Campaings, experience, and relative balance

from Elemental Forums

One thing I've disliked about HoMM and, to an extent, Age of Wonders is that as a campaign advances your heroes get so powerful that they make regular troops pitiful in comparison. It gets to the point where your one guy, or one elite stack that carries over, just rampages about. You can get to a point in those campaigns where losing a built up hero might as well be a complete loss as you have to start over. Early maps tend to be lots of fun with strategy and battles between non-hero groups that matter. Later maps tend to play much differently because you've got a very small pool of uber-powerful stacks and the non-hero stacks hardly matter.

The original Warlords and Civ4's Fall from Heaven mod, being self contained games, have heroes that grow powerful, but since they don't carry over it doesn't unbalance subsequent games. Though, those don't have campaigns I suppose and I do like the continuity of story in a campaign. I like improving units, just not with significant carry-over between games.

So, I guess this is a plea to avoid designing in this kind of growing power gap between regular units and heroic units as you progress through the campaign. Perhaps hero growth that's less power oriented and more option oriented. Some examples of things that gain you strategic and/or tactical advantage, but not outright strength:

  • bulk speed (able to move a stack somewhat more quickly overland)
  • small uber-speed (able to fly a small stack)
  • Wider range of spells or spells that given tactical advantage like throw up walls of stone to funnel attackers
  • Able to lead more troops. Say, normally a non-hero stack can attack with 10 units. A leader adds +X to that, so they can bring more units to bear in a combat even if the individual units are stronger (think the tactical advantage from Mount and Blade, if you've played that).
  • Morale. If you have morale loss in the game and units might flee, leader make that less likely or have a rally ability.

I'm sure there's more, but the core of each is an improvement in an army's abilities under a leader, but not a large scale increase in direct army strength. Or, if you're going to give a way to pump up an individual hero's abilities, don't give them the ability to lead a lot of troops. Make them a one-off like, oh, one of the nine minor Nazgul or something. Powerful in small engagements, but loses it's use in larger battles.

Note, I'm not against an uber powerful unit. The creation of a titan, demon, or some very powerful end-game unit. I'm against units that carry over creating an un-fun balance issue from the very start of the next game because you effectively have an end-game powered unit at the start of the game.

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Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

I'm hoping that the campaign in Elemental will be more of a "when you complete a set of goals, the map expands and you're given new goals" thing. It kind of drives me nuts when I constantly have to rebuild from scratch in every scenario (although sometimes that makes sense). I think Elemental would be a good candidate for that type of scenario based on the story and channelers.

This would also solve the problem of really strong hero units carrying over and making everything else obsolete. Although I think there would still need to be a limitation to how powerful heroes can get. Maybe their potential can be limited by how much essence you commit to them. That way you could choose to make a handful of heroes with the potential to become very powerful, or a small army of weaker heroes with the same commitment of essence.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

ckessel, is it a fair guess that you've not played Galactic Civilizations II? The campaigns in that game strike me as an unfortunately fine example of what drives pigeonpigen "nuts." One of the things I'm very interested in seeing develop through Elemental is the campaign format. The engine built for Elemental will be the starting point for GC3, so if internal hopes for GC3 include a richer campaign side, then you've raised a very good set of points.

But even in games with campaign/scenario sets that I've enjoyed, the sandbox mode is still what matters most to me, and there, I think what you say about hero units is also pretty applicable. I used MoM hero units pretty much as you describe, and it did eventually leave me feeling a little bit dirty, especially when I reloaded to erase a stupid mistake that cost me one of those game-changing heroes.

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Well, I feel the major problem is simple scale.  In HoMM, your hero gets more and more powerful, but its supposed to be a reward for using him.  Since you shouldn't have to rebuild every level, they let you carry over at least your hero so you start with an army to be feared.

I agree there is probebly a better way.  But it sounds like they already know how they plan to do it.   I just hope the regular skermishes are as good as they were in MoM

 

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Age of Mythology had a pretty interesting way of doing things. Heroes were really good at fighting monsters, but merely average against other humans. This kind of makes sense from a mythic standpoint because many heroes found their end in some pretty domestic situations (read: Jason). I'm in favor of Heroes being in a support role rather than a Rambo-esque fighting armies role... or at least make them have weaknesses.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

If fatigue was implimented perhaps it could be used to provide an achilies heel to stacks with a few uber units: throw lots of cheap units at them until they're to tierd to fight then finish them off.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting GW, reply 2
ckessel, is it a fair guess that you've not played Galactic Civilizations II? The campaigns in that game strike me as an unfortunately fine example of what drives pigeonpigen "nuts."

I've played the Twilight campaign, I have the gold edition (or whatever it's called that has all the expansions). It's campaigns are definitely the start over type, which pigionpigen isn't fond of. However, I prefer that start-over rather than a growing power gap from carried over units.

Trying for a good campaign that doesn't have the power gap problem with heroes is tough. How to grow heroes or units in a meaningful way without making them so powerful that they distort the play balance? The games I've played that I thought kept the balance essentially started over each time. You might start the next battle with a extra hero or introduced new units/features, but their experience levels had been knocked back down.

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Ahem.  Try a simple concept - RECALL.

I'll explain.  The more advanced a hero is, the more 'start resources' it costs to migrate him into the next game.  Maybe it costs less to put him into a 'reserve pool' where he can be summoned later.  Or maybe the hero might migrate, but the Sword of Fiery Awesomeness just doesn't seem so awesome anymore.  Things like gold, mana, elite units, heroes, technology, spell advances - all should pull from the same pool of 'next game' points.  Completing optional goals in a scenario might award more points - making it an agonizing decision to go for the end goal (time bonus) or maybe spend a few turns picking up those optional goals.

This actually accomplishes many things.  If I have a strategy, I can pick the units best suited for it.  Also, I get to keep units that impressed me with their own individual valor or use.  I get to decide between a LOT of little guys, or an alpha team, but not both.  I choose whether to hit the ground with resources (to build faster) or troops.  I get to decide whether my memory (tech) or my men (troops) accompany me through the portal to the next scenario.  AND, if I have some clue what the next scenario is (possibly, again, through a secondary goal), maybe that influences my choices.

And YES, the loss/death/defection of a hero should be a monumental occassion.  Maybe I should keep some flowers on hand for the funeral procession to offset the loss of morale in the commoners...

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

Haven't played AoW, but in HoMM the problem was that the enemy armies and their growth stayed more or less the same.

Make the enemy grunt units more numerous (plowing aside hordes of these bastards that used to be a challenge can be satisfying as hell), replace them with just upper tier ones, strip your hero of his usual resources and force him to fight alone or with limited, unreplenishable support, or some combo of the three. These all seem like good solutions.

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting MagicwillNZ, reply 4
Age of Mythology had a pretty interesting way of doing things. Heroes were really good at fighting monsters, but merely average against other humans. This kind of makes sense from a mythic standpoint because many heroes found their end in some pretty domestic situations (read: Jason). I'm in favor of Heroes being in a support role rather than a Rambo-esque fighting armies role... or at least make them have weaknesses.

When I read the above and think about what I've seen Brad typing so far about heros, quests, & dungeons, I wonder if something like this might be the current design plan. It definitely *sounds* like it could address the persistent uber-stack problem.