Balance testing release r4297

[EDMatt]

Thanks for the info guys. It looks like tree trunks could be slightly over valued at the moment, I agree that if the map maker only gives you 1 or 2 iron mine spots then you shouldn't be able to just trade for all the iron you want. As a test I've slightly reduced the bonus value trees get (because they require a large area compared to say corn) and here's how some of the trades look now:
2 trees gives 1 iron/gold ore
1 tree gives 1 coal
3 iron/gold ore gives 1 tree
3 coal gives 1 tree
7 trees gives 1 horse
2 trees gives 1 gold
4 trees gives 1 iron
2 gold gives 1 tree
1 iron gives 1 tree
2 trees gives 1 bread
1 tree gives 1 corn
1 tree gives 1 wine
1 tree gives 2 stones

Note that the only change I made is to devalue trees slightly compared to other resources, so some trades will become more expensive, some less expensive. It will also have a flow on effect to wood products, making them slightly less valuable than before. So here's some trade rates for timber:
2 timber gives 1 coal/iron ore/gold ore (does that sound too exploitable? I guess it's a fair bit of extra processing and needs more serfs to carry it to the market than 1 tree trunk)
2 coal/iron ore/gold ore gives 1 timber
3 timber gives 1 gold
5 timber gives 1 iron

Of course if we do keep this change you will have plenty of time to test it in the next balance release or RC or whatever, I just thought I'd see what you think of these values for now.
Cheers,
Lewin.

Sounds good to me, also the 1 tree trunk for 1 corn is a good idea IMO, if i were to explain it would be 1 heck of a big post, so ill just keep it at that.

[Bo_]

When you rush, you don't need much building space, so the cost of space that woodcutters are supposed to take disappears when you're not using all your space.
Like this their low building cost, and the fact that it's very easy to build woodcutters, makes them , in rush, better than farms. Explained.

[thunder]

Hey!
I played lot games on last week.
Experiences:
-Inn:
viewtopic.php?f=24&t=794&hilit=resturante&start=1095
-builder rush: the builders arent soilders, towers need more stone(10pcs) or cant attack builders and any citizens(and cant build on the enemy territory...)
-iron rush: its a new word in my vocabulary and i think this is better/stronger/masser thing then leather economy can product
-where are the leather economies?
-less wineyards
-NO mass SCOUTS in the game. While can do 15-20 knights easily with many militia try to do same army with scouts in PT.
-Market.... Personaly i like much much better that version where the nonrenewable resources was the basic trading option(2iron 1 horses, 1 gold 1 trunk). hm... one thing while impossible to make a normal usable market making:

-Prices of the wares arent constant in the TIME and this thing why do i think to that version of the market wasnt bad. Maybe the old market version could help: can trade with iron dont need woodcutter rush at the start and can make easier and earlier leather economic, mass leather units could be much better then milities...
Market cant help if player/-s make mistakes...

With glad!
t

[Bo_]

Discussion about the balance in the new release:
If you think this is too long too read then only read 3th, maybe second quote.

Hi there,

after almost 2 weeks of testing the new RC we're getting used to it,
new strategies are made, new balance issues are found so I'm giving you my first feedback.

I'd like to be as complete as possible so I'll start with the start.
The first games, we saw in a build mostly axe fighters + xbow or sword fighters + bowmen.
It was great to see how sword fighters were actually worth building, same for axefighters.
Still, bowmen still didn't seem that useful.
Some people tried lances as main unit but they quickly understood that they just didn't do the job any more.
Some players predicted that it's just a switch from lances to axe fighters, since lances are pretty much useless now.

Later on people experimented a bit more with ponies, when we got to the conclusion that they are just really strong.
Instead of only being used to chase range, they're sometimes even used to support a group of axe/sword fighters who're getting surrounded.
Ponies managed to rule the battlefield, with nobody to stop them. This forced people to train lances + pikemen.
Why both? Lances only aren't good enough for knight, while pikemen only are too expensive too use only against cavalry.
It felt perfect, the need of a mix of both.
That all gave us a balance of all units, except of militia which wasn't really made any more, except in emergency situations.
Someway I was feeling like the game was going to the battle system I proposed some months ago.

A big change was also made bowmen, who just weren't used any more. I already said something about them, they still looked pretty weak.
But we didn't give up and did some advanced tests on them, and what appeared?
Archers are actually stronger (in equal numbers) than xbow against builders, buildings and militia.
We already knew that for buildings they shoot faster, but not that they are actually stronger against militia.
It's actually logic when you calculate it, anyway I like this kind of 'specialization' in soldiers, you need both of them for an optimal army.

