Who can ever forget the epic battle shown at the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring? Sauron the Maiar was able to wipe out hosts of men and elves in a single swing. So terrible and powerful was he that he single handedly kept the armies of the last alliance at bay.
And yet…
There is a balance. Because what most people don’t realize is that the power of Sauron seemed great only in relation to his foes. Some time in the past, the host of Numenor – mortal men – no elves, so overwhelmed Sauron and his allies – when Sauron was at his peek, that they were able to take him prisoner (this didn’t end well for Numenor in the long run).
And before then…
The half-elf, Luthien’s guardian companion, Huan, single handedly defeated Sauron in combat. Single. Handedly. Huan was, essentially, a dog. How’s that for humiliating?
A single elf nearly crippled Morgoth in single combat. Morgoth is to Sauron what Sauron is to Aragorn. Morgoth was a Valar, an entire order beyond what Sauron was. Practically a god.
The point being is that you don’t have to cripple the champions to make the soldiers you train relatively powerful. The challenge is balance. And it is, to be certain, a significant challenge.
In the world of Elemental…
In the picture above, on the left, is Resana. She is the Empress of Krax. A Level 6 Channeler. She is quite mighty but only a wisp of what she will become later. Next to her is a party of Krax Legionaires. In Beta 5-B, they take 8 seasons to train (in Beta 5-A, the current public one, they’d take 17 turns to train). In 1 on 1 combat, Resana would win unless the Legionaires got lucky in combat (critical hits). But if there were two parties of them, she’d lose.
What changed?
What made training units unpleasant was that unless they were total junk, they took a long time to train. The equipment and skills were simply adding far too much training time. Why bother researching all this great tech if you couldn’t build it? So a considerable amount of time was spent relooking at how much equipment and traits should cost.
Another big change has to do with loot. This is something we will be working more on. But in previous betas, it was common (literally) to find high end weapons very quickly – just laying around.
What we are moving towards, instead, is where you find cool loot early on but it’s not nearly as over powering. Your sovereign and champions start out with fairly low grade weapons (8 attack). It’s a bit de-balancing to simply luck out and find a 12 attack +4 speed weapon. That’s a 50% increase in raw damage not to mention a 25% improvement in initiative.
So instead, Resana finds interesting weapons with trade-offs. A Iron War Hammer that does 12 attack (yay) but weighs a lot (slowing her down) and lowers her initiative. It makes her tougher in battle (she is doing more damage after all) but it also means she’d need troops to keep herself from getting swarmed. That’s just one example.
Powerful, rare weapons are out there still. But they have to be earned. You won’t just turn over some lost cargo and find a magic broad sword anymore.
The other change we made has to do with hit points. Previously, units gained 4 hit points per level. So by level 10, that’s an additional 40 HP. It doesn’t take long before the trained units become almost irrelevant to the battle because that level 10 champion would have 60 HIP while that newly trained unit might half less than half of that.
The Goal
We do want players who have invested in their champions to be able to win epic battles, single handedly. However, we also want players who invest in building an empire to be able to achieve victory equally effectively. In the early betas, the champions were considered to weak. The pendulum has swung too far the other way. Beta 5-B will be our first pass at bringing balance to this conflict.
Some balance to soldiers and groups is definitely needed.
I like the idea of an "overtax" bonus to grouped units based on how many more soldiers are in the unit. That should be fairly easy to implement too.
i just hope you change your mind on this
its so bad mechanic and so uncool i dont want to waste words on it
I've said a thousand time before that the solution to this debate is in the very basic mechanics.
Look at a game like warhammer, or D&D: the powerful characters have similar, but better attacks then soldiers, but the units of soldiers get multiple attack dice (to represent multiple arrows, or sword blows). To compensate for this, in the later game, powerful champions get multiple attack DICE as well. So while the two are both powerful, they differ in the fact that the characters do smaller (gross) amounts of damage, but of higher quality (ie, none of the archers arrows may be able to pierce the dragon's hide, but the hero's sword can).
Elemental does give units multiplte attacks (this is why the displayed attack value multiplies depending on unit size), but instead of giving hero's more attacks in the late game it just gives characters 1 attack dice that increases in power to ridiculous levels, and the two types of units behave in completely different, rather than subtly different ways. By the late game, the units can't compete.
If we just gave characters similar Attack values to units (with small, % bonuses as they levelled up, as well as accuracy and other bonuses), and multiple attack DICE (say, between 2 and 5 over levels), then they would be very competetive without leaving units in the dust.
