Discussion: Balancing Unit Lines

[Tlalynet]

While scouts can hunt, subdue animal takes a few level ups and you usually have to take a risk to get tougher critters. A hunter getting 2 or 3 Giant Spiders early on can crush an enemies infrastructure by eating its workers (the AI needs to learn to deal with this better, btw, unless they actually have a scout or a hunter you can do this indefinitely) War Elephants have the same STR as Hill Giants, and you can usually get several of those (albeit slightly later, but if you are attacking with spiders you will want to get riding for the mobility promo) Griffins can circumnavigate the globe extremely early and give you diplo contact with everyone on a multi continent map, pair that with trade and that is quite powerful on its own. All other animals give +1 happy and some culture in either your most unhappy or culture starved city.

A scout can probably get many of the +1 Happy animals, but they tend to disappear quickly. Hunters can usually snag spiders, elephents, and griffins because each of those premium critters has a trait that lets it survive longer (flying over the ocean, not attacking, and being invisible)

Rangers do cost too many beakers and really lack any perks, Even when I want to hunt I usually just save a hunter with a promotion ready and upgrade it straight to beast master when I can. AH could be made cheaper or hawks could be moved to rangers, either way it would make them more desirable.

Calvary are good as they are though, their extremely high escape rate lets you throw them in low odds combat and if they win they gain several levels.

 

[Tlalynet]

...........

 

[Senethro]

Mysticism: 300
Philosophy: 300
Priesthood: 800
Fanaticism: 1800
OO+Mind Stapling: 400 + 800
Order+WotW: 800 + 280

Total OO: 4400
Total Order: 4280

Decided to check out the religious Tier 3 replacements on offer. We're looking at a beaker price comparable for Iron Working but what do we get for it? 1: A religion and its happiness/economy/mana benefits. 2: Religious hero. 3: Priest unit. 4. Tier 3 replacement.

 

[Skyre Noktis]

While scouts can hunt, subdue animal takes a few level ups and you usually have to take a risk to get tougher critters. A hunter getting 2 or 3 Giant Spiders early on can crush an enemies infrastructure by eating its workers (the AI needs to learn to deal with this better, btw, unless they actually have a scout or a hunter you can do this indefinitely) War Elephants have the same STR as Hill Giants, and you can usually get several of those (albeit slightly later, but if you are attacking with spiders you will want to get riding for the mobility promo) Griffins can circumnavigate the globe extremely early and give you diplo contact with everyone on a multi continent map, pair that with trade and that is quite powerful on its own. All other animals give +1 happy and some culture in either your most unhappy or culture starved city.

A scout can probably get many of the +1 Happy animals, but they tend to disappear quickly. Hunters can usually snag spiders, elephents, and griffins because each of those premium critters has a trait that lets it survive longer (flying over the ocean, not attacking, and being invisible)

The problem is that Hunting just costs too much to be a worthwhile investment. Capturing animals is fun but not very practical when you consider that you need to research Hunting, build a Hunting Lodge and then a Hunter just to get started.

IMO, the main balance issues between different unit types can be boiled down to the following things:

1. Recon techs are vastly overpriced for what you get. Solution: Reduce the costs of the recon line techs and give Rangers (a very neglected unit) something extra to make researching them worthwhile. The hawks suggestion is good, but I'm worried that would have the side effect of making Hunting even more pointless to research.

2. The melee line has all the metals. In particular, this means that using the archery line pretty much requires that you research melee techs as well. As archery units don't really do much that melee units don't (they're slightly better on the defence, slightly worse on the attack), you might as well just go all melee. Solution: Remove the metals bonuses on non-melee units and increase their base strength to compensate.

 

[UncleJJ]

The basic problem with the Recon line being weak is because the Melee line is too fast and too capable. Currently Melee troops do many things that are unhistoric and should be done by the Recon troops. To rectify this Melee troops should lose the Mobility and the Guardsman promotions. The Recon line should be able to pillage and have the Guardsman promotion.

I see the Recon line as representing the Classical Light Infantry role of scouting and raiding who fought in open order and the Melee line as Heavy Infantry who fought in close order (shoulder to shoulder) in the main battle line. Typically when Light Infantry met Heavy Infantry they would try not to engage in melee combat but would attempt to skirmish and harass the flanks.

Why are the Recon line not allowed to pillage? That would be their main role in rough terrain (woods and hills), pillaging and countering enemy attempts at pillaging. In open terrain Mounted should be the main pillagers but they are bad in rough terrain and should have a defensive and attacking penalty when facing light troops

The assassin with the Marksman promotion can be thought of as a specialised form of raider able to harass the enemy and strike at the weakpoints but why is the Guardsman promotion not available to the Recon line? Instead it is given to Melee. The best counter to raiding Light Infantry was your own Light Infantry.

