Pick Your Recruits Armageddon (Standard & Extended)

[Horus2]

One thing to mention, is that the Walking Corpse pretty much loses all usefullness at 10 gold. What was the reason for raising it?

Owning everyone was.
For the scientific approach: indubitably Walking Corpse is better than Goblin Spearman, therefore it should cost more. It's not useless for 10, but with the plague ability calculated in its price, it is not spammable anymore. If you want to weaken only the opponent's units, use the Goblin Spearman. If you however, want to take advantage of having Walking Corpse, let them make the... *puts on sunglasses* finishing touches.

[TheScribe]

WC better than the Goblin spearman?

Gobo=6-3 melee, 3-1 ranged
WC=6-2 melee Plague

IMHO, plague isn't that good as to make a significantly weaker unit cost more...

[Horus2]

(This quote originates from the PYRAMID thread)

ok cool. give the useless merman hunter 4 attack strikes like all elves have. or 3 strikes with poison so it hurts for a change to play versus fish. or make them marksmen so they at least deliver the damage.

naga are a tad bit too fast i feel. why should they be faster than other fish? i find them overpowered they are so useful, depending what map u play.

the spearmans retaliation is a joke, why should he be able to damage enemies for ca 15% of their full hp? it should be 4 only.

archers for orcs should have just two strikes with fire and two with pierce. it fits their theme of dangerous nightfolk without giving them a pretty accurate chance to kill stuff the way they want.

the wose was once discussed to gain more cold weakness. perhaps this might be the place to finally translate the LCs decisions to action.

dwarves are so ridiculously useless once poisoned. whenever they survive, they eat gold per turn and have only half hp that will kill them eventually during the next waves. not sure how to tackle this situation, in this addon probably not that much a problem.


the elves in general have a ridiculously bad chance against every race because they usually dont have the power to attack on their own during the first couple of turns. it makes me wonder if the shaman unit should not be able to poison other units. it would fit the whole theme of nature-comprehending folks who can use roots and elixiers to their own good. the same should go for the lvl2 variant of elves. POISONOUS thorns

hope to ignite some sparks...

It is a shame that you tried to provoke others to comment on you, but did not have success, despite it is not that hard to doubt the usefulness of these suggestions. Here i go, if noone else. Sorry for the reaction time of mine.

First of all, i stated above:

In the case of Standard units, any other changes than price is discouraged. I want to avoid the unnecessary confusion of new players by limiting unit modifications to minimum. Cav, Flappy. Footie, Mage and Orcish Archer conserved their 1.8 stats to keep their characteristics (mighty and mobile tin can, annoying etc.) or because of little changes could not have been evaulated properly to make it balanced in comparison (it is the round numbers' fault, why Wesnoth can not have silver specie?) Dwarvish Fighter levelup is there for technical reasons. However if we reach a conclusion that being loyal to this disciple leaves some unit second-grade, i will gladly erase it.

Therefore, i'm not going to add interesting abilities to units just for the lol. I could have go in this direction, making a handful of units as different as possible, but this would have raised the problems of the lack of unique sprites. That would have been an entirely different era in fact.

For those who wouldn't know, all suggestion mentioned above are made at the Ladder Council, regarding default era (pretty wrong suggestions even for default but that is a different story). Since here we are not having "useless dwarves" or "elves in general", anything in regard of factional balance is nonsense.

At this point, i answered the part with the Orcish Archer, Wose, poisioned dwarves and weak elves including the Elvish Shaman. But let us stop for a moment here and see why TBS' suggestion of having posionous shamans would have been apocalyptical in default. Take the following steps and you will get the point.

