[Balance] - Weapons and Armor - Units

Well done. Very good post.

I fully support the idea of scaling back the stats so the disparities are much less between early, mid and late game troops. The battles I've enjoyed the most are the ones where the stats are just slightly more or less and that you need to look for the best terrain to get a win. I much prefer subtle variances.

Very nice. I can't wait for equipment reform. Like you mentioned, I really want to see different tech tracks for each kind of weapon (pole arms, bludgeoning, blades, missles, etc.), with stark advantages and disadvantages for each.

I agree that a group of 10 club-wielding peons should be able to damage a knight in plate. These weapons should have the same chance to hit as other weapons, and rather than soaking all damage when a weapon is obsolete, give it a chance to do light damage. Critical hits might be something that should help. If ten peons with clubs are banging away at said knight with plate mail, they should be hitting him quite a bit.

How about one of two possibilities:

1) Light damage gets through sometimes: If the armor soaks all the damage, then there is a % chance that it will do 1-2 points of damage instead.

2) Armor can only soak so much damage each battle. Plate mail has the highest soak with, say, 50 damage, but afterwards those clubs start doing damage.

I would like to see armor having different resistance to different attack types (piercing, blunt, slashing) but maybe this is too much to ask for. It would open up a lot more depth in unit planning, however.

I would personally like to see damage dealt at 1 point per hit minimum, unless the armor roll exceeds twice (or three times?) the damage roll. A little fidgety, yes, but it allows weaker weapons to still do some sort of damage in large groups, and yet still retains the ability of good armor to simply block a hit. The difference is, that it would happen a great deal less frequently than it does now, making plate-wearers have at least a little respect for bears and hordes of angry peasants.

None. 

With its research tree structure, Elemental shouldn't have obsolescence above "equipment"-level techs. It can't afford it, because you can rush late game techs while still in the early game (and no, you won't die from neglecting the rest. It's really not a big deal to be behind in adventure or civics when you can field 2 full heavy/light master guys.

Another problem is the cost-efficiency of late game stuff. Late game stuff should NOT be cheap. You want to have the choice between 2 light-armor, light weapons soldiers, or a heavier, single unit. No such thing in Elemental.

Also, 2-handed weapons are much more powerful than the 1-handed, and the shield (or the cost) doesn't really make up for the difference. Not only that, but some weapons are ridiculously overpowered (Trog Scimitar, I'm looking at you and your +2 speed. This is a weapon for sprinting.)

Big, BIG issue: there are 4 armor slots, and each require to increment at least by 1 point over the previous technology. Half-point armors are just a no-no. So your values aren't possible with the current system.

If you want shields to be useful, you need to make them quite effective. They need to be more attractive than a 30% increase in damage, at least in a certain number of situations. 

That's why I would like to see units issued "Leather Armor" with all the bits. We can worry about champion gear at another time. It can stand to be a bit better than ran-n-file stuff anyhow.

Besides, tell me you ever put mismatched armor on your troops...

-Defense Value

-Armor Value

-Price. And price is a thing with which you can play a lot. For instance, light master plate shouldn't use more metal than heavy plate. More gold ? Yeah ! More materials ? Certainly. Not more metal.

So you could actually start playing with armor parts to get a right price choice.

But otherwise, you are right, as long as there is no damage localization, having 4 armor parts really isn't that useful.

Good suggestion, but with any changes please keep things progressive and not regressive as they were in the original.

If more effort goes into researching a new tech then I wish it would be better at its intended purpose than the previous type.  How much better is subjective but I think making it worse or regress is very , very bad form.  (case in point - Kingdom Mace and Kingdom Warhammer)

   I agree; it is out of whack. Having my lone Sov stand in the middle of 20+ spiders & wolves & walk away nearly unhurt in early stage rediculous games makes me feel as if I'm somehow cheating. I'm not sure what a good fix would or should be, but I see that all of you have good ideas.

   As for rushing late game techs early on ... I realy think that should Not be an option, but again... I have no clue what a good or fair comprimise could be.

   Well, gonna wake up with my coffee & baileys & check out the newest beta while I think on this armor/weapon issue.

I'm not sure what you mean by a difference between armor value and defense value.

Armor right now gets a roll which is 1-n (where n = the armor value) which is subtracted from your damage. This is the value that I am focusing on.

