Balance thread

Did you see my post in Changelog 1.2 ?

1. i guess you havent seen the ai do that fire stuuf in de0cyrnasse on insane ouch. shure us humans with 2,3,4 fortresses do make better troops but in all honesty how often du you find such a place?

2. i like roadbuilding so my second hero is always going commander for that just make ais prioritice roads and clearing goodie huts problem solved.

3. dunno haven made a skellie army and eaten them but i will do so next death game prolly op so nerf is ok.

4.as i said not gone through summons but as a last tech i guess he should be fat beefy so seconded unless i find him op in my soon to be cull the weak skellies summoner game.

trained staff units seem excessively powerful (ignore defense). should be more expensive imo (more crystal & higher production cost) and/or might consume some mana per shot (it's magic damage after all) to bring them in line with other unit types.

Have they fixed the pioneer exploit yet?

Basically you can ignore the pop limits and ensure you always get maximum growth by queuing enough pioneers that your population is below 25. Just unqueue them when your max pop is high enough for the city to go to the next level, wait a turn to level up, then requeue them again.

for staff units: my idea.

Nerf damage, but give spell mastery a big bonus to damage so champions find them more useful.  the issue is they are too effective for troops, not effective enough for champs.

I just moved the Glyph Stones tech further down the tech tree by one. Also attached an addition prereq (Enchantment) to Arcane Mastery. Considering that the Book of Mastery victory is also along this path, which I moved to after Ereog's Journal, now my magic tree has the Mage strategy closer to the end game so it can't be as abusive mid game. Spell victory is also harder to achieve (which was a common complaint).

Thanks for the suggestions guys.

I had previously realised that if your capital was at maximum population then bulding a pioneer was a good idea. However I had not realised that you could reduce population further by queuing them up. Presumably a relatively simple fix would be to only pay the cost for the building when you actually start building it, as opposed to when you queue it up. I guess that complicates things if you've queued up things you don't have the resources for when you should start building them, but having a check and then cancelling the build if you don't have the resources (and giving you a message) should be possible.

I wouldn't mind if they looked at population in more detail in a future release, it seems a slightly odd mechanic, where (for example) you can reduce population to 1 and have no effect on tax or production.

I believe they're looking at staffs in the next patch, mainly to make them more useful for characters. Magic damage for trained troops is powerful, but in theory there are counters by using cloaks, spells, etc.

I agree it's not very often that you find a three essence city site, let alone four essence. But I still don't think you should get a +1 bonus per essence. I've generally found a three essence city at some point fairly early on. Having +1 initiative, +1 fire damage, +1 hit points is pretty powerful. Having +3 initiative, and +3 fire damage, and +3 hit points, just seems ludicrously overpowered, let alone if you have four essence. I did wonder if you should be allowed to cast the same spell multiple times on the same city, so in other words you could still get+3 fire damage if you were prepared to cast heart of fire three times, just not with hit points and initiative as well. However that would presumably be a more complicated change than just making the bonus +1 rather than +1 per essence.

If Heart of Fire only granted a flat +1 fire attack, I wouldn't bother with the enchantment. It's gotta balance with the rest of the enchantments availalble. Per essence is perfectly acceptable. All that needs to be done is have the AI think this way too and if they come across a 3 essence city, strongly consider it for Fortress and those enchantments. Problem fixed.

Also, it wouldn't hurt for the AI to use players own Mage strategy against them on the harder dificulty levels.

I still think 4 lots of +4 buffs is crazy overpowered, and three lots of +3 buffs is fairly overpowered.

If people think +1 only is too much of a nerf though, it could be +0.5, rounded up. i.e. +1, +1, +2, +2 for 1/2/3/4 essence. So it's still worth casting on 3 or 4 essence cities, just not so powerful.

It's the cumulative effect which is ridiculous; if you use all buff city spells, the total effect is a square of the essence. One and two essence give you +1 and +4 to stats, 3 essence gives you +9 to stats, 4 essence gives you a practically unstoppable +16.

Halving this and rounding up would give you a total buff of +1, +2, +6 and +8. Still very powerful for 3 and 4 essence cities, just not ludicrously so.

Love Heart of Fire. It just makes finding and developing those high essence tiles so much more rewarding. I would like to see some nice unit-boosting city enchantments on the higher spell levels though. For example +1 lightning damage per air shard for units trained in the city. This would be a L4 or L5 air spell.

Heart of Fire is pretty much a no-brainer right now.

1) I never use Heart of Fire. It's costly, and I would rather use an economical city buff. 3 Unit-buff spells cast on a Fortress can be powerful, but you could have also made those cities into Conclaves, gaining 8 mana/turn and even more research from that essence. It's a good spell, not OP, imo. Btw, you can only have 4 essence on a Fortess if you have the Enchanters trait.

