Balance Thoughts

[Hank]

So having played this game for about 50 hours I just want to throw out my thoughts and want to hear what others think about it mostly to validate or get me back in there to try things I haven't.

1. Archers are busted. With Archery, Legion/Bloodlust/Fortune/Morale Archers can win every fight. Slap Warding and Armorer, and no spell or summon will break them. If you're having trouble just pick a hero like Lor Kon or Cazadra mass archers and some cheap melee fodder. I've won every Hardcore + games and most Hot Seat against friends this way. The times I've lost are due to another friend archer spamming me.

Suggested Fix: I think there's too many things causing this. It's a game based on HoMM that has real time positioning and movement. Ranged units simply don't have enough counters when built correctly. I would say double the growth for cheap melee units, but even I don't find that buff is frightening. Maybe give Impenetrable to every biggish unit? Make Charge Units faster? Make it so projectile Protection is a permanent buff that acts like Impenetrable? Again if any or ALL of those buffs were implemented I would still go archer spam.

2. LET'S GET THIS OUT OF THE WAY REMOVE THE VICTORY CHEER AND RUSH TO SCORE SCREEN OR REMOVE DEBUFFS. NOTHING IS MORE ANNOYING THAN LOSING 50% OF YOUR TROGSERKERS BECAUSE EVERYONE NEEDED TO DO A VICTORY CHEER AND DIE TO POSION/FIRE.

Suggested Fix: STOP IT

3. Most HEROES ARE AWFUL. The problem is build tree. You want to look for characters with the skills you want earlier in the tree, and skills that are secondary later in the tree but still connected to your primary skills. A good example of a HERO I HATE is Kop Laka of the Tide faction who has an awesome branch on the right side for spellpower build BUT THE FREAKING MANA SKILL IS ON THE OTHER SIDE. Compare that to Akn Tea of the Enclave Faction who has Mana as a primary starting skill that leads into Hydromancy which leads into Mystecism then Potency and Sorcery.

Suggested Fix: Rearrange some of those skills, and remove some skills that have no synergy at all with the characters focus/kit. Honestly characters should be DESIGNED to fit into a play styles with each character showing off maybe 4 styles that are closely related.

4. Nearly all higher tier units are awful. Higher tier units cost too much power, and never do enough. SOMETHING THAT WOULD BE AWESOME is if the developers found a way to implement Warhammer Total War's Unit cost effectiveness indicator. Did your dragon kill 80+ powers worth or did he get pwned on by a pack of 8 archers. This would be really useful, but may be too hard to implement.

Suggested Fix: Buff the higher tier units? They really are all just awful. Either reduce their power cost, or make them actually worth 40 archers. Or somehow implement that cost effectiveness score screen so you can tell if your Dragon got 80+ power worth of kills or did he kill 1 anima.

Suggestions?

Tactics should be a town upgrade not a skill, or something that passively levels with your hero? Late game battles don't really become epic fights. Usually it's whoever floods/gets their archers in position to spawn camp the enemy as they come in piece meal.

The town tech tree randomizing is... tolerable, but make tavern always available turn 1 no matter what. A second Hero for scouting out paths for your main hero is always the best opening no matter what. Having it randomly lock tavern behind something you may not want might sound interesting, but more often than not I'm infuriated, not intrigued.

That's all I can think of for now will add more as I test more stuff. Let me know your opinions and thoughts. It helps me find things I may have overlooked.

[Yllarius]

Archery is for sure strong, even after the beta branch nerfs, but there's far worse things.

As far as skills, Dragonking is one of the worst offenders. It may be less broke on smaller maps, but on larger maps you can get 30-50%+ of an 80 power dragon for free on fights with just the helmet. With 5 points in it you can just make an army of them with no issues.

Couple that with the two most obvious broken mechanics: Devour and Tower of the Magi.
Devour is IMHO, slightly more broken, as you can devour a dragon for +10-20 to attack and defense per dragon depending on it's rank. Every day. This leads to being able to fight battles with no losses very quickly.
Tower of the magi is slightly less busted but still broke as hell. Chuck a bunch of units and get +20-30 to both spellcasting stats.

As far as races, I think Pyre takes the cake for me, free units from gating, Firetrapping on a caster hero is stupid as you can just rid yourself of troublesome groups or port archers into your melee group. The added mobility from TP'ing between mines for free is also ridiculous.

I think the first thing that needs to be done is a rework of the big three though. Dragonking, Devour, and ToM.

I don't even min-max early like a lot of people, I almost never build secondary heroes except for defensive purposes later. So the tech-tree only bothers me when units are locked inside the fort/stronghold/citadel line, as 20 wood/ore hurts early.

I think Power for fielding units growing would be a good thing as well. Tactics raw power is just so strong, because having more units on the battlefield at once is just almost always good.

