World Difficulty, Heroes, Experience and Risk vs Reward

So a buffed sovereign with the crown of Procipinee is the ultimate game unit. I wonder if such a sovereign can be actually killed by trained units - any trained units.

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I think Heavenfall's observation is interesting. I am sure Derek will check deep into this. Maybe we could look at the problem from a different angle.

If it is true that the disparity between regular armies and heroes is higher at higher difficulties, and if this is because monsters give more experience, then it must also be true that heroes power grows more steeply [edit: faster] with experience compared to units'. Otherwise, getting more experience should not make heroes increasingly preferable over units. Hence, maybe you may want to look also at how units improve with experience and make it more meaningful.

[As a side note, in MoM, most units had their hp doubled when becoming elite (from 1hp per figure to 2hp) and also got a remarkable +1 to hit].

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- Heaven, thats a really nice find, thinking out of the box and all.... I don't like it!

Quoting Tuidjy,

reply 6

I also agree that trained units could get a bit more from leveling... just one point of attack and one point of dodge would go a looong way.

They get to be tanks with the insane HP gained each level, although I wish it would increase stuff like damage slowly (1 attack per 2 or per 3 levels for low-attack units).

This is one of the things I would alleviate when/if I make a mod

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

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Quoting Heavenfall,

reply 24

I have always complained that level 4 and level 5 spellbook traits come too early in the game. Those Fire and Earth elementals kill anything the enemy factions can throw at me. A Focus+Flamedart kills most champions. But why?

1) Is it because those spells are overpowered?

3) Is it because I play on high difficulties and gain more experience and therefore more levels and therefore gain the spells earlier than is intended? Earlier than other human players that may be playing on lower difficulties?

All spells are not balanced at the moment, because they scale too much:

Slow without water shards is useful (- 4 initiative), but with 2 water shards it is very strong (- 8 initiative)

Blizzard without water shards, warlock, path of the mage and evoker is useless (8 points of damage per unit in every stack), but with 2 water shards, warlock, path of the mage and evoker I it is very strong (36 points of damage per unit in every stack).

The AI is not very good at leveling up the units (medium map, hard difficulty, standard settings: my Sovereign was level 16 and the AI Sovereigns were level 8 - 10).

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leroy105 has the right of it. Heroes level too fast and outshine troops.

In addition, the longer research times further amplify this imbalance.

Recommend dialing back hero XP a bit, and shave research times considerably. In addition, early game build times need to be reduced in order to produce your economy to support your troops. Lastly, resource improvements NEED to be reverted back to 40 bldg materials (or at least reduced to 60). They were great improvements to 'squeeze' in between the current, necessary, earlygame pioneer spam.

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Quoting Heavenfall,

reply 24

I have always complained that level 4 and level 5 spellbook traits come too early in the game. Those Fire and Earth elementals kill anything the enemy factions can throw at me. A Focus+Flamedart kills most champions. But why?

1) Is it because those spells are overpowered?

2) Is it because I abuse a mechanic to gain sudden advantage and strike just before they can do the same?

and/or

3) Is it because I play on high difficulties and gain more experience and therefore more levels and therefore gain the spells earlier than is intended? Earlier than other human players that may be playing on lower difficulties?

I would like to see the element level requirements spread out a bit, something like 1, 3, 7, 12, 18.

I would also like to see base spell damage brought down by about 50 - 75%. I can get magnar dealing game-ending damage by level 8 with only one fire shard. Not fun.

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Quoting mqpiffle,

reply 32

I would also like to see base spell damage brought down by about 50 - 75%. I can get magnar dealing game-ending damage by level 8 with only one fire shard. Not fun.

I think the problem is not the base damage, but the multipliers of the base damage:

Warlock + 50 %, Path of the Mage + 50 %, Evoker + 75 % (25 / 25 / 25), Staff of Souls + 25 %, Ring of Mastery + 25 %, ...

The base damage should be INCREASED and the multipliers should be REDUCED:

Warlock + 25 %, Path of the Mage + 25 %, Evoker + 50 % (15 / 15 / 20), Staff of Souls + 15 %, Ring of Mastery + 15 %, ...

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Heavenfall

Join Date 07/2008

+441

I agree with Wizard1200 on that.

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Quoting Wizard1200,

reply 33

Quoting mqpiffle, reply 32
I would also like to see base spell damage brought down by about 50 - 75%. I can get magnar dealing game-ending damage by level 8 with only one fire shard. Not fun.

