



Lieutenant-General





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Joined: 30-October 03



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Member No.: 549





Lieutenant-GeneralGroup: StaffPosts: 3,248AOM Replays: 204 Submissions:Joined: 30-October 03From: ?Member No.: 549













+Spoiler+ -Spoiler-

Previous Voobly Balance Patch changes that have been removed:





The Bow of Artemis relic now affects Throwing Axemen and all ranged myth units dealing pierce damage.

The Toothed Arrows and Trios Bow relics now affect Throwing Axemen.



In a previous patch we imitated EE and made several of the relics affect more units, most noticeably the throwing axemen. These changes have been removed, mainly because they go against the general theme of the relic (a bow relic affecting throwing axemen?) and also because we boosted the axemen outside of these relics.



The Scarab Pendant relic now affects Fire Siphons.



Similar to above, having the Scarab Pendant affect Fire Siphons went against its general theme. The Fire Siphon has also received some huge boosts too, making the boosts, in combination with this relic (see below), crazy OP.



Ulfsarks, Throwing Axemen, and Huskarl build town centers 10% faster.



The main reason this was removed was because it really didn't do anything. When we looked into the build rate formula (which is parabolic), a 10% faster speed on paper wasn't actually 10% faster. Egyptian villagers, for example, have almost a 20% slower settlement build rate, but once the number of villagers get to around 5 or 6, the difference in build speed with other civs was only about 3-4 seconds (not even close to 20% slower). Therefore, this change was removed due to the fact that it didn't really do anything, and one of the goals of this patch was to remove/modify pointless changes.



Shifting Sands' potential on enemy military units reduced by 50%.



This change was originally crafted back in the original balance patch, as a way to prevent Egyptians from shifting enemy units on top of Alfheim cliffs. Well, Alfheim cliffs can no longer be shifted upon, so that kind of made this change rather pointless. Additionally, with all of the nerfs to Shifting Sands, Shifting Sands has become a shell of its former self, with only one use (moving own army). Removing this change returns a little flexibility to the god power.



The spiders from Spider Lair are now able to capture Atlantean heroes, Hersir, Priests, and Archaic Greek heroes.



This change was intended to boost the Spider Lair (which it did), but the mechanics of it were just weird, and it created alot of confusion - so it has been removed.



Heka Gigantes' hack and pierce armor increased to 60% (from 44%).



A few of the patches saw a focus on improving Atlantean late-game, which was needed. However, this change was pretty a little excessive; the Heka Gigantes, at 60/60 armor, were tough to kill, and, when combined with Vortex, were absolutely destroying bases. At 44/44 they're still good, but a little easier to defend against.



Contarius and Contarius Hero receive +1 attack.



With all of the boosts, the Contarius went from being un-used to doing well in almost every situation. There's nothing wrong with a strong unit, but a unit shouldn't perform well against almost everything. The main issue was was the was the +1 attack, which is actually lot more than just +1, when you consider it also makes every attack upgrade 10% stronger.



Chaos recharge time decreased from 240 to 180.



Chaos went from being an underwhelming GP to a pretty strong one, due to it affecting 4 units and 1 myth every time. When used every 3 minutes, the GP just never seemed to go away, so the recharge time was returned to the original length.



Gemino now also gives Satyr +2 range.

Satyr's special recharge time decreased to 16 from 20.



Satyr received a number of boosts, all of which combined created an absolute monster. These two were boosts that did not need to exist.



Previous Voobly Balance Patch changes that have been modified:



Scylla favor cost increased from 15 to 20 favor. training time increased from 5 to 15 seconds.



Scylla have mostly disappeared from the waters of Age of Mythology - the first portion of this nerf was needed, the second was probably a bit too much. Our goal is not to remove strong strategies/units, but to moderate them.



Polyphemus receives +175% +300% damage vs buildings.



Polyphemus as a myth-fighting unit is fairly broken (in an useless way) because he's generally just too big to maneuver his way to myth units, and then when he does get there, his special attack whacks the myth unit farther away. The goal of this change was to give Polyphemus an effective secondary (or primary) use, as a siege unit. However, the previous damage bonus just wasn't high enough, due to the fact he does hack damage, so we've pushed it a little higher to improve his building-smashing abilities.



