Balance Update #2​

Note: The splash damage nerf for Catapults and Ballistas is still not implemented yet, it will be added in a hotfix.
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Balance team notes:

We felt that Town Centers are a little too strong at defending bases on their own right now. The DPS and HP reduction on every age up is our first step towards making greedy play less rewarding and a no-brainer and make it more appealing to consider more aggressive and 1-base strategies.

Prodromos​

Giving this unit some extra pierce armour was one of the main points of discussion in the months before the game closed down, three years ago. The Prodromos is intended to be a relatively specialized anti-cavalry unit. However, we felt that the unit lacked utility in both its anti-cavalry role and in stand up fights. For instance, in these stand up fights the Prodromos was found to perish quite rapidly, due to its low health and lack of pierce armour. Moreover, the civilizations added after the Greeks often include a ranged stable unit, in the form of a chariot/mounted archer. In matches that develop around heavy stable play, the Greeks were found to be struggling to compete, as the Sarissophoroi-Prodromos combo was outclassed by the equivalent stable combination of the other civilizations. We believe that adding pierce armour may balance this out better, in addition to greater survivability during stand up fights and raids.

Priest of set​

First of all, this is how the insanity rate works: An insanity rate of 16 implies that a priest of set will make insane (=convert to become neutral, but aggressive, an aggressive gaia unit, if you will. Like wolves) a unit after having it converted anywhere between 8 and 16 seconds. That is, the amount of seconds that it will take for a unit to become insane will be randomly distributed between half of the insanity rate, and the total number. In comparison, every other priest in the game has a 16 conversion rate (which works the same). Originally, the priest of set had an insanity rate of 10, which was changed to 16 in the first balance patch (a few days before this one). In combination with its low cost and long range (10 more than the other priests, with the possibility to add another 8 with an upgrade), this rate was considered to be too low. That is, units would become insane too rapidly. After some discussion we agreed that nerfing the rate to 16 was too large of a step, so we will try 13 for now.

Cataphract​

The Cataphract is intended to be a heavily armoured anti-infantry/siege unit. The unit was found to be underused. One big reason for that was because even though Cataphracts are tanky units, they were too slow and died before being able to reach the backline. And we believe this was because the Asabara was better at taking out siege units, since they are 2 speed (or 3, with their Champion upgrade) faster, and because Persia in general already has great anti-infantry capabilities (e.g., Immortals). We hope that an increase in speed will make the Cataphract better at taking out siege, and give it more utility overall.

Siege nerfs​

In our opinion, the game in its final state (three years ago) revolved too much around siege when matches would reach the late game. Moreover, matches would arrive at the late game stage a lot quicker than before, because the meta involved building a fast second Town Center. During this stage of the match, players would be primarily focused on protecting their own siege, whilst destroying their opponents’. Whilst this is not necessarily a bad thing, we felt that siege overall may have been a little too good against units. In fact, it was so strong, that many matches would become a race to age IV, with minimal spending on units/techs. We believe a nerf to siege should make such strategies less prevalent, and make spending resources on everything else more viable. That is, this balance change should allow players to utilize a more diverse set of strategies that do not necessarily revolve around siege as much. Therefore, whilst keeping their anti-building capabilities intact, we decided to decrease the (splash) damage of siege, which will primarily reduce their anti-unit effectiveness.

Discuss your opinion on the mentioned balance changes below!