Trained units are useless

The problem now is not that they are useless, but the fact that the monsters are so tame. You dont have to defend yourself, but can walk around and level your heroes. 

I think things have slightly improved although pushing that further wouldn't hurt.

I'm going to suggest something I did before: a unit should only be able to kill as many members in the target unit as their own number using standard attacks (i.e. Champions can only kill one person in the group at a time). Certain special abilities and spells should be an exception, as obviously something like Overpower should be able to wipe out armies. Likewise, perhaps a few swarming units (e.g. Mites) could be vulnerable no matter the attack used. There would still be some issues with being able to damage heroes but overall Trained units would be less of a pushover in combat as they'd get a unique advantage against most heroes.

I'd also tentatively suggest all attacks cumulatively reduce defense by 1 per strike (maybe multiplied by number of members) until the end of the battle. This would represent damage being done to armor and such, allowing weaker units to wear down tougher ones by sheer numbers until they're able to actually do some damage. They'd still have to be able to survive, of course.

I think the trained units should be useful not only for defending but for attacking too. Balance should be between sovereigns, champions and trained units. It should be very hard to defeat the whole army of trained units with a single sovereign/champion. Now it is simple.

I disagree. Trained units are very useful. You just have to use them correctly.

Defender units should be levelled up as much as possible to make them nearly impossible to kill. Get you some Chain equipped unit of 5 with shields at level 10, and a pair of them will KILL pretty much any champion or sovereign simply through attrition (barring spell use).

On a unit by unit basis, Trained Units have higher health and damage output across the board, and have the added benefit of being relatively cheap to create and maintain.

Champions are very weak at the start, and while they get more versatile and have access to magic as they develop, they are incredibly expensive to equip (vital for their usefulness) and are flatly outclassed on both health and damage output by even the smallest unit of the same level.

I suppose it depends on your tactic.  If you use a lot of enchants early on or use mana liberally with a champ, I can see that being the case.  If I'm on a faction that doesn't get free units (like Roslyn) I often find low level units invaluable, since I like to save my mana up.  But by the midgame those trained units (especially in the larger stacks - I often rush up to cooperation pretty fast) are pretty good.  I don't see them getting insane as, say crit hitting on an assassin build when growthed while using Crugen's hammer, etc, but a pretty steady 30 or more damage per attack isn't bad at all.

I would agree that they level a bit slow now compared to champs.  I also wish that the full range of armor/ weapon types were unlocked early on (in very weak form) so that the mechanics of armor types and weapons came into play earlier on and wasn't just an endgame thing (where super high attack values and endgame spells often make it obsolete anyways).

also exp has been unbalanced and is too fast

ofc now champions are too strong

and in general i feel monsters are too weak

you just farm them, while you should be scared

we could use a general buff to monsters

dragons should be LEGENDARY demigod nearly unkillable

you should use(and sacrifice maybe) your whole ARMY to fight them

not like now you just need sovereign lvl 10 to solo them

monsters, high lvl mostly, need a huge buff

I agree that trained units can't compete, but this is mostly due to easy monsters with too much XP. Heroes are leveling too fast, getting too powerful, killing too much. Trained units can't compete until much later in the game when they have groups and superior armor. 

There are defenitely still balance issues. I suspect the difficulty lies in the interaction between the wildlife and the AI factions. In Beta 3, the monsters were very aggressive to the player but tended to ignore the AI. In Beta 4, they ignore everybody. I would prefer aggressive monsters as long as they are equally aggressive to all factions - it should be a struggle to expand, clearing the wildlife before establishing a city should be a requirement. Defending cities and resources from wandering monsters should also be a requirement with resource management a key component in the game.

Trained units need to be more than cannon fodder in the early game. Given that the opposition in this phase will usually be wildlife, I'd like to see a few changes that will let the player field a balanced, combined arms force fairly early in the game that depends on trained units.

• I believe that spearmen, archers, mages and defenders should be unlocked by the first 4 military technologies (not necessarily in that order).
• Defenders should be garrison troops only -useless outside the city walls (unless it becomes possible to garrison outposts) - but extremely powerful in the defensive role. A defended city should discourage attackers and have a reasonable chance of surviving if they do attack. Cities should have an early (level 1 or 2) defensive structure they can build for additional protection. There should be resource management implications - defenders and fortifications need to be expensive.
• Archers, spearmen and mages should travel with their sovereign (or a champion) to explore and clear the land for settlement. They can also escort pioneers who should not be able to travel unmolested through uncleared regions. There should be a bonus for a combined arms force and a penalty for any force that contains more than 2 champions.
• When horses are unlocked, I think it should be possible to purchase mounts for mages. spearmen and archers instead of requiring a special horseman unit.
• It should also be possible to upgrade existing 3 man units to 5 or 7 man when those technologies become available.
• The ability to choose weapons and armor and re-equip to exploit the weakness of different opponents should be restricted to sovereigns and champions but the weapons and armor available to trained units should be equally effective against all opponents. Mages should start with a basic defensive spell and a basic offensive (ranged) spell they use in tactical combat. These spells should get stronger as they level up and additional spells unlocked by magic research.
• Trained units in armies led by a sovereign or champion should get bonuses for accuracy, initiative and dodge proportional to the leaders level and leadership skill. That includes garrisons in cities where a champion is stationed
• Monsters need to be tough but manageable at all stages of the game - not easy, just possible. Deadly monsters in the early game add nothing to the players enjoyment, nor do easy monsters in the late game. The current policy of increasing the number of monster units in a lair should be modified so that the player needs to fight them all, either at once or sequentially with no opportunity to recover between engagements. Start with a baby dragon and end with a flock - giving the player a consistent challenge.

