Hey. Enjoying this game a good bit so far, but there are some pretty significant balance factors that annoy me. The top 5 on my list are: how it's practically impossible to get a decently leveled hero if you ever use more than 1 in a stack, the extreme disparity between damage spell mana cost and usefulness, the Arcane Monolith spell, the way Defense and spells like Heart of Fire work, and lastly, spears. Fortunately, most of those things can be modded, but I feel that the spear thing in particular merits some thought.
Almost every post I have seen on the matter says unilaterally that spears are the best weapons. I agree, for several reasons, and I would go so far as to say the rest aren't even in the same ballpark. Most obvious is the armor penetration, which is quite strong alone. Then, there is the Impale ability, which seems silly, misplaced, and poorly conceived to me - I can make sense out of Cleave, but literally spearing straight through an entire army into a second one behind is a bit hard to believe. Add to those the fact that spear base damage is relatively high, and the fact that spears are the 2nd-highest initiative weapon, with only swords being higher, and there is a pretty obvious disparity.
Personally, I never use anything but spears anymore, unless I have to; I either rush Enchanting for the ice spear if I have decent crystal or blacksmithing for the boar spear if I don't, and, with a few staff-mage units, that's my army for the most of the game. I've gotten rather bored of this, frankly, since it's pretty much the same for every faction I play - almost all the faction weapons are meaningless to me. Heck, I don't even build archers with Tarth. The only weakness spears seem to have is that they are 2-handed, but even so, the Defensive trait (described by someone else on this forum as the best in the game) lets you onehand them, so.. so much for that.
So, it would seem clear that something should be done. What exactly is another question; I have a few suggestions, of course (why make a thread like this otherwise!) but I just hope that something is done one way or the other, to make weapon choices feel a bit more impactful on how the game plays. Axes and hammers both have their interesting points, but the lack of armor pen and the initiative penalties make them rather undesirable, and, frankly, swords are just boring.
Anyways, my suggestions for possible changes - the first 3 sort of go together, so I'm grouping them apart:
-Remove the current Impale from spears, rename it Piercing Blow or something, and make it a champion ability in the Assassin tree, leading off max-level Precise Strike. Or wherever else it may fit - Defender, Warrior, artifact ability, whatever... no point wasting a coded ability!
-Severely nerf the base armor pen on spears, starting from 20% for low tech and maxing at somewhere around 30-35% for high level spears. Add an initiative penalty.
-Make a new Impale ability, that doubles the armor pen on the spear for an attack and possibly adds a bit of damage based on tech level. 2-5 turn cooldown. This would make a heck of a lot more sense than spearing straight through (non-fatally, I might add) two crowds of people.
In my mind, those 3 changes would bring spears more inline with other weapons, fit the archetype better, and feel better overall. Possibly add some sort of Set Spears ability to increase damage/defense vs mounted units.. and hooray!
--
Other possibilites if the above isn't appealing (most of these would be easy to mod in manually, but hey):
-switch Axes and Spears in the initiative-tree: spears/pikes are big weapons, and should be slower, really. A straight penalty to spears would work as well as a switch.
-Lower base damage to compensate for armor pen - currently, spear damage is barely below other weapons, and ends up much higher thanks to the armor pen... plus the other benefits.
-As has been suggested before, add a bonus vs cavalry to counter mount spam. This is an interesting idea, but spears are already the best weapons in the game, so making them a must for fighting horsemen would be counterproductive imo
-Add new traits (or mod some of the current useless ones) to add damage bonuses when using certain classes of weapons, to encourage using other types. Or, change certain races to get small bonuses with certain weapon archtypes - ie. Men could get a small bonus from swords, Gilden-folk from hammers, and so on. This is something I feel should be done regardless of how devs view the current weapon balance, but again, hopefully it can be modded.
-consider adding more initiate and a bit of armor pen to daggers
Well, that's all I got.. Feel free to rage at me, give other suggestions, or whatever!
Ummm ok couple things.
Only first hit is affected by defense. After that you do normal damage (as in sort of break the defense of the enemy with first attack). The game doesn't update the defense icons - needs fixing, but the damage you deal to said unit after 1st attack with a similar unit clearly shows this change. It's a good mechanic which makes defense good to weaken the first impact, or preserve a unit longer during combat, but is not a "you do no dmg coz I'm defending". That would make city battles ranged only with melee having no place, as all the defender (or attacker) needs to do is place 2 units in defense stance to choke the narrow access paths and that's it.