I think the problem is not the base damage, but the multipliers of the base damage:

Warlock + 50 %, Path of the Mage + 50 %, Evoker + 75 % (25 / 25 / 25), Staff of Souls + 25 %, Ring of Mastery + 25 %, ...

The base damage should be INCREASED and the multipliers should be REDUCED:

Warlock + 25 %, Path of the Mage + 25 %, Evoker + 50 % (15 / 15 / 20), Staff of Souls + 15 %, Ring of Mastery + 15 %, ...

Not to forget the huge bonuses from shards ^^
Even 1 shard is tough, but with 3-4 shards it just multiplies even further.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

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how do you earn more XP on higher difficulty? I would think a higher difficulty would introduce an XP penalty rather then just throw more monsters at you..

Every game I have ever seen where higher difficulty meant more and higher level opponents yet the same XP calculations resulted in the game being easier the higher the difficulty was set to.

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I don't know about everyone else, but my playstyle tends to be about building a stack of heroes that is more or less unstoppable, and the army size limit means that mixing in mundane troops is usually not worthwhile, since it's all about optimizing that stack.

The AI doesn't seem to really know how to stack its heroes to match this, and the game might not even be that fun if it did (every war would boil down to one battle).

Once the modding tools are out I'm going to try and play around with setting a limit of one hero per party, to see if that makes things tend more toward mixing in regular units, rather than the hero doomstack. I'd also want to add a mechanic to teleport items from hero to hero at a small mana cost, similar to how Age Of Wonders 2 does it.

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Quoting Avesenchai,

reply 37

I don't know about everyone else, but my playstyle tends to be about building a stack of heroes that is more or less unstoppable

The only choice is whether you use a stack of heroes or solo with your sov (heroes split XP between them)

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Quoting Wizard1200,

reply 33

Quoting mqpiffle, reply 32
I would also like to see base spell damage brought down by about 50 - 75%. I can get magnar dealing game-ending damage by level 8 with only one fire shard. Not fun.

I think the problem is not the base damage, but the multipliers of the base damage:

Warlock + 50 %, Path of the Mage + 50 %, Evoker + 75 % (25 / 25 / 25), Staff of Souls + 25 %, Ring of Mastery + 25 %, ...

The base damage should be INCREASED and the multipliers should be REDUCED:

Warlock + 25 %, Path of the Mage + 25 %, Evoker + 50 % (15 / 15 / 20), Staff of Souls + 15 %, Ring of Mastery + 15 %, ...

something like that

i modded to have warlock 10% dmg

path of mage 25% dmg -10 mana

evoker 10,15,20

also i reduced shard scaling because i hate randomness

and i added few mage armors to improve stats so end game if you work on that you can still be very powerful but its not just easy and guaranteed

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Grr. Forums ate my post.... reminds me why I usually start a post and then edit it instead of writing and then submitting. No matter how hard it is to the other participants in a discussion to respond to it.
Is there no way to put in a clipboard instead of a writeboard as first step so stuff one tries to post isn't lost when the forums are wonky...?

This post will be shorter than the original one thanks to bad forums...

Agree with that there shouldn't be different XP for different difficulties and equal monsters.

Strongly disagree about the "bringing heroes in line" approach is the right approach to achive a fun game (which should probably be the goal to acheive a good game in singleplayer.)

Heroes and the way they work out are fun to play. Not just the best approach. Might also be a reason for their popularity (be it with the souvereign alone or an "heroic army" which is possible with the right traits...)

I for one think that the heroic dominance is just a symptom to other underlying problems (in addition to the one heavenfall pointed out), some of which wouldn't require new features or even rebalancing.

Most notably:

Units are actually to weak and uninteresting.
Meaning: To few trait slots and no variability for that possibly highly interesting mechanic as the game progresses.
Why isn't trait-slots something progressive going from 2 at the start to 5-6 (or even 7-8 for very lategame warfare techs) at the end with techs in the warfare tree granting new trait slots (also makes negative traits more valuable since they don't steal the overly valuable slots since they are capped by 3. + need more variability in negative traits)

