Greek Fire - overpowered or not?

Apparently it has never been brought up to dev's attention, so here's a question:

Greek Fire has range 9, and +45 (or +72 with lvl3 weapon upgrade) bonus attack vs. constructs - is it overpowered or not?

Would you agree  that either that bonus attack or its range (or both) should be reduced a bit?

Would be nice to get opinions and arguments from both despots and coll. players, also if you remember if similar question has been asked earlier, provide details or link if possible.

Thank you for your time..:)

1. Imo it's no fair for attackers ,as long as we dont have simillar units for attack with range higher than 4. 

2. Greekfires are classical , tho , they are making too many damages on sieges and destructive units from Medieval AND Rennaissance, as they are constructs. Maybe sieges and destructive in Rennaisance cannot be considered as constructs anymore ? Making damages on units 2 ages above with such low level unit it's too much and it's not a good balance.  

3. Maybe unlock them in Stone Age ( Wheel tech ) and lock them in Medieval Age ( Manufacturing tech)?  Currently, collect players have 2 ages to retrain them over and over again, AND they are very cheap, which is not fair again regardless to how costly are sieges and destructive in Medieval and Rennaisance. Maybe collect may start in Medieval to train another unit, more expensive, and with similar range as attackers's units. 

Apparently it has never been brought up to dev's attention, so here's a question:

Greek Fire has range 9, and +45 (or +72 with lvl3 weapon upgrade) bonus attack vs. constructs - is it overpowered or not?

Would you agree  that either that bonus attack or its range (or both) should be reduced a bit?

Would be nice to get opinions and arguments from both despots and coll. players, also if you remember if similar question has been asked earlier, provide details or link if possible.

Thank you for your time..:)

I am not technical enough to address the numbers but my observation has been that a defender with enough GF can wipe out all the pre-industrial siege of multiple attackers.  They don't even need that much to be honest.  The defending GF are very strong.   Stronger than the attacking GF taken to counter.  

I guess what I have found frustrating and elating at the same time is the fact that a classical weapon is so very powerful against not only medieval but renaissance weaponry.  GF range 9 is well outside the range of any other unit except other GF and works great against all construct units up through renaissance.  The downside is once they are obsolete they are not replaceable, leaving the incoming siege to towers.  

From a defense standpoint they are powerful tools because they tend to live longer and if attackers don't have sufficient GF to counter the defense the attackers' siege will be utterly destroyed.  They enhance the power of the towers exponentially.  However, this means that defending collectives and will have to make a lot of workshops which lower culture and add to build times.  

From an attacker view, GF are the only range 9 weapon that counters constructs and the added defensive bonuses (not to mention vele's which remains even if attacker BC is removed, more on that later lol) coupled with towers in most towns being hit, means attackers either have to make  TON of GF or hope the defenders don't  which is a vain hope.  From an attack vantage the GF are much too strong against higher age weapons precisely because they supplement the towers so much.  

Nerfing will affect everyone, though I think attacker GF will suffer the most because there are no towers on wheels going with attackers when they advance.  :-D  I still think nerfing the range might not be a bad idea overall however. 

As an aside, I've mentioned this before but could we have a thread about the removal of battle cry and the inability to remove vele's?  

I'd like to add that I think defenders should have available a weapon to counter attacks but at a similar range to those used against them, as Leto proposes.  GF should be susceptible to attack at a lower range if that can't be accomplished, however. 

Apparently it has never been brought up to dev's attention, so here's a question:

Greek Fire has range 9, and +45 (or +72 with lvl3 weapon upgrade) bonus attack vs. constructs - is it overpowered or not?

Would you agree  that either that bonus attack or its range (or both) should be reduced a bit?

Would be nice to get opinions and arguments from both despots and coll. players, also if you remember if similar question has been asked earlier, provide details or link if possible.

Thank you for your time..:)

I am not technical enough to address the numbers but my observation has been that a defender with enough GF can wipe out all the pre-industrial siege of multiple attackers.  They don't even need that much to be honest.  The defending GF are very strong.   Stronger than the attacking GF taken to counter.  

The devs, im sure, would have the tools to compare, just how powerful the greeks really are, by creating and replaying 2 scenarios on test server...

1. despot player A in ren. age, with balanced army of mixed 400 medieval-ren. units available to train, of which ~20% (~80 units) are siege/destructive constructs, attacking classical or medieval player B who has 200 balanced, mixed units available to train (but no greeks), medium-size wall and reasonable amount of towers.

2. same for player A, but remove 150 of player's B random units and replace them with 20 Greeks.

Compare the results. in 1st scenario player A would lose a few rams and maybe a dozen or two random units... in 2nd scenario player B, despite having 3x less units than in the 1st example, wipes out most of the attacking constructs of player A. 

