It's easy mode if you as the player pick either civ because you can BUY WHOLE ARMIES with influence! 75 influence for a full 4 man horde army? YES PLEASE, EVERY TURN!? Why not?
1. They need to scale with how many there are in the army, OR, they should only be able to be bought ONE at a time so there's an actual influence cost.
2. They should be WAY more expensive.
It's borderline rage quitting annoying to have to deal with the dumb AI throwing whole stacks at you EVERY turn because they're so damn CHEAP. Solution, either make the horde units cost SIGNIFICANTLY more influence OR make them start as 1 unit and actually FORCE them to use their BROKEN GROWTH mechanic. Seriously, how did these units make it through like 2 hours of playtesting?
Also while your at it make the damn war support gain per unit, I should get more for wiping out multiple stacks of units in one battle for god's sake.
The reason why I mentioned this is because while I absolutely support the devs for this amazing game (and what can it be), I'm just simply baffled why in 8 months barely if anything was done on this.
I personally think that the fact that they can amass a large number of these units is not a problem itself (they are horde for a reason), but that they are also superstrong.
They
1. can move a lot
2. ignore ZOC
3. can move even after attacking
4. have decent base combat strength, and get +3 from the trait
5. they do a lot of damage
6. they can TAKE a lot of damage - and this is what is utterly ridicolous. I attack with my melee unit, and it takes equal or more damage from them...
If they would be at least vulnerable to attacks, or at least to melee (even spearmen have no chance) or something, or can't retaliate, that would be a good start imo. I really don't understand why would you pay to the spiffing brit to break your game and then throw his feedback out on the window.
There is probably a mile long list of bugs and features they want to address, and it's just a matter of where this specific issue is on that list that is the reason it's still present.
• you can spawn units only from Outposts, and they also cost population on top of Influence;
• existing cities make units with industry and population (old-fashioned way)
• you can't make cities, you can't attach (nor re-attach) outposts to cities, i.e. outposts are only used to spawn horde
As such, Horde Mechanic has fair traid-offs, though it is a lot easier to gain population on outposts (due to buyout of Harbors and Extractors), then it is on cities. It could be better to increase pop cost to 2 per Horde unit, to limit spawn spam. No reason to increase Influence cost, as Population is the main limiting factor, it scales with outpost number.
As for units themselves, their free movement is countered by inability to climb walls, so only their unusually high Strength becomes an issue. I think their power should come only from movement and sheer numbers, rather then individual unit Strength. Strength should not be nerfed much though, as spearman/pikeman already counter Horde units almost enough in that regard.
They were already nerfed massively comparing to their OpenDev version, they used to have two attacks and full range (not to mention walls not being able to stop cavalry, or any unit for that matter).
The issue with nomads is that it's all those cultures have, they can't attach their territories and actually taking cities that are developed is not something the horde units are particularly good at. Huns can still be a major problem, but Mongols aren't even that impressive unless you go from Huns to them, but going that way is putting serious obstacle in way of your whole economy. At this point they're, imo, not even impressive enough to seriously consider them unless your immediate neighbour is way ahead of you and needs to be held back with violence.
I'll hand it to the developers, they created a game entity that pretty much accurately summarizes the real-world nuisance value of its historic archetype. The Hordes did destroy almost all the cultures that stood against them and seemed unstoppable until they were finally defeated by - you got it - fortified cities. Their inclusion in this game with these features is appropriate, if annoying.
I wonder if fortifications matter that much to the Huns/Mongols either though. Siege Tactics doesn't take long to get to in Classical, and ime Ballistae are plenty good at destroying walls and units.
(Battering Rams do destroy walls but they're melee only, can't hit actual units, and have fairly poopy stats.)
(Going from Ballistae to Trebuchets is not as big a jump as going from Rams to Ballistae.)
I personally don't think they are broken. Huns, Mongols and also Sovets have their own interesting and unique mechanics, moreover, I believe that it is possible to modify other cultures in this direction, adding something unique to each : )
I'll hand it to the developers, they created a game entity that pretty much accurately summarizes the real-world nuisance value of its historic archetype. The Hordes did destroy almost all the cultures that stood against them and seemed unstoppable until they were finally defeated by - you got it - fortified cities. Their inclusion in this game with these features is appropriate, if annoying.
This is how I feel about it too. Can't really complain if that's what happened in history.
As far as game mechanics go, they're actually two of the few cultures that are truly asymmetric - something that Amplitude does very well in other games. It's hard to do asymmetric in a historically based game, because aferall... we're all human.
I'm not saying they should change the way the Huns or Mongols work I'm saying it's just a nuisance when the AI uses them. They don't mass attack, they're not like an existential threat in the AI hands like they are for a human player. It's just a tedious thing to have to micro a long battle EVERY turn for like almost an era and a half if they're your neighbor. I'm fine with the units mechanics and stats I just think they're way to cheap, 75 inluence for a 4 man army in classical is silly, you can spam like 6 full armies in one turn if you have a decent influence producing city in the ancient era and this is exactly what the AI does until they run out of pop, which takes forever on the higher difficulties cuz of the bonus to X they get, and then the AI will mass produce them forever even after they tech up and just keep "throwing" them at you. It's an easy way to level units though I guess? Also I feel like the outposts not being able to be converted to cities is actually a bonus, you just go around "ah conquerin" and then when you era up you have your choice of what to turn into cities or attach for basically no cost. And if a civ on another continent from yours picks them that basically guarantees they take that continent because the AI is to stupid to put archers in their cities and just attacks the horde units from INSIDE the walls till all their conscripts die, It's kinda funny to watch actually.
I like to play them alot because they're a free era to basically solidify your control over whatever continent you started on and never look back and they're really the only civ that ACTUALLY PLAYS different. They need to be forced to use their growth mechanic through ransacking, I feel this would solve the issue. They shouldn't be able to just be bought at whatever your unit cap slots are unless you build them in a city for production. And as far as it costing population, it seems to be a non issue if you just buy them from outposts and then wait a few turns to buy more. I like their unique playstyle I just feel it needs some tweaks. I feel bellum_wst on the whole "modify other cultures in this direction, adding something unique to each : )" line of thought. I posted as such in my other post towards the end with ideas on how it could be done too. The other civs just feel so bland compared to the Horde ones. I also think the later eras need to be extended somehow, I'm getting tired of winning with a Mars Colony when I don't even have electricity and still have cannon elephants. Science per turn needs to scale back as you era up because spamming science districts is stupid easy, maybe a district cap per pop in each city?
The war support really needs to reflect per unit killed not just a flat number too, that whole system I feel will get some loving from the devs in some updates. I hated it at first but after figuring out how to game it it's actually kinda a fun mini game kinda. I just wish vassalizing was cheaper. Like oh hey give me all these cities which is WAY cheaper in the resolution screen, or idk just be my vassal and you can haz yourz stuffz back? I feel it should be the cheaper alternative because they can just break it later.
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