The Epic Guide To Balancing

[Heteroskedastic]

Ok, so here is my opinion on balancing in general. I'm normally top 20-50ish, high of rank 11, 190 games won, lots of theory crafting with some of the other top players, bla bla bla.

Airships:

King: Still too strong, needs a longer cooldown on his shield - currently can pretty much crush lasers, or stop enemies from mining lasers.

Princess: Needs a decent buff, either 15% cooldown, or 10% + 1% for every building kill (up to 25%) like mentioned in another thread.

Prince: Bloody strong, maybe a slight nerf to his repair rate. Another option would be to give him a healing surge every 30 seconds that is an active 10 hp or something.

Minionnette: useful only with frost tower strats, but does decent at that. If anything needs a slight buff to see more playtime. I've rarely gone up against a Minionnette.

Minion: I think the princess with drills outclasses the minion with drills. Drills don't really need MORE terrain dmg, they do so much now. Also, picking the minion really tips your hand and lets the enemy counter you with a rush or a shield strat. I think he needs a buff.

Buildings!

Gold Earners:

Mine - Every game, a necessary staple.

Banks - still really weak. The upgrades seem expensive for very little, taking over a building is super expensive and takes forever, taking over the castle is usually a better strategy. In general weak because turtling strategies are so hard to pull off (more on this later). Even playing against people with little experience, any strategy with a bank is REALLY hard to pull off.

Attack Towers:

Cannons - staple tower, very strong and fairly cheap. The cannon rush strategies are quite hard to stop. My best luck has been countering with further range drills and killing the bigger towers, but its quite hard, especially in the smaller hill maps. I think cannons need a slight nerf for early game dmg, because the rushed cannons seems to be the prevaling strategy at higher levels right now. I think they should have very slightly less dmg every level but cause terrain dmg when shooting demos.

Demos - These are really hit or miss. They are super powerful against some strategies, but get totally shut down by a cheap cannon. If your opponent gets cannons and cannon rushes you/the diamonds and is fairly decent at it, then its really hard to come back from. Then its not so powerful anymore. That being said, I see lots of complaints about them, and I use them fairly often as well. I'd say they are pretty balanced, except at lower skill levels of play they are probably too strong.

Missiles - These buggers can be annoying as anything to deal with. But I guess thats the point. I think they are fairly balanced. Countered mainly by harder aggession to wipe out the expensive towers.

Drills - I absolutely love drills. I think they are the strongest weapon in the game. A decent shot with even a lvl 2 can one shot a lvl 3 building (sometimes two if they stack). They are also great at popping balloons on the way and have a huge range. Early game I think they are fairly balanced, but late game they need a nerf. They can take out so much terrain and towers once you have even a single lvl 3 its insane. In a drawn out battle, I rarely see drills lose.

Lasers - meh. Still feel really weak. Pure counter by the king, pure countered by shields. Semi-Countered by drills (burying the laser makes them so shoot dirt). There are some effective strategies with lasers if they don't have shields or a king, but thats pretty rare and super risky to rely on. I think they still need a buff. Perhaps just a slightly shorter cooldown.

Ice Tower - I've lost to this one before - but only once. Its a difficult strategy. I'm not sure its a strong as any other strategy, although I love the idea of it. I think the ice freeze should be longer to make this a viable tower in games.

Warheads - Seem quite weak comparitively. I know its al all-in strategy, but with rocket rushes, you'll never pull it off. I rarely see them in my games. I'd like to see them used more often, but not as a base-race nuke fest. I think they should do half damage to the base (like the base gets half falling dmg), and made cheaper for the lvl 1s so that you can actually use them offensively. That way it is used against the enemies weapons/buildings instead of their base, and can make some exciting strategies. It would fit into other strategies when you are duking it out on top, and a warhead comes in to knock out a pile of buildings. Right now, you can invest 100+ gold into a weapon that just gets shot down before it hits the base and its just a weak strategy.

Defense Weapons:

Defense in general seems much weaker than offense. Its pretty rare that any turtling strategy works. Some combinations of cannons + shields does decent, but often I go purely with offensive towers.

Shields: Shields are pretty decent as a counter to a lot of viable strategies. I would probably leave these mostly alone.

Dirt Cannon: Meh. Again, I love the idea, but they seem to be too expensive upfront to get any type of defense early on to use. When using dirt cannons you are basically surrendering the crystals to the other team because it puts you so far on defensive. I've tried to win with banks + dirt, but its super hard to pull off. Any lasers/drills makes it impossible. Most people with rockets can get through as well. I'd like to see them have a buff (either dirt clump size, or cost).

Repair arm: The new nerfs seem to be effective. It is still good, but no longer insanely powerful.

Balloons: These have a much smaller impact on the gameplay it seems. I wouldn't adjust these right now as they seem fairly balanced/preference based.

General Strategies:

Right now Offense > Defense across the board. Defense needs a bit more balancing. Turtling strategies don't work in the current game balance.

Rushes seem to be the most effective - most high level players rush cannons it seems.
Demo or cannon both does OK - but decent missiles or drills can beat that sometimes.

Utility towers (ice, dirt, etc.) see little use and could use a helping hand to buff them.

TLDR: This game is awesome.

[greysphere]

Nice write up! I think most of your points are spot on but I thought I'd share a few divergent experiences.

I think Minionette is the unknown secret tech right now. She has a huge influence on the cannon skirmishes - 5 seconds to 3 cannons in a skirmish and it's gg.

