Khalifate gameplay thread (feedback on balance and bugs)

[Kapoue_II]

I played a 1.9.6 game, which was a 2v2- Khalifa &drakes vs Khalifa & elves. However, due to my choice of map (a non-standard one) the drakes and elves cancelled out, and left the kahlifa duelling. In the end, sheer weight of "unkillable" Jundi saw off the bulk of the enemies attack-though my leader had a nasty scrape with a bunch of arifs that swarmed his keep. I think hat arif vs Jundi is unfair on the arifs, no matter what the location. The jundi are much stronger than the arifs are (in my opinion). Also, falcons proved useful- I slipped one behind his lines, and half his villages were gone before he even noticed. And even then,he found it hard to fight- the falcon danced rings around the arifs sent to kill it. I like the idea of decreased movement for the falcons, as it would help reduce this problem. Alternative ways of handling the falcon problem:
-Increase cost (the obvious one)
-Remove 1 of his two attack choices
-Increase movement to 9, add skirmisher, make it level 1, and increase cost.

[Rigor]

suggestion: raise the kill limit to level up for the falcon from ca. 2 kills to 3 kills. it would be so fair to see this change. with the same situation like for bats u face the problem that the falcon is a super good finisher, just one strike, and then its a first strike, is enough to put enough pressure on your opponent to consider withdraing or facing a full hp lvl1 falcon with even better stats.

is there anything holding us back to try 1.1 already? would be nice to see the changes we talked about in action.

[Wintermute]

suggestion: raise the kill limit to level up for the falcon from ca. 2 kills to 3 kills. it would be so fair to see this change. with the same situation like for bats u face the problem that the falcon is a super good finisher, just one strike, and then its a first strike, is enough to put enough pressure on your opponent to consider withdraing or facing a full hp lvl1 falcon with even better stats.

is there anything holding us back to try 1.1 already? would be nice to see the changes we talked about in action.

IIRWIIR. Quite a few changes are being worked on, I hope to release the next version tonight or tomorrow.

[The Black Sword]

People are probably waiting for the new version to play more games but I thought I'd put some more replays up anyway!
I've played a couple of games since I last posted but none of them were worth much IMO due to bad play or bad luck etc. I played a couple of good games today though. Here's the first which was a great game where I finally got to play from the elf side of the matchup. RNG went a bit weird, I thought I'd lost a number of times and then there were a few amazing turns where everything just died and then the game never seemed to end !

On a more serious note, I'm still skeptical about the elvish attacking ability in this matchup. I found fighters, archers and shaman just wouldn't cut it vs the high def khalifa and woses and mages are the wrong alignment obviously. Still the elves seem to be able to defend well which isn't really unusual, I'm just mentioning this since attacking matchups are generally more fun.

I'll edit in the other replays in the morning, they're on my other computer.

Ok here are the rest of the promised replays, 2 dwarf ones, one where my opponent makes some mistakes and the other where I make some mistakes but they show some good ulf usage IMO. It seems to me that you need an ulf to attack the khalifa, but it looks like you can at least trade the ulf for pretty much any khalifa at night, giving you access to villages/hills/healers etc.

The other is a Drake game where the drakes manage a good night attack with saurians, take a village and then bring drake backup during the day. The game was still quite close when my opponent tried a risky leader kill, in turn leaving his own leader exposed to be cut down.

[Wintermute]

Version 1.1 out.

This is a major release, with a lot of minor fixes and some major changes as well. I've put items from the changelog that I think are particularly worth nothing in bold.