AI doesn't seem to know how to protect its troops against heroe's most powerful tools against them (mass spells like blizard and fireball most notably) with the right equipment (enchanted cloaks, elemental rings and other stuff like attican armor) and spells (nature's cloak isn't actually a high level spell. It should be the very first thing the AI Spams after losing a whole 12-Unit Garison to an allmighty blizard. really...). Takes nill new features just different AI weight to all things protecting from elements. (No reason why high level troops by riddiculous AI shouldn't start at least! with 50% resistance from both fire and ice out of the gate without enchants. Possibly more against heavily used elements encountered in a given game)

Units cost to much upkeep (heroes should be upped a little/mediocre, units reduced significantly, sensible change to introduce maintenence for heroes)

Military Units are to expensive and take to long a time to produce (focus is to much on city production and to low on actual resources which are only important for units anyways. The needed resources allready seem to expensive still. But if someone things they should be even moreso: That might be a good place to make very powerful units costly in some way... Otherwise it gets into the way of building stuff to much. Like the base mechanics of a single queue, don't like the big chunk of time units take to construct)

Fiddlying with heroes to much in the negative respect might kill of a fun feature (possibly the most fun one) of the game right now for questionable gain (is a more balanced single player game automatically more fun? Is a terribly balanced game always a bad and unfun one for singleplayer or even for multiplayer for that matter?)
I for one found heroes in beta 4 just right and units way to weak, not heroes overpowered and units just right...

Modding is always an option for people who wan't more balance and who want to artificially "bring heroes in line". Should it be the measurement for everyone that balance trumps fun? With so much of the above untouched and untried to actually lease new life into more or less dull current features.
Bring units up not heroes down...

To set the post into perspective: Coming from a gamer who had lots of fun with unbalanced single player games and strongly disliking negative balancing (have experienced more than one streamlined and balanced game which was downright terrible to play). Go big or go home. Don't kill good fun features because they seem to good. Make other stuff be equally or more fun. No dark ages please. Golden Ages! So take it with a pinch of salt.

In spite of having a different oppinion to Tuidjy (and probably others) about the right aproach to "the issue" I do agree withe heroes being extraordinarily powerful (and fun). Since someone asked how we play my usual stacks are like this: Sovereign or hero (or 2-3 against greater threats) + lots of tamed beasties (I do like beastmaster very much possibly the strongest voaction for a souvereign to have, if set up right...)
So there also seems to be variety even in the heroic strategy alone. IMO that works out very well for the game...

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Quoting taltamir,

reply 38

The only choice is whether you use a stack of heroes or solo with your sov (heroes split XP between them)

I have deliberately been dragging out my challenging level games to make some troops. My observations summary: even fixing the hero v troops research problem opens up resource problems amongst others.

a. There is just no possible way for research to match troops to heros. You can cut XP in half, a quater even. I dont think it would matter. I'm sure there are better players then me, but you would have to research 10 + times faster.

b. I can outbuild the build tree. I have cities siting idle with everything built they can build and I still dont bother with troops. see d

c. So I have made a unit of 5 lighting hammer women with wargs and all plus attack kit and armor, with careful nursemaiding to get up to about level 7 they are now about as good as my hero was a while ago. Still thats not bad and 3 or 4 would be great.

I also made a unit of 5 flame staff women, They 30-35 or so ranged damage a round. No armor to save costs and make them buildable. Again a barrage from 4 of these guys at the start of the round would be great!

d. So why are my cities sittig idle? I have no resources. There is no way I could make a stack of these guys to fight sans heros. My two troops ran me out of a games worth of crystal and wargs. Was I unlucky, maybe, I usually dont really care about this aspect so feel free to correct me, I also forgo some civics to get me up the other trees faster. So i'm open to being proved wrong here.

But for me even if you COULD research this stuff earlier, you cant make it!

e. Ok you say why dont you just churn out spearmen or something. Well I see the AI do this and I just shred 5 at at time so I dont see the point. The games not big enough to be flanking or fighitng on 5 fronts, so I dont need multiple stacks or anything.

f. The enemy is so lack luster. I dont need my fire staff women or anything really. Even if I could churn out 10 at a time I dont care, its just more work for me to micor manage, my heros fighting just fine thank you and dont need em.

For example I fight an AI sov and he and his hero have something like 12! Wounds from dieing, let alone bad leveling and no kit. How can he match my hero? Why would my hero need help? If my hero were 5 levels lower so would the AI and STILL have 6 wounds each

I feel bad killing a hero in coma with no arms or legs and gangrene

g. A minor matter, but I build troops and go ok cool, Ill enchant them like my heros. But no, not all spells can go on troops? Err what, you just handicaping these troop by not leting them have all the enchantments my heros got. It just another little way that troops arent as good.

