Broken mechanics lead to unballance

[Sartarius]

I will be short (played for 60 hours alchemist campaign only) and I can say this game is very good but it has serious issues. Played on ballanced difficulty, first and only run by now.

It can be insanly hard on start and very easy in mid-late game. The point is there are so many ways you can buff your stack that AI has 0 chances at all. After some point you can just summon t3 golems for 1 AP each... So you can just craft crowns and win any fight.

You can buff your stack with resists/immunity and weaken enemy with -resists, buff archers with +range and you will 1-2 shot any unit. Lots and lots of ways to make game insanly easy.

By week 18 I had 79+ archfire income, plenty of gold/mana (can sell souls for mana and reagents for gold any time), 62 casting points per turn, 7 stacks (5 with "heroes" 6-man and 2 5-man) full of t3-t2 units lvl 8-15 exp just demolishing anything. I have destroyed Ianna's tower in 2 combat turns without a single hp loss from main units... On map if you encounter some "special" units like phys resist monsters/undeads/demons just buff your stack with proper enchantment and viola. So game lost any point after 12 week or so despite auto combat lossing 2-turn win battles :)

And I heard that similar issues exist for artificer, f.e., so you can just buff your single hero the way you will 1-man the whole game (life drain, stance immunity and resists). Considering difficulty wont "fix" that uber strats it doesnt matter what diff you choose if you manage to survive for several weeks and develop a bit.

Again, game is very promissing and addictive. I really enjoy visuals/gameplay/... but such fundamental things just ruin the fun. So they only way to drop and start anew

[Mort]

Wrapping up an Impossible alchemist game (Nature/Nature/Mistycoast) and teleporting teams of tactical assault bears to drop 10+ fire elementals in a tower fight is hilarious. 2/4 wizards down.

[Sartarius]

Week 10. I can say impossible necro is completed as I just now can go and destroy all 3 remaining wizards towers. 2 of them are not even in cold war with me. Main stack 8 units (world progress 7 per stack neutral, 6 per stack wizards) can destroy everything. My only t3 unit is reaper with 2 glyps but thats more than enough. He can just 2-ap kill a full hp troll. And if I buff him and debuff targets for death res... Rest of the stack is also pretty solid. By far necro units and synergy are the best if you dont count broken 100% immunity.

Again game is very addictive and great but needs huge ballance tweaks. I would also cut off all buffs to +10% resist/+1-2 damage/15-25% lifestealing etc. Just all those stacking buffs make game broken.

[primetide_dev]

Thanks for the feedback. We will surely continue to improve balancing, especially for late game, so your experience helps us a lot.

[Kenneth]

If buffs give only 10% they can just as well remove them from the game as that is useless. Be careful not to over nerf things into uselessness.

[Mindeveler]

Originally posted by Sartarius:

He can just 2-ap kill a full hp troll.

So what on earth did you do to turn 28 damage per hit into 110 per hit?

Originally posted by Sartarius:

Main stack 8 units

Btw, how do you even reach 8 units?
I'm at week 11 on balanced with a lot of optimization and savescumming and I only have 6 units per stack. The next tower level promises +1 but it seems like the final one? Or the tower grows even beyond circle mage?

Originally posted by Kenneth:

If buffs give only 10% they can just as well remove them from the game as that is useless. Be careful not to over nerf things into uselessness.

+1

[VoiD]

Originally posted by Kenneth:

If buffs give only 10% they can just as well remove them from the game as that is useless. Be careful not to over nerf things into uselessness.

That depends on a lot of factors, a 1% buff can be OP on certain units with certain base resists

10% by itself is useless on a unit with 0% resists.

10% on top of a 50% base resistance unit using a 30% shield taking only 20% of the total damage just cuts that 20% in half to 10%.

Which is why I made a post earlier saying that, no matter what, every flat resistance buff will be OP as long as additive stacking exists, it probably shouldn't, in fact, I'm not sure if resist buffs should even exist at all, willpower is like armor for light/dark and armor stops elementa/physical damage, it might be a better idea to just have armor and WP buffs instead, and leave all resistances to innate characteristics, like undead always taking double damage from light.

[Mindeveler]

Originally posted by Grizley:

Still, my number one busted mechanic has to be Slaver.

How do you debuff their willpower though? Bears spamming their roar?
I've hardly ever seen enemies break in my game and it was usually low-tier trash, not t3.

[Sartarius]

Originally posted by Mindeveler:

Originally posted by Sartarius:

He can just 2-ap kill a full hp troll.

So what on earth did you do to turn 28 damage per hit into 110 per hit?

Originally posted by Sartarius:

Main stack 8 units

Btw, how do you even reach 8 units?
I'm at week 11 on balanced with a lot of optimization and savescumming and I only have 6 units per stack. The next tower level promises +1 but it seems like the final one? Or the tower grows even beyond circle mage?

Originally posted by Kenneth:

If buffs give only 10% they can just as well remove them from the game as that is useless. Be careful not to over nerf things into uselessness.

