The Golden Age

[IPS]

Well, I'm back to give partial feedback of another more factions, this time comenting Sylvans (which before revision I guess will be the one that will take me most time to describe) and undead which I have no initial idea of how many irregularities are at there; which I will coment later because Sylvan one took me really much longer than expected:

Sylvans
Dusk Faerie: those are too good... apart that 9-2 magical in 2 atack types is really eficent, 6-2 mele drains is much more than any other mage with mele; apart of drain in special (not forgetting the 50% flat defense), let's do some changes:
a) 8-2 ranged arcane, she has already impact mele which is pretty useful againist undead
b) 4-2 mele, well, at night, because consider a mage that a night if has strong trait deals 9-2 but with DRAINS and 50% flat defense? mmmm... no
c) Increase her xp to 50 (35 xp at 70% modifier); she actually needs less xp to lv2 than Dark Adept do.
She may look cost ineficent ofensively now, but she has exelent movement costs and defenses over most terrains.
Night Nymph: some of the same issues than in her lv1 can be found at her.
a) Change her mele to 6-2, because really, she's is still a mage.
b) Her health is a way too high to be a mage, try 44 hp.
c) Try forest chill 11-2 (19-2 vs Drakes at night) and Shadow wave 7-3 (13-3 againist skeletons on night)
Eventide Dancer: Same than on her lower level ups.
a) Try a mele of 9-2 at her.
b) Decrease her health to 58.
c) Forest Chill 15-2 and Noctum 9-3.
Elvish Adept: Her xp looks too low. Try with 29 xp (20.3 at 70% modifier; to be higher than civilians). Increase Price to 10g.
Elvish Acolyte: My only objection is her unnusual high health for mages standard. Try 28 hp. And maybe entangle 3-2.
Elvish Civilian: Performs much better than peasants do, try a price of 10 (he's even better than woodsmen).
Elvish Juggernaut: Well... he's actually dealing a way too much damage, let's do some posting about this:
a) He doesn't need to move 6 to be actually beast; he has already +10% to each blade/pierce/impact and lots of health.
b) Let's decrease damage of Stab bonus mele atack to 15-3
c) bow... comenting that the progress of elvish fighter bow at his diferent levels were 3-2 -> 3-3 -> 6-3 -> 9-3 (likely about +50% damage to ranged bow damage per level; to follow this pattern in a more balanced way let's make his ranged to 10-4 which apart of being closer of this pattern is less hostile for lv1 artilleries.
Elvish Hunters: To diferenciate them more to elvish fighters, change their mele to 4-5 and increase the price to 18g. Maybe make them 5 Movement only.
Elvish Trapper: Try bolas 6-2 and mele 5-5. He's alright at having 6 MP.
Elvish Prowler: Bolas 9-2; they don't need to be that strong offesnvely. 7-5 at mele.
Elvish Maiden: Increase her price to 21g (lv0 leadership); which is good at elvish adepts. Maybe 10% resistance to arcane.
Noble Ranger: In order to diferenciate them more to Rangers, try her ranged 5-5 bow (25 x 0.5% = 12.5 damage; 7-4 x 0.4 = 11.2 damage ; which means noble rangers bow might theorically deal more damage over targets with 60% defense or more than Rangers bow do). Also try her Arcane 10-2; her mele isn't that bad and bow isn't as well; give her a bonus 10% res to arcane.
Noble Avenger: At her use 7-5 bow (more damage than Avengers againist units at 60% defense or more than 10-4 without specials); 14-2 arcane ranged; 10% arcane resistance.
Elvish Noble: His health is a way too high (apart he moves 6); use health value of 34 and increase price to 20g because of his lv2 potential; he's not intended to be cost eficent at lv1; apart of being really good againist drakes (8-2 ranged over them; if dexterous 9-2) and we are not mentioning about undeads at all...
Elvish Spearman: judging his 10% physical resistances and 60% forest defense I would nerf his mele to 9-2 and his health to 33. Probably his ranged to 5-1; enters more in a defensive role.
Elvish Pikeman: the unit looks really really balanced, but he needs more xp because elvish Halberdier is a way better than human Halberdiers; xp of 90 (same than elvish hero needs to become to elvish champion)
Elvish Halberdier: This one now has 60% physical resistances (human one 40%), time for nerfs; because elves are more agile but less strong than humans are, gives a rasonable reasson to make his blade atack to 16-2.
Elvish Glavier: Actually overpowered for the defensive role (apart he's 60% forest defense with 40% physical resistances while defending? isn't that a way too much? obvious nerfs:
a) Let's make his mele 19-2
b) His resistances to 15% (30% while defending)
c) -5% to cold and fire (meh, it will not be notisable if any strike doesn't has more than 10 damage just takes +1 damage from any atack with more than 10 damage per strike)
d) Protection is actually being costless, because any alied unit next to him will take less damage, let's make that costs some health to Glavier; health to 64.
Elvish Shielder: Let's aplicate the resistances modifications on Glavier to Shielder and let's take make him 4 Movement; -1 ranged damage and 12-2 mele. Let's make him 90 xp too (same than Glaviers to lv3).
Elvish Line Holder: he's actually too overpowered... 60% def forest elf with 50% to blade/pierce/impact while defending nothing else to say, let's nerf:
a) Let's use the same resistances than on shielders and Glaviers but with 5% cold/fire resistance (instead of -5%)
b) giving him some more health to 72 health he will still be less durable than before because of the resistances nerfs.
c) his damages are too high... let's use 16-2 mele and 6-2 ranged (compared to Dwarvish Sentinel he's still really solid).
Pixie: Increase her xp to 28 (19.6 at 70% xp modifier).
Peri: Try health of 24 (+3 hp); because she needs more xp to get this level now. Maybe a lv2 with much xp costs to her.
Forest Spirit: Overperforming toughtness... let's just decrease her health amount to 38 (40% res to physical makes those 38 kinda high) and increase her damages to 6-5 because it's true that's low for a lv3 (likely 35 at day is comparable to 54 from the other option; but spirit can pick between dealing it from mele or ranged)
Will-o-Wisp: would change its cold/fire resistances to just 20% (dark adepts would still use shadow wave over those; (7 x 1.25 x 1.2) = 10.5 damage per strike of arcane at night; (10 x 1.25 x 0.8 = 10) = 10 damage per strike from cold strike at night). But from my sight, physical durability looks alright from the price (apart it has skirmisher which should make them considerably more expensive). Would increase
Great Wisp: on this one I would do some changes:
a) decreasing its health to 30
b) decreasing mele to 4-4, changing its ranged to 5-5 (because it's arcane)
c) at this one I see not that too many issues leaving it to +30% to cold/fire.
Radiant Wisp: I would do some changes to here as well:
a) decreasing health to 38
b) decreasing mele to 5-5
c) Reworking ranged to 7-5

