marionesi

Join Date 01/2011

[Suggestions] Easy to implement changes to rebalance Heroes and make Units interesting

Sorry for those who read it already in another post, but I was afraid not much people read it and I really wanted some feedback on it

This comes from reading posts and watching a lot of videos of beta games since I am not playing the beta. Sorry if some comments are mistargeted.

The objective

Heroes should be born weak but with the potential of becoming magnificent. Normal units should be relatively less strong than heroes as the game progresses, but always effective to deal with. I make two examples to give an idea of what I mean, though you may not agree on the details:
- a single swordman (or any other decent melee base unit) should be weaker than a low-level hero, but the low-level hero should be no match for a group of 5 base swordsmen, even if he has some equip.
- a single high level hero with extremely good equip should still have a very hard time against 6+ leveled high-end units with good weapons and armors.

Some ideas how to get there

per-level bonuses should not be dropped as someone suggests. Instead, they are indeed very useful if we want heroes to progress from weak to magnificent through levels (in MoM this was a lot of fun). Since this may induce people to choose fixed bonuses early on and per-level bonuses later on as they level up, I’d suggest either:

that per-level bonuses, in the form of “path of the …”, are given only for the first 2-3 level up, to define the path of the hero, and never for subsequent level-up’s
that per-level means for each level after that the hero picked up the ability

every faction should have 1-2 units with ability that really make a difference, as Elven Lords or Griffin used to have in MoM (e.g. armor piercing+first strike). These abilities should be very rare even for heroes. This would help to make units an interesting piece to deal with even in end-game.
Heroes should not be immortal. I am the first who doesn’t like my hero to die, but I understand it’s part of the fun in a game. There are many ways one can make death a costly but avoidable consequence: allow heroes to flee, allow a Death ward spell – I am sure this was already in the game, and maybe it’s still there – or a building that can capture the soul of a dead hero together with a spell that can bring him back after x seasons… all of these should have a cost in terms of time and/or game resources (mana or others). But not immortality upfront with just a scar... cool idea, but with too little impact.
Recruiting a hero should not be cheap and easy and right at the beginning. Not all at once. I suggest it costs you more gold, or it requires more factions points (as fame was in MoM) that you don’t have at the beginning. This forces you to train regulars to deal with early aggressions – there should be early aggressions, i.e. monsters that come to knock your door asking for food: you.
Imbuing a champion should come at a higher cost. Players like high cost for high rewards, and imbuing a champion is indeed an extremely good thing, so it sohuld not come cheap. Some ideas here:

Make cost scale up: first imbue 40, second imbue 120, third 360…
Make champions have a “magic propensity” trait that determines the cost of imbue, so that melee oriented heroes are much harder to endow with spells than wiz-oriented ones. On average imbue should be much more costly than now.
Make imbue costly in some other way (e.g. you must sacrifice a magic shard through a ritual…)

Not sure how dodge works, but this may be another factor in favor of heroes
[on a different note] Not sure how it is now, but heroes should not be able to equip all items they find. I hope even now that a chainmail cannot be used by all heroes, for instance – not a matter of realism but a matter of bigger diversity among heroes.

For more on making Units interesting I have a thread on City Guilds (https://forums.elementalgame.com/416510/page/1/#3074913) tell me what you think!

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NaytchSG

Join Date 03/2006

+19

Good ideas, here. I especially like your imbue thoughts...

Sacrificing a shard would sure limit mage spam... and then a chance to fail because your hero is not very magic-oriented = win.

And I also agree with some traits being available to ordinary units AND let them be ones I can design into my units.

From a previous post of mine:

Flying units that can only be hit by ranged/magic attacks...

Special attack/defense traits you can design/build into your regular troops:

Furious defense: can counterattack 2 or 3 attacks per round

Break Enemy Line: You halve (carve? heh!) an existing squad into two smaller, bloodied, less combat effective units, small % chance it breaks and flees the battle entirely

Camouflage/Ambush: Unit is invisible on map until enemy is next to it, ambushing unit gets bonus to first attack. May not work in certain terrain types... etc.

