Unit variety

[Dumbledood]

Every time I play survival, I end up using mostly bulwarks and arbalests, supported by my hero, a few healers, and a variety of artillery.

My gut feeling is that this is fairly meta in the game. All the siege engines can be useful, and I think spamming archers might also work, but would be a little sketchy, I haven't tried it later.

The game is pretty fun, but I think it needs more unit variety. What about you?

[Crypto Gamer]

Game has enough units but their viability is not as good.

And especially no regen health(and armor)kills melee units viability especially if gotten early on at DN1.

Mass bursters and spiders too can counter melee very well and crushers also counter melee.

Mass spitters are more common the higher the difficulty(enemy count) so mass melee can melt fast from AOE and also needs more micro(to dodge aoe) and nightmare difficulty has no pause so APM is a factor.

You can likely not win with melee only above normal but you can win with range only on most difficulties.
And range+siege on all diffs.

So most melee units are primary useful for clearing tier 1 and 2 zones faster and cheaper than ranged units.
Usually with attack speed 1 and 2.

After that only"sentinel"is useful for tanking stuff whilts clearing and semi useful for wave defence.
Some players skips melee and only use sentinels in that case more hp is likely better.

Volatist has better melee so they can likely even clear tier 3 very fast especially female hero with 30 second buff and mass cultists can clear very fast even if losses are great basically zerlings.

Warlock buff+pikeman is also very strong.

Ranged units wise.

Archer(rebbelion has better archers)

They can be used early on for DN 1-2 defence and tier 1-2 clearing depending on build order but can also be skipped.

ONLY if you take flaming arrows they have a use late game.
Very big masses of flaming arrow archer can defence wave but space inefficient and likely bad againts multi wave attacks.

And they need tons of micro in late tier 3 areas as spitters outrange them,priotise them and 2 shots them.
So you can easily lose crap loads of them very fast.(learnt the hard way).

Still they are the ONLY tier 1 unit which actually has a use in late game defence.
And very big masses of FA archers only can still win on final stand.(but not optimal).

Among tier 2.

Sentinel is basically a tank is optional but useful to have a few.

Healer is an okay unit,if have many melee and you get no regen malice she can still heal so that can be a factor too.

Rogue:I do not use her,but likely again few can be used to clear tier 1-2 but they have zero value in wave defence so you need to factor that too.
1-2 can be used to scout POIs and resource fields so might worth the invesment.

Hunter and arbalest are CORE units:
Easier to micro in big numbers can counter spitters and also counter to crusher which no one else counters(well) so they are useful for all game clearing and wave defence.
Expensive but light on micro and is always on high priority.

Hunter,arbalest only is viable but expensive.

For voltalist wave defence warlocks can also be used for damage as a better archers that still not cost food.So arbalest+warlock is very strong.
But arbalest only can be good too.


Siege:

Flamer:Got nerfed many many times.(as it was op).

Basically general anti"trash"core unit useful in clearing and defence while behind walls or towers.MUCH better than the grand below tower.

Impaler got buffed many many times.(it was bugged and up).

Basically alternative to flamers more jack of all trades and can shred.
Also can survive 1 burster explosion.
Useful for clearing and defence depending on many factors.
1-2 can be useful just for knock back support while flamers,ranged clears.

Warlock(Voltalist only) horrified impalers are very viable.


Order only catapult also got nerfed a few times(was super op).

Usually flamer+catas are good but with VERY strong eco cata only is good.

Due to big AOE and high range order is likely the only faction that can survive all 5 waves to a single spot on higher diffs.

Other factions likely want max 2 waves per choke especially rebbelion.

Cata is very slow for clearing and needs to be in siege but very strong defence againts all expect crusher againts him you still need arbalest.

That said VERY big mass of catas can only by themselves and tons of walls can win the game but risky depends on eco RNG and less optimal.