There is a Dodge modifier for heavier armors which I think is great, but at -12 for Heavy Master Plate, perhaps a bit meaningless for regular units.

I am not aware of any other factor in determining the usefulness of a particular piece of armor in combat.

Price has absolutely no bearing on combat efficiency of a suit of armor, and therefore was outside of the scope of my observations. Yes, armor needs to be costed appropriate to it's usefulness, but that is something that you do after you determine how useful your armor is.

OK, I've just finished that global armor/defense adjustment mod thingie I've been talking about for a while.  This will allow you to adjust the base armor and defense stats of most units (excluding monsters and a few other exceptions), by whatever you want, so you can try mitigating the differences between attack and defense by a 'fudge factor' (your choice, I'm trying +5 att and +3.3333 def at the moment).

Details here:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/402229

My thoughts on this (all along) have been that there is currently too much disparity between attack and defense early on (if you aren't wearing a full suit of the appropriate armor), so killing things with low defenses becomes waaaaaaay too easy.  Later on, it just gets worse.  Square/Squareroot heavily favors the higher value, to the point that if odds are 2 to 1 or better the low value might as well disband immediately...

My quick analysis of the Weapon and Armor stats show that if you are wearing Heavy Master Plate with a Heavy MP Shield, your 'dodge penalty' goes away, because the shield's dodge bonus 'negates' the armor penalty.  but I digress.

You'd need a Claymore (40), Lord Hammer(40), or Great Scimitar (50) to have a chance versus the 35 defense of said armor.

Legendary Plate is just ridiculous with the shield.  You get a 49 defense AND a +18 to Dodge.  Even with the Great Scimitar, hitting your target will be the big issue, let alone damaging him.

As for the 'piecemeal' approach to armors, this is kind of nice if you are on a budget, especially in the early game.  Sometimes you can only afford Bracers, but not the full suit for example.

This is just a great example of how balancing can work out.
Would really be happy to see those Stats (or similar ones) in the game evne before 1.1 goes live!

I'm putting together a mod right now. Keep an eye out; I'd love the testers.

   Yarp~ I dont have much to do over the next few forevers. So count me in...

I think your averages are wrong. The dice-rolls are calculated as sqrt(1->sqr(value)). So a weapon with attack 4, is rolled from 1->16 with the squareroot taken of the result. This gives a median damage of 3 (median means half of the time it is better, half of the time it is worse. When the rolls are not linear, median and average is not the same).

So trying again

-Padded; 4 (med 3)

-Leather; 9 (med 6.5)

-Light Plate; 14 (med 10)

-Heavy Plate; 18 (med 13)

-Master Plate; 22 (med 15.5)

-Heavy Master Plate; 30 (med 21)

as the guy who balanced the numbers for the current system I feel I need to point out a huge part of the equation you are neglecting: what tier of techs these items are unlocked at.  

Remember, the first tier of weapons are unlocked at the start of the game for free (Club and Staff) while armor is not.  The idea is that if you have out teched someone's weapons with your armor they will have an advantage, ideally they wont be 100% ineffective, but they will be pretty weak.  In your examples this is actually how it is lining up right now as all the weapons you have 'weak' next to armor sets for are one tech before the corresponding armor.  Obviously they don't unlock at the same time as you have to pick which line of the tree to go down, do you want to be offensive or defensive?  Also for most of the weapons that are weak to their equivalent tier armor set (daggers and the like) they have combat speed boosts or are 1h so can be used with a shield.  They are designed to be used situationally to help improve survivability or to when you know you aren't fighting a heavily armored force. 

I'm not saying that all the numbers are perfect, I just retooled some of them last week based on forum feedback and our own findings, I just want to make sure you guys remember to think about all factors 

For the legendary armor issues raised, the way its designed right now you are right, if you have a full set of the best armor in the game with the best shield in the game you are extremely hard to hit.  That's part of what the new magical champion only weapons are there for (Sword of Wrath can hit through legendary with shield).  Also like I said above, part of the design is that the 1h weapons are much weaker then the 2h so if you do go with a shield you will have trouble hitting things with the same armor and no shield.  I mean in reality its going to be nigh on impossible to mass produce the legendary set for standard troops, you just wont have enough Elementium.  So it almost becomes like the Sword of Wrath in that it is champion only.  Again, doesn't mean its perfect but some reasoning to digest.