2) Road building is powerful, no doubt. Apparently, Capitar can give any unit roadbuilding. That is OP. Giving a champ roadbuilding and let it build roads...it's a useful strategy, not OP by itself.

3) I agree with you here. It's easy to abuse and not flavorful to be able to cast this on summons.

4) I haven't tried the spell, but it seems buggy, from all reports. The turn limit seems pointless. It's a tactical summon, at the end of the trait line. It should be powerful.

I'm fairly sure you can get a four essence city if you complete a Wildlands.

True. But remember that high-essence tiles are low on food and material. I have never seen a tile with more than 9 total yield. This takes some edge of it.

I got owned by a custom faction on insane, 9 squads of 4 mages with double strike. I got one round of moves done before I was completely obliterated.....

Also, Heart of Fire is a must to compete at higher difficulty levels. When you are facing chainmailed AI units while being a tier below on weapons tech, HoF is almost the only thing making your units actually do damage. Saying it's OP is ridiculous, and you only feel that way cause you are playing on too low difficulty. With the upcoming AI changes etc. I expect HoF to be more than fine. 

As far as Road Building, how in the heck do you guys have the patience to sit and click that button so many times? Is there an auto-RoadBuild that I'm not seeing? 

The only time I use a road is when they auto-connect my Outposts or Cities, otherwise, I just can't be bothered to micro-manage that much.

The only one I like is removing the ability to cull TACTICALLY summoned units.  If you want to make the tactical decision to cull your strategic summon - go for it.

And fix the settlers bug, but wait till I try it out at least  once first   Obviously I didn't fully understand growth.

You don't like the idea of making the Pyre of Man something actually worth summoning?

If Heart of Fire etc. bonuses are halved then basically you do +1 damage rather than +2 for the two essence case, +2 damage rather than +3 for the 3 essence case. This doesn't seem like a massiver nerf to me.

One I'd forgotten:

5) Mauling a prone unit should not be a certain kill. Apart from anything else, it makes bears too powerful. Even a baby bear will maul for as long as it takes.

Parrotmath just released a small mod to fix this. Check out his thread for details.

Concerning the Beastlord ability. It seems to be quite powerful. In an attempt to balance this, is it possible to have the Tame Ability changed (I suppose modded to start) to remove the experience of the creature tamed from the combat experience being handed out? I think the ability will still be quite powerful as the creatures you aquire should still easily make up any difference there may be from having your sovereign level at a slower pace.

As a side note: The Beat Collar item could presumably have the same treatment. Remove the experience from the creature tamed from the combat experience handed out.

Thoughts? Comments?

Parrotmath, you figure something like this is even moddable?

Oddly enough this was added in because people complained about not getting experience for defeating these individuals using this ability. I do believe it is not possible to mod in the game. There are other ways of making the Beastlord ability less powerful. But remember that when it comes to balance it shouldn't be at the expense of fun, and there are a lot of people who have quite a bit of fun playing the Beastlord. The easiest way to accomplish what you are looking to do would be to make it less successful and more work.

lolz. Had no idea they added experience in at first.

Yes, maybe higher risk to tame the creature is what is needed. Perhaps a casting time of 1 ?

That would do it, or reduce the chance of success through the spell itself. Could even have it that a failure will put the beast in a rage...

For Tame, I think the mana cost should be increased, and a casting time of 1 should be added.  I also think that the cooldown should be reduced to 5 turns, because I've spent many a dull combat waiting for it to cooldown so I can tame all the beasts.  The cooldown reduction could be further justification for the mana cost and casting time increases.  I don't like the idea of reducing the chance of success.  I think there's too much chance in the game as it is (particularly in regards to damage ranges).

I also agree that Heart of Fire should be nerfed.

Other balance changes I'd like to see:

• Reduce Lucky faction strength to 20%.
• Change Heroic faction strength to 1 point (is it even worth 1 point as it is now?).
• Change Stealth faction strength to 1 point (particularly since it only reduces the chance of getting attacked, contrary to its description).
• Change Vulnerable to Magic weakness to 25%.  It seems like the obvious choice of weakness.  I only say to change it by 5% because I prefer small balance changes to dramatic ones, although I think changing it to 30% would probably be more appropriate.  I could be wrong, there.
• Reduce Wealthy sovereign trait to grant 400 gold.  I know it used to be a lot more than 500, but even 500 seems like too much.
• Increase the labor cost of Scrying Pool.
• Reduce wages of units generated by a Mercenary Camp.  They cost way too much!

Good list! I'll take a look at these things in my next set of balances. Who know....maybe they'll show up in the 1.3 changelog.