Balance Thoughts – KS, Humans, ATCs, and Long Range Disparity

Thecatman

Not sure how to respond to a post asking to buff humans lol Their TC units when upgraded are on par with some other races ATC. Yes other races ATC can hide and what not but you leave out that human has probably the best racial tech in the game. With ranged being actually viable now instead of garbage they have a strong counter, like every other race in the game.

skigglez

If anything the durability of their TC units needs a nerf

AdinTheDark

skigglez If anything the durability of their TC units needs a nerf

This just isn’t true I’m losing the full 80% in TC units almost every attack no matter the race with a couple of the armor techs done.

Lord Thane

I agree with skigglez , it's not a bad thing that races with different specialties fair badly against each other when pitting themselves against those specialties. Human and Orc both have pretty lame long range attacks, the only thing that gives Humans a chance is their armor. Only option for Orc is to send overwhelming force if the Gnome is heavily invested in atc.

I get the feeling when you say "humans aren't the baseline", what you really mean is "humans aren't dominating everyone". That's not a bad thing in my opinion, I think a "baseline race" should not be overly powerful, nor weak, and they seem pretty middle of the road to me all things considered. I think in old Thardferr the techs were a lot more powerful than they are now, and that is skewing peoples expectations. At least that's how it feels to me anyways - we don't have old Thard code to be able to compare those kind of things, though I think the techs are very worth it, but definitely not OP.

Happy to hear of ideas for replacements or improvements for cli. We made a lot of progress with it so far I think, fine tuning for situations like helping discourage bottom feeding by not granting it <70% ks, etc. My suggestion for tossing ideas into the community for assessment/debate is to try thinking of all possible scenarios in your presentation/rationale = ways it could help, possible abuses that need figuring out, etc. Then be ready to defend the idea with well thought reason.

Strider

Lord Thane should a successive attacks grant longer retal rights?

I thought failed attacks use to grant protection to hinder army kills which it doesnt now. Everyone knows someone at this stage of the reemergence of thardferr, so you will never defend an attack without being broken immediately after.

If you're going to kick a dog while its down maybe +48 hour retal right is the cost.

I dont have a stance on this and theres been zero thought other than the initial idea so everyone feel free to bash it in every way possible

AdinTheDark

It’s more about the disparity in attack power when it comes to finding a target, especially when considering gnomes as an example. The amount of damage capable by kingdoms of the same size is nowhere near the same. How does a kingdom capable of doing that amount of damage in one phase equal the same or even less kingdom strength than another? I can only speak for humans, but I’ve witnessed lopsided BRs against all races. Elves have started to even out a bit, but they still suffer high losses in the long-range phase. Orcs actually perform well against humans in many ways. Dwarves dominate human in melee phase and the only reason humans can get kills there is because they don’t have pikes. I haven’t seen maybe BRs against undead this round so can’t really judge that. There’s a stigma that humans are the strongest, and everyone just accepts it as fact, but this is my second time playing as humans, and they certainly haven’t felt strong or dominant in any way. You’re right, I might not have worded that correctly. I think it’s arguable that they aren’t nearly as strong as people think. Even when we’re on top, attacks were made with heavy losses. Maybe something isn’t working right with the armor and attack techs or your right the techs aren’t as powerful as they use to be but that means humans aren’t as strong as they use to be I’m not really sure.

Those were also ramblings of a stoned man who has seen some terrible BRs and failed attacks recently against a few races.

Lord Thane

AdinTheDark maybe you're on to something about the techs. I will double check those on Monday to make sure all the human units are getting credited properly.

As an example of what I meant about the techs being weaker, I believe in the old game a armor tech might have given a half or maybe even full defense point per level (I'm referring to old old Thard, idk if gen shadow changed it). The way it's set now, I think I recall it actually being a % buff, and not near as drastic as it may have been before (where a unit might have gotten a 50% buff). All the races had the same kind of armor buffing from what I can remember, so that part isn't just a human thing. I mention that because it's not necessarily a nerf just against humans, although as the race that has all armored units it may be more apparent to those players.

AdinTheDark

Lord Thane

I just see our loses scaling up as the round gets longer when they use to scale down as we got more armor techs and protections from that. I could see clerical magic helping with that but I still perceive it as drastically different at this level.

skigglez

Lord Thane
So the sharper blades and armour upgrades are all % increases? And it’s the same for increase for each race? Everyone i play with assumed it was simply +1 increases as it was in the past. Can we get the %’s? This info makes a massive difference for certain races that have higher/lower base damage units. It has a really big impact on what tech path you choose. Certain races SB would be rushed early if it's big increases or done last if it isn't. Feels really bad making such a significant investment in tech time if you don't have the information. Why even make the tech path a choice if most of the choices you don't have the information? Takes the strategy out of that aspect of the game.