So for the first 10 days everything seemed to be perfect, but it isn't. Since there is less range on the battlefield, people try to make militia again.
Now some people (you probably knw who) are searching for every single way to exploit something to in the end really ruin the game.
They make mass militia (+100) combined with swordfighters and knights. What bothers me is that it really is efficiënt, but how does work?
During pt you make 4 fishermen's, rush for gold and iron, and trade treetrunks for horse, corn, iron...
Why? Because woodcutters work faster than farms, stables and can fonction as iron mines, allowing you to build additional iron.
You could say yes, but it's a fair trade since they require so many building space.
The problem with rush is that you don't need much building space to do it,
so you can easily place woodcutters everywhere without even being in a lack of space.

I wanted to show you a replay in my post, but it was a wrong replay. Anyway what you could see:
Matt spamming 40 sword fighters + 70 militia after pt, by using the market and many fish.
Since Matt only rushes now, using every single exploit, the only chance we had to stop him was by rushing ourself.
I made 25 knights for example, by building 3 stables and only fish.
I could also just have made 10 woodcutters instead of the 3 stables and 7 farms, which would have been more efficient,
but where is the complex economy then that Kam is supposed to be?
Now rushers are just saying yes you'll just have to adapt your strategy, there is a way to stop it.
Maybe there is, but should a game being played on a certain way be changed because of something that I would just like to call cheating?
So yes, there are really some issues now, which is the reason that I'm giving this feedback.
I'm suggesting to have a discussion on the IRC or teamspeak, to find a solution that could allow us the game like I played it 4 days ago,
where the efficiency of your town at the end of pt is more important than the amount of soldiers you were able to get.

I hope everything is clear and thank you for reading my feedback.

Bo

Thanks for your detailed message. I think you should post it on the thread for the balance patch so other people (e.g. Krom) can see it too. If you do that I'll repost my reply there so people can see my opinion on these things.

It's great to hear the way the balance between units is going, it sounds really positive overall. Every unit is necessary and useful, even militia see some use due to less archers being used. It takes a lot of playing to test the balance with major changes like this, and after a few more weeks of playing everyone's opinions might change again (if somebody discovers some new strategy/counter or something).

IMO there's nothing wrong with some rush strategies, and the fact that "40 sword fighters + 70 militia" is as viable as a "normal" army means the balance between soldiers is good. Militia rushes SHOULD be a part of the game in my opinion. But you shouldn't have to use rush strategies to counter them, a "normal" army should be able to counter rushes fairly effectively (we definitely don't want the situation where every competitive player is forced into using a crazy rush strategy trading everything so you can have the biggest army after PT). IMO part of the reason why rushes work so well is that there is usually no punishment for having an unsustainable village. In my mind a rush strategy should be "high risk, high reward", meaning that there is a high risk (your village is unsustainable, not enough food, etc.), but a high reward if you manage to pull it off (you win the game fairly early by taking your opponent by surprise). It seems that most games only last 10-20 minutes after PT, meaning sustainability just doesn't matter, the only important thing is the number of soldiers you have at the end of PT. Some people already seem to think that towers are too powerful (making games long and boring) so I'm not exactly sure what we can do about this (people don't want longer games?). Maybe when we have the option to have the game run at 1.5x or 2x speed during PT this won't be such an issue (although maybe competitive players wouldn't want to use a feature like that)

Because woodcutters work faster than farms

That is not true. On average woodcutters produce 0.733 trees per minute, and a farm produces 1.15 corn per minute. The difference is the farm is slower to get started because of the initial planting, but the woodcutter starts cutting trees immediately. So woodcutters produce more in the short term but over time farms will produce much more corn. The reduced value of trees should make selling trees less attractive, we'll see how that goes.

Now rushers are just saying yes you'll just have to adapt your strategy, there is a way to stop it.
Maybe there is, but should a game being played on a certain way be changed because of something that I would just like to call cheating?

For what reason do you think these strategies are cheating?:

a) Because they abuse the market? If so we could look at slightly increasing the trade loss ratio to say 2.2 (in r4179 it is 2.5, in the balance release r4297 it is 2.0). Maybe we reduced it by too much and made the market too exploitable? We don't want market strategies like you described (4 fishermen, spamming woodcutters) etc. to be the predominant way to play. I think a few strategies like that are a good thing, but if most people use them (or you are forced to use them so you don't lose) then that's a bad thing.

b) Because the strategy revolves around winning after PT or losing if the game goes for longer (because your economy is unsustainable)? IMO that's kind of ok, if somebody chooses to use a rush then that's what they get. But rushes shouldn't be over powered, "normal" armies with a sustainable village should work too. As I said I'm not sure how we can counter this, I'm interested to hear your ideas.

c) Something else?

