Tzeentch ambush attack: needs tuning?

[(Steelclaw)]

Tzeentch teleport-attacking has very little counterplay right now.

Ambush defense chance doesn't apply, they can reinforce into the teleport with multiple armies, and it doesn't even allow retreating like normal ambushes do these days.

It's just no fun to play against. I understand that teleport stance has a Winds cost to enter, but there's nothing you can do about it from the receiving end. It would be fine if ambush defense chance applied, or if they couldn't reinforce it either. But frankly I think it's just stupid that it works the way it does.

Compare Skaven/Beastment/Nagarythe stalk stance. It also allows a super-Lightning Strike where the attacker's allies can reinforce but the defender's can't (which is already a little silly), but it allows retreating consistent with normal ambushes, and you can go into encamp stance (or pick an ambush-resistant lord/hero) to greatly reduce the chance that they'll land the ambush.

I'm aware that you can still garrison in a settlement to avoid ambush attacks, but I don't think it's reasonable to expect to always face Tzeentch in range of owned settlements.

I will freely admit I am coming at this fresh from the tilt of trying to fight 5 stacks of Tzeentch trash with 2 elite armies and a garrison, and getting split up and picked off. But I don't think I'm entirely wrong just because I'm tilted. :P

[IonizedMercury]

Nguyên văn bởi Zefar:

I declared war against Tzeentch and for about 50 turns I never once saw him. He was still alive but he did nothing. This was me being dwarfs and actually had to save the empire.

Do I need to own the DLC in order for him to attack me?
I even tried to find him but no luck there.

The AI won't attack you because being under pressure in a warfare strategy game was declared "not fun" by the scrubs on reddit.

[Zefar]

Nguyên văn bởi IonizedMercury:

Nguyên văn bởi Zefar:

I declared war against Tzeentch and for about 50 turns I never once saw him. He was still alive but he did nothing. This was me being dwarfs and actually had to save the empire.

Do I need to own the DLC in order for him to attack me?
I even tried to find him but no luck there.

The AI won't attack you because being under pressure in a warfare strategy game was declared "not fun" by the scrubs on reddit.

Pretty sure you're just trying to insult the coders of the game but every other AI in the game will attack any settlement that has no walls to sack or take it over when I'm at war with them.

Even going out of their way to seek out less defended ones.

[(Steelclaw)]

Nguyên văn bởi IonizedMercury:

Nguyên văn bởi (Steelclaw):

I don't believe bigger, more dramatic battles is inherently good compensation for factions which are weaker as a result of no longer having a tool which is annoying to play against. It's great for everyone else, but everyone else is not, actually, who's losing anything in this exchange.

I agree that teleport stance isn't a particularly cerebral mechanic, but I don't think "no mechanics at all, just be good at the base game" is really more lore-appropriate for Tzeentch (complexity is kinda his thing).

Weaker?

Really?

Beastmen have been massively overtuned ever since their rework. They need to be taken down several pegs to be interesting to play again.

Skaven haven't been weak ever since their first DLC back in WH2.

Alith Anar has all the perks of HE, he doesn't need to get overpowered advantages piled on top of it.

Tzeentch can simply steal settlements and mess with other faction's diplomacy at a negligible expense of non-essential resources (you have infinite tomes by midgame, just like any other resource thanks to bad balancing).

They don't need any such mechanics to thrive. And as I said for Tzeentch, he shouldn't have such brainless nonsense in the first place. He should require players to approach his campaigns with MORE thought rather than less.

And yes, getting more big battles is its own reward because...that's the prime attraction of TW after all.

I am not using "weaker" in an absolute power sense (I do think Skaven are one of the stronger factions just by virtue of their weapons teams), but rather with reference to how fun they are to play: my point is that stripping away mechanics from factions and leaving nothing to replace them leaves a faction with less going on. If I wanted something simple but extremely well balanced, I'd go play chess.

Beastmen: can't say much about playing as them, haven't done it. They already seem very weak in AI hands.

Skaven: they're okay, but they suffer from the standard problem of the pre-DLC LLs being very uninteresting to play and strictly worse than later LLs due to lack of mechanics, so I do think taking away one of the few interesting things they have would make them substantially less fun.

Alith Anar: similar to above, I'm very much not in favour of taking away one of the few differentiating things a faction has. "The baseline racial stuff is enough to win with" does not, to me, justify stripping a faction of one of its few unique features. Tyrion/Teclis are also fine balance-wise, but I (and the circles of WH3 players I run in) don't find them worth playing because they have very little interesting stuff going on to differentiate them from more complex HE factions.