Engineer/sapper: can build battlefield traps/mines and destroy walls in city battles... IF THERE WERE ANY

These special traits could be researchable or questable locations... or both...

Go talk to the Eagles... do their fetch quest... etc...

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Break enemy line is certainly innovative, but possibly messy to implement in a battlefield (what if there is no room for the army to split up?). Ambush I like a lot. Counterattacks are also a good idea. I think for now units do not counterattack at all, isn't it?

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Quoting marionesi,

reply 2

Break enemy lines is impossible, it's never gonna happen.

Defenders and only Defenders at this point get counterstrike.

Quoting marionesi,

reply 2

Recruiting a hero should not be cheap and easy and right at the beginning. Not all at once. I suggest it costs you more gold, or it requires more factions points (as fame was in MoM) that you don’t have at the beginning. This forces you to train regulars to deal with early aggressions – there should be early aggressions, i.e. monsters that come to knock your door asking for food: you.

Very much agree. Both heroes and monsters in the wild need a lot of balancing. Ive restarted plenty of games because both of the heroes near me were the wrong faction. It is so easy to just grab all nearby heroes off the start that if there arn't like 3 than I feel hard done by. Monsters should be more agressive and thye really need to scale better. Now it's either 1 tiny monster or a giant monster leading an army. It goes from me one shotting monsters to the reverse in a second.

[on a different note] Not sure how it is now, but heroes should not be able to equip all items they find. I hope even now that a chainmail cannot be used by all heroes, for instance – not a matter of realism but a matter of bigger diversity among heroes

At the very least there should be weapon or armor specialization talents like +2 str when using blunt weapon or +3 accuracy with single handed weapon.

Unit traits should exist and be unlocked by military tech. NOT like a hundred of them though. Just a few tasteful ones.

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Quoting Stupidity10,

reply 3

Break enemy lines is impossible, it's never gonna happen.

Is it? Stand in the middle of the enemy's army and cast Titan's Breath...

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Which doesnt cause units too flee or split into smaller units

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Quoting Stupidity10,

reply 3

Very much agree. Both heroes and monsters in the wild need a lot of balancing. Ive restarted plenty of games because both of the heroes near me were the wrong faction. It is so easy to just grab all nearby heroes off the start that if there arn't like 3 than I feel hard done by. Monsters should be more agressive and thye really need to scale better. Now it's either 1 tiny monster or a giant monster leading an army. It goes from me one shotting monsters to the reverse in a second.

So you purposefully stack your games and them complain about balance with respect to that particular version of the game.

What makes the game replayable is the randomness, challenge and fun factor. If you balance everything perfectly you end up with a game like WoM were everything plays out exactly the same boring way every time.

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Get rid of the "discipline" trait, or any trait that gives a + per level, and give units more defense against damaging spells. Fixed.

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You already have a "resource" that could be used to determine how many and what quality of heroes offer services to you, assuming heroes are removed from the map: diplomatic capital. Heroes shouldn't be sitting around on the map waiting for someone to hire them. I also find that by the time I am able to recruit high level heroes from the map, most have already been killed by the opposing faction. I have to find parts of the map that haven't been explored by anyone to find them. Heroes should offer services as rewards for completing quests, and there should be random offers from heroes based on diplomatic capital. More diplomatic capital means more heroes offer their services with greater chance of higher level heroes offering services. Then you can spend diplomatic capital as well as gilder to recruit them. This would also mean that you reduce your total diplomatic capital when you recruit a hero; so it would take some time, while you restock diplomatic capital, before you are given as many offers or are able to recruit that level of hero again.

I like the ideas about imbueing champions in the OP. I don't imbue many champions in my games, but I see how that system can be abused.

Immortal heroes is horrible. There should at least be a chance they die from their wounds. Preferably, there would be a small chance that they would escape death and a much greater chance they would die. On the other hand, you would have to make the AI more carefully choose its battles, if that were the case. I'm concerned that if sovereigns died and that ended the campaign for that faction, I could just sit still for about a hundred turns and all the AI sovereigns would get themselves killed, giving me the victory.