Axe of Muspell's favor cost reduced to 5 (from 10). and grants +1 range to Throwing Axeman.

Heavy Infantry gives Throwing Axemen +1 range. Throwing Axemen receive +1 range from each infantry line upgrade.



One good way to improve the throwing axeman was to give him more range. We already had him getting +2 range, through Muspell and Heavy Infantry. However, when not facing flying units, the Muspell technology just wasn't worth it for the +1 range. Therefore, we've moved that range to Medium Infantry, and then also added an additonal +1 range into Champion Infantry (so throwing axemen now get +3 range). This concept isn't new as Turma also receive increased range from Champion Archers, so the axemen change blended in well with an existing concept.



Fenris Wolf's pack bonus increased to 20% 16% (from 15%).



Previously, Tyr and the Fenris Wolf were underused, so a boost to the wolf seemed to be pretty straightforward.nHowever, improving the wolf's pack boost had much greater effects than anticipated, for which I will take the blame because I erroneously thought the maximum number of wolves in a pack was 5 (not true). Hence, while a boost of 5% seems small, when the pack consisted, for example, of 8 wolves, the 5% boost became a 40% boost. This led to vast packs of wolves terrorizing early Mythic age, massacring villagers, destroying town centers, and then running to the other side of the map seemingly in a few seconds. With a 1% boost, we hope the wolves in large packs will still be good (and effective), but not to the extent where they can't be countered.



Loki's Hersir speed boost is no longer automatic, but is now an effect of his unique technology Eyes in the Forest.

Loki's Hersir automatic speed boost is mostly returned, to .3. Hall of Thanes now affects Loki Hersir by .8 (decreased from 1.1). Eyes in the Forest still provides a .4 boost.



To clarify, this is a boost to all of Loki. What this does is make Hersir faster a little bit earlier in the game, but once Hall of Thanes is researched, they are in the same spot they were in 1.05. Researching Eyes in the Forest then improves them to maximum speed. So essentially, when going Forseti, this means that Hersir now have +.3 speed a few minutes earlier than in 1.05. However, the focus of this change is not to slightly improve Forseti, but to improve Heimdall. Heimdall Hersir can now achieve .3 additional speed than ever could before, by researching Eyes in the Forest. The 1.05 speed nerf unfairly nerfed Heimdall (already an underused god), and basically made him non-existent. This modification should make Heimdall more attractive (I don't mean physically), by giving Hersir just over 4.9 speed.



Gaia's economy technologies (including fishing ship upgrades) can now be researched in any age, similar to how the Thor armory works.



Gaia needed some boosts, obviously, but moving the fishing ship upgrades up an age (or two) was just a little over top, resulting in some crazy economic boosts on team water maps.



Satyr's base attack increased from 12 to 22 20. Satyr's special attack is increased from 22 to 27. The special also does splash damage (similar to the Manticore) , but in a much smaller area (specifically, the splash damage area was cut in half from the previous patch).



A continuation of the needed Satyr nerf. Satyr needed help (obviously), but 1.05 gave them way too much help. Their original 12 base attack was simply awful for a heroic myth unit, so it still needs the boost, albeit not quite as high. The special attack was the main problem, in that a few Satyrs could destroy a squad of villies (or army) with one set of specials. The special does need splash damage, because otherwise it's useless, due to how the game treats multiple-projectile attacks (one projectile almost always misses except at no range, sometimes 2 miss). The issue with the special was two-fold, too high of attack, and too large of an area of attack; thus, along with the damage reduction, the area has also been reduced, by half. Also just a quick explanation of splash damage; splash damage does not have the same amount of damage in the entire area, rather, the splash damage is maxiumum at the center, but just above 0 at the very edge. Hence, there is a very quick drop-off from the center (22) to the edge (0).Thus, Satyr will still punish very tightly-packed units, but not groups that are spread out.



