Balance Discussion

[EarthRed]

This topic has been going on and on with several different opinions flying around, thus I decided to start a simple and easy thread with the purpose as follows: State all mostly undisputed balance problems proven and argumented for by high level players. The purpose of this thread is not to debate how to fix these problems or change the game, but to simply gather a list of all severe imbalancements present in the game. The list I'll put below consists of what I've found and gathered from other threads and forums, if you have something to add please comment, but please, if I may ask, keep it clean, mathematically argumented, and without fix suggestions, only stating the problem itself. Thank you, expert players, and thank you, devs, for listening to us! And, most important of all, correct me if something in the list is wrong.

The map generator causes imbalancement as follows:
• Town Center placement sometimes causes severe imbalancement.
  
• Gold positioning for the first and second gold mine some times causes too big advantages for one player.
  
• Occasionally wood spawns are extremely unfair.
  
• Occasionally, fish spots and food positions favor one player by far.
  
• Town Centers some times spawn unintendedly too close to water range.
  
• Some times Town Centers (or towers spawned in the beginning of the game) may even be missing, or in an inaccessible location.
  
  
• 1vs1 Supremacy imbalancements:
  
  General:
  
• Technologies that improve farming actually only give marginal bonuses.
  
• Atlantean and Egyptian fast-titan strategies are too strong.
  
  Greek:
  
• Zeus is far stronger than the two other greek gods in competitive play, outmatching them even in their supposed strengths.
  
• Zeus can bolt the Ulfsark Norse get in the beginning of the game.
  
• Greeks have by far the strongest lategame, especially if the Egyptian mercenary abuse is fixed.
  
  Egyptian:
  
• Ra and Set struggle to compete with the overall strength of Isis, only barely usable due to shifting sands abuse.
  
• Axe of Vengeance weaker than other upgrades for tier 2 units, especially since it is a tier 4 tech.
  
• Mercenaries too strong in some cases, creating a gimmick in which the Egyptian player, especially with Hathor, could spam offencive mercenaries to fight from one side of the map to the other.
  
• Without gimmicks stated above, as well as Isis Ancestors+Eclipse, Egyptians sub-par in strength.
  
  Norse:
  
• Norse struggle to compete against other civilizations in high level competitive play.
  
• Due to imbalancement, Norse play dependant on three gimmicks: Flaming Weapons, Ragnarok and Loki's myth unit summon.
  
• Fimbulwinter and Walking Woods useless due to baitability.
  
  Atlantean:
  
• Turma is far too stong compared to other Atlantean units, most other Atlantean units too weak.
  
• Other tier 2 minor gods are too weak compared to Prometheus, because of the hero focus. Thus: Gaia is the worst god in the game by far.
  
• Hyperion unpickable, Theia a must-pick in almost all situations.
  
• Their only lategame strength is a faster Titan possibility.
  
  1vs1 Deathmatch imbalancements
  
• Most supremacy problems escalate in deathmatch, making Isis and Zeus the only playable gods.

And if I may repeat: if you have something to add please comment (with relevant arguments). This is by far not a complete list, and I'm not so high level as to voice my own opinions, thus I only gather what people have argumented for well, and mathematically enough.

[76561198072433336]

I'm going to edit the title and pin it so this is more of an official discussion thread for balance. Just a quick note, the steam forums here have bb code tags, so for your lists you may want to use the following (remove the ~. I put them there to keep it from turning it into a list)
[~list]
[~*] FIRST LIST ITEM
[~*] SECOND LIST ITEM
[~*] MORE ITEMS
[~/list]

to nicely format bullets. (I have to manually do that for all of the patch notes, fun times)

[Iced Dark Hunter]

NORSE
• Balance Norse troop, creating or enhancing anti-infantry units (please).
  
• T.A. increase atack, move speed or range.
  
• Improvements in their siege weapons in the mythical age.
  
• All Norse receive 1 after crow (with less sight range, except Odin) build a temple.
  
• Increase movement speed of Battering Ram.
  
• Hersir increase a little crush damage.
  
  Eggy
  
• All Egyptians towers with less power to reach the classical age.
  
• Decrease maximum number of Mercenaries from 12 to 8 and 5 to Mercenaries Cavalier.
  
• Remove skill matching downloads siege weapons of ROC ( please).
  
• Isis monuments now have 50% less hit points.
  
• Siege weapons increase cost population 3 to 4.
  
  Attly
  
• Unit Turma with higher price or a debuff attack or life (please).
  
• Deconstruction less cooldown.
  
