Defensive stats balance for troops in X3 speed

    Hello Travian community!

    I would like to bring your attention to an interesting topic about troops defensive stats.

    We all know the game is old and the troop stats have been balanced to perfection. However, it is not the case in X3 server speeds. Let me explain:

    We will be only talking about the most competitive defense players at the highest skill level, so I will make a few presumptions:
    1. The player is using gold for NPC trade therefore crop = any other resource.
    2. The player is using every single resource to produce the maximum amount of deff troops OVERALL, which will result in some resources being delegated to new village production, some for celebration, some deff troops production. Therefore:
    2.1. The player will produce deff in ALL VILLAGES at maximum possible barracks for continuous 24/7 production. He will not be limited by time and only be limited by resources, because if he has more resources then needed, he just increases barracks level.
    2.2. We will NOT talk about defensive kings of 50+ players, who are also limited by time, not only by resources.
    3. We will only be talking about infantry troops.

    When you produce a troop, it requires a certain amount of resources to generate a certain amount of defensive force. But if the troop is kept alive for 1 day, it also eats 24 crop (1 crop/h), so now his cost increases, while defensive force remained the same. If a phalanx survived for 20 days, it's actual cost becomes: 85 Wood + 100 Clay + 50 Iron + 480 Crop. And, remember, crop is ress like any other.

    So in normal speed servers you have a perfect balance of defensive force for different tribes, where some tribes get more INITIAL defense, but drops off in the late game while others start weak but shine in efficiency at lategame:

    pasted-from-clipboard.png

    (Vertical axis is a log scale)

    For example here you see Praetorian starting weak while Spearman looks the most promising, but at around day 70 Praetorian becomes the most cost-efficient and every troop deff seems similar. The later stage of the game - the bigger the difference in efficiency.

    However, things look much worse in X3 speed, because TROOPS STILL EAT SAME AMOUNT OF CROP:
    pasted-from-clipboard.png

    In X3 Speed servers Roman deff starts weak and never ever breaks even. Praetorians only become nearly useful if you never use them for 75% of all server. In comparison, they break even with Phalanx much sooner in Normal Speed standards. At the end, the difference in efficiency is so negligible, that you are always safer just going for Phalanx.

    Some people may argue with me, saying that Praetorians have a certain role - infantry defense. And they shouldn't be compared to Phalanx.
    So let's assume a standard infantry-heavy tribe - The Teutons attack. At level 20 Barracks/20 Stable/20 Workshop Teutons with 15% warrior helm and T2 club produce 14.2k off strength per hour, of which 9k is infantry (63%) and 5.2k cavalry strength (37%). Let's multiply each troop's Infantry and Cavalry deff by these percentages and check efficiency:

    pasted-from-clipboard.png


    Wee see that in this case Romans STILL have worse deff against Teutons when compared to Gaulish Phalanx. Romans only break even after 12 days, and after that the difference is mediocre. Wonder how it looks in X1 speed?

    pasted-from-clipboard.png

    (Vertical axis is a log scale)

    In X1 speed we can see why the Roman Praetorian is called the best deff against Teuton.

    I believe this serves as proof that X3 speed defensive troop values are unbalanced.

    My suggestion: Increase initial stats of Praetorian (Only in X3 speed) in order to reach the break even point at least at 40% of server length, like it is done in X1 speed.

    Thanks for reading through this. What are your opinions?
    -Mitsu

    (If anyone is interested, I will be happy to share my calculations and graphs. Just contact in PM)

    There are several things that you dont consider when you want to balance units...for instance phalanx are terrible and you can never clean camps/hideouts.This is true for spears aswell while Legos have quite good attack power aswell defence.This is huge for early game.Not to mention Legos are cheap (cheaper then phalanx) and good early game unit while pretorians are mostly used later on,no one start pump pretos first 5 days of the server (talking about 3x servers).Romans are made for late game.Like it or not they cant have best off unit's and best def unit's.