[Rin]

Rebellion def needs it's niche units like the Order, i.e Balista with flame arrows assuming Catapults is a no-go or units with torches for both range and horror removal. So maybe a fire mage of some sort?

Meanwhile Sentinels should be made into Crusaders/Paladins/Zealots(?) for the Rebellion while the Order should stay as it is since it fits their style.

Voltalists should definitely incorporate some warlock/necromancer elements like reviving dead and kinda play like the Zerg, so a bunch of cannon fodder and casters more or less.

Assuming the game isn't gonna evolve past what is currently avail AND most importantly POSSIBLE without breaking the flow I guess casters is out of the picture.

The thing is also that past a certain point most units become useless unless map variety is expanded upon because past DN3 you are mostly running around with 3 types of units at any given time unless you mix max/micro hard.

[Dumbledood]

I dunno man, I see what you're saying but since you mentioned Starcraft, I'm pretty sure any single faction in that game has more units than are available to you in this game. Unit variety is a big part of replayability, because a lot of the fun of RTS games is finding different strategies that work. I'm not trying to ♥♥♥♥ on the game at all, I think it's fun, and pretty good actually. It's still early access too so there's room for more, and adding more units would probably make it feel more worthwhile for people. I've also seen people talking about MP, I'm not sure how that would work, whether they mean as co-op or some kind of VS situation, but that sounds interesting.

Also, one of my favorite things about the game is the difference in playstyle that the different heroes bring. So more of those would also be good, but now that there are six, maybe units should be the priority? I dunno what else have they have planned atm. My favorite hero so far is probably still the empress lady with the guard summoning mechanic. She was really interesting to learn. But they've all been fun. They remind me of WC3's heroes, and that game was awesome. I haven't played since the last three heroes came out, so gave the tanky axe guy a try last night, and will try archer guy tonight. I'm sick so I have time to kill.

[Dumbledood]

Also, Crypto Gamer, thanks for the write up bro. That's very useful info. I like learning stuff myself but sometimes it's nice to hear some other strategies and it's also good to get some confirmation on how I felt about melee viability.

[Crypto Gamer]

Yes melee has more limited viability but if you use Auleria with her 30 second crystal buff masses of cultists with all attack speed can clear most of the map even tier 3 and even with losses might worth the faster economy gain than using expensive units.


Strarcraft was a AAA game with one of the best balance even today.

They are billions has 7 units and 1 of them is under powered for cost and another 1 is situationaly useful due to friendly fire.

You can easily win using 3 unit types.

So AOD is much closer to TAB and has more units and even heroes and both are indie games far away from AAA budget.


Defence wise:

Basic ballista optionally for wave 1 and 2 defence and for general colony defence walled in all game long againts night roamers and pester waves.

Usually 2 ballista if it is in tier 3 zone.
Otherwise 1 is almost always enough.

Grand below tower is underpowered since 0.62 more expensive and worse than a single flamer who can also move.......

So it has no use expect if you use no flamers and flaming arrow ranged at all than 1 tower might worth the weak 4 fire dot in a wave defence.....

Grand ballista got cost reduction so now it is okay.
If playing order catapult is basically better for not much more cost and can move.

Otherwise it is a good support tower likely for DN5 and FS ONCE you already have ranged and siege ready.

Unlike most RTS games defence towers are much weaker and very space inefficient.
1 grand ballista is same space as 12-16 arbalest which kill a crusher much faster.

Space efficiency starts to matter past wave 2.

Important ALL buildings and static defences are very bad(for space and cost) againts crushers who also deal around 250% dmg to buildings in a big aoe(unless recent patch changed them).

So you always want the ranged counter againts crusher ready FIRST for DN3 and above before anything else.

So that is usually arbalest or hunters in towers on high prio.
Now mass flaming archers could also works but much harder to micro and need more towers so more space taken less range worse againts multi wave attacks.
Mass warlock can also work or arb/hunter+warlock or archer.