More than that, if we did it this way, accuracy could be implemented better. At the moment, it can't be implemented meaningfully, because no one wants to fight a battle in which half of all attacks miss. But if every unit had multiple attack dice, they could all roll to hit separately, and the final damage values added together, so alot of attack dice could miss, but most attack actions would still do damage.
I would go a few steps further in eliminating the reason behind the imbalance, grouped units. I would elimnate armies of 3, 5, etc, and make "armies" function as single units. So they would appear to be a group of soldiers, but the army would use the same rules, roles, attack scores, hit points as a hero, but wouldn't have magic, heroic gear, or abilities from leveling, making them inferior, but massable. They would be inferior, but becasue they used the same rules, they would still be able to compete agaisnt champions and monsters. Also with this, you would rebalance weapons, monsters and such, which would be easy to do as you don't have to try and balance them out for two dfferent combat systems anymore. But, I have said this for years, and it's not going to happen at this point.
I would possibly be okay with this is it was just the Sovereign. But every champion is awful.
It would be a lot easier to balance heroes with such a system because you'd always know roughly where they are.
It reminds me of the D&D games I played with one of my GM friend. He was not very likely to give a shit load of gold and magical items. So this made these items much more valuable which made players end up worshipping a simple +1 sword.
This.
I messed around with the .981 beta a bit, had a crash after about 150 turns so I stopped.
The changes to hero equipment makes a huge change, I think researching up the weapons tree to give your heroes weapons is viable now.
After a little more playing, I think the balance between troops and heroes is pretty close now. The nerf to low-level hero eq makes the mid-level huts more dangerous, you can't rush them- even mages can't because they can't rush the low levels to get fireball or storm.
I do think some adjustments may have to be made to sovereigns to account for the system changes, and Ceresa's elementals will need real buffing if troops are to be more important.
There needs to be some middle ground because the opposite situation, where you spend all this time leveling your heroes, buying/trading them equipment, casting spell buffs on them, etc, and then they are no better than a late game recruited unit, really, really sucks. We've had that before in earlier beta's and it destroys the hero part of the game.
Mid game heroes should be very useful but not dominant. However by late game if you have managed to keep leveling them well they should become increasingly potent to reward the player. Maybe not win "epic battles single handedly" but still very strong.
Ditto.
I just don't have a problem with my troops competing with the AI, but I tend to like trying to avoid 'magic' in this game. I like the magic system, I just kind of like the challenge of getting around it to see what it does.
I really am disappointed with the possibility of losing squads, I really don't see how that could provide any fix that something else much simpler could not. Squads increase costs, have less spiky 'DPS' (neither good or bad), lose power as they take damage, have severe weaknesses to some 'boss' mobs. The trade off is you can pack more in an army, and if you have a war machine you can crank out fearsome units.
Now my "Ditto" is in reference to how my champions' leveling abilities can give massive self bonuses that the AI armies can't compete with...but this may be more of an AI thing. But side by side my champions will out-pace the damage/defense of 5x troops that they have leveled with...then come the time when I get my 9 squad, suddenly my leveled troops aren't 1/2 as strong as my newbie squad of 9.
So to me there is possibly a equipment/training leveling problem. It just feels odd that my level 15 squad of 5 can't compete with a new (level 3) squad of 9. Granted the level 3s I was making were being produced in a city that I had focused on troop creation buffs, but it just 'felt' strange that my troops who have been though countless battles just didn't cut it. It just felt strange that my vets couldn't reap the rewards of the civilization they helped form. Sure I could upgrade their weapons, and armor...but that didn't make up the gap. (plus actually for their design my troops were more effective in lighter armor...but would still have liked the trinkets)
Dunno how I would fix this though. Letting them upgrade would essentially be giving them about the same customization as a champion and it would remove a cost of new troops (by just upgrading...don't need to hire/make new ones). So, not sure if I like these alternate paths.
But as for removing the differing squad sizes...no, I see no reason for it.
This would be some great news. I will be getting into the Beta 5C, later today, and I hope that I will be able to reach the same conclusion.
