Multiplayer Game Balance

[The Skirmish Lord]

I haven't played multiplayer yet since I've been busy playing the three factions on singleplayer to figure out what the mythical units can do.

After playing all three factions, it seems that the game balance is much better than Stronghold Crusader 1 or Stronghold Crusader 2.

In Crusader 1, you could spam horse archers and mantlets to destroy everything in sight. The knights were a bit too overpowering as well. Crusader 2, crossbowmen in war wagons were horribly overpowered and the games often devolved into who could make crossbowmen in war wagons and Templars the fastest.

So far I haven't seen that imbalance in Legends. It seems the mythical creatures all have limits on their power and the honor system prevents spamming. The main strength of your army seems to lie with conventional units.

Of course, playing against real people is a different matter which is why I'd like to see what other players think about this.

[Fred]

Bats are op. With only one bat you can kill every single archer/crossbowman on a tower. Same goes for the slinges fire has in their siege weapons.

[Doggy]

Very true ! The ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ fire-units (dont know the name for the units) can climb over walls AND destroy most buildings.....absolute nerved. So the gameplay makes no fun. Walls are absolute useless when overpowered units can easy climb over the walls and then destroy buildings.

[The Skirmish Lord]

@Ethan Bradberry
I agree that the bats cause a lot of damage but don't Dragon Harpoons and the archers themselves shoot most of the bats down? If not for units like bats, the tower full of archers becomes overpowering.

I've found that towers with overlapping fields of fire take most of the bats out and while they may destroy one tower of archers, they won't get them all.

Then again, I haven't played against people and don't know how fast bats can be spammed at the Sorcerer's Tower.

[SnugSnug]

Alot depends on the map start set up and if the map has been deliberately designed for easy resource quick massed production or a slow economic slog with a very important early to mid game.

We had a 3 hour epic match yesterday 2 ice vz arthur n Evil, it was looking near victory for arthur /evil combo with so many trebuchets and a wall of expendable evil meat keeping them safe, but the slow slog to get them into the ice economy had been costly and the match had almost been lost several times prior to that. Shame it booted us all back to the menu, really wanted to see that one through was so close for so long a real mix of blunt force and sneaky crippling.

Most endgame tactics revolve around making a hole large enough to rush an army through to dog pile the enemy lord, who is in the middle of his own pile to prevent this waiting for an aoe special to clear the floor, either before or after the complete destruction of their economy. So with this in mind;

Bats are needed by evil faction as they don't have much in the way of seige, and a clever opponent won't build an accessable outward facing wall, thus nerfing creapers,firedeamons, ladders, seige towers and warewolf lobber.
That said they're an expensive suicide unit that generally needs safety in numbers to effectively reach the taget or good micro/placement to send in several at different targets simultaneously. It's really easy to spam them in large numbers assuming your oppenent forgets to apply real pressure.
Evil are great at harassing with a good selection of easy and fast troops. But if they get choke-pointed they really struggle although their special shennanigans makes them very versatile.

All races
Catapult spam works well with good troop coverage,a stack of 10 will level most things in one volley and can be set to target ground for defense but this is assuming you've managed to get to a state where one can casually spend 10k for instant armies rather than faffing with home production, which kind of relies on trading and selling being enabled by the host.

Ice
Giant spam, if there enough giants in the stack and they all ground slam together they'll kill anything and everything in aoe but requires atleast one other troop type for deathblow (assuming lord hides in keep) and assumes good honour economy. Hard countered with moat and fire aoe.

Arthur has best economy and seige, but seriously lacks ability to spam troops in the same way the other factions can and his specials and castle defenses are all micro intensive relative to the other fations and no easy fast/flying troops to hinder early economy and harass in general.
However creeping trebuchet spam or knight/mace spam will get the job done.

[Doggy]

For me ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ spam or/and rushing is not real tactical gameplay.To many games have only the same boring "tactics" Sins fo a Solar Empire for ecxample have many different tactics,only poor rushing/spam will not work there.