New Balance Changes:



Maps updated to be more streamlined, less buggy, and have more varied town center placement.



When you play the updated maps, you may not notice any immediate changes, but they do look alot more like the original maps. Of all the maps, team game Marsh probably has the greatest change. 1.05 marsh (and most of the other patch iterations) was pretty open, with not alot of water. 2.0 sees alot of the water return, meaning, like in the original version, there could be pretty long, unbroken expanses of water. Settlements, too, were updated to have more varied (yet balanced) positions, which, again, is a return to the original maps. The goal of these maps is for them to be balanced, yet to look and play more traditionally.



The Scarab Pendant Relic's effect on the Portable Ram, the Helepolis, and the Siege Tower has been reduced to +20% (from +100%).



The Scarab Pendant was the most powerful relic in the game, yet it escaped notice for a long time. No other relic even comes close to doubling attack, and in an Eggy v Eggy battle, the player with x2 siege tower attack had a huge advantage; an advantage far greater than what a relic should give. This change makes the siege unit boost equivalent to the relic's Scarab/Behemoth boost. Scarab/Behemoth, without the relic, have a x5 attack vs building, this relic gives them x6 (+20%).



Tusk of the Iron Boar relic now affects Contarius Hero (before it affected Contarius, but not the hero).



This is more of a bug/consistency change, in that the relic was labeled as affecting all cavalry, but it didn't effect the Hero Contarius.



Gastraphetes wood cost reduced by 20, to 100 (from 120).



Gastraphetes is an interesting unit, but a look at its cost (and pop) effectiveness showed that it was pretty awful. What makes Gastraphetes unique is that they have a supposed double-function (vs units and vs buildings), but in reality, they don't have a double function. Gastraphetes are bad against units, due to their 3-second fire rate. The extended fire rate really hurts the Gastraphetes, due to how ranged units work in AoM. In AoM, when ranged units fire at long range (like the Gastraphetes), their first arrow misses at very high percentage. Provided the ranged unit does not move, their second shot then misses at a lower percentage (maybe 40%, or a little lower), and then, as I recall, every arrow hits after that, UNLESS the ranged unit has to move (in which case the entire process is reset). Therefore, because of the 3-second fire rate, each shot of the Gastraphetes is much more important. But, the same ranged rules apply, so now if the Gast misses its first shot, it's the equivalent to missing 3 shots. The Gastraphetes can then miss its 2nd shot (equivalent of 6). To make a long story short, this means that the Gastraphetes does really poorly against units, much worse than the Toxotes, which has a much faster fire rate. Therefore, the Gast's only real purpose is to attack buildings, but again, it was so much less cost-effective than the other Greek choices. Now granted, the Gast is more flexible than Greek siege units, which helps, but it was still way too expensive. Hopefully this buff will help the Gast out a bit.



Slingers receive +1 range with Medium Slingers.

Axemen receive +10% pierce armor.



Historically, Egyptian classical fight has never been very good, worse than Greek and Atlantean, but about equal to Norse. That wasn't really an issue before, because Egyptian was super strong late-game. With the various nerfs to Egyptian, and boosts to most of the other civs, Egyptian doesn't have the same late-game superiority. I know some people like to blather about the patch's supposed Egyptian-bias, but a neutral observer without agenda will see that simply isn't true. Hence, Egyptian Classical age could use `a few small boosts, which these are. The Slinger range goes from 17 to 18 (about a 6% range boost), and the boost is embedded in Medium Slinger, which means the boost won't apply to the basic semi-fh, during which Egyptians normally don't get the Medium Slinger upgrade. The Axeman boost is also fairly small, in-game it means it takes one more turma/toxote shot to kill them. When looking at Egyptian vs Norse, the Axemen pierce has no real effect, and the slinger range boost is consistent with the throwing axemen range boost.



Lance of Stone now gives Contarius +150% attack vs buildings. (decreased from +200%).



