Weak factions?

[ElimiNator]

I have played a bunch of games against Egypt, and I have come to the conclusion that I think its OP.
All the units have splash which helps a ton, snakes seem too easy to produce and give lots of damage.
Just an idea to keep in mind next time your playing Egypt/against it.

Also I think while Romans have good defence units, their attack units aren't very good.
The battering ram and turtle formation are size 3, so the can't maneuver very well, the the other highest units are horse-men and gladiators.
I think the battering-ram/turtle formation should be beefed up a bit, or make a way for spear-men to create a turtle formation and brake it up for better manoeuvrability.
I also have and unit idea: The Siege Tower

EDIT: Of course all this is for after release.

[titi]

Egypts weakness is slow movement .
Hint: Archers are the end for all snakes...

... and Roman is the strongest faction in my opinion.

[jammyjamjamman]

I haven't tested this recently in the svn, but from my experience norse is able to completely destroy a roman army fairly easily, but not roman defense (even with the weaker crossbows, other units can still be used to destroy the army)

[ElimiNator]

I haven't tested this recently in the svn, but from my experience norse is able to completely destroy a roman army fairly easily, but not roman defense (even with the weaker crossbows, other units can still be used to destroy the army)

Yes, that is what I am saying, I think Roman lacks in attack capability.

Egypts weakness is slow movement .
Hint: Archers are the end for all snakes...

... and Roman is the strongest faction in my opinion.

Titi when is the last time you were Romans and attacked and killed a good player?

[softcoder]

Romans have the best defence of all factions, but their attack strength is not even close to Egypt in my opinion. Each faction has strategies you can use to win though in my opinion as long on you have enough resources on the map. With low resources, egypt or Indian usually win.

[tiger]

Romans have the best defences in the game for sure. I think all the factions are pretty much balanced.
Yes the Egyptian snakes do quite a bit of damage, BUT! they are very slow and only have 9 range. One archer can kill a large horde of snakes all alone. (if you use the "shoot and run" tactic)

[ElimiNator]

Well you have your opinion but when your Persion and Im Tech I win,when your Egypt and Im Tech you win, when your Egypt and Im Romans, you win, when Im Tech and your Romans I win...

This means good player VS good player = Romans never wins. (But it is a pain to take out their base)

[tiger]

I've won many games as romans....

[ElimiNator]

Not against me...

[tiger]

Always...

[softcoder]

Good news! We can solve this by playing a published game with game stats results on masterserver!

[tiger]

YEAH! 

[ElimiNator]

And we did, I was Norsemen and Tiger was Romans:

[tiger]

HEY. this is the second game. what about the first? 

[ElimiNator]

1. You clearly edited that...
2. whenever that game  was played, it was not the "Test".
3. We were both Romans...

[tiger]

Clearly non edited my young friend. 
Also the test was supposed to be Egypt Vs Roman. Not Norsemen Vs Roman.
Please read the title of this thread. Thanks 

[ElimiNator]

Its "Weak factions?" and the test was to prove Romans weakness.

[tiger]

Romans is VERY strong. You won that game because I spawned in a horrible position, AND you spawned with a bot ON YOUR TEAM! 
Just me vs you? WHO would win? that is debatable...

[jammyjamjamman]

Well you have your opinion but when your Persion and Im Tech I win,when your Egypt and Im Tech you win, when your Egypt and Im Romans, you win, when Im Tech and your Romans I win...

This means good player VS good player = Romans never wins. (But it is a pain to take out their base)

Tech doesn't fight well at all against romans, catapults + archers + footsoldiers = death to tech. Egypt can be beaten using roman archers + footsoldiers, tech can beat egypt with archers + footsoldiers (and horses, if you target workers and the other player has no defense which is quite often the case), but egypt does generally do better than tech in a 1v1. Persian is generally the weakest but is a great spamming faction so it gives the user the opportunity for rapid expansion while the other team is busy killing ghosts, women and spiky board people.

Also roman defences can be used to capture gold piles

[tiger]

All the stuff you are talking about depends on the other players skill level.
Did you ever start a game with 7 bots playing and you observer? If you did then you would know that there are usually 3 winners EVER.

