Poor balancing, Gallia especially not fun at all, Veles class sucks

[Sarmatian]

As per title. Some battle maps are just crap. Case in point, a pacification mission in Gallia.

The map is me assaulting a hill over a tiny bridge and a there's a jump-able gap elsewhere. My team of 6 is facing 15+ enemies, about 5 of whom are archers, and the rest has access to torches. Five archers shooting from an elevated position is enough to kill any non shielded character in a turn and they basically have range over the entire map. So, if I send my shielded guys alone they get outnumbered and picked apart. If I send in everyone, unshielded characters die turn by turn, because I can't push through to damage dealers.

In some cases you get enough information from your Primus Pilus, but in other you get none. So, I guess in this case, I should probably go back to camp, modify my equipment for piercing resistance and bring 3 archers, 2 heavies and 1 support and hope to outshoot them. Such specialization and effort might be fine if I'm playing on highest difficulty and I want a challenge, but I'm playing on normal.

To make matters worse, enemies in Gallia all have armour, mandating the use of shred, otherwise you're simply not efficient enough. Their resistances are also quite high so glancing happens too often, which can potentially ruin an entire tactical play.

Veles class really sucks. They're squishy and don't have enough damage dealing potential. They're supposed to flank, but that in most cases is simply impossible due to battle map design. Enemies both outnumber you and wait you near the choke points, which often makes flanking literally impossible, cause the hex is either impassable or occupied by the enemy. In the rare cases it might be possible to flank, it just might be suicide cause your squishy character just got in melee range of many enemies. Prowling is mostly useless because sending Veles class on its own is really ordering them to commit suicide most of the time.

Also, "flanking" in this case is a misnomer, you're not gaining enemy's flank to get to bonus, you get enemies rear.

 

Early game in Greece has poor balance, some battles are hard some are easy, but the value of tactical items is immense and with some clever positioning you can tip the scales in your favour. Late Act I and early Act II probably have the best balance overall, even though it can get extremely boring when all enemies have poison grenades and are all immune to poison. Late Act II also becomes too easy when you get Foundry upgraded. Then Act III comes and ramps up the difficulty by a very large margin, making what should be side battles into reloads and re-equips for most of your squad. I really don't need that on normal. Sure, I can start over on easy, but that makes most of the game prior to Gallia too easy.

 

Tone down Gallia, buff Veles class. Maybe allow them to also shred enemy armour (less than support, but some)

[Boznich]

In response to your comment about the Veles class:

I can understand where you are coming from in the early - mid game but in the late game the Veles class can be pretty devastating particularly with all of the abilities and other character buffs that can stack together on it.

The Veles in the late game (with the right abilities) is basically your opening insta kill class.

In the early game it's challenging because you have no focus to use and have to start by attacking enemies to earn focus, putting you in danger due to limited armour and defence plus low attack damage. However, the thing to invest in is the born ready ability which gives you 30/60/100% focus as you level up at the start of fights making your abilities immediately available to you.

Kitted out with the right weapons, some decent armour and talismans I had Bestia starting out every engagement with 22+ focus and never really dropping below 10 based on how often you can attack to get it back.

As an example of how the abilities stack together in the late game:

• Cheap shot grants you 100% crit chance on your first hit
• Sneak attack grants you 50/100% extra damage on your first two turns depending on ability investment
• Assassinate increases damage by 40% against leaders
• First strike against full health players gives 50% extra damage
• Marathon means you can sprint to literally anywhere in the entire battle area whilst retaining all your actions
• Tactical advantage means you don't trigger attacks of opportunity
• Prowling doubles critical chance and increases dodge
• Rush gives you back your action point

In the late game once you have the born ready ability upgraded you can potentially one shot enemy leaders as the first thing you do.

You apply cheap shot for guaranteed crit hit, you apply tactical advantage to avoid attacks, you then use marathon to run up to literally anybody you want to kill and then you use sneak attack on top of all the modifiers you've just earned yourself.