There would be no point to have cavalry and axes swords daggers maces etc, if you would only scratch someone in defense. Nobody would move to attack first to not lose the precious defense bonus
Try this: send a bunch of 2-4 mounted axemen toward the enemy troops (all AI with lower initiative will start in def position), and cleave with first one the center, then position 2 more on it's flanks and cleave again. Wow! From 2-5 damage you just jumped to 30+ on 2nd and 3rd cleave, hitting all the front line and wipping (or severely wounding) them. Note: defense stance just adds a flat bonus to your base defense, you only lose the defense stance bonus upon being attacked.
Now axes look a lot better heh?
are we playing the same game? i don't think so.
you definitely don't lose the defense boost after being attacked once. half of my games would have ended in a bloody mess if that were the case. i love playing with an early defender champion whose only job is to hold the line while my cappy trained units flank and slaughter the enemy units one by one. a level 4 defender with nothing but a piece of leather armor and a wooden shield can easily tank 3-4 mites or bandits without taking any significant damage. her armor score is about 4 or something without the defense bonus, and about 40 with defensive 2 and a shield (4 real armor + 5 basic "defending" + 25 from traits + 5 from shield)
if you attack with the defender in this situation, he's screwed. dies *instantly* next turn from swarm boosted attacks.
so no, i don't know how you come to that conclusion but it's not how the game works. my guess is it's the effect of the bloodthirsty trait, though. once the first axeman scratches the defending units, the next one deals 25% more damage, which screws up the defense formula quite a bit (easily the best damage trait, hence the rather high production cost)
EDIT: a very simple test that is easy to reproduce:
-start a new game (doesn't matter which faction; i recommend dense monsters so you don't have to search for test subjects too long), settle down
- design a "tank" unit with the "defensive" trait. no armor, no weapon (you can edit the default scout unit and replace the scout trait with defensive; keep the "weak" trait to reduce production cost, add the 3 bonus HP trait so he survives a bit longer in the test battle)
- build one of them, add it to your little army
- find a group of mites or rock spiderlings
- attack them with your glorious tank
- in tactical, move him forward and "pass" to get him in def stance
- he will (probably) survive the first few attacks, despite the fact that he gets swarmed and has 0 innate defense - his only defense are the 15 points from the improved def stance
- now attack one of the enemy to drop the def stance
- watch the poor guy die horribly
Considering spear damage is not that far below other weapon types, that 50% ends up being quite a bit more than anything else
Going through the mage stuff point by point:
Um, mages totally ignore armor and NEVER deal "crappy" damage except in the case of total immunity, which is why they are simply too good. Not sure what you're talking about there - they aren't any weaker hp, defense, or dodgewise than anything else; you can put your mages in armor just like any other troop, with the same HP/defense boosting perks, or whatever else. The problem isn't with some arbitrary mage unit, it's the staff as a weapon.
This is simply not true whatsoever except for the "mage-only group" part (you need 2-3 warg spearmen, too!) For one thing, you can't build them until midgame. For the other, they do more damage than any other ranged unit for a simple reason: Despite the ranged staff having low damage (and it isn't really much lower than bows), and in case you missed it above, they COMPELETELY ignore defense. Not sure if you've noticed that or not. Also, you keep talking about resists as if it's really common to encounter them. It isn't, outside of the boss enemies and a few other outliers, and those are quite easy to prepare for by taking a turn or 2 to make a mage with a different element. If the AI actually used the resistance unit enchant, it would be a different story.
How exactly do you propose to always have a debuff for targets by midgame? Is there a secret spell research no one else knows about that adds this mystery debuff? Either you're an empire with Mass Curse, or you aren't. And guess what? Tarth is a Kingdom! It's also worth pointing out that staves have more initiative than any but the Tarth faction bows, which are equal, so good luck killing (properly designed) mages with them before they kill the archers first. The things you are saying, in general, are making me question whether we are actually playing the same game - as someone above said - or if you're just typing nonsense in the vein of "don't nerf me, bro!" Either that, or you never play without spamming Mass Curse to force the other weapons to be useful and don't design your own units
Guess I should have named this topic "Spears (and mages) are too good, and Curse sucks too!" Regardless of how much balance applies in a single player game, when there is only one strategy you need to win (said strategy being build a few spearmen, support with a few mages, enchant them both with overpowered Heart of Fire spell, kill everything on the map) then, well, it's just boring. This is why I would like to go back to the OP and my suggestion to add bonuses with certain weapon types as a racial trait (not a faction customizable thing, though it could be tied to the weapon perks instead, I guess.) That would be a great reason to say "Ok, these guys are good with hammers, guess I'll focus on those this game!" for a taste of something different, rather than relying on the same 2-3 units no matter who you are playing. That's something that I'm sure will be modded in rather quickly (if not, I'll do it myself) - but it would be nice to see more differentiation in the races from the get-go.
