galahorn

Join Date 08/2009

0.91 balance suggestions

Hey,

First, I have to say I enjoyed the changes that have been made in beta 3 so far. Even if the game still needs major balance/polish to be a challenge, the things they changed are clearly in the right direction. Like someone said earlier, we can only judge SD on what they actually changed and not on what is still to be changed! The new weapon’s concept is great; I also like the end of attributes and the new skilling system. All of these still need balance but the concepts are right.This being said, after playing 5 full games with challenging AI, large map, all factions on and winning 3 by conquest without even building troops (or well I build couple of them but didn’t use them) and 2 with trying them (but they still were kind of useless), here are my suggestions to improve the feel.

- Link armor, weapons and magic progression to hero path. Mages should be limited to robe, assassins to robe-LA, warrior to robe-MA while defender can wear all armor. Same for weapons (mages shouldn’t be using 2 handed mauls no?). On parallel, mage can be all magic lv, governors 1-4, assassins 1-3 and warrior and defender 1-2. This way, less open choices and more decisions. This way, no more mages in HA destroying the map with spells or assassins in HA having incredible DPS (and unbeatable defense). Now, path choices will really mean something and can be done according to items found, number of nodes, play style etc…

- City need defense mechanisms! Yes, all strategy games out here (CIV 5, AoW, MoM, Homm, Stronghold, tower games, mount and blade, paradox games: all of them even FPS ones!) have strong defense mechanism for cities. I think this is one of the biggest problems right now. 1 hero shouldn’t take a whole empire alone fighting vs pesky militias. One AI peon army (like 3 peon’s creeps) shouldn’t take my capitol backdoor…Once a war is declared; cities fall so fast that it isn’t funny. No need to plan an attack or a defense, just need to rush your hero and hope they won’t send peons backdoor (will take 1 or 2 useless more turns to finish the faction). Here, I would suggest a ballista that can be upgraded with each wall level/research. This ballista, at lv 1, could deal major dmg to basic troops with no defense (peons, archers/spearmen etc.). With more walls, it will become more and more powerful, scaling with the quality of troops and heroes. If a ballista deals 15-20 dmg to my lord every round, my lord might die vs 3 militias in the 3 turns it will take him to kill these creeps: I will need an army to back him out!

- Magic items balancing: major items (like sword of the fiery divine atomic intervention) should only drop from bosses. They are game changers and finding one means the end of the world. And yes, without these, it would be impossible for a single hero to down a zone’s boss. A party and eventually an army would be needed, like it should (I mean only a half-god should be able to kill a dragon or a boss alone not a lv 10 hero…).

- Quest balancing: same then magic items. Getting panca archers means the destruction of all AI peons’ armies.

- Weapons, armor, research and city production: I like the general feel of the concepts, even if the whole needs some balancing of slight changes. Like many say, all basic weapons should be basic research. Yes, every faction should start with peons but the 2 first military researches should be wood weapons (bows, shield, spears, sticks, clubs etc.) and metal weapons (axe, sword, dagger, hammer etc.). The rest of the system may remain the same. It’s not a problem if it takes times to research better versions of swords or axe or mounted combat etc later in game. It’s just bad to have spearmen and maybe defenders at the time your hero have lv 5-lv 7 magic items. This is a very important balance change, in my opinion, which would make troops viable right from the start and counter the why should I need to build troops?

These changes would bring lots of balance and more decisions to the game. In my opinion, the city defense mechanism is the most urgent change needed and the only essential one to make the game really compelling. I think, like many others that the expansion pattern needs some love too but not that much. Often, when the AI expands properly in challenging, it’s rare to be able to build more then 3-4 cities (lots of outposts yes but they only bring territory control). With proper defense mechanism, destroying whole factions in 5 turns and leaping from 4 cities to 8 or 9 in a second won’t be possible anymore in early or mid-game. A war will turn around taking maybe 1 or 2 cities and fast expansion might only happen in late game, like it should. Most wars will last long and might even finish inconclusively by the destruction of outposts here and there. Diplomacy will now have some meaning. After a 20-40-50 turn war with no major fronteer changes but major economic consequences, peace might be the solution for all parties no?

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I just wanted to point out that linking armor to classes is

1) cliche

2) unrealistic

3) limiting on the player's creativity

4) forces you to play a certain way

Sounds like you are trying to fix balance issues the wrong way (make the system more complex, rather than attack the core problem)

For the troop scaling, its a very common problem in 4x games. When you limit the # of units of combat, you introduce the idea of "density." If you can only have 9 units, you don't want 50 units of spearmen, attacking 9 at a time. You want 9 units of super knights that can win without casualties every time. If it was 50 vs 9 in one battle, then maybe it would balance out, but thats not how FE is designed. So heroes, being the "densest" in power/slot will always outshine. Maybe just introduce high end "hero slayer" units that have a strong bonus vs heroes.