Per level bonuses are fine, but they shouldn't apply retroactively, if they do now. (I've never noticed.) This would be less of a problem if there was a level cap on champions.

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+1 per 2-4 levels is a good balance.

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NaytchSG

Join Date 03/2006

+19

The diplomatic capital idea is a good one...

Heroes could be prisoners ala good ole MOM. Or come to you with a quest offer... "My village is under attack, m'lord! I beg your intercession on behalf of my and my village's service!"

As far as the breaking enemy line idea... it could just halve the opponent stack and we assume the missing half fled

And no counterattacks is a lousy mechanic imo... every unit should get one unless they defended last round. Special units would get 2 or 3 counterattacks per round if they had unlocked the trait or had it from creation. Would like to see units that survive a tough battle earn a medal (trait) once in a while, would be fun.

Another unit trait: hit and fade... attack and move back 2 spaces...

Just borrow em all from AOW:SM and HOMM3 already!

And Kenata's Weapons and Murteas' Grimoire! Although I did get throwing knives last night

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I really like some of these suggestions. if they are not implemented in the base game then I hope that they can be modded into the game

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Quoting Stupidity10,

reply 5

Which doesnt cause units too flee or split into smaller units

Nope, but it does open up the lines

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Quoting Zygwen,

reply 6

Quoting Stupidity10, reply 3
Very much agree. Both heroes and monsters in the wild need a lot of balancing. Ive restarted plenty of games because both of the heroes near me were the wrong faction. It is so easy to just grab all nearby heroes off the start that if there arn't like 3 than I feel hard done by. Monsters should be more agressive and thye really need to scale better. Now it's either 1 tiny monster or a giant monster leading an army. It goes from me one shotting monsters to the reverse in a second.

So you purposefully stack your games and them complain about balance with respect to that particular version of the game.

What makes the game replayable is the randomness, challenge and fun factor. If you balance everything perfectly you end up with a game like WoM were everything plays out exactly the same boring way every time.

I agree that complaining about balance when one plays only some instances of the game leads to a biased view of the game. That said, if heroes are really important at the beginning, having the chance to find 3 close heroes or none may be too much variation as long as the normal units are not a nearly valuable substitute. Again, I have not played the beta so my opinion are limited to several videos and threads I have been reading. But I think we all agree that randomness is good up to a certain extent. Too much at the beginning could condition too much the development of the game. It could be like setting random game difficulty before the game starts

For those who have played HoMMV: despite the randomness of resources on the map, the game made sure every time that you had at least one mine for every base resource relatively close to your starting position. The position of mines was random, the mosters guarding them were random, but it was needed to have all of them roughly at hand, since making them truly random could heavily jeopardized a game much more than the difficulty level you picked right at the beginning.

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Quoting Lord Xia,

reply 7

Get rid of the "discipline" trait, or any trait that gives a + per level, and give units more defense against damaging spells. Fixed.

More defense against damage spells would result in all or nothing damage spells = bad game design. Spell resistance should work on all spells and it should always reduce the effect by 50 %.

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Quoting Lord Xia,

reply 7

Get rid of the "discipline" trait, or any trait that gives a + per level, and give units more defense against damaging spells. Fixed.

For the first time today I had a game where research went deep enough into the tree to unlock the discipline skill for troops I could create. It got me thinking that traits like Discipline (bonus per level) fit the fragile, rarely highly levelled troops much better than the immortal champions. I'd love to see a few more traits like that open up to troops, and be restricted from Champs.

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One thing you can look for in my mods are buildings unlocking traits that will give your trained units bonuses based on your specialization. Stat bonuses per level are a fun gameplay feature, if you can balance it. I hope that regular units get some of this in the core game.

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Quoting seanw3,

reply 16

I am beginning to have high hopes in your mods, seanw3. Make a mod with guilds and you have made (at least) one happy man

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