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General Balance Discussion

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TheDarkOne:
Catapult battles erupt when both players possess long range siege weapons in order to crush the opponent. Sometimes quite a natural response to seeing a catapult defending an enemy's army would be doing the same to balance the situation and take a less risk. And attacking a catapult with your own catapult is too 100% natural reaction when a time is right, cause it can leave an enemy without a powerful weapon to threaten your outpost or a base - destroying an enemy siege weapon gives you time. The exact problem is the whole thing itself. It's nasty and sometimes excruciating to bear witness to such a situation. Such catapult battles happen when players face a lack of available harassment opportunities like sending a cavalry to intercept a catapult or summoning eagles and so on...

The winner takes all and moves to the loser's base where the final stand will happen. However the same extremely boring catapult battle will take place. If the next patch surely does amplify the wall catapults damage output against ordinary siege weapons, it may not solve the problem because building a wall of upgraded Gondor catapults will be even more impenetrable. This counts for every single siege weapon of close combat too.

Such games are not even challenging but just mere prolonging and stretching of time. I'm glad Goodfella has tons of evidence, more importantly the YouTube content to supply us with a proof. The problem here is that it seems we can't totally agree upon any kind of solid decision to change anything. Towers is something required but becoming strangely too strong in late games, catapults are essential but their reach extends far above just structures.

One of the ways out could be watching closely on more games, especially played between high ranked players, pros. Only then under the overwhelming pressure of evidence we can finally all come up with a fair conclusion and after stopping neglecting each other's points. Seeing is believing. And Goodfella makes it happen.

Goodfella:
A summary (kind of) and Clarification (hopefully) of my thoughts on this topic xD: 

I am NOT saying that building an early outpost and getting towers on it is a GOOD IDEA.

Also, I'm NOT saying building towers all over your base early-on is a GOOD IDEA.

In fact, in my opinion it is almost always a BAD IDEA to go for towers on outposts OR camps/castles early on.

I have made a video on outpost rushing and why i think it is not a good tactic - despite the power of towers. It is a static defence that is only good if your opponent does not effectively counter it.

So how DO you efficiently counter it? You SHOULD imo be able to move in with your superior army and simply destroy it, because as Elessar said, you can use the money your opponent invested in the outpost on your army units.

You CAN still do this (attack with units) in some situations - depending on a number of factors including: balance of power, timing, positioning of your army etc.

However, unfortunately, if your enemy manages to get some towers up on that thing, you basically have to avoid it for the foreseeable future.

In this situation the correct counter is to use your superior army to gain the outside economy buildings.

Once you have a better eco, you can prepare to attack the outpost.

This outpost has sat there since it was built - a mini-fortress on the field that cannot be approach by the enemy - thereby blocking off some routes of attack. The degree to which an outpost blocks-off routes of attack depends on its position on the map. some people hate the map FOI2 because it has a central outpost (*cough* Elendil *cough*).

Nevertheless, let's imagine you've played the prefect game and countered the outpost:

You've played well, you've got map control and won all the outside eco buildings. You're winning! You've proved that the outpost rush is a mistake.

You've got loads of #money because you got all dem outside farms. You've invested all dat ca$h in your army: You've got upgraded troops, some of which are elite/heroic and you've got a few heroes. Great!

So, how do you kill that outpost-thing?

Even with your late-game army, you might Still not want to go anywhere near that death trap of towers*.

So, (for the most part) you do what any sane person does: build a few catas, sit-back out of range of the towers and bomb the sh*t out of it.

Once that is dead, you can move to the enemy base.

Now, because your opponent has made an outpost with towers, he's probably a scum-bag. So like all scum-bags he's built his fort full of towers and has made a sh*t-tone of catapults.

Now, how do you beat that base? It's rinse and repeat for the outpost - sit back with catapults and bomb the base. All the time making sure your catapults aren't being killed by the enemy (who is throwing everything he can at them). You'll inevitably lose a lot so you gotta keep spamming em'.

YOU'RE GOING TO WIN.

In fact, you should ALWAYS win against this play-style. Wasting so much money on all those static defences is a BAD IDEA. Towers DON'T win you the game. Spending all that money on them SHOULD LOSE you the game!

The problem is not that towers are so good they win you the game.**

The problem is that towers FORCE the enemy to get catapults - and only catapults - to siege from a distance.

Seriously, what else can you do against all those towers? Your units can't get Near them.

