[BALANCE] Reduce weapon damage

I don't have a lot to add right now, but I totally agree that tactical spells with cast times are often a waste of time.

I agree with a good many of your points here.

I think the real issue is how damage vs armor scales. Basically as I under stand it a units attack damage is attack value (weapon + any bonuses) times number of models in the unit. So a unit of 3 armed with spears (attack 6 I think?) does 18 damage a hit (modified by some random factor I don't really under stand.) Meanwhile a units defense is simple the defense of any member of the group, so a unit wearing all leather has a defense of like 5. Now I know theres some randomness in this, and also that the unit has to hit, another factor. But the base is, while at low tech its not such a big deal, as the tech goes up, so does this disparity. For instance a company of 6 men armed with spears now does 36 damg, while a six man unit with leather armor still only have 5 defense, though its hit points go up also. So the while a weapon might always do more damg then the same level armor give def, at higher tech this spread gets more, and then add in growing unit sizes, and it gets a bit rediclous I feel.

I don't if dropping damg is the way to fix late game boringess, but I think it might help, your right, I'm tried of trying to cast a spell with a one turn casting cost only to have the battle end before its cast.

The problem is that the AI does not have access to useful units. Player made units are strictly better than whatever units the AI can recruit due to traits. The guys I design early game still beat whatever the AI brings on late game. Furthermore, the abilities from spears and axes are completely overpowered. You get to kill multiple units in one charge, that is just wrong.

Can't the AI make use of the same units you design in later games?

Not competently; the AI players also have a tendency to play the default factions. Every game I play a new faction/race.

Also, just for example, having a initiative bonuses from a tactician can easily make two armies of similar troops strongly favour the one with a hero. Even one initiative can make all the difference if troops mostly kill each other on first hit.

I think that the combat mechanics mathematics are the problem - they are not leading to interesting combat. I'm not convinced that just changing the amount of damage weapons do, or the amount of hitpoints that things have, is ever going to be able to fix things.

A unit of 6 basic spearmen doesn't do 36 damage it does 6 damage 6 times, each hit being reduced by armor separately, so the gap you are talking about doesn't exist, in the way you described it anyway. The problem is they nerfed armor really badly when FE came out (or maybe it was late WoM), it used to be a flat reduction, but now it's only like 60% effective on average or something. Before 6 units hitting for 6 damage each against a unit with 5 armor would have done 1 damage 6 times, 6 damage total. Now that 5 armor only reduces damage by like 2-4, some randomness to it, so those same units hitting the same target do like 12-24 damage. Then they added armor penetration, so if those units are spearmen they do maybe 18-30 damage. These aren't exact numbers, I don't remember offhand what the formula is, but bottom line is armor doesn't mean that much anymore unless you get it extremely high.

Compounding this issue is the offensive degradation of units losing members, so whoever hits first can cripple the enemy even without killing them by just reducing their numbers.

I definitely agree that most tactical battles are decided on the first turn and are over far too quickly for many game mechanics to have any worthwhile effect. Spells with casting times definitely, pointless to use when the battle is over before they cast, but even instant cast spells aren't worth the wasted turn in many cases, why cast a buff when you can instead kill an enemy stack or three with a weapon skill. The 5 turn cooldowns they added to skills I also find amusing, there's no balancing going on there, they are only important on the first turn anyway. Send your units in, they all cleave, any survivors are going to have only 1 or 2 units left that do piddly damage and are easily finished off next turn with basic attacks. I don't think cleave is overpowered, I think general unit survivability sucks. I don't know if units need more base health, more armor, or less effective weapons, but yes currently battles are won with the alpha strike, especially once you get into repeatable techs. This is only bad because so much of the game is built around longer battles, there's so many spells that are just useless right now because they sped up combat. I think we are more likely to see said spells adjusted or removed instead though, they appear to be trying to make things faster paced, maybe to appeal to the ADHD masses, or the 5 people that want multiplayer.

I had been thinking about this, but thought maybe a combination of a little reduction to damage, and an increase to hp as well - this would result in the same thing (longer battles) and the added bonus of less one-shot kills. Less one shots mean less focus on initiative, as you can't wipe half the army before anyone gets a turn (or have that done to you, if you have low initiative!)

If you want to do this, you can adjust some things in the CoreUnitStat.xml file.

Yep this statement pretty much sums it up.

In FE because units start further away, you at least have a bit of an opportunity to get some tactiacl spells in (buffs etc).  Starting so close in LH compounds the issue.

Some good points here and I hope Kael is listenening and having a good think about this.

I've gone through and modded the weapon damage values. Lower level weapons didn't change, but the higher level weapons are at about half of what they were. I'll let you all know how it goes.

Huh, really? I find that there's a good chance that custom factions get selected for AI players when I start new games. 

I often see that too.

I agree with the OP. Right now the game is all about getting powerful first strikes in. It's not all about the damage though. It's tons of little things that have made it so. Like starting closer, and starting with troops. The new initiative system has also allowed players to super buff damage easily using traits, and we have all this nice new abilities that allows us to cross the map in 1 turn like rush and berserk, or hit multiple people like cleave. This also increase the speed of tactical combat.

Here's what I think needs to happen.

General:

-Cut weapon damage by a bit, not too much. Mostly just bring down the outliers. 

-Make sure units start in defend mode.

-Boost base champion hp. Not troops.

-Get rid of fortress improvements that give charge and impulsive.

-Nerf cleave and impale so their secondary targets take less damage, unless you have the right traits.