*** Version 1.1 ***
Many major changes with this release so please read carefully!

Changes to unit lines/movetypes etc:
---Falcon line (Falcon, Elder Falcon)---
added one normal trait (they will also get feral in 1.9 but that is impossible to add in 1.8 due to game engine).
decreased impact resist from 0% to -10%

---Units withh "Light Foot" movetype (Naffat, Hakim) converted to "Foot" movetype (Jundi)
The changes made to the Naffat and Hakim to accomplish this are listed in their own sections.
increased frozen defense of this line (now all unarmored foot units) from 20% to 30%

---changes to "Armored Foot" movetype (Arif line):
shallow water mp changed from 2 to 3.
swamp mp changed from 2 to 3.
decreased mushroom grove defense from 50% to 40%

---changes to the "Horse" (both level 1 horses, and some level up paths) movetype:
increased shallow water, swamp, cave, mushroom grove mp cost to 4 in all cases.
increased forest mp cost from 2 to 3.
decreased frozen mp cost from 4 to 2.
decreased swamp defense from 30% to 20%
decreased cave defense from 40% to 20%
decreased mushroom grove defense from 40% to 20%
increased frozen defense from 10% to 30%
increased cold resist from -10% to 0%
increased impact resist from -10% to 0%

---changes to the "Armored Horse" (some leveled units, as shown on sprite) movetype:
increased shallow water, swamp, cave, mushroom grove mp cost to 4 in all cases.
decreased frozen mp cost from 4 to 2.
decreased cave defense from 40% to 20%
decreased mushroom grove defense from 40% to 20%
increased frozen defense from 10% to 30%
increased swamp defense from 10% to 20%
decreased hill defense from 60% to 50%

Changes to units:
---Falcon---
Reduced beak and claw attack by one each to 2-3 and 5-1
decreased HP from 19 to 18
increased XP requirements from 20 to 24

---Jundi---
decreased HP from 36 to 32

---Hakim---
now uses the Jundi movetype/defense resulting in:
increased cold resist from -10% to 0%
increased fire resist from -10% to 0%
increased impact resist from -20% to -10%
increased village defense from 50% to 60%

---Naffat---
no longer able to get the strong trait
decreased HP from 30 to 28
now uses the Jundi movertype/defense resulting in:
increased cold resist from -10% to 0%
increased impact resist from -20% to -10%
increased village defense from 50% to 60%

---Khaiyal---
Changed movetype to Armored Horse (no mountain movement, 50% hill def), but with unique resits given it's lesser armor than other armored horses:
blade resist 20%
pierce resist -10%
impact resist 0%
fire resist 0%
cold resist -20%
arcane resist 20%

---Monawish---
corrected attack name and icon from axe to sword to match art.
increased melee attack from 6-4 to 7-4.
decreased hp from 45 to 41.

---Mighwar---
corrected attack name and icon from axe to sword to match art.
increased melee attack from 7-5 to 8-5.
decreased hp from 57 to 53.


Also changed the following default faction units (in this era only) to include the listed balance changes from the 1.9.x branch:
* Increased the pierce attack of the Orc Archer from 5-3 to 6-3.
* Decreased the HP of the Cavalryman from 38 to 34.
* Decreased the HP of the Dragoon from 53 to 49.
* Decreased the HP of the Cavalier from 68 to 64.
* Decreased the melee and ranged attack of the Footpad from 5-2 to 4-2.
* Decreased the XP requirement of the Mage from 60 to 54.
* Decreased the XP requirement of the White Mage from 150 to 136.

Please post version 1.1 replays after this point.

EDIT: First post has been edited to include a list of replays wanted.

More replays wanted (in approximate order of need):
*vs Drakes
* Vs. Dwarf
* Vs. Orc
* Vs. Loy
* Vs. Elf
*2v2
*vs UD
* Vs. Khalifate

[DrakeKing]

Great to see a update everything looks good and excited to test with teh new 1.9 changes as well. Great work.

[Wintermute]

I've just uploaded the addon to the 1.9 server too. It seems to work - in that it loads - but I haven't tested it so it may be buggy.

It's called "Khalifate Era" on the 1.9 server for anyone interested (name change to avoid confusion with the default+khalifate era that ships with the game now).

All balance changes will be included in the next development release.

[SigurdFireDragon]

The corrupted saves issue is still in the 1.1 version. I see where you mentioned filing a bug report about it, however, a simple work-around would be to replace the hyphens in the qatif-al-nar with underscores in the unit id (name can be left alone). There's only 2 spots to change, they are in qatif-al-nar.cfg (id) and naffat.cfg (advances_to). I tested it on my copy and it worked.