If there is no crusher counter you defences will likely get crushed and melee is also very bad againts them as they take aoe damage from him usually dying in 2 hits+spitter and bursters will also kill melee.

After crusher counter is done "trash counter" is needed.

That is flamers if going for aoe.They kill axeman and crawlers well.

If going for speed and or knockback you should use implalers.

Slightly worse againts trash but also has support shred and knockback againts spitters and crushes.+you can have more walls due to higher range.


Order only catapults with strong eco can basically replace all other units expect arbalest as crushes still needs to be countered.

And flamer+catapult is cheaper and often more realistic than catapult only.

But if final defence choke point is more than 2 waves or especially if it is all 5 waves at once catapults is best by far due to high range and aoe.

[yuuta]

Can always rely on Crypto for such a thorough breakdown! Feel free to join our discord community Dumbledood. There are a couple more gracious people like Crypto who are generous enough to take the time to strategise and help out!

[Vvv]

i do wish they either add more unit variety and maybe unit evolution like stronger versions of basic fighters.

Because right now I cannot but agree with OP, you only have few options available for late game, For example I just played with Aurelia and sure she's fun, reminds me a bit of Edwin but still different. The debut did feel different with the cultists which was nice but as you go towards end game melee becomes obsolete and you are pretty much forced to do mass arbs or hunters. Archers with rebellion work also well since they're faster and do more dmg. Give them fire arrows and they will over-perform their tier.

If no more unit variety it would be nice that end game would feel different for all 3 factions because right now it's almost exclusively arbs/hunters. I still think armour mechanic as it is now ruins everything because once your mighty armour is down it's useless and it's a waste of time to go and repair it.

So I really do hope that they either add more units or elite variants of said units or that they do something of making melee more viable even late game because right now all 3 factions end up being the same towards the mid-end game.

[Crypto Gamer]

Auleria actually with dark fury can make clearing with pikeman and cultists fast and kinda good too so they are viable.
You can have above 25 dmg pikeman killing stuff at 0.8 attack speed......

Armor restoring is simple you build a triage center(20 second build time).
If units are out of combat then even under construction triage already restores 10% armor inside the grey zone each second.

Going from 0 to 100% armor takes 10 seconds.
You never want to go back for armor unless it is within 5 seconds and wave defence chokes always benefit from triage center.

So if you were already resting(units start to regen health)than place a triage down wait 10 seconds and cancel for 100% back everyone is full armor.

Triage healing only works if it is already fully built.

Triage center(the only building)that can be refunded for 100% cost back and can move with the "frontline".


That said melee is still worse than in 0.71 pre armor but better than every other post armor version.

Weaken malice alone kills melee while -15% range in tower(used to be 25%)still bad but managable.

Buildings dying do damage malice can also make melee very very bad.

Tier 3 burster deals 225 dmg and 50 shred so melee alwaays needs more micro cause they can mass die easily even worse they charge into them.

Sadly crushes also counters melee hard even harder than in 0.71 cause now they have armor.

Even in 0.71 1 crusher could take on 60-70 soldiers......
But soldiers could clear all the map even on nightmare faster than most.(expect elite crushers).

Voltalist melee emboldened bonus also got nerfed so now it is outdamage by horrifed rookies......

But yes game could have elite variants or allow dismissing early tier units cause they are mostly for early-mid game clearing and DN 1-2.

I send cultists to die in tier 3 cause they take up too many population for later units.

And they have almost zero value in wave defence DN 3 and above.
I would dismiss them for 50% cost back(eg. TAB)or have a ritual building that kills them and gives a strong unit or dark crystal resource.


Archers can works all game long IF you give them fire arrows.
And of course rebbelion ones have faction bonus.

Very big mass archers can win waves too but map clearing is much harder and micro heavy.


That said melee ultimates are much weaker.
Flame arrows helps clearing and wave defence and also increases damage especially for archers againts armor.(very strong againts bursters).

Melee has charge that gives 50% increases MS and has zero value in defence.
Ignore horrify tree is useless(so does ranged emboldened).