+1

Flank +6 perk, death weakness, frenzy, + 6 fire glyph with burning, +3 from lvl ups, reaper has execute on 30%, low willpower on troll. Full list does not needed.

+2 slots from tower upgrade. +1 from necro building upgrade, +1 from another building (can be acquired from the most east castle on max rep)

[Mindeveler]

Originally posted by Sartarius:

Flank +6 perk, death weakness, frenzy, + 6 fire glyph with burning, +3 from lvl ups, reaper has execute on 30%, low willpower on troll. Full list does not needed.

1) With execute in mind, 220-66 = 154 HP, so you need to deal at least 77 dmg per attack.
2) You said "And IF I buff him and debuff targets for death res" so does he or does he not have death weakness?
3) DMG = 28+3+6+6 = 43. Minus certain willpower. Let it be 40.
40 is not 77. Not even close. Even with 50% death weakness.

So I do need a full list because I'm tired of this bragging ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ when someone writes "This unit easily deals XXXX damage" and then it turns out "easily" (or "just" in your case) means "buffed with every single buff in the game while the enemy is debuffed with every single debuff in the game".

Plz stop confusing the devs with your opinions on balance. There is nothing "just" about your gameplay, it's heavily minmaxed. Maybe 3-5% of players play like that, at best.
You don't even "just" attack a burning troll with full HP. Since he has full hp, apparently someone set another enemy on fire first and then another unit used that spell that spreads burning to others.
Burning, death weakness, low morale, flanking - there is nothing "just" about it, it all comes after heavy prebuffing & predebuffing.

[Sartarius]

I am not confusing. Numbers go up like hell. Burning on my reaper btw. Glyph +6 damage and inflicts burning to target. Also you forgot frenzy stacks thats not actually a buff but passive unit perk. I will try to make a screen for you.

So you state ballance is fine? I might have debuffed him with death weakness but cant remeber. So I will try to make a screen soon and post it not to be unfounded.

I am not bragging. I just want to point out things that might be worth looking into to balance

[Mindeveler]

So if it's the reaper that spreads burning, then it means +6 should only apply to the second attack.
Btw, how many attacks count for flanking bonus? The first 2?

Balance has 2 issues so far: 100% immunity (including 100% immunity to everything some minmaxers achieved by the end of the game with an army of titans) and unlimited vampiric retaliation.

A heavily buffed reaper killing a debuffed troll is not a balance issue.

[Sartarius]

No. Reaper is burning from start. Thats glyph effect as negative side.

Reaper is not buffed with weapon ench, Nor's boon etc. Ah nvm, this wont take anyehere just let me catch a troll in game and make a screen. And devs can surely just take note and make changes according to their view and situation reproduction not blindly cut off everything.

Another side of this. Take this reaper and add unlimited retaliation (he has 50% lifestealing glyph). As lifesteal works on any target you have a killing machine easily

[Sartarius]

Originally posted by Mindeveler:

Originally posted by Sartarius:

Flank +6 perk, death weakness, frenzy, + 6 fire glyph with burning, +3 from lvl ups, reaper has execute on 30%, low willpower on troll. Full list does not needed.

1) With execute in mind, 220-66 = 154 HP, so you need to deal at least 77 dmg per attack.
2) You said "And IF I buff him and debuff targets for death res" so does he or does he not have death weakness?
3) DMG = 28+3+6+6 = 43. Minus certain willpower. Let it be 40.
40 is not 77. Not even close. Even with 50% death weakness.

So I do need a full list because I'm tired of this bragging ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ when someone writes "This unit easily deals XXXX damage" and then it turns out "easily" (or "just" in your case) means "buffed with every single buff in the game while the enemy is debuffed with every single debuff in the game".

Plz stop confusing the devs with your opinions on balance. There is nothing "just" about your gameplay, it's heavily minmaxed. Maybe 3-5% of players play like that, at best.
You don't even "just" attack a burning troll with full HP. Since he has full hp, apparently someone set another enemy on fire first and then another unit used that spell that spreads burning to others.
Burning, death weakness, low morale, flanking - there is nothing "just" about it, it all comes after heavy prebuffing & predebuffing.

So the only screen I can do atm. Thats another reaper with only 1 attack from lvl up but he is buffed with battle cry +2 attack. Troll is debuffed here for 25% death resist and has nearly 0 willpower. However reaper does not have much frenzy stacks.

So I was mistaken about (without) 50% death debuff to 2-ap kill troll sorry, you need to debuff him to do that, however thats not a big deal as you can 3-ap kill him for sure

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2932504625

[Mindeveler]

I forgot, how big is bonus from lucky? What's the upper limit of damage roll (and is it +x or +x%)?
Also that perk is rare af. It has like 1/100 chance to appear or smth.

And how do they get frenzy? Some perk/spell/artifact/soul effect?

[Sartarius]

Lucky = always do max damage It seems that max damage is damage displayed in unit card.

Tbh that perk is not rare but it is special 5, 10 or 15 lvl. I find eagle eye more rare. But ofc it depends.