You MIGHT be able to kill an outpost with 1-2 towers if you're army is so much stronger than your enemy, but why risk it?

Attacking bases? There's no debate. ONLY catapults will work when lots of towers come up. Every other siegeing technique goes out the window.

You can TRY to send a few rams at the fort, but your enemy can easily attack them with his units; you can't defend them with your units, they will be in range of the towers!


THAT is the problem with towers - they force you to sit out of range of the towers with catapults. What's more, the defender can easily counter this technique by focusing down your catapults.

So, we battle our catapults for 20 mins, while anyone who is watching falls asleep.

It speaks volumes when Elendil says


--- Zitat von: Elendils Cousin 3. Grades am  1. Aug 2017, 16:53 ---I won't touch on the siege battle stuff because I usually ragequit if somebody does that

--- Ende Zitat ---

That is the issue with sieging! It's boring af and fustrating atm.

How can it be that you win the battle for the map through good macro and micro, then you lose because you literally don't want to siege the enemy?

THAT'S why sieging needs to be rebalanced.

My analysis is simply that:

Extremely strong towers are making sieging limited to catapult battles, and that is no fun!

There's just a few more things I've got to say about this (thank god):

Previously i've been talking about some pretty bad tactics on the part of the tower-spammer. No good player would mindlessly spam towers and think they will win the game.

However, you can easily play a good game, with decent, sound tactics: focusing on building a strong economy and army and fighting for map control. Them, lose the battle for map control and STILL build all your towers in the base and force a siege. Once again, towers = catapult only siegeing.

So a good player (if he wants) can force catapult battling in every game! The player Dmitry ALMOST NEVER resigns, he fights until the last minute. You're therefore forced to siege him in almost every game.

Most players will resign after the map control is lost and therefore sieging is often not seen in online multiplayer games with good players.

But if a good player WANTS to make it difficult for you at the end of the game, you can't stop him, unless you launch an extremely risky base rush on him.

His inside economy will be strong, because he is a good player with good macro. He can therefore afford to fill his base with towers and make some catapults. What's more, you can't attack his inside eco unless you use catas of your own.

The final point is that so far I've talked about towers being a kind of 'annoying-but-pretty-useless' tactic. However, that's not rly the case in many situations. Sometimes they CAN win you the game, it just depends on the situation (see footnotes)

Also, towers are INCREDIBLE at defending attacks from units. A few (extremely cheap) towers on a mordor or isen base can instantly stop harassment of your inside economy. You're therefore relatively free to build a very strong inside eco.

But that is what towers are for! You need them to stop that constant harassment (especially from huge clumps - that surround buildings with an ungodly number of units (#OrcClumps))
 
In my opinion, THIS is what the debate should centre around:

'How strong do towers need to be to sufficiently defend against unstoppable harassment but still encourage dynamic siegeing?'

We need to think about whether harassment of inside eco is such a bad thing and to what degree it should be viable. And how to balance factions with no walls vs those with walls when thinking about inside-eco harassment. It is nice to see the team using ALTERNATIVES to towers, like warg sentries. Clearly, there's more interesting ways of re-balancing towers than just a simple dmg nerf.

However, I think the question should NOT be 'Should towers have a damage nerf?'

I think the question should be 'HOW MUCH of a damage nerf should towers get?'

It sounds like the team knows about this issue and IS nerfing tower damage in 4.5.

I therefore hope these posts aren't redundant.

If nothing else, I hope they convince some people who are unsure/unhappy about sigeing getting a re-balance that it is 100% needed to improve the gameplay.

I also hope that, if tower damage isn't such a big consideration of the team, that they'll read this and agree with me that the number 1 way to free up alternative siegeing techniques (other than catapult battles) is a VERY BIG nerf to tower damage

Thanks again for reading  :)

Footnotes (Follow the '*') (a.k.a the complications i left-out to keep it simple(ish)):

*There are, of course exceptions - LG erebor can rek buildings nice and quick and luckily all buildings on an outpost are in a small area - so the whole thing goes down pretty quick. You just better hope your enemy hasn't got a big army of his own. If he does, you can still be in trouble when getting hit by towers at the same time. Mostly, it's not a risk worth taking - just get catapults to be on the safe side! Why risk losing your army when you're winning so much?
So yeah, outposts can sometimes be destroyed with units - mainly because all the buildings are close together and there aren't THAT many towers. BASES on the other hand? Forget it! You can be Eru himself and you'll still get rekt by all dem f*cking towers!!! Eru's gonna have to visit the siege works :/.

