Misty Mountains Balance Suggestions

[Elendils Cousin 3. Grades]

In this thread, you can discuss balancing issues with the Misty Mountains faction. If you feel a balance topic is so big it deserves its own thread, you're free to create one, but for smaller points this thread might be useful.

[ProfXavier]

Hi guys,
as suggested by Necro, I want to suggest some changes for this faction. We have been playing 2v2's at the office for almost a year everyday and we feel like this needs some changes. The newest of the 4 players, and also the worst, uses Misty Mountains and is unbeateable so there is definitely an issue with balance.

The issue:
-Spam of diverse, cheap, and extremely effective units. Misty has access to several types of units early game, which, in combination, is extremely effective. To add to this problem, they have an economic building they can place and protect near their base, making it easy and effective to just spam units against rivals. Settlements can spawn units so just hotkey from 3 to 0, place down flags, spam goblins and wargs, add in Trolls to the mix and its game over. We have tried several tacticts against the Trolls but they accelerate quick, move extremely fast, and are just too strong, even pikemen take a lot of time to mow them down. The issue is the MM player can just move the trolls around, have their enemy chase them, while goblins and wargs finish them. If you dont chase them around, you have several trolls throwing rocks and demolishing your army.

How could this be balanced without affecting the essence of the faction (spam)? I would say that trolls need to be slowed down in speed, take more time to start moving, and take more time to start throwing rocks. All 3 attributes are ridiculously fast, making them absolute units. When confronted by pikes they should also slow down, its too easy for them to move around pikes, kiting enemies while having your other units attacking them. I also think wargs should be 400 points not 300. Cheap cavalry early game is insanely overpowered. Misty players dont care about points as they are swimming in them, they can spam wargs without caring if they run into pikes and suicide as they are way to cheap. Maybe even 500. As for the buildings, perhaps it should be a bit more expensive to pop the first tunnel, its very hard to destroy if you place it near your base, and it gives an economic boost that supports your spamming of the above mentioned tough-to-deal-with units.

I added a replay, its not the best as my team mate (angmar) is not doing very good at 1K start. I will try to get a better one today.

[Halbarad]

Hey,
just looked into your replay. Its tough playing with Angmar against Misty Mountains in 1vs1, but with a few changes in strategy you could have turned that around.

So here are a few tips from me:
1. If he has trolls behind his front lines, you cant just send single bataillons of hillmen-pikes after them. Of course they get crushed by his infantry and wargs. You can also spam and you can also kill his units from far away with axe-throwers, however...
2. You never recruited archers from Carn Dûm even though you were able to do it. Trolls are weak against archers but strong against attacks from swords. And the damage Hillmen-Ax-Throwers counts as the latter. So go for archers, for later you may go for heroes like Helegwen (idk how strong Gulzar is, but he also has high ranged attack).
3. You have problem with the spam? He didnt go for any pikes and Angmar can get its cavalry really fast and just whipe away the orc-spam and catch a running Orc-chieftain.


In the earlygame you did push him, however he got saved by his ally Gondor. Otherwise, trollmoney and the battle would have been yours, maybe the hero too. There are also a few ways to optimize your start: Dont instantly recruit 2 units in your hall of the king at once, get the second one in the moment the first one is coming out of the hall of the kings. In between, you can use the money to get more farms. Go directly for the troll, it gives you more money then orcs and a huge early advantage. Misty Mountains cant directly go for the troll because they dont have the pikes. Trolls get easy killed when walking through pikes (they also die when walking through swordsmen) due to crush-revenge damage. Use that and lure them into your units. Use Drauglin for that, also you should always get him because he is worth his money and can catch units/ heroes that are running from you like his goblin archer when you won the battle in the early game.


I hope that helped and wish you good luck!

[ProfXavier]

Hey Halbarad,
that was not a great match to add. The tips for Angmar are good. Fabringio will try to use them. Can you suggest factions and strategies to deal with MM?

[Halbarad]

If I remember correctly, Rohan was the stronges faction when facing misty mountains. You can spam units of your own which dominate when fighting simple orcs, especially when protecting farms (since they gain extra defense). By going for an exile camp, you can go for early cav to destroy the enemies spam. Farms gain permanent protection from single unit raids by using the left spell. Gamling is an archer hero on horse, which means that he can outrun the trolls and attack them from afar. Also he adds units to your spam.
Later on, if you get Erkenbrand and let him summon pikes, you can summon a bataillon of pikes into the enemies trolls.

[Elendils Cousin 3. Grades]

The big advantage Rohan has in this matchup are the heroes on horseback. Start by getting enough peasants to fight against the spam, get some cavalry to force out pikes from MM, then get Eowyn/Eomer/Theoden/Hama out. Grouped together, they can hunt trolls, heroes and other high priority targets while forcing MM to group up around more and more pikes, making it easier for you to fight with peasants and eventually Rohirrim Archers. With decent micro, you should never lose these heroes, gaining constant value with them. Just look out for the Defiler's knockback.

