Mack10
Elves should not be an attacking force and should rely on Guard towers and pure defensive skills to be able to be good combatants. Make them rely on Shadow hall, firewall, Guard towers and again, I HIGHLY suggest, they are the only race allowed to gate.
I agree, generally. More below.
These are huge advantages given to the weakest army builds and should be incorporated into the build. They shouldnt be winning offensive fights against Dwarves and humans of their size, but on defense can put up a fight and hard to break
This is where I disagree. Having to build MC's, GT's and use a completely ass army(to only compete on defense?) just so you can bless your friends, fireball/GB or gate is not even close to a good trade-off. That's 30% build space, wizard upkeep and an ineffective army, but in return you get magic. As I currently view magic, it's a bad tradeoff to be only marginally better than a human(at magic). TERRIBLE TRADEOFF. Nobody would make that trade. I do not disagree they should be losing fights against races of similar sizes. It's not binary bro, they can lose without being demolished. Even then, all this is aside because mages cannot be left at home in their current form. We're left with a scenario where the elf cannot afford to attack, nor can they afford to leave their mages at home. So bottomfeed a rando I guess? Also, caragous are utter trash lol.
I also disagree with you on the"" "Race 1 counters Race 2 who counters Race 3 who counters Race 4" type balance"" , it makes it so every race has its strengths and weaknesses and can help take down 'runaway' provinces. If they are all equal in army strength, it makes replayability kind of repetitive... You find the OP build and everyone just copies, then were into 'rebalancing again'.
Again, nobody is saying races ought to be equal? The races do have strengths and weaknesses, it's great, but let's not lean into hard countering. I don't think anyone wants to wake up to getting destroyed by a player of equal size because they got hard countered with their army at home. There are things that are balanced, some things that are unbalanced. Do not construe balancing for attempting to create equal army strengths, it's not the intent, not even close.
It would be more fun to have to be switching up your build depending on the enemy. Dwarves having issues with Humans: get more Med Centres, ally Orc's, add another Tech, don't take away their upkeep in an attempt to 'balance'
This is what normally happens already....and it's not part of my arguments. It's been decades of this lol, it's always been this way and nobody(?) wants to change that. Adaptation and optionality is great. I love empowering the player with choices, a common theme with my suggestions. Which upkeep are you referring to? Mages?
In conclusion I just feel your thoughts are more catering to equality of armies and I think the game needs to steer more into the strategy and diplomacy and not making every races army 'fair'.
Yes sorry, you are crazy LOL. My focus for units has only been on:
- Elf army in general with a focus on mages, caragous later
- SW's getting fucked from range
It would be more accurate to say I am simping for Elves yet somehow advocating for range to go back to 50%. This has nothing to due with unit/race homogenization or getting rid of counters currently in place. Some stuff is just what it is, unbalanced. If we want to debate it, the best spot would be to start with how much tradeoffs Elves have to make for magic, how good magic is, and where the balance lies. ie; compare Human and elf armies, now compare their magic effectiveness. It doesn't jive.
I love the idea of and have thought about adding many more techs as well. Techs trees with choices even, pick-a-path style would be cool to further differentiate individual KD's. The idea of "late-game techs", and some kind of gatekeeping keeps crossing my mind but a timed release seems lame and I haven't thought of anything better yet. Maybe Elves cast a powerful spell that does things(?) and officially marks mid or late game, or even ends the round. You'll actually notice a theme of mine is to never make equal, homogenize or otherwise between races. I'm staunchly against it.
Where do you actually sit with the countering? I think you just have the wrong perception of what i'm espousing. imo we maintain the countering system of old, not specifically increase or decrease it at this point. We can think about and adjust that as needed after we get the easier balancing out of the way. When I say hard countering, I am talking current gnomes vs current Orc, that is bad. Old Dwarf vs old Elf, those were bad. They should still lose but be brought more in line. The only thing that bothers me about existing (Non-racial)countering are the mounted units. They have a hard counter but offer no benefit and have an increased armory cost, unless we consider their stats to be baked into the balance on it.
