Modding Union

[en] Edain Mod => [Edain] Suggestions => [Edain] General Suggestions => Thema gestartet von: Lord of Mordor am 24. Okt 2015, 01:57

Titel: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Lord of Mordor am 24. Okt 2015, 01:57
In this thread, you can discuss balance issues that affect more than one faction, such as the general economy. 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.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Saeros am 5. Feb 2016, 13:17
Greetings people,
I would like to propose a reduction in the infantry unit prices for the men factions.
If any of you have ever played BFME1 you could possibly remember that the units were cheaper the more fountains you had built.
I think this would help a lot (especially for the gondorian archers and the rohan infantry -archers and spearmen- since they are too weak and too costly respectively) in order to have a way to produce a supportive force for your -very weak- peasants without bleeding economically
Finally, the dwarven infantry could use this reduction, since the dwarves are an infantry-based faction although to be honset they are value for money.
A 15% reduction with two fountains and a 30% with three fountains I suppose would suffice.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Walküre am 5. Feb 2016, 15:45
I think that this topic should rightly be merged with the General Balance Discussion thread (still empty, so far).
It's the right place to discuss about general balance-related matters  :)

MERGED with: http://en.modding-union.com/index.php/topic,31984.msg415466.html#msg415466
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Hamanathnath am 5. Feb 2016, 16:08
I really don't either or the Men factions need a price reduction on their infantry.  I'll go into both of them specifically.

Rohan:  The only infantry Rohan has, excluding captains, are peasants.  And peasants are already very cheap (150 for Normal Peasants, 250 for Farmhands).  Not only are they very cheap, but the buildings that make peasants make money, and Rohan is the only faction to have that feature, except technically Lothlorien because of the Citadel and Beorning hut, but they have different money making mechanics then normal Resource Buildings.  Keep in mind that the more money your farm is making, the faster peasants come out.  So it would be wise to upgrade the farm(s) you are using to make peasants with Production increases, as well as using Theodens cruel taxes on them.  Finally, Gamling can also just summon Peasants for free, which comes back decently fast if you Banish him with Corrupted Theoden. 

Gondor:  Gondor does have a lot more infantry then Rohan.  However, Gondor Soldiers and Spearmen only cost 200 and 300 respectively, which is even with most other factions,  and pretty cheap considering how effective they can be.  And every other infantry unit (Tower Guards, Citadel Guards, Dol Amroth Soldiers), which are considered the elite infantry, already have a price reduction when you buy Town Houses (to 30% reduction if I remember correctly).  And even if you think the prices are still too high, that's where Denethor comes in.  His ability State of Emergency, I think after using the palatir 2 times, reduces the cost of all you soldiers, at the cost of making them less effective.  And Finally, Gondor gets free infantry from the signal fires, which is very effective, especially with the Spellbook power that makes it better. 

So, I really think that neither of the faction need a reduction like this.  They both have their own means of dealing with the prices. 
Don't take offense to my post though, this is just how I argue :). It's good to see people post ideas.   
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Sawman am 5. Feb 2016, 17:54
I agree with Haman here peasants are already very cheap and can be made quickly and if anything Rohan needs a upgrade discount not infantry discount and your right the Rohan archers and spear throwers are expensive but there's a reason for that and that's is they are very good if used right and as for Gondor they already have discount and cheap units and for their archers yes they are 400 but with 6 town houses you can get rangers for only 490 (I think) around there so you can get better archers for only a little more money and honestly with Gondor if I ever get an archery range it'd because I want the fire arrows for my rangers and I have no intent to buy Gondor archers
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Saeros am 6. Feb 2016, 11:31
@Haman, no offense taken but my post was not for either the peasants nor the gondor soldiers, it was for the archers, of the two factions.
Obviously you were right in what you said, but you answered in something that I never mentioned..


@Sawman you have a point for the gondorian archers but I think that rohan could use the reduction since their units (even peasants at lvl 1) are not value for money, at least in my opinion.

Anyway I don't know, I think that this suggestion could help a player under constant siege to stand on their feet and also give the player a reason to build an underused building which doesn't offer much , except if the player is not under attack.
In conclusion by including this suggestion, it adds more choises and depth in the game.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Hamanathnath am 6. Feb 2016, 16:59
I'm sorry I miss interpreted what you said BUT you did say infantry and to my knowledge, infantry means generally hand to hand combat foot soldiers.  And I have Medieval 2 Total War for giving me that knowledge:P. If you ment archers...... You probably should have said archers.

And my arugement still stands.  The only one I would like to see with a price decrease, as well as other buffs, is Spear Throwers, because they are pretty pathetic right now.  But other then that, the other archers are priced well because of how powerful archers can be.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Saeros am 7. Feb 2016, 16:09
Yes you're right but I had written clearly that this was about the archers in the parenthesis.
Well we see eye to eye for the spear throwers at least, but I think that 280 gp for a unit that is too important plus 600 gp in order to reach the reduction and at the same time the fact that the player has to think carefully what to build and what not to build, is not a bad deal!
Anyway I had this thought, I supposed that this could help..
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Lord of Mordor am 9. Mär 2016, 01:58
I'd like to hear what you guys think about the attack range of archers currently. Do you find archers easy and comfortable to use? Or do you often think that they're automatically standing too close to the enemy? In large late game battles, do you have two distinct rows of infantry - melee in front, ranged behind with some distance behind them - or does it all clump together usually? Edain has much larger armies than either BfME game, but our archer ranges are not that much higher at the moment. And from what I've heard, some people find archers annoying to use. What would you think if archer range in general was increased quite a bit - say, so that the range of Gondor Rangers is the new standard and others like Lothlorien archers with longbows shoot even farther? Games like Total War, for example, have much longer ranges than we do, and even in Age of Empires I think a longbowman shoots farther than in Edain.

On the one hand, this would be a significant buff to archers, on the other hand it could make them more practical and make positioning more important by creating more distinct battle lines. That's all theoretical though, so I'd like to hear your thoughts :)
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: DrHouse93 am 9. Mär 2016, 02:06
Actually, I'm fine on the current state of archers. They're quite strong, of course, but since they cost two times more than an ordinary infantry batallion, I think their strength is balanced. Also, to be honest, I even hate when my enemy bombards me with Lorien Archers with Longbows: they're basically able to attack my base by standing in their own castle xD
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Lord of Mordor am 9. Mär 2016, 02:11
Thanks for the feedback :) Do you also think that archers with the lowest range (for example, axe throwers, crossbowmen, cavalry archers, Galadhrim) feel good to use?
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: DrHouse93 am 9. Mär 2016, 02:30
Now that I think about it, maybe a very slightly range buff to crossbowmen and Galadhrim would be better, I think. They shouldn't be at the same range of archers, of course, but not even at the same range of melee fighters xD
Also, I don't know if this is a bug, but sometimes I ran into Orc Archers having more range than Gondor Archers ._. (which is kinda weird xD)
Of course, this is just my personal opinion, so maybe other guys may disagree with me^^
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: The_Necromancer0 am 9. Mär 2016, 04:53
Actually, I'm fine on the current state of archers. They're quite strong, of course, but since they cost two times more than an ordinary infantry batallion, I think their strength is balanced. Also, to be honest, I even hate when my enemy bombards me with Lorien Archers with Longbows: they're basically able to attack my base by standing in their own castle xD
+1
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: H4lbarad am 9. Mär 2016, 09:43
I think archers should get a little range buff. As you said Lord of Mordor, sometimes archers come almost in melee fighting and get killed very easily and fast ^^
But maybe to balance it you can nerf their damages.

I don't know if this solution can be good, but I think it wouldn't cost so much to try it :P
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Hamanathnath am 9. Mär 2016, 14:36
I like the current state of archers in general.  In my opinion, they have a perfect balance in their use difficulty.  I generally never see them get too close to melee combat, except the ones who intentionally have low range (I'll get to them in a moment), and their damage is pretty much perfect, neither being too high or too low.  They also do not make you instantly win fights if you have a lot in your army, and require the right amount of attention to make them very effective.  Honestly, I don't really have any problems with the way they are now.

The ones with less range are a little bit tricky.  The way I play, if 2 different types of archers  have the same price, I pretty much always prefer Range and Attack Speed over how much damage they deal.  The best example of this would have to be how I play Erebor.  The 2 main archer units they have are Axethrowers and Dale Archers.  Out of those 2, I always prefer getting the Dale Archers over the Axethrowers.  This is because the Dale Archers higher Range and faster Attack Speed makes them safer to use, and their damage is still pretty good.  It's not like Axethrowers are bad, it's just their range makes them harder to use, and I don't think their damage makes up for it.  So for the archers with less range (Axethrowers, Galadhrim, etc.), I would like to see a very slight range increase, and maybe also a slight damage increase, if that doesn't make them unbalanced.

Mounted Cavalry (well really just Rohirrim Archers) sort of have the same problem as Archers with low range, but being Mounted is already a major advantage, so a range increase might make them too strong.  Maybe a very slight damage would be good, but nothing more than that in my opinion.

Now that I think about it, maybe a very slightly range buff to crossbowmen and Galadhrim would be better, I think. They shouldn't be at the same range of archers, of course, but not even at the same range of melee fighters xD
Also, I don't know if this is a bug, but sometimes I ran into Orc Archers having more range than Gondor Archers ._. (which is kinda weird xD)
Of course, this is just my personal opinion, so maybe other guys may disagree with me^^
If I remember correctly, the formation of Gondor Archers makes their damage higher at the cost of range, so that might be why Orc Archers had a higher range then them.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: DrHouse93 am 9. Mär 2016, 16:29
Yes, but they weren't in formation, just in attack stance xD
Furthermore, they were even on top of the walls, which means they should have more range xD
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Hamanathnath am 9. Mär 2016, 16:39
Yes, but they weren't in formation, just in attack stance xD
Furthermore, they were even on top of the walls, which means they should have more range xD
Interesting.  Idk what to tell you then  xD.  I don't think Mordor has anything that improves the Range of their Archers so.....   [uglybunti]
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Adrigabbro am 9. Mär 2016, 20:19
I don't use archers that much right now, but to be fair it has never really been my playstyle. However, I'm quite comfortable with their range, their damage and their usefulness right now. I'm afraid that they might become a little too important if you guys decide to buff their range, kinda like "the first guy who gets archers gets the lead". To sum up: I'm in favor of not changing anything, even concerning short range archers.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Saeros am 9. Mär 2016, 23:47
I strongly agree with Hamanathnath, just a copy/paste of his opinion is on my mind  :P
Do you remember that hideous thing in the vanilla game of BFME2, that the archers (and only them) could literally annihilate any strategy if paired with strong heroes? (damn, BFME2 was such an ugly game)
Let's not bring it again...
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: RagingRemo am 9. Apr 2016, 01:33
Dear Developers,

I have some balance suggestions for the next patch.

Angmar:
1. Power ability for indestructible buildings is too strong, the duration should be reduced or it needs to be a tier 3 power (6/7 power points cost) or you can only use it for outposts or lone towers (NOT for fortresses).
Why should it be 'nerfed'? Because the dwarves use their Earthquake on a fortress and it will deal no damage to the fortress...
2. The spear units, with that unique passive (25% of the damage taken, would be dealt back), are also to strong. They win against every unit; horses, swordsman, archers, other elite units, heroes and also buildings. They are spear units, so make them strong against monsters and cavalry. Not against heroes and melee units. (balance the passive or basic stats)
3. I am not sure about this one, but some of the Angmar mages have a freeze ability. If you make like 5 of those mages the armies of the
enemy cannot move after casting that ability, like ever. So you just trow some catapults on the freezed army or a poison cloud (tier 4 power) and goodbye army. (not sure if you can actually make 5 of those mages, but if you can... Balance it)

Rohan:
1. I guess you guys already knew the bug... But just saying that the new outpost gives you way to much money.
2. Make it possible to create peasants and upgrade the farm at the same time.
3. Eomer's level 10 ability is absolute SHIT, yay a tiny charge that does 0 damage... I like the idea, but it's trash.

Isengard:
1. A bit lacking in overall performance, the faction is struggling in the early game too much. 8 out of the 10 times they die before they reach the late game.
2. Steel bolds upgrade does not do anything, or too little. Isengard has no real way to kill Ents and have a hard time fighting other archer units.
3. The siege ladders are simply useless. And the bomb is not worth it to use.

Dwarves:
1. Ability to upgrade fortress towers is too strong. It makes towers deal to much damage.
2. The Demolishers deal too much damage to buildings (they easily destroy an elven fortress). Also the Earthquake siege weapons are useless compared to other siege weapons of the dwarves (and price).
3. The Ram riders are to easy to make for the Iron Hills, they do too much for their price.

Mordor:
1. Great job balancing this faction. But there is still one thing that should be buffed.
2. The only thing to complain about are their siege towers. Make them cheaper or increase its health.

Gondor:
1. Balanced.

Elves:
1. Balanced.

TL;DR (conclusion),
- Angmar's indestructible buildings power is to strong, the Elite spear units are to strong, and the freeze of Angmar's mages is to strong.
- Rohan has a bug with the new outpost making to much money, peasants and farm upgrades should be able to be done at the same time, Eomer's level 10 ability it shit.
- Isengard is weak and their bomb is useless.
- The tower upgrade from the Dwarves is over powered and the Dwarves need some balancing in their siege weapons.

This was my paragraph of my thoughts about patch 4.3. (Remember these balance suggestions are based on Player vs Player matches, not against the AI)

I hope you guys agree with some of my suggestions.

RagingRemo
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Hamanathnath am 23. Mai 2016, 14:06
Hello everybody :)

I'm pretty sure I'm not the first to bring up this topic, but Battering Rams are too effective for their cost.  People abused how strong these things are.  Ram Spamming is a very effective tactic because of how cheap, and certain Camps and Castles can't defend against them by themselves.  Unless there is an army in the base your attacking, there doesn't seem to be a point to use nothing but Battering Rams,  because in pretty much every case, no matter how upgraded your base is, Ram Spamming will most likely win you the match, if not Serverly hinder the opponent.  Of course, certain bases can deal with Rams better then others (Gondor and Mordor Castles fully upgraded defensively can kill them quickly), but other that still have to pay a lot of defensive upgrades (Dwarven, Lothlorien, Angmar, Rohan, and Isengard Castles) can't do pretty much any damage to Rams by themselves.

I going to try to post a replay later showing how strong Rams are (though first I gotta get permission from the players that played in the match :P).  In most cases getting like 10 Rams with a few units guarding them is more effective then getting a fully upgraded army , and the Rams are cheaper and do more damage to buildings.  It really seems unfair in my opinion.  And the Battering Rams that should be worse due to their lower price  seem to preform better When Ram Spamming (Rohan, Isengard, and Mordor's Rams specifically).

In my opinion, All battering Rams should take a lot of damage from Upgraded Defenses of every faction.  I find it weird that Fire Arrows deal good damage to Battering Rams, while Upgraded Axe Towers and Buildings upgraded with Silverthorne Arrows do not.  Battering Rams shouldn't be able to solo upgraded Castles by themselves.  Additionally, Battering Rams should also take more damage from un upgraded defenses, though not too much, so that Rohan and Angmar Defenses can at least somewhat deal with this problem.   

I'll try to make another post later with a Replay in hand just to reinforce this point. 
 