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Quoting UmbralAngel,

reply 1

I just wanted to point out that linking armor to classes is

1) cliche

2) unrealistic

3) limiting on the player's creativity

4) forces you to play a certain way

Sounds like you are trying to fix balance issues the wrong way (make the system more complex, rather than attack the core problem)

For the troop scaling, its a very common problem in 4x games. When you limit the # of units of combat, you introduce the idea of "density." If you can only have 9 units, you don't want 50 units of spearmen, attacking 9 at a time. You want 9 units of super knights that can win without casualties every time. If it was 50 vs 9 in one battle, then maybe it would balance out, but thats not how FE is designed. So heroes, being the "densest" in power/slot will always outshine. Maybe just introduce high end "hero slayer" units that have a strong bonus vs heroes.

Funny, I was just thinking that linking that to class would be simply... Boring ..

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

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Alright, the first idea doesn’t seem to interest players, and that’s fine! Just a suggestion and certainly not an essential thing. Anyways, SD is clearly balancing that stuff out: they’ve already scaled down the magic items a bit and upped the level requirement to use them and I guess that’s just the start.

But what do you think about the city defense mechanism. For me, it’s the only crucial issue of the game right now; the rest can be addressed by adding content (differentiation, quests, monsters) balancing the actual content and improving the AI (and SD is already doing that). If cities can be taken that easily and that early in the game, it creates a major problem. Whipping out whole factions with 4-5 cities with a single hero and in the first 100 turns isn’t that fun. On a large map, it’s easy to conquer it all within 200 turns without using a single troop and that, on challenging. In 10 turns, I can gain 10 new cities if they are near one of each other. What militias can do vs my crazy lord of doom? Well, I am sure this can be addressed in many ways so don’t hesitate to let your opinions/suggestions on this post!

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Quoting galahorn,

reply 3

Just garrison your cities, I think it is way better if you have to do an active piece of duty to defend your cities, they already have militia support, and bonuses to initiative and later on defenses, you get a rather massive 25% bonus to attack and defense within your own borders. this is all besides what kind of garrison you decide to put in your cities, that said if you do a massive city Spam early in the game, the cities become very hard to defend, and you will get a whooping .

The AI have troubles defending itself, right, meaby thats a sign of the AI's current abilities. That said the capitol might want some more protection at start so to De-favour rushes a bit more.

It does not help the current standard sovereigns are poorly designed compared to power, some or most of them have useless equipment along (I only really like procipinee's crown), so if you design a powerful warrior sovereign and rush the enemy with hardy trait, might trait, and brilliant trait (gives a level or 2 more before you get to the opponents capital). You will have a good chance to win the first battle wiping them off the map.

I agree right now HEROES are too powerful, but the current mechanics apart from early game rushes, support very heavy city defenses, if you can support it in your economy (Might I suggest using Quendar racial ability to provide upkeep free slaves, or the warlord profession to the main hero, Quendar is the race which Magnar leads, and Warlord Verga have acquired the Warlord Profession boost).
I also suggest having high food cities, since material is kind of poor ATM due to all the funds needed to upkeep an army.

They will do a city re-haul in beta 4 (we are in beta 3 right now, so next major update), so I am not sure how it is going to look at that point.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

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Quoting ,

quoting post

- Troop scaling. This needs to be balanced. It’s not normal to produce lv 3 units or summon lv 6 elemental while my hero is lv 7-9 or 15…Why should I bother producing these at the end of the game, when all heroes are packed with items and double their levels? Making more lv raising buildings would scale troops with the hero’s progression and would be a major incentive to win the research/building race! Stronger troops would also make magic meaningful (better fireball these by far or mass curse these lv 9 spearmen then face all of them with one hero auto hitting).

- Magic items balancing: major items (like sword of the fiery divine atomic intervention) should only drop from bosses. They are game changers and finding one means the end of the world. And yes, without these, it would be impossible for a single hero to down a zone’s boss. A party and eventually an army would be needed, like it should (I mean only a half-god should be able to kill a dragon or a boss alone not a lv 10 hero…).

This is true, magic items and troops equipment needs balancing, this I bet is being worked on, am going to take a personal look at it after beta 4 when I know what they are considering with cities, since how fast you can spew out troops, and what kind of city defenses that will be available will have a token in the discussion about how to produce a proper unit / hero combat game

Magic items are horribly imbalanced ATM, I agree, but mostly because some magic items are super powerful, I think to start this topic, whenever you find a magic item you feel are imbalanced in whatever direction, be it under the power level, or way above the power level, you should post something to start a discussion about the item, since its hard to generalize and I don't know all the equipment.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

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