If these changes were made then adjustments to the basic strengths might be needed making Melee slower moving and stronger in normal combat but weaker to raiding and in rough terrain.

 

[Senethro]

If you give Recon units the ability to pillage then they'd slightly overshadow the mounted line as they'd have higher strength but similar mobility and can receive defensive bonuses.

Its also a game and not a historical simulation, especially given it is fiction.

So, given that Melee troops are your rank and file, Horse Archers are the raider, you need to find a

I'd like it if Hunting tech was cheap enough that Hunters could act as an anti-rush unit that would be cleaning up animals and barbarians, spot the incoming warrior stack and be able to use its promotions and movement to whittle the stack away a little as well as giving your cities time to spam some warriors of their own.

Once metal appears then their role has to change. If you have metal then you can research poisons, upgrade them into Assassins and stop there if you wish. If you don't have metal then, assuming tech costs were tweaked a bit, you'd value being able to promote your experienced Hunter units over building inexperienced Horse Archers. The current situation is you're honestly better going for Horse Archers than Rangers as AH/HBR/Stirrups is cheaper than Animal Handling on its own.

 

[UncleJJ]

I would make Mounted strong against Recon in open terrain with perhaps a 50% bonus when attacking or defending against them. That would make all the troop types useful, which is the OP main complaint. Melee does too well in too many roles. Recon should be strong at raiding in rough terrain and Mounted strong at raiding in open terrain. That would make players build more balanced armies. Each troop type should have advantages in certain conditions.

It is a fantasy game but the reason the basic relationships between the troop types doesn't work is simply because it is too far from reality. This fantasy game is based on reality with a bit of supernatural added on; magic, gods and a few fabulous beasts. The game is based in the Classical / Medieval age and the troop types reflect this. The ships get cannons and gunpowder is an end game tech.

 

[Senethro]

The reason the basic relationships don't work for you is because you're trying to bring your reality based ideas into an abstraction of a fiction.

Making mounted units strong against recon turns them into raider units AND anti-raider units. Since they're already better than recon units, how does this change things?
Theres an easier way to get the kind of recon unit you're describing - promote a melee unit with mobility and he'll probably still be better than a recon unit with Combat I.

Recon units need a new role, not to be overlapping the roles of whats already there. All thats needed is cheaper Tech: Hunting so Hunters can capture animals, explore and do early defense instead of their current role, being completely useless except as Hawk carriers. Thats Hunter sorted. Rangers may need some kind of rough terrain bonus and a slight lowering of tech: Animal Handling.

 

[Zobo]

I would suggest beefing rangers by giving them an attack bonus on difficult terrains.

A hill gives +25% defense, how about giving rangers +15% or so against it: it is the best unit to attack enemies on hills (and marshes and forests and ancient forests)

I don't know if it is possible but would be better if hills would only give 10% defense to defender and nothing to attacker, if that is doable, rather than giving rangers bonuses against units on defensible terrains.

That would make rangers the preferred harsh terrain combatants. Elven rangers would be scary in forests.

Maybe if you retain these with beastmasters you should reduce their base strength by one?

 

[UncleJJ]

Senethro: You didn't read or understand what I wrote intially, so here it is again.

The basic problem with the Recon line being weak is because the Melee line is too fast and too capable. Currently Melee troops do many things that are unhistoric and should be done by the Recon troops. To rectify this Melee troops should lose the Mobility and the Guardsman promotions. The Recon line should be able to pillage and have the Guardsman promotion.

Address those ideas or don't bother commenting.

I suggested we reduce Melee so they don't get the Mobility or Guardsmen promotions. They never should have had them anyway. That immediately gives Recon a bigger role which is what you say they need, and I agree.

Stop being an ass and trying to argue that reality is bad in a fantasy game. All fantasy games are based on reality to some extent otherwise they don't make sense. The question is how closely it should follow reality. In this case where we have a broken military system (due to one troop type being dominant) then it makes good sense to look to what was done in the ancient past. You should at least concede that point. Trying to dismiss my ideas as being "too near reality" is childish.

What we need in this game is a correct basic relationship between Light Infantry, Heavy Infantry and Mounted troops then we can add all the supernatural stuff onto that basis. That's what other fantasy games do and that's what this one would be better if it did. Your ignorance of the historical relationships is stopping you from appreciating my point. Your not understanding something doesn't make it a bad idea it just means you can't appreciate it. I suggest you educate yourself before commenting further on my posts.