• Decrease cost of population of some units (to be possible to go up against troops of other gods).
  
• Balance the ultra monster combo that is the A + E (decreasing the duration or the number of units that are invoked or even their attack powers)
  
  Greek
  
• Belerofront special atack increase cooldown.
  
• Decrease recovery of hit points colossus in gold mines (please)
  
• Special Cavalry Poseidon is very bad compared the special units of Zeus and Hades.
  
  General
  
• Tower limit 20 to 12.
  
• Caravan limit 30.

Got some good ideas for some later posts to mine, in order to do something that equilibri the gods.

[EarthRed]

Originally posted by MS Ryz0n:

I'm going to edit the title and pin it so this is more of an official discussion thread for balance. Just a quick note, the steam forums here have bb code tags, so for your lists you may want to use the following (remove the ~. I put them there to keep it from turning it into a list)
[~list]
[~*] FIRST LIST ITEM
[~*] SECOND LIST ITEM
[~*] MORE ITEMS
[~/list]

to nicely format bullets. (I have to manually do that for all of the patch notes, fun times)

Thanks, fine sir!

[Nakamura RTS]

Please add a bullet point for the DeathMatch gametype.

•Isis and Zeus are the only gods used in competitive DeathMatch. The source of this is the free favor trickle of DM(lets egyptian/greek ignore their unique favor mechanics, I believe the trickles should be removed and replaced with a slightly higher favor gather rate buff), the extremely high tower limit, and the speed of wall building coupled with its hack armor/repair rate. Norse's TC build rates on Hersirs was nerfed to oblivion, and Fenris wolves have been made useless during the patching process of TT.

[Rich]

^ Amen to that, no point in me picking up AoM Ex if DM is the same as the old AoT. Zeus and Isis gets boring real fast!

[Winters]

Lets see if we can make Turma more balanced, Right now they don't cost as much as other units, Hit fairly hard, Move fast, and train fast. Making them a good raid unit.

• Increase Turma cost and train time slightly, Maybe 5 seconds extra Build time and an extra 15 gold, 10wood?Or less.
  
• Decrease speed slightly, Maybe 5-10%
  
• Remove the free Medium archers, Why is it free in the first place? :l
  
• Adjust as needed. If it works keep it. if not, Change it.

[LNC_GoldenAxe]

Only balance change that I feel is required is sand shifting, it can really be abused. Double SS in classical age is instantly gg but I think it's to early for this discussion, the dev should focus on bugs and other issues.

General:
• Atlantean and Egyptian fast-titan strategies are too strong.
--Atty players resort to this strat because they have no other chance of winning the game sometimes, I rarely see Eggy players using this strat. In fact the original balance team probably wanted Atty players to go fast titan, this is why they were given those two tree gp's.


Greek:
• Zeus is far stronger than the two other greek gods in competitive play.
--You're looking at them as 3 different civs, this is wrong. All 3 of them are considered one civ, just different styles, Zeus is more aggressive in classical age, this is why more competitive players play him. You can't have 3 identical styles lol, that just wouldn't make sense. Hades is a beast in Mythical age, he has more of a defensive style early game. You also have to understand that we do need this version of Greek(Hades) for noobs, they like playing a defensive style and use Hades.

• Zeus can bolt the Ulfsark Norse get in the beginning of the game.
--I'm a Norse player, you'll never see a more aggressive player then me. My job is to get as close to a Zeus player's TC, build a temple without getting bolted. He's job is to find my Ulfsark and bolt him. Now if the dev does this balance change, there's no work needed on my part or the Zeus player, since he can't bolt me. Some of these changes will just reduce the skill gap between a noob and an expert. In fact I always use spy on their scout so I know exactly where he is while I build my temple.



Egyptian:
• Ra and Set struggle to compete with the overall strength of Isis.
--Again, they're all considered one civ, just different styles, you're basically asking for 3 Isis's. Also there can only be one first place spot, you can't have 3 styles considered first place.


Norse:
• Norse struggle to compete against other civilizations in high level competitive play.
--We should wait and see in 2-3 month, see what civs the top 10 players play.

Atlantean:
• Turma is far too stong compared to other Atlantean units, most other Atlantean units too weak.
--lol, dude, you should just play mirror civs. Ok, well turma are actually consider pretty weak to other units late game.

• Other tier 2 minor gods are too weak compared to Prometheus, because of the hero focus.
--lol, people will never stop complaining.

[Winters]

Originally posted by LNC_GoldenAxe:

Atlantean:
Turma is far too stong compared to other Atlantean units, most other Atlantean units too weak.

