Counters to stealth?

[jest]

First off, great game. A couple weeks ago I downloaded the mobile version on a whim, and purchased the PC version instead. The graphics suggest simple gameplay, but it's surprisingly deep.

So I'm about 50 hours in (Queen difficulty) and the game is starting to throw in lots of rank 2-3 hiding stealth units. A few missions (starting with Cruel Clare) have endless tides of them, and I'm trying to find a way to deal. I have a SINGLE source of stealth detection, Glen, the lone ranger -- whose detection ability isn't even reliable. Using it requires a squishy ranged character to be within melee range of assassins that can kill it in a single turn with flurry, moreover, on Queen, sometimes there's twice as many units as player units, there's not enough slots to waste on a unit who is so low DPS, whose specialty can't be relied upon.

The game teaches you to be speedy with captures, but that seems impossible with stealth waves. A single assassin can throw off a capture/kill your tankiest, best characters, and you can't even target them or retaliate. So you have to bunch up in groups, yet the CPU often outnumbers you 2:1, which means they constantly back cap, and killing units is pointless, because they just spawn with full HP the next turn. As a player, stealth seems fair since there's endless waves of enemies (CPU injury rate basically stays at 0-5% in a lot of missions) and you're outnumbered, but when the CPU throws lots of stealth units at you, is there even a counter? The earlier missions teach you to go for speedy captures, but I just don't see how to do that now, when you can't even the target units hiding in the way of objectives. If a boss assassin decides to attack a point, it's basically a restart, since even my tankiest/high HP knights can't survive -- it requires an entire team to burst down, meanwhile, there's 8 other characters, including witches who are chain bewitching.

I don't know if I'm missing something. Aren't there any active stealth detection abilities, for the amount of stealthed enemies thrown at you?

[jest]

Just did the mission to save several wolves, so now Glen isn't the only source of detection. The detection passive seems overly weak/unreliable though -- ambushing wolves barely drops the hide percentage from 99% to 88%.

[Mangobile]

First of all, sorry for my late reply, and thanks a lot for your thorough analysis, jest.
I've replayed scenario 161 on Queen difficulty now, and I have to admit that it's freaking hard in the current state. The spawn table is set to 33%,3 spawn chance for assassins, 33,3% for witches and 33,3% warriors. The witch / assassin combo is especially nasty, indeed.

I've been play-testing TM over and over in the past, but with close to 100 scenarios now, 5 difficulty settings, and quite a few different hero combinations, balancing has become quite a challenge.
I'll have a closer look at it, but judging from your comments and my latest play testing, lowering the Assassin's spawn chance in later scenarios might be the best option for now.
Beefing up stealth counter abilities slightly sounds like a promising idea as well, but I have to be careful not to overdo it, otherwise this change might fire back and make the player's life even more difficult for his own stealth units (all rules are valid in the same way for both ally and enemy units).

Most likely you've figured out most feasible strategies for yourself by now, but here's some general advice nevertheless:
Whenever you're facing overwhelming odds, a good strategy is often to avoid fights as far as possible, lure opponents with one of your faster units away from key positions like outposts, and conquer these with other units first. It's also best to avoid anti-selection, meaning that you shouldn't delay killing tough enemies like vampires in favor of weaker opponents for too long, otherwise you'll end up with vampires / tough enemies on the battlefield only. The later strategy obviously doesn't work out very well with Assassins, though, if you can't get to them because they are hiding.

[jest]

So I ended up finishing the game a while back -- wish there was more!

A few thoughts:

I was desperately hoping for an active stealth detect ability, up until the last moments. Many of wins centered around avoiding/tricking stealth units and playing past them, rather than countering them (ie. letting them capture a point so they unstealth, bodyblocking them with my own stealthed units). I think it'd be entirely fair if the AI has access to the same ability (say at the same frequency of wolves appearing) given how powerful stealth is. There are a few missions where stealthed units completely break the map, by blocking off the only path of attack, mainly the bridge maps. IIRC, the Wizard grandmaster assassination map, and the map with the small island with a single bridge and bear that spawns, required many restarts because assassin spawns would block off the only paths of attack. I eventually beat them, as you suggested, with some swap place/baiting-them-over hijinks (and restarting enough times to have a lucky spawns with fewer assassins), but still, if an assassin decides to do something, and doesn't fail its percentages, there's no counterplay.

Perhaps wolves could have one of their melee abilities augmented, where at rank 3, can target a hidden unit and bring it out of stealth -- seems fair given how squishy wolves are, and you only have one chance of acquiring them, nor does the CPU spawn them frequently enough to break the player experience. For story burglary missions where wolves appear, simply keep that attack under rank 3, so they don't all beeline straight for Cat. Either way, for a sequel, if not a future patch, please consider including an active stealth counter -- that doesn't require bunching up multiple units to surround a hidden one (just isn't feasible on higher difficulties, where your forces are overrun and you're being stretched across multiple points almost the entire time).



Univ damage really breaks balance and unit diversity -- my best units for the last half of the game were all casters with univ, and that goes for enemies as well. Univ simply makes a lot of late-game, specialized, high-investment/high-cost skills like holy fire 3, smite 2, pikemen's anti-rider, etc. obsolete. There's little reason to bring out melee units for actual damage (my only useful melee units were two riders/100% defense-specced bulwark knights for captures, and assassins for stealth harassment/bodyblocking ofc; ret-specced champion was fun to plop on points but was neither reliable or essential -- melee specific squishy leather wearer who can't even counter assassins), and even less reason to have bowmen (who are the worst for taking hits/capturing, and have the lowest mov, since their stats are spread so thin), as the intended bowmen>casters>melee>bowmen dynamic gets thrown out of the window very early on. Was hoping for more tactical diversity, but in the end, the optimal roster would be wizards wizards wizards, with just enough other units to keep them alive and capture/defend points.

Non-stealth, damage-focused melee units quickly became obsolete (skeleton knights with death strike remain terrifying, but players don't have access); wish melee units would've had some sort of attacks-of-opportunity feature to hit things casually running past/away from them -- but bow users were especially lackluster, as their mana costs are extremely high, for bad damage; never had a reason to bring them out, and only did so out of a feeling of pity/neglect. Enemy archers spawn frequently and numerously enough where the mp costs aren't a factor for them, unlike player spawned bowmen; every spot on the team is essential on Queen, and a bowman, at best, isn't worth half of an AOE capable caster, even against other squishies. Perhaps casters could be even more susceptible to bows, bowmen tankier vs magic, while the ability costs could be reduced (on Queen, CPU bowmen are being wiped out en mass and replenishing the next turn back to full anyway, resources aren't a factor for them) -- though even with end game gear/stats, stuff like Double Shot 3 with all crit/dmg/univ/massive crits still wasn't useful enough to want to field an archer over a caster/capturer (starburst>>>volley). I don't remember abilities like disabling shot (extremely expensive, while being low damage, only affects ATK on a single target, and not that noticeable even with max POW) or leg shot ever being worthwhile, despite experimenting with them a lot, not when you're routinely expected to a new wave of enemies each turn. On the other hand, magic damage, especially *magic missiles* and any of the magical AOEs (goes for the CPU as well) are way too strong/efficient, even without univ. Univ just put casters waaay over-the-top.

Anyway, thanks for the 110+ hours of fun, can't wait to see what you come up with in the future.