Balance testing release r4297

[Bludmaster]

Rush can be stopped. Its nothing imbalanced. The only fact is that you cant beat rush in open area. But its not so hard to beat rush army in your own base. The biggest problem in the defense city makes builder rush. In most of MP games u cant use power of your towers because rusher propably can see ur base and for sure he will do builder rush before PT. That means you need something like barricade (Mully Wall ) or need to call your mates for help as fast as possible. Personally i have nothing aganist rush.

Romek rush can be stopped but if whole team is rushing its impossible to be in time to help your teammates. Thats the biggest problem i think. And this is inbalanced on lots of maps.

[-George Stain-]

very simple Romo, ofc you can beat rush, but I must tell you that rush will come before the game... was you faced all in rush anytime in this patch?

[Nissarin]

If you really think it's too easy to rush then just tighten the timings - make food production more important factor of the multiplayer game, i.e. reduce initial stamina - this means that using rush strat you will have less recruits and/or smaller town.

[sado1]

About builder rush... what if we thought of some Tower functionality that would kill citizens without using stone? Or maybe, let's make builders unable to walk into tower's range?

[Jeronimo]

In my opinion (and I think many), 1 thing that is surely ruining KaM in several ways, are labourers digging fields/spamming blueprints with total freedom.
I think in the map's beauty, in the ruin of tower defense, and sabotage in enemy forest.

If you program towers to not shoot labourers, it will bring more stupid problems... many players use labourers for annoying purposes.
I support Antiviruz in this now, because I realize that this labourer rush greatly affects tight maps like Horseshoe.
Basically you cannot have a "normal game" with maps where enemy bases are close to you.
----------------------------------------------

Any Ideas to end this lame neverending story?

I still think best solution is implementing sort of Settlers mechanics... where 1 building give protection against enemy labourers actions.
A good radius of protections is 8 tiles. This they cannot waste your stones, and you have besides new "conquer territory" feature.

I believe that denying labourer rush to empty towers, as consequence will make players to not destroy the map digging fields as they usually do in order to explore fast -> and tower-rush before troops arrive.

I don't know if this mechanic is possible to program into game... but surely would solve the most ancient matters respect labourers.

[Da Revolution]

I don't like something like a radius around the buildings. By the way, I think many Top players won't dig fields around towers if they don't throw stones at those, but they will sacrifice them on enemy's troops.

I do like Sado's idea, infinite stone against citizens, but not really sure if it has negative side effects (you can make it impossible for enemies to build towers if you build one next to it).

[ChrisEggII]

Well, I think towers just shouldn't attack citizens. That would solve problem.

[dicsoupcan]

but that would create new problems, if someone does not have enough troops to defend all sides a player can get builders in someone's town and dig every field of your wood production, or build blueprints over your roads, crippling your town's production.

[ChrisEggII]

So next time I won't play with this one . Builers' rush is annoying, but this sabotage definitely shouldn't be allowed.
Maybe should map be devided into zones? Every player would have some place to build, but he couldn't do anything outside in pt.

[Bo_]

Builder rush should be allowed but not before the enemy has his troops out of his barracks, that's what ruins it for me:
Builders depleting your towers even before you were able to get anything to prevent that from happening.

[The Dark Lord]

If I remember correctly, player 'zones' are planned, meaning you won't be able to get near the enemy before pt is over.

[Lewin]

I personally dislike builder rush and I'd like to stop people from using it. I think militia should be the unit used for emptying towers. This would probably make rush tactics less effective because towers (the only defensive structure) will be more useful.

Something like forbidding you from building within range of an enemy tower would probably make it too hard to use in most games, but not prevent any legitimate moves (there's no good reason for you to build within range of an enemy tower, is there?). You can think of this as the builders not being so stupid as to build something near an enemy tower where he knows he will be killed If you can explore past the towers you could order them to build there, although I doubt it will be worth using in most games.

If anyone disagrees with me, please explain why builder rush is a good gameplay element that should be kept.

If I remember correctly, player 'zones' are planned, meaning you won't be able to get near the enemy before pt is over.

Yes that was planned to stop people building into your area during peacetime or exploring your village with builders. But it won't stop builder rushes after peacetime so I think we need another solution like I suggested above.

[Krom]

What do you think about PT 45min and moving iron production past leather? (let iron mines be built later in game)

Explanation is following: with shorter PT you can start acting sooner, meaning that armies are smaller. Always keep an amount of militia at base to defend it. Build early towers. At 60min you get access to first leather troops. At 75min to first iron troops. While rusher sends militia to you you can fight back with towers and your militia and have time to make leather to efficiently fight back and counter attack.

Lets think of a plan how they game should flow and see how can we make it real.


P.S. How do other games cope with builder rushes, what stops Warcraft/C&C players from building at enemies bases? Fact that builders are weak and player has early fighters to negate them. Yet not enough fighters to be offensive.

[Lewin]

P.S. How do other games cope with builder rushes, what stops Warcraft/C&C players from building at enemies bases? Fact that builders are weak and player has early fighters to negate them. Yet not enough fighters to be offensive.

I disagree. The builder rush in KaM is really only used to empty towers of their stones. The main difference is in most games towers do not have "ammo" so it doesn't matter if your opponent sends 100 builders into your towers in front of his army, the towers will kill the builders in a few shots and then be ready to shoot the army. But in KaM the towers waste all their ammo on killing weak builders and don't have time to be restocked before the enemy sends their real army in. I've seen replays where people rushed 50+ builders and emptied all the enemy towers with them. Even if you have an army that means you need to position it in front of your towers to stop the builders (thus diminishing the advantage of the towers). Either way your towers become far less effective, and in the worst case totally useless. I really don't like that as a game mechanic, even if it takes skill to organise your builders in that way, that doesn't mean it should be possible.

I don't have any problems with people using militia to empty towers because militia are more expensive, and they are military units not citizens.

[Bludmaster]

For me is not problem using builders on emtyimg towers as itself (Because sometimes its hard to have enought soldiers to emty enemy towers, especialy against tower spamers :-!). However, bad think is using it right after PT when players have no chance to defend against it.