I was referring to early game with my balance post, I can see how late game it wouldn't be as good.

[LNC_GoldenAxe]

Originally posted by Bo0T_Lycarous:

Originally posted by LNC_GoldenAxe:

Atlantean:
Turma is far too stong compared to other Atlantean units, most other Atlantean units too weak.

I was referring to early game with my balance post, I can see how late game it wouldn't be as good.

Dude, Atty has to be good in at least "one" age and that's classical age. The dev balance team from 2003 purposely buffed the Turma unit (wood unit), its a perfect counter to greek, egg and norse classical age wood units(Archers, TA & Slingers). They wanted to make sure that Atty is OP in at least one age. Naka the balance expert -_- actually made a patch where he nerfed the Turma unit, I mean no one played Atty in his FP tournament, even Velite(a top Atty player) play Eggy in that tournament.

[Winters]

Originally posted by LNC_GoldenAxe:

Originally posted by Bo0T_Lycarous:

I was referring to early game with my balance post, I can see how late game it wouldn't be as good.

Dude, Atty has to be good in at least "one" age and that's classical age. The dev balance team from 2003 purposely buffed the Turma unit (wood unit), its a perfect counter to greek, egg and norse classical wood units(Archers, TA & Slingers). They wanted to make sure that Atty is OP in at least one age. Naka the balance expert -_- actually made a patch where he nerfed the Turma unit, I mean no one played Atty in his FP tournament, even Velite(a top Atty player) play Eggy in that tournament.

Fair enough, They just seemed a bit OP when paired with Prometheus, Dat Kronos rush.(3 Oracle heros, Looped prometheans, Then move into promethean/turma I believe, Can't remember the full thing off the top of my head) But I get you, They just seem really strong.

[Boxer]

Gaia is very unbalanced in relation to chrono and uranos, extreme weakness in the classic age. as odin is a weak god compared to thor and loki. by the absence of the god Bragi.

[MYSTIC MOUNTAIN]

Most people just want bug fixes patched, or at most only a few changes that are checked out by the professional testing teams. The people who play a lot can tell you that they think is imbalanced and what gods are a counter to another god, and that Zeus/Set/Oranos kind of dominate, but we usually aren't really sure how to fix these things. I'm mostly a Norse player and some other players will probably post their ideas from the other topics, but here are some kind of popular ideas I've seen and accumulated over playing for a long time that hopefully the developers can draw upon and improve:

Turma are alright, they are fine with gaia and kronos, they are only too good on oasis because they beat all other wood units in classic or can run/raid. Atlanteans should not receive free medium archer upgrade. Oranos is strong because he has so many different bonuses, 3 shockwaves is too many (it's the strongest archaic godpower in many cases), should be 2 or something, and give the tc line of sight bonus to gaia instead, other people might have better ideas though.

For Greeks, some mostly agreed upon changes I can think of are that Restoration is a little too strong and should have a slightly shorter duration -1 to 2 seconds or similar. Zeus is a little too strong in several ways, being able to bolt starting ulfsarks immediately on water (or vill but not as bad) building dock/house and then having restoration after that on water fight with an earlier classic time. Bellerophon's special attack is too good, it should be lower in damage or have a longer recharge, especially since it can be used on normal units like son of osiris.

For Egypt, shifting sands should not affect villagers, civilians or dwarves, or at least only 1-2 of them and not affect oxcarts, since it is really brutal losing 3 villagers plus an oxcart at 4:40 shifted into towers.

For Norse, the only somewhat agreed on things are that they are mostly the weakest civ, but also flaming weapons and ragnarok are a little too strong (kind of need them in a lot of cases though as the game currently is, since flaming weapons is the only way to counter godpowers like ancestors/eclipse combo or restoration/bronze, or mass petsuchos with roc, or fast titan). Odin should have more of a benefit to his regeneration, it's really slow. Njord's godpower is way weaker than flaming weapons or frost, walking woods should either be stronger with better pathing or controllable with a timer. Throwing axemen are really weak since the last patch that reduced their attack by 0.5, bonus vs infantry maybe was lowered, and their hack armor was lowered, so they should at least have their range increased to 12, or some other boost. Also enable axe of muspell in classical age. Throwing axemen should have the same bonus against murmillo as they do against hoplites, I think there is a different bonus category for vs spearmen and ulfsarks that murmillo are in.