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So for Ekolite and anyone else ready to seriously address my ideas here is a summary of the basic relationships I propose for the main troop types:

Heavy Infantry (Melee); Strong (due to metal weapons) but slow (no Mobility), good in seiges can defend against Mounted in open.
Light Infantry (Recon); Medium strength and fast moving, weak in seiges, good in rough terrain (woods, swamps and hills) but weak against Mounted in open terrain (grasslands and plains). Can use Marksman promotion and the counter to it the Guardsman.
Mounted; Medium strength and fast moving, weak in seiges, good in open terrain (gets a bonus versus Recon) and weak in rough terrain. Makes good use of the Flanking promotions to do damage and withdraw from combat.

That is one way of meeting what the OP was complaining about - the dominance of the Melee troop types and the lack of a need to research the other troop types. The troops are each balanced and as in reality their usefulness depends on the situation. For instance as soon as your opponent starts to use assassins you need to follow the Recon line yourself or you lose all the weaker troops in your stacks. Just building Melee troops is no longer a solution without the Guardsman promotion. Once you have a Hunting Lodge for Rangers with the Guardsman promotion you may as well make you own assassins and so on. It adds an incentive to diversify the troop types.

 

[Senethro]

What you're proposing is a mod needing a whole load ( a small number of months) of new design work and testing. Its a new game, not balancing the current game.

You're also still missing the point that you've made a better unit line (mounted) the counter to recon and have so solved no problems at all.

Just knock some beakers off the recon techs and their natural advantages will come through. Making Iron rarer as well may help.

 

[UncleJJ]

What sort of universe are you in? I suggest removing two promotions from Melee, moving one to Recon and giving Mounted a 50% bonus and that is :

a mod needing a whole load ( a small number of months) of new design work and testing. Its a new game, not balancing the current game.

Please, get a sense of perspective. Anyway, anything I am suggesting is not too far different from what Ekolite has suggested in his OP. That's what I'm addressing.

I don't want to trivialise what I'm suggesting or the effort involved for Kael but your exageration is absurd. It won't need a mod or extensive design to move two promotions, just part of a patch.

Again you fail to read what I wrote. I suggested Mounted get a bonus versus Recon in the open, not in rough terrain. So in rough terrain the Mounted will get owned by Recon - and if they don't with present values then give some bonusses so they do I want Recon to have a role in controlling rough terrain better than other troops.

So that solves the problem, unlike your pathetic attempts to put a sticking plaster on a gaping wound. The problem is deep seated in the balance between military units. One unit type has too much utility and is a one size fits all solution. The solution is likely to involve a reduction in that units abilities and hence my suggestions.

 

[Senethro]

You can laugh it off but it would take that long. Fiddling with the game like that is a serious undertaking. Your suggestion is fundamentally flawed and you don't notice, so it would have to be demonstrated in testing. You would then come up with a different but equally reactionary solution. It would require several iterations and the usual bugs would pop up with unique units and religious units, or undesirable situations with weirder civ-specific strategies. Theres no end to these things so its little wonder that Kael tries not to interfere with the acceptable situation anymore. The game as it stands is already more balanced and varied than most strategy games reach.

Think it through. Everyones going to pick Melee because you always need Melee to take cities. Then you pick one of Recon or Mounted. You're going to pick the one that counters the other and then stick to open terrain, which is always found in abundance around enemy cities worth capturing. You'll never pick Recon as well over the option of getting a good support unit instead.

Simple is best. Just knock some beakers off.

Not everyone has to use each of Melee/Mounted/Recon in every game. If Recon becomes the defensive option for someone without metal then thats an acceptable outcome. For that to work you have to be able to research Rangers before an opponent can research (Axemen+Support unit) which isn't currently feasible.

 

[Ekolite]

I agree with UncleJJ that removing mobility and guardsman from melee would make recon far more useful. However, I think cutting the cost of some recon techs as Senethro suggests is also a good idea (possibly in combination). Also, perhaps increasing the yield of some hunting resources and making the Hunting Lodge provide one happiness with Ivory as well as Fur could make that tech in itself more valuable.

Senethro, as someone who has done a small amount of tinkering myself I can tell you that changing which unit types are eligible for a promotion is no more difficult then changing a few 1's to 0's. It's that easy.

 

[Senethro]

Senethro, as someone who has done a small amount of tinkering myself I can tell you that changing which unit types are eligible for a promotion is no more difficult then changing a few 1's to 0's. It's that easy.