I have never tried to minimize the difficulty/trickiness, of getting a proper balance, between Champions versus Soldiers. But if Stardock can get this just right, it will be an immense asset to the game. It will make both camps (fans of each category) reasonably happy, and provide those "alternative paths to victory" , that I was extolling in my Reply #48, to this thread. If, in the process, Stardock can also preserve the size increases in Trained Units, that occur over the course of the game, as new squad tactics are unlocked in the Warfare Tech Tree, that would ( IMO ) be the best of all possible worlds. (I very much agree with the last sentence in dctrjons' Reply # 88 above.)
That's what I keep hoping for from Stardock: the best, most versatile game possible; and so far, the FE Design Team's progress (improvement) from Beta to Beta, encourage me to think that we do indeed stand a pretty good chance of getting that, by the time the Retail version is released.
Balance Rules !
i totally agree
like i said many times the developing of champions is one of the coolest thing and i love them very much, i want them to be powerful, but not be able to win alone
they have to be generals to lead your army, or the strongest warrior you have but still less strong then many other warriors together, and so on
and there is A LOT of middle ground between old betas and actuals
I like the idea of "investing" into our champions and I rememeber in early WoM, you actually did this with you Sov. You gave of yourself to them to let them cast spells. They did away with this to what we have now, but I liked the idea. Really made them special and conncected to you in a way. I mean when you only have a limited amount to give out, you certainly dont want to lose them and it even made them a bit different than other champions. Im not saying I want to go back to that system, but I do like putting time and effort into my champions.
I feel the same way about my troops. I design them all and rename them and get quite attached to them...even when a drake eats them...makes me want to dive in there and pull em out! Would be really neat if some champions could come from normal troops as they hit higher lvls and survive. I like investing them as well and then combining them with my champs that I may find.
I think the 3rd unit I like investing in, is of course my Sov. If you dont take time in yourself that could be hurtful, though you could take the gov path and then camp your sov in a city i suppose. I havnt actually done that, cause I like to get out there and mix it up and playing on a setting of epic speed for research and such, it takes me quite awhile to get troops that can be built. Thus champs and my sov are initially what I have to use.
I remember a game...Forgotten Empires maybe....where you would send your heroes on quests and sometimes they would survive and most times they wouldnt. Still, once you had one that had been on quite a few successful quests and lvled up, you became attached to them and would then use them in battles with your regular army. Was neat in battle too because you would have real time fights with you controlling your hero or other units. Again, heroes werent super uber, but they sure did help, but you would still need troops to back them up.
I guess my ultimate point is that you arent prolly going to have a balance between Champions and Units that everyone will like. It seems one or the other will always be better in certain situations and there will be those who take advantage of that. If we have the option to both invest in champs and units wouldnt that be a way of balancing them. Both being able to take advantage of tech and magic? I remember in MoM, being able to cast beneficial spells on my units, making those Paladins even better...oh ya!! Loved my Pallies!! Course you didnt have Tech in MoM, just magic, but man...some of those spells were flipping awesome and unless you heavily invested in the spell books you werent always going to get the same spells every game.
I am late to the post, obviously. So I won't leave lengthy comment. I am very appreciative to changes made in this regard.
Regarding Frogboy's OP: a champion's superhuman actions are only half of the reason they may come to be considered an epic legend, the other is their eventual death.
Champions are just troops - yet being both immortal, and relatively permanent additions to a player's roster once hired, actually has the unintended and inverse effects of not only making other trained troops seem entirely optional and unimportant (more than anything else in the game I might add), but also of completely diminishing the feeling of importance actually intended for champions.
The value of anything is directly related to the weight of losing or not having it.
Having had a chance to actually build some troops in my most recent game, I must say they feel greatly improved. With an essence-heavy city and some decent production, I'm able to pump out some terrifyingly powerful troops that even my own heroes would be hard-pressed to take down. I'm particularly happy with my basic mage troops that have 60(!) elemental attack. I still greatly prefer building henchmen over troop stacks, but there's now a very serious incentive to build a proper army.
I'm new to the game, so I have no comments at all - is just figuring out how to play this great game so far. But I'm impressed that the devs are actually listening to the players and making changes to the game THANKS!!
As of last patch - surprisingly significant difference, good job! Units much more useful, heroes much more fragile, at least in my game. Looking for the next steps, keep up the good work!
This sums up the problem.
To achieve brads vision as described in the first post (aka, sauron) you must ELIMINATE XP gain from killing monsters and instead have champions grow via being INVESTED IN.
Technology, money, and most importantly MAGIC. For example, a spell that costs 50 mana to cast, 5 mana a turn to maintain and gives a hero X XP a turn.