    I think you are in general correct kirkata#EN , however your comment is wrongly placed, because I am not asking about overall troop balance, but rather JUST the imbalance that X3 speed brings.
    You say: "while pretorians are mostly used later on". This statement is true for X1 speed. In X3 speed Praetorians are simply never used if the deffender knows what he is doing.
    And what do you even mean by "Like it or not they cant have best off unit's and best def unit's."? What does that have to do with imbalance that comes from different server speed?

    Looks like this thread has gone down to abyss without being noticed.
    But now that the Travian team is already implementing changes to game mechanics, maybe we could talk about this one aswell?
    BridgetB

    Please have in mind that this all could be changed by something as simple as lowering the cost of slow and efficient deff units by 5-15 ress each.

    Thanks Mitsu !

    I would have one addition, that makes Romans to have a disadvantage against Gauls and Teutons at the end game. Slow training speed. That is a huge factor also in 1x servers.

    At the end game, as a defensive player you are going to be training as many troops as you can, as fast as you can, from as many villages as you can. And either Praetorians or Legionnaires just can't be trained as quickly as Phalanxes or Spearmen.

    Meaning that in order to reach at least +100k defensive troops, training need to be done from more villages, Smithy and troops need to be upgraded in more villages, and barracks need to be upgraded in more villages. And for all this to be possible, Romans will need produce more culture points in order to gain more villages faster than Gauls.

    Or 24/7 training needs to be started much earlier for WW-defending with Romans compared to Gauls. Which in itself will limit the amount of villages Romans will be able to build and upgrade to needed high levels.

    T5_def-power-balanced_per_time.png

    T5_resources_per_time.png

    Thank you all for the data, it is an interesting journey seeing the effect through the game world from beginning to end...


    But... in a personal level, I fail to see why this has to be changed.


    Each tribe is different, that is the idea, one can choose one or the other for different reasons, depending what one wants to do in the gameworld that is about to start.


    So it is logical that a tribe is better at defensive units, another one at offensive and another one at infrastructure... what would be the gain on making them all equal in all things?

    In my opinion it would make choosing one or the other almost based on looks if we make all of them equal... isn't it?

    That's true Unknown . We don't want to make things equal. But on the other hand it would be nice if for a good WW-defense Spearmen and Phalanxes wouldn't be as dominant as they are right now (I am a Gaul player myself).

    I think the main point from Mitsu was that the balance-differences are different between 1x and 3x servers. And that's something caused by the fact that not everything in 3x servers are 3x. So something that was much more balanced in 1x, isn't anymore so with 3x.

    Personally I think Praetorians and Legionnaires are very valuable troops for casual def-players, even on 3x servers. For them the crop consumption is much bigger benefit than for those high-end players only maximizing the defensive power they can provide for late game. And even if that benefit isn't as large on 3x, it is still beneficial.

    That's why romans have a cheat code called "Double building". After 5 villages, you can already start leveling res/crop fields and pushing barracks/smithy at the same time as extra with your overflow of resources.
    Roman defs are insanely afk friendly. You cook 10-11 villa, start cooking preto 24/7 in all of them from day 27 (t3). And you can practically go afk and still cook 350-400k pretorians until the end of server. You'll never have crop problems, you can just log in, queue preto in all villa and log of for another 12 hours. Dream life of a afk player.
    If you wanna go tryhard as roman def, you go all in on legionaires. Sim the shit out of it, 20 villages, 0 cities except capital. Cook legionaires in everywhere because they are so cheap. 600k+ def easily reachable.
    And you save your money, because the cheat code of double building.
    Yeah Romans are bit more expensive because you need much more smithies and much more barracks, but how much resources you generate in all your villages over all game, when you can start leveling res fields while you still level your warehouse, granary, main building and all the stuff. That shit adds up over time.

    Quote from Unknown

    Each tribe is different, that is the idea, one can choose one or the other for different reasons, depending what one wants to do in the gameworld that is about to start.


    So it is logical that a tribe is better at defensive units, another one at offensive and another one at infrastructure... what would be the gain on making them all equal in all things?

    In my opinion it would make choosing one or the other almost based on looks if we make all of them equal... isn't it?