Hard disagree on Tzeentch - sure, Changing of the Ways is really strong once you have infinite tomes, but teleport stance affects your viability before that point, and the resource scarcity stage of the game is the most challenging one and thus the one most important to ensure factions are strong enough in. I found Kairos' earlygame insufferable to play back in RoC days (though some of that's personal taste, and some of it would also have been the lack of CoC DLC mortals to prop up the weaknesses of Tzeentch's roster, and the bad replen).

It's clear we're coming at this from very different angles; you seem to think the entire game is too easy, and while this probably makes you qualified to speak for the portion of the playerbase that agrees with you, it does not mean you are objectively correct about difficulty, nor that veterans are the only ones whose skill level the game should be balanced around. (Let me also preemptively say, since I've seen people jump to conclusions about this kind of point, that I am also not suggesting balancing it purely around new players.) I understand that you probably disagree with this in its entirety, but you're very unlikely to change my mind on it, and I suspect I am also very unlikely to change yours, so I doubt it's worth arguing about - agree to disagree.

But even if I say for the sake of argument that the game is too easy and needs to be harder, I don't think taking away teleport stance (or several of the other things I've seen you suggest) would actually fix that problem. The "game too easy" problem is, from my perspective and what I've seen of other people complaining about it, born of the AI being dumb far more than it is of any individual balancing decision. I would love for this to get fixed, but I really don't think it will, given that it's probably to some extent baked into the mountain of spaghetti the code is built on.

Finally I'd say that if you want a hard game, play a hard faction - don't ask for easier factions not to exist. (I'm not going to tell you to go play another game, but I do wonder if you'd be happier that way - I'm pretty sure there are strategy games a lot more hardcore than this one, although I don't follow the turn-based strategy community at the moment. You might also look into rebalance/AI modding for TWH3 if you haven't already.) A mixture of faction difficulties is very healthy for the game, and lets it be enjoyable to a wider variety of players.

That might sound like it contradicts my point about taking things away from factions, but my primary objections there are 1) I don't want them to be too much easier to play against, and 2) I don't want them to be made simpler, especially the ones which already don't have a lot of unique mechanics.

I absolutely agree that Tzeentch campaigns should need a lot of thought to play optimally. But reducing the complexity of the faction is not a good path to that.

(Also, disagree with the idea that more big battles = inherently good, and strategic map gameplay should be sacrificed in favour of bigger fights. I do like me a good hard fight, but if that was all that mattered, I would just go play skirmish rather than starting campaigns.)

[Garatgh Deloi]

Nguyên văn bởi IonizedMercury:

And yes, getting more big battles is its own reward because...that's the prime attraction of TW after all.

For you maybe, i doubt 40 x 40 units battles are that fun for everyone (and yes, you can turn off big armies, but having a endless drip of reinforcements is hardly fun either).

[IonizedMercury]

Nguyên văn bởi (Steelclaw):

(Also, disagree with the idea that more big battles = inherently good, and strategic map gameplay should be sacrificed in favour of bigger fights. I do like me a good hard fight, but if that was all that mattered, I would just go play skirmish rather than starting campaigns.)

Offensive ambush deducts from the gameplay by dumbing the game down and giving the player even more advantages over the crippled, cowardly and lobotmized AI.

Giving you cheap ways to cheat your way around big battles is baffingly idiotic when that's the main selling point of this series. I repeat, in all TWWH games, I got exactly one such battle and only because this stupid mechanic misfired. On every other occasion either the AI bend over for me or I had some other tool to force the AI into 1v1 (or 3v1s since offensive ambush for whatever stupid reason allows you to reinforce but not the target).

And before you say "just don't use it", well, that's not really much of a glowing endorsement of those mechanics, is it?

Ambush is balanced by requiring the enemy to fall for it. Offensive ambush is "balanced" (giant air quotes here) by being RNG. So it can trigger if you don't want it and not trigger when you want it, so it's impossible to plan around its use. And you don't even get a choice of using it if you want to be the proactive one while Tzeentch's teleport nonsense has no counterplay at all. That's TERRIBLE design. CA has this very bad habit of making mechanics non-interactive and that removes a ton of possible depth.