Or building up to an alchemy shop grants the ability to make draughts at cost of gold to permanent boost stats.
Or researching a high end magic tech called "ring forging" which lets you forge an epic soul ring for your sov to give him a massive boost.
Or having a city build a "shrine of empowerment" that lets you designate in the city window 1 unit to be boosted (boost is to HP, Attack, and Defense). The boost lasts as long as the city is owned by you and has that building built.
Or having a city perform a "rite of sacrifice" which is built like a building but at its end reduces population by X and gives you a one use item that gives XP or some other perma boost to a hero.
Those are examples of INVESTING.
The problem in the balance right now is that there is zero INVESTMENT in creating heroes. Heroes HARVEST enemies to become stronger. And they harvest quests to get better items (better then you can ever make for them). (EDIT: ok, there is 1 investment in a hero and that is a horse, both researching the tech and buying one for a hero with gold... and you still need mana but that is trivially acquired via conquest)
Armies require that you invest many turns in researching army related tech so they do not suck, then you must invest time and money building them, you also need to invest in city building tech to be able to build them reasonably fast, and perhaps build a fortress town to get bonuses to them with city enchantments focused on that as well.
The idea you can have heroes just harvest random monsters for strength while armies need to be developed simply breaks apart the attempt to get at what brad describes in the first post.
Now, what you COULD do (and what you have been trying to do) is create a situation where both are used at the same time (by making armies dirt cheap), or a sorta odd balance between the two; but that is very difficult to do... and even if you succeed you have completely eliminated brads vision. Instead of choice you will ALWAYS develop both. In fact, in every game I have played thus far I DID always develop both. That heroes snowballed into being massively overpowering didn't change that fact that I tried... Instead of building worthless units I invested my cities into ever improving the cities themselves and climbing up the tech tree, they just didn't catch up... had they caught up I would have mixed heroes and armies but that is NOT the vision brad described in the first post. That vision sounds awesome and can only be achieved by eliminating XP gain from killing monsters and allowing it only from quests (in SMALL amounts) but primarily, from investing your cities production and research.
I had another though, an alternative to eliminating XP gain from battles is to allow armies to harvest as well.
Make it so armies armies DO take up a share of the XP from battles, and then convert that XP into research points applied to army tech.
And they also get events, like special lootable locations (like quests, but for armies) where your armies must defeat neutral armies to get a "reward" of a free tech... eg, "monks of the sword" stronghold which is defended by a bunch of armies which can be taken to discover a related tech.
And if an army conquers a city rather then getting XP like a hero does there is a chance of stealing tech.
That way both heroes AND armies could "harvest" and thus you are given a choice of which to harvest WITH.
Of course to make it really worthwhile you should be able to recruit level 1 heroes from your own cities via having it train a hero (requires a bunch of magic tech from the tech tree as well as time and gold).
Brad, your vision is FREAKING AWESOME! TM! I really want to see this happen. The reason its not happening despite having done tweak after tweak is that you didn't seem to realize this very important fact. That there is no choice of investing in heroes, armies, or both equally like you intended because heroes harvest while armies require research and then a well developed infrastructure to churn out. Heroes harvest non stop because not harvesting with a hero is a waste of their time. Cities develop tech non-stop because not developing it is a waste of time.
If you fail to perfectly balance the two then one of them will be worthless and the other one always win the game.
If you perfectly balance the two then both will always be used and there will be no choice.
In either case your vision as described in the original post will never come to pass so long as armies and heroes grow on completely different non competing resources! By making both heroes and armies use only harvesting/investment. Or by making both heroes and armies use both harvesting and investment, you make the two compete with a single limited resource and your vision of player choice in which to invest is achieved!
Taltamir, I think that you just inspired my next play-through.
taltamir, I agree the main issue is that troops feel much more valuable than champions, but I do not believe it is due to the fact that they require a different sort of investment. The main reason I protect my troops is not because of the time and resources it took to make them, but because those investments can die and be permanently lost. On the other hand, champions are relatively immortal, permanent additions to a player's roster once hired. They also require time and resources to grow, but there is practically nothing to lose in throwing them around. The value of anything is directly related to the weight of losing or not having it.<<
I couldn't agree more!
Please see this thread https://forums.elementalgame.com/432632 for my suggested solution, linking the champion trait system to army size and city production (its a bit too big to reproduce here).
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