Topic: Balancing around the tempo tournament

Clarifying my statement:

kaputtnik wrote:

So in my opinion the question shouldn't be 'how to balance the tribes to get fully trained soldiers' but ' how to balance to get more medium trained soldiers'. Creating a hero should be the exception. But i don't know how to archive this

So in my opinion the question shouldn't be 'how to balance the tribes to get fully trained soldiers' but 'how to balance the tribes to prevent to get fully trained soldiers'.

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kaputtnik wrote:

Do you have any alternate suggestion? would you prefer my earlier suggestion to move some marble cost from wineyards to mills and bakeries (therefore still keeping the distinction with "building material economy")? Or would you prefer to introduce experience for the imperial weaponsmith? or what else?

Making heroes should be expensive as possible i think. What most players do now is to work on creating fully trained heroes and let them fight against each other. Probably the one who made the most heroes wins the game. In my opinion this is not the way this game should work. If heroes are very expensive, the chance to fight with medium trained soldiers growth. Then there will be a difference if one soldier has one evade/attack/health/... point more than the other. On the opposite winning a fight with fully trained soldiers is luck.

So in my opinion the question shouldn't be 'how to balance the tribes to get fully trained soldiers' but ' how to balance to get more medium trained soldiers'. Creating a hero should be the exception. But i don't know how to archive this

Yes, making heroes should be as expensive as possible, as you can reach the full ambiente of the game, in my opinion fastest times should not be faster than 50 minutes, surely not the current 16 minutes.

"the chance to fight with medium trained soldiers growth" - this gives the game a lot more possibilities, i like this very much

Creating a hero should be the exception -> exactly

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simplypeachy wrote:

I shan't comment further on this area since my input has been misconstrued as a personal attack, which it was not.

ok, sorry for overreacting to what i misperceived as a personal attack.

anyway, this discussion has been going on for a long time. it started in 2015, when i won the tournament by first figuring out how to micromanage to turn all your resources into heroes. and i demonstrated that heroes will trounce an equal amount of resources in lesser soldiers (though i also had excellent economy). but right there, i instructed anyone on how to do the same, and it still took me over one hour to get heroes, so it wasn't a big deal.

then worldsavior came, and he started to lower the time (though his economy was also more excellent than mine). and then high level competitive game turned into a challenge to make the first hero - though of course keeping a healty economy to also get the second, and third, in reasonable time is needed. (as i often pointed out, the guy who got the first hero manged it because he had the best economy 99% of times)

and then we started seeing that the tribes were different, and we started trying to balance. some people would have wanted to get rid of the whole "micromanage heroes" thing, while others tried to accept it and play around it, and generally we tried to give each tribe even chance. since then, balancing has never really stopped.

simplypeachy wrote:

One way to force a timer, by means of an economy, would be to change the build requirements of the training sites. If they require wares that are a) not part of the starting wares and b) take a full economy to produce, then training cannot even begin until it's up and running.

there is already an attempt to do this. all training sites cost gold, which is the capstone of an economy. plus, barbarian training site costs lots of grout, empire need marble columns, amazon need balsa, atlanteans need cloth... all tribes need a lot of their more expensive ware to make their training site.

still, that hasn't discouraged anyone.

kaputtnik wrote:

Clarifying my statement:

kaputtnik wrote:

So in my opinion the question shouldn't be 'how to balance the tribes to get fully trained soldiers' but ' how to balance to get more medium trained soldiers'. Creating a hero should be the exception. But i don't know how to archive this

So in my opinion the question shouldn't be 'how to balance the tribes to get fully trained soldiers' but 'how to balance the tribes to prevent to get fully trained soldiers'.

problem with this is that, if it was actually convenient to make more medium promoted soldiers, then what would be the point of making heroes? one would just figure out the most cost-effective promotion level, then set to 0 the weapons and armors that are not needed. and then we may as well remove them from the game entirely.

and then the new heroes will be the soldiers with the higher convenient promotion level.

by the way, this used to be the case some years ago. the mathematical values of the various soldiers made it convenient to skip some of the higher armor promotions. for example, an atlantean hero would die in 5 hits from an enemy hero regardless of having shield 2 or only shield 1. so people figured that getting sshield 2 was useless and needlessly expensive, and stopped using it. we tweaked values to avoid having useless promotions.

