A major problem with mega-champs: lossless victories

I agree that the ability to steamroll (i.e. pick up momenetum as you start to win) makes the mid-and-end game more boinr ghtan it could/should be...many people have meentioned the fact that past a certian point it just becomes a time-consuming, and never in doubt - mop up exercise.

This topic is closely linked with the Stack of Doom/Champions Overpowered stuff that sominates the forum now, so I will avoid that topic and focus on some other things that I think might affect this dynamic (in I hope a positive way) in line with the OP's comments.

1.)  The regeneration of troops after battle just seems too fast, espicially as champions level up (i.e. by end game when the final push is on champions heal virtually immediately) and I think any/all of the following would "help":

- the mechanic in WOM was better - you had to return to a city to be healed, there was no healing on the fly.  At least that would slow down the rampage a bit, as there would be no winning and then just moving on to the next city and healing on the way.  Obviously, you can also play with the healing rate once you are in a city in a lot of different ways...a slider giving the player a choice; based on prestige of player or size of city, etc.  Or even cities farther from the player's Capital heal slower, which would help defend territory more than agressively aquire it,and plays to the general concept that an invading force wears down over time. 

- regeneration in field is avaiable via strategic spell, so can plan ahead for this factor as part of your strategy and save up mana to overcome this..adds a strategic flavor lacking now (a lot of pepole have stated they see no reson to ever use strategic spells...think game should give them some and make magic more central to success)

2.)  If tied to the concept I saw in another post (that champions have less strength/attack as they get hit/wouonded themselves, just like a multi-peron unit losses attaack as it gets injured), the slower/lack of regeneration would really slow the ability to just keep whacking and moving forward, and would make winning have some "cost" that would bring more strategy...and jsut seems right. in my opinion

3.)  Enforcing some "rest" time after winning a battle to regroup forces - e.g. a winning stack has no move pints for x turns after winning a battle.  After all, how many times does an army win a tough battle, and then immediately advance at the same speed as before regardless of injuries?!  The combination of having to stay there, not regenerate, and be weakened would not affect the ability of the army to take out monsters in single battles and therefore would not overly impact the ability to clean out monsters around your cities, but would make it harder and more dangerous to take a single stack and drive through the heart of your enemies many army units...yoou would need to plan ahead by having enough mana for regeneration spells (and could add strategic spells that replenish move points) or by having multiple stacjks so you could win battle with one and then defend that unit with the others post that battle - thereby increasing the importance of magic and exended use of regular units/multi stacks, adding to the strategic flavor vs. Stack of Doom single strategy approach.  Or any combination of these ideas woould have same impact to varying degree - can't move but do regenerate; can move but can't regenerate so advance is risky, or whatever

First, the AI is just not good enough.  So steamrolling the enemy is pretty much par for the course.

Second, there's some balance issues here.  It's currently much too easy to build up a half-dozen incredibly powerful mages and spam nuke-spells in battle after battle.  I'm a proponent of being able to do overwhelming magic, but I am a little disappointed at how commonplace that ability is in the current game.  I think the tweak where experience will be split amongst your party should help with this as well.

yeah also stop with these complicate argues about champions, the problem has been addressed in like 234343242 threads

its totally useless to keep proposing things over and over again, lets wait the next balance pass on champions and from that point we can judge

until we know what ideas the developers have in mind i dont see much point into spamming thread on the same topic of hundreds already there

Personally I appreciate the threads, even if they are redundant.  People are in the beta to give feedback, so I'm glad to receive it.

Honestly champions were underpowered through much of development.  We put more loot in the world, still underpowered, we made that loot better, still underpowered.  Then we made them not die.  Power!

We have some balancing to do, I really liked Heavenfalls post about making injuries more meaningful and I've checked in most of his suggestions (i should have posted in his thread, i hope he sees this).  It makes it much less rinse and repeat from battles.  But there is definitly more to it than just that change.

Im not a huge fan of slowing down healing as that just amounts to hitting end turn.  Id rather you win in 5 turns then stretch that to 20 with 15 turns of waiting between.  That isnt to say that i want instant healing everywhere, just that there is a balance between the extremes.

Losing a level (or a big chunk of experience) makes more sense the majority of injuries. Near death experience can fuck with your mind..