PS does anyone love the maul axe thingy. I love my hero chopping away for like 6 hits PLUS a backswing hit on top of that. Like chopping down a tree

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@ leroy105: Sounds like you seriously need to up the difficulty. Your playthrough sounds like you might be needing to up the dificulty to have fun. (try very hard or riddiculous to find some challenge with even heroic strategies...)

Agree with not understanding limiting certain enchants to heroes. (might be another little thing where a switcheroo whould be ok. Why not just allow flaming blades for units instead of heroes?)

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Quoting Blackmantle_,

reply 42

@ leroy105: Sounds like you seriously need to up the difficulty. Your playthrough sounds like you might be needing to up the dificulty to have fun. (try very hard or riddiculous to find some challenge with even heroic strategies...)

Agree with not understanding limiting certain enchants to heroes. (might be another little thing where a switcheroo whould be ok. Why not just allow flaming blades for units instead of heroes?)

Hmm dont get me wrong. I actually like my super friends, its kind of an rpg for me to tool up my heros and take on the whole world. But if this is the way the game is I want more focus on heros and traits, more kit, more spells and more quests and encounters plus less city improvements and buildings. Plus make the research matter to heros.

Also more hero type units, like I would like my dog to be a hero with levels etc. so I could personalise him. Or my elemental could be a hero type unit . . .

On the other hand make it more MOM where heros matter but troops and cities and empire building are also vital. I feel basically its in no mans land at the moment. Pick RPG or pick MOM.

I tried higher difficulty (in 952, to be fair) but it just seems like monster require artifical treechopping (ie hack hack hack) there is no more thinking or strategy required, just more combat turns, AI is no harder.

I kill AI spearmen/militia/whatever junky unit they make by the bucketload in challenging, I have to fight whole pools worth of spearmen in higher diff. But at the end of the day there still spearmen, cant scratch me 5 at a time, cant scrath me 5 times a turn.

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Oh, don't get me wrong. I whould also very much like the troops to matter more (but not by making heroes a less fun or less powerful feature. Instead breathing life into units actually). I think we are roughly in agreement what we like.

The difficulty thing was just a reccomendation for the current state of the game and what you described in your last post, not how an ideal state iof the E:FE-game whould be like.

At riddiculous though the AI currently very much fields other stuff than spearmen (stacks of fully plated platoons wielding boreal blades and the like. Rather scary honestly and gives value to spears. Big fun). The time where AI was unable to use arms and armor at higher difficulties is luckyly a thing of the past.
It just hasn't learned to protect those plated terrors against magic (yet. I hope...). Fireball and Blizard are still killers for them...
Since I din't play anything less than riddiculous or perhaps the occasional one step easier for quite a time so I didn't realize the AI still doesn't equip its troops at lower difficulties (that might be a symptom of not having the right tech though, since riddiculous proves that the AI indeed does know how to Equip its troops with weapons and armor if it's got the tech...)

In MOM both heroes and Units very much mattered and had the option to go thorugh the roof.
Hamerhands (personal favorite especially with mithril. ), Javeliners (also one heck of a powerhouse, best lizardmen unit around and more moves+waterwalking to boot...), Paladins (for completness, were never that hyped about them but lots of people think they are best...) and the like where also able to finish off a bunch of Sky-Drakes allright not only heroes if nurtured and buffed well enough... I also find that a very likeable goal

There was one part of the E:FE-beta where units rocked (and heroes sucked because they were badly nerfed at the time) when cheap units were free of upkeep and 1-turn to produce. Not convinced yet that the following nerfs of 3-turn-minimum production and forced upkeep as well as more expensive unit production really did huge good to the game...

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Quoting leroy105,

reply 41

The games not big enough to be flanking or fighitng on 5 fronts, so I dont need multiple stacks or anything.

I think this is a key observation. The advantages for having more than one stack are typically subject to severe diminishing returns. Horses, combined with easy and rapid city sieges, mean that a single stack can overrun a kingdom/empire extremely fast. The AI will occasionally try to open new fronts to snag your cities if it has troops in position to do so. However, those are usually just annoyances, since they don't actually threaten your war engine (the hero stack).

