Friday Update: Week 36/2015, More about the Slavs

And on we go, with our second Friday Update dedicated to the Slavs. As mentioned in the last Friday Update, the Slavs are quite a special civ, and do most things ever so slightly differently to other European civs. A key difference that becomes apparent straight at the start of the game is that the Slavs are the exception to the rule that hunting is always a faster way of gathering food than farming is. The Slavs have a quite significant increase in their gather rates from agriculture, but also do worse than other civs on natural resources. This makes the agriculture system, centred around the Manor, an absolutely crucial part of Slavic gameplay, where for other civs it is a powerful but nonetheless decidedly undecisive part of their strategy. The focus on agriculture that the Slavs have is very much a two-sided affair: On the one hand it benefits them greatly in situations where they don't have map control, and allows them to execute very effective turtles, staying behind their defences and just gathering from Farms instead of having to venture out in the world in search of huntables and mines. On the other hand however, it also makes the Slavs very vulnerable to raids, as they have to expend significant time and investment into not just retraining lost Peasants, but also lost Farmers and destroyed Farms. This also counts against the Slavs in Age I, as it will take them a while to set up their economy.

Paradoxically, the stubbornness of the Slavic economy is coupled with a very agile and versatile military. All Slavic military units, base units and unique units alike, do more attack damage than those of other civs, and while unit upgrades for all other civs benefit attack and hitpoints, for the Slavs they benefit attack, hitpoints (less so than for regular civs) and speed. The Slavic military, then, is not one to be held back for drawn-out pitched battles, but instead one that comes to its utmost fruition in lightning-fast raids and tactical attacks at strategic targets. All this is before we even get to the Duality feature, but we'll be talking about that next time...

Just to make sure that this Friday Update doesn't consist fully of text, here's an image of something we've been working on this week, an attachment for the Observatory.


When taking questions for the Q&A video we received something of a complaint about the Observatory, and how it still looks decidedly Aztec instead of Middle Eastern. To be honest, it's difficult to disagree with that sentiment. To alleviate that, and also to make it look more like an actual observatory, and not just some building with a high sloping roof, it will be getting an attachment, much as we've been doing to Castles. The render shown here is from a very much work-in-progress stage of the attachment model, with more things still to be added to it, as well as a wholly different attachment for the Age IV Observatory.


The main thing we've been doing this week is to take another look at balancing and unit stats, as evidenced in this collection of short sentences, somewhat like those uttered by a nuclear missile controller in a Cold War action film:

AOE_Fan wrote:The current version of Barbarian stats are now in main post. Also the Outlaw stats have been added. The livestock values have been recalculated.

K&B salutes... the forests around Arnhem. They were clearly crucial in the making of our Q&A video...
K&B refutes... Autumn. The summer weather is dying down, and now we can look forward to months upon months of rainy days...