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: -Mandos- am 23. Mai 2016, 14:21
Please don't nerf rams or buff the bases against them. Rams should be easily countered by all types of melee units and/ or heroes, if they die against the auto defense mechanism of the fortress they are useless. I know that its not very logical that they should be almost immune to arrows/ ranged damage, but it is the only intelligent solution gameplaywise.
If you get destroyed by ram rushes often you should work on your map awareness and keep a unit of swordsmen or two close to your base to defend yourself. Then it will just be a huge investment on your opponents side without gaining anything.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Hamanathnath am 23. Mai 2016, 14:34
I'm sorry, but rams shouldn't be able to replace armies.  Even if all the Rams do die, 1 group of Swordsmen won't be able to kill 10 Rams at once before Rams do more damage then they cost.  Even if the Rams just destroy your defensive Towers or your walls, they would make you pay a fortune just to replace all that stuff.  It that really balanced?
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Odysseus am 23. Mai 2016, 14:40
I am thinking that Rams should have the same armour values as the catapults. The first nerf to Rams was good, but rams are stil a bit too beefy for their cost imo. They should have even less health so that they really have to mingle inbetween your troops, or get crushed by cavalry, infantry and heroes.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: -Mandos- am 23. Mai 2016, 14:49
If your enemy has invested like 4000 to 6000 gold for rams you cant expect to beat that with units for 200...
But you should notice that your enemies armies are weaker and smaller than they could be and you should be able to get map control AND defend from the rams - let's be honest, they are destroyed really easy if you got some units and the damage they deal wont harm you that much.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Odysseus am 23. Mai 2016, 15:02
You are making it sound like the Rams are unsupported. Rams cost almost no CP, so you can literally get like 15 rams supported by for example orcs. They are dirt cheap and do good damage. When rams are supported, their value skyrockets, especially the quick and cheap rams of Isengard and Mordor. I think two or three patches ago, they received a small armour nerf, which I think was good. What I would like to see myself is Rams that cost 300 given the same armour values as catapults when attacked in melee. The 500 rams are fine imo, since they are slower and easier to hit and more difficult to mingle between the troops. The 300 ones, the cheap ones, they need to die like flies, not survive several hits.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Hamanathnath am 23. Mai 2016, 15:12
If your enemy has invested like 4000 to 6000 gold for rams you cant expect to beat that with units for 200...
I'm expecting a base fully equip with Towers, which costs a lot for faction like Dwarves and Gondor, as well as the 1500 cost upgrade that improves all of them, to deal with Battering Rams decently well.  I don't see how that is unreasonable.

Yes certain faction can deal with the Ram Spam with just their base defenses, but most of them, even when fully upgraded, can not.  This is most glaring with the Dwarves, Lothlorien, and Isengard, who all have to pay a lot for these defenses.

Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Odysseus am 23. Mai 2016, 15:46
Isengard can get the defensive Warg Pit though, which is good against Rams.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Hamanathnath am 23. Mai 2016, 16:05
Isengard can get the defensive Warg Pit though, which is good against Rams.
True, but it won't do enough to actually affect anything.  The Rams would most likely destroy the building before the Warg can even kill 1 Ram. And for decently obvious reasons, having moultiple of those buildings instead of resource buildings will hurt you in the long run.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Elendils Cousin 3. Grades am 23. Mai 2016, 17:47
I'm 100% with Mandos here that rams don't need a nerf and it was just a case of being outplayed (not trying to be rude, that can happen to anyone)... but I didn't see the replay, of course. So it would be best if you post it, because I certainly won't believe rams overperform when spammed unless there is some sort of proof^^
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Hamanathnath am 23. Mai 2016, 17:53
Yeah I'll try to get the replay soon.  It was a 3v3 so balance is kinda hard to determine, and of course, play wasn't completely perfect, but the rams basically replaced the Isengard players army.

Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Sawman am 23. Mai 2016, 19:56
I am all for a nerf to rams, siege in general ruins the game for me at least, but nothing makes me more angry with this game then when I'm off helping a teammate or creeping and my enemy makes 10-15 rams and kills me like that or destroys most of my base because my army isn't there to stop it, it ruins the game when people play like that. This might sound a bit drastic but I have seen some botta mod things and they limit the amount of siege you can have which I would be all for in this mod with the way siege is and how people use it currently. Some people may not agree and if not then a straight nerf to ram health and armor would at least make a little more difficult for people to ram rush/spam maybe increase their price as well.

That's my thoughts cheers
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Skeeverboy am 23. Mai 2016, 20:17
The problem is, that the balance is designed for 1v1 with two equal strong players and not for a game with more players. In a game with more players you can often use different strategies as in a normal 1v1 game, like only towerguards, only cavallery and such things.
You can counter a ramrush easy, when you have some units in your base which can kill them fast.
Video, how a player has couter a ramrush (https://youtu.be/EUWHNJxKTxA?t=45m41s)

So I agree with Mandos too.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Hamanathnath am 23. Mai 2016, 20:35
In the LPS Cup Patch, Rams were specifically changed to where ranged attack did barely anything to them, while making melee to more damage to them.  That isn't how Rams work right now. 

In 4.3.2.1, only the bases where defenses can kill these rams effectively are Gondor and Mordor (I'll assume this is because Fire Arrows do more damage to Battering Rams then Forged Axes/Silverthorne Arrows/Steel Bolts). 

I completely agree that games need to be balanced around the 1v1s.  But how would 1v1s be unbalanced from Rams taking more damage from Ranged?  I don't get why Forged Axes/Silverthorne Arrows/Steel Bolts should do so much less damage to Battering Rams then Gondor/Mordor's Fire Arrow Towers, and also why Rams are pretty much immune to normal arrows (I can understand this one a bit more, but I think they should deal at least slightly more damage to Rams).  Most of these defenses cost a lot of money, so I don't think this would make towers overperform.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Adrigabbro am 23. Mai 2016, 20:52
I don't think rams are too strong at the moment, but I do agree with you about ramrush being ridiculous and dumb. I wonder if something like rams take way more damage when no ally troops are nearby could be possible.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Hamanathnath am 24. Mai 2016, 01:53
Ok I got permission from everyone, so here is the replay:
3v3: Angmar (PythonX35) Isengard (martin) and Dwarves of Erebor (Hamanathnath..... so me :D) VS Gondor (Sawman) Lothlorien ([BMD]Dmitry) and Angmar (DevilsDaemon).

I know play isn't perfect here, but hopefully the point comes across.  I would suggest paying most attention to the northern part of the battle, was that is where most of the action happens. Enjoy :)



Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Elendils Cousin 3. Grades am 24. Mai 2016, 02:57
So... I watched up until the Gondor base was destroyed and I saw literally nothing that indicates rams are too strong. The Gondor player first bought nothing but heroes and one Beacon and one or two Tower Guards, had his gate open and fought with them elsewhere which allowed Isengard to get in unharmed. Outplayed. When Gondor sits in base and does nothing, you build siege to destroy the fortress.

Then later on Gondor again leaves the base completely undefended, there is literally no unit or hero to protect it. Only some defensive structures. Since we all know that siege counters buildings, what did you expect? 10+ rams attacking a fortress which is, again, completely undefended! Yeah sure he was fighting somewhere else, but guess what, that's what happens in teamgames - if you don't want that, then play 1v1s (they're a lot more fun anyway :P) or keep some melee units there to protect it. Or close the gate and use the repair spell to buy some time, be creative.

Maybe the part you wanted to show is later in the replay, I don't know. Based on what I saw, there is no need to nerf rams unless its part of a bigger overhaul.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Hamanathnath am 24. Mai 2016, 05:19
I'm not saying that Isengard shouldn't have to use siege, because yes, Gondor fortresses are hard to take down, so Battering Rams are very useful.  But I still don't understand why the defensive structures, whose purpose is to defend your base, can't deal with Rams unless they have Fire Arrows.  Yes, the Gondor player should have gotten more Fire Arrow Towers, but that's not a excuse in my opinion for what he had to literally do nothing to siege.  Maybe this replay wasn't the best example becuase played could have been better, but there are still some cases of Battering Rams replacing armies. 

It's not like it's exclusive to this 1 match.  In many 3v3 or 4v4 I play in, there is a case where someone tries to Ram Spam.  It's a known problem that has a fairly decent solution in my opinion.  Nerfing Rams would not make them useless, just not able to be spammed and successful as they are now. 

And I really can't see only bases with Fire Arrows can damage Rams like they do.  Shouldn't the other upgraded Towers be able to do the same thing? 

Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: PythonX35 am 24. Mai 2016, 05:31
Please don't nerf rams or buff the bases against them. Rams should be easily countered by all types of melee units and/ or heroes, if they die against the auto defense mechanism of the fortress they are useless.

The point is to mask the rams in with troops who act as a meat-shield.  If your doing a ram rush and your sending literally nothing but rams at the opponent, then you're doing it wrong.  The melee damage that rams take from units and hero's is fine as is at the moment, the problem is that they do not take enough damage from ranged attacks.

I know that its not very logical that they should be almost immune to arrows/ ranged damage, but it is the only intelligent solution gameplaywise.

In my opinion, this one of the reasons why the ram rush is too effective right now.  Rams are not susceptible enough to arrows/ranged attacks.  They need to take a little more damage from all types of ranged attacks since it is the primary source of most defensive buildings.

If you get destroyed by ram rushes often you should work on your map awareness and keep a unit of swordsmen or two close to your base to defend yourself. Then it will just be a huge investment on your opponents side without gaining anything.

Map awareness is not really the issue here, and leaving a unit or two of swordsmen will not be sufficient enough since, like I said above, most ram spams are combined with a small/large force to act as a meat-shield.

If your enemy has invested like 4000 to 6000 gold for rams you cant expect to beat that with units for 200...

Mordor and Isengard can easily get 10 rams for around 2100-3000 resources which is more than enough to do enough damage maybe even take out an entire castle that is defended...and who ever said anything about taking out rams with 200 resource units?

But you should notice that your enemies armies are weaker and smaller than they could be and you should be able to get map control AND defend from the rams - let's be honest, they are destroyed really easy if you got some units and the damage they deal wont harm you that much.

If you own the map, then you probably don't really have to worry about a ram spam in the first place.  If you don't own the map, then all the enemy has to do is deal with enough of your troops on the battlefield and then rush your fort with rams and the remainder of their army.  If the enemy is turtling, then you likely own the map and can simply blast the enemies fort away with catapults.  The point is that your argument is pretty weak here.

Isengard can get the defensive Warg Pit though, which is good against Rams.

This is not a valid argument at all in my opinion for the following reasons.  One, you're talking about a single faction.  Two the defence warg pit is a joke because it consumes a valuable build plot.  If it consumed a defensive plot, then this argument may hold a little more weight.  This building was more valuable in the free build plot system, but with a set number of plots it is not valuable enough and is the reason why no one ever builds it.


I'm not saying that Isengard shouldn't have to use siege, because yes, Gondor fortresses are hard to take down, so Battering Rams are very useful.  But I still don't understand why the defensive structures, whose purpose is to defend your base, can't deal with Rams unless they have Fire Arrows.  Yes, the Gondor player should have gotten more Fire Arrow Towers, but that's not a excuse in my opinion for what he had to literally do nothing to siege.  Maybe this replay wasn't the best example becuase played could have been better, but there are still some cases of Battering Rams replacing armies. 

It's not like it's exclusive to this 1 match.  In many 3v3 or 4v4 I play in, there is a case where someone tries to Ram Spam.  It's a known problem that has a fairly decent solution in my opinion.  Nerfing Rams would not make them useless, just not able to be spammed and successful as they are now. 

And I really can't see only bases with Fire Arrows can damage Rams like they do.  Shouldn't the other upgraded Towers be able to do the same thing?

I agree with everything Haman has said in this post.  I don't think rams should be nerfed into the ground, but making them more susceptible to all kinds of ranged attacks would be the right way to go towards proper balance.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Mogat am 24. Mai 2016, 11:05
I agree With elendil and mandos. Rams are Ok now, there is no change needed imo.
Buildings should not be able to counter siege.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Fine am 24. Mai 2016, 11:34
Buildings should not be able to counter siege.

This sums up my opinion on the matter. I also believe that rams are in a good place and do not need to be made weaker against buildings. A base that can defend itself against everything would not be balanced in my opinion. You should always require units for defense, not just towers.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: The_Necromancer0 am 24. Mai 2016, 11:36
I haven't chipped in yet but I just wanted to put my opinion out there. So far I'm seeing two clear problems in the discussion. There one side which is saying that ram rush is to OP, which it is to some extent. Then there is the other side that's afraid that if rams are nerfed they'll be unable to take anything down because they can be easily countered. Both have legitimate concerns and both should be addressed.

The problem with decreasing their armor/health is that they would take too much damage from defenses and thus would be enable to do damage since they can be singled out even in the midst of a battle by the towers. This would cause major issues where ram just aren't efficient enough anymore because they get taken down too easily, they are already weak enough against melee. So this doesn't seem to be the right option.

Secondly, there is the strategic aspect and more specifically the ethics behind a ram rush. In my eyes it is a viable solution to send a small detachment of troops with a couple rams to the enemy base while your main force pulls their attention, that some basic Art of the War right there. But the thing that differentiate Art of the War and the Edain mod is that IRL the rams would be much slower and much less efficient. There lies a possible solution.

So what I think could balance the Rams would be an increased price and CP with possibly a speed and attack speed nerf. This would mean that the rams would now be a bigger opportunity cost as the player would be able to train less troops, along with that the other player would be given more time to react to a ram rush. But definitely not a armor/health nerf
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Hamanathnath am 24. Mai 2016, 14:50
Well I don't think a Health nerf is needed.  I just think Ram's being pretty much immune to all Ranged Damage from towers besides Fire Arrows doesn't make much sense. 

It seems that a lot of people think that Towers shouldn't be able to counter Battering Rams.  There are 2 reasons why I don't agree with this.  First, because as I said before, Gondor and Mordor Towers with Fire Arrows can already counter them, which I haven't seen anyone ever complain about.  And Second, upgrading your Towers isn't cheap.  Almost every faction has to pay at least 1500 for the upgrade to Improve their Towers, plus the cost of the building and possibly improving that building.  And you also have to actually buy the towers, which is incredibly expensive for Factions like Gondor and Dwarves on Castle Maps. 

I really don't think it would make Battering Rams useless if Upgraded Towers Could Damage them like Gondor and Mordor Towers with Fire Arrows do now.  If everyone is okay with these Towers being able to deal with Battering Rams, then the way I see it, it doesn't make sense why other Upgraded Towers, which cost the around the same amount to obtain (and in fact cost more then Mordor's does), should deal so little damage to Rams.

Now concerning Towers that aren't upgraded, I can see why they should deal little Damage to Battering Rams.  I personally think that they should do slightly more just because right now the damage they do is incredibly low, and they should be able to eventually kill Battering Rams without taking forever to do so.  But I can see why making them too strong against Battering Rams would be problematic.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Odysseus am 24. Mai 2016, 14:54
Zitat
''Isengard can get the defensive Warg Pit though, which is good against Rams.''
This is not a valid argument at all in my opinion for the following reasons.  One, you're talking about a single faction.  Two the defence warg pit is a joke because it consumes a valuable build plot.  If it consumed a defensive plot, then this argument may hold a little more weight.  This building was more valuable in the free build plot system, but with a set number of plots it is not valuable enough and is the reason why no one ever builds it.
How is this not a valid argument? Yes, I was talking about a single faction because Haman referenced Isengard being one of the factions that suffers more from a ram rush than other factions, and this is largely due to their steel bolts being much worse against rams than fire arrows. A Warg Pit is much more effective at defending your base from a ram rush than an arrow tower. Of course it takes a build plot, but you are severely underestimating the value of a properly timed and placed warg pit or arrow tower. Especially when your opponents tries to rush you down, and you have resources to spare, one tower or warg pit does the work of multiple. It's not like Isengard is starving of resources anyway if you play properly, so sacrificing 1 build plot is not the end of the world.

That said, since this whole debate escalated quite quickly, I will stick to the conservatives, and say that if the rams their performance cannot be adjusted to their cost, then they should be fine as is. Even Elendil and Mogat bothered to pitch in, and their opinions hold more weight than ours. However, if the damage of some upgraded towers is so low to rams compared to the Gondorian fire arrows, it might be in good interest to bring their damage to the same or a more reasonable level.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Hamanathnath am 24. Mai 2016, 15:07
The problem with the Defensive Warg Pit in this case is that, if I remember correctly, if the Pit is destroyed, Warg Defending the Pit dies.  So against a Ram Rush, it will most likely die before it makes much progress. 

The Defensive Warg Pit, in my opinion, is one of the Buildings that works better with the BFME2 style of gameplay, and doesn't really translate well to the BFME1 style.  But that's an entirely different topic.

Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: -Mandos- am 24. Mai 2016, 17:27
[...] But I still don't understand why the defensive structures, whose purpose is to defend your base, can't deal with Rams unless they have Fire Arrows. [...]
That's a mistake you make there. Defensive structures are there to help you beat armies that invade your castle, did you ever try to attack an upgraded castle with an army only? :D
Siege units counter structures, in my opinion even the upgraded versions of defense towers shouldnt deal much damage to rams. If your castle is empty it deserves to fall, missplay by the defensive player.

