Topic: Healing rate in buildings

Astuur Topic Opener Joined: 2009-02-28, 10:08 Posts: 733 One Elder of Players Location: Frankfurt / Germany	Posted at: 2011-04-01, 08:27 Currently we have a healing rate of 2 in biggest militatry buildings (Castles) Towers also have that healing rate, while fortresses only have 1. Is there any particular reason for this? I understand that the general rule is, bigger building, higher healing rate. Being no programmer, I apologize for all my suggestions that imply undue workload and for other misjudgements due to lack of expertise or relevant skills. I am on Win32, have no means to compile, and rely on prefabricated distributions (Thanks to Tino). Top Quote

SirVer Joined: 2009-02-19, 15:18 Posts: 1440 One Elder of Players Location: Germany - Munich	Posted at: 2011-04-01, 10:37 I guess you are talking about the empire buildings here, is this correct? I agree that we should balance healing out more. My suggestion is to multiply all military values that deal with hitpoints by 10 or 100, so that healing rates can be tuned more finely. E.g. it is hardly fair that the tower has the same regen than the castle which takes forever to build and is extremely costly for the empire. Otoh, there would be the possibility to up the heal rate tremendously for specific smaller buildings; these would then support defensive play because the defender benefit of having his soldiers heal between fights is then much stronger. Top Quote

Astuur Topic Opener Joined: 2009-02-28, 10:08 Posts: 733 One Elder of Players Location: Frankfurt / Germany	Posted at: 2011-04-01, 17:12 Yes, I was talking about the Empire buildings, but it's the same for corresponding Barbarian Buildings (Citadel, Fortress, Donjon). The second biggest building goes back to a healing rate of 1. Only Atlanteans are an exception here. I did not have any afterthoughts when I wrote this, just discovered it seemed not logical. But ... hearing your extended solution, I'm delighted I would indeed set a precondition to fine tune possible defense vs. attack imbalances in a very "natural" way! Being no programmer, I apologize for all my suggestions that imply undue workload and for other misjudgements due to lack of expertise or relevant skills. I am on Win32, have no means to compile, and rely on prefabricated distributions (Thanks to Tino). Top Quote

martin Joined: 2011-01-13, 14:21 Posts: 65 Likes to be here	Posted at: 2011-04-01, 19:17 I have a question: In which way is game balancing done, currently? By trial and error or is there a kind of systematic approach? Top Quote

Astuur Topic Opener Joined: 2009-02-28, 10:08 Posts: 733 One Elder of Players Location: Frankfurt / Germany	Posted at: 2011-04-02, 08:23 Are you talking about Inter-tribe balancing? I don't think a systematic approach is possible. Too many differences in the economies factor in there. So, from time to time questions of balance do occur. However, the majority of players currently does not feel a need for further balancing. PS: This question does not really belong here.(i.e. is not found under this thread's title) If you want to further discuss balancing, you should start a new thread of its own. Being no programmer, I apologize for all my suggestions that imply undue workload and for other misjudgements due to lack of expertise or relevant skills. I am on Win32, have no means to compile, and rely on prefabricated distributions (Thanks to Tino). Top Quote

ixprefect Joined: 2009-02-27, 14:28 Posts: 367 Tribe Member	Posted at: 2011-04-02, 10:56 I think that in theory, a systematic approach is possible. In practice, this requires more games being played. The good side is that because not many games are being played visibly, there is no big need for balancing. Also, it seems to me that things are mostly balanced already - certainly as far as soldier capabilities are concerned. The relative economies are more difficult to balance, and suffer more from map-specific effects anyway, e.g. if a map does not have enough granite in mountains, then it is broken for atlanteans, etc. Top Quote