** Once, again there can be exceptions - getting mirkwood up with towers can win you the game if the balance of power before-hand is quite even. Angmar citadel towers too.  All thanks to the additional benefits these outposts provide, which can tip the balance of power in your favour.
The map you play on can also play a big role: getting an outpost at the top of the 3v3 map 'Rhun' with a forward facing tower can change the game a huge amount, just as long as the attacking team doesn't team-up on that outpost it will be extreamly difficult to destroy (but even if they DO - it will leave other areas of the map vulnerable for a counter push!). Again it's (mostly) catapults-only in a 1v1 situations at the top of the map. So you have to sacrifice one of your (very-few, it's a camp map!) building plots for a siege works, then upgrade it all the way and get out 1-2 catas - and upgrading them will help. It gets expensive! In the mean-time your opponent is reaping the rewards of the outpost. Now imagine, you can get teamed up on by the enemy army and lose all your catapults to powers, cavalry, denethor etc. etc. etc. OMG it is so frustrating! The best thing to do sometimes is say: 'f*ck it' you can have the outpost I'll just find something else to do on the map'. You just have to be prepared for constant harassment attacks coming from that outpost. Ok, salt overload over!

@Elessar

It sounds to me like you're not against a tower damage nerf, which is good news imo!

It also sounds like you're frustrated with catapults destroying towers from a distance - which is basically catapult battles with no fighting back!

I have no problem with towers having the same health as they do now.

I would MUCH rather they have the same health but much lower damage!

If they lowered the health but kept damage the same, you'd have to run around the base killing all the towers and re-killing them when they're rebuilt like a headless chicken :p

If they instead significantly reduce the damage of towers, you will still be concerned about them, but you will at least be able to do some kind of significant damage with units before they get destroyed. Once again, also allowing for different siege techniques.

I agree with your points about spending way too much on towers being a mistake (only mordor/isen are exceptions to this with their cheap towers imo).

It also sounds like you would like to see siegeing being more dynamic (and who doesn't!). All i'm saying is nerfing tower damage is the key to this!

I will have to read and think about your point on equipping towers with units - I'll make a post on that thread about when I have!

Thanks for helping me clarify some of my own arguments on this topic! :D

P.S.
Oops i nearly forgot to shout out @Selfie1999AD for being the first one to raise this point and give detailed info on some of the stats. Hopefully the evidence from those posts and the ones from my self - and other regular online players - will convince everyone that towers do too much dmg atm!

But for anyone that disagrees with me feel free to make your own counter-argument.

Robust discussion is the most important thing for balance changes i think!

-DJANGO-:
Thats quite a huge wall of text for a summary/clarification  [ugly]

However i agree with the points you make. Although i am quite sure that the current problems with towers and catapult battles can be fixed with the upcoming siege overhall, its always nice that such topics are discussed on a larger scale, getting input from the hole community.

Especially the point about inside eco harassment will be interesting, bcs of how strong the LG inside eco will be in 4.5. To what degree it should be viable is definitely a thing we need to check and balance the factions that have walls / no walls.
If im not mistaken, factions with walls like gondor, already have fewer defensive plots than faction without walls.
One goal of the siege overhall is to define the counter system of siege weapons / defensive structures better. Tower Damage Nerf and less tower health are changes that are very likely to be implemented in 4.5 and will make different ways to siege possible. The new citadell passive upgrade, will also help to destroy an enemy base quicker, once the citadell is taken down, as well has the effect to motivate the player to siege differently.

Goodfella:
Hi again everyone,

I was slightly wrong on my conclusions about towers:

I have recently found a second way to overcome the extreme power of towers (i.e. avoiding catapult battles) and it goes something like this:

Win the battle for map control and get ready to siege. You should've forced your enemy's army into his base through fear of death :p

Now get one or both outposts - you can build a few towers on that thing and camp around it to ensure your units stay safe.

Now eco-upgrade EVERYTHING - so double production everywhere and as many eco buildings you can build.

Consider getting a second barracks + stables + potentially 2 siege works

(You might guess where this is going :p)

Attack your enemy's base, and focus the farms 1st. Kill as many farms as you can with 1800 CP worth of fully-upgraded troops.

Most/ all of them will die to the towers and your enemy's army.

But alas, the whole time you've been spamming from every production building you have, and you've soon rebuilt your army, have more siege and can upgrade it all thanks to your HUGE booming economy.