Mordor and Isengard can easily get 10 rams for around 2100-3000 resources which is more than enough to do enough damage maybe even take out an entire castle that is defended...and who ever said anything about taking out rams with 200 resource units?

Then again, if your enemy, who is not ahead in terms of mapcontrol, has invested only 2000 resources into rams you could get like 5 units of swordsmen for 1000 (depends on the faction but it becomes even easier with Rohan for example) and still have units worth 1000 gold more than your opponent on other points of the map (and you can destroy the rams without casualties which benefits you 1000 gold again).
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Hamanathnath am 24. Mai 2016, 19:10
Well I guess this just comes down to opinion, but the way I see, If I invest a lot of resources into defensive upgrades, they should be able to kill Rams.  And when I say that, I don't mean that the Rams should die so quickly that they aren't able to hit any buildings.  I think the Damage of Upgraded Towers on Battering Rams should be similar to what Gondor/Mordor Upgraded Towers do now. 
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Elite KryPtik am 27. Mai 2016, 00:11
Well this has been an interesting discussion, guess I will throw in my 2 cents.

First, I will say that ram rushing can be a serious problem. You can be on the offensive with map control, killing the enemies outer farms, and he can just ram spam your base and force you to backpedal. Its a cheap and effective tactic, I do think right now that rams overperform for their cost. Especially the 300 ones.

So, in regards to nerfs, I would say that I agree with reducing their movement and attack speed, as necromancer suggested, and increasing their ranged damage against UPGRADED defensive towers to be on par with damage from fire arrows. I cannot understand why upgraded defenses of other factions should deal less against rams then fire arrow defenses, its illogical and unfair for that faction. The rams are fine in health, standard ranged armor and melee armor as far as I am concerned.

Also, something nobody has touched upon, Lothlorien can literally do nothing against a ram rush. Even if they have a horde of swordsmen defending their base, 10-15 rams with some army support WILL get in and destroy the citadel, thereby ending the game in defeat for lorien unless they have an ent moot. I know this is a bug, but it does demonstrate how much damage rams can deal before you are able to kill them. They need some kind of nerf, not necessarily health and armor, but something.

In regards to the Warg Sentry, I suggested a while back that it be moved to the defensive build plots of an Isengard base, and I don't understand why it wasn't. It would be a simple change that would REALLY increase the usefulness of the building. Its in the Isengard suggestions thread somewhere, if you want to read it ;)

But yeah overall I see both sides of the argument and agree to a certain extent with both, so I think the best middle ground is as necromancer said, movement speed and attack speed nerf, combined with taking more damage from upgraded towers.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Fine am 27. Mai 2016, 10:17
In regards to the Warg Sentry, I suggested a while back that it be moved to the defensive build plots of an Isengard base, and I don't understand why it wasn't. It would be a simple change that would REALLY increase the usefulness of the building. Its in the Isengard suggestions thread somewhere, if you want to read it ;)

Yeah, this seems reasonable. If it is do-able (as in if the team can make the sentry fit on the smaller defence plots), then I support this change.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Hamanathnath am 27. Mai 2016, 14:08
In regards to the Warg Sentry, I suggested a while back that it be moved to the defensive build plots of an Isengard base, and I don't understand why it wasn't. It would be a simple change that would REALLY increase the usefulness of the building. Its in the Isengard suggestions thread somewhere, if you want to read it ;)

Yeah, this seems reasonable. If it is do-able (as in if the team can make the sentry fit on the smaller defence plots), then I support this change.
Pretty much have the same thoughts on the subject.  So +1 :)
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Adrigabbro am 27. Mai 2016, 16:32
Is it even possible?
If the answer is yes, then I am of course in favor of your idea. :)
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Ealendril der Dunkle am 27. Mai 2016, 16:41
It wasn't because its not possible. There isn't enough space for this building.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Elite KryPtik am 27. Mai 2016, 23:23
Well, my idea was to shrink it down and make the building like half its current size, and only guarded by a single warg, as would befit a defensive building.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: DrHouse93 am 28. Mai 2016, 12:17
First, I will say that ram rushing can be a serious problem. You can be on the offensive with map control, killing the enemies outer farms, and he can just ram spam your base and force you to backpedal. Its a cheap and effective tactic, I do think right now that rams overperform for their cost. Especially the 300 ones.

Completely agree with this. I've just lost a match with a friend, where we were in a steady situation, in the exact moment he started to spam rams. At the end I had to quit  the game because I couldn't do nothing against the spam (also because I had Glorious King's power bugged)

However, as a way to nerf them, rather than increasing the damage received by upgraded defensive structures (not all the factions can afford them), I'd like to see them limited to a number of 5 or either their recruitment time increased. To be honest, I think this nerf would be good for all siege engines, because most of the times, when the enemy starts spamming siege, you've basically lost the game

I attach the replay of the match (the ram spam starts at 1/3 of the game)

Concerning the Warg sentry, what about making it a slave-upgrade for sentry towers, besides Steel bolts?
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Idrial12 am 28. Mai 2016, 12:38
First, I will say that ram rushing can be a serious problem. You can be on the offensive with map control, killing the enemies outer farms, and he can just ram spam your base and force you to backpedal. Its a cheap and effective tactic, I do think right now that rams overperform for their cost. Especially the 300 ones.

Completely agree with this. I've just lost a match with a friend, where we were in a steady situation, in the exact moment he started to spam rams. At the end I had to quit  the game because I couldn't do nothing against the spam (also because I had Glorious King's power bugged)

However, as a way to nerf them, rather than increasing the damage received by upgraded defensive structures (not all the factions can afford them), I'd like to see them limited to a number of 5 or either their recruitment time increased. To be honest, I think this nerf would be good for all siege engines, because most of the times, when the enemy starts spamming siege, you've basically lost the game

I attach the replay of the match (the ram spam starts at 1/3 of the game)

Concerning the Warg sentry, what about making it a slave-upgrade for sentry towers, besides Steel bolts?

I do not agree with that. why shoudl rams be limited? you can easily defend yourself against such a spam with 1 bat swords
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: DrHouse93 am 28. Mai 2016, 12:43
Yes, but that would require you to spend CP for units to defend all your buildings, and also, not all the swordsmen are equally effective (for example, Rohan Peasants, Mordor Orcs or Thrall Masters)

Furthermore, the problem is not a single ram, but when the enemy starts sending say 4 of them at the same building, while simultaneously sending other 4 at another one, and so on
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: -Mandos- am 28. Mai 2016, 18:08
Same argument as always: You can get like 4-5 units of peasants per ram which destroy it in absolutly no time. So, if he sends like ten rams you can keep 10 units of peasants close to your base and destroy them all, have a money advantage elsewhere and another money advantage because your peasants didnt die but killed a lot or rams (=resources)...
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Elite KryPtik am 28. Mai 2016, 19:50
The problem isn't that the rams can be killed, the problem is how cost effective they are. Our entire argument is not based around the health of the ram. If you are on the offensive killing enemy things in the field and he sneaks 5 rams into your base, then what can you do? Nobody leaves 5 battalions of infantry to guard their freaking base while they are on the offensive! Not to mention, with army support rams can walk right through troops and deal horrific damage before you can kill them, even with troops hitting them they will get a hit or 2 of their own off and deal extreme damage to the structure. 10 rams + 10 basic infantry can destroy most bases regardless of defense.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Draco100000 am 28. Mai 2016, 20:49
Nobody leaves 5 battalions of infantry to guard their freaking base while they are on the offensive!

Why not? I mean if you know your enemie is going to attack your base you have to defend it no matter if you want to attack him it doesnt mean he shouldnt be able to attack yours, this is not a lineal game, this is strategy, just puting on ofensive a few melee battallions and gg rams are down, Your enemie wasted money and you can attack with no problem while you have some troops in the back.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: DrHouse93 am 28. Mai 2016, 21:00
I agree that dealing with rams in lategame isn't so hard, the problem is another. First of all, the ram spam may be extremely effective even on mid game, when you're still building your army, your opponent can send 4 rams on a farm, 4 on another, 4 on another, and so on, therefore drawing your attention and thwarting economy and development, while you have to send your troops in several spots to kill those rams, or even worse, being forced to leave - for example - two swordsmen on a farm, two on another, two on another, and so on, which means a smaller army, fewer CPs and fewer resources

Furthermore, as Elite said (and I agree with him), even in lategame they can deal terrible damage, because they can walk with no problems between troops and smash a lot of buildings before you can make them harmless (the same happens with catapults: what can you do when your opponent has 7-8 of them - or even more - all clumped in the same spot, bombing your base, while his troops just stand around them preventing anyone from destroying them?)
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Draco100000 am 28. Mai 2016, 22:33
I agree that dealing with rams in lategame isn't so hard, the problem is another. First of all, the ram spam may be extremely effective even on mid game, when you're still building your army, your opponent can send 4 rams on a farm, 4 on another, 4 on another, and so on, therefore drawing your attention and thwarting economy and development, while you have to send your troops in several spots to kill those rams, or even worse, being forced to leave - for example - two swordsmen on a farm, two on another, two on another, and so on, which means a smaller army, fewer CPs and fewer resources

Furthermore, as Elite said (and I agree with him), even in lategame they can deal terrible damage, because they can walk with no problems between troops and smash a lot of buildings before you can make them harmless (the same happens with catapults: what can you do when your opponent has 7-8 of them - or even more - all clumped in the same spot, bombing your base, while his troops just stand around them preventing anyone from destroying them?)
That huge ram spam should mean no armie for your enemie( except mordor) and if so you will have great advantage in the match just destroy the already done rams and attack with few units you will win easily.

About catas it is just a consecuence of loose completely in previous fases. I fyour enemie could do 8 catas measn you didnt had anything more than your base so it obvious you will loose cause lack of map control, unles you go out do a great move and recover the map. each cata use to costr huge amount of money that your enemie only can afford if he has entire map so get better previous stages and you will have a chance.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Sawman am 28. Mai 2016, 23:04
Rams hardly cost any cp so if you hid 10 of them in a corner and waited until your enemy leaves his base to attack you, you should still have enough cp space for an army to hold him off and let your rams kill his base and you win easy as that.

Regarding leaving troops in your base to prevent ram spam/rush if you have fully upgraded wall defense's why should you have to leave men guarding your base? Isn't that what wall defense is for? To protect your base? If they cannot do that there is a problem.

 
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: -Mandos- am 28. Mai 2016, 23:18
The wall defenses protect your castle against soldiers. If they would just kill everything (there was a beta where that happened) it would be a) really boring and b) siege weapons wouldnt have any use. They are there to especially counter those auto defenses...
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Sawman am 28. Mai 2016, 23:42
If you had an army supporting the rams like you should, the wall defenses would have other targets to hit. And how boring would it be if you were to have a fully upgraded army and going to attack your enemy and you lose because your base dies to ram spam. How much fun is that? I don't even see how winning that way is fun. All the things you can do in this mod and you ram spam to beat someone, don't understand it.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Lord of Mordor am 29. Mai 2016, 00:00
Seems to me that increasing ram command points would be the most logical solution here without affecting their strength too much. Rams (and catapults, for that matter), were never meant to be units that you send in droves of 10 or 15. Increasing their point costs to 40 or 60 would mean that you'd actually have to think about how many siege weapons and how many field units you want in your army, whereas currently you can get six rams for the point cost of two Gondor soldier bataillons.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Elite KryPtik am 29. Mai 2016, 00:01
If you had an army supporting the rams like you should, the wall defenses would have other targets to hit. And how boring would it be if you were to have a fully upgraded army and going to attack your enemy and you lose because your base dies to ram spam. How much fun is that? I don't even see how winning that way is fun. All the things you can do in this mod and you ram spam to beat someone, don't understand it.
^^ This. I can't tell you how many times this has happened to me, where I have clearly outplayed my opponent and won the match just for him to send 5-10 rams into my base and kill me. Upgraded base defenses SHOULD be able to kill rams, because upgraded base defenses still cannot counter a proper catapult siege. Rams are mean to be used to take down outposts and normal settlements, but right now they can level a base easily. Even if its defended by troops they can usually get at least 3-4 buildings before you can kill them all.

EDIT
Seems to me that increasing ram command points would be the most logical solution here without affecting their strength too much. Rams (and catapults, for that matter), were never meant to be units that you send in droves of 10 or 15. Increasing their point costs to 40 or 60 would mean that you'd actually have to think about how many siege weapons and how many field units you want in your army, whereas currently you can get six rams for the point cost of two Gondor soldier bataillons.
That seems fair, I think also a movement speed and attack speed nerf would be good. I don't think they should have lower health or armor because then they could just get shot down, but making them hit buildings a bit slower would help ensure that the defender at least has a chance to target them.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: DrHouse93 am 29. Mai 2016, 01:38
Seems to me that increasing ram command points would be the most logical solution here without affecting their strength too much. Rams (and catapults, for that matter), were never meant to be units that you send in droves of 10 or 15. Increasing their point costs to 40 or 60 would mean that you'd actually have to think about how many siege weapons and how many field units you want in your army, whereas currently you can get six rams for the point cost of two Gondor soldier bataillons.

Agree with that^^
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Hamanathnath am 29. Mai 2016, 04:46
Seems to me that increasing ram command points would be the most logical solution here without affecting their strength too much. Rams (and catapults, for that matter), were never meant to be units that you send in droves of 10 or 15. Increasing their point costs to 40 or 60 would mean that you'd actually have to think about how many siege weapons and how many field units you want in your army, whereas currently you can get six rams for the point cost of two Gondor soldier bataillons.
I agree with this.

Though if the Upgraded Towers could also deal decent damage to Rams that would be great :P.  I still find it unfair that Mordor and Gondor Defenses can kill ram spams while other factions can't.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Elite KryPtik am 29. Mai 2016, 07:01
Actually Haman, Dwarven Defences do pretty heavy damage to rams once they got forged blades, so their fine. The only problem is Isengard and Lorien. Rohan is obviously fucked because their defenses cannot be upgraded.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Odysseus am 29. Mai 2016, 13:21
I'll take any ''nerf''. Feels more like a tweak, I think. It's good, I agree completely with increasing the CP requirement per Ram.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Sir_Stig am 30. Mai 2016, 06:44
I support the command point increase and an upgraded tower defence damage increase for steel bolts and silver thorns, especially the silver thorns as Lothlorièn has no outer walls or barricades to slow down rams.
Really, rams should be effective against doors and outposts, I think they tend to outshine most ranged siege due to the fact the can move so easily inside a scrum.
Just my 2 cents though.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: LordDainIronfoot am 6. Jun 2016, 11:28
CP increase sounds good but I think that Ram main if not only strength should be against Gates and nothing elae. It is not logical nor true for a Ram to hit Stone Walls or Buildings and destroy them and so fast and easy is even less believable! :-)

At least in my eyes! :-)
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: FG15 am 6. Jun 2016, 12:12
They can destroy the door of the buildings such that the ram crew can enter and destroy the building from the inside. Else nothing but catapults should damage any structure.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Darkayah am 6. Jun 2016, 12:44
And if you say that a Ram can't destroy  stonewalls in the game,  also soldiers with their swords shouldn't do that.
Then we have only catapults to destroy a fortress... but it is not a good solution for a game... Promotes only a very boring siege if you everytime have to wait for catapults to win this battle.  ;)
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Odysseus am 6. Jun 2016, 13:34
+1 to Darkness.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Elendils Cousin 3. Grades am 6. Jun 2016, 23:38
And I'm just sitting here, waiting for someone to actually post a replay showcasing rams are op...

Rams are not meant to be units that are send in droves of 10 or 15? Maybe you need to send so many of them because with how strong defensive structures are, they don't do shit otherwise? There are so many statements in this thread that I just don't understand (who uses rams to take down settlements, seriously?), so please, somebody post a good replay. If this is as op as you claim, it should be easy to get one.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: DrHouse93 am 7. Jun 2016, 01:09
And I'm just sitting here, waiting for someone to actually post a replay showcasing rams are op...

