stats for their cost. in any case, that's why i said 4.5. I do agree there's a possibility that halbs become too good with 5 speed, though I still don't think that most civs would use them over goons in many cases.

[p0cA]

I remember fast halbs being quite lame on twc.
I dont remember if speed was nerfed or just attack vs inf.

Spain church card gives guard halberdiers in age 3, they still sucK