I was hoping for a rebalance of raids/tier 1 military buff with the full 0.9.2 release but it stayed the same, more or less.
I give up for now, it’s too frustrating to play…I’ve just lost another T3 city to raiders. Built the city on a cliff with barracks and 3 upgraded towers. Can’t afford more with my current economy…I was earning steadily over 80 gold/month (I’m without gold mine) but knowing the power of raiders I’ve boosted military a lot after the upgrade to T3 and this crippled my economy to <10 gold/month. They came with 3 catapults, 2 rams and that damn heavy knights with horned helms…my light infantry can’t last more than one minute outside the castle and I have to send them out.
Last time I tried focus 12 soldiers on ONE champion with horned helm and he just destroyed my men…killed 4 of them before he was down to 50% life. It seems to fight against unstoppable demigods…light infantry and archers are so weak that I’m considering just playing pacifist mode or ignore vanquisher entirely.
Yep the game is completely unplayable now at high military levels. I played as normal, got to tier three then similarly have absolutely zero chance against the WW2 tanks… err sorry rams and whatnot.
Next time I played deliberately slowly to build up double walls & plenty of towers (I usually just spam towers and disable them, then enable them on raids, but this time had double walls up and a low population to get hit by smaller raids). Get hit by tank cavalry and tank rams with like 90 population.
There is absolute no point playing it on vanquisher now. And I’m pretty good at this game - I’m like a top 20-25 They Are Billions player and former World Champion at a well known board game. This is completely broken and unplayable now. Did anyone actual test this because I’d love to see how anyone would not get completely annihilated on raids. Higher tier units are literal tanks, it’s ridiculous. Meanwhile you’re completely neutered by tier 2/3 limitations.
Retried a new town with highly defensible terrain and managed to reach T4. During all T3 phase I suffered as hell. With each raid I lost at least 10 people and raiders once nearly destroyed my town center. Somehow I resisted with 2 barracks with 12 light inf + 6 archers + 4 upgraded towers.
Once reached T4 and recruited lancers and heavy infantry the raids became trivial…my soldiers just obliterate the enemies. Even upgraded barracks (fort) make a huge difference because archers do A LOT more damage shooting from inside.
But yeah, I feel T3 balance is a bit off…without a highly defensible terrain I would have lost as usual.
I got my 1st raid in year 5 and they come back each 2 years. No matter how many soldier and guard I have, their number is always x3 or 4 with full-equip. Vanquisher mode is really imbalance -_-
First raids are easy however…I can survive the first 2-3 raids with town center + hunters only, after that I build a walled tower or two depending on my economy. Then I go on with barracks as soon as I can easily afford it. Once in T3 it starts the REALLY hard part btw…when they came with catapults, rams and heavily armored soldiers.
Yes, early raid is easy. I am at year 15 now, I have 179 pop, T3 (10 soldiers, 4 guards). Then 55 raiders came and kick my ass -_-
Trailblazer is a bit too easy and Vanquisher sounds too punishing. So either another option between the two or a more granular difficulty slider in custom mode.
I would like to see a buff to tier 1 military units (archers and light infantry) and/or a debuff of raiders during T3 phase.
Hey guys.
This sounds sooooo arrogant, I am so sorry. I don’t want to brag. Maybe I do something by chance that makes it work or just lucky. I have started 2 vanq cities to upto 1600 pop since 9.2. Had to reload 2-3 times to change some tactics, it is hard, I get it, but so much fun. I don’t get your frustration.
The biggest issue I had were rider-raids t2- t3. I had to build 2 barracks right aside the center and wall them in to survive and max out on light infantry just for that raid (24,disband the 24 immediately after of course). Towers are useless as “real” defense, especially against riders, only usable to statically place them in range of barracks and town center to be attacked so that barracks/ forts can kill easier. As soon as the barracks are updated to forts, you are golden. Once you have a spare fort and heavy infantry to kill all camps, the game is done/ too easy. You need to kill the camps as soon as you can destroy them without loosing more than maybe 5 people, I can only do that with heavy infantry at about 800 pop by placing a fort just outside the range of a camp.
Ps: Towers: make sense of course next to wolf den and boar spawn and walled in on the typical raider route to slow down catapults when raids reach 200+
Don’t kill me guys, again, maybe I was just lucky.