1 - Take a Ghoul from the store. It is 15 coins, contains much fat, intestines, and it is poisonous as well.
2 - Now imagine you need to have a Ghoul without poison, because, let us say your sweetheart is allergic to it. How much you would pay for a sterile Ghoul, with all other statistics being the same?
3 - Now substract the price of the sterile Ghoul from the normal Ghoul, and you get the value of poisoning. Yes, it is that powerful.
4 - Give poison to Elvish Shaman for the lol without modifying her price. Now the value/price ratio is severely disturbed, because you increased the value with the estimated price without increasing unit's price itself.
5 - Compare some of the default units' price to PYRA units', where value/price ratio is intended to be around 1:1 in every single case. You will notice that the biggest difference between those price are 2 gold coins (Wolf Rider, Cavalryman, Mage etc.). Notice how big deal 2 gold difference is even in faction vs faction balance: while cav is/was OP and spammable, wolf is too weak to buy and you do it only when the circumstances forces you, and if you are doing forced moves, you are at disadvantage.
6 - How much is the difference between a sterile Elvish Shaman girl and Poison Ivy? TADA! Revelation.

Now one may argue that since posion was not stacked on the same attack as slow, you abandon one speciality for the sake of another, resulting in lesser efficiency in exploiting them, therefore it decreases the estimated unit value by 1 or even 2. I will not deny that one. But there is an opposite effect increasing price once again. That one i call the:

Toolbox-effect.

We talk about toolbox-effect when a certain single unit is capable of performing two or more tasks, whether they are abilities, weapon specials or other parameters. For example, Horseman is excellent for scouting and finishing, Dust Devil is durable when defending and mobile, and i do not even know where to start with Dusk Faerie. Being a "toolbox" results in flexibility, because there is always a part of their palette which is useful momentarily. This is true, because if someone is poisoned, next time you can slow it instead, unlike other poisoners (that's actually the main drawback of their ability!). The skills of a toolbox may or may not synergise with the other skill (combos). Is it the case with Poison Ivy? Yes of course, it is one of the most spectacular combos; when a poisoned enemy is entangled so it cannot fight properly, cannot retreat to a village, and its hp is going down in the sink. Hell it is. But the most important aspect lies in being handy all the time, things served by a single unit type's single representative on silver plate. If you want to prepare posion and slow for the opponent, you need only this one and not let us say, a Ghoul plus Elvish Shaman together. This is very, very advantageous, because (if wouldn't the toolbox-effect itself counted in value/price) only by paying the royalty of poison you can use it, and you do not have to spend gold on necessary accessories, like the hp or movetype of the two different specialists what you do not actually need, you need only the ability, the performance.



And for the rest:

Spearman: why shouldn't he be able to damage enemies? I remember this has been called irreal at LC and references to reality and whatnot, which is funny, because Wesnoth keeps being WINR, second, i hope you will not recieve the honour to get the chance to comparise them on yourself IRL, but i expect an impaling javelin doing more harm after a short flight by fixing you to bloody Mother Earth than some melee poking. Also, Elvish Fighter does 9, if it is only 9 in the end, yet not getting the attention it deserves.
Damaging capabilities of core fighters will be covered later in the I. Terminator-law.

Naga Fighter: Merman Fighter has 3 more hp, 2 more damage and 20% cold resistance just in case, while +1 mp, better overall landfishing capabilities and 3 less XP do no really help in the actual combat itself. This two is equal or at least very close to equal in value, and if you do not agree, prove it!

[Mint]

Apparently the skirmishers have been forgotten for now. They still need that price increase!

[The Black Sword]

It seems I owe you a response here and all this talk of crazy poison shamans seems to be aimed at provoking such !

Regarding the poison shamans: This is a totally different idea in default to PYRA because you are not trying to balance a unit but matchups and the poison has most effect in the matchups in which elves have problems(Dwarves,loys) and least effect in matchups where they are strongest (UD). In any case, I've pretty much gone off the idea as too big of a flavour change.

Dwarf runesmith: Tbh, I would quite like to see this guy gone in standard or improved at least. I was randomed into this guy once during the tournament and didn't like him at all. I can't remember his stats right now but I think the steelclad was better(though partly, I remember wishing he still had blade at the time), definetly a lot more durable anyway.

EDIT: Ah, found them, steelclad has 50%(!!!) more hp for a mere 10% less blade resist. 24 magic vs 33 standard dmg isn't so bad, but I'd prefer steelclad damage also, especially taking into account the versatility of his extra attack.