Now about my own ideas if anything else was changed; I'm not really sure what is best to do with atlanteans overall, here are some things I would change personally, they aren't really 'agreed on changes' but some might make sense:

Katapeltes are too good for a 2 pop classical age unit, they should either be changed into a 3 pop unit, have lower attack for a 4x bonus vs cav unit, or lower hp so they can be killed faster (they have the same hp and armor as hoplites, but over double the attack against cavalry, while still doing okay vs ulfsarks and hersirs when mixed with murmillo, a few on defense crush raids). Contarius are almost never used in RM 1v1 since everyone goes fast titan instead of doing their Theia upgrades, plus they have low hp and pierce armor, maybe could use an increase. I would improve Leto who is never used, in some way, maybe by adding a tech costing favor to improve archer or cheiroballista damage by 10% or similar, make Hyperion usable by fixing satyr's special attack bug and increasing attack, and maybe making Chaos stronger plus boosting the hero regen tech rate, as well as make mail of orihalcos increase another stat like archer attack as well. I would make stymphalian birds stronger against pierce damage and weaker against hack, maybe have slightly less hp and a lot more pierce armor, maybe increase their population to 4 and make them a little faster or whatever seems balanced. Max 4 citizens garrisoned in a mansion. Promethean offspring -2 line of sight or lower speed by 0.3. Atlanteans might need some help with heroes so they don't always have to go Prometheus, especially if any other civs become stronger in classical age.

A couple people say the hoplite bonus vs buildings is a little too good, but I'm not sure if it would be better lower at all. Zeus just gets a lot of different bonuses and is very strong. It's difficult for poseidon/hades/odin/thor to counter mass centaurs with one or zero ranged heroes, since Zeus starts with favor and has such a large favor bonus, maybe it should be reduced slightly. I would also reduce all archaic age heroes attacks even further by 25% from all civs, and priest/pharoah range slightly, if other people wanted it.

I think Rocs should have less hack armor, speed, and more pierce armor. Plague of serpents should be slightly stronger (eclipse and shifting sands are 2 of the top 4 classical age godpowers, hard to go anubis), eclipse should have a shorter duration, (or improve myth units by another 10% and not block godpowers or something but people would probably get mad over that), War elephants should have slightly lower hp or hack armor, odin can't beat them besides frost giants and able to take out priests, if they are too weak could always make them a 4 pop unit. Siege towers should have -20 or -25 hp or so or cost 4 pop, they are very strong, especially against pierce attack armies. Catapults should be 4 pop. Serpent spear could be a little cheaper or give 10% to 2 stats instead of 15% to one (or 20% to attack), and axe of vengeance could be improved by giving axemen more hp or attack, since hardly anyone uses them against buildings with their low attack and egypt's good siege. Maybe egypt can be boosted in other ways too but they are very strong with free buildings, mercenaries, and free army godpowers/eclipse. Camels might deserve +5-10 hp.

Some changes I would make are to give odin +10% speed to hillfort units (they are slower than Ra's and he gets both speed and hp), increase fenris wolf broods to aom speed and attack, make ring giver -50g or -100g cost, and decrease flaming weapons by at least 25% duration or damage, give nidhogg +10% pierce armor. Maybe decrease ragnarok heroes hp or attack by 10% or something (it'll still be strong but these things need to be tested). Also Fimbulwinter is way weaker in age of titans due to autoqueue on villagers, plus tcs are available in classic, gatherer count is way higher than in aom, so I would increase it either by 5-10 seconds duration or make the wolves 10-20% higher attack/spawn 10-20% more.

A lot of people might disagree with me but then at least we can get straight on the basic agreed upon changes and maybe they can add in their own ideas of altering some units in a beneficial way.

[JAYCJ]

GoldenAxe is right, Tuma's are the only option for Atty
Gaia is really weak in comparison with Cronos and Ouranos, not really advatange to play

Norsk are really good, they don't need any up !

[SomePTSD]

I agree with everything, Nemesis. I think Fimbulwinter and Walking Woods should both be controllable as they are simply weaker versions of Ancestors atm which comes into play earlier in some cases (except you cannot use Ceasefire during Fimbulwinter, but you can fool Walking Woods by sending the unit they target away into the corner of the map, lose that one unit and make the tree/trees useless forever - same goes for the Fimbulwinter wolves: If you immediately ring the town bell and leave 1 cavalry unit at each tc, the wolves will chase after those units, dealing no damage at all; you just need to be a little better here than to fool Walking Woods).

[LNC_GoldenAxe]

You don't understand both these gp's or just using them wrong, this is why you're asking for a change.