SirVer Joined: 2009-02-19, 15:18 Posts: 1440 One Elder of Players Location: Germany - Munich	Posted at: 2011-04-02, 19:25 Nasenbaer invested a lot of time in balancing. he let the AI play against each other mostly. Sometimes, we detect imbalances and fix them - those could be considered abusable bugs. There is some work to gather statistics from games played on the game server. In the end this should help to underline balance decisions with data. But balancing is always more an art than a science - take a look at commercial games which invest a lot of time in balance (e.g. Starcraft 2), still some feel balance has not been achieved. Bottom line is: if you feel something is very unbalanced, make a good argument for it here in the forums. Expect though that we have thought about the arguments before - the tribes are different for a reason. Top Quote

martin Joined: 2011-01-13, 14:21 Posts: 65 Likes to be here	Posted at: 2011-04-04, 11:43 Thanks for your answers With a systematic approach I mean either a mathematical or a simulative one. I've thought a little about it: The mathematical approach could use a kind of factor to describe how difficult a specific ware can be produced - the higher the value, the more precious the ware is (similar, but not identical to the current AI ware preciousness). This approach could start from basic building materials considering the costs for buildings producing that ware, the needed space for the building, and the costs for the worker's tool. Then, it goes further to the not-so-basic building materials (for barbarians e.g. blackwood, grout, and gold). After that, everything you can eat. Then, resources. Ingots. Tools/weapons. Then, you have a kind of preciousness list (which could of course be used by the AI) for all wares of a specific tribe. Starting from that, you could calculate the overall preciousness for soldiers of all levels, military buildings and so on. I guess, this would be a nice fundament to decide about healing rates, territory expansions, military strength of soldiers within intra-tribal and inter-tribal fights, etc. As the mathematical approach is very theoretical, the simulative one seems to be more practical. You simply let some AI play against each other a lot of times. For enhanced performance, this should be done without graphics. This approach would provide a lot of statistical data to underline or even to lead to balance decisions. Of course, it requires a kind of extra program or script where you can fine-tune some parameters, where you can just simulate parts of the game (e.g. fights or economic growth speed), and where you don't have to wait too long for the simulation results. The only problem is, that the AI currently does not play good enough Maybe there could be a combination of those two approaches to get optimal balancing. The former will need some "theoretical brains" while the latter is up to programmers. Of course, this will take some efforts, but it would not interfere with current game development and maybe could be extended later on - e.g. for seafaring, trading system, AI development, 4th tribe if there will be one What do you think about these ideas? Would they still improve things? Or is further balancing needed at all? Edited: 2011-04-04, 11:52 Top Quote

Qweesdy Joined: 2011-04-05, 10:53 Posts: 2 Just found this site	Posted at: 2011-04-05, 12:25 Hi, If everything was perfectly balanced, then it wouldn't matter which tribe you choose in any situation, and there'd be no point bothering with more than 1 tribe (other than superficial stuff like different graphics). In my opinion the tribes shouldn't be balanced properly - different tribes should be better/worse in general, and different tribes should be better/worse in specific situations. A skilled player should look at a map and (for e.g.) think to themselves "tribe #4 would be the easiest on this map because there's lots of wood/trees, but I feel like a challenge so I'll try tribe #5 even though it doesn't look like there's much iron". On multiplayer, players with weaker tribes would form alliances to bring down a player with a stronger tribe (and maybe choosing the best/strongest tribe would be a bad strategy if you don't want everyone to gang up on you from the beginning of the game). I guess what I'm saying is that "bad balance" can be a good thing and can make the game more interesting. Qweesdy Top Quote

SirVer Joined: 2009-02-19, 15:18 Posts: 1440 One Elder of Players Location: Germany - Munich	Posted at: 2011-04-05, 14:11 hi qweesdy and welcome to the forum (I somehow missed your first post ). balance is only generally speaking. for example, the barbarians are faster to produce new soldiers than any other race and this is well wanted. It gives them a stronger point on small maps. We want to keep things different, nevertheless a situation should never be clear from the beginning who wins: e.g. when I play a barabarian on a small map, I build a lot of big military buildings to survive the early game. I will get stronger once I build my momentum (being the empire). Top Quote