I actually did it, pal xD
Look at page 3, I posted a RohanVMordor match against a friend (keep in mind I'm not so skilled with Rohan, but at 1/3 of the match, when the ram spam starts, I couldn't do anything at all)
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Fine am 7. Jun 2016, 08:56
I see no need for a ram nerf at the moment.
That is all.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Hamanathnath am 7. Jun 2016, 14:00
The reason people send rams in groups of 10-15 is because the can take down buildings so quickly that your army (wherever it is) can't make it back in time. 

I don't agree with Nerfing Rams, besides the increase in command points.  The attack speed or health or damage really isn't the problem I have with Rams, nor the reason I brought this topic up.  I just want the factions whose bases can't deal Rams when upgrade to be able to when certain faction clearly can. 

Take Isengard as an example.  Even if you do leave 1 or 2 units are your base to protect against Ram Rushes as multiple people have suggested, if your enemy sends 10-15 Rams, do you honestly think that the Units will be able to break the Ram before lose a lot of your base?  Even if your base is upgraded with Steel Bolts, it doesn't mean anything because they basically don't do any damage to Rams.  And the Defensive Warg Pit also won't do enough because if the Rams just destroy it first, then all the wargs there die if I remember correctly.  Is that really fair that certain factions can deal a lot better with Rams while others can't? 
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Skeeverboy am 7. Jun 2016, 14:21
Personally I think, that no base should be able to kill rams without any units. Instead of makeing the upgrades of the other fortresses stronger, I think the upgrades from Mordor and Gondor should be much weaker against siege weapons. It makes no sense for me, that a tower can kill a ram.

And it's not very hard to counter a ramrush, because:
- Units in your base can counter it easy
- Every faction can scout what the enemy do(Isengard: Bill Ferny, raven, Saruman on the tower, the palantíri)
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Hamanathnath am 7. Jun 2016, 14:30
There are certain things that need to be unrealistic in terms of Gameplay.  How does it make sense that people with swords can destroy a building?  It doesn't make sense, but it is something that needs to happen for the game to function properly.  I think the same applies to Rams and Upgraded Towers.  If you spend the money for upgradeing defenses, why should the Defenses not be able to hold off such a inexpensive army of Rams? 
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Odysseus am 7. Jun 2016, 14:47
Fair points all across the board. However, from a conceptual point of view, I think it makes most sense that Rams are most effective as early to mid game siege, and that when the enemy base starts upgrading, rams should lose their cost-efficiency, primarily if spammed. That is where you have the catapults come in for you. I do want to mention, factions always have two siege options, a ram and a catapult (except Lothlorien, they have Beornings and Ents), at the very least. Tell me, what is the significance of catapults if you can spam rams to do the same thing, but much cheaper? Also, catapults take more CP and cost more, and generally are much harder to spam. Lightweight rams only cost 20 CP, they are easy to field in numbers. Nobody is going to send in Rams unsupported, unless it is a sneaky surprise move. I thought this was common knowledge.
At first, I wanted to nerf rams into the ground for their cost-efficiency, which is through the roof. You can literally take down outposts costing 3000 with two rams that cost 600 together and a couple of infantry to meathshield for them. If such a building is not taken down, it will have suffered grievous damage, and will take ages to repair.

My opinion now is alligned with that of LoM, increase the CP to atleast prevent the spam. 
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Skeeverboy am 7. Jun 2016, 15:09
Zitat
If you spend the money for upgradeing defenses, why should the Defenses not be able to hold off such a inexpensive army of Rams? 
The defense is strong enaugh to counter attacks of normal units.

Zitat
There are certain things that need to be unrealistic in terms of Gameplay.  How does it make sense that people with swords can destroy a building?  It doesn't make sense, but it is something that needs to happen for the game to function properly
I don't talk from the sense, what is logical and what not, I talk from the sense why a tower should be able to kill his counter. It's like that a pikeman can kill a swordman, or a archer can kill cavallery.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: AmrothderTapfere am 2. Jul 2016, 01:53
Hello dear Edain-Community!

I played some edain matches and I have a big concern. Farms and buidings in general are falling way too quickly. Often I can't even send soldiers to defend farms.

Similarly, fortress buildings have too weak armor against rams and catapults, when they are attacked there is always no time to react quickly enough. So I propose a general building-life increase of about 50%.

I hope you like my balance idea. :D
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Walküre am 2. Jul 2016, 04:57
Hello dear Edain-Community!

I played some edain matches and I have a big concern. Farms and buidings in general are falling way too quickly. Often I can't even send soldiers to defend farms.

Similarly, fortress buildings have too weak armor against rams and catapults, when they are attacked there is always no time to react quickly enough. So I propose a general building-life increase of about 50%.

I hope you like my balance idea. :D

I think that this topic doesn't deserve a thread on its own for now. I will merge everything with the General Balance Discussion thread.

--- MERGED ---
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: The_Nazgul am 9. Sep 2016, 22:29
When you play online this is so important:
"which hero you spend your valuable money on"
That is WHY i posted this comment and that is why the hero balancing discussion is important!
We may had this discussion before but i see it necessary to remind
About hero balancing;

Glorfindel : The last guardian of gondolin an elf who survived from the first age of arda and probably the most experienced elven lord in the matter of combat!
He cost 1800 just like Boromir and Mornamarth or Thorin III
Glorfindels abilities are fine but his stats? he has nothing special worthy of his legacy and history! in fact he should not be weaker than Durmarth or Mornamarth!
I say he deserve a higher hp and damage for a little more price!

Eomer : like glorfindel he is a 1.8k hero but you can easily slay him by gothmog or any nazgul remember he is not aoe he is a tank and a fighter he needs buff on his health and damage to be a perfect 2k hero while he is just good as arwen right now!

Helegwen : her ranged damage is super low in fact you can't do anything really with her regular attack while her abilities are very useful she deserve a higher ranged damage she has the same cost as denethor but much less on act!
(denethor can beat almost everything with his attack style while helegwen can't kill a scout hero)

Dain Ring hero : before you give the ring to him king dain/dain iron foot is one of the best heroes in the mod but when you give the ring to him he become the most useless hero of all times and slowest person of all ages!
so i can't say much more but to be honest King Dain was so strong against the desires and he refused one of the old dwarven rings!
While thorin the oakenshild had a great desire to almost every kind of jewel!
Second topic is about removing Durin the deathless the most bad A$$ Dwarf!
he had a great design and a great voice also great stats and abilities
I suggest when thorin oakenshild or dain pick up the ring they summon Durin the deathless he is the only Dwarf worthy of the ring of power!

Witch king of Angmar: just reminding and nothing more! i have already posted 10 comment about him.

Legolas : too weak for a 2200 cost hero!
he needs a proper ranged damage and his dagger ability cooldown needs a shorter time!
Gimli and Aragorn are both 2.5 k and very strong heroes , legolas on the other side not much on the battlefield really!

Dwalin : unlike thorin Oakenshield or gimli His health and melee damage is too low for a 2.4k hero! he dies so easily against most of heroes and his AOE style is not so good for that price! he needs a higher armor or damage.

Thorin III and Denethor are exactly reverse those heroes! they are exremely more powerful than what they should be!
So i think there is 2 way to balancing Them;
1-Keep their abilities and stats for a higher price!
Thorin III for +2k cost and Denetor for 2 or 1.8k would be perfect
2-Decrease their damage/range/health or decrease their ability effects!


I will also post this on the forum!
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Sefie1999AD am 9. Sep 2016, 22:46
How do you feel about Arrow Towers and other base defences? At the moment, they cost about 500 credits, and I think they're way too powerful against units. If you attack an enemy base that has all the defences built up, even fully upgraded units will die quickly there. Cavalry with Heavy Armor, Horse Shields and Banner Carriers will get shot really quickly due to their small battalion size. The same for elite and heroic units. The only thing that can survive inside a fully defended base are your heroes. While I realize this is needed to force the player to use siege, but I think we've pretty much reached the other bad extreme this way.

If the player has full map control, and the enemy is turtling inside their base, I think it's just lousy gameplay that the offensive player should spam siege and bombard the enemy base for 10 minutes (30 minutes with Rohan's Onagers :D) while the fully upgraded army is better off protecting the siege weapons rather than attack. As both siege and towers seem to be too important in the late-game, I'd suggest making siege much more effective against towers, walls and gates, but much less effective against inner base structures and units. This not only makes sure you can't win by sneaking a single Battering Ram inside the enemy base, but it also forces you to use a varied force to take down an enemy base: siege to take out the outer defences, and units to destroy the actual base and the troops defending it.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Elite KryPtik am 10. Sep 2016, 01:15
Siege and base defences are getting an overhaul in the next patch, there is no point in discussing them now.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Sefie1999AD am 1. Nov 2016, 00:48
Even though the siege system is getting an overhaul, there's something about the overpoweredness of the Arrow Towers I'd like to point out. I'm not sure if this is a bug or intentional, but I still find it a very... peculiar balance design.

Here are the armor levels for cavalry in Edain:


The higher the number, the more Cavalry takes damage. For example, they take only 30% damage from swords (Slash), but 135% damage from pikes (Specialist). Note that they take 135% damage from Structural, which refers to Arrow Towers, level 2 Defensive Measurements and other structure-based defences. This is already quite a large number, meaning Arrow Towers wreck Cavalry. However, let's take a look at Cavalry with Heavy Armor:


Note how Structural does 200% damage now. This means Arrow Towers deal 1.5x more damage to Cavalry after you upgrade them with Heavy Armor, so upgrading your Cavalry makes them even more susceptible to base defences. This is not the only case, though. EdainInfantryArmor takes 100% damage from Structural weapons, while EdainInfantryHeavyArmor takes 150% damage. Same for EdainPikemanArmor and EdainPikemanHeavyArmor. The same applies to EdainTrollArmor and EdainTrollHeavyArmor. For EdainArcherArmor and EdainArcherHeavyArmor, the numbers are 50% and 75%, respectively.

If you upgrade a unit's armor, why make the unit more vulnerable? I can somewhat understand why Cavalry_Ranged, Hero and Hero_Ranged have been increased, as those unit types are reasonably rare, and can be considered specialized in taking out heavily armored units, but base defences are way too easy to spam. With the current system, only Battering Rams (1% damage from Structural), Catapults and their equivalents (1% damage from Structural), and Heroes (25%-35% damage from Structural, 15%-25% damage with armor upgrades) take reasonably low damage from Catapults, so when you're assaulting a fully towered enemy base, you're better off sending your Cavalry, Swordsmen and Pikes elsewhere, and have Heroes and maybe Archers support your siege equipment, or otherwise your army, to which you spent lots of resources to upgrade, will be hopelessly massacred.

Even if there will be new siege units, I can't really consider this kind of balance design very strategic, as it reinforces that you switch your late-game to practically one unit type, which is siege (well, combined with heroes as cannon fodder). In the vanilla game, upgrading units with Heavy Armor made them take 1/3-2/3 of the damage they'd normally take from Structural type weapons. Even in Edain 3.8.1, upgrading with Heavy Armor made the units take 0.75x of their original Structural damage. I'd really hope that the Structural damage for units with Heavy Armor upgrade will be reduced to the levels they were in 3.8.1, so that you can successfully mix both siege and your army to assault an enemy base. For Rohan, this is almost impossible on a Castle map, since a) their Onagers deal pitiful damage, and b) all of their other non-hero units (especially Cavalry, which is Rohan's trademark) get wrecked by defences.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Julio229 am 1. Nov 2016, 00:57
I can only agree with you, the fact that towers are even more effective against upgraded units completely kills the usefulness of these units in sieges.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Odysseus am 1. Nov 2016, 02:42
Unless we are missing some crucial detail, I also can only agree. I had the discussion with Sefie earlier and I was really surprised to hear such a finding, because it does not make a lick of sense.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Slawek56703 am 1. Nov 2016, 04:41
Didnt heavy armor increase health points? even description mentions that. ET proably make it on purpose to not make units to much tanky in sake of balance and beside make units more revelant on battles and no just send units to enemy camp and destroy it (especially evil one bases) ... but still i agree those uniits should take at least this same damage from structural




Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Hamanathnath am 1. Nov 2016, 05:19
Just to clarify, Heavy Armour DOES increase the health points of the unit, and generally that health increase is enough to cancel out the increased damage from Towers.

However, I agree that units with Heavy Armour should not take more Structural Damage.  I can sort of see the idea behind why it is like that, because in BFME2/ROTWK, Heavy Armour gave you ridiculous resistance against towers.  However, I'd really rather just see you resistance to Structural damage stay the same when upgraded with Heavy Armour.

The funny thing is I always thought that Cavalry was a little too weak against Tower Defenses, even with heavy armour.  Guess this is why.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Tirano am 3. Dez 2016, 17:41
Why some factions like imladris or arnor, don't need a stable to mount the heros? I think this is very unbalance for dome factions like gondor or rohan because in early game a hero killer mount like Glorfindel (yeah I know you are going to say he is not a hero killer but he kill heroes like flies) is really strong against other heros not mounted  or archers. I think Gondor and rohan heros should mount without a stable or Arnor and Imladris heros should nor mount without a stable to balance more the game.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Slawek56703 am 26. Jan 2017, 14:18
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong but aren't Hero killers supposed to have lesser health than army supporters ? I give u example Aragorn starting health is 4500 should't it be rather 3500? Lurtz , Eowyn have this that way why Aragorn have this additional health points ? Of course i exluding Dwar heroes here becouse they need stronger heroes . I thought this that way
Scout 1500
Hero Killer 3500
Supporter 4500
Tank 5500
Super Tank 6500 (Mollok and Treebeard)
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Hamanathnath am 26. Jan 2017, 15:56
Aragorn costs more then double the amount of resources as Eowyn, and just barely under double the amount more as Lurtz.  Therefore, the extra health is justified.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Slawek56703 am 26. Jan 2017, 16:02
Aragorn costs more then double the amount of resources as Eowyn, and just barely under double the amount more as Lurtz.  Therefore, the extra health is justified.

Aragorn get's increased damage by 60% and armor by 30% and since level 4 he gets additional 50% damage boost from Andruil but sadly he's stats doesn't show that .
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Hamanathnath am 26. Jan 2017, 16:07
There is a difference between 50% damage and 50 damage.  Last I checked, the ability says 50 damage.

Though I don't see how the stats of Blademaster are relevant to Aragorn's health.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Slawek56703 am 26. Jan 2017, 16:09
There is a difference between 50% damage and 50 damage.  Last I checked, the ability says 50 damage.

Though I don't see how the stats of Blademaster are relevant to Aragorn's health.

The think is Blademaster increase his Armor too so this is somehow similar to increased health points.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Hamanathnath am 26. Jan 2017, 16:12
And Aragorn costs 1100 more then Lurtz.  Is it balanced for a Hero that is 1400 to preform just as well as a hero that costs 2500?
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Slawek56703 am 26. Jan 2017, 16:13
Alright thanks Haman I'm fine with this health point increase .
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Julio229 am 26. Jan 2017, 22:07
Hi!

I think Dwarven CAHs could have a shield like the Ered Mithrin units have, it would be cool to be able to make custom Ered Mithrim heroes, and the shield is the only part of their design that isn't available for CAH.

I hope you like this suggestion!
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: FilipGeorg95 am 6. Feb 2017, 17:14
Hey, is there a possibility to increase the health and armor against arrows for Rochyn Sul, Knights of Dol Amroth and Royal Guard of Rohan ?
I am writing this because they resemble the very jewel of those factions might and units and therefore when I usually play with them it takes me about 40 min to recruit them and they require previous updates and are strictly late game units which I personally approve. My point is to buff them a little bit because even though they act as heroic cavalry, I am sure that in pitched and massive battles they should endure long ( note that my tactic is to use them as flanking force and hammer-anvil which is used by most players ) Overall their role, concept, price and CP are well balanced but I have noticed that everyone of them on level 10 has the maximum health of 2276 which I find a little bit "small" compared to other heroic units.
That's for now and all of you have a good day
Filip Georgievski
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Goodfella am 31. Jul 2017, 23:54
Hello Everybody!  :)

1st of all: How are you? How's your day been? How's the kids? etc.

