Major battles

[KGB]

Ansgar,

The problem is that the people who don't, are runnig out of options fast if you get into the end game between two players that have somewhat equal armies & cities.

Honestly I don't know what the game is ever going to do about something like that. If the cities divide roughly 50/50 and both players have roughly the same amount of armies/heroes isn't that by definition a stalemate/drawn game ala chess?

I'm not sure what could be done in cases like this because both sides will be basically waiting for the other to make a mistake. Fog of War will help some what with this because you might be able to sneak something by but that relies on the other player making a mistake.

Right now, 10-12 (or more ?) fairly powerful stacks don't stand a chance against a fully & properly defended city - unless *each* of those stacks contains both catapult *and* devil (and pray to the higher powers that the snail catapult magically avoids sniping, and doesn't die from old age before reaching the target city).

I understand that the game may be too early in development to take advantage of discussing balancing like this - but the feedback is valuable nevertheless.

Quite true. I've taken to basically avoiding such cities and going around regardless of how far out of my way I have to go. If that's impossible then I'll try all flying stacks that lurk on impassible terrain. But if the map is truly 'locked up' then on one occasion I've chatted with my opponent and called the game a draw.

I used to experience this same problem in hotseat games in Warlords 2 when I played for hours in college with my roommates. Its one of the reasons I stopped playing Warlords 2 because two equally skilled players rarely got anything but a draw unless one side or the other got early allies and/or a speed/flight item.

To reference DLR again, the problem was addressed there by making high level hero stacks UBER strong. So strong that they could run roughshod over fully loaded cities due to hero bonus's/spells/items and other goodies. To balance that, the assassination (first strike) skill was added to the game so that units could have a pure 10-50% chance of killing a unit outright. This meant that hero stacks had to be wary of stacks/cities full of these units. At the same time, such units were themselves weak in actual combat so that regular units could kill them quite easily. So you got a rock-paper-scissors effect. This effect came into play with regards to other bonus's in DLR as well.

KGB

[KGB]

Itangast,

Thanks for posting those screen shots and the descriptions.

Sadly for your friend, all his stacks were basically pointless in terms of being put together. In every case your bonus was exactly the same (+5 from city walls + dragon) so every bonus unit (Pegasi/Unicorn) he included was a waste other than its strength in combat.

I would have used a different composition (for example 2 unicorns in 1 stack is a waste) but the end result wouldn't have been any different in terms of bonus's regardless of what I or anyone did. Without Siege/Devil he could never lower your +5 bonus.

His only chance would have been loading up on stacks of Wolfriders (15% first strike chance) and Ghosts (+5% stack first strike chance) so that 6 Wolfriders and 2 Ghosts = 25% chance to outright kill a unit.

To sum this up... a Devil cancelling terrain/stack and Medusa (-1 stack) is extremely powerful while defending.

Indeed it is. In fact I didn't realize until the other day that the Devil was canceling terrain bonus's as I thought that only the Unicorn did that. I honestly don't think that was the case in Warlords 2. I'm going to load the game up in Dos Box and test it out and see if that was the case.

Canceling a terrain bonus is a very powerful skill and might be too powerful to actually have in the game. Or maybe the Unicorn could only cancel +1 from a terrain bonus so that a Spider for example would still get 1 of it's plus's vs a city (I don't think the Devil should cancel terrain bonus's).

Incidentally, the Elementals are having their +3 combat when attacking bonus negated by the Devil. That's not supposed to happen and is a bug that will eventually be fixed along with the other combat related bugs.

KGB

[KGB]

OK, I went to Bob Heeter's Warlords 2 site. It's basically the bible of Warlords 2 information.

http://www.heeter.net/warlords/info/det ... nuses.html

Cancel Non-Hero Attribute: Attribute of an army (typically an ally) that cancels the Non-Hero Bonus. If you have an army with the Cancel Non-Hero Attribute, any enemy Non-Hero Bonuses will not be applied. This does not cancel any Terrain Modifiers nor the Enemy Subtract Modifier. A naval unit with a Cancel Non-Hero Attribute will still cancel the enemy's Non-Hero Bonuses!

As you can see, the Devil is canceling WAY too much stuff. Not only should it not cancel the terrain bonus, it shouldn't even cancel out the -1 stack mod from a Medusa.

In reality, I'm OK with the Devil canceling out the negative stack modifiers as well as the positive ones. The Devil should definitely *not* cancel out the terrain mods, attack modes (like the Elementals +3 attack, the +2/+3 that Elves/Wizards get vs fliers etc).

Also makes me think again that the Unicorn bonus is probably too much to have in the game as I suspected it might be back when it was changed to have that skill in Beta2.

Incidentally, there is at least one error on this web page. I've definitely gotten strengths beyond 14. The highest I got was a 16 on a custom scenario that had high bonus's for terrain for a certain unit and I blessed it to a natural 9 so that it got +7 with terrain + stack/hero bonus's.

I was also thinking that maybe we need a 3rd Siege unit. A 4 turn unit (that can only be bought, never in the neutrals) that moves 14 and negates 3 levels of city walls (DLR had a Siege Engine which was one of 5 types of siege units in total). That way in the end game you could make a couple of these units for those level 3 cities. At the same time the 3 turn Catapult could have it's movement increased from 10 to 12 to make it slightly better.

KGB

[Itangast]

As you can see, the Devil is canceling WAY too much stuff. Not only should it not cancel the terrain bonus, it shouldn't even cancel out the -1 stack mod from a Medusa.

In reality, I'm OK with the Devil canceling out the negative stack modifiers as well as the positive ones. The Devil should definitely *not* cancel out the terrain mods, attack modes (like the Elementals +3 attack, the +2/+3 that Elves/Wizards get vs fliers etc).

Also makes me think again that the Unicorn bonus is probably too much to have in the game as I suspected it might be back when it was changed to have that skill in Beta2.
KGB

I agree.
- Devils should only cancel both negative and positive stack effects, not terrain. It will still make it a very powerful unit as you may reduce the STR differance with up to 3 STR.
- I like the cancel terrain bonus on the Unicorn, but I see where you are coming coming from. Why not change the Unicorn to only cancel non-city terrain. Will still be good in open, hills etc. but will not cancel assault units.

I was also thinking that maybe we need a 3rd Siege unit. A 4 turn unit (that can only be bought, never in the neutrals) that moves 14 and negates 3 levels of city walls (DLR had a Siege Engine which was one of 5 types of siege units in total). That way in the end game you could make a couple of these units for those level 3 cities. At the same time the 3 turn Catapult could have it's movement increased from 10 to 12 to make it slightly better.

Sounds OK. It may well be worth trying out.

[piranha]

It's great that you are testing thing like this and discussing it. It will help to balance the game and make it fun.
The games I've played so far are far from as advanced as many of your games.

I know there are a bunch of errors in the battle that have been found and I will work on that for beta3. I think Beta 3 will be about new interface, new terrain model, new graphics, FOW and fixing bugs and game balancing. Game balancing is obviously something that requires time and testing so its good that we can make adjustments between each beta.

To comment a few things.
We want the game to be as fun as possible and tedious work is something few people enjoy.
I haven't played our game on a high level and we don't have FOW yet so I can't comment on the part where you need 12 stacks to take down a well protected city. But I don't want games to last forever because you can sit in your castle and wait forever.

If the problem is that its difficult to capture a well protected city we could have a unit that have a quite high cumulative critical strike bonus that applies when attacking only.

Heroes will become a bit better too when there are items introduced.

One thing that struck me when reading through the posts is that we have a lot of different bonuses. The devil is obviously too good right now. He is better than I intended because he is canceling some bonuses that he shouldn't. If I ask you, which bonuses do you think he should cancel to be balanced?

Someone suggested that the unicorn should only cancel terrain bonus outside cities. What about having 1 unit that cancel terrain bonuses outside cities and one that only cancel terrain bonus inside cities?

I will continue to read your discussions and when some of the main features for beta3 are completed we will start discussing unit stats for beta3.

[KGB]

Piranha,

It's great that you are testing thing like this and discussing it. It will help to balance the game and make it fun.
The games I've played so far are far from as advanced as many of your games.

Luckily there are about 10 or so players who are doing multiple turns a day in games so that in 1-1 games you can complete sometimes 10 turns a day. That lets many games reach a conclusion of 30-40 turns within a week.

If the problem is that its difficult to capture a well protected city we could have a unit that have a quite high cumulative critical strike bonus that applies when attacking only.

The problem I see with this idea is that since the unit gives the bonus to all other units in the stack players would put 1 or maybe 2 (depending on the strike bonus) of these with bats simply for the cumulative strike bonus chance to kill.

It would be better balance wise to just have a 2 turn unit with a 25% or 30% first strike chance. The Wolfrider for example could just be increased to from its current 15% to fill this role. 2 turn, 30% chance units were not over powering in DLR but were effective for their specific role of killing units that were inflated by bonus's.

One thing that struck me when reading through the posts is that we have a lot of different bonuses.

You do, but so did Warlords2 (Hero, stack, terrain, fortify, city walls). DLR had even more.

One thing to be aware of is that the more bonus's and game features (FOW, ability to upgrade cities beyond walls/new units, complex quest system, complex hero leveling etc) you introduce, the more complex the game becomes and so the less it will appeal to casual gamers. I once had a long discussion on the SSG website where I compared Warlords 2 to Risk and DLR to Axis and Allies. The premise was that Warlords 2 was easy to learn and I could teach any casual player how to play and have fun in 20 minutes and be reasonably competitive with a hardcore player just like Risk. But DLR required a longer/steeper learning curve such that casual gamers could play in 20 minutes but could not compete with any hardcore player due to all the strategic complexities of the game just like Axis and Allies.

The devil is obviously too good right now. He is better than I intended because he is canceling some bonuses that he shouldn't. If I ask you, which bonuses do you think he should cancel to be balanced?

Just what Itangast and I said in the above 2 posts. All Stack bonus's only. So the +2 from the Dragon, the +1 from Pegasi/Demons/Devils (and any other similar unit), the -1 from Medusa (any any other similar unit) plus all the Stack bonus's from units in specific terrain (the +2 from the Elephant in the Open, the +1 from the Wolfrider in the hills etc).

Someone suggested that the unicorn should only cancel terrain bonus outside cities. What about having 1 unit that cancel terrain bonuses outside cities and one that only cancel terrain bonus inside cities?

I would not break it up that way so that 2 units get a terrain canceling skill. It just needlessly complicates the bonus's even more. Either no unit has the skill or the Unicorn keeps the ability and negates all terrain bonus's other than city ones (in which case it's a 3 turn unit).

My only problem with the Unicorn (or any unit canceling terrain in a city) is that right now making a super strong city only requires the L3 walls + Devil/Medusa (possibly Archon). Once the Devil is fixed, all that happens is that the Unicorn now just goes into the city on defense so you have L3 walls + Devil/Unicorn/Medusa and you are right back to the same place you were before. Slightly harder to achieve but not impossible.

Plus the Attacker being limited to 8 units has a much harder time fitting in all the bonus's than the Defender does.

KGB

[RagingSaxon]

I was also thinking that maybe we need a 3rd Siege unit. A 4 turn unit (that can only be bought, never in the neutrals) that moves 14 and negates 3 levels of city walls (DLR had a Siege Engine which was one of 5 types of siege units in total). That way in the end game you could make a couple of these units for those level 3 cities. At the same time the 3 turn Catapult could have it's movement increased from 10 to 12 to make it slightly better.
KGB

Perhaps there is a need to create a Siege Tower - a natural choice for overcoming a wall's bonus.

[SnotlinG]

Siegetower sounds like a nice unit, even slower moving, but with a -3 city deff.

Unicorn on 3 turns that cancels all terrainbonuses except in cities sounds reasonable for me.
I dont think we should have any unit that cancels terrainbonus in cities, as this would to easily cancel all the siegeunits etc...

[KGB]

We definitely don't need an even slower moving siege unit. If it takes 4 turns to produce one and it costs 1200 gold it should move 14 per turn. That makes it useful for sieging well defended towns but not good enough to haul around with a strong hero stack unless that stack moves slowly.

Battering Ram - 2 turns, 14 moves, -1 city walls, can be found in neutral cities
Catapult - 3 turns, 12 moves, -2 city walls, can be found in neutral cities
Siege Tower - 4 turns, 14 moves, -3 city walls, must be bought

The most important reason for Unicorns not to cancel any city terrain bonus's is so that attackers can use spiders/griffons/minotaurs in their assault forces against cities with 32 defenders.

KGB

[Itangast]

Siegetower sounds like a nice unit, even slower moving, but with a -3 city deff.

Having played some more games I believe a unit like above is very much needed. Defense of 3 is simply too strong, even though devils and unicorns are changed.