The ability for defender to add veles' which attacker can do nothing about, removal of BC by the defender attacker again can do nothing about, extra health for defending greeks being behind a wall, gives defending greeks (a mere classical age unit), being alongside even a tiny army, extraordinary power to 'sneeze to death' all incoming constructs from higher ages.

By the same token, we might as well have a medieval or ren. unit, that can wipe out a-bombs or nukes from info-age attacker, before they even land.

Funny thread. My 2 cents (sorry, just can't resist): play despot vs. despot and greeks become less of a problem :)

Funny thread. My 2 cents (sorry, just can't resist): play despot vs. despot and greeks become less of a problem :)

That is not true at all. They do not gain any attack strengh as collect. It is the same attack power as despot. They are just as effective no matter if it's despot vs despot or despot vs collect. And I do agree they are over powered to a point, or maybe it is just the range 9 making them difficult to destroy.

@dbarns,

no, of course they do not gain attack power as collects. But in despot vs. despot, greeks brought along by the attacking party would have the full power (as opposed to being reduced by x0.33 when attacking collects) to neutralize defending greeks. See where I am going? (And I am obviously playing a bit devil's advocat :)

I will agree to this: in a well-defending alliance, a ton of greeks do have a bit too much of an upper hand. BUT (and let's be honest here), despots do not only attack well-defending alliances. You guys (or some of you) bring huge amounts of siege to either single players or weak alliances. Go into your reports and look how many rows of siege you bring. Then (imo) you will have to admit that in those cases the range of greeks does make sense. (And ideally you'll have to admit that you sort of created the "problem" yourself?)

I never said despot vs  collective.  I said defenders vs attackers.  The problem is the same.  :-)  With collective, the other units have the defensive bonus and thus last longer because the towers are not being taken out with siege being destroyed.  More damage overall.  From any defensive standpoint the greeks are very very very effective against attacker siege unless the attacker has enough units to counter.  With walls and towers it's very hard to counter a large number of greek fires because they last so long being far out of range.  :-)  At least that's how I see it.

With walls and towers it's very hard to counter a large number of greek fires because they last so long being far out of range.  :-)  At least that's how I see it.

They wouldn't be far out of range if you brought enough greeks to counter the defending greeks. But you don't want to make/bring greeks (you as in FF bring some collect greeks, which, if you look at the report, are extremely ineffective due to double penalty aka x0.1) because you want to bring maximum destructive siege (or you don't want to bother with greeks/classical workshop at all and move on with more ease to more powerful units in later ages). And on top of maximum destructive siege, you want maximum destruction and minimal losses.

I brought up despot vs. despot because as you know I am interested in different/new gameplay. Imo too many players continue to do the same old and end up having a problem once the opponent (aka collect players) manage to adjust. Personally, I don't believe it's the devs' responsibility to "balance an imbalance" that is mostly due to players' choice of gameplay.

With walls and towers it's very hard to counter a large number of greek fires because they last so long being far out of range.  :-)  At least that's how I see it.

 (you as in FF bring some collect greeks, which, if you look at the report, are extremely ineffective due to double penalty aka x0.1) because you want to bring maximum destructive siege (or you don't want to bother with greeks/classical workshop at all and move on with more ease to more powerful units in later ages). 

 Personally, I don't believe it's the devs' responsibility to "balance an imbalance" that is mostly due to players' choice of gameplay.

That's inaccurate.  We make Greeks which, as you might remember, was one of my big nagging points.  :-)  But towers and walls give defending greeks more staying power which, even if they are in range, outweighs the health of the attacking greeks.  That was my point.  Do I expect losses?  Of course.  Do I want to be entirely wiped?  Who does?  lol Do I want maximum damage also?  Of course.  Defenders also want maximum damage with few losses.  It's not like defenders and attackers don't have that in common.  I've been on both sides of this equation.  

As to balancing the game or not, the devs are the ones who want to balance and we've seen that often enough with Bers talking about making the game balanced.  :-)  I agree with you, however, that it's mostly down to play styles.  

I agree it is play style and strategy. This is correct. For example, if an attacker sent normal units to wipe out the defending greekfires... They would not be strong at all since they only have a 5 or 9 attack on normal units. My only voice to this debate is the range 9 putting them way outside of attack range. Personally i have seen greekfires on both side and in the reports that attackers greekfire focus more on the normal units instead of the defending greekfires.

it is far too powerfull.  and hard to kill.  also my opinion is ren age machines should not be constructs (cannons and mortars).  Another reason we rush to ind age to avoid the greek bonus damage to our seige.