Reflect 20% dmg back hm maybe could use okay for sentinels not sure if 20% is affected by armor.(might test in that case only 6% gets reflected back.)

That is so much weaker than +50% dmg and shred tower perk.....



So weaken malice needs nerf.(2 other strongest malices already got nerfed)-

Building explode malice is fine but maybe could be DN3+ only roll so early melee is safer.

Melee ultimate 25 dark crystals perks all need buffs.

Ignore horrify could be replaced with reduce aoe damage taken by %.
AOE is bursters,spitter and non primary targets of crushers.

Health tree is fine reflect needs % increase and also reflect back shred if not already.

Charge could also have slight bonus damage upon impact or small chance to stun.
Attack speed tree by itself is fine.

Sentinel is cheap but cost 2 food like arbalest and hunter but has much less viable roles.

Eg.50 flamer or impalers is always going to be better than 75 sentinels.

So Sentinel need a slight cost increase and food lowered to 1.

Now 50 flamer vs 150 sentinel is not as bad.


Triage center restoring armor should be very clear,most ingame tutorials do NOT mention it.

Each faction could also get a weak combat support armorer who basically heals armor even in combat eg.like order healer but for armor can be on auto cast.



In current game many things are viable even mass warlocks and impalers can win with no arbalest.

OR mass FA rebbelion archers.

You can win with zero flamers cause impalers are finally viable.

So game is better than 0.81 arb+flamer+(catapult if order) everything else sucks"balance".

[Vvv]

Originally posted by Crypto Gamer:

Auleria actually with dark fury can make clearing with pikeman and cultists fast and kinda good too so they are viable.
You can have above 25 dmg pikeman killing stuff at 0.8 attack speed......

Armor restoring is simple you build a triage center(20 second build time).
If units are out of combat then even under construction triage already restores 10% armor inside the grey zone each second.

Going from 0 to 100% armor takes 10 seconds.
You never want to go back for armor unless it is within 5 seconds and wave defence chokes always benefit from triage center.

So if you were already resting(units start to regen health)than place a triage down wait 10 seconds and cancel for 100% back everyone is full armor.

Triage healing only works if it is already fully built.

Triage center(the only building)that can be refunded for 100% cost back and can move with the "frontline".


That said melee is still worse than in 0.71 pre armor but better than every other post armor version.

Weaken malice alone kills melee while -15% range in tower(used to be 25%)still bad but managable.

Buildings dying do damage malice can also make melee very very bad.

Tier 3 burster deals 225 dmg and 50 shred so melee alwaays needs more micro cause they can mass die easily even worse they charge into them.

Sadly crushes also counters melee hard even harder than in 0.71 cause now they have armor.

Even in 0.71 1 crusher could take on 60-70 soldiers......
But soldiers could clear all the map even on nightmare faster than most.(expect elite crushers).

Voltalist melee emboldened bonus also got nerfed so now it is outdamage by horrifed rookies......

But yes game could have elite variants or allow dismissing early tier units cause they are mostly for early-mid game clearing and DN 1-2.

I send cultists to die in tier 3 cause they take up too many population for later units.

And they have almost zero value in wave defence DN 3 and above.
I would dismiss them for 50% cost back(eg. TAB)or have a ritual building that kills them and gives a strong unit or dark crystal resource.


Archers can works all game long IF you give them fire arrows.
And of course rebbelion ones have faction bonus.

Very big mass archers can win waves too but map clearing is much harder and micro heavy.


That said melee ultimates are much weaker.
Flame arrows helps clearing and wave defence and also increases damage especially for archers againts armor.(very strong againts bursters).

Melee has charge that gives 50% increases MS and has zero value in defence.
Ignore horrify tree is useless(so does ranged emboldened).

Reflect 20% dmg back hm maybe could use okay for sentinels not sure if 20% is affected by armor.(might test in that case only 6% gets reflected back.)