Perhaps more importantly even if the empire wins, that champion should have a recovery time at the capital. That way the stack of doom is weakened at least long enough for the enemy empire to retake the city.

Sorry if this is posting in a weird color, there is something wrong with my forum interface, and I have a black background in this window.

Derek: I'm pretty sure we are all thrilled with very powerful champions. They are, after all, the focus of the game. Fodder is important; fodder matters. Hordes of units should have value, but, I think they should have value to the champions. I've suggested elsewhere that one way to do this is to limit non-special attacks from hitting more than one unit per attack (without a trample or cleave ability). I'm not the only one to suggest this.

I did want to point out something re:survivability of champions. I'd suggest that there should be a high "default" chance for champions to die. Maybe 30+%. Maybe higher in major battles (battles where more than 500+ total damage is done), and battles against "epic" strength armies. In turn, however, there should be ways to mitigate this chance. I'm picturing specialized items that cost crystal/mana. I'm picturing an air enchantment that allows your champion to be wisked away when they fall, or a life enchantment that brings them back (with an injury) if they die.

Along those lines, one of my *favorite* abilities in MoM was the "Undead" trait. You could cast "black channels" which would turn any unit undead as an enchantment. If I recall correctly, Death magic could bring back champions as "undead" heroes. Units that were undead were slightly buffed, but could not heal using normal means; only by life stealing.

Anyways, to add some spice to heroes, I'd suggest making it possible for them to die, and then providing ways to get them back, or pre-emptively prevent them from dying. It would be *really* cool if a higher-level hero could be resurrected through a quest. In fact, it would be *even cooler* if a higher level hero could be resurrected by an opposing faction by a quest.

Imagine "Scarla the Life Witch (or something, I'm making up the name)" brought back to life via fire quest by an Empire Faction, and then sent into battle against her former employer.

Again, reaching back into the MoM way of doing things, I believe there was a "cache" of the last 10 heroes that died. Those heroes could be resurrected. I'd allow heroes to drop into that "cache", and then have the game randomly place them into quests, and allow spells (and possible artifacts) to resurrect them.

Edit: Stealing from Dominions 3, another *awesome* 4x game. Some of the injuries in Dominions 3 were absolutely crippling, particularly because they could stack multiple times. Feeble-minded reduced your champions intellect to 0. Blinded reduced accuracy by 90+%. Horror marked, which could stack, summoned ghastly monsters randomly to fight your champion. Madness was pretty funny, as it resulted in your champion wasting all of his action points in one turn on something useless, and madness stacked as a percentage chance. I especially enjoyed the "lose a limb" mechanic. Losing 1 limb wasn't all that bad; but loosing 2 limbs resulted in a champion which could do no melee damage. All of these sorts of injuries would be *awesome* in the elemental world, and would substitute appropriately for a death mechanic. That being said, I'd think a certain number of accumulated injuries might result in a death; perhaps a 10% chance per injury after 5 injuries. .

Love to hear this. 

I disagree.  The experience grind is a chore and robbing players of experience would only be acceptable in the case where experience was easy to regain.  I don't want experience to be easy to get, so I don't want it to be easy to lose.

Heh.  I actually thought about this suggestion when I was writing my reply.  (Great minds think alike, right?)  I am not really sure what effect making victors who die go recuperate would have on the game.  It would certainly simplify the game were the champ death game mechanic consistent whether you win or lose the battle.  I suppose the only way to tell would be to put it in the game like they did with injuries and see how it played out.

KAEL

The goal of stopping/slowing on the-the-field regeneration and/or ability to advance for a short while is not to turn it into an "end turn" situation, but rather to incent the player to have more than one Stack of Doom/have other armies to advance to AVOID being in a position to have no choice but just hit "end turn".  Per the OP's main point, by not having the player face any potential negative consequences of having just one super stack attack over and over you are  making it so that is all players do, as it is all that matters.  Champions don't die, they are never without great weapons and armor, they don't get sent back to cities if they die in a battle but their stack wins,...all with the goal of making the champions someone that players get atttached too and never have to suffer without....that's a good goal, but the net result is that a stack of champions becomes the whole game.  I think the goal is to make other factors matter more...incent the player to use magic more, and build "regular" units more to have a deeper army...Not saying that the thoughts above are the best way to do that, just trying to be clear on what I think the goal is, and why SOMEHOW champions have to be adjusted so other game mechnics become important.