The issue I have with the game so far, is that early game is a bit of a slog as most neutral units are particularly difficult until week 2/3. After that and ~level 10 for your main hero most of the time you're just walking around taking anything you see.

Even knowing ToM/Devour is busted, it honestly doesn't matter, because the amount of units you can get by then, especially with Mastery/Necromancy/Diplomacy/Creation ect means the town units are just sitting there.

I keep seeing complaints about difficulty, but I've never lost a game even on HC+.

Other than that, I think 'Might' heroes need some love. Outside of Horde they have no abilities, and most of the unit buffing skills can feel lackluster, they might actually be somewhat decent but they certainly don't feel like it. Mastery's 5% bonus is worth a little more than 1.5 pts in attack/defense. There's a lot of skills that almost seem nice but fall of quickly. I almost never take things like hex, toxicology, or almost any of the on-death effect ones. Nor swarming ect.

Finally spells need looked at. There's far too many doing the same thing and not very well.
While Overlap is nice for casters that have -mancy skills, in a large map you have a mass of unsorted spells in your book and most of the time you're only using a handful. Hypnotize and Confusion come to mind.

Overall i'm enjoying the game, with 100+h now I thing and i'm one achievement shy of being done with those. But most of the time I don't feel like i'm experimenting with new skills and almost never care about army composition.

[Quillithe]

Originally posted by Hank:

1. Archers are busted. With Archery, Legion/Bloodlust/Fortune/Morale Archers can win every fight. Slap Warding and Armorer, and no spell or summon will break them. If you're having trouble just pick a hero like Lor Kon or Cazadra mass archers and some cheap melee fodder. I've won every Hardcore + games and most Hot Seat against friends this way. The times I've lost are due to another friend archer spamming me.

Suggested Fix: I think there's too many things causing this. It's a game based on HoMM that has real time positioning and movement. Ranged units simply don't have enough counters when built correctly. I would say double the growth for cheap melee units, but even I don't find that buff is frightening. Maybe give Impenetrable to every biggish unit? Make Charge Units faster? Make it so projectile Protection is a permanent buff that acts like Impenetrable? Again if any or ALL of those buffs were implemented I would still go archer spam.

Yeah generally feels like low tier archers benefit a lot from the combat structure. Low tier units are effective for their cost, but don't put as much power in a single location - which can be bad sometimes in melee but doesn't matter for archers.

Plus the archer melee penalty doesn't really matter - in HoMM your whole stack of gremlins is in melee at once, but here only a few on the edge are likely to have reduced damage in most cases and the rest are uneffected. Some of the leap and charge units can kinda help, and those ash demons, but most armies just aren't great against them.


Honestly for spells it feels like summons tend to be the best and damage spells are very awkward in general - again because of mechanical differences adding more damage doesn't always help much and I wish they scaled in area a bit. Buffs really scale terribly - again I think it's a cast area problem - if you can only buff 20 units or so it's hard to compete with just summoning 10 more units.

[Hank]

Originally posted by Yllarius:

Archery is for sure strong, even after the beta branch nerfs, but there's far worse things.

As far as skills, Dragonking is one of the worst offenders. It may be less broke on smaller maps, but on larger maps you can get 30-50%+ of an 80 power dragon for free on fights with just the helmet. With 5 points in it you can just make an army of them with no issues.

Couple that with the two most obvious broken mechanics: Devour and Tower of the Magi.
Devour is IMHO, slightly more broken, as you can devour a dragon for +10-20 to attack and defense per dragon depending on it's rank. Every day. This leads to being able to fight battles with no losses very quickly.
Tower of the magi is slightly less busted but still broke as hell. Chuck a bunch of units and get +20-30 to both spellcasting stats.

I don't actually have much experience with this because if I'm not knocking the enemies town out at right at the end of week 2 I feel like I'm doing something wrong. I tend towards rushing, and by mid week 2 I've cleared my area. So I tend towards Shorter Games we're someones dying at the start of week 3. So Dragon King seems straight pointless for me but I can see the benefits in longer games I just don't usually let the games get longer.

Originally posted by Yllarius:

As far as races, I think Pyre takes the cake for me, free units from gating, Firetrapping on a caster hero is stupid as you can just rid yourself of troublesome groups or port archers into your melee group. The added mobility from TP'ing between mines for free is also ridiculous.

I thought Pyre was pretty good, but they lack spell counters their entire army can get wiped by a few good spells. Partially due to Warding not being easily accessed by any of their heroes except MAYBE Teyonot, but that heroes early skills are more countered towards late game not shorter games/rush.

Originally posted by Yllarius:

The issue I have with the game so far, is that early game is a bit of a slog as most neutral units are particularly difficult until week 2/3. After that and ~level 10 for your main hero most of the time you're just walking around taking anything you see.

I find the early game really easy with archer focus builds as by mid of week 1 with upgraded archers and some EXP from chest and EXP shrines the area should be cleared maybe 2-3 days into early weak 2 and then it's rushing towards the enemy and killing them by early week 3. Again it's probably due to my focus on shorter maps and heavier focus on rushing rather than building that cool army.