[Kolbur]

Version 1.1 out.

This is a major release, with a lot of minor fixes and some major changes as well. I've put items from the changelog that I think are particularly worth nothing in bold.

*** Version 1.1 ***
Many major changes with this release so please read carefully!

*lots of awesome Khaliphate changes*


Also changed the following default faction units (in this era only) to include the listed balance changes from the 1.9.x branch:
* Increased the pierce attack of the Orc Archer from 5-3 to 6-3.
* Decreased the HP of the Cavalryman from 38 to 34.
* Decreased the HP of the Dragoon from 53 to 49.
* Decreased the HP of the Cavalier from 68 to 64.
* Decreased the melee and ranged attack of the Footpad from 5-2 to 4-2.
* Decreased the XP requirement of the Mage from 60 to 54.
* Decreased the XP requirement of the White Mage from 150 to 136.

Please post version 1.1 replays after this point.

...

Wow!
Ladies and Gentlemen, we finally have the general balance testing addon!
With this it's now possible to test all balance changes and adjust them without waiting for a new dev release. We could even test changes that are still under discussion and not yet agreed. That's pretty nifty!
The xp decrease of the mage is new to me, interesting...

Edit: Why is this forum always eating my posts lately?

[The Black Sword]

I put my other replays up.

Really nice to see all the changes made, can't wait to try them out.

[Rigor]

silverhead, khalifa era 1.1:

DW p1 vs KH p2 : 1:0 for fanjo
rematch:
KH p1 vs DW p2: 1:1 rigor/fanjo

in the 1st game the arifs managed to retaliate heavily on backstabbing thieves (who died while attacking), and overall i could have done much more damage but that was just the game i guess.

in the rematch fanjo built on a mobile griph army and i countered with an equally versatile army: ramis, falcons and more units made my core army. even though i had the feeling i could have dealt more damage earlier again

i think the second game shows u how very powerful the falcons can be and that the lack of a water controling unit does not bother their march to victory at all. and i think the falcon is starting to be very different from the bat already, fortunately.

[Alarantalara]

A long (42 turn) game on Weldyn Channel. Both sides were chosen in advance. The Northerners eventually won on economy.
Edit: Rigor, your game 1 (the one without 2) is a Drake vs Loyalist match. Is that what you intended?

[The Black Sword]

Another elf vs khalifate game between me and tekelili. This time it went even worse for the elves despite the Jundi nerf, though arguably the game would have been very different if my falcon hadn't been able to finish the archer in the vill(which tek could have blocked if not for time).

Most of our opinions are in the chat log but I'd point out how easy it was for the 2 Jundi on the right to hold off twice as much elves. Obviously more testing is needed but the matchup seems in danger of being pretty boring for the elves.

EDIT : 2 more khalifate replays today with Fanjo; first is orcs, second is UD.

[powershot]

The corrupted saves issue is still in the 1.1 version. I see where you mentioned filing a bug report about it, however, a simple work-around would be to replace the hyphens in the qatif-al-nar with underscores in the unit id (name can be left alone). There's only 2 spots to change, they are in qatif-al-nar.cfg (id) and naffat.cfg (advances_to). I tested it on my copy and it worked.

Haven't read this discussion for the new faction but I get corrupted files If I try to load with the faction. What's up? It's seems to happen with geneticist on war of chaos era when I moved it to age of hero's or played with the era itself. Answers, anyone???

[SigurdFireDragon]

Haven't read this discussion for the new faction but I get corrupted files If I try to load with the faction. What's up? It's seems to happen with geneticist on war of chaos era when I moved it to age of hero's or played with the era itself. Answers, anyone???

In short, any [unit_type] with a '-' in the id field will cause a 'invalid file' when you try to load a save game containing that unit.

In Khalifate, it's the Qatif-al-nar. In War of Chaos, it's several units that have a '-' in the id field.