Now rinse and repeat until you've pulled the eco-rug from under your enemy.

All these kamikaze attacks on his inside eco will leave him with very little income and you can start to overwhelm him and switch your attacks to the citadel/ unit production buildings.

You can also now make better use of catapults because he does not have the eco to keep producing his own.

Clearly, this works WAY better vs factions with no walls. Vs Gondor it is very difficult(/ impossible) if they have turtled and so you have to deal with denethor in cata-battles.

This tactic is a lot more risky than cata-battles as you're accepting that your gonna lose most or all of your army in exchange for enemy eco.


But it's an alternative, which is nice.

However, this could be considered equally as strange/ annoying as catapult-battles. I know a lot of players will not be willing to destroy their sexy army for the sake of winning the game a little quicker!

What's more, there is a big time-gap between winning the map and launching these attacks - while you do an eco-boom - which is boring for everyone.

In fact, i don't like this eco-boom feature in general. It allows the winning player to get into such a dominant position that there is no hope of a comeback from the defending player, no matter how bad the micro is from the attacker - he's just always gonna be able to afford more stuff!

I'm in favour of having some kind of inflation, whereby you can't steam-roll your eco in this way. Without inflation, matches can be decided in the early game and then both players simply wait, either to kill the enemy or be killed, depending on if they won or lost the early-game.

That point is for another time but I think/ hope there may be some changes to eco coming in the near future - although nothing to drastic (yet  [uglybunti])


It's difficult to know what changes like this will do to the game, and opinions change on the dynamics of a game (like mine - from last post to this one :P)

Either way, I am still 100% in favour of reducing (by quite-a-bit) the damage of towers - to improve the quality and enjoy-ability of siegeng

Ok thanks Bye!

Max_Power:
Hi everyone!

Following some Discord debates about balance, I noticed how little of the issues discussed there are actually being posted in the balance forums here (specially in the english ones), so I decided to take a first step and make this post  :) I hope this serves as a starting point to discuss balance and improve the competitive experience even more :) I would like to adress some general ideas, see what other players think, and make specific posts about each issue when needed.

Balance is a difficult subject, as it needs a lot of testing by high-skilled players to determine if something is really over/underpowered, and how it should be dealt with. The ideal balance itself and the definition of "overpowered" are in themselves open to debate. Also, there are different reasons of why something is unbalanced. Maybe it lacks a counter, or rewards low-skill playing, or simply performs too well for its cost. Also the solution isn't as easy: sometimes a simple armor/damage nerf is not enough, or causes other imbalances. As a simple example, we can make cav weaker by strenghtening its counter, pikes, without actually changing the stats of the cav  xD.
So I think we should be careful, try to support our ideas with testing, reasoning and evidence, and propose creative and well-crafted ideas to bring balance to Edain  :D

So for now, I will present some of the issues that myself and other players have talked about, in order to hear what everyone thinks and hopefully achieve some conclusions. Plase take into account that I talk from the perspective of Edain 4.4.1 with Megafix 1.2/1.3, as it is the most played in competitive games. I know that 4.5 attempts to solve some of the issues here described, and introduces new gameplay features, but I haven't played it and am unable to judge. So...

-The first problem to take into consideration is faction imbalances. Right now, some factions decide the outcome of the match more than the skill of the players involved. I'm specially talking of Lothlorien, Isengard, and the three Dwarven factions. I will write and link a specific post about each faction in the corresponding thread.
-Lothlorien: Right now, Lorien combines a very strong eco in base with very fast producing citadel (once the ghaladrim quarters are upgraded). That allows them to spam good units in large numbers, and later in the game, heros and upgrades. In my opinion, that strong eco allows the player to play worse (for example losing heros, not microing properly, losing map control, etc.) without significative negative impact on the game.
-Isengard: As Lorien, Isengard has a very strong inside economy, combined with very good options in early, middle and late game. In most matches, Isengard can get heros, upgrades and bigger armies faster than their enemies because they just get more income.
-Dwarves: Standard dwarven troops have very good base stats (armor and damage), at the cost of speed (except Ered Luin). The problem lies in the combination of mines, which help to mantain map control (almost instant transfer of units through the map allows to defend any mine very quickly), battlewaggons (specially Ered Luin and Erebor ones, since they can shoot whilst moving, targeting pikes, which cannot run away because have lower speed, and trampling the rest once the pikes are down) and upgrades on standard troops. The standard troops are not expensive but once upgraded deal a lot of damage to everything (specially Erebor against structures). Ered Luin gets even more advantage thanks to their speed.
-Angmar: I would like to speak also of Angmar because their early-mid game is very weak in most matchups. Thralls die very easily and wolves are a good support unit thanks to their speed, but their low damage to buildings doesnt make them suitable for creeping or destroying enemy buildings. Angmar elite troops are very good but expensive and thus not possible to use until late mid-game.

