Attack Move - Ban or Bang?

[Snizl]

It almost feels like melee units need something that would make their pathing behave the same as researching "ballistics" does for the arrows - making melee units go not where the target unit _is now_, but where it _will be_ (where it is going)

I'm not disagreeing with your point, but I think it could/should be done much simpler:

There are two problems here:
1. Melee units trail behind each other getting stuck on themselves all trying to attack the same unit.

This should be fixed and I honestly don't know why that is the case. If you click scouts on attack stance on a villager on a woodline the scouts will inevitably attack different villagers, but somehow while chasing, all knights want to attack the same xbow? There should be some change to try and attack xbows further away from them as well.

2. Archers cannot be surrounded, they will always just walk through the knights.

This is the real problem imo. Archers need to be microed A LOT to be effective, it is okay for you to have to micro knights at least to some degree to take efficient fights vs archers. I don't think knights should do surrounds by themselves, it is not a big deal to take half of your knights and micro them in front of the xbows to surround them, players should be able to make this miniscule effort themselves.
The problem here is, that this is completely pointless currently, the X-bows will just move past them and after three volleys all the knights are stuck behind each other again.

So I don't think you need a sort ballistics for knights, just a simple collision avoidance mechanic that already exists in other places in the game, that allows them to move past each other and target different units + bigger collision for enemy units, which seems to be the main thing that attack move changes.

 

[Spring_]

try asking these type of questions on the dev streams where they "talk about the game" and you just get banned lmao... emo days are back boys and girls

 

[SouFire]

April's pup is live now, i am gonna test attack move to see if they changed it or fixed it.
111 biggest patch scam ever 2.1 gb and not a single balance change and attack move is still the same.

 

[BugA_the_Great]

I'm not disagreeing with your point, but I think it could/should be done much simpler:

Indeed, I think we're somewhat on the same page here.

1. Melee units trail behind each other getting stuck on themselves all trying to attack the same unit.

Exactly. This is best observed with previous "large group of knights attacking a moving ram" example I mentioned. There is no sense why knights which are currently blocked by other knights hitting the rear of the ram couldn't move a bit forward and hit sides, and eventually the front of the ram, too (thus surrounding it, due to their higher speed, and possibly blocking its further movement, even).

When ram is standing still, knights do behave as expected, though (surrounding it).

This should be fixed and I honestly don't know why that is the case. If you click scouts on attack stance on a villager on a woodline the scouts will inevitably attack different villagers, but somehow while chasing, all knights want to attack the same xbow? There should be some change to try and attack xbows further away from them as well.

Possibly a huge difference here could be villagers having no formations and moving each for himself - thus their collision boxes are standalone and further apart, easier to get picked up as an alternative target, if the previous one gets blocked...? Just a speculation, though.

2. Archers cannot be surrounded, they will always just walk through the knights.

Now, I don't have much experience with this myself - if it's really so, archers falling under some "behind the scenes voodoo" in order to slide/glide through the knights, it should be fixed, of course. But if it's just the outcome of knights subpar pathing (and thus positioning), allowing the archers to use it to their own advantage, I'd say let it be (and fix the knights/melee pathing instead).

Archers should try to squeeze through and flee, and knights should try to block and kill, it's the name of the game (but without any "walkthroughs" allowed on each side).

This is the real problem imo. Archers need to be microed A LOT to be effective, it is okay for you to have to micro knights at least to some degree to take efficient fights vs archers. I don't think knights should do surrounds by themselves, it is not a big deal to take half of your knights and micro them in front of the xbows to surround them, players should be able to make this miniscule effort themselves.
The problem here is, that this is completely pointless currently, the X-bows will just move past them and after three volleys all the knights are stuck behind each other again.

Not sure how my "knights surrounding archers" came through, but it was not my intention to make anything easier (still, separating knights and having two or more groups approaching from different sides should be vastly more effective), but simply making melee units "attack move" have the same benefit the range units currently have (not to say "not be broken", even).

"Surrounding" should happen naturally, having knights from the back of their own formation progressively moving to the front of the archer formation (due to their speed advantage), in the pursue of the unit they can actually engage with - and not have all of the knights get stuck trying to fight the same (blocked) unit at the rear of the target formation only. That just makes no sense (as already agreed to in your point 1 above).

Do note it's the same behavior that seems to happen naturally already, but only when the target units are not moving - which should not really matter if attacking units are faster, allowing a similar outcome.