[Le Sournois]

Goblin basic units and above all Gundabad units are too weak in my opinion.

For example, Gundabad Warriors who cost 300 have less health points than Iron Hill Guardians who cost 200.

I think this had sense before when the economy of the Misty Mountains was too strong. Now that the economy is finally quite well balanced, the weaknesses of those units appear more clearly.

Against the AI, I cannot fight battles of the same level with the Misty Mountains that I can with other factions.
I remember at the beggining, there was a change where those units were weakened and dragons were made stronger. Now that the economy is balanced, I guess it is possible to make those units have the value of their cost, and keep the same dragon power.

Also, maybe the defence in the castle start is too weak, I know goblins have short range but I think tower quite more expensive, stronger, more effective and with a longer range would be better.

[The_Necromancer0]

Balance is not really my expertise so I won't comment in depth on that part but I do think that Iron Hill Guardians are the wrong unit to use as comparison. The dwarven units have 10% extra health to account for their reduced speed and the Iron Hills unit have an additional 10% health as their realm specific trait. If you wanted to compare a standard 10-man battalion to the Gundabad warriors a better choice would have been the Lorien Warriors:
200 resources
330 health per unit
55 damage per unit

Now when compared to the Gundabad Warriors:
300 resources
380 health per unit
63 damage per unit

For a 50% cost increase, you get a 15% health and damage increase (30% of additional value total). To me, that seems mostly okay, you don't want a 1-to-1 increase in cost and total stats. Which part would you say feels rougher when it comes to the units? Is it more that they can't take a lot of damage or that they don't seem to deal enough?

[Le Sournois]

Thanks The Necromancer for this very complete reply. I knew indeed about the Iron Hills health boost but it startled me nonetheless that a unit that cost more did have less hit points.

However :

If I take Arnor Palace Guards that cost 500, they get 570 hit points.

This is 300 more than the Lorien unit, and it get 240 more hit points. 240 hit points for 300 ressources make 80 hit points for 100 ressources, which would make 410 hit points at least for the Gundabad Warriors.

Yes, I think that in the beginning of the game, they are too bad to help against hard opponents (the same for pikes). Misty Mountains have the weakest start of all factions which can make sense because of free build for ressources but nonetheless, you don't get anything really good to defend yourself before getting Bolg at level 5, or Smaug or dragons but that's quite late game also.




 

[Le Sournois]

In Edain 4.7.2, the economy was nerfed especially for Goblin Town and I assume those changes are very good.

However, Goblin Town now suffer maybe a problem of attractivity compared to Gundabad which gives 40 every 12 seconds and slightly better units (still not good enough in my opinion) while Goblin Town tunnel gives 10 every 12 seconds and is less effective in the very early game even economically.


I have two little suggestions to make Goblin Town more attractive and also maybe I hope even more fun that it already is.

-the first would be a lot faster construction time, maybe like 3 times more rapidly to build it which in early game would make it more attractive.

-inserting a destroy button in all the segments of scaffoldings. That would allow to put trap on the ennemies who are just below (though it does almost no damage when they get the scaffoldings right on their head, it scatters them, rendering them less dangerous for a while).

By doing that, we would risk for a lot of the structure to fall out, even if it is not always the case.

But it would also allow new construction for the tunnel in the place where a building has been destroyed.
Indeed, sometimes there is a segment of scaffoldings which stays from a previous construction but which has not fallen with the other segments. This segment prevents Goblin Town tunnel from rebuilding the building in the same place as it was before.

Allowing the player to destroy the remnants of the previous construction would allow to build once more in that place.

[The_Necromancer0]

The faster construction time could be interesting.

The destroy button won't happen, in the early phases of 4.6's betas there was such a thing however this led to a lot of cheesing where you could selectively destroy scaffoldings in order to be able to place more buildings



If you notice many instances of these leftovers please take screenshots and submit them as bug, we can try to improve the reliability of the destruction.

[Le Sournois]

Wow, this destroy button would have indeed been a mistake indeed !

I posted the bug in the appropriate section for leftovers.

What would be great in my opinion if possible would be a clear out button on the Goblin Town tunnel that would destroy all the Goblin Town buildings and scaffoldings in a medium range except other Goblin Town tunnel. The fall of scaffoldings could therefore scatters but maybe also damage units under them.

That would allow to come back to zero if there are too much leftovers

That would also be a very fun structural defense because for now, it does very few, with only very bad archers on the top of them compared to Gundabad which is now better in almost every aspects if it were not for the bug that rise its price while rebuilding itself (see the bug section)