And that's how did over my sylvan feedback.

[ForestDragon]

thanks again! yeah, sylvan/undead are kind of a mess when it comes to balance, well, good thing i have you commenting on this. expect these changes in the next update.

looking forward to your undead balance review (and i can sort of already guess that you will mention Slitherblade with his 9-6 melee, 48 hp, 9-3 whirlwind and good water movement/50% flat def.)

[Durin_the_great]

Hi ForestDragon.

I found this old goat rider sprite by Turin:



I cut the black background:



Maybe you could try to give it animation and add it? It's quality looks really good, only a weapon is needed.
Back with my idea:
Dwarvish tamer
Ram rider & Boar rider
Ram charriot & Heavy boar rider & Boar archer

[ForestDragon]

@Durin the great
your idea could be pretty good alongside the bear riders i already implemented, but not released, and since you are a big dwarf fan, here is a preview of the bear riders (the sprites are by Kwandulin, i remember you posting in his art thread, so you should know him):

bear_rider_line.png (32.24 KiB) Viewed 3658 times

the melee line currently doesn't have a lvl3, i could make him, i guess

totally unrelated to bEar riders, but related to bOar riders

boar.png (2.14 KiB) Viewed 3658 times

@IPS: here are a few responces i would like commenting about in more detail

Elvish Hunters: To diferenciate them more to elvish fighters, change their mele to 4-5 and increase the price to 18g. Maybe make them 5 Movement only.
Elvish Trapper: Try bolas 6-2 and mele 5-5. He's alright at having 6 MP.
Elvish Prowler: Bolas 9-2; they don't need to be that strong offesnvely. 7-5 at mele.

good idea, btw i could rename their melee attack from 'sword' to 'short sword' to give a reason for such a change for melee. also, i could give lvl2's ranged 'lesser marksman' ability, since he isn't improving too much from lvl1 in the weapon skill (lesser marksman would also make him a better support)

Elvish Halberdier: This one now has 60% physical resistances (human one 40%), time for nerfs; because elves are more agile but less strong than humans are, gives a rasonable reasson to make his blade atack to 16-2.

ummm, what are you talking about? he has, and had 20% resistance to blade, look at the code:

Code: Select all

    [resistance]
        blade=80
        pierce=80
        impact=80
    [/resistance]

the resistance values are put i way NOT how much resistance values are, but how much damage the unit TAKES, in unit description, it's supposed to be 20%. if you are claiming that he has 60% resistances, then i would like some evidence. about blade melee, i guess something like 13-3 or 12-3 would suit him, since he has 11-4 pierce melee already.
the rest are going to be added the way you proposd them

[IPS]

Ehm no, I was not talking that he had 60% to blade/pierce/impact res to each one, no, I was talking about he has +60% physical bonus resistances overall, while human one has just 40% because of all being to pierce but not to other physical atack types. Did I explain it clearly now?