    Thank you for the reply Unknown . You are absolutely right, each tribe has to be different.
    But I have to once again remind that this thread is NOT about tribe imbalance.

    It is about the imbalance of troop stats in X3 speed. We have to realise that same troop behaves differently in X1 speed and X3 speed.
    Travian have made romans to be slow and efficient, but because in x3 speed servers crop consumption is only x1, romans become just slow... and never efficient :D

    Agree with your analysis Mitsu , but not sure how to resolve it. Or what is the best way to avoid it.
    Because changing troops stats to be different in x3 compared x1 can be a bit hard, and confusing.

    The issue comes from the imbalance how the stats for troops in 3x speed-servers are scaled:

    • 3x training
    • 2x walking speed
    • 1x crop consumption

    Theoretically the "right" answer would be to increase the crop consumption to also be 3x.
    But many players enjoy the easiness of managing larger armies, meaning it would be very hard to change that.

    Quote from Mitsu


    It is about the imbalance of troop stats in X3 speed. We have to realise that same troop behaves differently in X1 speed and X3 speed.
    Travian have made romans to be slow and efficient, but because in x3 speed servers crop consumption is only x1, romans become just slow... and never efficient :D

    It hurt my maths, stats of troops on x1 and x3, x5 and x150kkk are exactely same.

    I play Roman off, always, been first off several time, 2nd on last Halloween Hunt.

    I don't know what are you trying to change and what is your project.

    Quote from DrugsInc

    It hurt my maths, stats of troops on x1 and x3, x5 and x150kkk are exactely same.

    This post is about defense stats per resource (considering crop upkeep).

    So obviously praets are least cost efficient while trained, but considering crop upkeep, they start getting cost efficient if they survive for ~70 days.

    So with regards to that, def troops are balanced at x1, with praets starting really bad in terms of cost efficiency, but being fine in the late game.

    But at x3 late game is not late enough, so prates are just bad.

    Quote from DrugsInc


    I play Roman off, always, been first off several time, 2nd on last Halloween Hunt.

    I don't know what are you trying to change and what is your project.

    You know I could just write "go read the initial post" because both you and me know that you did not read it :D But what the hell, i like you, Drugs, so lets go:

    1. The goal of this project is to prove that in terms of defensive power, x3 speed is imbalanced for some tribes. Most heavily - for romans and their Praetorians.
    2. Good thing that you mentioned that you play off. Because the problems i raise are only applicable for deff player.
    Why? -Because deff players care ONLY about defence/ress of a unit. Training time is irrelevant, because if we have more ress - we build troops in more villages. if we have less ress - we utilise smaller baracks level.
    This is completely opposite to off players, who do not care about the troop power/ress and instead care only about power/time.

    Quote from Killeri

    Theoretically the "right" answer would be to increase the crop consumption to also be 3x.
    But many players enjoy the easiness of managing larger armies, meaning it would be very hard to change that.

    Thank you for your insight. What would you think about a resource discount for slower, more expensive troops? Even something like reducing praetorian cost by 5 wood + 5 iron would mean that it breaks even with phalanx at around day 30, which is similar to X1 standards.

    Yes Mitsu , I think if we would need to make changes for the troop stats only for 3x, reducing the cost of training rather than increasing defense points, might be less bad of the two.
    But that still doesn't sound right to me :/ , as it might be worse to create confusion that way, than just living with the 3x misbalance.

    Because game was originally tried to be balanced for the 1x Travian T4, and then improved for Kingdoms back in ~2015.
    And the improper crop-consumption was a very much a necessity for any 3x Travian, so that people can actually sleep and be 7-10h away from the game.
    Because regular 8h-away on 3x would be same as full 24h away from the 1x game.
    So managing large armies would be very hard without that improper scaling to 3x.

    The fact that 3x for Kingdoms seems to be these days the more popular choice for players, it might even make sense to balance the game for 3x.
    And let the 1x be the imbalanced version.

    That way for example reducing the cost of Praetorians by that 5-10 resources for every version, might still keep the game simple and aligned across different speeds.