and then some pieces of the economy would be useless.

kaputtnik wrote:

Maybe for playing on small maps, but in general skipping a large portion of the economy does not work on medium or big maps.

it's not even just small maps.

in the 2019 tournament, i was facing the-x on ice wars. which is one of the biggest, latest-contact maps. i felt safe enough, because i know the-x has a dangerous early rush but is weaker later. and yet, in 40 minutes he was able to cross the distance and almost kill me. So, if on one of our biggest maps there is contact in 40 minutes, this ideal of "late contact when everyone has several heroes made with all calm" doesn't really apply often.

in fact, I believe that we should not make heroes more difficult to get, but we should make them easier.

if we make them difficult, then still someone, eventually, will get one. and then the game is done. or both sides will make one, they will fight, whoever gets lucky wins.

if we make them easy, both sides will have some heroes. one side will manage to make them a few minutes earlier, but it won't matter too much for onlyu a few minutes. and winning/losing a single 50% fight won't have too huge an impact on the game.

we should do that, or remove heroes entirely.

making them harder to do only makes them more important. making them weaker/too expensive is akin to removing them entirely.

but really: this whole mess sparked the moment some powergamers started to study optimal strategies for this game. it's unavoidable. we can change things all we want, but unless you ban worldsavior and me (and probably also the-x and a few others) there will always be powergamers powergaming and figuring strange tricks to get an advantage. trying to stop those tricks will only cause different ones to arise. may as well try to ride it as best as possible

These points lead to the fact that I would ask everyone on their specific thought on the folllowing goals:

1. It should not be possible to make a hero without having a full (except ship industry) economy. (perhaps we could define a percentage or number of buildings needed)
2. Each tribe should be able (played by skilled players who are clearly identified now ;-)) to make a hero in the same range of time (value to be discussed I would vote for 40 +-5 minutes as you might encounter enemy earlier in a small map)
3. The flavour and character of each tribe should be kept to the maximum extent possible. We don't wan't to end up with all tribes similar won't we. So we should aim at achieving 1 and 2 with the least amount of changes possible.

maybe this has to be done in steps first 1. then 2.

yes. i said this same thing in the first post, though i naively assumed that everyone would be on board with it.

I only took a shorter time (30 minutes) because that would require the least changes, as 2 tribes are already there and the others can be put there easily enough.

I'm not sure we can force 40 minutes without significantly altering all the economies, or putting some strong artificial obstacles in the way.

by the way, I think I got the perfect easy idea for making first hero unimportant. Giving EVERYONE heroes FROM THE START!

Think about it: your starting stock of soldiers will include 10 heroes, and a few more with lesser promotions. Oh, you made an 11th after only 20 minutes? It hardly matters.

I would not want this to be the norm. So I think we could add a new starting condition - elite army, or something like this.

then we would be free to make tournaments wit the classic rush to get first hero, and casual games where we can relax and have a slow start... but if we want a casual game and to not have to worry about getting a first hero? we pick that starting condition.

especially if we do implement some bonus to the defender.

then both sides start with sizeable armies, and can't attack the opponent, and a few quick new soldiers won't make enough of a difference. and then both sides are forced to play the economy war in full strenght.

and the best thing is, it would be completely optional as a starting condition. nobody can complain that the game is being pushed in a direction he does not want, because if one does not want to use it, one can simply not pick that starting condition.

this would not remove the need to balance the classic start, but it would give a good way out to all those of you who don't want to have to worry about early heroes.

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king_of_nowhere wrote:

kaputtnik wrote:

Clarifying my statement:

kaputtnik wrote:

So in my opinion the question shouldn't be 'how to balance the tribes to get fully trained soldiers' but ' how to balance to get more medium trained soldiers'. Creating a hero should be the exception. But i don't know how to archive this

So in my opinion the question shouldn't be 'how to balance the tribes to get fully trained soldiers' but 'how to balance the tribes to prevent to get fully trained soldiers'.

problem with this is that, if it was actually convenient to make more medium promoted soldiers, then what would be the point of making heroes?

Heroes will ever be the strongest soldiers, so creating a hero will be ever the goal.

one would just figure out the most cost-effective promotion level, then set to 0 the weapons and armors that are not needed. and then we may as well remove them from the game entirely.

and then the new heroes will be the soldiers with the higher convenient promotion level.