2nd of all: NERF TOWERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think it is well known to the team that they are currently OP but i just wanted to make this post, to be doubly sure. And also to point out the level to which (I believe) they need to be nerfed.

In a recent patch fix, that is being experimented with in the MP community (made by Deathless), towers have been nerfed. He nerfed them by decreasing the fire rate of the towers. However, I consider (along with many other players) that even this nerf is nowhere near enough.

Are Towers OP in edain?
Deciding if something is OP is no easy task and I like to be careful before making that deceleration. But i can honestly say that if there was one thing i could change about this mod it would be tower damage.

I would go as far as saying i would rather DELETE towers from the game than keep them how they currently are! I have never come across a player who supports the buffing of towers and almost every player i talk to agrees that they are currently way too powerful.

Ruuddevil said in his most recent video: 'this is why people make sub-mods - these f*cking towers' (i'm paraphrasing :p). Honestly, I have to agree with him, one small change like a HUGE nerf to towers would improve the experience of the mod in a big way! :)

What's the problem with OP towers:
You could argue that they're technically not 'Imbalanced' because towers are a feature of every faction, so everyone can exploit this feature right? Well yes, that's true - so its more a game-play tweak rather than a re-balancing

What's The problem with Towers in Edain?
1. They make outpost rushing somewhat viable and if you can solidify your position at an outpost with lots of towers it is very difficult for the attacker to destroy it, leading to stale, campy games with little map dynamics.

There are of course ways of destroying the outpost, moving in with rams for one - but this is difficult to do as you need to protect your rams with units, which drop like flies to the towers, thereby making it so much easier for the defender.

Often the only viable option is to make catapults and siege from a distance. How does the defender counter this? With catapults of his own of course! And thus the battle of the catapults begins, 10-20 mins of shooting each others catapults whilst spamming out more. 'Shoot catapult, move catapult to dodge incoming bolder, rinse and repeat till one player wins'. Unless of course one player has denethor then its gg cus he reks catas from 5 miles away :/

2. sieging a base is a bloody nightmare. Pretty much the same thing as the outpost - a few towers force catapult battles.

You can be in a completely winning position, have the entire map, destroyed your enemy's army with some good play, then you're instantly stopped with 2-3 towers. You can make rams but they're often easily targeted by your enemy and thus the cata battle begins.

I think that UNITS should be able to destroy a base, such as mordors, WITHOUT siege even if they have some towers - just as long as your position is so dominant it warrants such an attack. Same goes for a castle base, you'd just need a ram or 2 to get through the gate.

3. Why is there such a huge reward on building towers for a player? There is almost 0 skill involved in building a tower. And yet they have the power to destroy armies. The burden of skill is laid almost entirely on the attacker once towers come up. The attacker must carefully micro his rams, fight the enemies with units, target the tower with units if needs be, pick the perfect moment to attack etc. The defender need only target siege then put his units on defensive stance, as to avoid damage and let the towers work their magic.

4. Unupgraded towers are bad enough in the early game, but when they are upgraded: Wow. They are insane!

Have you ever attacked a mordor base with all towers having fire arrows? Moving near that thing with units is suicide. The only option is catapults, and good luck defending them while you're being constantly drowned by orcs! I'm not saying it's impossible, or even that difficult once you got the hang of it, but my god is it boring and frustrating!
 
Why are towers OP in Edain?
So why ARE they so OP in edain?
I don't know tbh, but i have a few ideas:

Is it that they do more damage? I don't know the actual stats but they don't 'feel' like they do more damage when you compare them to vanilla. Getting near a fort in vanilla does plenty of damage to your troops - they drop like flies.

So if it's not higher damage then what?

I think part of the issue is building health: it is higher in edain right? so it's harder to kill towers and stop that damage output. The longer you're trying to get rid of a tower the more damage it is doing, and the more time your enemy has to attack you/ run to the building's defence.

The other thing i'd say is: there's not that many things that easily kill units in edain. Like yeah, in vanilla towers do a lot of damage to your units and kill them pretty quick, but so do heroes or archers or arrow volleys or giant-tentacled-sea-creatures (you get the picture) - so the relative damage of towers are not so high in vanilla. In edain on the other hand, there's not many army killers left and yet towers still kinda have that status so their relative damage is higher.

So yeah, a BIG nerf to towers would help the 'feel' of the game a lot i think. Why don't we reduce it by like 4x and see what happens? That may just be my salt talking but they've been op for so long i would LOVE to seem them under powered and build up from there.

Because of course, towers are necessary (i was only half joking about deleting them). For example, mordor and isen would rly suffer without decent defences in their base. We still need towers but they need to have a role change as a helping-hand to your defence - not a power house that completely changes the direction of a game.

Finally, I have a few ideas about towers in the future. How about having un-upgraded towers being good vs spam - so low damage high fire rate. And upgraded towers being good vs elite/ upgraded units, at the cost of being weaker vs spam - higher damage but with a slower fire rate. (Kind of like how the isen bezerker upgrade works)

Anyway, ideas like that may be nice to make towers more interesting but the main priority (imo) should be nerf nerf nerf them! plz! plz! plz!

P.S all terms and conditions apply: this is not an attack on the edain team or your work, it's simply constructive (I hope) critisim from one of your players. Best mod eva 10/10 (11/10 if no towers)

Peace!
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: ElessarTelcontar am 1. Aug 2017, 02:04
Hello Goodfella,

Zitat
I think it is well known to the team that they are currently OP but i just wanted to make this post, to be doubly sure. And also to point out the level to which (I believe) they need to be nerfed.

As far as I know ET will already debuff the towers.

Zitat
I would go as far as saying i would rather DELETE towers from the game than keep them how they currently are! I have never come across a player who supports the buffing of towers and almost every player i talk to agrees that they are currently way too powerful.

I think if they delete the towers it would be funny but not a joy for us. I heard that people think that towers are OP but actually they are not. Me and friends believe that actually they are not OP. I will explain why.

Zitat
You could argue that they're technically not 'Imbalanced' because towers are a feature of every faction, so everyone can exploit this feature right? Well yes, that's true - so its more a game-play tweak rather than a re-balancing

If there is one thing you can exploit it would be a ballista.

Zitat
1. They make outpost rushing somewhat viable and if you can solidify your position at an outpost with lots of towers it is very difficult for the attacker to destroy it, leading to stale, campy games with little map dynamics.

There are of course ways of destroying the outpost, moving in with rams for one - but this is difficult to do as you need to protect your rams with units, which drop like flies to the towers, thereby making it so much easier for the defender.

Often the only viable option is to make catapults and siege from a distance. How does the defender counter this? With catapults of his own of course! And thus the battle of the catapults begins, 10-20 mins of shooting each others catapults whilst spamming out more. 'Shoot catapult, move catapult to dodge incoming bolder, rinse and repeat till one player wins'. Unless of course one player has denethor then its gg cus he reks catas from 5 miles away :/

I think you admit that there are ways of destroying an outpost. Actually there is no need to siege weapons to destroy a outpost which has three upgraded towers. In addition siege weapons are not for shooting each other it would be very funny and ridiculous scene watching them trying to shoot each other. It is never needed to carry the situation into that.  For me if you want to use your siege weapon you should learn how to defend them. And there is nothing easier to defender when one has already spent his high amounts of money to build an outpost, build towers and upgrade them. It is not a proper way to offend against towers saying that there is no effort requirement to build a tower. You should actually think about "opportunity cost". If you want to take an outpost first you should send your troops there first it requires to sacrificing your economy by giving up the opportunity to extending your area and it requires to kill possible creeps or trolls nearby.

Zitat
You can be in a completely winning position, have the entire map, destroyed your enemy's army with some good play, then you're instantly stopped with 2-3 towers. You can make rams but they're often easily targeted by your enemy and thus the cata battle begins.

If you be in a completely winning position by having the entire map and destroyed your opponent's army then you should be able to destroy the tiny rest and actually in that situation it is not a problem even you don't need to make rams or catapults. Furthermore, in that situation there can not be a "cata battle" because of the opponents economy. The argument is somewhat wrong because of it.

Zitat
I think that UNITS should be able to destroy a base, such as mordors, WITHOUT siege even if they have some towers - just as long as your position is so dominant it warrants such an attack. Same goes for a castle base, you'd just need a ram or 2 to get through the gate.

Actually you can destroy a base without siege weapons as long as you have the right forces on the battleground besides I usually don't build siege weapons and if your positions is so dominant then you can be able to destroy the opponent's base in the current configuration

Zitat
3. Why is there such a huge reward on building towers for a player? There is almost 0 skill involved in building a tower. And yet they have the power to destroy armies. The burden of skill is laid almost entirely on the attacker once towers come up. The attacker must carefully micro his rams, fight the enemies with units, target the tower with units if needs be, pick the perfect moment to attack etc. The defender need only target siege then put his units on defensive stance, as to avoid damage and let the towers work their magic.

There is no huge reward on building towers. You can't say that there is no skill involved in building a tower if it is not in the base. And of course they should be able to destroy armies after all they gain that ability after spending huge amounts of money and spending effort to keep the area and the outpost safe to be able to upgrade them before they are destroyed. If there is a reward it is because of that opportunity cost. If one can have the outpost then one should go there first keep the area clean and work for it when it costs to slow down one's economy and army building.

If it is in the base one should basically give up one of the needs like economy, army, upgrade. One pays the cost of building a tower directly at the beginning of the game. It is also an opportunity cost. And if you let one take a camp and build only towers on it you are playing wrong then. Towers are for protecting the base or outpost from a direct fall so if you want that you better come with an outnumbered force.

And the game is not about taking outposts and destroying the towers. You should first weaken the opponent's economy by taking economic structures and then you can deal with that outpost. Outpost and towers are static structures that they are not meaningful by themselves. They need opponents to do their job if you don't want to overtake them or to control the area you should not go near them at the beginning of the game once one took 'em.

Zitat
So why ARE they so OP in edain?
I don't know tbh, but i have a few ideas:

Is it that they do more damage? I don't know the actual stats but they don't 'feel' like they do more damage when you compare them to vanilla. Getting near a fort in vanilla does plenty of damage to your troops - they drop like flies.

So if it's not higher damage then what?

I think part of the issue is building health: it is higher in edain right? so it's harder to kill towers and stop that damage output. The longer you're trying to get rid of a tower the more damage it is doing, and the more time your enemy has to attack you/ run to the building's defence.

As I said at the very beginning they will be slightly debuffed in 4.5 but there is no need to a huge nerf to be able to "feel the game" or something good for enhancing the gameplay as you said and I think their health points are just right. Really if you have right amount of force you will be able to destroy them.

Zitat
Finally, I have a few ideas about towers in the future. How about having un-upgraded towers being good vs spam - so low damage high fire rate. And upgraded towers being good vs elite/ upgraded units, at the cost of being weaker vs spam - higher damage but with a slower fire rate.

The fire rate can be discussed but I think towers are already weak against spam.

For towers we have an idea an it is being able to equipped with allies forces and being able to see from the largest distance a siege weapon attack them( may be their damage will be low at that distance or their damage can be decreased totally but we don't think that their health point is the issue.)

Towers are the facts of the battle. They need to be tough and rough enough. Love the towers or at least accept them. That would be easier for all of us.

For whom is interested: Please comment on what you think.

Peace.

 




Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Mogat am 1. Aug 2017, 07:10
Very nice post Goodfella, finally someone breaks down the general opinion of the Multiplayer about towers  :)
I can support every point of yours, especially the ugly catapult battles (they don't really leave a chance for the defender, but are a way to stretch the game up to 20 minutes longer).
For the sceptics here a perfect illustration of that point. Just watch the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5ilacLvDQw&t=1s

Sieging a tower-base is almost impossible without siege. Seeing someone trying it amuses me every time. Towers are my biggest concern in 4.x atm., changing it would improove multiplayer experience by a lot!
#onlygoodwithtowers
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Goodfella am 1. Aug 2017, 13:28
Hi Elessar

Thanks for your reply.

Yes I'm pretty sure the Edain team is looking to nerf towers, i only hope that this post will outline (what i see as) one of the big problems in 4.4.1 - and how it could be improved in future patches! Basicaly, I just hope they are nerfed enough.


I think if they delete the towers it would be funny but not a joy for us.

Yeah, I agree we definitely need towers for defending against unexpected attacks on base etc.


If there is one thing you can exploit it would be a ballista.

Honestly, I kinda agree with this too, I think the siege does too much damage to units and it further encourages catapult battles. However, i think towers can be exploited too (also leading to catapult battles)


Actually there is no need to siege weapons to destroy a outpost which has three upgraded towers

Ok, NOW we disagree :) In the vast majority of cases you would 100% need siege in that situation - at least that is what i have experienced when playing online. Let's say (for a generic example), you attack that outpost with a generic (let's say) mid-game army, like gondor soldiers, a few pikes and maybe a hero.

What happens to your army in that situation with no siege? The fire rate of an upgraded tower is very high and will kill a unit in (let's say) 1-3 hits. Now times that by 3 and that's the damage output of the towers. The damage output of the soldiers to the towers is quite minimal and so it will take quite a while for the towers to be destroyed. All the time you're being pelted with 3 lots of high damage arrows at a very high fire rate.

Even if you manage to destroy the outpost (without siege) before your enemy comes to its defence you will have lost a lot of your army and your enemy will have lost nothing. Your enemy invested a lot in their outpost and you decided to invest your money in your army, but now a lot of your army is dead and your enemy can work to gain map control with a temporarily superior force. But ok, in this situation you may still come off better and the sacrifice you made to kill the expensive outpost would be worthwhile.

So there's no problem, right? But wait, what if your opponent came back to defend his outpost (the buildings have high health so he will probably make it back in time), then you will have to deal with not only the damage output of the towers but also the damage output of your enemies army. Now imagine that your enemy REBUILDS his towers that are destroyed! You'll have to hit the citadel first to stop this! But then your not getting rid of tower damage output AND the citadel has even more health AND your being attacked by your enemies army!

Then imagine that your enemy is smart. He has built cavalry and instead of letting the towers hit any-old-thing, they hit your pikes! You will have 3-4 pikes if you're smart, to defend against the cav. The towers can kill these few battalions quickly then the rest of your army is doomed to die to a cavalry charge (including any heroes you've got - even if you decided to go upgrades instead, you'll still lose your upgraded swords to cav.)

So no, you need At least a ram or two, so you can quickly destroy your enemies towers/citadel. And you need to protect those rams with pikes, but your enemy can still come over with his army and deal huge amounts of damage to you and aim for your rams, all the while your pikes (or whatever else) are being hit with high damage towers.

For the most part I therefore only attack outposts with catapults once they have enough towers to defend. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule:
1. If my enemy is no where near his outpost and i feel i have tanky enough units (e.g. tower guards) i will often rush his outpost.

2. If i am Imladris i sometimes use all my damage and speed buffs simultaneously to rush an outpost (because the damage output of my soldiers is so high in this situation the towers are not so bad) but of course, i can now no longer use all these buffs to fight my enemies army :(

3. If i am mordor, i generally don't care much about towers (apart from vs my trolls)  because who cares if you lose a hundred free units?

If, however, we are talking about sieging a base (and not an outpost) I can think of no situation in which towers are not a concern - once the enemy has filled his base full of towers.

Sometimes I attack a base before catapults, for example if i have destroyed my enemy in under 10mins and he not built towers yet, then i will rush into the base (maybe with a ram) and try and end it quick.

Other than that, trying to siege a base with units when facing 6+ towers is not an option. The only option in that situation are catapults. This, i have learnt from playing against some of the best (and most annoying :p) players online in 1v1 - I'm looking at YOU Dmitry!


In addition siege weapons are not for shooting each other it would be very funny and ridiculous scene watching them trying to shoot each other. It is never needed to carry the situation into that.  For me if you want to use your siege weapon you should learn how to defend them.

Unfortunately, i disagree with this too :/

I have seen first hand this very situation in my own games, and countless other times watching games of others play. It is a very real feature of edain atm.

Let me ask you a question: What do you do when your enemy is sitting in a base full of towers (which you cannot approach with units) and he realises your only hope is to break through with catapults?