I also lilke the more-meaningful injuries concept, as that addresses the same basic issue.

Yeah, any kind of attrition  would make some kind of strategic logistics and production capacity come into play.  

> [quoting cattess]
Champions don't die, they are never without great weapons and armor, they don't get sent back to cities if they die in a battle but their stack wins,...all with the goal of making the champions someone that players get atttached too and never have to suffer without
> 

Just speaking for myself, i don't get attached to champions currently, they're all just kind of monotonously kind of powerful units, either "Fireball Dispenser #2" or "Sword Guy #3", or sometimes "Guy I Forgot to Stick on a Horse Yet".  Other than the fact that they level up they are just a thing that does a ton of damage with little risk; the piece might as well be a mangonel.  Not necessarily a problem if this is a first and foremost  strategy game, but I am starting to understand that there might be some tension between strategy game ideas and a desire to "keep" RPG elements.  If these are supposed to be RPG heroes then we should hold off on all this talk about balance and start talking about getting them unique and distinctive traits. 

Just as an aside, who have you been having playtest this derek? Retarded monkeys? I think I've only had a champion die twice, both times from some rediculously lucky maul stream attack. Champions are rediculous for reasons other than that they don't die. It's just that the lack of death mechanic and their recovery rate means steamrolling is easier. On the other hand it is =much= less likely that the defending army will be doomed after losing the 'game-breaker' combat.

The period of time it takes for armies to recover is important! The time it takes needs to be somewhere close to the time it takes for an injured champion to recover and/or the opposing empire to construct new troops. Otherwise the next city will fall even easier than the first. Steamroll mechanics do not for epic battles make.

@boatman The reason I mention xp is because it is not permanent. Losing stat points (depending on how much) can be devastating. The exact ammount of lost xp can be tweaked. The idea is that they suffer a 'setback' rather than a potential 'I suck now' strike. If some ideas are taken to 'increase' the effects of injuries in this forum I worry they will all become 'reload-worthy' such as -1 con to the army or -20% strength.

I find it humorous that," The goal of stopping/slowing on the-the-field regeneration and/or ability to advance for a short while is not to turn it into an "end turn" situation, but rather to incent the player to have more than one Stack of Doom/have other armies to advance to AVOID being in a position to have no choice but just hit "end turn".  " is being presented as a good alternative. Yes, I want someone else to eliminate my playstyle that I enjoy that isn't represented by MANY OTHER PRODUCTS and is relatively unique and different in this one. Please, remove the option for me to enjoy that playstyle and be forced into a more standard format of play! Clearly this is the right choice....

Again, Nerf mentality is fail. Many people enjoy this, some don't. Does that make one more right than the other? No. Lets focus on creating MORE playstyles and not LESS by destroying one that many find enjoyable.

I don't really think that's fair.

FE is leaps and bounds above where WoM ever was and it's still very early beta.  Yes, it's "broken" now in terms of balance, but that's to be expected.  Let Derek and company tweak the game based on our feedback before you lambast him.

It's not just an issue of playstyle...here's the problem.

All 4X games will eventually progress to a point where you know you have won the game, and all that's left to do is mop up.  This is boring.  Once the game gets here, many people just quit and assume victory.

GOOD 4X games, however, will not progress to this point for a long while though.  Given you hundreds of turns of fun, strategic gameplay before the proverbial curtain falls.

Right now, FE reaches this "mop up" point waaaay too fast.  And I think the "lossless" victories that you have with champions greatly contribute to this.  It makes war an essentially free endeavor.

Once you take one city and beat their champ once, that's it.  They are pretty much screwed.  You have a gigantic wrecking ball that never gets damaged coming straight at them.

And then once you beat one faction, you have all their cities, and even MORE military might from the exp your champs gained.  So it's basically open season on the other factions and the game becomes a mop up operation.

If wandering around with a champion stack of doom can somehow be brought in line so that this doesn't happen...then that's fine.

Only in the world of video games do normally intelligent, rational human beings make such nonsensical statements. Let me put the whole idea of 'no more nerfs' into a real world scenario.