So I don't think you need a sort ballistics for knights, just a simple collision avoidance mechanic that already exists in other places in the game, that allows them to move past each other and target different units + bigger collision for enemy units, which seems to be the main thing that attack move changes.

"Ballistics for melee units" might be a bit unfortunate wording on my end, but it is for the fact that melee units already seem to behave as expected when the target is not moving, where they should (arguably?) behave the same when the target is moving, too (thus the reference to "ballistics" and its effect to arrows).

But it is indeed allowing (1) targeting different (and reachable!) standing _or_ moving units while (2) moving past each other (avoiding each other as usual, going around, no need for magical going through each other here, either). Again, this seems to work just fine already in case target units are standing, so the only part that needs fixing is targeting moving units. And again, this would inevitably lead to (a sufficiently large) group of knights eventually encircling the archers, moving or not But that's just how it should be (I think?).

 

[BugA_the_Great]

Taking a step back, to me, the problem seems to lie in the fact that "attack move" doesn't seem to be fairly implemented for both ranged and melee units. Absurdly, the way melee/ranged units issued an "attack move" behave does feel exactly the same - but that is the problem by itself, as these two types of units have widely different attack mechanics.

For example, if "attack move" makes attacking group (in formation) target the closest/first line (or X lines) of the enemy formation, it means all ranged units (assuming they have the range required - and they usually do, especially if trying to run away, thus having their faster moving targets chasing them) can fire at the same time. And they possibly don't even need to change/leave formation... This seems great for ranged units so far, and I would think it kind of works as expected.

But let's look at melee units now - if attacking group of melee units (in formation) is issued an "attack move", it makes absolutely no sense for them all to target closest/first line (or X lines) of the enemy formation only, for the simple fact they cannot absolutely reach them all (if not for the fact that target units may be in a tight formation as well, then simply because attacking melee units will be blocking each other, too).

So melee units do need a bit of a different "target finding" mechanism - most probably falling out of formation immediately, ignoring the blocked units (either in the middle of the target formation, or outside ones already being under attack and blocked), and moving further ahead in search of available targets to approach and attack.

And all this should still work no matter if target units are moving or not (as it does not seem to matter much in case of ranged units, either, simply for the range itself).

 

[SC2noHope]

I come from other RTS , so i dont know what to say , AOE2 A move is just like other RTS , nothing special Plus formations moving speed.
But if fix or nerf it , also affected split micro in AOE2 , because they are same . About melee pathing, is just AOE2 Pathing so damn bad and bug, also affected surround Archers.

 

[Sitaux]

the attack move feature is surely not perfect but I'm more shocked about the stand ground + patrol thing that liereyy does, it even looks like units are sliding when he is doing that

 

[Sitaux]

and i don't think we should nerf everything which is strong or the game will become even more casual, we shouldn't get rid of the spectacular aspects in aoe 2

 

[Sitaux]

attack move would be fine if the knight path finding wasn't so bad, attack move isn't the main issue imo

 

[Mollask]

What about just lowering the archer (and skirmisher) movement speed a little bit? This would make it easier to surround them and should not have a big impact on lower levels for casual players.

 

[Snizl]

What about just lowering the archer (and skirmisher) movement speed a little bit? This would make it easier to surround them and should not have a big impact on lower levels for casual players.

If anything a slight increase in attack delay could be an option. But improving pathing would be the much better option, although it indeed is much more difficult.

 

[kalpit00]

No, I do not think changing the movement speed of archers is a good idea, it will completely mess up the xbow balance, like xbow vs CAs/UUs/infantry. xbows will outrun their counters like skirms, mangos/scorps, certain fast infantry UUs and become OP.

Reducing the attack delay by a few frames is an acceptable idea, but it is nowhere going to solve the problem of attack move. Take CAs for instance, they have become almost unkillable by knights alone because you can attack move and glide past them (even with their nerfed increased frame delay). Only reason why CAs are not broken currently is because they are more micro-intensive to attack move all the time, and knight player just patrols and macros behind and transitions to skirms, or has Camels which run faster and deal with CAs better in castle age.

One idea is to give knights an inner +2 attack against archers (like persians) so they can 3 shot xbows instead of 4, this might help with killing xbows fast enough so they are not as devastating when attack moving.

