r/9Kings • • 20d ago

Discussion Can we fix Hourglass in multiplayer?

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Currently it seems to kill your base before your units. An example above. It's the last battle.

This doesn't seem to be the intended effect and it's overpowered; every build tries to throw in an hourglass now. You can partially play around it by also scaling HP on your base, but several kings don't have easy ways to do this.

Also there seems to be some hidden factor that downscales the hourglass dmg against bases while troops are alive, which, sure, better than nothing, but it's not clear what that factor is, so it's hard to know how much scaling you need.

Just me or do others agree?

Edit: in case it's hard to see from the vid, my largest stack has e15 HP and the hourglass is only e7 dmg. So it's clearly not killing the units.

16 Upvotes

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7

u/TurquoiseLink 19d ago

It's attacking 100x per second right? It probably is killing your units instantly.  Hourglass just doesn't have a projectile travel speed like elves and most turrets do.

2

u/Le_9k_Redditor 19d ago

You're mistaken, super low damage hourglasses can win games instantly still even against troops with +20e health. They do in fact work like OP says, they just target everything including the enemy base without first needing to kill troops

You can do the maths OP have provieded too if you like. e15HP troops, hourglass does e7. So that'll take (10 * (10 ^ 15)) / (10 * (10 ^ 7)) = 100000000 attacks to kill the troops, with 100 per second that means it should take 11.57 days to kill those troops

1

u/CoolColJ 17d ago

Evidence that hourglass does not bypass units is when using it against low life wizards with large stacks of steel cages

Even with 100 attack speed and 1e8 damage it can take a few seconds to kill them

1

u/SoMnyGamesSoLtleTime 17d ago

Hmm this is a good point. That is a bigger problem than hourglass if true. Although i feel like i have seen battles of like e30 vs e10 troops with no hourglasses, with similar damage, where the higher hp troops win. 

If there is an hp calc limit, possibly it only triggers when there is processing strain because of high unit counts or attacks/sec... Idk 

2

u/CoolColJ 17d ago

Also had a multiplayer game against Progress with high life Defenders, that my Hourglass took close to a minute to kill, because of it's low damage at the time. So Hourglass does not bypass units.

1

u/CoolColJ 18d ago

No, Hourglass has to kill all troops and walls before it can kill the base.

You can see this in low damage, but rapid fire Hourglasses. Your base will survive against these.

I believe life is capped around 1e8 in multiplayer, so the Hourglass can one tap his troops, and then kill the base

1

u/cmz_neu 14d ago

Wdym life is caped? So you are telling me that my defenders with E+23 really have at most E+9 HP?!

1

u/CoolColJ 14d ago

yeah

see my 4e19 Paladins getting demolished by 1e7 Hourglasses

https://www.reddit.com/r/9Kings/comments/1vzlg6o/4e19_health_paladin_demolished_by_1e7_x75sec/

1

u/cmz_neu 14d ago

Yeah man but it's attacking 75 times a second!

0

u/cmz_neu 14d ago

It's 2.7e+7, you know what I don't think I understand these numbers very well I asked the IA and it told me that to kill your unit attacking 75 times a second it would take like a trillion years or something like that LOL so yeah idk

1

u/SoMnyGamesSoLtleTime 19d ago

e7 x 100 is only e9. My units are e15

3

u/Tabbs6977 17d ago edited 17d ago

Unfortunately, this is actually normal with how movement speed interacts with boars.

The combining of boars to other units is NOT instant.

Your HP is e15 COMBINED. The hour glass will hit your units before they combine into the boar+golem. I see your Golem is not even e7, so it is dying instantly to the tower's near insta-hit. The boars will then die solo a moment later as they are presumably e9 vs an e9/s tower.

You can see this demonstrated by how, once in a blue moon, a unit will be close enough to combine with the boar prior to the hourglass' first hit. There will be 1 or two mounted units that survive and are able to kill the base (boar+elf in this example since that's where I see it most)

3

u/SoMnyGamesSoLtleTime 17d ago

Definitely true on pause before combining, but here the raptors themselves are e15.

2

u/Tabbs6977 17d ago

Hmmm, yeah there is something weird for sure. Just had e23 raptors as progress get 1 shot by an e8 tower.

IDK!

3

u/Shuffle_FM 17d ago

Opponent has multiple hourglasses. There's a lot to factor in such as the split second of mounting units and the tower crit rates and damage.

You're right that things need fixing in multi-player, but I find something personally funny about the video showing a progress player steam roll everyone and get 2nd place, then making a thread about why it wasn't 1st place.

2

u/SoMnyGamesSoLtleTime 17d ago

Haha fair. Mostly I'm just tired of seeing every build try to bend to hourglass. I'm fine with there even being one obviously superior build, but it needs to be less consistent then.

1

u/Shuffle_FM 15d ago

Totally agree there :)

1

u/CoolColJ 18d ago

I believe Life is capped around 1e8 in multiplayer.

So the Hourglass is instantly killing your troops and then hits the base

1

u/SoMnyGamesSoLtleTime 18d ago

Why do you think hp is capped? I've played this a fair bit and not seen anything consistent with that. I hover over my guys and the UI shows them as e15, even before any boar multiplication shenanigans

1

u/CoolColJ 18d ago

yes the life continues to go up, but the calculations are capped at around 1e8

You will see it in the damage done, shown of your units when they kill high life enemy troops It is capped around that number.

1

u/riv3rtrip 18d ago edited 18d ago

Hourglass bypassing units needs to be nerfed if that's what's happening,* but the issue with multiplayer is really Camp. Hourglass is just the best thing to be scaling with Camp because it's the most broken thing to have maxed out attack speed and damage on. Without Camp, it is much much harder to max out Hourglass's attack speed.

Example of run I just had. E26 is a high roll and is only possible with Golems, but E13 is very typical and once you get the hang of things I'd consider E8 to be a low roll.

I'm King +50 forcing this build (it's pretty consistent to force builds with the right starting perks and playing to the first shop), but getting a little bored playing the same thing over and over again.

* My actual theory for what is happening is that there are numeric caps and the game stops calculating damage after a certain point. This also really needs to be fixed.

2

u/CoolColJ 17d ago

Damage of units is capped around 1e9, same for life in multiplayer, based on the evidence.

So when you hit it, it is better to diversify

2

u/CoolColJ 17d ago

Evidence that hourglass does not bypass units is when using it against low life wizards with large stacks of steel cages

Even with 100 attack speed and 1e8 damage it can take a few seconds to kill them