I didn't know that slingers were so much more powerful with all the additional upgrades.
On the whole view they are not
Because the damage is not the attack value.
The damage is calculated by attack- armour, so if you up the attack but your opponent up the armour you have no damage increase ( let not consider forge for simplicity).
But barbarians do not have defense ups 
Why slinger/spears? Are they that much cheaper?
Spears was a mistake, since swords has the same exactly upgrade cost.
Slingers because barbarians cannot up their defense and slingers are 350 on the battefield so every up on slingers takes more total attack from my formation to barbarians.
This is in order to explain GF how adding new units and why i think would be valuable for ikariam.
How
1) Introduce a new resource that can be crafted or bought somewhere (maybe in a new building) using existing resource. To have 1 unit of the new resource you need more than 1 unit of already existing resources
2) New units need the new resource to be trained
3) The resource cost (= general score) is a little bit higher then already existing. (For example 2 or 3 times)
4) The gold maintenance cost of new units is significantly higher then already existing ( From 10 to 20 times)
As a result if a player is now able to maintain 5000 hoplites he should be able to maintain only 500 or less new front line unit
Why
1) Late game battles will involve less units so will last less round and finish early. -> Avoid endless battles
2) Chance to balancing new units values in order to prevent such unbalanced fakes like existing balloons naval fakes
Will old units become completely unhelpful? No because
3) Possibility to have a pool of more units and mix old and new units in waves -> New tatics for players to explore
4) Impossibility to have all cities protected with new units due to the high gold maintenance cost, so players can keep old units and use them for different targets/missions
Other details
0) Fix about general banks, preventing them to sell units immediately after exiting vacation mode, has been done. If units can be abused
using general banks there is no sense in introducing new ones.
1) New units will be available in server opened from 3 years, in order to prevent abuse by whales on low point players in new servers
2) New units will be trained in the barracks starting from level 40
3) New units will be sold in the black market starting from level 40
4) New units will be upped in the workshop starting from level 40. The new resource will be needed for ups.
Every up bonus will be double respect to old units' ups but the number of possible up will be capped (e.g. max 20 levels)
5) Also new barbarian units can be created for new levels of barbarian village and fleet.
Before the new ups it was ( Base +Upgrades) * forge
i don't have any proof it is remained the same but i think remaining the same is the simple way
I am low on attack up for hoplites
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Oplita.............................2848(-152) - Oplita.............................1689(-177)
Spadaccino...........................2100(-0) - .............................................
Tiratore fucile a zolfo...............420(-0) - .............................................
Ariete................................175(-0) - Ariete................................130(-0)
Giavellottiere........................500(-0) - Giavellottiere.....................2804(-172)
Cuoco.................................155(-0) - Cuoco..................................30(-0)
Guaritore.............................170(-0) - Guaritore..............................10(-0)
............................................. - Fromboliere..........................2415(-0)
............................................. - Mortaio................................30(-0)
............................................. - Gigante a Vapore......................214(-0)
............................................. - Girocottero...........................210(-0)
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Now for level 33 slingers attak need 16,17 M crystal
Gyros attacks contemporary to opponent's gyros
Gyros targets first opponent's ballons, and then ( all enemy ballons dead or opponent hasn' t have deployed ballons) opponent's gyros
the gyros on the side with no balloons will take heavy losses until the other sides' balloons are destroyed.
This sentence is not correct
If you want to confute the sentence do this test with equal ups on gyros
Player 1-> Deploy 150 balloons and 120 gyros
Player 2 -> Deploy only 400 Gyros
At round 6 player 1 should have no more balloons, but i am sure that gyros of player 2 will continue to suffer heavy losses and damage, and at round six player 2 will lose more gyros than player 1
Basically this sentence is in contrast with the following
Anyway the world " tank" "distract" or " use as bait" are all incorrect. They try to explain an algorithm in everyday language.