If your opponent is smart and he wants the draw/ win he will focus all his energies on targeting your catapults. He can do this is a number of ways, but the most common is to build catapults of his own (on the walls, or otherwise) and target your catapults with his.

To be clear what i call 'catapult battles' are not only catapult vs catapult but a battle that focuses all the energies on killing catapults. The attacker will defend his own and the defender will try kill his enemy's catapults. This can be done with cavalry charges, summons or (worst of all) denethor!

If you think that this feature does not exist Please watch these videos:

The first (and i think the best) example of this ugly, ugly play style comes from a game that Elite KryPtik played with Haman. KryPtik played well and had-the-game-won at around the 30 min mark. The siege begins at around 42:00. Skip to that point and watch the catapult battle begin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkN8aIN2pqM&list=PL7-qpJu_KnvgFYqH1Kc-0a-yymsmbXcOZ&index=17

Also, this game (which mogat also shared), not as extreme as kryptik's game but has the same features nonetheless. Skip to around the 22:00 mark:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5ilacLvDQw&t=1s

Finaly a game between two players who would (i'm guessing :p) consider themselves about mid-level players: Ruuddevil and The Silver Elf, around 36:00 the siege begins:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt8O3yWZSIE

That final game actually ended in a stalemate :( ^

Now, another question: How do you defend against this if your enemy really wants to play this way? The only viable thing to do is out-spam your enemies catapults. Kryptik discovered this and won his game. Ruuddevil did not and called it a draw. Django had the courtesy of surrendering rather than have the game last another 20 mins.

In every one of these situations, if the towers did less damage to units there would have been an opportunity to attack the base with units, to deal damage from multiple different directions - making it much harder for the defender to counter.

We need to be able to destroy a castle base by using a ram to get through the gate then storming the keep with a superior army - with the support of catapults if needs be!


And there is nothing easier to defender when one has already spent his high amounts of money to build an outpost, build towers and upgrade them.

This I don't understand: the outposts don't sit in catapult-range of castles, you can't siege if you are at your outpost. so do both players just sit at their outpost/base with catapults, defended by towers and wait till one person is so bored they quit? Sorry if i sound a little sarcastic, I just don't understand this point :)


You should actually think about "opportunity cost". If you want to take an outpost first you should send your troops there first it requires to sacrificing your economy by giving up the opportunity to extending your area and it requires to kill possible creeps or trolls nearby.

Now we are in agreement again (yay!). Even though i consider towers OP, i still don't go for early outposts. The risks are too high and the benefits too little.

For example, why build 3 towers on an outpost anyway? it will give you no benefit other than the minimal resource production of the citadel. However, problems do arise with things like the dunedain outpost for imla, where you can have strong towers without sacrificing outpost-usefulness - same goes for angmar citadel tower upgrade.

And the game is not about taking outposts and destroying the towers. You should first weaken the opponent's economy by taking economic structures and then you can deal with that outpost. Outpost and towers are static structures that they are not meaningful by themselves. They need opponents to do their job if you don't want to overtake them or to control the area you should not go near them at the beginning of the game once one took 'em.

100% yes! This is exactly what i do when faced with outposts, focus all my efforts on gaining outside economy. But once you do that there is still the arduous chore of destroying the outpost with catapults whilst your enemy targets yours, it's not impossible but it's boring and frustrating to be forced to play in this strange way.

Also, like i mentioned many outposts are not neutral, some are extremely good - take for example mirkwood, if you can get that up and upgraded with tower expansions it is so difficult to destroy. Your enemy gains access to 2 excellent heroes, a solid foothold on the map, excellent units such as the mega-powerful elk riders etc. What's more, all the money you invest trying to destroy mirkwood with siege, reduces the relative cost of your enemy's outpost. When I see my enemy go for mirkwood in a 1v1 i instantly cancel everything that i am doing and rush to attack it, targeting first the palace guard building that grants the tower upgrade. If my enemy has a superior army and i can't destroy it - it is almost always gg for me.



WOW! That was a lot of text! Thanks to anyone who read the whole thing (i'll post a condensed version for everyone else :p)

In summary:
Catapult battles are real (and real annoying!), as seen in the videos. In fact, they are often necessary due to the power of towers.

Towers are NOT impossible to beat. Nor (in many cases) are they the CORRECT DECISION, in fact i think they are often a MISTAKE! But dealing with them is frustrating, ugly and (worse of all) Not interesting!!!

IMO, I can sacrifice some things being 'not fun' in the game or 'frustrating', just as long as they are interesting and you can find a way to do it better in the next game (thereby making it more fun next time), i fear this is not the case for catapult battles atm.




Finally, I Know the team is re-balancing towers and siege in general. I am super happy and grateful about this!

The aim of this post is to clarify my own view (and the view of many other good online players) about how towers and sieging currently functions in 4.4.1 and how it can be improved in 4.5.

It may not change anything about 4.5, the edain team may already be incorporating all these changes as we speak.

But it might, at least, convince people that there is an issue in sieging and that it is a good idea to re-balance it. As well as convince people that towers are too strong atm.

If it does convince the team to change the direction of siege in anyway that will be a good thing imo, because it will improve the experience of the mod.

And that, after all, is what we all want!

Thanks for reading :)
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Goodfella am 1. Aug 2017, 13:44
Ok, now the condensed version :p

1. Towers do so much damage to units, they often force 'catapult battles'

2. Catapult battles are real! They are quite common actually, and are often forced upon the attacker.

I define a catapult battle as 'a battle in which the primary focus is destroying the enemy's - or defending your own - catapults'. Catapults can be targeted through powers, cavalry charges, heroes (e.g. denethor) or other catapults.

Here is some evidence that they exist:

The best example imo: Kryptik Vs Haman. Kryptik is completely winning but must spam catapults to destroy Haman's base. Skip to 42:00:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkN8aIN2pqM&index=17&list=PL7-qpJu_KnvgFYqH1Kc-0a-yymsmbXcOZ

A game i observed between ErenionF and Django. ErenionF is completely winning, Django makes ballistas in his base, defended by towers. Django courteously surrenders to avoid a boring 20 min siege. Skip to 22:00:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5ilacLvDQw&t=1s

The all-mighty Ruddevil plays Vs The silver elf, the match reaches a stalemate due to the power of denethor and the upgraded gondor base in catapult-battles. Ruud could have won, he needed to spam tf out of catapults (but where's the fun in that!). Skip to 36:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt8O3yWZSIE


Building towers is not a sure-way to win a game. In fact it is often a mistake imo! It just often forces the game down the path of catapult battling (and spamming).

Nerfing the damage of towers would allow units to get into, or near the enemy base, allowing for attacks from multiple directions, leading to more dynamic sieging that is harder for the defender to nullify.


I Know the team is re-balancing towers and siege in general. I am super happy and grateful about this!

The aim of this post to clarify my own view (and the view of many other good online players) about how towers and sieging currently functions in 4.4.1 and how it can be improved in 4.5.

It may not change anything about 4.5, the edain team may already be incorporating all these changes as we speak.

But it might, at least, convince people that there is an issue in sieging and that it is a good idea to re-balance it. As well as convince people that towers are too strong atm.

If it does convince the team to change the direction of siege in anyway that will be a good thing imo, because it will improve the experience of the mod.

And that, after all, is what we all want!

Thanks for reading :)
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Julio229 am 1. Aug 2017, 15:33
I support all of Goodfella's points about the towers, I have been a witness to my full upgraded Imladris army falling to a Castle full of towers, heroes included (and in the Legendary Heroes mode), and I always lose a lot of troops to them, even on camp maps (which I play the most in to avoid castles full of towers), so I always need to make Siege (which I almost never make until the attack on the enemy's base) and target the towers first so my army can survive and not get obliterated.

As the Team is working on that, I hope that in the next patch (when I think I'll start playing Online), they are less of an army-killer!
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: ElessarTelcontar am 1. Aug 2017, 15:43
Hello again Goodfella,

First we should clarify what are we talking about. It is an outpost or a camp. Each of them has completely different scenario against siege weapons. So If we are talking about outposts if one in mid-game have an outpost with three upgraded towers then in the background one should have to spend money on unlock to "upgrade(s)" because one can't upgrade the arrows at the beginning, spend money on first troops to take the outpost, spend money on an outpost, spend money to towers and spend money to upgrade them. So if you managed to destroy that outpost there is no big chance to one take it again an destroy your army. If you count that one's expenses to achieve that you will understand what it costs to the one who wants to build a strong outpost. So in that situation (mid-game) one would not be able to have enough amount of army to supply for overtake the outpost again. To contrary if you achieve to destroy it you already give the one a huge economical and strategical hit because one's money  becomes being spent on nothing.

If we are talking about camps then as I said before if you already let someone take a camp and build 6+ towers on it you should have played wrong. It is already not a normal or advantageous thing to have more then one tower in the main building plots in the starting camp. I don't build towers in the beginning camp of mine.



And siege weapons against towers thing. I said that you don't need to have siege weapons to take an outpost with upgraded towers but of course you can make them an overtake the outpost easily for example ballistas, they can shoot the towers at a distance the towers can not even touch them. So if you want to win a game you should not go near a fully upgraded outpost with your army in the mid-game phase but you can use siege weapons an wait the opponent comes to your siege weapons so you can win that hand against your opponents with a larger army you have because the opponent would not be able to have a larger army then yours. As I said before you should destroy every other thing to come to that outpost.

Siege weapon fight thing. Okay. It is not a necessary or natural thing just because there are players who make it. I looked at the videos briefly there are some mistakes at the beginning or middle of the game. And I realised that these are mainly occurs in castle maps and of course you should have siege weapons to destroy the gate and to pass the defence . They should not be happen on normal settlements. Actually it is possible to generate such a scene with just one of the player's mistake. It is often the attacker's mistake to participate such a battle. In Ruuddevil and The Silver Elf's game why he wait with that army in front of the castle before his siege weapons destroy gate? And once the gate are destroyed he could push all of his forces inside to wound his opponent. He just waited being afraid to lose his army and as far as I seen he didn't have proper archers to be effective at distace. LOL.[/color]



Zitat
This I don't understand: the outposts don't sit in catapult-range of castles, you can't siege if you are at your outpost. so do both players just sit at their outpost/base with catapults, defended by towers and wait till one person is so bored they quit? Sorry if i sound a little sarcastic, I just don't understand this point

Let me clarify, I was talking about outposts not camps or castles. And if one just sits at one's outposts camps or whatever, one can't win the game. It is just meaningless. One who is a good player just doesn't do that. As I said before, it is just mistakes of both sides to carry the situation to a siege war. The sole purpose of this game is winning and to surrender is a fact of the war. End of story.



Finally,

I think that fire rate or damage of the towers can be discussed but me and my friends think that health points of towers will be right if they will not be decreased too much.

And what would you think if allies can equip each others towers. You didn't say your opininon about it. I would like to see some comments.

Thanks for everyone who contribute to that discussion. And it is good to see people here discuss in a qualitative way also thanks for that.

I also have a topic discussed with Gnomi included that tower issue. May be it is helpful and beneficial to check here also.
Zitat
 https://modding-union.com/index.php/topic,34820.0.html

Have a nice weekend. Do not forget to comment.

Peace.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Mogat am 1. Aug 2017, 16:00
I would really like to see a replay of one of your 1v1 if it is possible, competative rules of course (1k, skirmish mode). Could you attach one please, Elessar?  :)
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: ElessarTelcontar am 1. Aug 2017, 16:13
Hi Mogat,

If one day I record our game of course I will. For now you can ask what would you want to learn in terms of my gameplay.

Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Elendils Cousin 3. Grades am 1. Aug 2017, 16:53
Hey Elessar, I appreciate the effort you put into your posts but some of the things you mentioned are just plain wrong or contradictory^^

First of all, outposts. There are two things I want to point out here.

1. has to do with the pricing of towers. At an outpost, you pay just 500(!) bucks for one tower, that's what Imladris has to pay for their swordsmen and even less than what Gondor pays for cavalry. Of course you don't just run to the outpost buildplot at the start, kill the troll and start building towers, you wait until you have at least some units and then get the outpost. 1200+500 = 1700 resources to ensure your army will win every fight at the outpost is a good tradeoff for not getting a hero out on nearly every map, and that's not even counting the two other buildplots you get. This is not expensive, contrary to what you say. It is very affordable, and much cheaper than what your opponent has to pay to get catapults out in most cases by the way.

2. follows up on 1.: Having a safe haven where your opponent can't follow you means that the outpost alone denies your enemy a huge part of the map. While you have to retreat to your base to save your units, he just walks back a few steps to his outpost which usually is located in the centre of the map. Even with an inferior army, he can protect so much of the map that "weakening his economy" just isn't a possibility, something that should be obvious if you played some competitive 1v1s. You're even saying yourself that you shouldn't go near an outpost with towers with your army ;)


I won't touch on the siege battle stuff because I usually ragequit if somebody does that, but what I do want to mention is the pricing and buildtime of towers, especially in your base. In open bases like Isengard's, you pay 150 bucks for one tower that takes only 20 seconds to build. That is literally nothing to worry about ever. You could start with a tower protecting your citadel for the luls if you wanted to. So regardless of your situation you can always build a tower if the enemy threatens to attack your base and be sure it will be ready in time to shoot the living crap out of every soldier stupid enough to still be around. That's why it takes no skill whatsoever to use towers - you don't even need to plan ahead to account for buildtime. It also means that filling your base with towers costs you a fraction of what any decent army would cost. There are maybe ten small buildplots in a Mordor base, so for just 1500 bucks you can secure your base against everything but a full on attack by a lategame army.
Fortresses with walls need to pay more for towers (500), but those do even more damage and are invulnerable to anything but siege weapons. That means that, again, for just 1500 bucks you get three towers that do enough dps to absolutely decimate any army that goes near them, forcing you to get siege which then takes forever to bring those towers down. And costs much more than the towers. Just as a side note.

I do agree with you, Elessar, in that towers serve a purpose, and I don't think you should be able to take a fully upgraded Gondor base just with upgraded infantry either. The point is that the costefficiency of towers is so ridiculously good that just a few of them can make armies that cost thousands of resources utterly useless. If towers were priced around 800 resources (300 for the small ones) and took twice as long to build, even a smaller damage nerf could actually suffice for you to have a chance to do something against them. They would counter base rushes, but without being a simple "I win"-button. Destroying them would mean you now have a small timeframe where you won't be shot at instead of towers being up again immediately.

Towers are without a doubt in need of a change, as Goodfella said.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Goodfella am 1. Aug 2017, 18:21
@Elessar

I was talking about how towers make it very difficult(/ impossible) to attack nearby buildings, thereby forcing a player into getting catapults - so they can attack from range. They do this because moving near a tower destroys your units very quickly, so it is beneficial to attack from a distance with catapults - this leads to the (almost objectively - i mean seriously who thinks these battles are interesting and fun!) ugly and frustrating catapult battles.

I think the only difference between Outposts and Bases is this:

Outposts tend to have less towers, therefore there are chances for the enemy to come in and attack with his units (whether he uses catapults too is up to him). However, in many cases, the best way to siege an outpost is to sit back with catapults, defend them with units and slowly destroy the outpost, just like you said. So that's outposts.

Now, Bases on the other hand have many more towers and so it is almost always suicide to move into, or near, the base with units. Therefore the attacker is forced to sit back with catapults and slowly destroy all the  buildings in the base from a distance. This is the point at which the defender uses all of his energies on destroying the catapults and it becomes very frustrating and boring.

Yes you make a valid point about how expensive it is to make upgraded towers. Once again, I think that going for outposts with towers is usually a bad idea. With the exceptions i mentioned - mirkwood, dunedain, angmar tower upgrade - this is where outpost towers can help decide a game in the defenders favour. Equally, you could get 3 economy buildings at an outpost and upgrade them with towers, thereby getting more eco and towers at the same time.

No one would build an outpost with 3 upgraded towers for no other reasons, all things being equal. It would simply be a waste of money. The only situation where doing that is viable is if your completely winning and you build an outpost near your enemy's base, so as to set up an impenetrable position on the map and launch attacks from there.