By mid game focus tends to shift from clearing monsters and expansion to relations with other factions.  I'd like to see a defensive mage to defend cities from magic attack and possibly a structure to reinforce their power. Right now it's way too easy to take a city. If the factions are evenly matched, you shouldn't be able to take a defended city without a 2:1 advantage plus seige weapons. I like the new upgrades for outposts - it makes territorial defense a lot easier. Current upgrades confer bonuses for friendly forces. I'd like to see a couple of upgrades that penalize opposing forces.

Late game epic monsters need to be truly epic. Elemental lords that I can defeat with 3 sunder casts don't qualify. I would like to see late game trained units that act as force multipliers. Perhaps a unit that channels mana to strengthen their leader and mages - similar to the evoker attribute. Or a C³ unit that allows the player to stack armies and take on a flock of dragons. Defeating the epic monsters should require a well managed combined arms attack - you push auto resolve, you lose.

I know that most of these ideas aren't practical at this stage of the development process but some of them are and there may be other ways to achieve the same objective. Food for thought anyway.

I think the SPELL USE is exactly the point where heroes are much more powerful than trained units. It is much more effective to buff only the Sovereign or a Champion and kill everything with him, because he gets nice traits at every level and his equipment can be found in the world. With the right spells (Blizzard, Fireball, ...) a single Sovereign or Champion can wipe out an army.

A Sovereign can be very powerful at the start (Magical: Life II + Water II -> Mantel of Oceans + Slow, Physical: Tarth + Might + Shortsword -> attack 14 at level 1).

Exactly.

I think changing the weapons and armor to exploit the weakness of different opponents should be possible and it should be rewarded with lower losses, because it encourages to study the opponent and to choose a good strategy.

They have become much cheaper to equip in this beta, and easier to level up.

I do think there should be some sort of RPS where strong monsters > mobs > heroes > strong monsters.

The idea of heroes only being to kill one unit at a time barring certain abilities is my suggestion also.  This would require some rebalancing of abilities.

Certain magic spells should also be limited to single-target killing (storm, flame dart, burning hands, etc)

If you use champions with trainer traits to lead them and are able to keep your troops alive in battle, they can level up and become very powerful. 

I agree and disagree with this. In the first stage of the game I win really easily on any difficulty by rushing to the first 2 warfare tech that give a better armor and a better weapon to my troops. I then rush any AI that are close by and the game is sealed right from the start because of those 1-2 troops train quickly.

After that for a really long time, as you said, the troops become almost useless.

I'm torn by this because I like to have a powerful sovereign but I also like to have more traditionnal army with varied troops that called for a more strategic approach to combat.

Overkilling restriction for heroes (max one man killed normally + some skill that extends the limit to 2 or 3 guys) plus slower leveling plus tougher early mobs should fix this problem right away.

Well, there is one problem with heroes; you can't get so many as you'd like. Units on the other hand can be recruited en masse. They are extremely usefull in supporting your heroes, but mostley from mid-game.

I too agree monsters are too weak now. This is the reason units feel useless for some, you don't need them early on to help your 2 starting heroes leveling up more efectively. They help of course, to take some hits, but are not worth it compared to building pioneers or buildings. It should be a more sound strategy to build a unit or 2 early on too, not just building pioneers and teching civic to cooparation first. The solution isn't to make the units stronger or cheaper, but to make the monsters stronger. That way you will get a head start on leveling your heroes if u build a unit or two early, but still pay for it by slower city development.:)

I have to report since I've been experimenting with increased attack (see my long post in DEFENCE stat thread ) that by upping the attack values of weapons as a whole.  Units become far better.  Low level heroes can get pwned by armies of mites.  A 3rd level darkling shaman will own a low level hero.  Sounds like I'm beating my own drum, but increase attack values of weapons a bit and see.  Armies of bandits are actually scary.  Makes you want to have armies of spearmen and defenders backing you up instead of running around alone.  This also fixes the defence is godly problems somewhat (still have to hate on the 100% bonuses to the wrong types, plate- blunt, chain - cutting ).  But still, this problem can be solved. 

One of the disconnects between developers and testers is that they take so much longer to make changes. When we see a problem, like defense or weak units, we can just change something to fix it. The devs have a much longer and more involved process to change balance numbers. I would guess that they are already making some changes, but it is invisible to us. It will probably be another month before we see any concrete changes, unless we just guess which changes they will make and implement them ourselves. At some point we start testing a game that has no relevance to the beta cycle other than the odd crash dump. 