1-Persion (55%)
2-Norsemen (30%)
3-Tech (10%)
4-any other faction (5%)

If you don't believe this then try a game right now and watch the bots.
Capturing Gold piles with the Roman faction is just as easy with any other faction (if strategy is used)

[ElimiNator]

OK, just gona say, whoever voted for Norsemen is sad and obviously doesn't know how to play it, I would say Norsemen is the very strongest faction.

[titi]

I just wanted to mention that just letting the CPUs play says nothing ;-) . Regarding pure CPU play and only one type of CPU with one multiplier is easy. Take into account different CPU/Multiplier settings and HUMAN players who typically have very creative ideas! Look what human players can do with Romans if they know what to do !

Beside of Magic I am really really happy with the current state and I will for sure deny very big change regarding balance. Tiny things are always possible but you must be careful that they don't end up with a huge effect ( especially regarding humans playing .

[Djemynai]

I just wanted to mention that just letting the CPUs play says nothing.

Indeed.

Beside of Magic I am really really happy with the current state and I will for sure deny very big change regarding balance.

I second this. I think balancing changes should wait until there has been a *lot* of competition by many different strong players.

But what's wrong with Magic? I'm trying to pick them up at the moment, am I getting myself into trouble? 

[ctz]

Magic's my favorite faction, so I don't think you're getting yourself into trouble .

Magic has the following weaknesses compared to other factions:

• Initiates mine significantly slower than workers of other factions due to the combination of slower mine speed (200 vs 225 gold per second), smaller load (20 vs 25 gold), and slower walk speed (150/130 vs 190/190 unloaded/loaded).  Initiates do harvest wood faster (200 vs 150 wood per second), but this is not very significant since Magic doesn't use much wood.
• Magic's air units are among the worst. Dragons do 250 damage at 40 rate, which is less than the similarly-priced units of other factions such as Thunderbird (250 at 70 (ground only)), Flyingvalkyrie (270 at 50), and Ibis (170 at 100).  Evil Dragons do 450 damage at an effective rate of 20 due to their EP requirement, which is about the same damage per second; their advantage over normal dragons is increased hp, better burst damage (especially when leveled up), and range, but they cost even more.
• All other factions except Norsemen have a ground-attacking range 12 defensive building.  Magic does not.  The closest unit is the golem, but it only has 10 range and 2000 hp (stone) and does only about 1 battlemage of damage on average.  A summoner guild, although it has no armor, does no damage, and can't move, is a cheaper and more effective defense building when combined with an army of mages who do the damage while hiding behind it.
• Most other factions have an effective cheap melee unit.  Egypt doesn't have an effective cheap melee unit in my opinion (mummy and spearman are too weak), but it has Anubis Warrior, which is fast and tough and doesn't get killed by snakes (whose splash does not damage friendly units, unlike archmages).
  Magic has no effective melee unit.  The daemon has 500 hp organic, which is very weak, and ghost armors tend to get killed by battlemages when they move into the place of a dead enemy and get hit by spells targeting the dead unit.  This is even worse with archmages since the archmages are almost guaranteed to kill all friendly melee units with splash.  Titi tried to make ghost armor less useless with the last balance change by making it cheaper and faster and allowing its armor and damage to be upgraded, but I still don't use it much (although this is partly because in team games, other factions make melee units for me).

But Magic has the following unique strengths, which may or may not make up for the weaknesses:

• Battlemages (when they have EP) are more powerful than archers of other factions, although their range is slightly worse.  I believe their strength is also what makes ghost armors almost useless, even though ghost armors are now among the strongest "metal melee"-type units -- it does not take very many battlemages in a group (exploiting their range) to be as effective as the same number of ghost armors.
• Also, they are morphed from initiates, which means that making more initiates than necessary for work is not a waste of gold, since they can be converted later if it becomes necessary.
• Archmages are extremely effective against ranged units and buildings when used correctly ... but it is difficult to use them correctly.  You have to worry about friendly splash, running out of EP, and inability to retreat quickly.
• Initiates also build the mage tower faster than other factions build their main buildings.