If you want to destroy this outpost, you're still gonna have to invest in some catapults. So towers on an outpost can be a pain-in-the-butt to deal with and can even turn the tide of the game if you get a good one like mirkwood

However, the big problem-area in which towers are too powerful is sieging a base. Especially Gondor's base. The upgraded walls, towers and wall catapults all combine to make it extremely difficult to penetrate. The only option is to spam catapults and avoid denethor's attacks. Mordor is a similarly extreame case. Once they get free upgrades on all their towers - and catas at the citadel. All other factions are basically the same, just not as extreme as gondor or mordor.

No good player would play as gondor and instantly start building towers and turtleing. You would lose every game so long as your opponent spammed catapults. I'm not saying it is an imbalance in that towers are so good they win you the game. I'm simply saying that the power of them makes sieging boring and fustrating!

Most importantly:

WHY SHOULD THIS BE THE CASE?!

Why should this be the only way of sieging a faction? To sit outside the base and slowly destroy all the walls/buildings - whilst constantly dodging attacks on your catapults!?

Imagine if you could move into or near a gondor castle even with lots of towers up with your UNITS. You could launch an attack on the gate with a ram, whilst your units valiantly protect the ram from attack. You could use siege ladders, you could sneak in isenguard mines, you could destroy the gate and storm the keep with your army. You could still use catapults as an additional weapon in your arsenal to fire from a distance, with a few units back their protecting them.

It would 'feel' more like a siege, it would feel more 'lord-of-the-ringsy' it might even 'look' more like the battle at helms deep or minas tirith.

Imagine if you had multiple siegeing techniques occurring simultaneously. Imagine how cool and intense it would be to be defending against a ram at the gate, having uruk-hai scale your walls with siege ladders - attacking your archers that are trying to bring down the ram. All the while your walls are being pelted with ballistas, then all of a sudden

BOOM!!!

Your wall is blown up by a mine that you missed because your focus was split all over the place, and you're forced to retreat to the citadel for a final stand. Perhaps your powers will recharge in time (the ents, or rohan, or the eagles may save you) and you can stop the attack and have a chance of a comeback, or perhaps your enemy is too skillull and he wins a deserved victory because of his great micro management of the siege.

Now imagine how cool it will be for others to watch it live in tournaments and on youtube. What a great advertisement these kind of sieges would be for edain!

This is the ideal, it may never work like that but that's what i think the edain team should have as the end-goal!

However, with towers being as powerful as they are, all these options are worthless, except for using catapults from a distance, because you can't attack a base with units when your enemy has 6+ towers, every unit in range of the towers is toast. Nerfing towers would free up so much more dynamic tactics to be viable. Instead we are left in the current state where we must use catapults once your enemy gets towers, and the defender can easily focus all his attention on the one threat of catapults.


If we are talking about camps then as I said before if you already let someone take a camp and build 6+ towers on it you should have played wrong. It is already not a normal or advantageous thing to have more then one tower in the main building plots in the starting camp. I don't build towers in the beginning camp of mine.

How can you stop a good player building towers? I really don't see how i can stop someone from doing this.

If they play mordor or isen, each tower is like 150-200 resources, that is super cheap and even if they are a castle-faction, the inside economy will be strong enough to support towers.

This is how almost all my games go, and how the games of almost all online players go atm:

The game starts and we fight for map control, for economy buildings, for map presence and sometimes for outposts.

The player with the better macro and micro skill will win the fight for the map control (just as long as no one uses anything mega OP (e.g. thorin iii :p))

Now, 1 of 2 things will happen:
1. The player will be a nice well-respecting pleasant edain player and concede defeat to your mighty pro skills and resign

OR

2. They will refuse to resign in the face of the better play and decided to make it as painful as possible. They'll set up camp in their base, build towers, build catapults and (if they're a real sum-bag) build denethor

If option 1 happens we both leave happy and content that a good game has been played by both.

If option 2 happens the game will continue for an extra 10-40 minutes (depending on your catapult skills) in which neither player learns anything new about the game, and all units, heroes and powers are used to attack or defend one-and-other's catapults.

How can i stop my enemy from making towers if we have fought for 20 mins and both have a strong inside economy? The only way is rushing his base and getting his citadel before he can build them. Sometimes this works but sometimes the towers come up in time and your army is too far into the base and it gets rekt.

It has therefore resulted that, with many people, it is common courtesy to resign once you have lost map control/ your army. Lots of people get annoyed if people continue to play after this. This should not be the case! Sieging should be every bit a part of this game as outside fighting.

This is why I for one am happy about the edain team's decision to change sieging. If it can become an interesting and dynamic part of the game it will make edain even better, and even, truly unique to the rts world.

A big nerf to towers is such a simple change that may lead to such an improvement in the quality of games. It will make attacking outposts that little bit nicer, sure. But more importantly it will make siegeing a castle so much more fun and dynamic. It is a small change and will not fix everything, but it is key to the sieging gameplay changes in 4.5 imo!

And siege weapons against towers thing. I said that you don't need to have siege weapons to take an outpost with upgraded towers but of course you can make them an overtake the outpost easily for example ballistas, they can shoot the towers at a distance the towers can not even touch them. So if you want to win a game you should not go near a fully upgraded outpost with your army in the mid-game phase but you can use siege weapons an wait the opponent comes to your siege weapons so you can win that hand against your opponents with a larger army you have because the opponent would not be able to have a larger army then yours. As I said before you should destroy every other thing to come to that outpost.

Yes i agree, making outposts with towers is, for the most part, a bad idea as you're investing money in static defence, whilst your enemy invests in actual units. There are exceptions to this and it all depends on the balance of power in the game.

Yes, you're also saying that it is very often the better option to use catapults which out-range towers to destroy the outpost and minimise loses to your units, now imagine the defender makes catapults to target your own! Or summons some orcs behind the catapults and hits them in that way. Or uses a combination of both, (and more) to kill your catapults, so that you have to dodge incoming catapult shots after every shot you take, but also not send that cata outside of your infantry clump otherwise the summon or cavalry will get them.

Now imagine what you must do to attack the outpost: target your enemy's catapults with your catapults and summons. But wait! you can't send your cavalry in because they will be destroyed by towers. And your summons will drop like flies to the towers. This is catapult battling^.

Whoever has denethor wins. This is why he is so OP, he's the steward of gondor but the king of catapult-battling!



Siege weapon fight thing. Okay. It is not a necessary or natural thing just because there are players who make it.

Please tell us, if it is not necessary how do you fight a gondor base that has had all its upgrades? If you could tell us that, all the people in the multiplayer community would have much more fun when sieging.

How do you stop your enemy attacking your catapults, i can find no way. If my opponent really wants to do it, he will!

If I don't attack his, he will keep attacking mine and i will never be able to destroy his base. What do you do to stop this?

I looked at the videos briefly there are some mistakes at the beginning or middle of the game.

Yes, they were not perfect games.

So you must play the perfect game to avoid catapult battles?

What's more, if both players play well, the defender will have built a large inside economy - so he will be able to afford his towers and catapults. So even with perfect play on both sides the game can descend into catapult-battles

And I realised that these are mainly occurs in castle maps and of course you should have siege weapons to destroy the gate and to pass the defence . They should not be happen on normal settlements.

Ok, but we need interesting siegeing for castle maps AND camp maps - not one ore the other- nerfing towers may help to do this.

In Ruuddevil and The Silver Elf's game why he wait with that army in front of the castle before his siege weapons destroy gate? And once the gate are destroyed he could push all of his forces inside to wound his opponent. He just waited being afraid to lose his army and as far as I seen he didn't have proper archers to be effective at distace. LOL.

If he did this, his units would die to the towers, that is my point. he can only do what he did in that game: Sit outside with catapults. He just didn't spam them enough and called it a draw.

Watch the elite kryptik's video again. See how he gets frustrated with haman and decides to send his army in. His command points plummet at this very moment. He loses his entire army and then even the heroes are being killed by the towers! There is one good thing about that: it freed up command points for 30 more catapults, so he made them and won.

It is such a shame that losing your entire army and many heroes like kryptik did in that game was a GOOD thing - if he hadn't done that he never would of had enough command points for all those catapults - surely this is something that should be removed as a viable option from the game (if we can)!

If you are patient and play in the correct way, you should still be able to win by spamming catapults (unless your enemy has a vastly superior cavalry army - then he can harass from his base and regain map control and potentially make a comeback - but this point is for another post!).

You can win, but it is a silly, strange, dull and uninteresting win when you spam catapults like this.

Let me clarify, I was talking about outposts not camps or castles. And if one just sits at one's outposts camps or whatever, one can't win the game. It is just meaningless. One who is a good player just doesn't do that. As I said before, it is just mistakes of both sides to carry the situation to a siege war. The sole purpose of this game is winning and to surrender is a fact of the war. End of story.

Sorry Elessar, i still don't understand (see below)

I think you admit that there are ways of destroying an outpost. Actually there is no need to siege weapons to destroy a outpost which has three upgraded towers. In addition siege weapons are not for shooting each other it would be very funny and ridiculous scene watching them trying to shoot each other. It is never needed to carry the situation into that.  For me if you want to use your siege weapon you should learn how to defend them. And there is nothing easier to defender when one has already spent his high amounts of money to build an outpost, build towers and upgrade them.

I thought you meant by this that it is easy to defend siege weapons if you are at your outpost with 3 upgraded towers. If you were at your outpost with towers, you wouldn't be near the base and therefore wouldn't be able to siege anyway. Maybe i misunderstood what you meant.

As I said before, it is just mistakes of both sides to carry the situation to a siege war.

How does one destroy a castle without siegeing it? Every game will end in a siege war if the defender does not surrender.

I'm not saying we should not have sieging, I'm saying we should make sieging more interesting and dynamic (which the team aims to do! - partly by nerfing towers).

All I'm trying to say in these posts is that allowing units near (or in) a base to deal damage to buildings(/ enemy units) would drastically improve the sieging in edain and that cannot be achieved with towers doing as much relative damage as they currently do!

And also that the team should not underestimate the degree to which towers damage should be reduced :D

I think that fire rate or damage of the towers can be discussed but me and my friends think that health points of towers will be right if they will not be decreased too much.

Yeah i don't mind if the health of towers stay the same either. In fact i would much rather see a big damage nerf to towers, but with similar health, - than less health but the same damage.

I'll have to read through your discussion with Gnomi and maybe even make a post on that thread, to discuss your idea.

Hope you have a nice weekend too! :D

Shout out to the edain team for all the great work! I hope you can make sieging as cool as it can be in the confines of this very old game!
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: ElessarTelcontar am 2. Aug 2017, 00:58
Hey Elendils Cousin 3. Grades and Goodfella,

Well, a single tower outpost combined with a well can not defend itself without a good army even being equipped with non upgraded archers. You should upgrade your tower or equip it with upgraded archers it is what costs considerably much.

Getting the well functioning outpost costs more than 1700 with training archers and unlocking the upgrades cost. And with them you choose defending so you can not build an army like being never spent this money. So it deserves that function you mentioned above. So actually things you give up to build a strong outpost does not fit with being affordable. I can not see any contradictory thing here. Again you should consider "opportunity cost".

You can't say one can not win the game against an opponent who have a strong outpost or you can't say one can't overtake a strong outpost either. Just because one's opponent have a strong outpost in the middle of the map one should not be fall back to the one's base. I said don't go near the this kind of outpost with your troops in mid-game because it should be end-game business but you can build siege weapons to wound them or incur the opponents army to your siege weapons away from towers so you can win the hand in that area with your stronger army and you should because if you can't then what were you doing when your opponent spending his money and effort to build such a strong outpost?. If your opponent building a strong outpost with upgraded or equipped towers, you should take the other building plots then because it will give you an opportunity to train bigger army. So I can't see any contradictory thing here also.

Furthermore, when I was talking about something, most of the time they were not camps or fortresses they were outposts and towers you build near that outpost again I am not talking about towers you build in your camp or castle. But also I mentioned about open camps you can take over the map. If you let someone build towers to all of the building plots meaning that your opponent spending 5000 just to get towers on that camp(I did not count the upgrades), you are doing something wrong it is a huge comfort to find in the middle of game to build something like that. I was arguing this about camps and my argument regarding towers is not about towers in the camps, it is your gameplay to let this happen. Because of that I separated them at the beginning. There is no contradicton.

Also I have no argument about towers at the fortresses. As I said before they all have completely different scenarios. In skill, costs and other arguments I excluded them.
Let me clarify that I am not a tower fan or something. Their price can be discussed, their damage can be discussed and everything they have can be discussed. I did not say anything like they should be the same but I think their health points should not be decreased too much because they are already vulnerable to multiple ballistas at distance. Again there is no contradicton.

All I mentioned above is basically "opportunity cost".



Zitat
I was talking about how towers make it very difficult(/ impossible) to attack nearby buildings, thereby forcing a player into getting catapults - so they can attack from range. They do this because moving near a tower destroys your units very quickly, so it is beneficial to attack from a distance with catapults - this leads to the (almost objectively - i mean seriously who thinks these battles are interesting and fun!) ugly and frustrating catapult battles

I understood your point about why these catapult battle begin and as I said I don't wanna see this kind of scene and I don't play like that. But siege weapons should have their own purposes too. I mean if there were no towers or gates so what would you do with that siege weapons? -They would be weapons just to give too much damage. So towers should be able to change the decisions and preferences of the opponent. They should drive you to build catapults, ballistas or rams. It is like chess, kinda fast played.

Zitat
Outposts tend to have less towers, therefore there are chances for the enemy to come in and attack with his units (whether he uses catapults too is up to him). However, in many cases, the best way to siege an outpost is to sit back with catapults, defend them with units and slowly destroy the outpost, just like you said. So that's outposts.

So we agree here. I did not say anything different from this. I am talking about towers which can be builded with outpost. There is always a way to destroy and overtake outposts and this is not too hard to achieve.

Zitat
Now, Bases on the other hand have many more towers and so it is almost always suicide to move into, or near, the base with units. Therefore the attacker is forced to sit back with catapults and slowly destroy all the  buildings in the base from a distance. This is the point at which the defender uses all of his energies on destroying the catapults and it becomes very frustrating and boring.

As I said about having all map and trying to win, you should be able to finish the opponent because eventually the one's economy will not let him to build anything. And it can be discussed also if it is too long to achieve this but I wasn't discussing this things. I was discussing that if one can have another camp with 6+ towers then you are playing wrong as I explain above.

Zitat
No good player would play as gondor and instantly start building towers and turtleing. You would lose every game so long as your opponent spammed catapults. I'm not saying it is an imbalance in that towers are so good they win you the game. I'm simply saying that the power of them makes sieging boring and fustrating!

I agree with you except the last sentence, I can accept that their damage is a bit high but until they get the upgrade they are just nothing against siege weapons. Also siege weapons like ballista and catapult without upgrade can easily destroy a tower. Once towers get upgrade they become powerful. And again we can discuss that damage.

Zitat
Imagine if you could move into or near a gondor castle even with lots of towers up with your UNITS. You could launch an attack on the gate with a ram, whilst your units valiantly protect the ram from attack. You could use siege ladders, you could sneak in isenguard mines, you could destroy the gate and storm the keep with your army. You could still use catapults as an additional weapon in your arsenal to fire from a distance, with a few units back their protecting them.

It would 'feel' more like a siege, it would feel more 'lord-of-the-ringsy' it might even 'look' more like the battle at helms deep or minas tirith.

Imagine if you had multiple siegeing techniques occurring simultaneously. Imagine how cool and intense it would be to be defending against a ram at the gate, having uruk-hai scale your walls with siege ladders - attacking your archers that are trying to bring down the ram. All the while your walls are being pelted with ballistas, then all of a sudden 

BOOM!!!

Yes! It would be good. In fact I would glad to see a roof above rams to add more protection in terms of health. I also agree with your other ideas about siegeing.

Zitat
However, with towers being as powerful as they are, all these options are worthless, except for using catapults from a distance, because you can't attack a base with units when your enemy has 6+ towers, every unit in range of the towers is toast. Nerfing towers would free up so much more dynamic tactics to be viable. Instead we are left in the current state where we must use catapults once your enemy gets towers, and the defender can easily focus all his attention on the one threat of catapults.

Yes, if nerfing towers damage will balance this situation We are already ok with this, our point is that tower should not be destroyed so easily. You can make your siegeing while towers alive with balanced damage. I think we can agree with this also?