Sometimes you can mention about the total of resistances to talk about a unit (for example you can say that Guru from EoMa has 240% bonus resistances because he has 50% to blade/pierce/impact and 30% to arcane/cold/fire). Talking in this way you can compare better the resistances of 2 units. Also I should have explained it a bit better.

[ForestDragon]

Ehm no, I was not talking that he had 60% to blade/pierce/impact res to each one, no, I was talking about he has +60% physical bonus resistances overall, while human one has just 40% because of all being to pierce but not to other physical atack types. Did I explain it clearly now?

Sometimes you can mention about the total of resistances to talk about a unit (for example you can say that Guru from EoMa has 240% bonus resistances because he has 50% to blade/pierce/impact and 30% to arcane/cold/fire). Talking in this way you can compare better the resistances of 2 units. Also I should have explained it a bit better.

ok, i guess i would nerf it to 15% each like glavier (45% total) this would seem more reasonable, i guess. yeah, having 15% physical resistance for elvish resistance-relying units (glavier/halberdier/shielder/ect.) would do a good job reflecting the fact that elves are not as strong as, say, humans or dwarves. looking forward to the undead review
EDIT: made a lvl3 for the melee line:

took a few things from the lvl4, and meshed it with the lvl2

bear_dragoon.png (6.01 KiB) Viewed 3628 times

[Durin_the_great]

The lv4 melee bear rider looks great! Not sure about the helmet of lv4 ranged. Still cool!
Since as far as I understood, Golden Age is like a set of all graphically good units and the factions themselves don't have to be perfectly balanced, all four dwarvish riders could join the club. I mean bear, boar, ram and gryphon.

[ForestDragon]

The lv4 melee bear rider looks great! Not sure about the helmet of lv4 ranged. Still cool!

yeah i agree with that, quite a decent amount of dwarf sprites used in TGA come from Kwandulin, including these bears, brewer line

Since as far as I understood, Golden Age is like a set of all graphically good units and the factions themselves don't have to be perfectly balanced

you got it right, The Golden Age is indeed meant as a high-quality mostly-mainline-faction-ish version of Ageless Era, since Ageless Era is kinda messy with the amount of factions it has (most of them are crap when it comes to artwork, except ones from Archaic Era), that's what inspired me to make TGA. about balance, well, it's not like the N1 priority (the N1 priority is adding as many new units as possible), but it's generally nice to have, IPS have been extremely helpful on the balancing matter.

all four dwarvish riders could join the club. I mean bear, boar, ram and gryphon.

yeah sure the more, the merrier

[Angelonius]

The Bear Rider line looks awesome.

[Durin_the_great]

Finished ramrider:

[ForestDragon]

Finished ramrider:

i think the sprite is too low quality for me. Archaic Era has pretty good orcish ram riders, if i or you would remove the orc and replace him with a dwarf, it would suit him pretty nicely

The Bear Rider line looks awesome.

you should tell those compliments to Kwandulin, he made them

[Bitron]

Finished ramrider:

i think the sprite is too low quality for me. Archaic Era has pretty good orcish ram riders, if i or you would remove the orc and replace him with a dwarf, it would suit him pretty nicely

too low quality? the ram looks just fine for me, ass well as the dwarf.. whats the matter with this sprite?

[ForestDragon]

too low quality? the ram looks just fine for me, ass well as the dwarf.. whats the matter with this sprite?

well, ram looks somewhat ok, but i am more concerned about the dwarf, his headwear looks like a modern-ish, i don't know how to put it. you see, when it comes to riders, the standards sky-rocketed in 1.12, due to the need to increase the size of mounts (look at the bear rider line, see the quality difference). it's not too much about quality, but more of the style, i don't know how to put it.

[Eagle_11]

hiya,
just wanted to point out that abilities_AoT.cfg and AofT_abilities.cfg are the same thing.

[Bitron]

well, ram looks somewhat ok, but i am more concerned about the dwarf, his headwear looks like a modern-ish, i don't know how to put it. you see, when it comes to riders, the standards sky-rocketed in 1.12, due to the need to increase the size of mounts (look at the bear rider line, see the quality difference). it's not too much about quality, but more of the style, i don't know how to put it.

Well okay, thats a different thing.

In addition, i wanted to mention that the dwarves faction-image is missing.