To balance the Champions and regular Soldiers

from Elemental Forums

From beginning of the time, Elemental EWOM has a balance issue with the Champion aka Heroes. their number and power make some people forget about the existence of regular army, their price make people complain, and their uselessness at the end game drive a lot of people crazy.

So what should we do?

If we make the champion stronger, then the player will avoid regular soldier and go to them, if we make the champion weaker, then people will think that they are useless.Making all them wizards will get complains from players who love to role play (hey, we need Paladin, Warrior, Wizard, thief, etc, not just a group of wizards)

So I think I have a little idea for this troublesome unit

Early on, people always use the champion as combatant / explorer. yeah, Explore strange new world, boldly gone where no your faction has gone before. You make them monster slayer, and their action and bravery can be written in many books. but after some time being, when the soldiers have better equipments, and groups formed, you should make the champion useless in head on combat. Instead of become a frontier man like Legolas who can kill 100 of soldiers, the champion should act like a king of chess in tactical battle.

You know the king of the chess? He is useless and depend too much to others to save his ass. But in here, your champion will give a great deal of bonus to his group if he presents in a tactical battle.

It is a battle bonus if your champion has a great deal of strength, dexterity, or Constitution.

How this idea work?

Here you are.

There are two armies meet on the field. Both of them have a large number of soldiers. A single champion will surely dead with meet with one group of soldiers in this battle. But one of them have a champion who have a great deal of strength, and the others not.

In this battle, the champion will act as beacon, the source of power who give his soldiers bonus. It is the strength that matter. A strong champion will give a bonus to his group. Only the strongest champion's stat will effect the entire group. If there are two or more champion, only the one who have greatest strength will matter. But, that bonus won't give any benefit to himself and other champions (only regular soldiers will).

Because of this champion, the balance of power will shifted. the group who has a strong champion will able to crush the others. But, despise of this advantage, the enemy still has a chance to win. They can hunt down the champ, kill him with anything they have. You will expected to face a swarm of arrows targeted to your champion (so good armor, high dexterity and constitution will save his ass).

You can of course, have more than one champions in battle. But in the end game, none of them will give benefit in battle (except for wizard and the one with the highest strength)

With this idea, you can make three type of Champion class :

- General (a warrior Champ with great strength) to lead your army

- Wizard (a high INT Champ who help with spell)

- Administrator (champ who help to build your town)

6,335 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

This seems like a drastic redesign of the champion system.

The latest patch helped with this balance problem somewhat by giving champions more HP as they advance.  And equipment advances with champions at the same rate as with soldiers, because the same tech applies to both.

Maybe provide some other army-specific talents that champions can have?

Also, the way attack and defense is calculated for groups could be tweaked.  Instead of a group of 3 soldiers with 5 attack each getting a 15 attack, they should perhaps get 3 attacks at strength 5.  The math is slightly different, and should further balance the champion vs. soldier group balance problem.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

The problem of Elemental EWOM Champion is that there are a lot of them, and people tend to recruit them all. If the champion is too strong, the army will be useless, but if the champion is too ordinary, the game will felt bland.

In a game like this, there are always two kind of gamers. First, the people who play it as strategy game and consider the map as a board of play and every units as unit. The other are role playing game people. I don't say about the RPG system like Diablo etc, just people who love role play and consider the champions as their main characters of the story.For people like this, they want the champions become Heroes. Like the brave Aragorn, Legolas and Gimly in LOTR movie.

Basically The strategy type gamer will think that a powerhouse character will ruin the fun, but the role play gamer will think that an ordinary champion will bland.

Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

I know Brad mentioned they are completely revamping tactical combat so this idea is probably moot. One idea I thought of would be to implement some kind of fatigue debuff to attacking/defending units in combat. Logic goes that if a unit is actively engaged in combat, it is getting tired and stats suffer. I raise this point because in my current game I have an army of 11 fully geared champions marauding across the map killing massive groups of armies (armies in Umber cities of 6 groups of 9 Sions, full stacks of Pariden Lord Hammer and heavy plate, etc). My champions aren't cleaning house from massive fireballs and such; they are doing it my swinging magical metal blades and dodging/blocking damage. That has to get tiring. If a unit "rests" during a combat turn, their fatigue bar would replenish. Maybe moving around doesn't hurt or help. If units/champions got tired and stats suffered, a million peasants could then kill an elite champion or unit, no matter how rocked out the unit is. They could implement some spells and abilities to help offset fatigue as well. Anyway, that's my two gildars.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

But the problem remain. People will tend to make a winning group contains of champions and forget about the ordinary unit. Instead of one unit of champions, they will make two or three or four, but units will still ignored.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

I agree that it is currently too easy to have dozens of champions running around.  In fact it's possible to win a game without training a single combat unit.  I think there needs to be some mechanism to limit the number of champions a player can support.  Some sort of upkeep (Gildar, materials, population, food or something combination) would help to limit the number of champions while still allowing for players to choose for themselves how many champions they want.  If they want armies of champions running around then fine but they'll have to pay for it in some way.  Either that or get the AI to make units that can actually hurt/kill high level champions.  The way things are now, champions are like regular units except they can be instantly trained and equipped.  

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

what if it work like this :

1st champion : basic payment gildar

2nd champion : basic payment gildar x 2

3rd champion : basic payment gildar x 3

4th champion : basic payment gildar x 4

.....................

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10th champion : Basic payment gildar x 10

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Since Master Of Magic Heroes are an isue. If you make them unique so that only one faction can get certein hero then we get random element into the game. 

Making them more expensive doesn't solve the problem how it is now. 

Making items harder to get will render them useless. 

Adding passive abilities like +10% to attack for every unit in stack will make "stacks of doom" present. So that doesn't solve anything.

 

I would add counter matter to the game. So that you can easily get a hero who could counter the threat quickly. Something like one hero gets ability to assassinate other can get protection from that etc. One hero is extreamly qiuck so other has lot of snares. Such change would give everyone a counter to a threat that well eqiuped powerfull heroes bring. Also this change could give more tactical feeling.

Having the possibility to qiuckly assembly a defensive army with a hero who would render even most deadly foe weaker could balance things out.