This was not the intention of the idea. The idea was to force the players to spend more time on training and make it more resource consuming. In the end it should be possible to create a hero, but it should be more time consuming. In the meantime (while focussing on training) one faces the opponent and fighting with half trained soldiers comes into account, which means less luck.

But to be honest: I am not very familiar with all the promotion levels and i do not exactly know which armor/weapon produce which level of promotion. I am a friend to this game because of the nice graphics, the cozy gameplay, discovering a map step by step. So i am maybe not the person who should talk about hero creation Anyway i believe some people like the game in the same manner as i do.

if we make them difficult, then still someone, eventually, will get one. and then the game is done. or both sides will make one, they will fight, whoever gets lucky wins.

The players who manage to get, eventually, heroes, has managed his economy better. No difference than what we have today.

by the way, I think I got the perfect easy idea for making first hero unimportant. Giving EVERYONE heroes FROM THE START!

Think about it: your starting stock of soldiers will include 10 heroes, and a few more with lesser promotions. Oh, you made an 11th after only 20 minutes? It hardly matters.

I would not want this to be the norm. So I think we could add a new starting condition - elite army, or something like this.

Also a nice idea

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Yes, to your post last night king of nowhere, I still wonder why we didnt make something like the triple circle system, as it solves most of the problems you showed above, indeed i had the feeling that you were against it, cause it was new or maybe cause it could weaken the hero handling part which you discoverd in 2015?

What a very fevoribly solution would be the one of kaputtnik: That a hero is the ultimative goal which good players can only achieve very rarely. It is a further challenge to us and it is something special in a game (like the goal in football, were you waiting very long for, if they defense right)

I mean yes i do completely understand your love for the hero. but it disadvantegs new players and that you give your knowledge to all is simply not true, as not even I know anything ybout your nice hero handling strategy, for what i feel a bit disadvanted cause that is the reasoen world wins most of the games in the past we had in 1v1 against me, though my eco is a lot stronger and more precise, world builds faster and goes stronger on wood and building quantity.

Of course its understandable for that we should keep this hidden knowledge, but in most cases this turns out not so nice because it seems not everyone has a chance, even if they try hard. Of course i also understand your wish to keep it like 2015, but we can add new challenging elements, which would make a lot of fun to explore.

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ektor wrote:

I fully agree that the game needs to be completely overhauled so that it is indeed necessary to develop a complete economic system - before - we can get a hero!

Because without that, the basic idea of the game, in my humble opinion, loses all meaning.

Thats almost the same like my opinion. The basic Idea of the game has been always that its a stragegy game rather than a roleplay game.

If we tap all focus on this one hero, not only new players cant compete at all with us, i rather like a fun and long game where at the end experience wins than a short hero move through.

also is smalles strategic options even more cause if you only have the resources for your hero, you dont have any options than to build this hero.

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A maybe nice solution to include also hektors and kapuittniks ideas might be:

• a hero as the ultimative goal, hard and late to reach

• cheap training sites and easy upgrades at the beginning to have some upgrades even at maps like crater when the first contact happens

• the last speer upgrade superexpensive, the one before hard to reach and may be after something like 60 minutes in the game

maybe also some path you decide to go and then any interaction between the two competitive players

kaputtnik wrote:

I see it similar like simplypeachy, whereas i wouldn't write it that drastically. The last tournament was just an edgecase. This can't be used to balance the tribes. Maybe for playing on small maps, but in general skipping a large portion of the economy does not work on medium or big maps.

Do you have any alternate suggestion? would you prefer my earlier suggestion to move some marble cost from wineyards to mills and bakeries (therefore still keeping the distinction with "building material economy")? Or would you prefer to introduce experience for the imperial weaponsmith? or what else?

Making heroes should be expensive as possible i think. What most players do now is to work on creating fully trained heroes and let them fight against each other. Probably the one who made the most heroes wins the game. In my opinion this is not the way this game should work. If heroes are very expensive, the chance to fight with medium trained soldiers growth. Then there will be a difference if one soldier has one evade/attack/health/... point more than the other. On the opposite winning a fight with fully trained soldiers is luck.

So in my opinion the question shouldn't be 'how to balance the tribes to get fully trained soldiers' but ' how to balance to get more medium trained soldiers'. Creating a hero should be the exception. But i don't know how to archive this

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