(...)where the efficiency of your town at the end of pt is more important than the amount of soldiers you were able to get.

You hit the nail on the head, that's what we need to aim for. If PT is just a rush to get the maximum number of soldiers the game will become boring. PT should be the time to build an efficient and sustainable town (and maybe a few people can just rush for the most soldiers as a strategy, but it shouldn't be too common). The problem is that the game really needs to go for longer if we want efficiency/sustainability of your town to be an important factor. If the game only lasts for 10 minutes after PT it doesn't matter how efficient your town is, the guy with the most troops has already won.

I'd prefer IRC over TeamSpeak. I'm going away over Christmas so I won't be around too much, but I'll leave IRC running today (and hopefully the next few days before I go away) so feel free to come online for a chat.

Cheers,
Lewin.
P.S. As I said at the top I think other people would be interested in my reply to your message, what do you think about posting this conversation on the forum thread?

I've also sent this message to Krom so you could both read it.

It's a good idea to post it on the forum, anyway I'd like to say a few words first:

IMO there's nothing wrong with some rush strategies, and the fact that "40 sword fighters + 70 militia" is as viable as a "normal" army means the balance between soldiers is good. Militia rushes SHOULD be a part of the game in my opinion. But you shouldn't have to use rush strategies to counter them, a "normal" army should be able to counter rushes fairly effectively

Yes rush should be an option, as a surprise like you said, but that isn't the problem.
A rusher should have an advantage, but the way like thinks are now the rusher has I'd like to say 85% chance of succeeding.
You've never seen the power of 40 sword fighters and 70 militia, did you? A normal army (30 iron, 20 leather soldiers) has almost no chance.
Those 15% is for when the rusher just really messes up or loses by randomness of soldiers.
I think for rush to be balanced it should be something like on games where 1 team rushed have a 55-60% win ratio, what do you think?

Now the counters of rush are based on a player knowing that his opponents will rush, but in a normal game you don't know what your opponent will do.
So games with rush don't even last 10 min after pt, normal games, depending on the map, are something like 20-60 min after pt.
We even had games of 2:40, but that's too long I think. You really want a break then, but there's no real way to pause the game.

Back to market.
When I said woodcutters produce faster than farms, you're right average farms are faster, but I was still talking about rush.
Woodcutters are cheaper, require less builders, don't require you to dig fields and yes, start producing faster.
Also don't forget that you can start building woodcutters before farms.
So when playing the game normally you can have, when you do really really good, 40 leather soldiers.
If I heard it right Pizza (haven't seen it yet) he managed to have 40 skins after pt,
which gives us the double amount of jackets, by trading with 8 woodcutters.
Still I think it's a bit too early to really say if it's balanced or not since I haven't seen how it works.

Why do I think it's cheating? I'd say a and c.
Kam is about a complex economy, you have to manage your food to survive,
and every good weapons has to go trough a long process.
I don't see what's complex about spamming 4 fishermen's for your food, spam 16 woodcutters everywhere and making a market,
then trade trunks for everything. (Horse, corn, iron, bread...) It's all faster than going trough the normal process.
I've seen the changes you made with the market, and I think it could fix iron, still I'm not so sure about trunks => ponies:
Now 4 woodcutters work as fast as 1 stable, 2 farms. You made this trade 16% more expensive, so I think this is still very exploitable.

I think that the biggest problem with the market is that the value of something at 30 min game time is now the same as 1:30 min of game time,
market rush strategy probably relies a lot on that. I'll explain it with a quote of me:

Most of the runs were 2 hours, but Swine required 3hours for better precision.

P.S. AI uses these values to compute how many of something he has producing, then it computes demand and resulting balance, according to which selects what to build

Yes after 1 hour swine farm and stables had an average consumption of 5/unit.
The question now is, do they need 4 or 5 corn?
You rarely get a game where your swine farms will be running for 3 hours.