---

Also, if you don't like big spectacular real time battles, what are you even playing TW for? If you want depth on the campaign layer, I recommend PDX games over this series.

[(Steelclaw)]

Nguyên văn bởi IonizedMercury:

Nguyên văn bởi (Steelclaw):

(Also, disagree with the idea that more big battles = inherently good, and strategic map gameplay should be sacrificed in favour of bigger fights. I do like me a good hard fight, but if that was all that mattered, I would just go play skirmish rather than starting campaigns.)

Offensive ambush deducts from the gameplay by dumbing the game down and giving the player even more advantages over the crippled, cowardly and lobotmized AI.

Giving you cheap ways to cheat your way around big battles is baffingly idiotic when that's the main selling point of this series. I repeat, in all TWWH games, I got exactly one such battle and only because this stupid mechanic misfired. On every other occasion either the AI bend over for me or I had some other tool to force the AI into 1v1 (or 3v1s since offensive ambush for whatever stupid reason allows you to reinforce but not the target).

And before you say "just don't use it", well, that's not really much of a glowing endorsement of those mechanics, is it?

Ambush is balanced by requiring the enemy to fall for it. Offensive ambush is balanced by being RNG. So it can trigger if you don't want it and not trigger when you want it, so it's impossible to plan around its use. And you don't even get a choice of using it if you want to be the proactive one while Tzeentch's teleport nonsense has no counterplay at all. That's TERRIBLE design. CA has this very bad habit of making mechanics non-interactive and that removes a ton of possible depth.

---

Also, if you don't like big spectacular real time battles, what are you even playing TW for? If you want depth on the campaign layer, I recommend PDX games over this series.

I literally started the thread to say I don't like the way offensive ambush works right now. xD I'm not endorsing the current state, I'm arguing against removing content from factions which are barren without it, without leaving anything to replace it. I think reworking teleport or giving Tzeentch a new mechanic to replace it would both be fine options.

At no point did I say I don't like the big battles (in fact, I specifically spoke up in favour of hard fights), only that they are not the be-all and end-all of the game. Of course the campaign map gameplay isn't as complex and I don't expect it to be, but that doesn't mean it doesn't matter. You are missing the nuance of what I say and responding as if I've taken the position in the opposite extreme to yours rather than just one not in full agreement.

I would appreciate it if you could be politer. Nobody's insulting your grandmother's fidelity; you don't need to imply that everyone you disagree with is an idiot every other paragraph. :P

[IonizedMercury]

Nguyên văn bởi (Steelclaw):

I literally started the thread to say I don't like the way offensive ambush works right now. xD I'm not endorsing the current state, I'm arguing against removing content from factions which are barren without it, without leaving anything to replace it. I think reworking teleport or giving Tzeentch a new mechanic to replace it would both be fine options.

Then feel free to brainstorm what you'd put in its place. I for my part think they should just go away and that'd be the end of it. Consider however that any mechanic you'd put in its place should be 100% be used as much by the AI as well as the player, so it needs to be both fun to use and to counter.

The game is full of bad mechanics so some culling is absolutely in order.

[(Steelclaw)]

Nguyên văn bởi Tunguska:

Beastmen: Don't judge them by how AI plays, seriously. Don't judge any faction by that. Beastmen are absurdly strong.

Skaven: This is true.

Helves: Again, agree.

Tzeentch (Kairos): He just needs replenish, and his campaign would be far better. His mechanics are pretty broken later and all, but not like that's exclusive to him. If they get
some proper balancing, other things would need it too, and probably more. Still, they should at least make it so either neither side can reinforce teleport battles, or both can.

In terms of difficulty, maybe just make playing the game require a brain? The current balancing and AI are absolute trash. If you want it easier (that is, have a case of SKILL ISSUE), the difficulty slider is right there.

I don't like bigger battles in this game. It usually just devolves into a blob fight (and you can camp map border to further dumb it down), the AI can't manage 20 units, so what about several times that? There's not much of a strategy in those battles (not that there ever is, in a singleplayer campaign), which is pretty funny for a strategy game.

Beastmen: fair! I've never played as them and only a little alongside them in co-op, so I really don't know them very well, but their LLs and minotaurs/gorebulls seem solid.

Tzeentch: pretty much agree on both Kairos and Changeling, very much hoping to see Changeling nerfs on the horizon with the SoC update. I don't love the current Tzeentch mechanics, but I've never liked playing as them enough to get to the point where you can just autowin with Changing of the Ways.