Have fun playing.
Sorry about whining about the game too. I recently played vanquisher, so maybe the post fits here a bit. I know I just don’t have the skill for this current configuration. I was not able to defend against 150 high gear raiders from the same camp, that had only 15 regular ones few decades back.
It was very unexpected that at some tier the raiders-invaders level and AI changed drastically. It was not just “get what you can and run back” mission - it changed into “Destroy everything and everyone”. If i would have known that - i would have taken 200 more years for terraforming, trading, defense building.
For some reason it doesn’t feel right to load 3 years back save-game to try keep population and tier low this time, so i get 100 weak raiders instead of 150 immortal ones. Some time before i also had destructive raids, but i took the years to recover and learn. They never stayed for the winter to take down the whole village with every single soul.
Is this some puzzle-TD-type of gameplay added into this RTS style of city builder? I mean - should i really keep trying to figure out what secret difficulty levels are programmed there and how exactly I should be prepared for certain tiers and population levels? And if i don’t - then just whole village will get destroyed at T4 instead of damage-recovery style of raids in earlier tiers? In some RST games, the units can be clicked and stats are visible to get better feeling how strong they are. Here right now, only see that one unit sliced through 10 defending units with some whirlwind-axe-magic. Only thing these poor swordsmen learned, that 10 years of training is nothing against one horseman.
I throw here some stuff how i feel what is underdeveloped and what is overdeveloped.
Requires work:
30% villagers and military brains (Hunters have 80%),
40% tech tree (tiers and upgrades),
70% trading,
50% mechanics (Farming has 80%),
60% work load balancing,
20% military AI, mechanics and unit balance.
20% villagers micro-level control.
40% military units micro-level control.
20% villagers and military behavior/AI control.
70% economics and population balance and control.
60% sounds and music.
90% graphics.
60% performance.
300% no-brain micro-management in routine find-and-click.
200% notifications.
I wish the notification say also what raiders difficulty level i am right now with my tier and villagers population and what should I prepare for if i plan any higher tier or more villagers. Vanquisher play can take long with slow grow and hard recoveries, so it is not like some RTS game - 2 hours - dead - new game.
Anyway - thanks for the great work so far. I feel - it is enough testing and feedback for me right now. I hope it will be great game one day, but it needs a bit more “game” development - not just animated-graphics-simulation-map-editor type of environment. If there is intended to be micro-controlled unit-level military - then this whole system needs to be working well and balanced in a realistic and predictable way. Arrows should dismount horses. Medieval villagers are all rather tough fighters even without special gear or training - basic gear with spears or bow should be in every house. Rams should take down only gates and doors. 10 villagers should take down any raiding unit whatever the gear is - at least take as prisoner if 3 villagers vs 1 raider. Of course that just my opinion - any game owner, designer, developer can decide whatever the rules and balance is - it does not need to be realistic at all - just some buttons with rules like chess or something. It is just my personal wish to have it in a more balanced realistic simulation-type of city builder with some destructive-defensive mechanics. If it wants to be a prepare-for-raiders TD game, it needs to be clear what wave of raiders i need to be prepared.
You need to understand that the more you build up your town, the stronger the raider forces will be. You need to spend more money on military. Sell your resources for the gold upkeep. Slow down. VANQUISHER SHOULD BE DIFFICULT, and it is very well balanced as it is. Perhaps not perfect, but it has definitely improved a lot over the last few updates.
There are lower difficulties if you can’t handle the heat. It’s not the devs fault that your ego can’t handle it, and they’ve already care-beared those lower difficulty levels to a pile of feather pillows.
Learn from your mistakes, grow, adapt. You can and will survive eventually, or just build a bigger graveyard.
Classic git gud answer, nosense in this case. The game was unbalanced, now it has improved a lot based also on this and other threads arguments.
But it’s not! It still takes only 40-60 years to reach 1k pop with all top tier buildings. And you don’t even need walls!
I love the game first 20 years when you actually have to micro some of your soldiers/villagers and after filling you second barracks you go clear the bandit camps - with army this big you should not have any casualties unless you fail your micro. Then around 500 pop you upgrade your barracks to forts and there is barely anything to worry in the game.
Classic git gud answer is the answer - period.