Another, perhaps subtler aspect of this is that heroes aren't very tightly integrated into the rest of the game, for how powerful they are. Sure, heroes can buy crystal trinkets, metal armor, and horses from cities, but it's not like CIV where if you lose the resource your mounted heroes take a penalty - once they buy the horse, they can more or less afford to forget about ranches. Also, some sort of synergy bonus for normal troops that are partied with heroes might encourage at least bringing them along for the ride.

I'm playing expert these days, but even when I was playing the easier settings heroes seemed extremely dominant.

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Quoting Blackmantle_,

reply 40

Grr. Forums ate my post.... reminds me why I usually start a post and then edit it instead of writing and then submitting. No matter how hard it is to the other participants in a discussion to respond to it.
Is there no way to put in a clipboard instead of a writeboard as first step so stuff one tries to post isn't lost when the forums are wonky...?

I usually copy my reply to the windows clipboard if it took me more than 2 minutes to write the post. Forums haven't eaten any of my posts in a while, but better safe than sorry.

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Wow, it looks like there are some major gripes with the strategic game balance. I took off in my own direction awhile ago and I just can't bear to go back to the vanilla. There is nothing majorly wrong with it, but it lacks the depth I need to stay interested in the game. Now that I have a better RPG aspect too, it's hard to call myself a beta tester.

Don't get me wrong, alot of great things are being added, fixed, and balanced. But doing polish and balance at once means balance changes come slower to testers. I think the devs can probably handle balancing things in the end, but it's going to take quite a long time. We probably won't see a major change to the hero-unit balance or the production-cost balance, or even the unit-resource issues for at least a week. I'll check back after the next update.

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Yeah, there's no reason to build units at the moment. I hope they do a thorough rebalance near the end of beta.

I just won on Insane difficulty with Insane AI. The only units that I built were pioneers.

Three heroes won the game. Haste, Growth, and Giant Form. That's all you need in the end.

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Am I the only one who thinks the enemy AI's heroes are a little over the top strong? I mean, I've played WoM and I was really good at it, but in FE, even on normal/easy, because for some reason my enemy's all have super strong sovs and heroes (one being lvl 19 and insta kills everything I throw at him), while I'm stuck with low level guys even though none of my heroes or sov has been killed. I don't know how I'm supposed to farm EXP when enemy monster mobs go around razing my cities (and the land is unsettleable after for some strange reason).

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Quoting Monzter9952,

reply 49

Am I the only one who thinks the enemy AI's heroes are a little over the top strong? I mean, I've played WoM and I was really good at it, but in FE, even on normal/easy, because for some reason my enemy's all have super strong sovs and heroes (one being lvl 19 and insta kills everything I throw at him), while I'm stuck with low level guys even though none of my heroes or sov has been killed. I don't know how I'm supposed to farm EXP when enemy monster mobs go around razing my cities (and the land is unsettleable after for some strange reason).

All heroes are over them top, I personally have no particular problem with the enemy heroes... except when I try to kill them with leather armoured spearmen

I would love to help you, but it all comes down to little details in hero levelling, best advice I can give is don't try to stack heroes and/or sovereigns in the same stack, that will include an experience Penalty.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

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Quoting Monzter9952,

reply 49

Am I the only one who thinks the enemy AI's heroes are a little over the top strong? I mean, I've played WoM and I was really good at it, but in FE, even on normal/easy, because for some reason my enemy's all have super strong sovs and heroes (one being lvl 19 and insta kills everything I throw at him), while I'm stuck with low level guys even though none of my heroes or sov has been killed. I don't know how I'm supposed to farm EXP when enemy monster mobs go around razing my cities (and the land is unsettleable after for some strange reason).

This happens because you made the of not realising that the ONLY thing that matters is heroes and your only viable choices are a super sov or a superstack of heroes. (personally I prefer the supersov, harder to buid right but superior results if you do)

Your towns only exist to provide your heroes with a horse, HP restoring consumables to make them fight more often, and mana for casting spells, and perhaps an item or two to replace missing loot (eg, leather bracers if you never got a bracer drop).

If you played your heroes right then your super stack OR solo sov would have easily beatdown the AI's super-sov or hero stack.

Also, the key to gaining more XP faster then enemy is mobility, get a fast horse so you are always fighting to harvest that delicious XP.

In Age of Wonders and Masters of Magic your sov equivalent gets more powerful via investing research points (generated from towns) to unlock magic skills (including things like "reduce upkeep of all units" and "increase construction rate at all towns" type skills in AoW). But in Elemental the hero only way of gaining power is killing things for XP.

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