Ghost - definitely 19 IMO and leading me to my next point of: please reduce skel costs. We had this talk before during the tournament. I feel it should be standard for people to pick varied damage types in their recruits so they can combat skels and other units like this. In default, most matchups are fairly balanced with the current costs of skels and their counters in the various matchups. In fact, the skels tend to be worse in cost-effectiveness turn vs their counters, its just that the counters tend to be inefficient vs DAs etc. In PYRA, almost all the skel counters have gone down, the some of the best ones (IMO) by even 2g and skels themselves have gone up by 2g. Picking the skels tend to be quite a risk IMO when you could pick a unit with a much higher chance of their tactical options being useful. I'd suggest a 1g drop for the minute anyway and try them out from there.

Orcish archer: should go down in price IMO. He does have the toolbox effect, but neither of the tools are that good and in most cases I'd prefer to buy 2 specialised tools. If for some reason you were playing with only 50g of recruits or something like that, I could see him being quite helpful, but not sure atm. Is the fire arrow worth 2g and weaker elsewhere when its quite likely you bought fire(or some other counter) elsewhere also?

I'm fairly happy with thief as is, particularly with possibility of thief/skirm combo in PYRA, I don't think he needs to be too cheap.

Mer spearman: I think at 14g its probably on the level of the other 2 units, I think they might overpower them at 13g. The only thing I'd say is that you often use fish on flat/ford tiles to provide a 60% defense on flat, in this role the spearman is the worst of the fish because of such low hp, might be something to do with the low usage, but I'm not sure if a cost decrease is warranted.

Crescent Lake is fine with the 150g IMO, the problem was the decreased starting gold I think.

[Horus2]

This is a heads-up for everyone not downloaded the new 1.5 version of PYRA: do it.

After one year of mostly pointless secret beta stage this version features two new game modes, thus different number of units in the pool. Advanced supplements Stardand with all the non-default core units, including Thug, Mermaid Initiate, Peasant, Giant Scorpion and so on. I think this middle ground will be useful for those who seeks for extra units yet wants the gameflow to have a somewhat regulated course without the insane combo rush potential and the real freakshow units. Ultimate has 13 extra units in addition to Extended plus the masked dwarves which i moved here. In this game mode you may encounter the Khalifate and a handful of remarkable units from After The Storm. Oh, and a custom unit with a disturbingly malicious, unique ability, aiming for the Most Original Unit Of 2014 award. She's creepy.

Also, and since there was a recurring interest regarding whether or not, there goes a note that yes, there will be a II. PYRA Tournament soon. Stay tuned.

[Horus2]

Before i can announce the II. PYRA Tournament, some things have to be arranged.

Tournament will be played in the new Advanced gamemode (64 different units). Tournament structure greatly depends on the number of sign-ups, but probably end up being similar to the first.
There is a new, 1.6.0 version on the way, with many noticeable changes, mostly balance-wise. I would like to ask for previous participants' opinions on these price changes before they get implemented:

Dwarvish Ulfserker: +1 gold
It was the third most popular unit in the previous tournament according to the survey. This is not uncalled; just by being present behind your zocs, you can have a major impact over the enemy team's composition. You can start assaults with it and get a kill for nearly sure, and often without a way to prevent it. The two skirmishers may be able to take it out, but otherwise untouchable. And if i have to nerf the shaman+ulf combo, it is definitely not the shamanic end which is wrong. By increasing the price of the ulf, it would make it slightly harder to make awesome trade-offs. Slightly.

Goblin Impaler: -1 gold
As much as i fear the arms race of letting units in with even less price and more damage, currently i think impaler is subpar to grunt, spearman or thug.

Wesfolk Oucast: +2 gold
Very disturbing ability, if you have one, the opponent won't be interested in playing defensively. You just pull the plug, infiltrate with all you got, hit them with ulf, thief or simply core fighters and leave everyone zoced. Same as for the ulf and other unitity units applies: normally you can't kill it until it is activated and in your face. Still not as bad as...