It's the same with a lot of buildings, (woodcutters, farms, vineyards, pig farms, stables).
I think, but I'm not sure, since that woodcutters start with trees their it's actually in the other way,
at 30 min of production their average production will be higher than after 3 hours.
Since market values are calculated for the production over a very long time (2-3 hours running),
I think adding a time parameter for certain goods could really fix the problem of market abuse in rush.
For example with trunks => horse: At 30 min you would need 12 trunks for 1 pony, while at 2 hours it would be 5 trunks => 1 pony:
Value of trunks increase over time, while the value of corn gets lower over time.
What do you think of this?

[Lewin]

Thanks for posting the conversation here. It looks like we are in agreement about rushes and where we want the balance of KaM to go. There are many ways we could try to stop these kind of market rushes being "85%" better than a "normal" village (ideally they should be about the same effectiveness, depending on the map):

a) Make the trade loss higher, probably by reverting it back to 2.5. Would that make everybody sad? I felt that people were unhappy with the market in r4179, that's why we experimented with lowering it to 2.0 in this balance release.

b) Make market values vary over time like Bo suggested (so things get cheaper as the game progresses). IMO this is not very intuitive, and it's hard to plan your strategies when you can't see exactly how many items you will get for a trade, because the next minute it will be different.

c) Make market prices vary as you trade more items. This could be done like Age of Empries and Stronghold (IIRC), where there is a kind of "inflation" system. If you sell 100 stone, then stone becomes low valued (bad for selling, good for buying). If you buy 100 stone, then stone becomes high valued (bad for buying, good for selling). As each trade happens the inflation on the resources updates to reflect what is scarce and what is plentiful in the marketplace. The inflation on each resource could slowly drift back towards the initial value, so inflation only punishes you if you are trading one resource a lot. This would solve the situation where you can buy everything with one resource like tree trunks, since tree trunks will become almost worthless by the time you've sold 200 of them. My only concern is that this system is a bit "complicated" and hard for the player to understand since prices will be constantly varying (hard to plan strategies around it).

d) A suggestion from Krom: Make trading take time, like training somebody in the school. As you trade more of an item it takes longer to trade it, so it could start by taking 1 second to trade, and increase by 1 second for each additional item of the same type that you trade. Every 30 seconds the time it takes could lower by 1 second.

I'd be interested to hear any comment on these ideas or any ideas of your own that you might have.
Cheers,
Lewin.

[dicsoupcan]

excellent post bo, i agree what is said there. as for the solution i came up with might be a bit unrealistic but better give it a shot on proposing then keeping it for myself.

In pure economics the market works on supply and demand, and yes i know KaM has no money, but the good old trading for goods. but i still think supply and demand could work if it fits in the code. le'ts say the trade rate change dependant on how much of certain resources will be traded. the best way to explain this is by using an example.

Let's say for instance that 1 treetrunk = 1 horse

If a player keeps trading tree trunks for horses the trade rate will be more expensive, since there is more demand for horses then for tree trunks. So for the example the trade rate rises to 2 trunks -> 1 horse.

This can continue to occur untill the player feels that the trade is getting too expensive for him/her (let's say at 5 trunks -> 1 horse) and stop trading for it or produce it on their own.

If the player trades horses for trunks however after he traded so much trunks for horses it shall be the other way around, you start with 1 horse -> 5 trunks and the price shall get higher for this trade (going back to 1 horse-> 1 trunk, and maybe even worse to 2 horse -> 1 trunk).

This way the market can be abused a little bit, but not constantly and it is really just a short term boost you can get.

you might also be able to make it so that the trades of 1 player affects all players, but i do not think that is going to work very well.

But in this case market prices will vary, but you are the one causing the variation. It shall not be random.

If i caused any confusion with my explanation jsut say it so i can be more clear.

[EDMatt]

Thanks for posting the conversation here. It looks like we are in agreement about rushes and where we want the balance of KaM to go. There are many ways we could try to stop these kind of market rushes being "85%" better than a "normal" village (ideally they should be about the same effectiveness, depending on the map):

a) Make the trade loss higher, probably by reverting it back to 2.5. Would that make everybody sad? I felt that people were unhappy with the market in r4179, that's why we experimented with lowering it to 2.0 in this balance release.

b) Make market values vary over time like Bo suggested (so things get cheaper as the game progresses). IMO this is not very intuitive, and it's hard to plan your strategies when you can't see exactly how many items you will get for a trade, because the next minute it will be different.