Can we just put a huge disclaimer at the beginning of the game guide that details will be revealed, and anyone who wants to play under the shroud of mystery has the option to not read it? That gives the rest of the majority of the players (I would guess a significant majority) the information that influences how the game is played. Can we do a poll to see how many players actually want the numbers revealed for units and techs? The game becomes so much more in depth and interesting if you're able to use that information to influence decisions.

Mack10

I have to jump in here because I was told "this is not how the game is supposed to be" when I previously said in the forum that races are supposed to have a weakness race to keep everyone in check. This is how it should be but we have a small community and I can see why its balanced the way it is. Gnome on FF should eat humans, Orc on surrounding should eat dwarves and give humans a run for their iron. A Dwarf should tear up Elf and Gnomes.

Speaking on to Adin's topic of humans.
I have noticed having almost all army techs (as human) was a huge benefit in early game. When everyone went CLI, I went Light armor +SB , and I was losing next to nothing, ESPECIALLY on defense. As others began teching into Sharper blades and using more ATC units, I have to agree with Adin, I am seeing 40-80% loss in Knights & Mounted Archers and 80% Infantry, Pikemen, archers as well as Heavy Infantry.
I believe Charging is not working as intended, I am losing the same amount of Knights as MA every battle and very little on successful attacks.

Fighting Dwarf has been a problem all round. I was able to bounce some attacks pre Dwarven Sharper blades, but no longer can stop a similar sized Dwarven (TC ONLY) army. I have said this before and some of the dwarves 'who were in the top 15 came in with their opposite opinion' so my posts were not taken seriously but they are really becoming a problem.
Dwarves are hitting too hard and are OP due to the fact they dont have Gold problems. They can Run 1:1+ GH with high Training Centres only and have the best units in the game.
They can Buy MP's and stay blessed relatively easily.
They have the same food issues as the rest of us and should be struggling more.

Humans units are known for their defensive techniques but I have only bounced Undead attacks in the past 2 weeks. Broken by Orcs and dwarves of similar size over and over with a full army home and GH's full with tons of Knights on Charging. This should not be the case, humans have low attack but very high defence, I shouldnt be losing so much and should be stopping more attacks. On top of that the losses are astronomical. I have 1.2:1 TC's and am being outgrown by Dwarves that break me with similar land/ks, then they rebuild at double the speed.
I have not hit a Gnome, I think all round, so I cannot speak on this subject.
Elves on Energy gathering are a force to be reckoned with and cause heavy damages, but Charging is helping win the battles there. Its nice to see they have a strat that can at least cause some damage to Humans instead of just getting crushed.
Orcs just zerging and are breaking me with their cheap units.
The point here being, no matter the race it is HEAVY TC losses.

The advantage to humans seems to be early game and not late game as it was previously. I know this is a new style of play but I feel something is off with human TC units. I dont think Humans are too OP or considered a weaker race by any means, but the upkeep of iron is too much to be losing so many men every battle (mid-late game)
I was using Med centres, which was helping but I couldnt keep up to facing dwarven enemies without tearing them down and making them in to Training Centres. I have every intention of reversing this end game again when I can afford the ATC units but the iron costs are so damn high, Especially with 200 market value (Screw you hippies who changed this haha)
Once the ATCs are broken on a human, its game over unless they can hide in protection with CLI and rebuild said units. TC units just MELT.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk

Lord Thane

Mack10 eh idk, I had a handful of dwarfs bounce off me this round. I got broken by orcs and humans. I played Dwarf in the last test round and the thing I noticed was it's slow to build a big army, and there's some gotchas (learning to use SB properly is hard). But once you figure them out and have had time to build up a large force, you have some really crazy strong defense. It's all that Plate. Gold was a major issue for me in the test round, but since we had techs skewing gold at the time I can imagine they have a good chunk more gold available this round to ease that, making them more dangerous

As a Dwarf, I would be very scared of an Orc. An Orc on Infantry Attack could be very dangerous against a Dwarf.

For the humans thing, I did mention in the test round about it, but I think that bit was glossed over - people didn't see it because we had resource dumps skewing things I think. When I was running through testing techs, that's when I noticed they were much weaker than I expected, and that's what I relayed to the community. I said it again a couple other times about it, thinking we should probably increase the strength of armor tech... Welp, I guess we'll see on Monday when I can look. I'll check for the actual code in the battle calc, who knows - maybe we luck out and it's just a < that should be a > and it's a simple mistake. Or maybe the code isn't stacking/compounding the buffs from levels or something, idk. I just remember testing the techs, confirming they actually worked to produce higher defense numbers, noted in my brain that it was surprisingly low effect, moved on to next things to test.