Yup, makes no sense to look at weapon balance without considering the actual cost of researching them. It takes a minimum two picks to get leather armour, whereas a spear is available after a single warfare tech. In this respect, the items are balanced when you can say a player with (X) picks from the tech tree has no inherent advantage over a player with the same number of picks, only situational ones. The other thing to consider is that the disparity will widen over time, since players are likely to focus on different fields while researching too.

Which brings a fun little question for the number crunchers. If you could take three picks from the Kingdom's Warfare tree, what would be the optimum strategy to adopt? Is it better to go all out armour or all out weapons, or would you be better off going for one of each? Is it worth going archery instead? Is it possible to start fielding parties at that point?

Elemental doesn't have a real tiered tech system. It's a mix of horizontal and vertical progression, but you can prioritize the higher tiers so early that it doesn't make sense to talk about the tiers being part of the balance. It makes sense in Civilization, because to get to mecahnized infantry and AEGIS cruisers, you need to clear almost all of the tech tree, which leads you to the 1800s at the earliest (mid-1900 most of the time) anyway. But Civilization doesn't pretend to offer a large choice of units either, or to discuss quality over quantity. Elemental does.

Elemental is closer to Age of Wonders, which also has a sort of "tier system" (city building-related) that can be cleared pretty quickly by prioritizing it. And in AoW/AoW 2, high tier units aren't invulnerable compared to early tier units.

And that's actually a good thing: obsolescence sucks in an all-medieval game. Obsolescence makes sense when you have M16, muskets and prehistoric bows in the same game, but not in Elemental. Medieval armies had peasants with pitchforks, light infantry in leather armor AND knights. If you play those total war games, you see that you can do much, much better without obsolescence.

And so there is no point using them, because the shield is a costly piece of equipement that doesn't really increase survivability all that much. Certainly NOT worth 8 points of damage between broadsword and battleaxe for a light shield.

Also, remember that glass canons don't need a shield. Even if the 2-handed weapons weren't that much better than 1-handed, they'd still be the better choice for heavy-hitting, light-armor infantry which will not use a shield anyway.

Great post. I think another reason why the system works in AoW and not in Elemental is, because AoW uses a much smaller number of stat values (1 - 20) and Elemental uses much greater stat values (1 - 50). These values are much more difficult to balance.

I would reduce the number of stat points per level to 1 and make every point more important. This would make the character creation more important, too.

The tech tree was the thing that caused me to start looking at how these work.

We have a row of weapon tech (Kingdom): Basic -> Equipment -> Weaponry -> 1st Tier -> 2nd Tier -> 3rd Tier

And a Row of Armor Tech: None -> Equipment -> Armor -> Light Armor -> Heavy Armor -> Expert Armor

6 Tiers Each. Each armor tier makes the weapons from the equivalent tier weak, and the ones before very nearly useless. The only weapon that really avoids obsolescence in the current setup is the War Staff.

Weapons should get 2 tiers of genuine usefulness tech-wise, and 1 Tier where they are weak. It is fine if clubs are worthless against heavy plate because people will have the capacity to get to "weaponry" by then. It is not fine if clubs are essentially worthless against bears and people wearing armor from the very first tech you research.

Once you have researched the first tier "cutting" or "blunt" weapons, these should remain functional (if only barely) until the end of the game.

It is the same rapid obsolescence of weaponry that makes the strategy of "many weaker troops versus few stronger troops" totally pointless. The time it takes you to get groups of 8 people with leather and spears, someone else has individuals battle axes and heavy plate, and you lose every time.

Factor in the increased cost of every tech in a given tree becoming more expensive as you unlock more tech, and armor is the clear fastest, best, most efficient thing that you can do for your soldiers. Weaponry is a secondary consideration. Nothing else comes close; Not training, not groups.

Please don't take my ministrations personally, Kestral. You and the whole team have done amazing work between the start of real beta (September 2009 to 2010) and release, and have quite literally moved mountains between then and now. It is just that allowing armor to be the most important consideration in an entire third of the game (tactical mode) severely limits the drive and ability of players to explore other avenues of the game, and I sincerely feel at this point that the armor techs are just that; the most important consideration in the warfare arc.