Gunpowder : should it be time limited?

[phoenixffyrnig]

Is it possible (or desirable ) to put a trigger on gunpowder tech so it is only research-able after 25 turns/ 30 turns / x turns?

Gunpowder completely changes this game and renders many units obsolete. In theory, we can put out fully working galleons by about turn 13-16. Cannon towers will destroy any siege unit bar trebs. I hear from people in the know that the soon-coming new gunpowder units will have boni Vs heavy infantry.

All of which makes 80% of units (including third tier upgrades) relatively worthless against what I call the "Gunpowder Rush" strategy - when a player chooses to focus on getting gunpowder units in the field as soon as possible. The only counter to this is to Gunpowder Rush yourself. This passes by and misses out so much "medieval" play.

I feel this game would be better served by having to play through the medieval era in order to get to the gunpowder era. I have trialled this in a few games recently - gunpowder rush is a game winner, but takes so much away from any other strategies. So much time and effort has been put into balancing all these units that it seems a shame to have them overpowered and nullified so early on in the game. (Also makes it nigh on impossible for newer players to compete with fully upgraded players).

[L4cus]

i use this tactic, but it ever works
having a tc from the turn 1 producing ballistic and make an advancemetnt center to research gunpowder takes too long and u could make more workers to improve ur condition in the game is better
is not unbalanced

[phoenixffyrnig]

It's pretty much a green light in any situation you can have 4-5 tcs by your 2nd or 3rd turn and your nearest opponent is more than 10 tiles from you.

All you need is a spare slot to build your advancement centre and enough elbow room to churn out 2 turn units until you're set. Basically, 30x30 upwards

[makazuwr32]

Why not just increasing cost of gunpowder tech?

[goose88]

I completely agree. I would like gunpowder to be an option for setting up a new game just like spells. Almost everything is a 1-hit kill late in the game and we just have armadas of double cannon ships supported by a few galleons rushing at each other and wiping each other out depending on who gets the movement jump. It was refreshing to play a land-only match with lots of woods because it forced everyone to use the diverse units (priests, bards, rangers, drummers, archers, siege engines) to stack bonuses and have an actual strategy. The game would be much better served if gunpowder were removed entirely. Newer matches are getting repetitive and boring because they all go down the same path, despite the huge diversity of units. I haven't built an upgraded swordsman or Spartan since 2019! This comes from someone who almost exclusively uses a heavy-gunpowder strategy on any map with ocean or bigger than 20x20.

[makazuwr32]

Just make gunpowder cost like 20 or 30 turns to research.

[L4cus]

Just make gunpowder cost like 20 or 30 turns to research.

mmh, actually gunpowder shouldnt be viable even for late game
remember they were worse on every way in comparission with older arms

[phoenixffyrnig]

Just make gunpowder cost like 20 or 30 turns to research.

But there are so many other worthwhile techs to research in the meantime, how many ACs should we build? Man, we start with guys throwing rocks or shoving a pointy stick in the direction of the enemy! Surely it would be better to keep it at a similar cost , just not available until x or y turns in. Given that you can technically have gunpowder before you have cavalier, man at arms, elite foot night etc, it just seems like time travel. I think the word is anachronistic, but I'm too drunk to be sure

Like Goose says, it just sends us down a 1 way street. So much of the balancing in this game seems to be set up to just about avoid 1 hit kills, yet gunpowder units seem to be one hit killers with most things - doesnt really work in a tbs game. I dont necessarily agree it should be an optional tech, just a late game tech.

I have frequently invoked a voluntarily no gunpowder rule in my games just to keep them interesting. The practical use of gunpowder came so long after the (admittedly undefinable) start point of this game - we lose out on so much interesting game play by letting it in unrestricted.

[Squirrel5555]

Yeah, my largest problem with this game, the movement jump. Glad they toned this down with the siege reworks

[Badnorth]

Yeah I hate gunpowder, I too agree that this should be more costier or turn based.

[SirPat]

we should have more tech requirements: techs needed to research to be able to research more further techs but we cant just do that cause not everyone have all of the upgrades so we should make a whole upgrade section change. lets categorize them into groups and it should be placed in such a way that you can see all of the techs that you need to research to research the next im having a hard time to explain but what will I do is ill draw an advancement table/ tech tree so we can group and categorize them accordingly and @Stratego is this ok with you? Ill change the progression of the game by making etechs to need to have certain techs to research and ill change the upgrade section and stuff. oh and if anyone have time, pls message me the names of all of the techs in game and the place to research it. Ill try to make it as soon as possible when this gets approved.

[Endru1241]

@SirPat Please - limit noticing and citing stratego unless absolutely necessary (game-breaking code bugs, crashes).

As for the topic - I agree that gunpowder may be too early researched compared to other research strategies.
Most of gunpowder-based units was balanced to the late game. So they should be fighting against upgraded units with blacksmith bonuses (not necessarily full), but as the game has increasing number of units, definition of late game may have changed in number of turns.
Flavour-wise gunpowder units are mostly from 14th -15th century, even the start of 16th. Still before matchlock, but with metallurgy and chemistry advanced enough to have reliable hand cannons, cannons.
Name nomenclature should also reflect that. Carrack is a term that appeared in 14th century, Galleon similarily and Frigate actually even earlier around 13th century. Tanegashima is just island name. So I scrapped the last remaining - musketeer name - it's handgonneer now.

To properly balance gunpowder different approaches can be applied:
1. Global tech rebalance.
2. Adding requirements or even sequence/chain of them.
3. Just increase the cost, like makazuwr32 suggested.

I actually had thoughts about 1. The details belong to another topic, but it could be done by age techs and/or important inventions and/or general tech locks (like in AoF), which would be added as requirements. To balance things out - some current techs would have to be made cheaper to achieve the same overall time to research.
In this approach e.g. blacksmith techs could cost 2/3, but require metallurgy lv1 (cost 2) and lv2 (cost 4), which could be added as requirements for gunpowder units to be produced, upgrade techs from 5/5 could become 3/2, but require metallurgy as well.

[SirPat]

hehe my bad.

and Ill go for global tech rebalance and adding requirements