Map size, balance and the scaling problem.

How will various map sizes be balanced ?

from Elemental Forums

I've been thinking about the advantages and potential pitfalls of the Asymmetrical 4X concept, and something struck me. It started when I was thinking about ideal spell balance, especially the power curve that comes with the increase of shards. So I'm going to reuse that as my example to explain what's troubling me:

 

Imagine you have a mid-range direct damage spell. Let's say that it deals 20 damage + 10 per shard (bullshit numbers!). Let's say that on a tiny map, you're expected to finish the game with 3 shards, and on a huge map, you can accumulate 15 shards easily. Basically, at endgame level, when you face the SK himself with your stack of doom, your spell will deal 50 damage on a tiny map, and 170 on a huge map.

In other words, if the challenge progression is the same on every map, if you face the same monsters and bosses with the same stats, either huge maps will be too easy, or tiny maps will be too hard. Or both, if balance is adjusted for a perfect challenge on a medium map.

And it's perfectly logical. According to Frogboy, the game pretty much revolves around making a stack of doom (the composition of which may vary, of course !) and kicking the SK's butt with it. Huge maps have more resources to collect, so they tend to provide more opportunities to power-up that stack of doom.

In other words, I think it's extremely important that the increase in challenge over time is adjusted to the map size. That's not just an endgame issue; the SK and his lieutenant aren't the only monsters that should be tougher on a larger map. In fact, it seems to me that the logical way to proceed about this is to make the "increase in challenge power wrt. number of turns" the same on every map size, with the idea that since larger maps last longer, they'll have time to churn out stronger monsters and monster groups.

And every aspect of the game should be thought out with this idea in mind. For instance, sovereigns should all be able to follow the same power curve. If shard numbers are the only thing that scale strongly with map size, then magic-oriented sovereigns will outshine others on these maps, so it's important that commanders, tinkerers, etc. get opportunities of their own.

 

What's your opinion on this?

8,727 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from SorcererKing Forums Top

What do you think about scaling the SK's stats upon doom counter progression? For example, every 1% of doom counter equals X% improvement to SK's stats (or all of his units) such as hit points, damage, etc.

Reply #2 from SorcererKing Forums Top

... if you can outrace Genius Dungeon Master to all those shards, and keep them ... you deserve them?

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Reply #3 from SorcererKing Forums Top

Quoting AlLanMandragoran, reply 1

What do you think about scaling the SK's stats upon doom counter progression? For example, every 1% of doom counter equals X% improvement to SK's stats (or all of his units) such as hit points, damage, etc.
I don't think it solves the problem I'm discussing, because you're supposed to get near the end of the doomsday counter on both tiny and huge maps. So it shouldn't be based on percentage of the counter (because you'll get to 90% or 75% or such on both tiny and huge maps, and we're back to the balance problem I was talking about) but on the absolute value. Because the absolute value of the counter IS larger at the endgame of a huge map than on a tiny one.

But it shouldn't just be the SK's stats. it should be his lieutenants, lairs, spawns, quest monsters, etc... at the endgame, or you will have the same problem with them too! If you have three times as many shards and items late game on a huge map than on a small one, then you'll get bored steamrolling lairs and quests unless these are stronger too!

 

Quoting Gilmoy, reply 2

... if you can outrace Genius Dungeon Master to all those shards, and keep them ... you deserve them?

You missed my point entirely. Yes, you deserve them. But you're supposed to get more of them on a larger map (because if you're supposed to get roughly half the shards on every map, or even one third, that mathematically makes more on a larger map...). What you're saying is equivalent to "the player deserves to face no challenge and be bored..."

 

 

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I don't see it as much of a (new) problem because we already have this problem on tiny maps.  The first few area-effect spells you get instantly turn all Trog archer groups into knock-knock jokes that you've already heard.

More to the point, somebody is getting paid to solve that design problem, and it isn't me.  So I won't bother to expend effort on designs that will get swept away like crackers on a soup.

Step back a bit, and consider how other games handle the scale-up problem.

  • Paper RPG/AD&D.  Also asymmetric, in that the DM has access to the entire world.  Fireball damage scales up; troll HPs don't.  What's the "answer" there?  Generally, you take on harder modules, where all monsters are calibrated to be tougher (however that's measured).  It might be silly fun to take your L14 melee mage solo through an adventure for an L5-7 party.
    • Giants/Drow/Lolth.  One knee-jerk (elegant-yet-clumsy) design retort was: if dumb monsters cannot scale up to a PC party, let's make all Drow equal to NPCs, with classes and levels.  And give them all +5 magic equipment that isn't magic, and 50%+ magic resistance.  That does get brutal.
    • Power Word: Kill abuse.  A totally different direction was to load a "for levels 12-14" module with discardable peon magic-user monsters that have only one spell each: a copy of Power Word: Kill.  Every melee combat consists of your party making 8-12 saving throws against instant death, and then a short fight.  It's very much like a guns-and-ammo RPG against enemies with front-loading muskets.  Even L24 stud parties just attrition away from that, in unenlightening ways.
    • Puzzle tombs.  Another idea is to completely devalue combat and damage by forcing the party to solve puzzles and run errands.  Presumably their foot speed did not scale up quite as much as their damage.
    • Summoners summoning more summoners.  Jeff Vogel's Exile RPGs have high-end mages that do this.  Even a Vampire who can cast Fireball twice per combat is very obnoxious.  The arch-solution to this was to abuse (wands of) Anti-Magic Shell, and spend the last 60% of the game fighting every single melee with no magic at all on either side, which was tedious but unbeatable.  In other words, both sides' damage scaled up to the point that the only solution was to negate it all.
  • Online RPGs/Diablo.  Finish the game on Normal, and you promote to Nightmare, where all monsters get extra HP and resistances, and hit for more damage, but are exactly as dumb as before.  That's trivial to code, but not very interesting to (re)play.
  • Space Empires V.  Symmetric space 4X, but it had a similar problem: damage and shields scale up with tech, but hull "hp" do not.  Hence, the margin-past-shields to kill ships decreased down to fractions of 1%, until ships basically emerge unscathed (shields survived) or destroyed, with no cripples in between.

