Author Topic: How to Control Norse Barracks Units?  (Read 2375 times)

Offline MaxAstro

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How to Control Norse Barracks Units?
« on: June 08, 2013, 02:02:03 am »
Just picked this game up, and really enjoying it.  However, I've hit something that is kinda frustrating and feels like it gives the Greeks an edge over the Norse, especially early on.

Marauders and Huscarls require the same finished goods buildings, namely the Smithy and Butcher.  Huscarls additionally require horse meat, but since horse meat is produced at a butcher there doesn't seem to be any way to produce marauders but not huscarls, except not having any stables anywhere on your entire side.

Compunding this is that horses are a slowly generating resource and huscarls require a lot of it.  This seems to often result in a barracks that could be producing a marauder sitting idle for 2-3 turns waiting for enough resources to build a huscarl.

So is this WAD?  'Cause it's kinda been frustrating me.  :)

Offline solosol

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Re: How to Control Norse Barracks Units?
« Reply #1 on: June 08, 2013, 03:33:26 am »
That Factions are disbalanced is intended (for example greek barracks units are stronger, that's why greek tend to power early on), so is the player who has to find a way to deal with it. And the map routes, the location, the ruins, the bandits, the woes, and all that is affecting the unit behavior,  makes very difficult to find a good way to "control" them.  Using myths and tokens is a way, but you can't in the first age...
About controlling the unit created...I'm not sure. Given that there are enough resources, I think that the unit is randomly created from the availables...so you can't control that directly, but by limiting a certain resource/building.
 I've found that giving horses only to norse early on is good as a way to "rebalance" at first, because greek will not make those  horsemen for some time. Once the game progress, you can add horse to greek, because you will need that meat.  That's helping me a lot in the first moments.  Other ways  to try to rebalance are by using schools to get stronger units, and by combining barracks and archeries.

Offline Misery

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Re: How to Control Norse Barracks Units?
« Reply #2 on: June 08, 2013, 05:34:04 am »
Just picked this game up, and really enjoying it.  However, I've hit something that is kinda frustrating and feels like it gives the Greeks an edge over the Norse, especially early on.

Marauders and Huscarls require the same finished goods buildings, namely the Smithy and Butcher.  Huscarls additionally require horse meat, but since horse meat is produced at a butcher there doesn't seem to be any way to produce marauders but not huscarls, except not having any stables anywhere on your entire side.

Compunding this is that horses are a slowly generating resource and huscarls require a lot of it.  This seems to often result in a barracks that could be producing a marauder sitting idle for 2-3 turns waiting for enough resources to build a huscarl.

So is this WAD?  'Cause it's kinda been frustrating me.  :)


The Huscarls missing resources wont cause the Mauraders to not be produced.    If you're running out of horse meat, the barracks will simply designate huscarls as unavailable, and produce the next unit down the line (the order is from top to bottom), in this case, Mauraders, if they're available based on your resources.   In the building's tooltip it will say "Next in queue" next to the unit that will be produced next when the cooldown ends.

The reason why your barracks and things sit idle is because there is always a cooldown between one produced unit and the next.   Changing what resources are available will never alter this, unless you make it so that all 4 possible units cant be produced due to missing something.  There will always be a 2-3 (I forget which) cooldown on these buildings.  It's one reason why it's important to build more than one at a time, and to keep track of resources and make sure these buildings have what they need.


As for what to do about the early game imbalance, there's a few tricks you can use.

1.  Produce more Norse units than Greek

2. Use "Unit Up" to boost Norse units where needed, micromanaging the battles;  it's more effective than you might think.

3. Smite a key building in the Greek city.... probably the Butcher.... to halt production of all units in that city at once until you're ready for some more to appear

4. Use Norse myth units to balance things out a bit.   Yes, you can use these in the first Age, but early on the resources are difficult to get.   I strongly suggest that in your starting group of 9 buildings you include 1 or 2 Seers and possibly a diamond mine, so that production of those important resources can begin right away, allowing earlier access to myth units that use those things.  Beware though:  Myth units are strong!  Use them with care, and have a backup plan in case they go on a rampage and do more destruction than you planned.

5. Use tokens like Singasteinn that are grabbable by human troops; keep in mind that these are grabbable by BOTH sides!   So if you want to, say, use Pandora's Box, which is a Greek item, to boost the Norse side, you can!  It's all in the placement with these.   Be careful with these though, as they can have quite the strong effect!  And dont let bandits grab them.


Offline Winge

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Re: How to Control Norse Barracks Units?
« Reply #3 on: June 08, 2013, 10:08:21 am »
One note on what Misery said:  the cooldown for Greek Barracks and Archery Ranges is 4 turns; the cooldown for Norse Barracks and Archery Ranges is 5 turns.  Siege workshops have a lower cooldown, but I cannot remember what it was.  The Greek lesser god Pan also seriously messes with the other side's military production.

I do wish there was a little more control over Barracks units on both sides (I love how I can perfectly control the unit Norse Archery Ranges produce).  But really, it's not actually that bad.  You just have to get a few extra ranches if you want to produce catapults.
« Last Edit: June 08, 2013, 10:10:28 am by Winge »
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Offline MaxAstro

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Re: How to Control Norse Barracks Units?
« Reply #4 on: June 08, 2013, 07:26:54 pm »
I am aware of the cooldown.  What I am experiencing is a barracks with "0 turns to next unit", enough resources to produce a marauder, and not enough resources to produce a huscarl (due to lacking horse meat).  Said barracks produces nothing until it has enough horse meat to make a huscarl.  I know it's not the cooldown because this is before ANY units have been produced from that barracks.

I will try and see if I can get a save uploaded, should be simple enough...

EDIT: Strange, now it is working like you guys say it should.  And yet last night it definitely seemed to work differently...  Will keep poking it and see if I can reproduce, as this certainly seems like a bug.

EDIT2: Tried it several times and the marauder popped.  I have no idea why it didn't happen that way before, but whatever set of circumstances led to it refusing to build a marauder I can't seem to recreate.
« Last Edit: June 08, 2013, 07:40:41 pm by MaxAstro »

Offline zespri

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Re: How to Control Norse Barracks Units?
« Reply #5 on: June 09, 2013, 07:04:55 am »
Just picked this game up, and really enjoying it.  However, I've hit something that is kinda frustrating and feels like it gives the Greeks an edge over the Norse, especially early on.


Yep, I had the same feeling. The thread was moved here http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,13286.0.html
There are a few good tips there, so you might want to have a look.

 

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