But too many players prefer simple gameplay and call such poor spwm/rushing gameplay tactic.
Theatre of war,Combat Missions ect are real tactical games.....but such gameplay you find in the most other games are only stupid "fast-click-rusher-spam-games",nothing else.
You can only call such games "Very light strategic games".

[SnugSnug]

Originally posted by Doggy:

For me ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ spam or/and rushing is not real tactical gameplay.To many games have only the same boring "tactics" Sins fo a Solar Empire for ecxample have many different tactics,only poor rushing/spam will not work there.

But too many players prefer simple gameplay and call such poor spwm/rushing gameplay tactic.
Theatre of war,Combat Missions ect are real tactical games.....but such gameplay you find in the most other games are only stupid "fast-click-rusher-spam-games",nothing else.
You can only call such games "Very light strategic games".

The tactic is not in the spam, its in enabling oneself to be able to spam while preventing the opponent from doing so in an orderly fashion. Then knowing how to counter said spam if it does produce and knowing the limitations of ones own spam so it does not go to waste. This is something that legends does failry well, for while it is relatively simple each unit has a purpose and a counter and matches are often fluid enough to require most at some point.

The opening stages have many inherent vulnerabilities and at this stage quick action is often decisive (rush), but once the economies are established greater numbers (spam) or the more effiecient economy (formulaic design) will have an improved chance of achieving map control (winning) and while a good defense (turtling) will heavily tax the enemy an aggressive counter will need good micro (fast click) to tactically hard counter key threats with surgical responses (balance) or the use of overwhelming force (spam) before irrevocable damage is sustained to ones economy (destruction) or the lord snuffs it (assassination) while preventing the enemy from taking the keep (capped) resulting in a robust tug of war style gameplay fraught with challange but simple enough for casuals to enjoy. (Very light strategic games)

[The Skirmish Lord]

@SnugSnug
Thanks for your informative summary of the advantages of each faction as well as some of the general strategy. All games will be different depending on the map and opening resources but from what you say, the game seems well balanced.

Too bad your epic game crashed. Stronghold Crusader 2 had a method to save and restore multiplayer games which I used a couple of times when one or more players got disconnected.

One question - what do you mean by not building an "accessable outward facing wall" ? Do you mean putting a moat around it or making a series of double walls?

[Doggy]

But the gameplay will much more better with fog of war (like ALL other rts games). Without fog of war no tactical gameplay possible: You cant hide units in woods,behind hills,buildings ect. So you cant build traps,all feels like so unrealistic. The game have no line of sight too. And the biggest gamebreaker: You can look in the enemy base,know every time which buildings the enemy have,the size of the army....you know absolute all about your enemy without any kind of spy. So no surprise where the enemy is,you cant plan deep tactics. All the time the same...build so many food-buildings as possible and then rush/spam to the enemy.

A rts game without fog of war is not tactical,only the defense structures give the gameplay a very little bit of tactic.

But without fog of war the game(play) cant call "tactical" !!!!

[The Skirmish Lord]

@Doggy
Fog of war doesn't eliminate tactics, it just requires different tactics. Putting fog of war into Stronghold games would require new classes of scouts, scout buildings and military units that move much faster. You really can't properly plan to defeat a fortified castle or cripple a complex economy without knowing what your targets are. If anything, being able to see the entire map allows you to be MORE tactical since you know what you're dealing with instead of hiding units and hoping an enemy blunders into your trap.

An example where fog of war works well is StarCraft 2. StarCraft2 has fog of war but is a much faster moving game and has a really stripped down economy. You collect two resources, spam as many units as you can an click AS FAST AS POSSIBLE ! You have very few economic targets and no castle to deal with. You also have the ability to build anywhere on the map to detect enemy movement and, in some cases, you have scan abilities to see anywhere on the map. The units move very quickly and can quickly return to defend against a base attack that you didn't see due to fog of war. With Stronghold games, you're lucky if you can move swordsmen from one side of your castle to the other in case of an attack. StarCraft2 is a really popular and fun game where fog of war works really well, but it's not what Stronghold games are all about.

