I've mentioned this issue before, but i feel it needs highlighting again, considering changes to shieldwall and henchmen in the upcoming patch.
I believe the biggest balance issue in FE at the moment, is the ability to infinitely stack "aura" abilities. That is, things that boost your army, such as Shieldwall (+3 defense to whole army)
+3 def on an army is quite reasonable, and it makes a nice ability. But if you put another unit in there with the same ability, your army gets a total of +6. This can stack up to a total +27 defense for a whole army, just from that skill. That much, or slightly less, is enough to protect reasonably from just about anything. Most notably, it gives a large amount of defense to things that ordinarily have little or none, such as beasts and juggernauts, thus mitigating their weaknesses, and homogenising the entire unit roster.
Aside from shieldwall, the other major problematic ones are the Trainer series (increased XP for entire army) and the Guild Grocer HP bonus
With abilities of these sorts, the most common and accepted method of balancing them is to make them unique. ie: non-stackable. Having one shieldwall would give +3 armor, and having two shieldwalls would still only give +3 armor. This provides more reason to diversify your army, and also allows those abilities to be made sufficiently powerful as to be useful individually.
at the moment the stackability is a problem compounded by henchmen, as they have the ability to start off with shieldwall, and an XP boosting ability even at lv0. Because of the way they don't split xp with the soverign, you can make an army entirely of henchmen, and give each one the entire trainer series plus shieldwall, resulting in an army that comes out of the gate with unfairly high defense, and levels about 3x the speed of anyone else.
While it can be funny to make an army of lv30+ heroes with relative ease, it also makes lategame wars a bit of a joke.
I agree entirely.
I mentioned in another post that there is a similarly silly stacking effect with some spells, i.e. cast Tireless March on 9 units in your army and voila, +9 to move. It really is a bit silly and the fix you mention of allowing the bonus to apply just once is a very common one. Seems like a no brainer to me.
I do not agree. If i have 2 guys with Shieldwall, I want it to stack. However i am annoyed with 2x-3x shrinking.
Otherwise, i would have to go out of my way in designing armies to make sure i didn't accidentally put the same aura effect 2x in one army, that level of micromanagement is unfun.
Yes, it is powerful, so is Flame Dart with 5 fire shards - does that mean we should remove the per-shard bonuses and just have a higher base rate damage and maybe just have the shards apply a subtle 5% bonus effect?
You can also translate this to a bunch of late game guild grocer (the one that gives +10% exp). One hand says that 5 of these things gives me an army with over 1,200 HP near the end of the game, and i only build that one. So to make the others better, let's make each guild grocer after the first have diminishing returns. This turns my late-game 1,200 HP into 450 HP and makes me consider the other options (which aren't actually better on the merit of making the one i want worse).
In the end, i lose a strategy i like to use, am forced to build things i don't want and get minimal benefit of what i do want. So at what point do features get whacked and nerfed for being good? It makes no sense.
Maybe we should hard cap movement bonuses so that if you cast tireless march on a unit with the horse and those longstrider boots, it doesn't get all the extra movement. I mean, it makes leather boots better by making longstrider boots less good.
I partially agree...
I find logical that certain bonus may stack, like dodge or obsidian guardian. The boni are small, so you need many units with it to pay really a difference.
Other bonus, like the shieldwall, I agree with that it should not stack, because of the ultrabenefits. If you want stack them, maybe they should be nerfed (+1 defense). OR boost a bit it and remove stack (+5 defense only for THAT unit).
Finally, there are bonus that I'm not very sure about them to be stackable: the +initiative and the XP boost, for example.
Anyway, I think The REAL problem is the Henchmen Quest Loop. In a no-henchmen game, you would never realize the benefits of multi-stacking, as there would be very few units with each of them (if any). Try playing without hench: the more similar is making all champs POTD/POTW, level them all and be very lucky with the traits. In the practice, you will rarely stack more than 1 or 2 of some of them...
So, IMO, the key is working first on the Quest Loop, and later, see if the stackable boni should be revisited or not.
1.1 Changelog says that quests now are 100 gildar, and the influence received +20. BUT henchmen only cost 40 influ now. That is a starting...but still more to do...
I think that XP and +initiative should be stackable.
Otherwise, i will have to learn every hard cap in the game, and meticulously micromanage everything to make sure im not "above the cap". That is never fun, and only leaves me irritated at the power i "could have" if it weren't somehow shut down.
Quoting , quoting postWhile it can be funny to make an army of lv30+ heroes with relative ease, it also makes lategame wars a bit of a joke.
The stacking is ok, you can get even higher heroes than that with Paragon, and much earlier. The problem is probably just that Henchmen can get it too easily. Also, you have piercing traits, and magic weapons. Shieldwall doesn't help against that.
Perhaps the stacking benefit should be half of the base benefit? (and when stacking unequal amounts, they would need to keep the biggest benefit and use half of the others, otherwise we can get into situations where stacked can be worse than unstacked)
Note that in 1.1, grocers currently give a 5% health bonus, which approximates the mechanic I am suggesting here.
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