That is so much weaker than +50% dmg and shred tower perk.....



So weaken malice needs nerf.(2 other strongest malices already got nerfed)-

Building explode malice is fine but maybe could be DN3+ only roll so early melee is safer.

Melee ultimate 25 dark crystals perks all need buffs.

Ignore horrify could be replaced with reduce aoe damage taken by %.
AOE is bursters,spitter and non primary targets of crushers.

Health tree is fine reflect needs % increase and also reflect back shred if not already.

Charge could also have slight bonus damage upon impact or small chance to stun.
Attack speed tree by itself is fine.

Sentinel is cheap but cost 2 food like arbalest and hunter but has much less viable roles.

Eg.50 flamer or impalers is always going to be better than 75 sentinels.

So Sentinel need a slight cost increase and food lowered to 1.

Now 50 flamer vs 150 sentinel is not as bad.


Triage center restoring armor should be very clear,most ingame tutorials do NOT mention it.

Each faction could also get a weak combat support armorer who basically heals armor even in combat eg.like order healer but for armor can be on auto cast.



In current game many things are viable even mass warlocks and impalers can win with no arbalest.

OR mass FA rebbelion archers.

You can win with zero flamers cause impalers are finally viable.

So game is better than 0.81 arb+flamer+(catapult if order) everything else sucks"balance".

Problem with triage center is that it is counter intuitive. It's a decrease in fun and it's backwards thinking as of now imho. Before the armour mechanic, you did not need to stop and take time to build a building to repair your armour because your units would simply heal as they go to another area while armour existed simply as dmg reduction. Even worse I am still not sure if you can repair the armour of the buildings...

I am not saying the armour mechanic is bad as a mechanic but how it is implemented right now for the way the game is supposed to be played. Resources matter meaning your goal is to max the cost effectiveness of your actions mostly for later difficulties. Even if triage center is 100% refunded you still need initial resources to build which might prevent you from building something else at that precise moment also meaning you will have to stop your advance to repair unit armour. I even think that manned towers could offer to repair armour because those actually can serve a purpose to guard certain roads while you're busy exploring elsewhere.

Same thing with melee it's not that they're bad because they're melee, they can kill just as good as ranged and even faster in many cases. The problem again is how cost effective they are vs ranged units. If this game did not have a time limit and resource limit none of these question would matter and I would not even complain about armour and would find the triage center building just fine, but as of now the way the game is played it's simply not a mechanic that adds fun imo, especially in the case of buildings.

Other than that I agree with many of the things you say. Melee counters are just to fatal compared to ranged. One mistake and poof a burster will take almost all your front line as example. The way this game looks, melee units are supposed to be what protects the ranged units but as of now they are obsolete because ranged units do not need melee to protect them and in almost every case just distracting with your hero is enough to give some time for your ranged to deal with anything.

Anyway it's still early access so who knows how the game will turn out. I just like this game, how it looks and love to talk about it.

Cheers

[Dumbledood]

@Crypto

I didn't know that triage centers repaired armor. That's really cool. I was putting my workshops close-ish to a couple of my defense points and occasionally running people back.

Also didn't know that sentinels had a chance to stun, that makes them a bit stronger. Although I did think so, just hadn't read it.

I agree with your suggestions about balancing sentinels, since the equivalent cost of other units you mentioned is just a lot more valuable due to their ability to kill stuff or stun it and let buildings tank more.

[Raymond]

man, I was looking to redownload the game to see what the devs been up too. I am very disappointed that arbalests is still the no-brainer choice after all these years.

Man, what's with the obsession that sniper units gotta be op in these kind of game? I was hoping this would have turn out to be more than just medieval reskin of They are billions

[Crypto Gamer]

Now to be fair arbalest used to cost 300 gold(like TAB) and had I think 30 dmg with "powerful perk".Before that 50 dmg but no powerful.

powerul=(doubled dmg againts wraith,spitter,cursher)

It likely recieved over 10 nerfs so it is 600 gold 2 food 20 dmg and the"powerful perk"got removed+attack speed and movement speed nerfs and buffs.