I`m played a little more an now I tend to agree that spears are very good - I`m using them much more than axe or mace troops. Maybe, like was already proposed in this thread, will be better if percentage remove of defense to be replaced with fixed (2-4 points for first type of spears to 10-12 for late-game spears). Or maybe remove it completely from spears (only for troops - heroes spears are good as they are) and add in back as activated ability that ignore 50% of defense but have a cooldown of 3.
As for the fire/cold mage staffs - I agree completely - they are very good. I`m not sure - are they affected by common magic resistance or just by specific elemental resistance (of corresponding type)? And I`m almost sure that they don`t use accuracy/evade mechanic - which I think they should.
Anyway - when I research them and ensure needed crystal and wargs (in the latest game I don`t have my source of wargs so I just trade them and it was very cheap) the game is suddenly very easy - just one or two units with mage-stafs change dynamics of hard battles. I don`t know the solution to this, but maybe the hart of fire is big part of the problem (it is too good! - maybe it will be better to just add one or just two points of fire attack - not tied to number of essence of the city), but it is just one side of the problem. Maybe the base damage (attack) of the staffs ought to be 2 point lower and to have some type of armors that have elemental resistance (the two starting cloaks with 25% fire/cold are good, but not enough) - maybe all the leather armor to have some cold or fire resistances. Or - maybe even better - someplace in the magic research three to have units traits that give 40% fire resistance (and 25% cold vulnerability for compensation) and vice versa.
And for compensation and to make magic-staff units interesting to use to add to them some kind of activated abilities - like attack with increased damage (150% attack) but with great cooldown (4-5) and some kind of spells - like vulnerability to corresponding element (for potential targets) and spell to increase elemental resistance to fire/cold for friendly targets. Or tied them to unit traits that can be researched (magic research tree). Again with high cooldown. And corresponding unit trait that gives unit high spell mastery (for higher chance for these spells to succeed). And a trait that give spell focus to unit.
That way it would be possible to make a real mage unit with some choice about what kind off spells (if we have several lower thier spells as unit-traits - like healing/cursing and giving low elemental resistance and vulnerabilities) for it to have. They could not be too strong because each spell will require a different trait (so no more than 3 spells or even fewer).
Anyway - to be back on topic. The problem with magic staffs is that it is relatively equal hard to gad to the first magic damage staffs and to first mundane missile weapons. The main difference is crystal cost involved but it is not so grade of hindrance (since it is not too difficult to get crystal). And magic ranged weapons are clearly better. Maybe they should have much greater initiative penalty then mundane missile weapons and it will be good to have some kind of starting mundane missile weapon (maybe a sling/staff sling weapon - low attack (3-4) and low initiative penalty (-3 or -4)).
Actually you can make mages in early game if you have access to crystal (or can trade for it).
I am not a mage unit fan, am using archers mainly as ranged source of damage. Mage atk is very low compared to other units available upgraded weapons (including bows and xbows). If we're talking about mid-end game, when units (well group of units) start to pack over 100hp and accuracy easily, where you can add 20% fire cold resist trait and also buff them with another resist spell (for which you have no answer in tactical combat), then dodge becomes less of a problem since accuracy always increases as a unit levels. I really doubt that a group of mages will beat a group of archers in this situation. And the later bows have lower initiative penalty similar to staves. Both units can be pimped with initiative boosting items.
spell resistance working against staffs might work. though i guess the spell resistance trait for units might need a little buff to make it worthwhile; if you have to face staff guys, you could make a "mage killer" unit with spell resistance and soldier's cloak. moving the abjuration spells (protection vs. fire / vs. cold) back to the tech tree could also help (at least for armies with a champion)
the bigger problem is probably not the player facing staff users, but the other way around - a player using mage staffs. maybe they should use up some mana to shoot or something. they might still be the ultimate weapon (sort of), but they'd now have a real cost attached. if a staff shot costs say 1-2 mana per use, a 5 man group of mages would use up 5 (or 10) mana per shot. you'd at least need a healthy mana supply to field an army of mages then. i guess that could work; or maybe instread of mana, they could use up a small amount of crystal per shot. don't know - might be a bit excessive
i don't really know if any of that is necessary, though. technically, you can get staff units quite early, but you need a lot of crystal to build them, so they really are more of a mid game thing. the natural counter to them is the same as for archers - have some cavalry that can bypass the melee meatshields and slaughter the range units; or bring your own range units an decimate theirs (in which case it once again boils down to an initiative race- the side that fires first wins).
