[Age 359] New Unit Levels, Africa Balance, City Centre Layout

[Tiralan]

Dear Players,

For coming age we announce the following:

New Unit Levels:

Elite and Legendary have been added as levels to the Tier3 units. This is the first part of extending the ranking system and creating more ranks in the endgame. This is not a balance measure we are working on as priority, but in the future it opens more to have a different meta in endgame/endranks. For now, Tier3 units will have two additional levels, and they will provide Free (read: no extra auth cost) additional Strength and Ranged Strength to your units. This will make your army harder to be defeated by lower ranked pvpers and will protect your army a little bit more after you clicked so many times for it . Both tiers add 5% on those two stats, you can check it out in the reference guide. HP and Auth are untouched intentionally. We don't want looping and for auth changes that would have to come with a whole new balancepatch, also including new commander-auths. Thats not the case as this very moment.

In short: two new levels, adds (ranged) strength for free to highranks.


Africa Unit Changes

I listened to the suggestions posted in the balance section of the forum, and these are the changes for coming age:

1) Hirelings +3hp - to have a bit more answer to the updated training system

2) Turkana Shieldmasters +15hp +10auth - this makes them a little bit templar alike, but then in African terms. They will be very bulky, but you will also have about 3 less of them now.

3) Freefighters +6hp +2auth - The suggestion on the forum hinted to give them more hp per auth and I tried a few setups, ended up with this. It will cost you about 5-6 units, but you end up with more hp after all for your whole army.

4) Halbediers +2str - To give them a bit more chance to take down elephants, amongst other cav armies.


City Centre Layout

In order to make the city centre more and more mobile friendly, we are always looking to improve functionality vs the looks of it. This time the looks of it got enhanced by city-icons to easily show in what type of city you are. Expect more frontend changes like this to drip in one at a time.


Tournament joining mess

This fix is not ready yet, but you can expect it next age, I suppose. We have been working on a change to the mechanics of it. We first want to setup a basic, bugfree tournament, and then its still up to the players what you want to do with the function as a whole. Nuvelle opened a topic about it on the forums, there will be a dev-voicemeeting about tournaments/heroes in the near future, so be aware that work is really been put into this side of the game, it was about time, but still .


Then some minor things:
- Timelapse video being improved
- Terrainbonus showing consistent over all locations it shows
- Resolved the bug where the injury camp showed empty on its first load
- Hero medals are handed out to players who lost their nobility before the age end

[Fiskerman]

Cool changes, keep up the great work!!

[spyke]

While training, injured units dont pop up in the injured camp anymore (but in hospital they do).
Was this changed or just a bug ?

Thank you

[Tiralan]

While training, injured units dont pop up in the injured camp anymore (but in hospital they do).
Was this changed or just a bug ?

Thank you

Thats a caching issue. The page got changed, ctrl-f5 and it should be fixed.

[Mysterious]

thx for the unit buffs! Let's see how that works out

[Hans]

quick observation. those "low" ranked pvpers, probably joined alot of SFs...

conclusion: those pvpers will have elite and legendary units BEFORE the rankers get close to them...

edit: + since you only add str and rstr those pvpers will crush even more

[Nuvelle]

quick observation. those "low" ranked pvpers, probably joined alot of SFs...

conclusion: those pvpers will have elite and legendary units BEFORE the rankers get close to them...

edit: + since you only add str and rstr those pvpers will crush even more

Chances are the rankers are also joining lots of SFs, as well as clicking for XP where the PVPers are not.

I would expect the rankers to be having the higher tier units (110K and 150K unit EXP) easier than you make out.

[Sayonara]

Nice updates. Am curious about the new T3 ranks.

As for the city update ... a nice start. I want to suggest a minor change to that.

You now put citytype, cityname, terraintype in 4 rows. I very much would like those in ONE row. Just to have a better look at HC message and the first line(s) of commanders. This last depending on the creativity of some HC members putting ugly pictures in HC message .

[Tiralan]

I heard suggestions to increase the promotion exps to elite/legendary a bit, as they are obtainable a bit too fast into count ranking?
Its meant as a endgame reward for marqs, however, somebody with trainer pumped can get it earlier ofcourse.

Thoughts?

Do you feel differences with stronger units on marqs?

[Fiskerman]

I like the fact elite and legend units give more rating for ranking armies and therefor the needed exp should be higher indeed.

Maybe half way to marq you get around elite and then when you hit marq plus a little then you hit legend.

[Frans]

With normal trainer (15-20) and lots of SFs, you can be full elites on baron (due to ranking with sfs, this will be near the later stage of the age)

If it's meant for late game marq, definitely increase promo xp.
I'd suggest something like elite 150-200k, legendary 400k. With even higher promo xp, it might even make boosting trainer skill more interesting at late game, though that's a whole different balancing act ofc.

[Mysterious]

I had almost full Elites by the end of Baron. Unit/hero exp gained from SFs/PvP is still absolutely rigged. This has been the case ever since the code rework that happened early 2019 (!). Exp gains for units compared to commander exp is still way too high for non-training battles.

One can neglect this problem by increasing the promotion exp of Elite/Legendary units... or one can fix the actual problem and decrease unit exp gained from non-training battles.

There was a certain logic to T1 units at blue ranks, T2 units at green ranks and T3 units at red ranks before the code rework. With the current rigged exp gains, one can have a VM army by green and a Baron army by Marshall. And with the new unit levels PvPers now have a Marq army by Baron? That's ridiculous. This way the Reference guide is not even correct anymore, because most people are having Vet T3s by Marshall.

[Tiralan]

We just changed all your rigged observations in age 360.

With the exp changes we implemented, I want to see how that progresses, in regards to elite/legendary units.
IF they are still obtainable too easy,then i will set those bars higher. But, step by step

[Mysterious]

Finally! That's great. Thx