But an algorithm is deterministic. Talking about distracting make no sense. Ikariam units choose their target by a deterministic priority order.
Also i think you don't use you steam giants to distract the enemy and protect your spearmen, since steam giants are more expensive and more useful in other situations. So back to the problem raised with this post, the aim of balloons is attacking and possibly destroying the opponent's third line.
If they are no more able to do so in most of situation maybe it's time to change some values, otherwise we risk to have an other completely unhelpful units in the game.
Display MoreHi,
Using the new battle system, with infinite upgrades, seems like the balloons are now just worthless.
With just 5 upgrade differences between enemy gyrocopters (17 attack) and ballons (12 deffensive), the balloons just ALL die without inflicting any damage to the enemy 3rd line.
Is this REALLY intended? Because it crashed the entire battle system of this game....
Now, the balloons are just WORTHLESS!!!
I think this is really intended.
Do you want your ballons to perform better? Just spend to grow, to have more resource and gold and go further in the up. Since the up are infinite you can have infinite armour for your ballons, and technically have 0 losses in your ballons.
Obviousely i do not agree with this setting, but it is really intended. There must be always something for whales to spend on and have advantage.
And if an advantage is done by spending money it will never be removed.
While I know many people have been looking forward to this change, I was disappointed they didn't give us a warning about it so people could prepare.
The same as when they "corrected" the bug of Ares and it become an useless miracle vanishing years of hard work and organisation of players to have cities on it.
Merge -> reduction of costs for GF
Infinte building upgrade and infinite troop upgrades -> giving whales something to spend on
Hydra event -> very bad, not ever reproposed
It seems to me their priorities are very clear.
Solve or mitigate the gen bank problems and so on won' t let fair players to spend more in the game.
Maybe all developers that have worked on the code years ago are no more in GF and the expense to re gain control over the code and make significant changes ( like the cooldown about v mode and black market ) is considered not worth it.
Also investing in creating new events ( es: pvp virtual arenas, events againts barbarians) and changes in the gameplay are considered not worth it.
More then 1 years ago they introduced a new type of event.
It was a disaster and the rewards distribution did not work properly. After more than one year it seems to me they have abandon the idea.
Very slow progression
Is it really worth the expenditure of gold and crystal? Would it not have been better to spend the gold and crystal on superior units? Or does this enable combat without sulphur?
On flank it enables battle without sulphur, but only against barbarians.
Then it is just experiments.
Since i dont play anymore competitive i am wasting resources on slingers
Slinger attack lv 28
Hoplite attack lv10/ armour lv16
spearman attack lv12/ armour lv18
forge on
Slinger attack level 23
Hoplites armour +50 , attack i do not remeber
Spearman levels 12/19
Forge active
Slingers attack lev 24
Hoplites +60 armour ( that is with 20 base armour and forge 100 armour so immune to barbarian second line )
Hoplites +50 attack
Forge active
Oh, barbarians. Yes, the barbarians don't get any upgrades, but you'd still need 36 to 40 armor upgrades to make that possible.
I don't see why this is a problem.
I try to explain that these percentages below are not the whole picture.
Plus, upgrades have diminishing returns. Going from 95 armor to 100 armor is ~5.3% improvement. From 100 to 105 is a 5% improvement. And from 105 to 110 a 4.76% improvement.
So maybe invest in one more up or 2 even very expensive but can have sense.
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There is no way that a game which is played over decades should allow you to burn an entire fleet within minutes, by avoiding regular round durations.
Well, not in minutes, since there is action point limitation, even with general banks if you are alone you need some hours to continually send fake missions, but usually people have a sleep time of some hours so the destruction is feasible.
But with fakes you can think of avoid them by moving while being offline.
Very disgusting tatic is the multiimpact so that even you have a big fleet and you are online if you engage in defense you can only stay watching your opponent continually impacts your fleet and makes 3 round every 15 min + 2-3 sec.
This is why i hope there will be new units in the future.