You can also augment all of the killing potential in other ways too.

If you have a triarius in your team you can use the war horn ability before you send him out to give 25% extra damage and you can even reset action points as well whilst still maintaining the prowling advantage due to the range at which the Inspire ability works. You can equip your Veles with Pilum so you can get close to your target, shred whatever armour they have before devastating them. 

Alternatively you can equip the rally banners and place them just short of your target to give yourself additional damage in the area that you're about to unleash your attack.

If the above attack doesn't instantly kill whatever you've just targeted, you can literally regain your attacks with Rush meaning you can attack again, you'll also have the shiv ability to add in some final damage and with tactical advance already applied you can simply disengage without penalty giving you plenty of room from whatever is about to counter attack you. If you have a weapon set that allows you to disarm you can even do that as well meaning that if all of the above fails the closest target can't even attack you back.

This is also if you're intending to kill one high health/armour target. The Veles in the late game can become the ultimate crowd controller based on how easily they can deal out around 20 - 30 damage in a single hit. You can either target archers directly or march them into crowds of low level infantry and with the regain action point mechanic you can one shot target after target after target if positioned correctly. An archer weakening all of the low level infantry beforehand makes this super easy.

 

In terms of your comments about flanking targets I agree it's often tricky to get the positioning right. I'd usually overcome this by simply placing my Princeps characters in the middle of a group of enemies. Once they're in direct contact I'd work out which side of the enemy I'd need to strike from, apply tactical advantage to move there and then get the flanked advantage plush the damage bonus from my weapon set with the backstab ability. Obviously this isn't always possible but if it isn't I'd often be roaming my Veles around so that I can engage when it suits rather than trying to kill something on every single turn.

 

I say again, I initially thought it was a really weak class but as the game evolves the class almost becomes an essential component.

Apologies for the huge wall of text and I am certainly not writing this to attack you or anything like that. I just personally feel that the Veles class is actually in a fairly good balance spot when considered against all of the ways you can augment damage and provide ways for it to keep dealing damage beyond its initial turn.

[Sarmatian]

3 hours ago, Boznich said:

In response to your comment about the Veles class:

I can understand where you are coming from in the early - mid game but in the late game the Veles class can be pretty devastating particularly with all of the abilities and other character buffs that can stack together on it.

The Veles in the late game (with the right abilities) is basically your opening insta kill class.

In the early game it's challenging because you have no focus to use and have to start by attacking enemies to earn focus, putting you in danger due to limited armour and defence plus low attack damage. However, the thing to invest in is the born ready ability which gives you 30/60/100% focus as you level up at the start of fights making your abilities immediately available to you.

Kitted out with the right weapons, some decent armour and talismans I had Bestia starting out every engagement with 22+ focus and never really dropping below 10 based on how often you can attack to get it back.

As an example of how the abilities stack together in the late game:

• Cheap shot grants you 100% crit chance on your first hit
• Sneak attack grants you 50/100% extra damage on your first two turns depending on ability investment
• Assassinate increases damage by 40% against leaders
• First strike against full health players gives 50% extra damage
• Marathon means you can sprint to literally anywhere in the entire battle area whilst retaining all your actions
• Tactical advantage means you don't trigger attacks of opportunity
• Prowling doubles critical chance and increases dodge
• Rush gives you back your action point

In the late game once you have the born ready ability upgraded you can potentially one shot enemy leaders as the first thing you do.

You apply cheap shot for guaranteed crit hit, you apply tactical advantage to avoid attacks, you then use marathon to run up to literally anybody you want to kill and then you use sneak attack on top of all the modifiers you've just earned yourself.

You can also augment all of the killing potential in other ways too.

If you have a triarius in your team you can use the war horn ability before you send him out to give 25% extra damage and you can even reset action points as well whilst still maintaining the prowling advantage due to the range at which the Inspire ability works. You can equip your Veles with Pilum so you can get close to your target, shred whatever armour they have before devastating them. 

Alternatively you can equip the rally banners and place them just short of your target to give yourself additional damage in the area that you're about to unleash your attack.