c) Make market prices vary as you trade more items. This could be done like Age of Empries and Stronghold (IIRC), where there is a kind of "inflation" system. If you sell 100 stone, then stone becomes low valued (bad for selling, good for buying). If you buy 100 stone, then stone becomes high valued (bad for buying, good for selling). As each trade happens the inflation on the resources updates to reflect what is scarce and what is plentiful in the marketplace. The inflation on each resource could slowly drift back towards the initial value, so inflation only punishes you if you are trading one resource a lot. This would solve the situation where you can buy everything with one resource like tree trunks, since tree trunks will become almost worthless by the time you've sold 200 of them. My only concern is that this system is a bit "complicated" and hard for the player to understand since prices will be constantly varying (hard to plan strategies around it).

d) A suggestion from Krom: Make trading take time, like training somebody in the school. As you trade more of an item it takes longer to trade it, so it could start by taking 1 second to trade, and increase by 1 second for each additional item of the same type that you trade. Every 30 seconds the time it takes could lower by 1 second.

I'd be interested to hear any comment on these ideas or any ideas of your own that you might have.
Cheers,
Lewin.

Here is an analysis from my part.

I would like to address the Rush strategy since alot of people think its cheating and such.
first of all, how does rush works?
Successful rush works around trying to avoid food and farm production at all costs (avoid leather) and focus mainly on iron and axe, such build has no future, it is one big gamble and huge risk.

First of all I would like to say that there are ways in which you can gain 30-40 leather units after peacetime combined with 40 iron units (80 quality units in totall), and the risk of the strategy failing is just as high as the risk of one not having a successful rush army after peacetime (I havent seen anyone address this yet, not even Bo).

The risk of rush build failing is VERY high, I have only seen 3 people successfully manage to do it, and infact I have only seen myself pull something like 120 units after peacetime, it is more common to see 50 militia and 30 iron units, So lets not exaggerate , 50 militia and 30 iron units is no big task to stop when you have 40-30 leather units and 40-30 iron units.

One more thing that we must mention is that rush strategy is interesting development since people thought that it disappeared forever since the foodchange, and I think the game has become more interesting this way for sure (for me anyway), some locations are worse than others and arent worth building leather on, and so I think rush is now a part of a game in which 3 or 2 players decide to go leather and the other 1 player goes for rush army.

About the market, just because someone else is able to use the market doesnt mean its cheating or unfair, the market values for leather builds are just as fair with the trade of 1 tree trunk for 1 corn, I dont see any thing being wrong with that. I think the new values that are put up by Lewin are almost perfect regarding tree trunks for horse. The trade of 1 timber for 1 corn is a way to balance out leather build vs rush, since you can boost your pig production with this trade, but what do I see instead? people saying stuff like "Oh no KAM should never be about the market.. its all about player between player trade, since market is not in the original kam i dont want to add it to my game!" , and that in itself is a contradiction since the original KAM was all messed up big time in the first place anyway.

Conclusion : the new rush strategy was developed by taking the new changes into account and sacrificing your lategame for rush.
Solution: use the new corn values to your advantage, small boost of corn in earlygame can seriously boost your production of corn thus alowing you to expand much faster without the worry of a huge starvasion , many builders can be built this way.

[thunder]

(e. Or a harder version of market what is little copmlicated to make it: Mapspecific Market. count amount of resources, the buildable squares, number of trees, buildable mines... and divide it to the numbers of actual players and calculated the market prices...So every map will have another 'market' or another market prices. <Every map or locations have a very good trading ware(-s) or resources. Example BitD has lot of fishes, but some maps doesnt have fish...>)

d. Time trading sound is interesting. Maybe if the tax delete i think it could work. (same the scool ~3 trade/min?)

[dicsoupcan]

Thanks for posting the conversation here. It looks like we are in agreement about rushes and where we want the balance of KaM to go. There are many ways we could try to stop these kind of market rushes being "85%" better than a "normal" village (ideally they should be about the same effectiveness, depending on the map):

a) Make the trade loss higher, probably by reverting it back to 2.5. Would that make everybody sad? I felt that people were unhappy with the market in r4179, that's why we experimented with lowering it to 2.0 in this balance release.

b) Make market values vary over time like Bo suggested (so things get cheaper as the game progresses). IMO this is not very intuitive, and it's hard to plan your strategies when you can't see exactly how many items you will get for a trade, because the next minute it will be different.