If you check Pariden units, they have an early-mid game unit called Mage Killer. Is buffed with spell resist and elemental resists
I believe most of the problems regarding various unit types lies within AI inability to recognize them and adapt his units to counter them rather than lack of counters in a player's Arsenal.
The thing that makes Impale good design is how it emphasizes the tactical positioning of units. I would propose replacing this active ability with a passive mechanic that makes all tiles adjacent to the spear unit a deadzone, where they are unable to attack enemies or defend against melee attacks. In other words, spear units will only be able to damage enemies which are 2 tiles away. This would both encourage unit diversity (as you would need frontline troops in the deadzone tiles to protect the spear units) and emphasize tactical positioning. Properly positioned spear units would also be able to provide swarm bonus for adjacent friendly units.
I believe spearmen may have been used in a similar way historically as well.
I do not find spear superior to any other unit type. Each unit type has its advantages/disadvantages and the key is learning how to effectively deploy them. The hammer/mace units can be devastating as well. The bash trait can as effective if not more than the impale trait if appropriate tactics are employed. It has the advantage that you are not reliant on the opposition aligning themselves properly as is required by impale. Unit mix of the armies (both yours and the enemy's) has a lot to do with the effectiveness of any one unit type.
If there was multiplayer, I'd gladly challenge you to a spear vs hammer or spear versus axe duel. : )
I don't think anyone who's put time into LH thinks blunts and axes are useless. But against high-defense enemies, the armor piercing of spears is simply the best choice.
The best feature of blunts is no metal cost. But if you've got the metal...
yeah blunt isn't that great. my only real use for them is the no metal situation. in theory, they are be decent defenders, though. in a defensive battle, i think i'd prefer mace defenders over sword defenders. i rarely fight defensive battles, though, so this is kind of moot (for me, anyway)
Crushing blow is situational but very powerful. It can overcome defensive bonuses to an extent.
And most importantly, blunts allow shields.
I don't really get why all axes are two handed, while vast majority of axes used in medieval combat was one-handed, used with shield.
That's because the strongest axe is two handed. If you build on handed axes with shield early game you can not upgrade them to the stronger axe later because of the shield. It breaks the upgrade path. There were one handed axes originally, but they where changed to two handed for that reason. I think the opposite happened to the heaviest blunt weapon. It was two handed originally.
I will concede that with heavy armor, spears have a definite advantage. Most my games have been over before heavy armor has become common, so my opinion is skewed toward a non-heavy armor perspective. I have been playing at progressively higher levels of difficulty, so I will see first had how spears compare.
I only play on Ridiculous, and at that level the AI gets heavy armor quite quickly, and almost always long before you do yourself. It's practically impossible to win using anything but spears and mages... hence the topic
You put it as if YOU have to fight non stop and early on before you develop economy / research / spells to decent levels to tackle enemies. Can you do weak quests on Ridiculous and Insane with your starting militia and spearmen? Can you clear lairs of 2 spiders, pack of wolves etc early game? No you can't, unlike AI. On normal you can go on a map sweep with starting army and whatever you grab along until you can produce advanced (mounted) units to tackle harder enemies.
that's not entirely true. i mean, sure, you can't kill that stuff with just your starting troops, but (playing around with ridiculous world difficulty and dense monsters) it's definitely possible to clear ignis lairs or widow lairs with your sov, the first champ and 3 basic speamen units. harder stuff probably won't work without some weapon tech. but it's definitely not required to sit in your city and turtle until you can crank out cavalry or other such stuff. it may not be the best idea to tackle ignis lairs with such crap troops, but it's doable. in that particular game, my choice was either to kill the ignis or fight my way through a harridan lair to get my second city. i picked the lesser evil
Well, if I were going to adjust spears/polearms, I'd suggest the following:
1)Free pre-emptive strike against approaching enemies. As we really don't have facing implemented in this game (sure the models face a direction, but attack in any which direction), any time a unit moves adjacent to your unit, you get a pre-emptive attack due to your reach. This includes other spear units, as you are 'set' against their attack.
You know, as I remember, Kenata did something along these lines (set to defend) with spears in E:WOM. I'll need to look that up.
2) Impale only strikes the unit immediately behind if it misses the unit in the front. As a sub-ability, the spearman might choose to focus his strike on the second rank, attempting to bypass the first rank (still that chance of the first rank taking the hit), but that'd be another icon, and perhaps a little too complex for this crowd.