I wonder if they raised attack values too.

Seeing as how attack values are nowhere near defence,  I would have to think they did so.  Unless they went about seriously weakening armor.  Which I don't see them doing.  The other option I can imagine, would be to redesign both attack and defence values (As Mqpiffle and Cogburn stated about designing themselves into a corner).  Take more work. 

Well by tossing out some numbers I was hoping to give a starting point if they hadn't already.  But what I suggested is out the window pretty much if armors are getting re-done too. 

@Supreme Shogun,

Did you take a look at my balance mod's weapon changes? I have a pretty solid progression there. My design assumes that higher tier weapons needs to be slightly better than the previous ones, without making the old weapons completely obsolete. One thing that helps me is having an xml equation that shows me the min/max damage a weapon will do against full sets of each armor type. I suggest making one for anybody that wants to mod weapons or attack values in general.

Trained units can't compete mostly because they are too weak in early game. For example, Defender unit at level 2 has the following parameters: 12x3 Health, 6x3 Attack, 15 Defence. 6x3 Attack is very small. It is not 18 Attack. It is 3 times 6 Attack. So if an enemy has 10 Defence, Defender unit can't do any tangible damage to him. For comparison Nada champion has the following parameters: ~35 Health, ~20 Attack, ~20 Defence, 2 Magic schools, some skills. Also Nada have much more future potential, than Defender unit, because she is a champion. However their costs are comparable. You can recruit Nada for ~400 gold at expert difficulty. Defender unit costs 315 production points, that is 18 seasons in a city with 3 materials. So rushing Defender production costs 315 gold. Simple solution for this issue is to add some base attack for trained units. For example, 5 base attack is enough for all trained units. Also base production cost can be reduced to minimal value (cost of "Weak" trait). Labor costs of traits, weapons and armors can be lowered too.

It isn't that trained units are bad or good, its that you can easily win without building one.

My last game was on "ridiculous" difficulty, the second highest one and I never built a single unit, and only hired the hero on turn one that was standing beside me. I beat the game and got the highest title (dragonol).

If the game was harder then you could consider building units. Maybe on impossible you need to build units...

The enemies had infinite squads of 2k hps, and around 1000 faction strength but it didn't matter, my hero could solo any squad with no real injuries and take any town.

I ended up just doing the quest victory because I didn't want to defend my towns. It is the fastest way to win on that difficulty I expect.

I have played with trained units also, and they are fine, but until the game is harder you don't need them. I will try insane next, I suspect I will lose :/

I have pretty good luck with trained units.  If I'm careful, I can keep them around long enough so that they're actually useful during the mid to late game.  I learned from one of the Seanw3's watch-me-play games to make heavy defenders armed with daggers then just defend with them during tactical battles.  They take most of the heat while the rest of my spear guys and bowmen pick away at them.  So long as Brad keeps programming the AI to go after the heavy defenders first, we are good! 

Oops.  I ran your mod along with mine.  I'll remove my folder and see how it goes. 

I know I mentioned this earlier, but the problem is not trained units.  The problem is champions.  They are way to powerful compared to trained units.  This was made even worse when they were given access to magic at the start of the game.  The champions need nerfed.  They also need to be able to be killed.  Injuries are just not enough.  I am fine with a Sovereign being super powerful and capable of defeating entire armies, especially when they get to upper levels.  I do not like the fact a champion can do the same thing.

There is no difference between the champions and sovereigns.  You could take any one of the Champions as they are in the game, change them in name only to a Sovereign and a start a game with them.  Some of them maybe even better than the Sovereigns we have.  That is a problem.

I had a problem with immortal champions because I would have to kill the same 5 AI champions over and over again.  In the latest beta, I think they've put a lot less champions on the map.  That solved my problem of having to kill too many AI champions over and over, but sadly, I don't have as many champions either.  I think that was their way of solving the uber-champion vs. normal trained units problem = put less champions on the map to begin with.

• 3 turn production minimum for trained units.  If heroes are meant to be similar to Sauron in LOTR, that's fine, but you need to be able to train your mundane troops to keep up with hero power level.
• The difference in the arc of the power curve for trained units and powerful heroes is huge.  You have powerful heroes way earlier because they rely on leveling and loot, which you can do at essentially whatever pace you want.  Trained units rely on the research system, which is  governed so powerful techs aren't discovered until mid to late game.  
• Army management is horrendous. The way of adding and removing units to armies is frustrating.  The game's lack of ability to smartly determine how much movement a unit has remaining when it is pulled out of a larger army.  The lack of a waypoint system for newly produced units creates army formation hell.  All these provide incentive not to use armies.  Etc, etc, etc...
• My heroes and Sovereign can perform quests and pick up goody huts while exploring and waging war.  Trained units can't.  This should either be changed or trained units should have some sort of balancing feature.  
• Trained unit power is governed partially by a resource trickle.  Hero power is governed by items.  It takes X turns to produce one power trained unit.  It takes 1 fight to upgrade a hero SIGNIFICANTLY.  

Admittedly I play on Dense everything, but the solution to this issue should scale with world settings.