Balance out traits:

-Remove strength for troops.

-Make muscle give -1 initiative.

-Reduce charge to +1 movement and +2 damage.

@DsRaider - good suggestions.... agree with all of them.

+1 to everything in here

I think that the weapon damage is balanced if a hero fights against a hero or a group fights against a group, but if a hero fights against a group the weapon damage is unbalanced.

- impulsive should be replaced by graceful

- charge should increase the movement during the first round by 3

- ambush (new ability) should increase the attack during the first round by 3

- decimate should be a passive commander, defender and warrior ability to make the paths useful against groups

- executioner should increase the damage against heroes and single monsters to make the path useful against single targets

- medium sized heroes and monsters should have evasion (new ability) * to make them less vulnerable against groups

* Reduces the number of lost hit points (not the damage) of an attack by an enemy group by 50 %

The unit multipliers make things tricky for the hero vs grouped units. Can I go out on the crazy tree limb and say they should be removed? Even just for testing purposes.

entire character system is long jump to casual BS and stupidity.

+1 for awesomness as only stat for heroes and units, everyone will be happy with high awesomness... 

Multiple skills with same effect inside single skill set is just

Great suggestions!

You have some good points bigduncm24. Your point about how tactical buffs are pointless due to short unit lives is really true. I hope tactical battles become a little longer and not just about using high attack and initiative to one shot armies.

Agree on all points Dsraider.

My two cents: Mounts are too numerous and easy to equip too units, allowing entirely mounted armies to cross tactical maps. Reduce the amount of mounts we get and add some production or wage cost to them.

The - initiative seems like the best way to balance + attack traits. Good call.

I really hate how removing the encumbrance system has made traits even more limited, we need more traits and traits that buff impale and cleave seem like a good idea.

Awesome feedback, I particuarly love DSRaider's balance points.  Many will be coming in the next patch.

another radical idea: what about removing the techs for larger group sizes (4/5/6 guys per unit) and instead give the units increased (base) HP instead (with options to upgrade legacy units to the new health levels). i realize that armor is basically there to counterbalance better weapons, but armor is fairly expensive resource wise, while high powered weapons are rather cheap, so it happens quite often that troops have powerful weapons, but only baseline armor (leather/monk robes). by adding extra health instead of extra units, you get tougher units without giving them additional firepower - which also results in longer battles with more interesting tactics. this also affects fights vs. monsters - an endgame unit with the highest tier weapons would still deal about 3-4 times the damage of a basic starting units, but not 6-8 times the amount of damage (from double group size).

hope that makes sense

Good to hear.

Well, last night I played around with weapon values and sped up a couple games to see how late game battle might feel. It was different... and better, in my opinion.

Early tactical battles lasted the same amount of time, but later battles did feel more epic and took longer (upwards of 10 turns). Fortunately I had mana to spend. I usually lost a unit or two, or my whole army. In one example, my mage was spamming every fire spell he had after everybody fell around him. Towards the end the mage was attacked by a single damaged unit of 2-3 mounted spearmen (with at least boar spears). First, he didn't die. Second, he used flaming hands and caused enough damage so that they retreated! He was then able to fireball the horsemen and the unit of archers in the backfield. That was a cool feeling. In another example a Capitarian unit in heavy armor took a beating for several turns before falling to several of my units armed with pikes, longswords, and hammers.

Other things I noticed:

* Archers... mattered, both for my army and the AI. With more turns to fire archers actually played a role on the battlefield.

* Poison worked. This was the first time I ever cast Dirge of Ceresa and heard men die off screen (an archer unit started to lose numbers). It was a very satisfying feeling.

* Counterattack mattered. Units designed as line holders actually held the line and were able to counterattack. In addition, the damage inflicted by counterattack was actually noticable.

* Swarm was just right. In fact, it almost became necessary to take down some units.

* Heroes could tank. In one battle Dionya (I think is her name) was trained as a defender and tanked a Crag Spawn for several turns while I concentrated on other units. Very cool.

* Tactical spells in general mattered. Infection and Graveseal become necessary on a few occasions. Heal would have made a big difference as well had I had a Life caster.

* Unit sizes would come into play. I didn't train up to squads and companies, but I did feel like they would have helped me in the battles I fought. The AI had bigger sized units, and they definitely hit harder and were harder to take down.

* Militia were no longer priority targets. Often time AI militia has the best weaponry and the lowest defense so they became a priority. I did not necessarily find that to be the case because they couldn't one shot my units.

Concerning the changes I made, I reduced weapon damage, in my opinion, rather dramatically. Early game weaponry remained unchanged, late game weaponry was reduced to HALF of what it was, and mid range weaponry fell in between. For example, Spear damage 5, Boar Spear damage 6, Pike damage 8. Even with these reduced values, boar spears and pikes inflicted damage versus full plate which I believe would be impossible if the math that Sanati suggested was accurate.

I generally like these changes, but I feel like it all depends on how much damage values are reduced. A small reduction alongside these changes would probably work, but I also think a large reduction and maintaining (or slightly downgrading) the above features would also work.

If changes are right around the corner then uploading my modded file might be unnecessary, but here it is for those who might be interested: http://fallenenchantress.nexusmods.com/mods/54

I've done some other tweaks, which you can read about on the Nexus. In general, I was very pleased with changes and I'll be using them at least until the next update.

BigDunc

Good suggestions.  removing impulsive from the fortress improvement should be a must.

I wonder with the changes if monster attack values/HPs will also need to be tweaked as well?