We now get to the 3rd main problem with 1.05, Contarius vs buildings. Pre-patch, this tech was rarely used, simply because of the crazy cost of the Contarius hero, combined with their very poor HP/armor. With boosts to all of the above, this technology reared its ugly head and showed itself for the monster that it really was. While sure, we could revert all of the boosts to the Contarius, but that just means they'd fade back into nothing again. We'd rather avoid that, because it's nice to see Contarius - just not when they are running rampant across the map. Mathematically, this change, combined with the -1 attack, is a 24.24% damage nerf vs buildings, from 1.05. 25 seconds to kill a town center is now just over 31. That extra 6 seconds is big; 6 more seconds to repair and 6 more seconds to kill the Contarius. The hope is that Contarius building raids will still exist, but at a greater cost to the Atlantean/Oranos. Also, as a sidenote, research Masons. Contarius does hack damage. Masons gives hack armor.



Automaton receive +10% pierce armor.

Volcanic Forge's cost changed from 200F 50G 18Favor to 200G 15Favor.



Leto still struggles, and the removal of Spider Lair vs Heroes won't help. Automaton are actually a decent unit, and with their increased speed from an earlier version, they aren't bad at all, but they still die really fast to ranged heroes. Against Egyptian they are pretty useless, so hopefully the extra pierce armor will help. Similarly, Volcanic Forge improves Automaton pierce armor, and, due to a previous boost, also improves all human unit's pierce armor. But with a 200F/50G/18F cost, the technology just wasnt practical in Classical Age. The cheaper cost will hopefully result in the technology being useful earlier in the game.