c) Make market prices vary as you trade more items. This could be done like Age of Empries and Stronghold (IIRC), where there is a kind of "inflation" system. If you sell 100 stone, then stone becomes low valued (bad for selling, good for buying). If you buy 100 stone, then stone becomes high valued (bad for buying, good for selling). As each trade happens the inflation on the resources updates to reflect what is scarce and what is plentiful in the marketplace. The inflation on each resource could slowly drift back towards the initial value, so inflation only punishes you if you are trading one resource a lot. This would solve the situation where you can buy everything with one resource like tree trunks, since tree trunks will become almost worthless by the time you've sold 200 of them. My only concern is that this system is a bit "complicated" and hard for the player to understand since prices will be constantly varying (hard to plan strategies around it).

d) A suggestion from Krom: Make trading take time, like training somebody in the school. As you trade more of an item it takes longer to trade it, so it could start by taking 1 second to trade, and increase by 1 second for each additional item of the same type that you trade. Every 30 seconds the time it takes could lower by 1 second.

I'd be interested to hear any comment on these ideas or any ideas of your own that you might have.
Cheers,
Lewin.

Here is an analysis from my part.

I would like to address the Rush strategy since alot of people think its cheating and such.
first of all, how does rush works?
Successful rush works around trying to avoid food and farm production at all costs (avoid leather) and focus mainly on iron and axe, such build has no future, it is one big gamble and huge risk.

First of all I would like to say that there are ways in which you can gain 30-40 leather units after peacetime combined with 40 iron units (80 quality units in totall), and the risk of the strategy failing is just as high as the risk of one not having a successful rush army after peacetime (I havent seen anyone address this yet, not even Bo).

The risk of rush build failing is VERY high, I have only seen 3 people successfully manage to do it, and infact I have only seen myself pull something like 120 units after peacetime, it is more common to see 50 militia and 30 iron units, So lets not exaggerate , 50 militia and 30 iron units is no big task to stop when you have 40-30 leather units and 40-30 iron units.

One more thing that we must mention is that rush strategy is interesting development since people thought that it disappeared forever since the foodchange, and I think the game has become more interesting this way for sure (for me anyway), some locations are worse than others and arent worth building leather on, and so I think rush is now a part of a game in which 3 or 2 players decide to go leather and the other 1 player goes for rush army.

About the market, just because someone else is able to use the market doesnt mean its cheating or unfair, the market values for leather builds are just as fair with the trade of 1 tree trunk for 1 corn, I dont see any thing being wrong with that. I think the new values that are put up by Lewin are almost perfect regarding tree trunks for horse. The trade of 1 timber for 1 corn is a way to balance out leather build vs rush, since you can boost your pig production with this trade, but what do I see instead? people saying stuff like "Oh no KAM should never be about the market.. its all about player between player trade, since market is not in the original kam i dont want to add it to my game!" , and that in itself is a contradiction since the original KAM was all messed up big time in the first place anyway.

Conclusion : the new rush strategy was developed by taking the new changes into account and sacrificing your lategame for rush.
Solution: use the new corn values to your advantage, small boost of corn in earlygame can seriously boost your production of corn thus alowing you to expand much faster without the worry of a huge starvasion , many builders can be built this way.

the part what i find sad about rush armies is that the only way to counter it is with another rush army, and the bigger rush army or better combonation of the rush army will prevail. a normal big base strategy will be punished because it is made to sustain long games. the town is stable and you can keep producing a lot of units in the long run. the problem is that there is no long run because a normal big base does not have the army after pt to stand up against a rush army. i letterally had games wherei was destroyed within 30 seconds after pt even though i had a reasonable army (45 xbows, 20 axefighters). without any rush armies to counter a rush army you stand no chance, rendering every other strategy useless except rush army.

I do not say that rush army is an invalid strategy but it shall be the only one ths way. just like the militia + xbow strategy was the only used strategy in older releases (don't know wich one anymore).

*edit* my bad, forgot to read option c from lewin. discard this post.

[EDMatt]

Another way to stop rush is to go for 2 pigfarms, and rush for iron and militia, so you will have the slight advantage of leather units and a possible expansion in lategame, since you already have farms and pigfarms.

