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Unit speeds - The root of all evil?
I'm sure you've all read my last rant about how I believe the game is too one-battle oriented. I still believe that, and sadly almost every game since then has been determined by a single battle . Another commonly mentioned greivance is the attrition / anti-rushing early on, which can lead to this one game deciding battle. Personally, I don't mind attrition. I believe that the problems/grievances most people have with RoN stems from the speed of the units.
If you haven't had the pleasure of playing RoN in any of its beta stages, then let me explain something to you. First off, there doesn't seem to be a 1v1 map, there is Arena, which is extremely small, your borders are almost touching at the onset of the game. 2-3 players, which is what most players play for 1v1, seems a bit too big. It takes about 1:30 for your scout to get from your capital to his on this map. Scouts are also one of the fastest units pre-industrial age. A quick glance at the XML/Data file, Knight/Heavy Horse units have a speed of 31-33, Pikemen/Heavy Infantry have a speed of 22, Archers are 26. Scouts are 34, only the Light Cavalry line is faster than them. This gives you an indication of the map size, 1:30 for one of the fastest units to cross it from capital to capital (Not even edge to edge).
I find harassing to be rather meaningless unless its incorporated with a rush, with attrition you can't stay in his territory unitl he challenges you with light cavalry, and must retreat before your units become to damaged from the attrition factor. Civilans can also be garrisoned and ungarrisoned with relative ease, you don't have to re-assign them to tasks, so the most your going to lose is one or two civilans per city. Horse Archers are the prime harass unit, since they're "fast", are ranged, have a bonus against civilians (I think), and can fire while moving. Problem is, all horse archers have a speed of 30, which is a perfect speed relative to the scout, being 4 points off. Problem is, the unit speed in general is VERY SLOW, so while they make look fast on paper, the same conclusion doesn't hold true for in game. This slow speed means your not going to hit many cities, and thus not kill many enemy civilians. Another problem is, its hard to multi-task when you are harassing. I personally prefer to have complete control of a harassing force while its doing its work, ignoring, for the most part, my economy. Can't do this in RoN, they move too slow, if you focused 100% of your attention on them, keeping them out of tower range, targeting civilians etc., you would have idle civilians . If all units got a relative speed boost, it would help harassing because you could hit more targets in a shorter amount of time; while maintaing the balance of light cavalry being able to catch up.
Another problem that stems from the unit speed, or lack thereof, is rushing. Rushing works, let me say this first. I've been rushed, and I've rushed other opponents; rushes can decide a game. The problem, as I see it, is that it seems far too risky to attack, than it does to defend. A defender should have an advantage, and in pretty much all RTS games, the defender does; mostly due to garrisonable buildings, units popping instantly into battle (no walk time). The attacker uses a few methods to gain part of that advantage back, forward building is one, and using manuverable/ranged units to keep away from arrow fire. The garrisoned cities do pretty poor damage to heavy infantry in RoN, which is good, but the travel time really sucks. Due to borders, and "innapropriate" map sizes, you can't forward build, means the time it takes to get from your production buildings to his base is very large. Time = Distance / Velocity, or Time = Large Number as a result of no forward building & borders divided by a small number due to the speed of unit movement. On the other hand, the defender has almost no distance to travel, and thus the unit speed effects him him a lot less. This is why, in most rushes I've seen so far, the player builds a large army, and rushes in, rarley ever bothering to reinforce his troops. Hence the "all or nothing" stigma with rushes, granted I haven't played as much games as some people, but I have a feeling if someone rushes, and doesn't come out the clear victor, he's going to pay a heft price and may even lose the game as a result of it. I was never a fan of forward building, and so I don't really have a problem with the borders, but coupled with slow unit speeds, it puts a big damper on the attacker, while the defender really doesn't feel the effects of it due his troops barely having to lift their foot to enter combat.