Previous Voobly Balance Patch changes that have been removed:In a previous patch we imitated EE and made several of the relics affect more units, most noticeably the throwing axemen. These changes have been removed, mainly because they go against the general theme of the relic (a bow relic affecting throwing axemen?) and also because we boosted the axemen outside of these relics.Similar to above, having the Scarab Pendant affect Fire Siphons went against its general theme. The Fire Siphon has also received some huge boosts too, making the boosts, in combination with this relic (see below), crazy OP.The main reason this was removed was because it really didn't do anything. When we looked into the build rate formula (which is parabolic), a 10% faster speed on paper wasn't actually 10% faster. Egyptian villagers, for example, have almost a 20% slower settlement build rate, but once the number of villagers get to around 5 or 6, the difference in build speed with other civs was only about 3-4 seconds (not even close to 20% slower). Therefore, this change was removed due to the fact that it didn't really do anything, and one of the goals of this patch was to remove/modify pointless changes.This change was originally crafted back in the original balance patch, as a way to prevent Egyptians from shifting enemy units on top of Alfheim cliffs. Well, Alfheim cliffs can no longer be shifted upon, so that kind of made this change rather pointless. Additionally, with all of the nerfs to Shifting Sands, Shifting Sands has become a shell of its former self, with only one use (moving own army). Removing this change returns a little flexibility to the god power.This change was intended to boost the Spider Lair (which it did), but the mechanics of it were just weird, and it created alot of confusion - so it has been removed.A few of the patches saw a focus on improving Atlantean late-game, which was needed. However, this change was pretty a little excessive; the Heka Gigantes, at 60/60 armor, were tough to kill, and, when combined with Vortex, were absolutely destroying bases. At 44/44 they're still good, but a little easier to defend against.With all of the boosts, the Contarius went from being un-used to doing well in almost every situation. There's nothing wrong with a strong unit, but a unit shouldn't perform well against almost everything. The main issue was was the was the +1 attack, which is actually lot more than just +1, when you consider it also makes every attack upgrade 10% stronger.Chaos went from being an underwhelming GP to a pretty strong one, due to it affecting 4 units and 1 myth every time. When used every 3 minutes, the GP just never seemed to go away, so the recharge time was returned to the original length.Satyr received a number of boosts, all of which combined created an absolute monster. These two were boosts that did not need to exist.Previous Voobly Balance Patch changes that have been modified:Scylla have mostly disappeared from the waters of Age of Mythology - the first portion of this nerf was needed, the second was probably a bit too much. Our goal is not to remove strong strategies/units, but to moderate them.Polyphemus as a myth-fighting unit is fairly broken (in an useless way) because he's generally just too big to maneuver his way to myth units, and then when he does get there, his special attack whacks the myth unit farther away. The goal of this change was to give Polyphemus an effective secondary (or primary) use, as a siege unit. However, the previous damage bonus just wasn't high enough, due to the fact he does hack damage, so we've pushed it a little higher to improve his building-smashing abilities.One good way to improve the throwing axeman was to give him more range. We already had him getting +2 range, through Muspell and Heavy Infantry. However, when not facing flying units, the Muspell technology just wasn't worth it for the +1 range. Therefore, we've moved that range to Medium Infantry, and then also added an additonal +1 range into Champion Infantry (so throwing axemen now get +3 range). This concept isn't new as Turma also receive increased range from Champion Archers, so the axemen change blended in well with an existing concept.Previously, Tyr and the Fenris Wolf were underused, so a boost to the wolf seemed to be pretty straightforward.nHowever, improving the wolf's pack boost had much greater effects than anticipated, for which I will take the blame because I erroneously thought the maximum number of wolves in a pack was 5 (not true). Hence, while a boost of 5% seems small, when the pack consisted, for example, of 8 wolves, the 5% boost became a 40% boost. This led to vast packs of wolves terrorizing early Mythic age, massacring villagers, destroying town centers, and then running to the other side of the map seemingly in a few seconds. With a 1% boost, we hope the wolves in large packs will still be good (and effective), but not to the extent where they can't be countered.To clarify, this is a boost to all of Loki. What this does is make Hersir faster a little bit earlier in the game, but once Hall of Thanes is researched, they are in the same spot they were in 1.05. Researching Eyes in the Forest then improves them to maximum speed. So essentially, when going Forseti, this means that Hersir now have +.3 speed a few minutes earlier than in 1.05. However, the focus of this change is not to slightly improve Forseti, but to improve Heimdall. Heimdall Hersir can now achieve .3 additional speed than ever could before, by researching Eyes in the Forest. The 1.05 speed nerf unfairly nerfed Heimdall (already an underused god), and basically made him non-existent. This modification should make Heimdall more attractive (I don't mean physically), by giving Hersir just over 4.9 speed.Gaia needed some boosts, obviously, but moving the fishing ship upgrades up an age (or two) was just a little over top, resulting in some crazy economic boosts on team water maps.A continuation of the needed Satyr nerf. Satyr needed help (obviously), but 1.05 gave them way too much help. Their original 12 base attack was simply awful for a heroic myth unit, so it still needs the boost, albeit not quite as high. The special attack was the main problem, in that a few Satyrs could destroy a squad of villies (or