<Beta 0.75> Balance/Suggestions after 5 games

from Elemental Forums

I just wanted to write down some of my suggestions about how to improve this game.  Clearly there is room for improvement, the question is, where do you improve?

A little history:  I've played 5 games on Hard with a Large map and 10 opponents, Dense monsters.  I quit each game when it got to the point where i was just auto resolving ALL battles due to the overpoweredness of my 'stack of doom'.  I've had leaders that were melee only, martial ranged (bow)/support spells, full casters, and melee/caster hybrids.  I played with 5 different factions.

Most of the issues that I saw have been outlined in many posts on this forum.  Such as the power curve of the leaders and heroes in general.  The lack luster city portion of this game.  Tactical battles that just aren't tactical.  Technology pacing and general usefulness (uselessness?) of tech.  I wont go into detail on many of these issues, as they have been documented over and over.

I'd like to address solutions to these issues:

Leaders/Heroes

  • Have the number of these units that may join a single party tied to the recruiting tech.  To start the game, each Hero/Leader could lead troops, but would be unable to group together until further down the tech path, with a maximum of 5 heroes grouped together.
  • Equipment needs to be revisited. Potential solutions:
  • Have equipment drops tied to tier of quest and tier of enemy. Level 1 quests give no magic items, level 2 give very low power magic etc...
  • Have all the loot cashes (green icons) around the map only have mundane items, or useable items, no magic.
  • Have further requirements to use high level gear, such as a requirement for the corresponding tech researched, tied to stats, etc...

 

  • Review some of the more unbalancing traits. 
    • If the Leader/Heroes can take more than one action before the other side even gets to act, this leads to very uninteresting fights.  Players spend your first few actions focusing down the unit that might do the most damage then mop up the rest once the enemies start to have actions.  (This particular trait is even worse when you have a wide area spell that fires before the enemies has a chance to act). 
    • Traits that add to base stats per level need to be removed.  They do too much for just one trait slot.
  • This has been said before and I agree, every time a hero goes down in a battle (won or lost) they should have a wound placed on them.

General Game Play

  • MORE RANGE UNITS.  I place this in caps because I believe this is an area that is unbalancing early game (first 100 turns).  A single range unit (Leader with a bow or magic) can decimate everything up to 'Strong' with very little issue.
  • (Player/AI)  There should be a new basic range unit type, like slinger or javelin thrower.  Something that you can build right from the start of the game. 
  • (Monster) monster groups should have one of; more range options included OR range mitigation tactics/abilities OR speed to close on range units.  If the monsters are able to counter range units, this will force the players to use a more balanced strategy, melee and range units in the same battle group.
  • More units in monster battle groups.  Currently the monster groups are so very bland, either all melee or one range and a bunch of melee.  Either way the player just focus's down the range unit and the mops up the rest.  These groups need to be more diverse in their composition.  Each group should have a few of these types of units; melee, range, fast units, tanky units, casters, healers.
  • Spells that do wide area damage and multiply damage per unit need to be toned down.  Have spells that do wide area damage, but only apply the damage once.  And spells that multiply damage per unit but only target one square.

Game Start

  • Have Leaders start out with a couple units, maybe 2 melee groups of 3 and a range group of 3 (see General Game play suggestions).
  • Having range units to build from the start of the game, as well as, monster groups having more units will lead to more interesting choices at the start of city management.  Currently players just queue up everything and go exploring, then when the next tech is done, they queue up all those buildings and move on.  If a player had to make hard choices between building starting units and buildings, combined with potentially multiple groups roaming the land due to Hero grouping restrictions, and those cities may be very busy building units!

These are some of the things I believe will help to balance out the power curve of early Heroes/Leaders.  The changes to range units and monster group composition should lend to more diverse city management in the early game, I'm not sure it will help the late game though.

 

Thoughts?

 

 

39,790 views 8 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top


Very well thought out post and good writeup. I agree with basically every suggestion you make here. As for wounded heroes I would go further. I'd rather have them die and according to how powerful the hero is, make it cost a lot of mana to resurrect them.

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Amazing, I actually agree completely with every suggestion in the OP.

 

In addition to the above I think loot drops and equipment in general need a complete balance overhaul. Its far too common for me to get things such as champion gear from simply moving onto a tile, while I will fight an army of fierce trolls later and get something mediocre like a wooden shield. I'll beat an elemental lord and get a darkling cloak. The effort needed to take down an enemy should reflect itself in the drops. It wouldn't hurt to have drops in general be far less random while still being varied and not too predictable. Have darkling cloaks be a potential drop from darklings instead of part of a global loot table for example! Also it seems only leather cuirass drop, no other leather gear?

 

It is far too easy to destroy enemy faction's champions and steal their ridiculously OP gear in the early game. Equipment such as the Maul that casts shrink (unaffected by spell resists too it seems!), Berserker weapons (maul = OP) and the various pointy things of pwnage allow you to simply walk over and stomp the other factions before you research pointy sticks if you so desire. It would greatly help if these had additional conditions such as being tied to stats for their use as the OP suggests. The level barrier doesn't matter much after a few fights as a single high level champion/hero can eliminate high level mobs with ease allowing lvl 1 champions in their party to gain multiple levels per fight. I'd almost suggest something like having a limit of one champion/hero per party, to fill a general/spellcaster type role. I just don't ever seem to need to build troops, I just waltz around with my death blob of champions and thats without (ab)using the teleport spell.

 

I often find myself using gear I acquired at the beginning of the game over 500 turns later, with so much extra that I can't even hire enough champions to utilize it all, and generally getting disappointed with any loot drops that aren't accessories. On that note I think there should be a limit of how many accessories a hero can use, perhaps something like 3 or 5.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

k1 karma to OP. I totally agree to everything said in your post.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Very nice post... i agree completely

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

I agree with everything, except I'm worried about giving heroes/champions wounds EVERY time they fall in battle. There are just so few in each map, it seems... But perhaps the suggestion is a good one, and the problem noted here suggests another issue that needs to be addressed.

As for charging a fairly heft mana penalty, personally I don't think that's a "fun" alternate solution. Magic is "fun." Saying goodbye to magic for a while as a death penalty is "not fun."

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Ratatosk7, reply 3
I'd almost suggest something like having a limit of one champion/hero per party,

I did suggest that  B)

 

  • Have the number of these (hero/leader) units that may join a single party tied to the recruiting tech.  To start the game, each Hero/Leader could lead troops, but would be unable to group together until further down the tech path, with a maximum of 5 heroes grouped together.

 

Thanks everyone for your feedback!

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting scyldSCHEFING, reply 6
I agree with everything, except I'm worried about giving heroes/champions wounds EVERY time they fall in battle. There are just so few in each map, it seems... But perhaps the suggestion is a good one, and the problem noted here suggests another issue that needs to be addressed."
Yeah, I think the current low number of heroes is necessitated by the decision to keep them alive and limit their wounding.  If these conditions were changed, more low level heroes would make sense.

Quoting scyldSCHEFING, reply 6
As for charging a fairly heft mana penalty, personally I don't think that's a "fun" alternate solution. Magic is "fun." Saying goodbye to magic for a while as a death penalty is "not fun."
Trouble is, taking a serious loss is no fun, but winning when there is little chance of a serious loss is also no fun.  If fallen heroes are not going to be dead and gone, then  a significant alternative consequence must be found.