Lately I've had the chance to play some team games in RoN, and I must say I prefer them much more over 1v1 games. Even in team games, however, I feel unit speed negatively influences the gameplay. A great part of a good game for teamplay is setting up 2v1's (Both on the offensive & defensive). The slow units really kill this part of RoN, in my opinion. If your ally is under sudden attack from his opponent, you really have no chance to save him. Without forced march from a general, you might as well not even move your units, because you won't be able to save him in time. In fact, you'll likely arrive just after your ally's troops get wasted, so rather than setting up a 2v1 against your attacking opponent, you setup two 1v1's, ally vs attacker & you vs attacker. Even with forced march, which itself is fairly useless until you have atleast upgraded one level of the general/spy tech (Increases the AoE of forced march), setting up 2v1's is very hard to do. For one, its hard to move your entire army in unison with your general; like I said above, there is a wide range of unit speeds in the game, as low as 22, and as high as 36, its hard to get all your units together to have them all under the effect of forced march, and then it is another feat to have them appear as an army against your opponent - rather than having them stream in one at a time. WarCraft III is the exact opposite, 2v1's are damn near immpossible to setup because units move so fast, town portals enable you to totally ignore unit speed & terrain and stop a 2v1, but the attacker can't have his ally "town portal" into the battle on his behalf. If RoN had even marginally faster units than it does now, team games wouldn't be so "1v1 & 1v1 = 2v2" oriented .
On the same topic of team games, the slow units speed also makes it hard for players to fulfil unique roles. I can remeber back in AoK especially, having my ally go Cavalry, while I was the Infantry/Siege guy. This is very hard to do in RoN because of the unit speeds; you cannot cover your borders with one combined army. Nor can you have a joint attack on one player, because if his ally attacks you, there is no way you'll get back in time . In recent games, I've found the best way to combat an enemy attacking on of your allies, isn't to help your ally, but rather press harder on your man and hopefully force the enemy attacking your ally to retreat. Of course, that means the enemy attacker is going to press harder on your ally in hopes of you retreating, which really means there isn't a 2v2 game going on, but rather 2 1v1's .
I think I can even blame the "one-battle" oriented gameplay (in my experience) on the unit speed! If units didn't move so slow, I don't think you would see this "build up - attack - resign/win" sort of mentality. It would be a lot easier to be in constant combat with your enemy, on mulitple fronts. If you think about it, splitting up your army into two and putting them on different fronts is a lot like a 2v2; and since 2v2's are often just 2 1v1's, why bother splitting it up? If I was able to attack my enemy's side, with my main army without fear of losing the position where my army was instantly, I could split up his army, and with the help of the production buildings push back where I started, rather than just having a mini-cold war, climaxed at a single battle. Why don't I do that? Mostly because if I move my army, he'll be able to attack before I even engage his support city. I also won't be able to make it to his support city, conqueror it, and then back to my original position in time to save it. Again, it is mostly "I" who feel the effects of the slow unit speed, as I am the one who needs to travel the farthest. He only needs to move across a border, where as I must completely re-position my army at another one of his cities, which could be a few screen lengths away.
I realize that I could simply play on Fast speed, but I don't really want to. Units die fast enough from the R/P/S counter system, battles are short enough, I don't want to have them over in a blink of an eye on the fast setting. The game also seems a lot more tight on normal, I started off playing on fast - before I actually played against real people, but once I played a few games on normal, I knew I didn't want to go back. Rather than having loose control over my economy, units, and armies on the fast setting, I can have complete control on normal. Where even little things make a difference, on fast, it zooms by so fast, wether that villager gets to destinationX in 10 seconds, or 30, it doesn't make a big difference on fast. I also know Brian himself mentioned that they couldn't really increase the speed of units because it would make the graphics look weird. I'm not saying that this isn't true, but when I played on fast, I didn't notice any "weird" looking unit animations. This could be due to my high resolution, and/or the fact that I'm zoomed out 100% of the time, but then again, who isn't? I think it would be interesting to play a game of RoN with a "mixed" speed setting, that is take the unit speeds from Fast (Probably 30% faster), while maintaining the Rate Of Fire (RoF), gathering rates and build times from normal.
Finally, just to clarify somethings, I like RoN, and perhaps I sounded too negative in my original rant. I think its a great game, with an original gameplay system, I just prefer to point out the problems as I see them in my experiences, more than the positives. Please don't judge RoN soley on what I've said here, or there, as it is a rather one sided view point. The game is good, lots of fun, and I wish more people player online, I'm just showcasing the problems, rather than the "good"'s.
. Sit between 2 towns and simply kill the caravans and you get a gold bonus while his gold income stagnates, that is very devistating and it will force him to find and kill your horse archers (or light horse, whatever). He can't sit there and let his garison do it for him, and if you research a few levels of supply, his attrition won't do it either! (Attrition only applies to moving units after you research supply).
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