If the above attack doesn't instantly kill whatever you've just targeted, you can literally regain your attacks with Rush meaning you can attack again, you'll also have the shiv ability to add in some final damage and with tactical advance already applied you can simply disengage without penalty giving you plenty of room from whatever is about to counter attack you. If you have a weapon set that allows you to disarm you can even do that as well meaning that if all of the above fails the closest target can't even attack you back.

This is also if you're intending to kill one high health/armour target. The Veles in the late game can become the ultimate crowd controller based on how easily they can deal out around 20 - 30 damage in a single hit. You can either target archers directly or march them into crowds of low level infantry and with the regain action point mechanic you can one shot target after target after target if positioned correctly. An archer weakening all of the low level infantry beforehand makes this super easy.

 

In terms of your comments about flanking targets I agree it's often tricky to get the positioning right. I'd usually overcome this by simply placing my Princeps characters in the middle of a group of enemies. Once they're in direct contact I'd work out which side of the enemy I'd need to strike from, apply tactical advantage to move there and then get the flanked advantage plush the damage bonus from my weapon set with the backstab ability. Obviously this isn't always possible but if it isn't I'd often be roaming my Veles around so that I can engage when it suits rather than trying to kill something on every single turn.

 

I say again, I initially thought it was a really weak class but as the game evolves the class almost becomes an essential component.

Apologies for the huge wall of text and I am certainly not writing this to attack you or anything like that. I just personally feel that the Veles class is actually in a fairly good balance spot when considered against all of the ways you can augment damage and provide ways for it to keep dealing damage beyond its initial turn.

Thanks for the answer.

 

Regarding Veles, yes, I understand that in perfect conditions, with top of the line equipment, once their skills have been maxed out, there will be situations where you can use them to devastating effect. I agree with you there. None of damage buffs matter, though, if you're facing an enemy with a shield. Then you need another character to first pull down the shield because pila won't go through all of it in late game, as soon as 2nd half of Act II. Even if you can pull off 40 damage in a single attack, none of it will matter if enemy has a single point left in his shield.

 

On the other hand, you will spend most of the game not being able to pull it off, and even in late game, there will be situations where you simply can't pull it off. If we take masterfully specced Archer, they will be much more useful early on, and with proper stacking buffs can also put out devastating damage, from a safe position.

 

My experience is that Veles is more of a "win faster" class. To get full use of their abilities you need to be already in a dominant position.

[Boznich]

This is very true regarding the shields and I guess there's probably room for some buffs in the early game. Rather than enhancing built in abilities of the class it could be something like offering more early game weapon based abilities that allow you disable the shields so you can use your focus based follow up attacks, similar to the shield hook ability that comes with the Shotel sword.

I assume you probably did the same but I basically would avoid the shielded characters with my Veles class and leave them to Princeps and Triarius classes to deal with. I agree that the shields massively disadvantage the Veles but they essentially disadvantage every single class including archers in so many situations. The only damage archers can do to shielded characters from memory is fire damage which is often better applied elsewhere.

As the Veles is a light class I used it pretty much exclusively to stiffle attacks from enemy sagittarius and triarius classed due to the fact that these classes are heavily disadvantaged when in base to base contact with any enemy. Both of these classes usually have to incur attacks of opportunity to use their weapon sets which can hopefully help to get that extra damage in.

I'd essentially use sagittarius and veles classes to deal with all the non-shielded characters whilst my princeps and triarius classes are breaking shields and shredding armour. As much as this game is not really a demonstration of authentic historical fighting tactics I do like how it would borrow from the idea of having your princeps shield to shield against enemy front line troops, your triarius behind them with their reach and extend abilities delivering damage over their shoulders whilst your sagittarius and veles classes deal with all the auxilaries.

[Rhadamathys]

Yea, I'm half way through egypt and both of my veles are unstoppable. Most battles last 2-3 rounds max. They can kill 3-4 people per round esp with the right support.