[Fix] How to fix the biggest problem in 952

Wow! With one fell swoop you took us back to the days of WoM, reversed several months of game design and development by very experienced professionals and solved the game's biggest problem (which many of us do not consider a problem, but OK)!

You should become  a game designer! (no, seriously, give it a shot)!

He does have a point with heroes at the moment.  They are OP.  I'm not sure how to balance it though.  You can get really powerful champs well before you have troops that can match.

tbh the easiest solution is just NOT MAKING champions steamroll everything fast, also reducing the leveling helps

all these things actually work, im trying in my modded games and its perfect

also another important thing forcing to go champions is the research

going into magic is cool

going into civilization is a must, at least halfway or so

warfare is just not cool as other trees (thats why i added crafted stuff in there to have more motivation to research it)

We are past the point of such changes. What we could do it make monsters tougher, so that you need units to help. Could also be helped  by making monsters more aggressive.

Turns out I have designed dozens of published games. And thanks for the sarcastic response.

If you have designed dozens of published games you should know that offering such broad and sweeping suggestions that require changes of game fundamentals and a serious new round of error-checking, bug-fixing and balancing at this late stage is both useless and quite frustrating...

Also, integrating the unit and building queue was a specific design decision made by the developers whose vision the game expresses - if it were your game, obviously this would be a different story...

I also of course disagree with your initial premise - having played the game to completion more than 20 times with several maps, I find units to be very useful in several ways:

- to support my heroes as they gain levels,

- as melee units to shore up mage heroes

- as ranged units to support fighter / assassin heroes

- for city defence and territory sentry purposes

- to handle difficult encounters with dragons etc. without waiting for my heroes to hit L20+

- to quickly defeat enemies with multiple cities

- to explore enemy territory while my heroes are busy doing something else

In any case, and with apologies for my sarcasm, I think your best bet is to develop your mod skills and change the game to your heart's content, which is what I plan to do (lacking of course your vast experience in game design).

Trained units are weak in comparison with sovereign/champions. I will not build them even in a separate queue. I don't need weak units. At first trained units should be improved a lot: higher base stats, higher weapon/armor stats, lower production/resource costs.

I'd rather have early units just be appealing as a choice.

mdonais does have a point. champions become all powerful pretty quickly. i think the only thing limiting them right now is the amount of mana they have and the weak weapons you find limiting their damage potential. other than that i still have managed to win about 4 full games on challenging with no units built at all besides pioneers.

i have an idea that may fix the "trained units are useless" issue but nobody listened   

https://forums.elementalgame.com/431066

As I have said in many other threads purporting to "fix" this problem, what you perceive as an issue with Champions being OP is really a problem with the AI.  They don't need to dramatically alter the structure of the game, or hamstring and nerf champions.  They need the AI to be able to use Champions properly.

To compare it to chess, the AI knows how all the pieces work, but doesn't understand how to use the pieces together and doesn't understand how to use its pieces to best advantage.  What you're seeing is the effect of the AI not being able to recognize that using its queen like its a pawn is stupid.

Champions should be all-powerful, they should obliterate low-level troops.  You want weak champions, go play WoM, seriously.  That was a game where champions were balanced against units and guess what people complained about? That's right, "Champions are pointless".

In FE, the counter to a high level Champion is another high level Champion, not freshly trained units.  You want to play RPS?  There are thousands of games out there that provide a RPS.

I agree with the OP. I really don't like the single build que.

What's really needed is buffing troops vs heroes in the mid-late game.   There needs to be an RPS relationship (with the usual game exceptions) between troops, monsters, and heroes in the mid/end-game.

I fixed the balance between heores and units in my latest balance mod. Heores need to take much longer to level and those levels need to be more powerful. Unique weapons then need to be nerfed to compensate for the new power of hero traits. Then Fortresses need to offer many more options for trainning bonuses and do +1 level per level of the city. It works quite well, I suggest you try it.

As far as vanilla goes, it would be better to think within the bounds of what the devs are willing to do. They won't be adding a new queue to cities. They might implement the minor changes I just hinted to. Of course there are about 100 other things to be balanced in conjunction with this, but it would be a good start in the right direction.

Hey Seanw feel free to link to your mod. I am interested in trying mods after I play this thursday's new beta 5.

Everyone else thanks for the support. 

Mike.