A plumber gets called into a home to fix a kitchen sink:

Dude: "The water runs way too fast, even turning the handle slightly puts the water out at full force; could you fix it to run normally please?"

Plumber: "I'm sorry I don't believe in doing that sir. What I will instead do is go to all of your other faucets and make them all run as fast as this one so that the difference is less noticable and you will get used to it."

... Okay so.. in our above scenario not only does the plumber's suggestion require considerably more work, but it also potentially causes a number of other issues, like constant water stains or the faucets falling apart. Or in this case, monsters dying too easily, empires expanding too quickly etc.

The only difference between 'Nerfing' and 'buffing everything else' is that the latter takes considerably more time and effort.

I am all for more severe injuries and even death of champions.  You would loose experience, but without some loss you contribute to the steamroller effect.  Losing regular units means both a loss of experience and a loss of time and production cost, as well as the maintenance paid to the unit to get it to the point it was at.  That is a more significant loss and therefore to be avoided.

The stack of doom is encouraged by 3 factors:

Champions never die completely, so there is no loss of power to the stack.  It just keeps getting stronger.  Stronger is better, so the stack of doom is the best strategy.  Found another champion to hire?  Add him to the stack to gain insane experience until he too can contribute to the awesomeness of the stack.  There is no incentive to split up the stack.

If you have an awesome unit like a champion, you want to keep it.  Two or three champions are more likely to survive together than apart.  Keeping them safe and not risking losing them is good, so keep them as safe as you can.  How?  Stack of doom.

There is a tech requirement for hiring some champions, but chiefly the cost is gildar.  So how do you get lots of money to affort to hire more champions?  Get all the loot you can and sell it, netting huge profits and allowing you to hire yet more champions.  And what is the best way to get the most loot the fastest?  How about a stack of immortals that are rarely ever in danger of dying, even against the most powerful force the game can field.  AKA: Stack of doom.

The stack of doom is a valid strategy and shouldn't be banned just because it is effective.  The question is, how do you counter it and why would you not use it?

Firstly, the champions never die issue needs to change.  As Derek said, flip that switch and the whole game changes.  But even if they get nasty injuries, how often do your champions even die after level 10?  They are effectively unkillable, especially when grouped together.  Why would you not put them together?  The only reason I can think of is that having all your best troops in one place means that they can't be everywhere at once.  If there were more threats on more fronts, the stack of doom would not be a maintainable strategy.  Every time you turned your back you would be taking losses in cities, resources, and trade.  You go out with a stack of doom, the AI's response should be to hit you everywhere at once.  That would require a lot of troops, so regular units would need to be easier to train and cheaper to maintain.  The wildlands AI could also help out here by being more aggressive, continuing to harrass the player on all fronts.  Then the player would not be able to afford to invest all their power into one stack, lazily roaming the map collecting loot from every available source.  Lastly, the hiring and maintenance cost of champions could be increased and the loot-based economy exploit could be reduced by further penalizing the sale of used equipment.

Or not.

Nerfing is the lazy way out. More options are good and the other poster is right, who is to say one Playstyle should exist while others are destroyed? Isnt the point of games like this to come up with your own style of play? Forcing a playstyle on people is wrong when this simply comes down to one simple fact.

If you dont like Stacks of doom, dont make them? Its very simple, its like those people who dont like violent video games or rpgs with sex in them. Dont play them? Why try to destroy things other people like by simple virtue you dont like it when you can simply ignore it.

As for solutions, the easiest one is buffing up High end creatures like Dragons, demons and such so they are dangerous to heroes. Not to mention perhaps allow npc champions to level alittle faster to keep them competitive with player heroes.

It's not lazy, it's efficient.

If something is broken, you don't break everything else so that is is less noticable. You FIX it!

No one said anything about fewer options. In fact I argue for more options that are 'viable' not just possible. If obtaining a viable balance between champions and armies means bringing out the nerf bat on champions, then thwak away! Having stupidly high stats right out the door is obviously an imbalancing factor and needs to change; champions being immortal has little to do with it. Tweaking stats on a unit does not alter his/her available combat options and can be just as (if not more) fun, because there will be real challenge presented.

I did not even remotely suggest that heroes couldn't join an army by themselves and destroy monsters - it is the speed at which they are capable of achieving godly status that is the problem, and later game that there is no other viable strategy but to do this to win.