Maybe there was a misunderstanding in one of my previous posts. I mean free units reachable by all players.
But the aim should be that if you can afford 200k gen, with new stronger but more expensive unit you can produce and maintain a number of troops
equivalent to that of 10 or 20k now.
So you can both resolve big generals fight in hours instead days, and avoid or mitigate massive fake and multimpact strategies because even for big account
should become proibitive maintain tons of new more expensive units.
They can't become mathematically immune to knifeman (I'm going to assume you mean swordsman because a swordsman has a base attack of 200) attacks because you can also upgrade the attack of the swordsman, too. So yes, if you do 40 upgrades to your swordsman's armor and attack someone who has never upgraded their swordsman, you would receive 0 damage.
If someone has 40/40 upgraded swordsmen and attacks someone who has 0/0 upgraded swordsman, I'm perfectly fine with that being a complete rout. I don't know why anyone would even be concerned about this scenario.
Knifeman is the name of the barbarian unit.
For what i know barbarians does not have ups, so if you up swordsman to +200 armour ( or +180 +20 of forge) you mathematically can farm barbarian without lose any swoardsman
Bigger accounts can have more gold, generals etc but when it comes to fighting they have no advantage in battle.
False.
Bigger account with bigger generals and general banks can dispose of tons of paddles and balloons to fake you.
Wars in old servers can go in 2 directions:
1) infinite battles where both part can produce more than killed units
2) fake or multiimpact strategy.
Personally none of them is funny for my and that is why since December 2024 i have stopped trying to be competitive in wars.
Plus, upgrades have diminishing returns. Going from 95 armor to 100 armor is ~5.3% improvement. From 100 to 105 is a 5% improvement. And from 105 to 110 a 4.76% improvement.
These percentage are not all.
If you up swordmen armor from + 195 to 200 they become mathematically immune to knifeman attacks and you do need doctors anymore for them, so maybe can worth the investment
Moreover in some situation being even only one up in advance can give you a big advantage like lose 4 subs or only 2 ,
or even more OP avoid losing balloon.
Some players enjoy the playstyle of sniping entire fleets within minutes. The defender usually doesnt like having to monitor the game 24/7 to avoid getting sniped. Personally, I think the interaction between 5/5 carriers and paddles vs 0/0 rockets, carriers, and paddles is a little too strong, and Im not sure if this is healthy for the game.
If you use subs, there is more possibility now to lose only 2 subs instead of 4. This should mitigate fakes.
In other words if you want to mitigate fake you have to invest all you have only in paddle attacks and subs armour, and avoid using rockets at all.
Still better avoid to keep fleet at all.
This is a screen before v 14.
As you can see Spartans were already balanced, since they still died and they are not able to completely wipe out the opponents formation.
Obviousely since they are paid units they were a bit better than hoplites.
Unfortunately with v. 14 they could become like upped hoplites.
most paid things should be either cosmetic or for convenience... NOT for direct effectiveness and advantage
Honestly are there stupid players who paid for things that does not give direct effectiveness and advantage?
Why should i paid for something that does not give me some kind of advantage?
In ikariam there is only one units that is a paid units among all land and sea units. There are no other units, skills or wonders that are p2w.
Moreover before infinte horizon a big economy did not granted a direct advantage against your opponent since your army could grow only in number and no in strength.
If attacker and defender are online the defender was always in advantage ( attacker's missions visibility, control of the garrison, walls, instant munition reloading in own polis).
Moreover with multies, friends and general banks, that are al free features, you can block spots on islands and prevent other people to attack you without spend any money.
So you are complaining about what?
Here the real p2w feature are the new ups. Since ups are infinite and now are +5 /+10 whales can spend tons of money to buy or produce faster tons of crystals and have armies that can completely overcome other players armies, including spartans.
The worst thing?
Ups does not count for total score, so you can grow in a server for years, making ups and then move to an other server and have a big gap in ups with normal players of that server.