Of course its easy to do. Its more difficult to stop.

Read UncleJJ's solution carefully. In between his getting offended that I don't accept this theories of medieval warfare in a fantasy world, he defends at length a solution that amounts to giving Mounted units a bonus and do almost nothing for Recon.

Its that kind of thinking that makes modding difficult to stop.

 

[Ekolite]

Thankyou I have read his post carefully and adressed the point that you made. I happen to agree with you that the suggested relationship between recon and mounted could use some work, and is unlikely to be very useful to recon units in the mid to late game when most forest is removed (leaving little ''rough'' terrain overall), and the majority of the land is ''open'' making them vulnerable to mounted units.

However I disagree that mounted units don't need a small boost and I strongly agree with UncleJJ that the relationship between the unit lines should be based on reality. Not to do so is ridiculous. We can look back in history and see exactly what worked and what didn't, inventing roles for units completely off the top of our heads is simply a bad approach.

 

[Senethro]

However I disagree that mounted units don't need a small boost and I strongly agree with UncleJJ that the relationship between the unit lines should be based on reality. Not to do so is ridiculous. We can look back in history and see exactly what worked and what didn't, inventing roles for units completely off the top of our heads is simply a bad approach.

This approach is doomed to fail. In reality heavy infantry/skirmishers/cavalry/artillery were available dependent on if your population had shepherds and hunters, citizen soldiers with obligatory service, skilled craftsmen and wealthy nobility. The society makes the army. It took industrialisation and theories of warfare to break this.

In FFH your troop types are available dependent on how many beakers you have. You don't always have all troops available, you have to choose. You have your Tier 2 main Offense: Melee/Mounted/Recon (pick 1; pick again if you took Mounted because its cheap) and Support: Siege/Arcane/Disciple/Archer (Pick 1 now and maybe 1 later). You can't usually pick more than 1 from each because if you do, your opponent will pick Tier 3 for his Main instead and his units will be uncounterable due to high strength.

Theres not going to be any kind of elegant dance of combined arms stacks because any Tier 3 counters all Tier 2s in the field and ends any possible inter-unit counter system you can devise.

You make your choices based on who you are, who your opponent is and what resources are available. If you have metal, you take melee. If you have no metal but think you can acquire some through war, you take Mounted. If you are Khazad you'll be more likely to pick Siege, if Sheaim then Arcane etc

Recon should be the choice for having to defend territory without resources and giving up the ability to capture enemy core cities, while still having the possibility of surprise attacking small ones. Assassins add a unique little Anti-Support role to this. If they can defend themselves then they can be patient and work on a builder victory or a comeback involving Tier 4 units.

But as I pointed out earlier in the thread, the beaker price is too high to make that work.

 

[Tlalynet]

I still think you need to consider the value of early happy faces, contact, circumnavigation, stealth and HN units into the cost of Hunting. If you go Hunting -> Riding -> Trade you get strong HN units and the ability to trade with people over seas for much less than the cost of optics. That's not nearly as good on Pangea or if none of these animals can be found, but under the right conditions it is well worth the beakers.

I agree with Senthro about the beaker reduction for T3 recon units though, right now Rangers don't seem worth it.

 

[DaveGold]

I don't see many of the problems raised by the initial post.

Hunting is a quite a strong technology because it provides hawks with the hunters. I don't see hunters as being intended for front line duty. They are primarily there to hunt (the clue is in the name) and be improved scouts. They do that very well, especially on Erebus maps. My only complaint would be the cost of the technology as it massively disadvantages furs and deer resources, even compared to plantation crops.

Rangers are weak but only because of their cost. I'm not sure why their production cost is so much more than horse archers. If they need improving then I'd suggest giving them a recon I promotion for free. This would make give handy utility and allow a faster promotion path to seeing invisible units.

Assassins are the military promotion you give to hunters and the assassin is a very strong recon unit for warfare. They change the battlefield. I'm not sure what role the rangers serve to complement assassins.

Archers and Longbowmen do their job, namely sit in defensive positions and keep out the enemy. They do it better than any other type of unit. That's fine. As much as you like having exciting units, you need to have some dull units sitting around guarding your cities. Archers are as cheap as axemen and guard cities better, so why build axemen to guard cities?

Horsemen and Horsearchers are also fine. The extra movement is vital when you're trying to scout, preserve your forces, and pick easy battles. Horse archers can be developed very early and used as the bulk of your army against axemen and archers. They also fit into many blitzkreig strategies really well.

 

[Lade]

Aren't you guys forgeting to at least MENTION disciple units? I'm curious of other peoples opinions of their worth.