finite hare
I was advised this was the place to share. After skipping s38 with all the massive unit changes, I wanted to give my feedback combined of that and the changes for s39 (Obelisk and second round of unit changes).
Disclaimer: I played s39 as a Dwarf on Stargate. This will of course have impact on my insights.
I'm going over mostly just the state as they are currently live on s39. Most things feel great.
AG still feel like they're much weaker than they really need to be. Personally, I had an okay time with opening my early fields... but it also seemed like I lucked out pretty well with the opposing goblins. Some of my team mates still had quite the struggle on actually getting all their fields open... and I really don't understand why this has to be the case? Effectively micro-managing your development in the early game is one of the things I do consider a lot of fun in this game, but even then being so much work to actually manage your AG reserves, having to actually micro-manage how many you can afford to spend or not clearing your realm supplies to save for your own usage, etc... it just really becomes a chore at that point. It also makes it specially frustrating that there's goblin RNG involved... you get a couple goblin poisoners at the important supply landmarks, and bam, RIP all your AG reserves, any chance that you can participate in clearing realm supplies, and probably delay the rest of your fields for another 10-12 hours...
AG are a unit that we do kinda produce the entire server, and that has exclusively 1 purpose: kill goblins. The fact that they're rather bad at their own job makes it feel bad to train so many, when we could possibly even be producing some additional PvP troops to incentivize even more fights.
TL:DR I think AG can be buffed more. I don't think they'd be a problem at all at 75% strength vs Goblins.
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In s38 we had both AB and defensive troops. The clear sentiment was that Defense troops felt rather bad to play with / play into... so they were removed, which I'll say was a great change!
I'll also say that AB troops for Dwarf feels pretty good. Gives Trank a nice boost early on, AG and AB are no longer competing for the same training, and it feels a lot more relevant to train LPs early on now, as we already did.
However, AB troops are still exceptionally week. Our general consensus was that after the first week of i2 they were completely irrelevant. Even when you had a good use for them - a situation where they were actually appropriate (good snipes, defenses) using them usually yielded a bad result for you still. Not to mention that the new anti-cav troops make them even worse. I think bringing them back up to 55% is a no-brainer; I'd probably even go further, but I can understand the reservations.
Attack Bonus as a bonus is really powerful mostly, in my opinion, because it's a catch-all on defense... However, I'd argue that the real fun of using AB is catching good, planned snipes. This creates a weird dynamic where they have to be kept weak because they're too powerful in the least fun way to use them. I'd say this justifies an eventual rework of their ability, as it's hard to balance in a fun way. Maybe an effect where they only get the bonus while attacking enemy realm towers / portals? Then they can have their power brought back while not being an issue for defense.
On the note of AB becoming irrelevant after the 1st week of i2, I'd also add that Valks felt like they were kind of in the same boat; however, they're doing a lot better than AB... maybe they could use just a slight bump, and maybe even Petrifies could use a slight bump too.
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The new units with anti-cav bonus as Cav troops themselves felt pretty good to use. They also slotted nicely in multiple types of comps, opening up things like full anti-cav Zorbas and mixed troop Trankard. Another reason why they may have felt great was because of the AB changes... See above.
I will note though that there's a tiny bug that annoys me - in multiple places they're not in the correct order, showing up under the last cavalry troops (for example, in a warlord overview -> troops, the order shows "LP -> TJ -> Impalers -> Stonehoofs" instead of "LP -> Stonehoofs -> TJ -> Impalers".
They also make the unit list too large vertically on mobile, when you click your "units" next to resources, but this is rather minor.
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This was probably an oversight from the new troops, but Dwarf vs Elf supply rotations are all kinds of messed up.
For example, in i1, Dwarves produce AG + Valks + Detons as their infantry, while Elves only produce AG + Pets. This makes it so that you get a lot of situations where you can only fill a slot with half valks or with half Detons, without managing to make the slot full with either - not to mention that every time you get detons in the rotation, it's another rotation you don't get AG, which feels pretty bad considering how many AG you need at their current state.
Also in i1, Dwarves produce LP + Stonehoofs + TJs... while Elves only get Daggers + Hunches... same thing happens.
Another critical thing is, for example, that on i3 dwarves are still producing LPs, while elves don't anymore.
Given that with the new troops, both Elves and Dwarves tiered units are more or less tiered the same way, I see no reason why supply rotations can't be the same (again, seems like a simple oversight with the introduction of the new troops). As it currently is, Elves are very very favored in their supply rotations.
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Usually there's no place to talk about QOL in these kinds of feedback posts, but there's a couple QOL of life changes that I feel are very very important for the current health for the game.
lethal elbow
👍 thank you for your comments, very helpful and good comprehensible
finite hare
I should add because I didn't talk about the EO.
There's not really a lot to comment on it; s39 on i4 did not seem like a good server to draw out conclusions of it's potential. Feedback on it has already been talked about in other places like here #☕│feedback-café message