I've been very successful with warheads on larger maps (numerous wins vs top 20 people). By slowly withdrawing from whatever row the enemy advances on you force them to invest quite a bit in the offensive. You spend that same amount of money on warheads tucked safely away in a corner then launch them as soon as you have 2/2/1 or so. Then spend the next income on repair towers to keep them alive into the base. Note this strat doesn't work very well on tight maps with a single path. That all being said, I would love to see warheads be more effective in the skirmish phase as you suggest rather than acting soley as finishers.

[Mana]

I wish the lasers were better, there are some really cool tricks with them and the king, for example making the laser bounce against the same shield more times in the same attack takes multiples layers at once, but they are really hard countered by the king and drills are way better at damaging because of the ground damage and can avoid the shields more effectively.

[Woooloowoooloo]

Yeah, Greysphere destroyed me with the huge warhead rushes. I used to be able to heal tank through those, but the recent nerfs to the repair tower heal rate doesn't cut it anymore. I think I should of just pushed bot and won straight up while u turtled top with warheads.

[Woooloowoooloo]

Do damaged warheads do less damage greysphere?

[Harold]

Warhead.
Cost 50/40/35
HP 20/25/30
Cooldown 35/20/22
Damage 15/18/22 Damage is reduced depending on the remaining HP of the Warhead.
Places a single fire missile, when upgraded the cooldown is added to any cooldown that is already on the missile.
Can be fire at any enemy building and will fly towards it, exploding and doing massive damage. If the screen is blocked
by terrain the missile will fly in a straight line towards the target, digging out the terrain in the way and taking damage
from it. The missile has HP like a building and can be shot down by offensive towers and takes damage from passing trough
a shield. The missile can also be repaired by the repair center and the prince's airship in mid flight. A missile cannot be bribed anymore once it's in the air.

:p

[Heteroskedastic]

Greysphere (I think it was him) tried the warhead thing on me. Did not work, but at least he showed it as a viable strategy, especially with repair arms. Super hard countered by an ice tower + cannons or the minionnette. They get frozen for SO long. I think I beat him with repair arms, cannons and drills for offense. If someone spends money on nukes, drills can walk all ove their base.

Sometimes even if the warhead doesn't work, it distracts them and lets you push back while they are shooting the nukes too. Its a neat strategy.

[Heteroskedastic]

Also, its not necessarily a warhead rush, but a cannon rush for quickmap control/diamonds and then building nukes during the cannon duking it out phase.

Greysphere, consider using the platform balloons as well. Little bit more expensive, but harder to take out while the missiles are building (especially with drills).

[Mo0?]

I think cannons need to be 5g more expensive, too cheap to spam even using rank 1 cannons as meat shields to protect more expensive targets behind. Spamming them is the most effective strategy Ive seen and have employed to date but it feels cheap.

Another good strat vs nukes are banks, if they build nukes then spam banks and buy out their HQ whilst building enough defense to stop the nukes destroying your HQ.

[Heteroskedastic]

I agree with Moo, that'd be a decent way to fix cannons. I don't think banks are a good counter to nukes. Nukes happen way before you can spam out their HQ with bribes. I think nukes would totally crush banks (but add me and we'll do a friendly match and see).

[Heteroskedastic]

Following Greysphere's advice, I've tried the half-cannon rush + nukes and it is definitely a viable strategy on some maps - and actually is a sort of counter against the cannon rush. It is not good on the single lane maps as he mentioned at all.

That being said, I still would like to see them do more dmg to everything else to make the useful as building targetted nukes. (40 g for lvl 1, faster cooldown for lvl 1 by 5 seconds, base 1/2 dmg, building dmg the same - or something).

[ChessCitten]

I fully agree that something has to be done about the cannon. I'm not sure what though. But it feels really cheap going for cannon push every single game...

[greysphere]

+5g on cannons would slightly slowdown the early game, which might not be bad cause it would make the micro errors people make in the setup less relevant. If it was too slow you could add 5g to the starting gold. Alternatively, you could just keep reducing other units cost (and potentially power if it goes too far) until they are competitive with cannons early.

[Arsmountain]

Yeah if you wanted to keep early game pace but nerf Offensive rushes then perhaps reducing the cost of balloons by 5g would do it? Along with the Offensive tower gold increase.

[ChessCitten]

5g+ on cannons and 5g- on baloons sounds like something that should be tried.

[Harold]

Here are some efficiency numbers, calculated are Damage per minute. And the Damage per minute per gold you payed. As you can see, the missile tower is by far the most damage efficient tower for what you pay, in any stage of the game, with the cannon starting out as a close second, but on level 2/3 on par with the laser. Offcourse this doesnt take into account the damage drill's do to terrain or that shields counter laser pretty well.
Surprisingly because there was a time when Demolishers looked very overpowered, they seem the most reasonably balanced tower of the lot. I included the warhead, but these numbers represent the maximum damage they could do to 1 building, while they have a large splash area aswell. Also because of the way the cooldown works on the warhead i doubt those numbers are very meaningfull.

                  Lvl 1    Lvl 2   Lvl 3 	Lvl 1 DPM	Lvl 2 DPM	Lvl 3 DPM
Missile	  0,69    0,46    0,36          	45     67     88
Cannon	  0,62    0,30   0,22           	25     32     43
Warhead	  0,50    0,18   0,14           	25      16     17
Laser	  0,45    0,30   0,23             	27     39     48
Demolisher 0,42	    0,25   0,17           	25     33     36
Drill      0,17    0,19    0,14          	10      25     30
Frost	    0,17    0,09   0,07          	10     12      14