army) with one set of specials. The special does need splash damage, because otherwise it's useless, due to how the game treats multiple-projectile attacks (one projectile almost always misses except at no range, sometimes 2 miss). The issue with the special was two-fold, too high of attack, and too large of an area of attack; thus, along with the damage reduction, the area has also been reduced, by half. Also just a quick explanation of splash damage; splash damage does not have the same amount of damage in the entire area, rather, the splash damage is maxiumum at the center, but just above 0 at the very edge. Hence, there is a very quick drop-off from the center (22) to the edge (0).Thus, Satyr will still punish very tightly-packed units, but not groups that are spread out.New Balance Changes:When you play the updated maps, you may not notice any immediate changes, but they do look alot more like the original maps. Of all the maps, team game Marsh probably has the greatest change. 1.05 marsh (and most of the other patch iterations) was pretty open, with not alot of water. 2.0 sees alot of the water return, meaning, like in the original version, there could be pretty long, unbroken expanses of water. Settlements, too, were updated to have more varied (yet balanced) positions, which, again, is a return to the original maps. The goal of these maps is for them to be balanced, yet to look and play more traditionally.The Scarab Pendant was the most powerful relic in the game, yet it escaped notice for a long time. No other relic even comes close to doubling attack, and in an Eggy v Eggy battle, the player with x2 siege tower attack had a huge advantage; an advantage far greater than what a relic should give. This change makes the siege unit boost equivalent to the relic's Scarab/Behemoth boost. Scarab/Behemoth, without the relic, have a x5 attack vs building, this relic gives them x6 (+20%).This is more of a bug/consistency change, in that the relic was labeled as affecting all cavalry, but it didn't effect the Hero Contarius.Gastraphetes is an interesting unit, but a look at its cost (and pop) effectiveness showed that it was pretty awful. What makes Gastraphetes unique is that they have a supposed double-function (vs units and vs buildings), but in reality, they don't have a double function. Gastraphetes are bad against units, due to their 3-second fire rate. The extended fire rate really hurts the Gastraphetes, due to how ranged units work in AoM. In AoM, when ranged units fire at long range (like the Gastraphetes), their first arrow misses at very high percentage. Provided the ranged unit does not move, their second shot then misses at a lower percentage (maybe 40%, or a little lower), and then, as I recall, every arrow hits after that, UNLESS the ranged unit has to move (in which case the entire process is reset). Therefore, because of the 3-second fire rate, each shot of the Gastraphetes is much more important. But, the same ranged rules apply, so now if the Gast misses its first shot, it's the equivalent to missing 3 shots. The Gastraphetes can then miss its 2nd shot (equivalent of 6). To make a long story short, this means that the Gastraphetes does really poorly against units, much worse than the Toxotes, which has a much faster fire rate. Therefore, the Gast's only real purpose is to attack buildings, but again, it was so much less cost-effective than the other Greek choices. Now granted, the Gast is more flexible than Greek siege units, which helps, but it was still way too expensive. Hopefully this buff will help the Gast out a bit.Historically, Egyptian classical fight has never been very good, worse than Greek and Atlantean, but about equal to Norse. That wasn't really an issue before, because Egyptian was super strong late-game. With the various nerfs to Egyptian, and boosts to most of the other civs, Egyptian doesn't have the same late-game superiority. I know some people like to blather about the patch's supposed Egyptian-bias, but a neutral observer without agenda will see that simply isn't true. Hence, Egyptian Classical age could use `a fewboosts, which these are. The Slinger range goes from 17 to 18 (about a 6% range boost), and the boost is embedded in Medium Slinger, which means the boost won't apply to the basic semi-fh, during which Egyptians normally don't get the Medium Slinger upgrade. The Axeman boost is also fairly small, in-game it means it takes one more turma/toxote shot to kill them. When looking at Egyptian vs Norse, the Axemen pierce has no real effect, and the slinger range boost is consistent with the throwing axemen range boost.We now get to the 3rd main problem with 1.05, Contarius vs buildings. Pre-patch, this tech was rarely used, simply because of the crazy cost of the Contarius hero, combined with their very poor HP/armor. With boosts to all of the above, this technology reared its ugly head and showed itself for the monster that it really was. While sure, we could revert all of the boosts to the Contarius, but that just means they'd fade back into nothing again. We'd rather avoid that, because it's nice to see Contarius - just not when they are running rampant across the map. Mathematically, this change, combined with the -1 attack, is a 24.24% damage nerf vs buildings, from 1.05. 25 seconds to kill a town center is now just over 31. That extra 6 seconds is big; 6 more seconds to repair and 6 more seconds to kill the Contarius. The hope is that Contarius building raids will still exist, but at a greater cost to the Atlantean/Oranos. Also, as a sidenote, research Masons. Contarius does hack damage. Masons gives hack armor.Leto still struggles, and the removal of Spider Lair vs Heroes won't help. Automaton are actually a decent unit, and with their increased speed from an earlier version, they aren't bad at all, but they still die really fast to ranged heroes. Against Egyptian they are pretty useless, so hopefully the extra pierce armor will help. Similarly, Volcanic Forge improves Automaton pierce armor, and, due to a previous boost, also improves all human unit's pierce armor. But with a 200F/50G/18F cost, the technology just wasnt practical in Classical Age. The cheaper cost will hopefully result in the technology being useful earlier in the game. Change-by-change analysis:

