As I joined this beta-project only a couple of week ago, I am not sure if this has already been discussed. Anyway, as the search function is not really helpfull I will open a new discussion.
As we approach a final implementation of the game the difficulty of balancing heroes magic and meleewise becomes obvious to me. Lets first consider the power of armies during the game:
At the start of the game a typical unit has 3 attack, 0 defense, 5 healthpoints and 1-2 attacks per turn.In the midgame you are confronted with parties of lightly armord swordsmen: 4*18 attack = 72, 4*8 defense = 32, 4*6 healthpoints = 24 and 1-2 attacks per turn.In the late game the armies consist typically of squads of armoured elite riders with medical paks: 10*30 attack = 300, 10*16 defense = 160 and 10*20 healthpoints = 200, and 2-3 attacks
Therefore the Power rating of an unit grows from the early game to late game by a factor of 100 to 1000.
To make champions and the souvereign actually balanced throughout the course of a game the power rating has to grow in a similar way. This is quite problematic! While champions gain some additional power by improving their equippment (neglecting casters for the moment), we still can not offset the fact, that the size of a unit grows by a factor of 20 from early to late game (and that units effectively level - by simply building more experienced troop - which offsets some of the leveling effects of champions. Annotation: in this regard i do not understand why regular troops do not level, and why we can not combine individual units to a party if we have the tech).
At the moment a Champion/Souvereign unit is balanced powerwise in the range of a party of units. The automatically results is that Souvereigns feel absolutely overpowered in the early game (when confronted with individual soldiers). This furthermore leads to the fact, that early game units are not very usefull, because a souvereign (if he acts first) can simply walk into a city and destroy all defending units. However when the same Souvereign is confronted by an Squad of units his preferred option is to run, and the player/AI has to be super carefull whith its heroes later on.
I want at this point take a look back at the system employed by master of magic concerning regular troops and heroes. There combat of a troop vs a hero worked like this:
E.g. The troop hat 4 attack per person, 4 defense per person and 2 hitpoints per person, while fielding 6 persons
The hero might have had 12 Attack, 12 Defense and 12 HP. So All its values were dramatically higher that that of an individuall troop (note this is not achievable in Elemental at the moment), but if the troops were added up, the troop would have double the defense and offense.
Now attack worked like this: The hero attacked and did an average of 4 damage [remember in MoM each attack and defense symbol hat a 30% chanceto inflict or avoind one damage, when neglecting hit (heroes typically hat 60%+ chance to inflict damage, through)] of these 4 damage the fists man in the unit can avoid 1 damage with his 4 defense and gets hit for 3 Damage, which kills him. The remaining 1 Point of damage is absorbed by the defense of the second unit. On the attack back, the army (which now has only 5 men) will do an combined damage of 5*4*0.3 which is 6. The heroes defense of 12 can cancel about 4 and he gets about 2 damage. Thus both have lost the same amount of health, while the values of the hero seem to be much less impressive. So this is based on the fact that in MoM each unit has to defend individually against attacks, giving single units with high defense an additional advantage.
If you additioally remember the leveling system you will note that a hero, from leveling alone typically doubled his attack, defense and hitpoints, while also at least doubling his chance to hit. To gain an similar strong increase in hero capabilities (by leveling) a Elemental-hero needs about to be level 25 or above. The power of regular troops, in contrast, did not increase that much because higher level units usually comprised even fewer soldiers that the 8 of the initial spearmen.
Suggestions for Elemental
To offest the problems discussed above several approaches could be taken:
- The single units of the early game could be replaced by groups or even squads, and the power level of souvereings increased accordingly. This would offset one of the facts that make units late game so powerfull. compared to champions.
- The increase of power obtained while leveling could be enhanced dramatically. The souvereign could, for instance, automatically gain more HitPoints per level. I would propose to set the champion hitpoints to (Level+2)*Constitution/2 (For a 10 Constitution hero 15 hitpoints to start, 60 hitpoints at level 10). This will also help souvereigns against magic, which should in endgame also do about several times the damage it does early on, to be actually usefull against squads. [Due to tactical speed it in fact does several times the damage form early on, but the additional mana cost is by far to high].
- Furthermore, combined units in Elemental should also defend inidvidually, so that onlay the defense of one soldier is used to counter an attack. The balance could further be changed in favour of champions, if units consisting of several soldiers attack individuallay. This means, that each attack of the squad has to defeat the champions defense individually. I am not sure if that is how Elemental handles combat, but the numbers shown in the interface indicate that the values for groups of soldiers are simply added up (if this is not the case then the inferface should be changed in some way to represent this).
I like this idea. Originally I was shocked when I found out that each guy you recruit was actually one guy! I understand the post apocalptal thing, yet its not game friendly in the long run IMO. I truely think you should have to level your town up before you recruit people to defend it. Say a house after the first ten people, and then you can recruit a squad of five or six guys to defend the town. Before that, I think the towns people would help defend the town on their own instead of waiting for regular military to come and defend them. So recruiting one person at a time is silly if you ask me. Plus having squads would help to offset the power balance like what the OP had to say.
If it really is post apoc, then the people who survived would be quite hardy and capable of defending their initial settlement from the odd wolf, spider, or random guy wandering around with a club.
First, why does there have to be a static balance at all points in the game?
Secondly, heros/sovs can use magic, which increases on it's own during the course of the game outside of their particular development.
I fully agree with the Master of Magic approach to squads and parties of units.
The main cause of this "issue" is that weapons don't really scale properly. They jump way too high and are disproportionately powerful. Bringing them down to a better damage progression will help a lot.
Second, unless Sovereign/Champions will count towards the army cap (I haven't heard anything suggesting they'll uncap it), then it's not necessary and actually not so good to balance them out to be an equivalent of a full company. For example, if you're limited to 10 stacks in an army, including Sovereign/Champions, then yes they do need to be comparable in the late game to the best stack of units you can get at the time. But this doesn't necessarily mean pure combat stats. Since Sovereigns and Champions can have spells, they can easily act as force multipliers for the armies (mass buffs or mass debuffs/AoE damage), and so it's not necessary for them to be as "strong" as a company. But if the Sovereigns and Champions count as extra units on top of the cap, then buffing them strongly to compete with whole companies is actually bad, as the player would basically have to bring them or else his army would be outmatched. In this situation, the Sovereign and Champion units should be helpful to have in the battle (magic, etc), but not tip the balance as much as an additional company of your best units.
Well its like this in early game There is No one and No infrastructure therefore 'armies' are impossible thats why theirs only single units. The sovereign is practically a demi god at this point in time as he has raw power and no one else does.
Champions too. Now later on in game their gear has to become very good if they want to compete with the infantry. My simple prosposel is to add in some champion and sovereign only armor and weapons *armor and weapons that are magical and require magical power/essence to control them*
this would allow mid to late game for them to become more powerful.
Also We could always attatch 'bodyguards' to our heroes and sovereign Picture this you create 2 units you name them 'The Royal Guard' you then Attatch them *theres a limit of like 10* to the Sovereign they have magical gear because they are his guards imbuned with some of his power *but not at a cost of essence just abit of upkeep/enchantmentslot* they are far superior to anyother normal mundane soldiers not only this but they act as a single unit guarding the sovereign and dying first in battle before him. similar things could be done for champions allowing you to counterbalance the higher troopnumbers by having personal guards\small battle groups for each champion.
You master of magic example is not quite correct. The hero would get to roll his 12 defense 5 times, once for every attack. That results in about 0.065 damage per figure, or 0.33 damage on average for 5 attacking figures. Far less then the 2 you implied in your example. That hero is nigh invulnarable to such weak units, and can easily slaughter masses of them. Also, unless the hero had first strike, all 6 figures would retaliate, since attacks happen simultaneously in Master of Magic by default.
You can imagine that these rules made properly equipped high level hero's nigh invulnerable.
@Netriak: I was not entirely sure about this one and thought it worked the other way round. Your are right of course about First strike (always used Roland the Paladin or Mortu the Black Knight). Concerning the multiple defense rolls I mentioned them in my last paragraph, with the comment that this would lead to really powerfull champions.
In fact through hero balancing is always a critical point that is often solved poorly. Because of the long leveling process, Heroes are very expensive. This means that the balance is between heros beeing overpowered and nearly unkillable and heroes beeing rather fragile and unusable.The first allows to freely utilize the heroes but diminishes the value or standard troops. This scenario leads to a more RPG style game, where you simply move your hero to conquer the map, while all other units are simply built, because, you know, one should have armies. If however another Hero happens to meet your regular troops, you could as well not have built them.In contrast the second part results in heroes sitting somewhere in one of your towns, doing their hero thing and not participating in any major battle. This of course strengthens the strategic aspect, because your regular troops are more important.
According to the vision of elemental, the plan seems to be that your souvereign starts weak (second scenario) and amasses power to be like Sauron in the end game (first scenario). However currently the hero development is the other way round, they start strong and get meaningless (minus their spellcasting) in the endgame. While I actually prefer this it seems to contradict the plan. However, Elementals Essence-based-Souvereign-saving somewhat lessers the effect of the second scenario, as your Souvereign will survive some battles gone wrong.
On some further thinking, not only the souvereign should get teleportet back to city, but also those heroes that have been imbued by his essence should gain this ability.
Agree with OP.
It would definately make the game feel more epic if the standard unit size was 5 or 10 soldiers and not 1.
Yeah but by the first time your running with 4 individual guys and come across a party, who's power is more significant, you'll be researching Party, and Platoon, and Company sized advancements too.
yeah i personally like making single units. it makes sense in the early game. i think its just gonna take a crap load of balancing to get this right. all that is really needed is giving more powerful level ups for champion units.
I agree, this does need a little more balancing. I understand the reason a sovereign/champion's importance drops late-game (ie. men vs. armies) but it could be balanced. For example, your champions could evolve into generals or governors and have passive bonuses to armies or cities. For example, in the beginning of the game a champion named Gregory could be great against wolves and individual soldiers but later on when he's fighting armies he is overwhelmed. He should evolve into a leader of men and possibly gives moral or speed bonuses to troops in his stack. Maybe you could also improve the abilities of the non-adventurers so that their bonuses increase (but only when stationed in cities).
Just needs a little work, that's all.
I like to body guard idea to augment and scale hero/champion/soverign power as units power increases with organization into squards/companies etc. Adding henchmen, magical familars, and pets with more retainer slots unlocked with leveling, reserach, and equipment. That sound fun and another way to customize your leaders.
Also I do not care for the additive method for generating stats for grouping units into squads. This creates strength values way too high. 100 indvidual spearmen attacking a steel golem (or any very high defense unit) = little or no damage and the steel golem eventually killing them all. A unit of spearmen organized into a company = one shot instant death. That is too much power increase and makes unorganized single individual units (heros, special monsters, the fun stuff) ineffective.
Don't get me wrong I like the idea of units getting organized into armies and and increase in power because of this. I would say that damage should go up additive, to hit ability should go up slighlty, defense ability should go up slightly, and hitpoints should go up based on the number of people in a unit. Instead of stats i would focus on trained squads having many more special attacks and special abilities compared to a large number of individual units.
For Example:
i could probaly think of more but I think my point is made.
Also I do not care for the additive method for generating stats for grouping units into squads. This creates strength values way too high.
I like the idea of bodyguards, henchmen, familiars, pets, and retainers related to leveling. Have you ever played the Medieval Total War series? They had a good way of adding all of the above to your character for actions and events that occurred. They gave small but important bonuses and I think something like that would work for sovereigns and champions in Elemental quite well.
Also, I just wanted to agree about the additive method being overpowered. Personally, I think that each unit in the group should attack and "defend" individually with their individual stat and not the group stat when you attack something. Dead units could be visually removed slightly lowering the group stats until they heal. That way an army of spearman wouldn't be ridiculously overpowered but still powerful. Power in numbers.
It is possible currently to re-integrate the singles one produces early game back into a Town/City. It can be done to relieve financial pressure if need be or to do as noted, remove them to make room for larger teams/squads/companies of better armed soldiers.
The additive nature does create issues now in the early game as Hero's can group together, making the cost to recruit untenable and fighting them suicidal at best.
It is hoped that Beta 4 will provide better insight into how the Dev see the "Balance" between SoV's/Hero's and Army groups, as far as over-all power levels go.
Magic, after learning just 1 new spell (Burn Foes?), can make Tactical Battles a lot more fair, if not a tad lopsided to the Magic users side.
But, then again, the AI does not really fight with Magic yet either.
I agree with the sentiment here, so much that I may be repeating some things already mentioned.
Let me answer this first. Why does there have to be balance at all points in the game? Because Heroing and Conquering are both tech trees. If heroing is only useful at the beginning of the game, there should be no tech tree for it and all heroes should be removed after turn 100. Equal investment = Equal reward. The two should be equal, if not necessarily the same.
However, before continuing, I have to say that if Elemental is as you say, common sense took one look and jumped headlong out the window. You're saying that one guy - one, single, guy, can:
1: Guard a whole town by himself.
2: Conquer a town. Again, by himself.
3: Prevent said town from simply revolting and reaffirming its former allegiance.... Again, by himself.
And this isn't even a heroic guy. This is a level 1 swordguy who for some unbelievable reason can do all that?
This is absurd.
I fully agree with the idea of using squads entirely, and no it isn't unreasonable.
This is post-apocalyptic, and therefore populations must start (for the minimal amount of incest) at about 100 people.
For a single squad of warriors - the absolute minimum of which should be about 10, this consumes around 10% of your starting population (so let's pretend that it was 110, because I'm lazy and it's easy) . Two squads in exchange for a lower starting population would give 90 population in exchange for two squads of guys. So at maximum, your starting army of guys is conquering populations ten times its size, not a hundred times.
Midgame can have twenty units to a squad, and with a late game squad, this can go up to, say, 50 people each. Note the progression is not ten times as is the current 1 > 4 > 10, but exactly half that. The default attack rate should be 1 per, and 2 for the end game, so attacks increase from 10 (1 each), to 100 (2 each and size 50).
This makes a lot more sense already. When the population increases, army and squad size must also increase, though not proportionally as larger populations become comparitively harder to mobilise against invaders. You need an army to conquer a city. One man units are not armies, they're don't even constitute an organised militia.
Secondly, however, I'd argue that the same logic applies to a hero. How does one person keep control in a town? Sure, the hero might be able to kill a bunch of them, but if even one in ten hurt him, he's dead. A lone hero should not be able to retain control of a town. In fact, unless units were actively left in a town for several (ten?) turns (during which time the town is "occupied" rather than "captured") the ownership should immediately revert to the previous owners - Would you remain loyal to your conqueror without any conquerors around? Occupied towns shouldn't be able to create units themselves either - a military squad is loyal. If it's not, you just armed the people who are fighting against you.
This leads to the idea of "presence". A hero hasn't got much military presence. He's just a guy. He might be able to raid a town for loot (but not much, since he has to carry it himself), but he's not going to be able to conquer it; even if he did, he'd have to stay put for ten turns. This seriously limits any potential for hero-rushing with a super-sovereign, whilst rewarding players with specialised "police" units who have more presence to let them control large cities easier. Armies can't complete a quest without a hero, why should a hero be able to conquer a city without an army?
As an aside here - I hope sovereign "level" to be a settable game option. I'd get more satisfaction from levelling up an initially weak, low level sovereign into the all powerful demi-god than having him at some arbitrarily high level from the get-go only to fall behind more useful heroes later on. Sovereign combat should be high-risk/high-reward in my mind.
I also agree that, for starters, every unit must be handled as an individual. Early discussions waaaay back talked about a squad of swordsmen against a dragon - one hundred soldiers can't beat a dragon, neither could a thousand. This makes sense. Just because there's a thousand swords doesn't mean any of the people behind them can hurt a dragon. Has this approach been forgotten?
So an elite group of knights isn't a 1500 attack, 800 defence, 1000 HP army of fifty. It's 50 x 30 attacks, times 2 each (or 3, though that many attacks on a basic unit with normal guys is fairly ridiculous). And every attack is against one unit of the group, with only sixteen defence, though - unlike MoM - this doesn't have to all hit the same unit each time, but the one with the most health (making the unit overall longer lasting with spreading damage). Sidenote: Special unit ability that allows them to target the most injured unit instead of the least would be potentially very powerful.
To compete a hero who starts out at, say, 12 attack, 6 defence, 8 HP and 1 attack - about three times more powerful than a regular unit - only needs to increase at a comparatively small rate - 60 attack, 45 defence, 60 HP, 10 attacks at max level without gear.
The key for lone units I see to be number of attacks, just 60 attack makes even an unarmed hero inherently dangerous all by themself, even though it's a smaller increase over nine levels (starting at level 1 up to 10) compared to a military unit, but with ten attacks as well, he's a unit all by himself.
On its own, this isn't going to cut it against multiple squads of high-end units, but a hero shouldn't be balanced with just stats alone, but with special abilities plus stats, a max level hero should pose a high threat to any unit in the game, even dragons, whose high def/attack is better against the death-of-a-thousand cuts that a military unit offers.
One such ability, Magic, is great for heroes that have it, but magic should be only one of many special talents heroes have, so the special abilities are another must-have.
Finally, cohorts is a great idea - but I think it's so powerful better as a skill rather than by default. Cohorts themselves don't even need to be particularly powerful to provide a large amount of security for the hero whilst the hero does all the damage. A hero with the appropriate ability naturally accumulates a cohort with a size equal to their level - 1. This even gives the hero a little presence for holding territory.A lesser cohort options would be an equippable "pet" or partner which basically serves as a single additional unit to share damage with.
Combining this all together makes heroes adequately powerful alone, at a broadly consistent (but not necessarily even) level of advancement (thanks primarily to the number of attacks they get) compared to squads they might meet over the course of a game. But even if they could take on entire stacks of squads (and the law of averages still doesn't work too well in their favour there), they wouldn't be able to hold anything and any invasion led by a hero would lose units to hold the territory every town they conquered.
It's nice to see such cohesive thinking going on about this.
Kholai, I like your idea of "presence", except for one part: your heroes or sovereign should have a lot of presence, simply because they can accomplish somewhat superhuman feats and even cast magic, which is rare in that time. Plus, it being post apocalyptic, if they did revolt, they'd be left with no real leader. This is only considering there isn't any outside influence, which leads to new things such as propaganda and espionage.
I've long since said that cities should be able to defend themselves. Not against Sovs or overwhelming armies, but small scouting parties, bandits or occasional monsters? yes.
How about each population point adds .1 attack to a town defence unit, but this can also vary by the 'opinion' of the town towards the leaders. Stationing leaders may also give a defence bonus, moral of sorts with diplomatic capital being spent to increase moral (eg benevolent acts) and the creation of new buildings, winning loosing battles etc adding moral points. Obviously the moral has to fade with time (perhaps based on town level?). Constant attacks on the town and a minus in production as well as unit recruitment could cause a faster drop in moral. Perhaps a national pride instead of per town moral bar?Well, sorry for that rambling... Sorry: RestructuredTowns Have defence units (militia, perhaps unique to kingdoms, but with a reduced unit cost to empires)• Population adds .1(?) Attack(defence etc) Various Factors Effect Unit strength• Presence of Sovereigns/champions/heros/descendants increases defence/moral• Moral/Opinion/Happiness System° This control effectiveness of militia +/ army° Moral can be bought eg Diplomatic capital° Moral can be earned eg Building Construction, winning battles, successfully defending towns (more than just winning battles) etc° Moral Can be lost eg Loosing Battles, Loosing Towns, Loosing Special Units, Numerous attacks on that town etc° Certain actions Cause drops in Moral eg Declaring War, Recruiting units etc° Constant drop in moral, perhaps influenced by Town level, War etcNational Moral/Pride Factor As well?• Empire Wide, Roaming Armies EffectedMisc• Loosing a Town can cause reduced moral in Units originating there, except when fighting there.
I just want to put a plug in again for some other way to rebalance. I'm especially a fan of how master of magic did it (ie 6 soldiers in a unit has 6 times x attacks, whatever x weapon is). This really is key... the current method of just adding it all together doesnt seem balanced currently.
I wouldnt mind a bodygaurd or 'attach a champion to a unit' method was used either. I just really hope this is changed before the game comes out this month.
Yes!!! This would make armor actually meaningful.
I've also been quite annoyed by the relative uselessness of my sovereign and entourage in the late game. Sure, the sov gets more moves than a standard troop, but deals pitiful damage in comparison and will die if anything so much as looks at them. Yes, the sovereign gets better magic, but what if you want to focus on martial prowess instead of magic? Personally, I'd get a kick out of being able to have a sov who can't cast that well but can wade into the midst of enemies and send them flying all over the place. Sure, it doesn't make a lot of logical sense, but we're talking about magical, near-immortal heroes here. I think that just adding automatic HP buffs could go a long way to alleviate this problem--automatic buffs to all stats, plus still assigning a "specialization" bonus at each level could also do it.
Well ... having 6 archers with an attack rating of 4 each ... instead of a single attack of "24" it should be 6 separate attacks of 4.
additionally, a single target attack should only be able to kill a max of one person imho (unless its a spell that targets a single tile, or a cleave/sweep attack).
Meaning ... I attack into a 4 soldier unit with a simple attack using a sword. I deal 9000 damage, each soldier has only 30 HP. I kill ONE soldier, leaving it as a 3 soldier unit.
Tasunke- think of one attack as an instant of battle..not a single swing. That attack could have a swing, a shield bash, a kick, a dodge etc. The point - a powerful melee warrior should be able to kill multiple individuals in a single attack. A supremely powerful warrior hero with magical weapons and speacial abilities should be able to even kill tens of units in a single 'attack'.
Still ... 6 people shouldn't have one massive additive attack, but 6 smaller attacks
same goes for damage dealt to a 6 person unit. Damage should (probably) be dealt one unit at a time ... so that assuming each man has 10 HP, if its dealt 15 Damage, one person permanently dies. And if the unit has 1 HP left ... then really only one person is still alive.
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