In addition to the inherent advantage that some factions have, other game features can break the balance and make very difficult or impossible to win the game:

-Heros: While single heros aren't a problem, when a player spams them (let's say, gets 2/3 or more heros), combined with a small-medium army, it is very difficult to counter, as the heros give a lot of strenght to their army (with abilities plus their normal attack). Targeting them with units is not useful unless isolated (you can't deal enough damage in enough time), so the only option is having high damage units than can target them. Since at the moment there are not a lot of them (beorns in human form being an example), the best option is to go for heros of your own, since one hero-killer hero will die to the enemy hero spam. This way, hero spamming is almost forced and becomes the most rewarding meta-strategy. Also, the player who goes first for heros has an advantage, since he can get more of them earlier and possibly level them up faster. A possible workaround would be to increase the CP cost of all heros, thus making the player decide to get a big army or a smaller army combined with heros, and/or giving each faction anti-hero units.

-Outposts: Although early outposts can be risky, once in mid-game outposts can give huge income (equivalent to 3-4 farms at least) to the player, also a strong hold on the map (very prominent in Fords of Isen 2, for example) which traduces in even more map control (of the plots nearest to the outpost) and prevents enemy flanking manouvers. In some cases, the outpost can give enough advantage to recover from poor map control thanks to said advantage. Some problematic outposts even in early game are Dunedain outpost, Dale, etc, which generate a lot of resources, are quite cheap and allow troop regeneration, also have leadership, making up for their cost very quickly. We could say that the enemy player can use the resources not spent on the outpost on countering it (via more units and/or siege) but in many cases the outpost gives enough benefits to allow the defending army to survive the attack. At the same time, the longer the outpost stands, the more benefits it gives and pays for itself, narrowing the gap between the two players eco and army, thus making the outpost more defendable.

-Base Rushing: Now that arrow towers have been nerfed, Mordor and Isengard are very vulnerable to base rushes, as their arrow towers are not powerful enough to stop a quick attack. Isengard is a very strong faction so that could compensate for that weakness, but Mordor in early game is very set back from base rushes. Also, constructing defensive structures as a "preventive counter"  to a base rush is detrimental to that player economy. In any case,  I can't find a way where a player can defend from a base rush since the enemy army can deal damage to the resource buildings quicker than you can harm the attacking army enough to compensate for the loss. If confronted with a superior defence, the attacking army can leave the enemy base after destroying a building or two before suffering significative damage.

-Archer clumps (specially in team games and sometimes 1v1 late game). Archers are very good anti-infantry (thats their role, after all). But a clump of archers with one or two pikes inside to protect from cav, is very strong, specially once they get upgrades. Once this happens, the player with the clump just has to sit in range of the enemy, stop, and let the archers shoot. If enemy army engages, will lose half the army before reaching the clump. Cav is not useful as counter since the archers can target them and some pikes inside are enough to protect the archers. And if the enemy retreats, your clump quickly destroys the buildings (base included), no siege needed  [ugly]. Why upgraded archers should do so much damage to buildings?

-Cavalry (specially Gondor Knights): once upgraded they can trample pikes without suffering many loses, specially if enemy pikes are lower in number (than the cav) or not upgraded. So you have to almost outnumber the cav with pikes in order to defend properly, which now renders your army weaker because pikes are more vulnerable to archers and swordsman. In some extreme cases, cav can actually kill pikes in a 1v1 scenario, if microed well. In regards to map control, cavalry stops enemy splitting (as a small force of 1-2 swords and a pike, for example, will die to 4 good cav units, and cav can be quickly at any point of the map). Also allows to the cav owner player to split less, as the cav enough will win the battle for the map control. Factions with unupgradable or weak pikes (mordor for example) will suffer the most.
Please let us know what you think, from your experience, and feel free to discuss any point that I made. The main goal of this post is to start a public talk about balance (as there have been a lot in internal forums and discord servers) and provide more insight into the intrincate equilibrium that makes this game a truly fun and enjoyable experience.
Thanks!!
MaxPower

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