Originally posted by Yllarius:

I keep seeing complaints about difficulty, but I've never lost a game even on HC+.

I think it's because many people have never played HoMM, or games like it, and do things a normal person would do, but a HoMM player would never do. Having multiple Heroes with armies and splitting EXP between them is probably one most people do.

Originally posted by Yllarius:

toxicology, or almost any of the on-death effect ones.

I like toxicology on a secondary hero have them engage the enemy army, and let toxicology do it's thing while you rally your hero into a corner to buy some time AMAZING in siege fights because they have to come to you, or lose a good chunk of their forces to poison. Not consistent strategy since you might not get a secondary toxicology hero.

Blood lust is the few on-death effects I think is great. Hekoni of the Wilds Anima Spam with blood lust is crazy good. Forest Spirit Dying trigger blood lust, but also spawn an Anima, and those Anima can get crazy fast and rapid attack speed after a few of them die. Scared my friend after he nuked my Forest Spirits with a spell to have a 100 anima go at mach 5 right on top of his army. Combo with flying units doing the "I'M INVINCIBLE BECAUSE KILL ANIMATION OF DROPPING GUY IN THE SKY" allows them to kill alot, and die very little.

Originally posted by Yllarius:

Overall i'm enjoying the game, with 100+h now I thing and i'm one achievement shy of being done with those. But most of the time I don't feel like i'm experimenting with new skills and almost never care about army composition.

I enjoy the game as well, but like you said I feel like I'm not experimenting with new things. A good example is I was trying an Oligarchy build, and after I put my third point into I WAS LOSING FIGHTS and so I reload a save didn't put points into it dumped into some random spell stat that I didn't care about and started winning fights. LIKE HOW!?

[Hank]

Originally posted by Quillithe:

Plus the archer melee penalty doesn't really matter - in HoMM your whole stack of gremlins is in melee at once, but here only a few on the edge are likely to have reduced damage in most cases and the rest are uneffected. Some of the leap and charge units can kinda help, and those ash demons, but most armies just aren't great against them.

I entirely agree the archers in melee just have the archers in the back murder their melee opponent for them. Unless you warp in the middle of them with Pyre but then the archers not in the center murder you.

Originally posted by Quillithe:

Honestly for spells it feels like summons tend to be the best and damage spells are very awkward in general - again because of mechanical differences adding more damage doesn't always help much and I wish they scaled in area a bit. Buffs really scale terribly - again I think it's a cast area problem - if you can only buff 20 units or so it's hard to compete with just summoning 10 more units.

My best spell build is Akn Tea Hydromancy build. Akn Tea has a nice skill tree for magic focus, and with the Hierophant Lizard Mage you can get more spell power which increase your damage and buff amount. The spell you want is Beam of Frost I've gotten it to one shot nearly all my friends army with it by dealing 400 damage with Potency + Mysticism + Hierophants. The problem was mana with 120 mana I can cast it 6 times before I run dry, and need a long time to recharge to full. Which means if he just sends his army piece meal I'm dead to rights. Since we also play aggressive shorter maps I can't just go to Tower of Magic odds are I just don't even spawn with one.

[Zeal]

Originally posted by Hank:

I enjoy the game as well, but like you said I feel like I'm not experimenting with new things. A good example is I was trying an Oligarchy build, and after I put my third point into I WAS LOSING FIGHTS and so I reload a save didn't put points into it dumped into some random spell stat that I didn't care about and started winning fights. LIKE HOW!?

Yeah. Did that same mistake once. Oligarchy is fine at rank1, but later ranks need to cost less army pop.

[amimai002]

oligarchy works if you are using something that buffs like bless or growth on your units. nothing is more funny then a "3 power" worm swarm with a couple hundred attack enlarged to the size of Godzilla.

Tobruni from Horde is probably the best example of this

[Quillithe]

Originally posted by amimai002:

oligarchy works if you are using something that buffs like bless or growth on your units. nothing is more funny then a "3 power" worm swarm with a couple hundred attack enlarged to the size of Godzilla.

Feel like it might combo really well with bodyguard - who cares if you only get a limited power stack of small units when they're all pumped up to huge stats anyway

[amimai002]

Originally posted by Quillithe:

Originally posted by amimai002:

oligarchy works if you are using something that buffs like bless or growth on your units. nothing is more funny then a "3 power" worm swarm with a couple hundred attack enlarged to the size of Godzilla.

Feel like it might combo really well with bodyguard - who cares if you only get a limited power stack of small units when they're all pumped up to huge stats anyway

im my last game using that setup i could field 80 units to my opponent 800... not that this was an issue, my 2+ goblin was packing around 500% to all stats and could probably 1v1 anything short of dragon(the dragon took 2 goblins)