Ageless Era - Current Version: 4.33

[Ravana]

Checking changes currently, first thing I disagree with is Armored Cuttlefish - Movement from 6 to 8 (fixing -2 movement from leveling) its description says that armor makes it slower.

I think I need to check code of WEAPON_SPECIAL_LEECH first, last time I mostly skipped over those that weren't used.

[ChaosRider]

Im not sure is it a good idea to change units only because for you they are too weak or too powerfull in some rpg scenarios... You shouldnt compare unit to unit when you want balance faction.

[IPS]

Checking changes currently, first thing I disagree with is Armored Cuttlefish - Movement from 6 to 8 (fixing -2 movement from leveling) its description says that armor makes it slower.

I'm not sure, but forcing a unit to lose stats from leveling up (like 2 movement points, 1 less per turn because of it's movement costs) may be the case you're forcing a player to get an unconfortable or not requested improvement at the cost lossing a stat that you liked from a unit. If it was a kind of optional level up which you can choose if armored or just improved cuttlefish then no problem, maybe it's just needing another lv3 level up option.

That would be similar to the case if when leveling a spearman, you want a kind of strongered pierce mele atacker (Pikeman or Javelineer) but then spearman advances to Swordsman because of being the unique option (ehm yes, higher stats, but probably you didn't want that at all againist a calvarymen spam). Personally I don't like that kind of improvements that drastically upgarades units at the cost of lowering a particular stat or that even force a drastic change on the previus (being different, but superior) than before. Movement is a strong stat.

Im not sure is it a good idea to change units only because for you they are too weak or too powerfull in some rpg scenarios... You shouldnt compare unit to unit when you want balance faction.

Ehm it's understandable your point, but these changes are not based to be done for just RPG scenarios, it's mostly for better overall ballance (well, just a personal suggerence for a improved ballance experience). The case of the lv2 spider, it was an awful lv2 unit in terms of stats that had the same health than it's lv1 with few improvement of damage, nothing else than that... even without a level 3. Consider If you're playing a match, and as you level up a unit, you notice it doesn't even raise it's maximun health and just raises few points of damage and gains a atack special that is very conditional... wouldn't you feel something is wrong there? Still, even with drain, the spider is easy to kill if focused rightly on default like matches, I think that it needs something that makes it "special" to compensate it's no lv3 or just higher stats, my suggerence was that drain.

About the unit to unit ballance, it's more complicated than that... remmember this is ageless. On default that point is easier to be done, but on ageless there are lots of factions which you can't never ballance them againist a particular faction. May be I'm wrong with my criteria, but it's just another of many opionions there are in. Also the Eventide faction is a very polemic faction which I tried to make some kind of small buffs. I have not seen anyone else than me using sometimes Eventide for survivals because most people rathers playing or OP or just stronger factions than default ones, so I considered that maybe it would be a good idea to make it a little stronger to make it more fun for most people.

[ChaosRider]

Unit lvlup dont mean allways max hp raise, or other stats. Such a changes in unit stats depence of what plan author had in his own idea. Especially when units have more than 1 advance way, one its getting more hpfull, other one gains weapon special as drain (or other one) and by this gets less max hp or even none. For me you still making some changes in units to have these "unballanced" better (or worse, maybe you dont like when people use one of them in your game) for rpg scenarios. As you said, its "Ageless" so dont expect that all factions will be equally strong, because here you have combined many eras which inside were ballanced (atleast for these eras authors) but they dont have to and wont be between other eras.

[IPS]

mmm... yes. It's something I totally forgot to include on most of my changes, the ballance with these factions againsit the factions of the SAME era (imperial vs imperial, and rest). Also it's true that you said about author does what ever he pleases with his units, but considering that in the case of EotS these units have their authors "abandoned" and not updating the era anymore, so I guess they can be changed without considering the authors but maybe with a kind of agreement between us.

But It's kinda hard that changes like 1-20 to 2-10 becomes becomes a really impactful change on faction vs faction ballance, mostly because it's hard to find a unit with +50% or -50% fire ressistance making an atack 1-10 or 3-10 depending the case or just a constant 1-20 againist anyone. I guess that "Changes like halving strikes amount but duplicating the damage on hit on these units with more than several strikes wouldn't matter that much at faction vs faction", mostly considering that the maximun damage is still the same.

Also as you're commenting, these changes must be supervised in order to not change drastically any faction vs faction on the same era (point that I admit I forgot earlier), with changes that must NOT increase or decrease the damage that a unit deals to another unit (mostly on level 1 cases) by just readjusting oh how a unit does the same "total amount of damage" to another unit (thing that may be broken if changed the amount of strikes/damage on a particular atack, even if it's "total amount of damage" is theorically the same, but will not be if considering some levels of ressistances on the defender)

[Battlecruiser_Venca]

2 gamage gets lowered to 1 at 30% resist! (or any positive resist with bad ToD) and 30% resist is not so rare (therefore it could change faction balance significantly)

[IPS]

ah! crappy fact xD

It sounds rasonable beause 70% of 2 is 1.4 and that means it will get rounded to 1 instead 2. And if considering the change of a unfavorable ToD 2 decreases to just 1.5 and that decreses to 1 damage with atleast 10% ressistance... so dealing just half of damage at unfavorable ToD with a particular unit againist a particular target can change a faction vs faction ballance not just significally, even at the level of drastically.

