Suggestions (PvE) for Some Underused Units

Indeed, and India will also have that upfront cost as well as their Ram equivalent comes from their fort too.
 
The early attack use could be interesting, maybe even more so than just making rams more effective. It would add some dynamic to pve, really inviting more average players to try early attacks with a few rams and small number of units, which normally is just done by the very top fast players. I think the rams would still need a bit more effectiveness against walls and would need to consider the upfront cost of the fortress for norse/celts/india when judging their ram costs.
 
Until I see the discussions about rams, I did not realise that almost nobody uses battering rams in quests, or leg quests to be more precise lol. I almost forgot about their existence while doing quests above level 40. So, I think the discussions about buffing battering rams in pve is the right way to go. They are so squishy and does not worth the trouble training them, EXCEPT the babylon rams with a possible 5k 6k HP :D as Frogpoison mentioned earlier.

THOUGH, I won't get a good night sleep until I see with my own eyes that Cataphracts are buffed with 1 area damage like Aoe2 cataphracts. Seriously devs, pleaseeee show some love to aoeo pve balance changes just like you care so much about PvP tech tree :D It's almost like champion mode tree gets a change weekly ( a bit exaggeration :p ) . On the other hand, love the work you celeste team put into this game. I just hope when you have enough time after India civ or such, you start to work towards PvE unit changes [I only see devs mentioning advisors reworks, though I think some units need reworks as well]

Those are all great topics by frogpoison, the underwhelmingness of slingers, javelin thrower units of all sorts, battering rams,
frogs.poison said:
After additional discussion on Ram-type units in PvE, it was determined that a Cost and Train Time reduction across the board in PvE is probably the safest route to go.

New players have a difficult time dealing with Rams in PvE, especially with elite rams - These players often rely on towers and walls to defend themselves against the AI, and Rams completely wreck through such defense. Thus, buffing health, damage, or armor on Rams in PvE will make new players have a significantly harder time vs Rams.

However, cost, train time, and population of Rams has a minimal affect on AI power. Thus, modifying any of these stats can be a way to buff Rams in PvE without making the game harder for newer players.

A 30% cost and train time reduction for all Rams in PvE was suggested, and I feel that is a good starting point to help make Rams more usable in PvE.
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Aryzel said:
@frogs.poison Updated the list a bit, included the moving ranged siege for Egypt,Greeks,Romans, and sappers/arrows for babylon. Removed lancers and reworded what i said on woad raiders

I can see why cost/train time were suggested, but just don't think players would use them for that reason outside of a few top players who push early, vast majority of players get their army together before pushing at all. And remember celts/norse need to drop a fortress first too, there is still a large upfront cost.
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It's true that it might not be enough just reducing cost/training time will make players to use rams actively, but a small step to make rams more useable.
 
On Rams, bit of a discussion today with Atlas and DesArch on discord, one of the ideas was putting buffs on the Siege advisors. Making Ligeia designed for early quick pushes, larger cost and train time reduction and also pop reduction. Have Titus designed for later game rolling siege, so health, move speed and self-repair/regen, etc. Not sure on exact details but goal is to move the advisors towards two concepts of usage, early, cheap rams or later, unstopping rams.
 
Short transcript of my discussion from discord:

On the topic of Rams - Comparing Champion Mode to PvE, Rams got significant cost reduction, as well as a decent size boost to building damage, but at a cost to melee/inf armor. In PvE, all but a single Ram is completely unable to attack anything but buildings by themselves. This means that for every pop taken up by Rams, you could instead have something that clears out both buildings and army

Of course, the other side of PvE rams are AI-controlled Rams, which can be very hard for inexperienced players to deal with. I suggested a significant baseline, non-advisor cost and train time reduction in a previous discussion, as this doesn't cause AI-Rams to get buffs, and if the buff is high enough it could introduce early ram rushes as a potential strat - Quickly hit the AI before they can get built up to cripple their eco/spam

I also mentioned population cost reduction as a potential buff, especially for Farbjodr's and Celtic Rams for PvE - Population is another balance consideration that has 0 impact on the AI, but significant impact on players. For instance, a current large issue with Celtic Rams is that their offensive capabilities just aren't on par with any Celtic infantry unit vs buildings. However, at 1 pop, suddenly Celtic Rams are significantly more efficient vs buildings, without impacting the AIs difficulty at all. Similar case for Farbjodrs - Except that with them, it also boosts them up to a C-tier melee push build
 
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On the topic of rams, I recently did Megara with Egypt. One problem I found with early/mid game rushing with Siege Towers was their cost being on par with Ramses/MAG elephants, yet their overall speed and health trail far below a war elephant in PvE. What if when rams get a cost/train time reduction buff, Egypt siege towers actually inherit the standard PvP ram cost of 150 wood / 60 gold (or whatever baseline cost and train time pve rams get), instead of 200 wood / 80 gold, so they can become even more appealing of an early rush option? (especially given that Champion Mode Fortresses also have a cost increase in PvP!)
 
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