3) On second and subsequent rounds of combat, spears suffer a penalty against adjacent, non-spear opponents. Said opponents have passed within the 'reach' of the spear, and can knock the shaft aside. The spearman has to retract the spear, and has less 'reach' to get velocity on the weapon. This could also be accomplished with a first round of combat attack bonus, and a lower base attack value, which would probably be the cleaner way to approach this.
4) Spears on mounts get a charge bonus on the first round of combat, which is higher than said bonus for other weapons. Also, spears get a bonus against charging mounted units. This is why Cavalry just hated charging pike formations, and absolutely loved it when firearms made pikemen obsolete.
It'd be REALLY NICE if we had facing modifiers, and the ability to implement formations. But the current combat structure isn't set up for that. Greek phalanxes would be fun in the early-midgame!
Am not really sure peeps will keep using spears if they will get a penalty from being next to target. That pretty much makes them worst swarmers and I'd suppose the penalty would be negated by a full swarm bonus (full surround of attacked unit) so you end up doing normal damage no matter what you do.
Personally I never bring more than 1 spear unit (and that only precisely for the impale ability) I never use them as a frontline fighter, always preferring maces / axes / swords for that.
In my opinion, the only situation in which (especially) defensive spears have a clear competitor is if you have a Gilden Blood faction with wanderlust (athican tons of counterattack swords) that has fun using guarded strikes. Unfortunately, operation garded strike trolling would not work on enemies with spears.
In my opinion, remove either the defence ignore ability or the no counter attack ability.
Spears just have 1 or 2 "cool" feautures too many, no ini penalty, no counter attack and the defence ignore thing.
Impale is pretty much in line with the other special abilities, maybe even a bit weaker, but either the ini penalty, the no counter attack or the defence ignore thing should go to another weapon type.
Given that in real life, Axes and Blut weapons are a lot more armor piercing than spears, it should propably be changed to one of these.
Yes, you can, actually. Ridiculous AI has nothing to do with lair difficulty
he didn't actually write "Ridiculous AI" - pretty sure he meant ridiculous world difficulty (which increases monster level by 4, that's quite significant)
Makes sense.. But when I brought it up, I just meant I play vs ridiculous AI opponents, that get armor fast... nothing to do with lairs
Anyways, guess it's best to just leave this till the game releases and it's worthwhile to start modding!
Precisely. If you play on a set diff, use it both for world and AI, no point to make insane AI with weak world
You can make deals with AI (offering tribute or paying what they demand - which is only wise until you have a chance to fight back), but you can't with wandering monsters / lairs, hell not to mention events.
What will you do if you get the undead spawn on turn 15-30?
In my current game I got ~4 events back to back (couple turns difference) in my territory including: Syndicate spawns (elites with 100 atk, 225 hp, 90 armor), Gold Rush with Gold God (or w/e he's called) with insane defense / atk and aoe spells (and good spell resist as well as great initiative) and 3 lairs spawn events. I got 2 dragons, 2 mega ogres (the named shaman with groups of 4 ogres each, 100 atk etc), 1 air shrine with 2 Air elementals and filled slots with air shrills (lvl 10 the shrills), and an army of forsaken (2.2k army hp, groups of 5 butchers with crazy atk and the boss with mass fear at start of combat, fun fun). Not only did those give me several levels on my main army with 2 heroes in it, but those were crazy stuff! The next turn after spawn they started roaming and poaching and razing stuff, only choice I had was to cloud walk my main stack next to city and start the eradication process, no army with no hero or secondaries could have hope for a chance of success against those. And all this at same time when both beast lord and gold lover DoWed me (they were one on top and one on bottom creating a common front line to my right side, and they started to spam send groups of 600-900 hp armies on top with their heroes main stacks and beasts and stuff). If I had spell of making VC enabled I could have just sit in my furthest town from threats and win the game in 10 turns without having to deal with all that (and boy was tense every and each fight).
My main stack had a level 12 Assassin, a level 10 spellcaster, 2 mounted archers with 2nd bow upgrade, 2 mounted fire mages with 1st staff, 2 Forest defenders (crazy def 1h sword and board mounted) and 1 mounted Axe Riders with decent defense, rest dmg / accuracy optimized (with burning axes). Size of parties was 5 And this group cleared all the bad monsters (dragons included) while my other 3 heroes fended off the invaders replacing lost troops every turn from my 2 pimped up fortresses set on mass producing troops. Death Ward on all heroes every turn was a necessity, as well with all buffs available (only on the heroes, and I had evasion on everyone in main group).
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