Affortunally there are few units with 2 damage with more than several strikes at lv1 and these are the most important to be revised if to do rpg adjusment at not changing a faction vs faction ballance on the same era, but these lv2 ones with many strikes of 2 damage will not be that important at faction ballance, so it's probably these units will have higher chances at being edited without worries or with less opposition to change.


Also ... about another theme, Steel hive Slashers have 60% flat defense and stats are a way too strong... even a way too broken (broken > OP) for just 13g. Theorically, it has 1 30%, 1 10% and 1 20% ressisntances and 3 20% weaknesses, but it's likely giving a fencer neutral ressistances with higher stats and lower cost (but no skirmisher). That unit has 1 movement cost on forest/hills/mushroom/MOUNTAINS ... it's like giving it dwarish movement costs. 60% flat defense looks exagerated on Steel Slashers, considering it's the most common terrain on most maps, maybe changing it to 40-50% flat defense could help them at being more ballanced.

[Ravana]

It has been brought to my attention that "nerfing faction is the wrong way to go" and I quite agree with that. I think it would be better to avoid nerfs as much as possible - even if its op then everyone already expects this. Even when something clearly is op, when it is not overly used then there is no need to do anything either.

When nerfs do happen then it should be very slowly, affecting only 1 facet of unit at once, (and no factionwide nerfs,) to avoid situations like currently with beast. This means that even when I agree that slasher is op in 1 release only for example def will be lowered.

[IPS]

I have no problems if the changes will be aplied one per one per update, but if on the future will be clearly better, then all is fine . Also I will leave here some suggerences for now/later, there is no hurry.

Lv1 slasher is all fine except on flat defense, as it fits normal defenses (probably 40%) it keeps being a good unit because of using 2 different atack types that both have efficent damage (good pierce & good blade atacks), but its weaknesses can be used easly againsit them because the impact one is pretty common and cold/fire are anoying ones, so even at having high damage and health it will be fine for 13g (also compared to Skeleton, it is kinda badass for 13g). But Vector and it's lv3 are clearly too strong... Vector as lv2 unit has 65 health if I am right and 7 (yup SEVEN) movement points, so meaning that it needs atleast a movement nerf and probably a health that fits with a standard lv2 unit (55-65 hp if adjusted to 5 movement , 48-55 hp if adjusted 6 movement, all are just suggested values) and its damages well... standarized to lv2 damages xD.

Maybe as compensation for this, Larva unit and its level ups can be improved in order to make it a viable unit line aswell becuase no-one will buy them being that terribly cost ineficent and mostly weak one.

[raozspaz]

I noticed that you recognized the fact that there was a bug with the Frozen Heavy Warriors movement. Or at least it was pointed out thanks to ChaosRider. I don't quite understand what you were saying in your reply? Do we have to update to the newest Dev Version in order to fix that bug? If that's the case, is there a way to fix it without updating? Like a quick fix to the unit's code or something?

If the only way to fix it is by updating then Ill probably just have to update cause me and my friend both love the Frozen Race. I in particular am a major fan of Ice based stuff so yeah XP It just kinda fits me.

[ChaosRider]

Find Ageless era folder on your pc (you can make it by open any folder and in search place write "Ageless"), then Ageless_Era/units/misc_units/frozen/FrostHeavyWarrior.cfg (the last one is unit file) change 8 line:

Spoiler:

Code: Select all

movement_type=frozen_human

for

Spoiler:

Code: Select all

movement_type=frozen_smallfoot

Remeber that this can make oos if in your game will be someone without this change when you will have it.
Why this unit had 0% def everywhere? Because they gave him movement type which is not set, so game cant find it and give unit 0% values everywhere.

[Ravana]

Exactly, problem was noticed less than 30min after release, but for stable server it had to remain this way, people had already downloaded that and having different versions with same number is REALLY bad idea. For version on 1.12 server I could fix it even then, as even if someone had downloaded it there already, for dev version oos is only expected.

As one of the critical issues its fix is long ready, only waiting for when 1.12 is known to become official stable within next 48h before uploading. (I admit that I expected that to happen before now)


So to sum it up, you can a) do what ChaosRider suggests, b) get git version https://github.com/ProditorMagnus/Ageless that has required files already changed (will cause oos with others), c) use development version 1.11.16, d) wait until release of 1.12/planned update this december; whichever happens first.

[raozspaz]

Well. I did the changes like you said (I already tried that before I made this post, should've said something) and yet it still doesn't want to work. I go into a local game on my computer and when I get the Heavy Warrior, its movement still rests at 0 and def are all 0%. Is there something I have to do to force Wesnoth to recognize the change or is there some other problem?

If the later option pops up before you guys see this (the stable version getting updated with the fix already done) then don't worry about this.

[ChaosRider]

If you want updload some new AE version with new units you can before this action send me some link to this new version to let me check them before they go on wesnoth addons server. I can find such a errors even with closed eyes after editing & checking so many units codes already...

Edit: "I did the changes like you said" - you changed it by your self (because then game (or reopen it after such a change) should see your unit def in diffrent (than 0%) way) or you get a version from git?

[raozspaz]

I changed it myself. It was a simple enough change and I figured that was the problem. I closed wesnoth, went into the addons section for ageless era. Found the heavy warrior and changed it to the frozen_smallfoot. Afterwards, I saved and clsed everything. Started up wesnoth, started a local game, went into debug mode and created the unit. The unit still had the same inability to move as before and had the same 0% defenses.