So, basically, they don't handle it (well).  The ubiquitous response is to just add HP, but I generally find that non-interesting.  I don't know how I would solve it (in the hypothetical world that it becomes my job).

  • Monsters learn to not take your damage?  (they hide, dodge, develop infantry tactics)
  • Time (which scales) allows the Dungeon Master to research (haha) Bigger Monsters, which replace wimpier ones.  Instead of groups of Bandits, you get groups of Trolls.

The ultimate solution is that the game gets harder because things are smarter (or the game decisions you need to make are more interesting).  But that strays into AI design that is simply inscrutable: we don't know what the engine is capable of doing, nor what's (already) in Brad's head.

  • Monster groups pursue more goals concurrently?  e.g. instead of scaling up hp/damage, they "buy" Major Actions with accumulated time-cents, where one Major Action might be like Army Group South driving on two of your cities and the valley between them.  Maybe your doom stack can overkill any one Army Group and you still find that boring ... but you can't even run one lap to wipe out all six Army Groups before SK spawns another eight of them.  (This lies within the family of devaluing damage, in that you can't put the fires out faster than they arise.  In the limit, it becomes "Missile Command".)  Rome's Legions had this kind of problem.

Anyways, I vote against the simple scaling of any numeric quantities, because it's been done before in other games.  Surely there are more interesting tools in the palette.  Here's one I have designed as a whimsy:

  • Down in Flames.  Like a 4X in the build-up phase, but ... actually you're a fetus, and you're about to be Born (i.e. thrown out of the Phase 1 UI).  This process involves your nicely designed, smoothly humming empire ... getting torn to shreds by earthquake-like ripples and other end-of-the-world calamities.  You must sac pieces, rip yourself loose like the Alien Queen from her useless egg sac, pull the core of yourself together, throw away those Glorious Wonders you laboriously built up (they become one-off sacrificial blockers on a punt return to end all time) -- and finally tunnel through the Barrier at the Bottom of the Fall into -- Phase 2.
  • SK's counterattacks on your sprawling empire could be like that.  At some point, you simply cannot defend, and you must -- sac intelligently and counterattack straight for the final fight.  And time your last-ditch defenses so that when you reach the fight, SK's Army Groups have destroyed not-quite-enough of your insufficiently-defended shards that you have just enough left to win.
Reply #5 from SorcererKing Forums Top

Quoting Gilmoy, reply 4

I don't see it as much of a (new) problem because we already have this problem on tiny maps.  The first few area-effect spells you get instantly turn all Trog archer groups into knock-knock jokes that you've already heard.

That's correct, but I'm pointing out that there's an additional thing to take into account when trying to balance the game. And that something can't be solved without some clever solution.


More to the point, somebody is getting paid to solve that design problem, and it isn't me.  So I won't bother to expend effort on designs that will get swept away like crackers on a soup.

And neither should you. I'm basically asking the devs "hey, here's an obvious issue that the asymmetrical nature of the game could create. Don't forget to address it !"


    • Paper RPG/AD&D.  Also asymmetric, in that the DM has access to the entire world.  

But the DM can provide ad-hoc challenges for the party. Here, I don't think Stardock will setup the difficulties of each of our games specifically. So I'm telling them "don't forget that larger maps bring more opportunities to gather power over time, so the additional length of time spent playing compared to smaller maps should have stronger challenges to match the increased power of the player's kingdom"

 

    • Online RPGs/Diablo.  Finish the game on Normal, and you promote to Nightmare, where all monsters get extra HP and resistances, and hit for more damage, but are exactly as dumb as before.  That's trivial to code, but not very interesting to (re)play.

You're confusing the difficulty setting, and the adjustment in monster power that's needed for games happening on larger maps where players have access to more resources. But yes, one solution should be that after quite a few turns on large maps, monsters with new spells and powers spawn that wouldn't spawn on tiny maps.

 

The ultimate solution is that the game gets harder because things are smarter (or the game decisions you need to make are more interesting).  But that strays into AI design that is simply inscrutable: we don't know what the engine is capable of doing, nor what's (already) in Brad's head.

 

 

Smarter won't make them resist that hugely powerful fireball of doom that deals 3 times the damage on a large map than on a small one.

I'm not saying it's a simple problem, I'm saying it's an issue that if not taken care of correctly, will make only one mapsize interesting (the sweet spot the game is balanced for). Balance is critical in this game, because of how it's setup.