[Doggy]

Hmmmm.......perhaps you have right. Hehe but i dont like to say that.
But i hope firefly will fix the game. Set waypoints (it doesnt work in legends) is so important.The direct way is not the best. But when wayponts doesnt work it is a really big gamenreaker for me.

When i have not fog of war i will send my units to some alternative ways.And waypoints is a must have in such games.
but Legends have some other bugs so sometimes the roofs will not removes when the castle stand on a little higher position (level of the map) Sry cant explain it better in english but it is true. Try it and you will see. And this is the next gamebreaker bug for me....i will see my inventar of the storage,food-house ect.

Firefly i a very worse company (the last years. Release and never fixed the unfinished buggy Stronghold 3 and stronghol crusader 2 was a disaster too. Not possible to play the promised 8 payer mode (can you read in the manual too,but will nor work). And stronghold crusader 2 is very laggy too,very often unplayable in 4plyer mode. Only 2 player mode works better.

Firefly make a very poor work ther last years,hope they will fixed Legends. But they do nothing for the game but will promote the next game for 2017. SO POOR FIREFLY.

Legends is nor a bad game,but Firefly must support it and not only promote the bext game!!!!

But Firefly have the worst support i have ever saw from devs and they dont answer or give a statement here in the steamforum too. EVERY other devs use the steamforum too,only firelfy do nothing !!!

[SnugSnug]

Originally posted by The Skirmish Lord:

@SnugSnug

One question - what do you mean by not building an "accessable outward facing wall" ? Do you mean putting a moat around it or making a series of double walls?

The climbing and latching mechanism for certain special and seige units requires a wall piece. This does not include towers or gatehouse and in most instances also requires 'pathing'.

So any wall piece that has bad terrain, trees, rock,moat is safe. Otherwise build the towers (short towers) next to each other in line or infront of vunerable wall sections to prevent this mechanic. Its more expensive, but safer and gives any archers a height advantage over normal wall. Small towers aren't high enough to kill outright when people fall off them either so usually safer against bats as well.

Warewolf lobber, has a hard time hitting normal walls, more so towers with most warewolves lobbed at an engine tower seemingly removed from play, and those that do land are often injured.

For added cheese, delete any steps to a tower after its occupied. Then it can only be sieged, dragoned or bat'd. Allowing for cheap any easy defense against harassment early to mid game.

Walls can be used infront of towers so long as the aren't connected to soak up seige damage and place static defences (3 pieces long). Engineers will constantly rebuild them. Alot depends on the opponent type. Against Ice, more wall is preferable to distract their seige units as it messes with the ai targeting forcing the opponent to micro more.

Likewise building a tower defense style switchback either with wall or moat in front of the gatehouse gives archers more time and can result in pathing issues for attackers and moat fillers.

Most maps don't allow for a perfect defense, moat can't be reliably made or towers can't be placed. Wall is also alot eaiser to bang down quickly before defending properly, and if the enemy drip feeds their units onto ones castle then building can't be done at all which adds to the pressure and turns it more into a work in progress over the game. The delete function is great, so is space bar for those who haven't found it.

Another cheese tactic; disband... unit is on its last legs or facing certain doom or in most instances one has just been outflanked then just disband it, enemy is denied the glory and one has instant peasants for new recruits.

Edit:
@doggy
All the stronghold games have had huge bugs, most are workable but some are still game breaking. I remember a discussion about multiplayer soon after its release regarding crashing, where the limitation of the engine hadn't/couldn't be fixed so both stronghold 2 and legends had the same instability issues. Carter posts and certain Ai opponent combinations will still crash the game, and that was reported soon after release as well. The original stronghold crashed if you build a wall in front of the gatehouse.