Post Patch Chat (7/11/2001)

We recently had the opportunity to sit down for a discussion about the new patch with Kevin "the_Sheriff" Holme, who is not only a fantastic Age player, but also one of the hard working folks at Ensemble Studios who've brought us this new update. You can find the recently released patch for the Conquerors expansion pack here, along with the readme file which explains the many changes, additions and tweaks.

Thunder: Howdy there Kevin, many thanks for this sit down chat. Pull up a chair, stand, sit, lay down, kneel...get comfortable.

There were a lot more changes to civilizations in the final patch than I was expecting. The change to Japanese and Gothic infantry in particular was quite drastic. This seems to really go against AoK's original theme of weaker bonuses to start that progressively got stronger. What brought this about?

Kevin "The_Sheriff" Holme: Hmm. Well our original plan was to make as few changes as possible and get the patch out as soon as we could. We were going to balance the Koreans, balance the feudal age, fix the farm bug, and not much more. So we did this, and sent out the beta patch to get some feedback on the changes. But in the end, not only did we get a ton of feedback on our new changes, but we also got an amazing number of requests and suggestions to make the civilizations more balanced. So after a long discussion over some of the suggestions we read at AoKH and MFO, we decided to look at each civilization individually and take another crack at rebalancing them with some small easy changes. When we got to the Goths and Japanese we saw 2 problems. The first and most obvious was that they are considered 'slow civs' and are rarely if ever used in a competitive RM game. The second problem was that they are strong infantry civs, but most players never build infantry until they are in imperial age and have the champion upgrade. So we un-scaled their infantry bonuses. This gives them a new powerful unit-line to fight the faster civs with in the early ages, yet it maintains our old Imperial age balance

Thunder: Staying with the infantry for a moment here, there is some discrepancy between how large of a change both of these civs infantry bonuses are supposed to be between the readme and the final patch. For those who haven't noticed, the Goths are actually getting 35% cheaper infantry in the game. Which reflects your actual intentions?

Kevin "The_Sheriff" Holme: This was unfortunately a mistake in the database that slipped by us. We had intended that the Japanese and Goths should get no more than a 25% bonus. We are very aware of the error and are running tests on it already in case it turns out to be a problem.

Thunder: Yes, there's some debate about whether or not 35% is too much of a bonus, with players backing both points of view. But with slower archer build time, introduced with the xpack, you must have had some concerns about civs being able to counter infantry rushes.

Kevin "The_Sheriff" Holme: Like I said above, we felt that a 25% bonus was a safe change, not intending it to go to 35%.

Thunder: Alrighty, now on to the much debated Koreans. Do you believe the Koreans will be off the "banned" list in DM with the all changes that have been made to them? It seems that some more wood for War Wagons won't have much of an impact when you have DM resources.

Kevin "The_Sheriff" Holme: The wood increase will have impact, even in DM. I almost always end up with 100 villagers stripping the map dry at the end of all my DM games. Besides that, we also lowered the range on their WWs and Onagers. Their bombard towers shouldn't be as much of a problem now either because of their new vulnerability to siege rams.

Thunder: Yes indeed, I've experienced the changes to BTs first hand. It's great for civs without bombard cannons to have more than one option at stopping a BT push. Now, you guys had lots of fan feedback to deal with. What was one of the most unexpected reactions from fans during the beta patch period that you guys had to deal with?

Kevin "The_Sheriff" Holme: We received a lot of complaints about bombard towers being too powerful in deathmatch. Players would build forests of towers backed up by bombard cannons which were nearly impossible to destroy.

Thunder: Aha, those BTs again. It'll be interesting to see how the change plays out in DM. Now, you folks at ES did plenty of testing, were there any strange events that occurred during your in house sessions?

Kevin "The_Sheriff" Holme: Hmm not really. I guess the biggest problem we came across was an out of sync in the recorded games caused by Turbo gold trickle from relics.

Thunder: Ahhh, speaking of Turbo...it is quite a popular new addition. Where did the idea for turbo mode come from?

Kevin "The_Sheriff" Holme: I believe Mike Kidd came up with this idea during his trip to the Cybergames in Korea last year. He spent a lot of time talking with the Korean gamers and found that the biggest complaint about AoK by far was that it was too slow. They prefered games that take 30 minutes rather than an hour, and they especially didn't want to play for 15 minutes before they could fight. Turbo mode is probably what 'Fast Speed' should have been. You can advance faster, fight sooner, but without the loss of unit control.

Thunder: Yah, it reminds some of the old timers of the fast paced RoR days. Now, there were other civilizations that had tweaks such as China. Some feel the change to the chinese starting resources has hurt them too much. How did this change play out in your testing?

Kevin "The_Sheriff" Holme: I don't see why they should be a bad civ now. At the very worst they should have an even start with the rest of the civs speed-wise, but they also still have a very robust tech tree with discounted improvements. They have a strong navy (you are gonna need those demo boats to take out the new fireships) and probably one of the best team bonuses in the game.

Thunder: Getting on to another civilization that was tweaked, everyone was expecting better Conquistadors as a result of the patch, but why was it decided to give the Spanish a major bonus with all gunpowder units?

Kevin "The_Sheriff" Holme: We thought that the Spanish had a pretty well-rounded tech tree, but nothing really stood out from the other civilizations. Gunpowder units weren't very popular in the past, and only the Turks had a bonus to them. So we figured it would be a safe and welcomed improvement. It also kinda all ties together with their super cannon galleys.

Thunder: Oki doki there Kevin, many thanks for your time! We'll let you get back to your QA duties there at the studios. See ya on the battlefield!