[EDMatt]

Thanks for posting the conversation here. It looks like we are in agreement about rushes and where we want the balance of KaM to go. There are many ways we could try to stop these kind of market rushes being "85%" better than a "normal" village (ideally they should be about the same effectiveness, depending on the map):

a) Make the trade loss higher, probably by reverting it back to 2.5. Would that make everybody sad? I felt that people were unhappy with the market in r4179, that's why we experimented with lowering it to 2.0 in this balance release.

b) Make market values vary over time like Bo suggested (so things get cheaper as the game progresses). IMO this is not very intuitive, and it's hard to plan your strategies when you can't see exactly how many items you will get for a trade, because the next minute it will be different.

c) Make market prices vary as you trade more items. This could be done like Age of Empries and Stronghold (IIRC), where there is a kind of "inflation" system. If you sell 100 stone, then stone becomes low valued (bad for selling, good for buying). If you buy 100 stone, then stone becomes high valued (bad for buying, good for selling). As each trade happens the inflation on the resources updates to reflect what is scarce and what is plentiful in the marketplace. The inflation on each resource could slowly drift back towards the initial value, so inflation only punishes you if you are trading one resource a lot. This would solve the situation where you can buy everything with one resource like tree trunks, since tree trunks will become almost worthless by the time you've sold 200 of them. My only concern is that this system is a bit "complicated" and hard for the player to understand since prices will be constantly varying (hard to plan strategies around it).

d) A suggestion from Krom: Make trading take time, like training somebody in the school. As you trade more of an item it takes longer to trade it, so it could start by taking 1 second to trade, and increase by 1 second for each additional item of the same type that you trade. Every 30 seconds the time it takes could lower by 1 second.

I'd be interested to hear any comment on these ideas or any ideas of your own that you might have.
Cheers,
Lewin.

Here is an analysis from my part.

I would like to address the Rush strategy since alot of people think its cheating and such.
first of all, how does rush works?
Successful rush works around trying to avoid food and farm production at all costs (avoid leather) and focus mainly on iron and axe, such build has no future, it is one big gamble and huge risk.

First of all I would like to say that there are ways in which you can gain 30-40 leather units after peacetime combined with 40 iron units (80 quality units in totall), and the risk of the strategy failing is just as high as the risk of one not having a successful rush army after peacetime (I havent seen anyone address this yet, not even Bo).

The risk of rush build failing is VERY high, I have only seen 3 people successfully manage to do it, and infact I have only seen myself pull something like 120 units after peacetime, it is more common to see 50 militia and 30 iron units, So lets not exaggerate , 50 militia and 30 iron units is no big task to stop when you have 40-30 leather units and 40-30 iron units.

One more thing that we must mention is that rush strategy is interesting development since people thought that it disappeared forever since the foodchange, and I think the game has become more interesting this way for sure (for me anyway), some locations are worse than others and arent worth building leather on, and so I think rush is now a part of a game in which 3 or 2 players decide to go leather and the other 1 player goes for rush army.

About the market, just because someone else is able to use the market doesnt mean its cheating or unfair, the market values for leather builds are just as fair with the trade of 1 tree trunk for 1 corn, I dont see any thing being wrong with that. I think the new values that are put up by Lewin are almost perfect regarding tree trunks for horse. The trade of 1 timber for 1 corn is a way to balance out leather build vs rush, since you can boost your pig production with this trade, but what do I see instead? people saying stuff like "Oh no KAM should never be about the market.. its all about player between player trade, since market is not in the original kam i dont want to add it to my game!" , and that in itself is a contradiction since the original KAM was all messed up big time in the first place anyway.

Conclusion : the new rush strategy was developed by taking the new changes into account and sacrificing your lategame for rush.
Solution: use the new corn values to your advantage, small boost of corn in earlygame can seriously boost your production of corn thus alowing you to expand much faster without the worry of a huge starvasion , many builders can be built this way.

the part what i find sad about rush armies is that the only way to counter it is with another rush army, and the bigger rush army or better combonation of the rush army will prevail. a normal big base strategy will be punished because it is made to sustain long games. the town is stable and you can keep producing a lot of units in the long run. the problem is that there is no long run because a normal big base does not have the army after pt to stand up against a rush army. i letterally had games wherei was destroyed within 30 seconds after pt even though i had a reasonable army (45 xbows, 20 axefighters). without any rush armies to counter a rush army you stand no chance, rendering every other strategy useless except rush army.

I do not say that rush army is an invalid strategy but it shall be the only one ths way. just like the militia + xbow strategy was the only used strategy in older releases (don't know wich one anymore).

It was always about most units after peacetime, that is what I always said with Romek "The best job you can do is most units after pt ".
Also if you read what I wrote you would have already understood that there is a way to beat rush with big base, it is all about how you are achieving this.
Again, the fact that someone has leather units means that he has pigfarms, therefor he has lategame, so if you make pigfarms, you already have a massive advantage over the rush of no leather, read again what I wrote please regarding the counter of no leather rush.