Best solution however still remains - FIX MELEE PATHING, it is nowhere nearly same as Voobly, and i admit knight siege in voobly were probably stronger due to this reason, but remember, Voobly was laggy as well and Liereyy did wonders with xbows in voobly days, so with DE's server system and attack move being a "better" version of patrol, i can't wait to see xbows vs kts in their prime conditions

 

[Tocaraca]

By the way, I have done some testing and it seems that stop micro now actually works again. I have no idea when this was fixed, but it's funny that nobody noticed this before since everybody is using attack move micro

 

[GrandNagus]

By the way, I have done some testing and it seems that stop micro now actually works again. I have no idea when this was fixed, but it's funny that nobody noticed this before since everybody is using attack move micro

I tried testing this a bit, and it still seemed less reliable than attack move micro. Occasionally you still get a long pause while the entire reload animation is played. Not sure if it was because I was mis-timing it, but attack move seemed more forgiving in this respect.

 

[otw_Da]

1 million archers can hide in a one tile large corner. Imagen knights or elefantos could go in there and push them apart and attack not only the same target to block each other to death. Would somebody care about attack move then?

 

[Snizl]

Well, the new patch seems to change the attack move, and give it back some delay before firing.
Though from some short tests in the scenario editor as a pleb it feels like it simply means you don't actually have to right click anymore, and just spamming attack move without additional movement commands works perfectly fine.

 

[Keckerz]

I think lowering the archer/xbow movement speed just a little bit would fix so many issues and make moving our with an archer/xbow mass more of a risk.

At the moment it's one click on attack move and another click on the destination (two clicks). No matter how carefully you arrange your cavalry and get upgrades for them the archers/xbows always get such bullshit value. It's enough to make me rage every time. With just two low effort clicks it nullifies all the micro you could ever do with cavalry.

 

[IvIaximus]

I wonder, why was attack move even intorduced into AoE2? AFAIK it was not there before DE (orHD?). I know it was one of core mechanics in aoe 3 kinda replacing patrol. Who made decision to put it in AoE2 and for what reason?

 

[lecracheursagacite]

I wonder, why was attack move even intorduced into AoE2? AFAIK it was not there before DE (orHD?). I know it was one of core mechanics in aoe 3 kinda replacing patrol. Who made decision to put it in AoE2 and for what reason?

Attack move and patrol should be different things. They both tell units they should stop to engage enemies encountered but one is about moving to a certain location once while the other is about repeating along a predefined path.

 

[eC_Gurke]

Attack Move is a basic command in every RTS isnt it?
Aoe2 missing it is sth that has put off a good amount of people I knew from different RTS. Myself includede early on. I couldnt believe that there was no Attack Move. Kept searching everywhere how to do it.

 

[lecracheursagacite]

Attack Move is a basic command in every RTS isnt it?
Aoe2 missing it is sth that has put off a good amount of people I knew from different RTS. Myself includede early on. I couldnt believe that there was no Attack Move. Kept searching everywhere how to do it

Yup that is most people are doing when they use patrol. The number of times I've seen the phrase "patrol in" like they are ordering their units to engage with the move makes this clear. I personally wasn't put off by the lack of attack move when I first played AoE2 but that is because I was so bad at RTS I didn't understand the concept of it 11

 

[King_Boo]

Attack move and patrol should be different things. They both tell units they should stop to engage enemies encountered but one is about moving to a certain location once while the other is about repeating along a predefined path.

Exactly this. They have different functions and have their uses.
Depending on the situation you choose which to use - it’s better for the game to have multiple ways to engage.
Target firing is also still very relevant in some situations. Not really sure why people wouldn’t like having more choices

 

[Influenza]

Exactly this. They have different functions and have their uses.
Depending on the situation you choose which to use - it’s better for the game to have multiple ways to engage.
Target firing is also still very relevant in some situations. Not really sure why people wouldn’t like having more choices

Perhaps because it has contributed towards a huge shift in power towards xbows and others ranged units as people have been discussing throughout the topic?

 

[LowEloNobody]

Why not just slightly nerf the movement speed of archer units?
They are very clearly the dominant force in the current meta, and it would help resolve some of the issues with attack move while also slightly buffing melee units against ranged units

 

[King_Boo]

Perhaps because it has contributed towards a huge shift in power towards xbows and others ranged units as people have been discussing throughout the topic?

Melee pathing (specifically regrouping atm) and the ability to stack ranged units so tightly seem like bigger factors to me.
Low lag environments are also a big factor in allowing the archer plays to be executed more reliably and with more precision.
Personally I would be looking into stacking and pathing before changing a mechanic that’s allowing players to execute better.