Dwarvish Witness: +4 gold (or more)
The only reason this abomination still exists is that it felt such a cheap tactics that i didn't bother testing it on a regular base. Whenever i see one of them falling, it feels euphoric. It was often 1 xp from levelup when someone was able to remove it on the cost of substantial sacrifices. And even so, opponents often just bought a second. And a third. I think we can agree on a cost increasement, the real question is how much should it be. Maybe 4 gold won't even do the trick.


Some other questions regarding the tournament rules, again for previous participants:

What do you think about the restriction of allowing the same map only once for every player during the tournament. Was it a positive experience or was it troublesome?

Can you think of maps that should be added or removed from the pool? If yes, which are these and why?

Are there any units (from standard and advanced) you would like to seen modified? If yes, which and why?

Later on i will upload a survey for all the units, if you are feeling adventurous and experienced enough, you can rate all the 116, and i would be thankful for that.



Most importantly however, i am going to need one or two voluntary co-admins to bathe in popularity when i'm not here. Last year Mint did a great job in it, but the position is currently open for everyone. I can promise that co-admins get only quite easy tasks, like checking the validity of replays or answering the upcoming questions and reminding players to those silly obscure rules. If you feel qualified for the ride, please send me a private message!

[abhijit]

Here i present my humble suggestions towards the above mentioned changes.

Ulf: Yes, 21g seems ok to me.
---

Goblin Impaler: No comments.
-----------------

Wesfolk Outcast: 23g seems to be too much to me, however I do agree that there needs to be some price increase. I suggest going with a +1, but can't give an unbiased opinion about this unit, as I tend
-------------------- to use it a lot.

Dwarvish Witness: Definitely a yes, even the +4 gold might be less for this unit. Where the wesfolk's distract ability often puts her in danger ( due to weak resistances ), the witness has no such problems,
--------------------- unless ofcourse the player gets too bold with it.

Apart from these, I would like to see the naffat get changed. It got it's base hp increased by 4, TBS , Wintermute and many others agreed to it being fragile, while PYR still uses the old naffat.
I also think the 'junior commander' cost should go up, At 15 his leadership is a bargain with l0 units, and it's one of the cheapest tactics i have seen.

I like the idea of a map to be used only once during the 'qualifying stages' of the tournament. It was a good learning experience the last time, to play on many different maps. Ruined passage got updated I think, Mint might comment better.

Regards,
abhijit

[iceiceice]

My very humble thoughts / suggestions:

21 gp for ulf sounds like a pretty serious nerf. Ulfs are already very expensive and have many drawbacks esp. in a game mode when anyone can recruit grunts, thugs, etc., and you already bumped the cost once. My impression (on the basis of 6-7 games, 1v1 and team with regulars) is that most people don't even get them in the current version, it's mostly just me (But I guess the old tourney must tell us something.) Sometimes when you use ulf you have to be content with some kind of trade -- given that you have reduced the costs of mages, we would now have in PYRA that trade ulf for mage is a 2gp loss rather than a 1 gp win as in default? It represents a huge shift in mentality IMO. I agree that shaman + ulf seems potentially very powerful, but I'm not sure if I've actually seen someone even choose this over the other options in the current version. Maybe should be more concerned about witness + ulf

Maybe instead of increasing the cost of ulfs, you could strengthen alternatives like the hounds, and make more cheap and damaging melee units available (like goblin as you suggest?) I think there may be a consensus that the hounds are pretty weak? Seems they often lose half hp or more to kill a skeleton archer for example. I played an interesting 3 v 3 PYRA some time ago in which Danniel_BR seemed to demonstrate that Noble Youth may be a counter to the hounds to some extent.

Impaler: No comment, see above.

Wesfolk Outcast ("The Distractress"): You tell a convincing story. I haven't actually seen a game where these are particularly effective, and I have seen 3 or 4 games (1v1 and 2v2) where someone chose it, so I guess it just shows what a noob I am.

Dwarf Witness: At some point when you have to spend half of your gold just on this one unit, you can't even build a reasonable faction with it and you might as well remove the option to pick it. Perhaps a more interesting direction is to replace inspire with leadership and see if that helps it? Or something along these lines. (Edit: Or even make it 4mp like a regular dwarf?)