Difficulty: I maintain that the issue is AI stupidity, predictability, and exploitability more than it is general balance. I also don't love the way difficulty scaling works - partly because it fails to prop up the dumbass AI, partly because I dislike player handicaps as a way of doing difficulty adjustment in any game, and partly because Legendary is poorly-implemented (I'd take actual difficulty above VH in a heartbeat, but enforced ironman just makes it incompatible with multiplayer because of the multiplayer bugs, crashes, and generally unstable netcode causing saves to get bricked in ironman - ironman and no-pausing-in-battle should definitely be their own toggles, not baked into Legendary).

Difficulty slider also only does so much compared to the difficulty of the faction, and I like that too. Zhao Ming (Legendary/VH) probably isn't easier than Daemon Prince (Easy/Easy), but it probably is easier than Daemon Prince (Hard/Hard).

I don't think the game itself is fundamentally brainless, just overly exploitable, in large part due to the AI. I'm also not sure that should be entirely reversed, just toned down a lot - a theoretical perfect AI would be functionally unbeatable, and I don't imagine that would be much fun. There's a balance to be struck - most people don't want an AI that plays perfectly and can't be beaten, and most people also don't want a braindead AI which just rolls over.

Big battles: this is why I said I like hard battles, not big battles. Some of the most challenging, interesting fights I've had have been small and long, the kind which go on enough for your archers to run out of ammo and have to melee. 60v60 battles are not just beyond the AI's capacity to manage, they're also not humanly microable (unless you want to spend 80% of the time paused, I suppose - not that I don't use pause, but the pause requirements for microing a huge army are, well, huge), and I find the micro more interesting than the macro (though they both have their charms).

Nguyên văn bởi IonizedMercury:

Nguyên văn bởi (Steelclaw):

I literally started the thread to say I don't like the way offensive ambush works right now. xD I'm not endorsing the current state, I'm arguing against removing content from factions which are barren without it, without leaving anything to replace it. I think reworking teleport or giving Tzeentch a new mechanic to replace it would both be fine options.

Then feel free to brainstorm what you'd put in its place. I for my part think they should just go away and that'd be the end of it. Consider however that any mechanic you'd put in its place should be 100% be used as much by the AI as well as the player, so it needs to be both fun to use and to counter.

The game is full of bad mechanics so some culling is absolutely in order.

Fair! *shrug* I have no particular ideas for Tzeentch mechanics at this time; they're not really my faction of choice. I do think it's reasonable to have the opinion "devs should make more content for X" without doing the creative legwork for them, though.

[IonizedMercury]

Nguyên văn bởi (Steelclaw):

Fair! *shrug* I have no particular ideas for Tzeentch mechanics at this time; they're not really my faction of choice. I do think it's reasonable to have the opinion "devs should make more content for X" without doing the creative legwork for them, though.

That's how we got the siege "rework". People need to have a general idea of what they want and give pointers about it to minimize the risk of getting something really stupid.

If you have no idea whatsoever, then it's better if the mechanics are just scrapped and not replaced with anything. Because just not having them is better than them getting replaced with something even worse.

[(Steelclaw)]

Nguyên văn bởi IonizedMercury:

Nguyên văn bởi (Steelclaw):

Fair! *shrug* I have no particular ideas for Tzeentch mechanics at this time; they're not really my faction of choice. I do think it's reasonable to have the opinion "devs should make more content for X" without doing the creative legwork for them, though.

That's how we got the siege "rework". People need to have a general idea of what they want and give pointers about it to minimize the risk of getting something really stupid.

If you have no idea whatsoever, then it's better if the mechanics are just scrapped and not replaced with anything. Because just not having them is better than them getting replaced with something even worse.

Indeed that is how we got garbage TWH3 siege, but I think I still prefer this timeline over one where siege was scrapped entirely and we only got field battles. (Partly because it's gotten better since release, though I'm not sure whether I prefer what we have now over TWH2 siege or not.)

My impression is also that people also did have a lot of alternate suggestions for how siege should work? (Though I'm not sure whether any of those player suggestions were actually listened to.) I wasn't very active in the Steam community in those days, but I do think I remember a lot of suggestions regarding siege changes, not just complaints.

[Da_Higg]

My recollection of Game 2's life cycle was mostly people asking for 360 sieges, which we got and fighting minor settlement battles inside the settlements which we also got.