Edit: also, I remember noting that the sharper blades techs actually had a good and noticeable affect, very much worth it. Strange that the attack techs seemed much stronger effect than armor techs.

AdinTheDark

Any system that is percentage based dwarves and ATC gnomes just win.

Hammers are a 7/7 TC unit. The 3/5 human infantry is laughable when teched out under percentages

The game guide says it adds 1 point for each tech

The first combat technology increases the damages dealt by blade weapons, each level in this technology will increase by one the damages dealt by all units using bladed weapons (arrows are not considered to have blades).

The third and forth combat technologies have basically the same effect and improve your army defense. Each armor type can be improved using this technology, but the lower level ones can usually reach a higher level. Like the blade technology, each technology point in armor resistance will increase your defense by one point.

skigglez

AdinTheDark
Completely agree - in my opinion it should be flat scaling and not % based, or else the weaker early game races just get weaker and the stronger units get stronger. Maybe 1 for each tech level isn't where it needs to be, but flat seems more fair.

Lord Thane

AdinTheDark well, percentage boost can be equivalent of a point boost, just depends on what and how the percent is done. Could be the percent boost is supposed to match it as a full point increase and just had a bug in it or something. When I was testing techs I was just testing that they actually worked, not tweaking balance/config. We'll find out tomorrow when I can dig into it in more depth 🙂

Lord Thane

Strider if we did, it would need to be pretty complex to prevent abuse, something like requiring a certain % of total army (garrisoned and out on attack) killed to work... We've talked about it a couple times, even as recently as a week ago, but the idea didn't really go anywhere. We already have so many types of protection, etc.

I think the current system is pretty favorable for that situation though, as a failed attack gives a retal so the defender can team up with an ally to perform a pre-re on the failed attacker. If the defender wins a castle (with pre-re is pretty much guaranteed) then they get the protection that comes with it.

When we buff defenders with things, it makes attacking less attractive. We've got a lot of rules in place to give defenders the upper hand, I just can't imagine giving them even more protection scenarios.

Also, many kingdoms attacking to kill an army is the main way to take down a large kingdom. If we put a rule to give the defender protection, even after losing something like 30% of their army, they may be able to rebuild it faster than other kingdoms can destroy - meaning top players could perpetually remain in the top. One of the funnest parts of this round so far has been watching the top10 get cycled in and out so often - bunch of kingslayers.

For me, I can't support the idea. It would need some high level rationale worked out and all abusable scenarios fixed first. The few times I spitballed it in my head so far I just couldn't get passed the problems it has or would create.

Strider

Lord Thane I dont disagree with any of that

Nolio

I like the part about increasing the Retal time against the kingdoms that follow hits. Not adding any protection, just increasing retal time. This would mean that since you basically had someone pre against you, you'd then be able to get a pre/retal against them. Makes it fair, adds more blood and battles, and overall ends up being good in my opinion.

TheKeeper

increasing a flat point, would make gnomes demigods! that's why I used %

skigglez

TheKeeper
Then doesn't the % make dwarf and human gods? Most of the fodder units that get the flat damage don't get any scaling on defense

Nolio

TheKeeper Percentage most greatly affects the units that are the strongest, and affects the weakest units the least. With flat damage, weaker fodder units become viable late game. And while yes this benefits fodder heavy armies, Gnomes, Orcs, Undead, those fodder units are unsustainable. An undead can't easily make 20k Skeletal Legion, have them killed off, then make 20k more repeatedly. So no, they aren't demigods. They're expensive glass cannons that take time to replenish.

But lets break down how much it affects units with numbers. We will increase armor by 100% for simplicity sake:

Riders 6 to 12
Shieldbearers 20 to 40
Hammer wheilder 7 to 14
Axe Man 11 to 22
Knights 11 to 22
Heavy Infantry 8 to 16
Caragous ??? to ???
Wolf Master 3 to 6

Now consider how a fodder unit (for gnomes only) increases by 1 point at 100%, while the other fodder races all have 2 base points, and it becomes apparent that the disparity between fodder and elite units is even more massive.

If you take into account the non fodder races who have mid tier units, which is all of them except gnome who have none, and dwarf where they're all strong, then the increases are bewteew 3 and 6.

So with Human Infantry having 5 defense, even those units jump up to 10 where a gnome Infantry unit goes from 2 to 4. So now the gap of the mid tier unit has increased by the percentage increase.

This means that whatever the percentage increase there is, becomes the increase in gap between the strong and weak units. Strong units get stronger, weak units become weaker.

Flat rates reduce that percentage discrepancy without making fodder units OP.