But current game version is kinda good it just need some tweaks.

Because impalers got so many buffs they are also viable(took 2 years) and it good enough for map clearing shred.

Bursters now also have 50% projectile resistance,so ranged kills them very slowly.
And they also got hp buff and even armor from 0.71.

Albeit fire arrow"fire" deals full damage and burster fire damage explosion is increased and that fire damage can cause chain burster explosion too and kill close nightmares.

Pikemen can actually kill burster if they focus on them with good enough attack speed as they get knocked back. provided other low range melee untis do not reach.
And melee does 100% dmg to them including flamers.

Melee can often clear map faster and cheaper but you also have to factor in defensive value.

Auleria dark fury clears very very fast with melee so you can get bigger eco for ranged who can focus more on defence.So often worth it over slow attack speed archer.
Few arbalest is still good primary to kill spitters.

ON above nightmare difficulty melee is RNG even if it could clear 2x as fast.
You can get permanent no regen or building die do damage(kills melee)so you can not risk them.

If ranged gets-15% range in tower malice(used to be-25% before that -50% "insta fail"....)it hurts but manegeable and you expect to get it so you slightly over defend.

And of course as nightmare+ is no pause you have limited apm and melee has increased APM requirements especially in wave defence.

So melee will still need further buffs.



Grand below tower worth like half a flamer for more cost,space taken with noway to move.

So that needs a major buffs since 0.62 and especially since 0.8 cause armor took the"impact" dmg down from 12 to 6.4 againts armored axemen.

So because that tower is very weak it has very rare cases it needs to be used.
Especially if you can just make 1-2 flamers.

And its fire dot likely will be get overwritten by the"strongest dot"mechanics.....

Grand below maybe could even get 50% cooldown decreases that doubles its dps.

Some suggested that grand below could be a support tower with current weak damage.

Eg.units who burn from belows do take 25% more shred damage.

Game could also benefit from 1 anti crusher defensive building.

[SpaceCat]

Originally posted by Dumbledood:

I dunno man, I see what you're saying but since you mentioned Starcraft, I'm pretty sure any single faction in that game has more units than are available to you in this game. Unit variety is a big part of replayability, because a lot of the fun of RTS games is finding different strategies that work. I'm not trying to ♥♥♥♥ on the game at all, I think it's fun, and pretty good actually. It's still early access too so there's room for more, and adding more units would probably make it feel more worthwhile for people. I've also seen people talking about MP, I'm not sure how that would work, whether they mean as co-op or some kind of VS situation, but that sounds interesting.

That's what's fun about SC, you can build mass marines, ultras, zerglings or any clever combinations without being op and each of them has a counter. It's always fun theory crafting what build can work each time.

I hope the devs can soon figure out how to fix the problem of only ranged high dps units to be the only reliable answer to special enemies

[Vvv]

Originally posted by SpaceCat:

Originally posted by Dumbledood:

I dunno man, I see what you're saying but since you mentioned Starcraft, I'm pretty sure any single faction in that game has more units than are available to you in this game. Unit variety is a big part of replayability, because a lot of the fun of RTS games is finding different strategies that work. I'm not trying to ♥♥♥♥ on the game at all, I think it's fun, and pretty good actually. It's still early access too so there's room for more, and adding more units would probably make it feel more worthwhile for people. I've also seen people talking about MP, I'm not sure how that would work, whether they mean as co-op or some kind of VS situation, but that sounds interesting.

That's what's fun about SC, you can build mass marines, ultras, zerglings or any clever combinations without being op and each of them has a counter. It's always fun theory crafting what build can work each time.

I hope the devs can soon figure out how to fix the problem of only ranged high dps units to be the only reliable answer to special enemies

True, age of empire 2 that is still very popular is also a great example of many units being relevant from beginning to end.