[Mint]

Some more humble suggestions/another set of 2 cents.

Nerfing the ulfserker: I agree. Having berserk around limits the potential of any ranged attack based unit holding any spot on the map, which makes quite a few tactics unfeasible. (I guess I prefer unfeasible.)

Dwarf Witness: even at a whopping 28 gold, he's still an overpowered deal. A few gold up I think would be good for it, even though it'd send it's price into the 30s. It'd make the choice between cheap spam and the expensive booster something to contemplate more.
The Ulf/Witness combo is something I've seen and used before, and it's a bit too good a combo, combining slows and leadershipped berserk. Nerfing either or both would be a good thing I think. That said, I've never seen the shaman used together with an ulf.

Goblin impaler: a decrease in price by even one would send it to the edge of too spammable I think. It would also mean that the level 0 and level 1 units of the line would have only a 2g price difference which is a bit too small, even if the spearman is level 0.

Wesfolk Outcast: I haven't seen her distraction in action much, so I haven't much to say about it.

Other units that need editing; the same ones I've always said. The grunt needs to be 13 gold, and skirmishers also need to go up in price. The puppies might need a slight boost, but they've got berserk so I'm not sure about that one
Also, will the princess line (Li'Sar's line) get its shiny new ability of allied firststrike?

The map restrictions placed on the tournament gave a rotation of maps instead of using the boring old conservative maps that are the only ones that seem to be played nowadays. This can only be a good thing!

[iceiceice]

Horus2:

A minor idea to improve the PYRA add-on:
I think it would be nice if after you pick your recruits, at the end of that turn your recruit and gold are immediately set properly, so that you can begin to use planning mode to plot your village grab while your opponents might still be picking recruits. In the current version I guess that the list doesnt get switched over until your turn on turn 2.

[Horus2]

Horus2:

A minor idea to improve the PYRA add-on:
I think it would be nice if after you pick your recruits, at the end of that turn your recruit and gold are immediately set properly, so that you can begin to use planning mode to plot your village grab while your opponents might still be picking recruits. In the current version I guess that the list doesnt get switched over until your turn on turn 2.

Indeed this is the case. However, this most challenging part of the code has been written by fellow co-author Zaton. I will see if i can do something for it, but i don't want to go too deep into the rabbit hole to play and drink tea with it, while the tournament is in the vicinity, i may as well cause some silly unforeseen bugs, because Murphy's Law and whatnot. Nevertheless thanks for the suggestion, i'm on it!

[Horus2]

PYRA 1.6.0 is out! Download it or face the OOS error!
As the most important part of the update, many units' price have been changed. Below is the complete list:

Dwarvish Ulfserker: +1 gold
Dwarvish Witness: +4 gold
Fencer: +1 gold
Ghost: -1 gold
Goblin Impaler: -1 gold
Goblin Rouser: +1 gold
Junior Commander: +1 gold
Naffat: -1 gold
Orcish Leader: +1 gold
Sergeant: +1 gold
Saurian Skirmisher: +1 gold
Wesfolk Outcast: +3 gold

[Horus2]

It looks like i did not update the news section of this era for a long, long time. PYRA had a game-breaking bug for a more than 1 year interval, but fortunately those dark times were over. It still contained a bug that prevented linux users from enjoying it, and this is what got fixed today. So go ahead, linux users!
On a sidenote, 2.0.2 is still a mandatory update for everyone, because the equally game-breaking Desert Fighter got nerfed.

[ForPeace]

Hi Horus,

Just downloaded the latest version of PYRA and idk why it happened, anyway I encountered a bug during loading:

Code: Select all

Macro/file 'multiplayer/maps/2p_Hellhole.map' is missing
    at ~add-ons\\armageddon_PYR\\.\\scenarios\\PYRA_Hellhole.cfg:14
        included from ~add-ons\\armageddon_PYR\\_main.cfg:24

The message wasn't shown afterwards, but PYRA still doesn't load.