Adjustments need to be made.

It sounds alot like you want Heroes of Might and Magic, is that what your saying here? Because Im fairly sure multiple devs have stated that is not the design of Elemental. Its just very possible this may not be the game you want if your looking for a more realistic Wargame as opposed to fantasy RPG Strategy game, even the dev in this thread basically said what amounts to the intent that they are looking for more over the top Diablo-esqe Hack and Slash heroes rather then fully balanced Generals whom only support troops.

Im not saying your not welcome to your opinion now, but it does seem like your advocating a direction that elemental was not intended to go. There doesnt seem like room here for watering down champions yet still allowing them to do what they were designed to do, at mid to end game either a hero will be powerful or they will be worthless unless they add options to customize the experience by letting players choose if they want powerful heroes or mundane champions.

Either way this entire issue doesnt matter yet. why? Because there will never be any resolution until Stardock definitely says what direction they plan to go, which i hope they will soon so we can all finally stop fighting over champion balance and get on with the testing.

Amen, I stopped reading this thread at this point.

@LordRikerQ Seriously.. what.. the.. fuck? Did you even read any of my post? Clearly I stated no such thing. Put down the weed for a minute and think before you reply. I am not disagreeing that regular units couldn't use more options, I am all for this! But the pacing of the game makes it so that empire building and research are functionally useless with the comparitive rate at which champions advance.

Maybe the devs intended for the game to end in 200 turns, but if that is the case they need to readjust all of the values regarding build times, population growth, research and initial unit strength. But that is only if they feel 200 turns is the right ammount of time for a game to last. In the event they want it to last longer they -must- reduce the threat of champions, or consequently raise the threat of all monsters, which is functionally the same thing, except it takes way more time.

In the event they feel that research, empire growth and armies are all supposed to be useless, then they should take them out of the game!

Whatever has to be done needs to balance champions downwards, and armies upwards.

Champions should be changed from a static hiring cost, to a cost per turn same as units. Selling yourself an upfront cost for a lifetime of servitude is silly.

I agree with the earlier idea of making Champions heal slower than units. It makes sense that in a unit you can replace a man and injuries are spread out amongst a group. When you rely on one star player, they have to heal fully.

Units stationed in a city as a garrison could have a cost reduction. Garrison troops can do police duty to make up some wages, etc.

Make champions (i.e. Assassins), units and spells that specialize in killing solo champions.

• Assassin champions should get bonuses in 1v1 combat.
• Spells that do reduced damage against units (Lightning Strike?) rather than individuals.

Basically make it strategic. Do you go for anti-unit tech or anti-champion tech?

I only just recently got access to the beta, and haven't had time to read all the threads, so I might be off here. But if you're referring to injuries the way Dominions uses them, then I'm all for that. It's the best way yet that I've found to keep heroes/champions and stacks of doom from getting too powerful. It requires you to replace experienced but injuried troops with fresh and uninjured troops, which slows down a stack of doom. Well, unless it's a really BIG stack of doom, in which case you have to worry about the supply situation, or bring along cauldrons of food

The problem is not only the loot. The problem is that FE has currently too many luck based mechanics:

- get the powerful talents (evoker, affinity, ...)

- find the right shards (+ spell damage and + mana)

- find the powerful loot

- find easy monsters that give many XP

If you combine that with either overpowered (fireball or blizzard) or underpowered (slow or shrink, because they are all or nothing spells) spells you get a balance nightmare.

I agree with the fact that wars should cost you something to win in order to avoid the steam rolling. And I guess that even those who advocate strong champions want it to be a challenge. So it seems that some would prefer the stack of doom game play and some want the mixing of regular units with less powerful heroes aproach. I guess the developers will decide wht it will be or perhaps provide us with the option ingame to decide. Still the developers seem to want regular units used but all the mechanics goes against that concept, I think they need to make a decision.

I would vote for less powerful heroes but anything that make the game more fun in middle to late game would get my vote ... Right now the beginning is fun but after you get to fireball and/or good melee heroes the fun goes out.

Good to see you're still very much open to suggestions from the community! And by community, I mean me, and only me. Me, Me, Me. That is the important bit, I think.