It will take a day or two to update my mod files. Here is the link though:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/430587

I have to agree with the OP on this, although heroes should be strong they quickly become gods among mere sheep. I definitely get to the point very quickly where I just use my hero to solo dragons and empires... (on challenging, I do not believe in cheating AI's -_-)

As a personal preference I would go with seanw3's answer to this problem. Making the levels matter more and making the experience required much higher. Meaning your simple units can catch up a little better.

Secondly, as an alternative, I think that having units gain levels and allowing you to choose how their stats are shaped. Or possibly pre-define various level curve styles might be interesting, although probably unnecessary for the majority of players.

In response to ins2... Since I am not a game designer I am going to look at this disagreement from a different angle.

FE is considerably more open to the modding community, or at least that is the direction the game aims to go from what I can tell. Also, being a single-player only game, it allows for drastic modifications by the user-community with relative ease. 

This being said, I believe mdonis and a lot of the user community that does dislike a number of the current features will have the opportunity and the community around them to make changes that will not be made by the game development team. If you look in the OP post, he does not say that game developers should fix this problem. He implies it, but he is not asking the game devs to alter their timelines and change some core functionality. He is making a suggestion towards a problem which he perceives.

What I believe many users on this forum would be happy with is a well done game. Maybe it has some glaring flaws in their minds, but it is rounded, thought out and has a solid overarching design behind it. Which currently FE is shaping up to be. But, they would request that in addition to this there be ample ways to modify this game. Which currently the game devs have spent a lot of time making sure modifications fit easily into the game and are not immensely complex to add. It is my hope, that we will see a development kit of types, allowing the community to polish off the game in various directions that we desire.

I just want to say, in my experience testing.  and tweaking some attack values and testing again.  I believe the problem is the attack values.  Where they are underwhelming vs. an armored target.  In addition Seanw does make a compelling argument for slowing down hero leveling.  A uber/obscenely levelled hero will always be greater than anything else.  When attack values are up, clink fest is gone and things die.   I would now say that both should be looked at (attack values of weapons and the levelling rate ). 

I don't really have a problem with winning by OP heroes.  Heroes are a big part of the attraction of this genre game.  There are sci-fi space & historical 4x games, with no heroes or nerfed ones, so I'd vote for biasing the fantasy-themed games toward heavy-hitting heroes as a rare favor to whoever likes them, instead of turning the game into a near-clone of a space game with magic substituted for technology.

this just doesnt make any sense, think again plz

this is a strategy game

there has to be NO op mechanics, AT ALL

but yeah i love champions, i love taking care of them and getting them to be very strong, its one of the part of the game i prefer, but they need to find a balance with other parts, only this

EWOM had a troll warrior with a special that did increased damage to single units, which was deadly to melee heroes. It was like an opposite of overpower. The troll warrior packs were deadly. Wish I could remember the name of that special.

Sean or HF - mod that in please! Would love to see some mobs that specialize in hero killing.

This is exactly what I told him ! I have already started modding parts of the game that I, personally, feel the need to change, and other modders have developed full balance mods... 

The good news is that frogboy has already mentioned that this game is developed so it can be absolutely moddable (aftef all, it was made by the people who created the legendary fall from heaven mod for civ iv) and that it will be released with a number of mod tools and editors

I love this game so much AND I understand that everyone has the choice of what to create and how to play/role play

BUT

Heroes are definitely obscenely overpowered. 

In my latest game I am playing Lady Irane of the Tarth. I have created several units solely for defense (they have never left or even needed to defend their cities). Lady Irane, all by her lonesome, has been my only attacking unit and I have systematically obliterated every unit I encountered. I have taken down my nearest rival, Magnar, city by city and just wiped them from the face of the world.

Of course, I have gotten some great drops and lots of levels by now but it just seemed too easy. I am not necessarily complaining but I can see how a lot of people may feel put off by this and/or never create regular units at all.

Great heroes should be forged through great trials and tribulations and refined with mighty gear and a +5 my mamma gunna kick yo arse with this here rollin pin sonny boy enchantments!

Hopefully this will be balanced well enough for all to be happy.

But seriously, this game has grown so much and is maturing so nicely through all this time and I can't help to feel so proud of what it has become!

THANK YOU BRAD, DEREK, and CO.

You guys are the best. Good Luck, God Bless, and get to work and never stop making these great games!!!

Spot on.

I curently play my games without troops. Saves the queue slot for things that actaully matter.