[Nissarin]

a) Make the trade loss higher, probably by reverting it back to 2.5. Would that make everybody sad? I felt that people were unhappy with the market in r4179, that's why we experimented with lowering it to 2.0 in this balance release.

I didn't tried RC release but I think that 2.5 rate is quite optimal.

b) Make market values vary over time like Bo suggested (so things get cheaper as the game progresses). IMO this is not very intuitive, and it's hard to plan your strategies when you can't see exactly how many items you will get for a trade, because the next minute it will be different.

Personally I like this idea, rate could go from 3.0/3.5 to 2.5 (2.0 ?) from "0" to PT, either continuously or in steps (like 1/4 or 1/5 PT). Since the price will drop I doubt there will be much issue about not knowing it in advance (you won't lose anything by accident) and most importantly most players stick to some PT, which means the timing will be well known after some play time. This should "kill" most strats which use market as center of the (early) economy.

c) Make market prices vary as you trade more items. This could be done like Age of Empries and Stronghold (IIRC), where there is a kind of "inflation" system. If you sell 100 stone, then stone becomes low valued (bad for selling, good for buying). If you buy 100 stone, then stone becomes high valued (bad for buying, good for selling). As each trade happens the inflation on the resources updates to reflect what is scarce and what is plentiful in the marketplace. The inflation on each resource could slowly drift back towards the initial value, so inflation only punishes you if you are trading one resource a lot. This would solve the situation where you can buy everything with one resource like tree trunks, since tree trunks will become almost worthless by the time you've sold 200 of them. My only concern is that this system is a bit "complicated" and hard for the player to understand since prices will be constantly varying (hard to plan strategies around it).

This sounds ideal at first but I think it's too complicated, also seems like overkill to do something like this in order to "fix" one building, we might as well include stock exchange or banks

d) A suggestion from Krom: Make trading take time, like training somebody in the school. As you trade more of an item it takes longer to trade it, so it could start by taking 1 second to trade, and increase by 1 second for each additional item of the same type that you trade. Every 30 seconds the time it takes could lower by 1 second.

In the end trading rate is limited by (over)production capacity, not sure if this will be a good change, I mean, lately I've been using 2 markets in the late game, won't such change just force players to build more markets ? And if that is so, won't that put players playing at locations with limited space severely handicapped (i.e. more than they already are) ?

[sado1]

Matt, what concern I have with this rush tactic is that it's so market-dependant. Wasn't the market supposed to just help you a bit, instead of being the easier/the only way of achieving something, as it is since a few versions (because, I believe, we all the time fail to balance it)? When we've had concerns about wood trades in previous versions, you provided a nice post, writing that in fact, trading for wood is slower than making woodcutters (as a side effect, the "big boom" effect was brought into the spotlight ). But now it's not the case, as "the new rush" abuses market up to the extreme and there's no other way to achieve this effect (unless you can grow some new iron mountains, perhaps ).

[Lewin]

@dicsoupcan: Your "supply and demand" suggestion is what I meant by option c), I called it inflation instead, and you explained it more clearly. Unfortunately it makes it quite complicated and hard to understand for the player.

@EDMatt: Thanks for your comments. Rush armies are not a bad thing and we'd like to have them in the game, but we don't want the gameplay to become completely focused around them where most players are forced to rush and the "normal big base" build gives you a disadvantage. We don't want most strategies to become focused around the market (either to achieve a rush or to counter one). A few rush strategies that heavily use the market but can be defeated by a player who does not rush sounds good to me, it adds variation. You seem to say that rushes are a high risk, hard to do and not that hard to defeat. Bo (and other people) seemed to say rushes are not risky, easy to do and hard to defeat. I'd be interested to hear what other people who have played the balance release think. I haven't played many games so I can't comment on it. Perhaps it just needs more testing before people can agree? More time to find ways to counter such strategies and more effective build orders.

[sado1]

I found the rush devastating, impossible to defeat, and killing my city in 2 minutes. But I'm not sure if that's the opinion you're interested with, since I'm the worst player in the Teamspeak group I think it's exactly as you said Lewin - it can be countered, but does that matter? We don't want Market to be essential, right?

On the other hand... if we "fix" the Market so the rush is less effective, we're kinda punishing the best players for finding a good tactic that widens the gap between them and other players. Matt, can you explain why is the rush tactic hard to do? Because, I am too weak to even build a proper iron+leather base, so I should shut up about things I have no idea about, but I don't think it's that hard. It looks like just trading some stuff...