Zitat
Yes, you're also saying that it is very often the better option to use catapults which out-range towers to destroy the outpost and minimise loses to your units, now imagine the defender makes catapults to target your own! Or summons some orcs behind the catapults and hits them in that way. Or uses a combination of both, (and more) to kill your catapults, so that you have to dodge incoming catapult shots after every shot you take, but also not send that cata outside of your infantry clump otherwise the summon or cavalry will get them.

Now imagine what you must do to attack the outpost: target your enemy's catapults with your catapults and summons. But wait! you can't send your cavalry in because they will be destroyed by towers. And your summons will drop like flies to the towers. This is catapult battling^.

Whoever has denethor wins. This is why he is so OP, he's the steward of gondor but the king of catapult-battling!

I think one who have that deadly towers and I think one is not enough to be that deadly, can not be able to make siege weapons in an instant. You should make your move before one makes one's own. And I agree that denethor is OP.

Zitat
Please tell us, if it is not necessary how do you fight a gondor base that has had all its upgrades? If you could tell us that, all the people in the multiplayer community would have much more fun when sieging.

I didn't mean there is no siege weapons involved or they don't shoot each other. I mean it is not a proper thing to a siege weapon thing occurs in a way that preclude the normal battle.

Zitat
If he did this, his units would die to the towers, that is my point. he can only do what he did in that game: Sit outside with catapults. He just didn't spam them enough and called it a draw.

As far as I remember, he had have all the map and have economical advantage but did not train rivendell archers. He could take his time to train them while sacrificing his useless forces to wound his opponents and then invade. He would eventually win. And I personally, don't like to win or lose a battle without skill, being good at tactics, strategy and good fair gameplay.

Zitat
Zitat
Let me clarify, I was talking about outposts not camps or castles. And if one just sits at one's outposts camps or whatever, one can't win the game. It is just meaningless. One who is a good player just doesn't do that. As I said before, it is just mistakes of both sides to carry the situation to a siege war. The sole purpose of this game is winning and to surrender is a fact of the war. End of story.
Sorry Elessar, i still don't understand (see below)

Zitat
I think you admit that there are ways of destroying an outpost. Actually there is no need to siege weapons to destroy a outpost which has three upgraded towers. In addition siege weapons are not for shooting each other it would be very funny and ridiculous scene watching them trying to shoot each other. It is never needed to carry the situation into that.  For me if you want to use your siege weapon you should learn how to defend them. And there is nothing easier to defender when one has already spent his high amounts of money to build an outpost, build towers and upgrade them.

I thought you meant by this that it is easy to defend siege weapons if you are at your outpost with 3 upgraded towers. If you were at your outpost with towers, you wouldn't be near the base and therefore wouldn't be able to siege anyway. Maybe i misunderstood what you meant.

I mean if you want to use your siege weapons against towers you should know how to defend them I didn't mean outpost with siege weapons. You asked to me that should we sit at our outpost throughout the hole game so I answered that question. As I talking about outposts there is no base siegeing involved.

Zitat
I'm not saying we should not have sieging, I'm saying we should make sieging more interesting and dynamic (which the team aims to do! - partly by nerfing towers).

I agree.

Zitat
Hope you have a nice weekend too! :D

 :D

Finally, we are also supporting to changes in towers like ability to equip with ally forces. You didn't comment on this again. :) Really I would like to see some.

Thanks for reading.

Have a nice week. And don't forget to comment.

Peace.

Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: TheDarkOne am 2. Aug 2017, 15:09
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.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Goodfella am 2. Aug 2017, 16:21
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

I won't touch on the siege battle stuff because I usually ragequit if somebody does that

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!
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: -DJANGO- am 3. Aug 2017, 18:05
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.

Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Goodfella am 24. Aug 2017, 21:17
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!
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Max_Power am 15. Apr 2019, 00:15
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
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Big F am 25. Mär 2020, 14:05
Hello everyone,

I recently tried to get together with the best non edain team 1v1 players who play Edain on a daily basis. Smeargollum, Jojo, Seleukos, MaxPower, DSS, Luke and me (Fabian) elaborated on current edain gameplay and balance. There is much to love about 4.5, but in order to give constructive feedback we listed which gameplay elements we think are hurting the multiplayer experience the most at the moment.


About inflation & 300 resource farms

Making external farms more expensive and introducing inflation nerfed economic map control. This buffed clumping and turtling. In particular the extremely boring strategies of early outposts and hero spamming are a lot more viable now. Even if they are still not optimal, it takes a lot longer to punish them since your economic advantage is smaller now. And while it adds a little bit of decision making, now that just going for internal economy buildings is much more viable it removes a lot of action packed gameplay from the early game if there are less farms to fight over.


About heroes

Currently if one player gets a hero the game becomes a lot more boring. In straight up fights heroes already fight quite cost efficiently at level 1. Most heroes have more than 4000 health while only receiving 65% damage from infantry, giving them more than 6000 effective HP in melee fights. A good player will always retreat a low health hero from a fight and heal and within a minute they are healed back up. Thousands of damage points were tanked while the other player took permanent damage on their troops. A much bigger problem is the insane snowballing of hero leveling. Their good stats get better and the abilities they unlock add extreme strength and cost efficiency to any army. Therefore the correct response to an early hero or straight up hero spamming is avoiding the heroes, not fight and only attack once you are certain you can actually kill the heroes. Heroes are vulnerable alone and must not be lost so the player usually clumps everything together. So it is usually possible to get map control against heroes. Now you wait until your economic advantage is enough to crush your opponents death ball. Since inflation this takes a lot longer and is much more difficult. Overall it makes games more boring.


About healing (and towers) on the map

Any outpost with a heal makes it borderline impossible and extremely costly to conquer that position. The stronger towers compared to the megafix add to this problem. More importantly though, it means you need to avoid fighting your enemy in general. You cannot even fight your opponent for neighboring settlements, since your opponent can just heal back up after the skirmish while you took permanent damage. All you can do is getting more map control and wait around until you have such a massive army advantage that you still win. Inflation makes this a much longer process and outpost rushing got more viable. Outpost rushing might still not be optimal, but it takes a very long time to deal with and is very boring.
The rohan assembly point is even worse since it costs less for the almost the same utility while you can even place it in front of your opponents base. An intermediate fix could be reworking the rohan assembly point into an upgrade of the exile camp and reworking maps to feature outposts only at the corners like it was done on fords of isen or nurn.


About in-base healing & mass cavalry

Most experienced edain players are annoyed by the strength of mass cavalry that just yolos in your army and kills too much for the damage it receives. Especially sending out smaller groups of units is suppressed. It forces clumping. In-base wells exacerbate this problem since the mobile cavalry can quickly heal back up and get back on the field while infantry either takes permanent damage or is taken out of the game for a long time since going home and healing back up so many units takes a very long time, especially on big maps.


About horse Archers

Mobile archers always win map control because they always force clumping. With roughly equal forces foot archers fight horse archers efficiently. But if you split those foot archers into 2 or 3 groups to get more map control, the concentrated mobile force of horse archers will pick them off one by one very efficiently. On top of that, each group of archers also needs a lot of pikes to deal with rohan's cavalry. On top of that, horse archers and normal cavalry can quickly retreat home to heal back up, retroactively turning cost inefficient fights into favourable ones.


About sieges

a fundamental problem of sieges is that time is on the site of the attacker. Despite inflation, map control gives you twice the economy of your opponent. In a serious game the attacker benefits from dragging the game out for a very long time. Opponents to this argument say that you are also giving the defender time to get back up, or that your relative advantage cannot grow once you reach a maximum power level. However, with twice the economy you’re always outgrowing your opponent and this maximum power level is only reached once you have every eco & unit upgrade, most heroes and all outposts. These things take an eternity to get and until then you benefit from waiting. In reality, what gives your opponent a chance to come back is deleting an economy building, investing in a siege works and spending even more resources and command points into siege units while your opponent is investing everything into units, upgrades or heroes. Inflation didn’t change this dynamic, it just made the whole process slower.
If this is such a fundamental problem why don’t we see it every game? This has two reasons. Sometimes a player wins the early game by such a massive margin that they can invest in siege units while knowing they still have more than enough army power. Strictly speaking this is neither optimal nor safe but it doesn’t matter if a game is already that one-sided. The second and more common reason is that most experienced players of edain will leave the game since they know a very long, very boring and very pre-decided siege is about to follow. A common suggestion is making siege works cost less and siege units cost no CP but instead limit them by number to reduce their opportunity cost. This way a player that is ahead could start with the siege earlier without sacrificing too much of their army power. However this will not change the fact that map control makes it beneficial for the attacker to wait around because they are outgrowing their opponent.


In Summary

Generally it seems that under the current inflation system, map control is still what wins games, it just takes a lot longer now to take effect. Which is why sieges are still pre-decided, horse archers that guarantee map control are still game deciding while boring, annoying strategies that force waiting around like outpost rushing or hero spamming are still not optimal but take a very long time to deal with.


About losing through baserushing

You should only lose the game when your entire base is destroyed, especially on camp maps and especially for lorien the current system is very frustrating and exploitable.


Outpost Units

Most outpost units see very little use. Settlement units on the other hand (cirith ungol, rangers, lindons, dunlendings, and even beorn's) are used often because they have either a unique role or are higher tier units. The mordor outposts unlock heroic units and heroes and provide better orcs and it's needed to level sauron. The exile camp recruits extremely quickly and later unlocks higher tier units. If players build a mirkwood outpost it is usually for palace guards to get higher tier pikemen (besides the healing ofc). In theory Mirkwood does unlock useful heroes and mirkwood units are just better units but to most players the investment seems still too much. The dol amroth units have a unique role and are of a higher tier, but the advantage does not seem worth the cost of the outpost to most gondor players. The problem with most outpost units is that you need to invest more than a thousand recources just to recruit them but they don't add any new functionality to your army, aren't higher tier or more cost efficient.


About stuns and fear resistance

Stun & fear abilities should be more late game, some enemy factions have a very hard time getting fear resistance and without it they are too strong. Haldir's arrow and gamlings horn are their respective 2nd ability and they could be swapped with their respective 3rd ability


Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Elendils Cousin 3. Grades am 25. Mär 2020, 15:41
All the miscellaneous suggestions should be going either into the respective faction balance or bug threads as they'll only clog this thread, but other than that nice post! I'd be interested if you have suggestions on how to tackle these issues - be that sieges, heroes, economy or the gameplay quality in general.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Big F am 25. Mär 2020, 20:00
hi elendil,
glad you like it.
good idea i will get all those smaller ideas into their respective faction categories.

I think i will get together with everyone again, think about our best ideas for solutions and then upload them in a 2nd post.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Max_Power am 27. Mär 2020, 12:23
I agree with everything stated in Fabian's post. I would add that towers do too much damage for my liking, specially in external buildings such as Lindon tower, Dunedain camp, any level 3 farm, etc. I find it rewards poor army positioning, requires no skill and, unlike towers in camps or castles, is not easily counterable, because the health of those buildings is not low. Also makes lategame harassing very annoying. The building itself will go down, but just takes longer (a goodplayer will attack, take some arrow damage, retreat, and come again when the arrows are on cooldown). In case the defender sends some troops to defend the building, the arrows give him time. And my question is: why? I prefer when the harassment is more dynamic, and the defender needs to use scouting,  vision, and army position to defend from harassing, and if he fails to do so, then lose the building. Otherwise, we are again rewarding players for playing worse.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Seleukos I. am 27. Mär 2020, 12:51
I too agree with all main points of Fabian's post. And I also agree with Max :)

But in fact I wanted to suggest something else^^
Zitat
Making external farms more expensive and introducing inflation nerfed economic map control. This buffed clumping and turtling. In particular the extremely boring strategies of early outposts and hero spamming are a lot more viable now. Even if they are still not optimal, it takes a lot longer to punish them since your economic advantage is smaller now. And while it adds a little bit of decision making, now that just going for internal economy buildings is much more viable it removes a lot of action packed gameplay from the early game if there are less farms to fight over.

As Fabian said, farms costing 300 now makes mapcontrol way less attractive to get early on. In fact even several good players don't go for external farms at all within the first 5 to 10 min of the game, which is extremely boring to play/watch and, in my opinion, bad gameplay.
On the other hand many people argued that harassing in the lg has too little impact on the game because a) inflation is too strong atm and b) you can rebuild a Level 3 farm for just 300.

My idea would be to reduce the cost of farms back to 200 BUT increase the cost of farms with every level. Level one would cost 200, as I said, level two farms would cost 300 and level three farms would cost 400. This would only affect external farms, inbase farms are fine I think.
This would make the eg more dynamic because you can trade farms more easily (like in 441), but losing a level three farm in the lg would be more painfull and harassment could have more impact in the later game.
Ofc you could also make level three farms cost even 450 or 500, but I think 400 would be a good start.

What do you think? :P

best regardes,
Seleukos I.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Elendils Cousin 3. Grades am 27. Mär 2020, 13:27
I personally think both the Lindon Towers and the defensive ability of level 3 farms are in a good spot right now. Keep in mind that structure arrows deal increased damage to cavalry - if you want to take down a Lindon Tower, use your infantry; due to its low health, it goes down very fast if it's not defended. Same goes for level 3 farms, their ability is most potent against cavalry and much less useful against infantry. It only lasts for 20 seconds, so with cavalry you can ride to the next farm and force the tower to activate there, come back to the first farm and destroy it because the tower expired. infatry can usually just tank the damage. It is meant to be a small countermeasure against cavalry harassment: It doesn't stop the harassment by itself against a good player, but it gives you time to react. I think you would agree that cavalry overall is still incredibly powerful in 4.5, so I don't think this kills their role as a harassment unit in the LG by any means. There are other arguments for the strength of Lindon towers in regards to Imladris' difficulties with map control, but if you're interested in continuing that discussion, let's move that to the Imladris thread.


My idea would be to reduce the cost of farms back to 200 BUT increase the cost of farms with every level. Level one would cost 200, as I said, level two farms would cost 300 and level three farms would cost 400. This would only affect external farms, inbase farms are fine I think.
This would make the eg more dynamic because you can trade farms more easily (like in 441), but losing a level three farm in the lg would be more painfull and harassment could have more impact in the later game.
Ofc you could also make level three farms cost even 450 or 500, but I think 400 would be a good start.
I like this.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Halbarad am 27. Mär 2020, 17:01
Increasing the farms cost with their level sounds good.
Arnor and Imladris Lindon towers shooting ability could be bound to Cirdan, since he already got an ability that makes the tower better.
Dunadan outpost could easy get fixed by giving the archers on the tower less shooting speed, maybe lowering their number. Although I do like the idea of many weak defensive archers, making the outpost stronger against spam and less effective against strong units. Especially since big amount of units like Mordor clumps are so effective against Imladris, while Dunadan are one way of Imladris for defending itself against such a high amount of troops.
Besides that, the tower upgrade could be mainly for increasing sight distance and giving the outpost a new defense ability, that increases the number of archers, even spawn some defense Dunadan with sword and spear but also stopping Ressource production and healing abilities for the outpost. Would be nice if the player you could able and disable the defensive mode instead of just giving the ability a timer like farms have it. However, the ability should also have a cooldown and the number of defensive Dunadan should increase with the number of tents. 

Such a mode could fit for Dale and Laketown as well.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Big F am 29. Mär 2020, 18:34
Edain 4.5 needs more action & speed. External farms need to cost 200 or even less since there is inflation now.

In other bfme mods troops just fall like flies and nobody cares. A constant flow of units is send on suicide missions just to kill some building near your opponent's base. This is basically the basis for constant action for 30 minutes until someone dies.

I like that edain is different, the life of your units matters.
The action in edain 4.4.1 megafix came from constant fighting over map control. This is much less the case in 4.5. Unit efficiency is much more important by comparison now. There is much more running around in clumps. What do you even do with your units if you can't harass and also can't force a fight because your opponent is equally fast as you?

Also the upgrade system and the mid and lategame economy feel extremely slow.

I would also like to see siege units being made much more accessible, since attacking someones base is the most natural way to force a fight in most other rts games. I know that some good players like Elendil like to siege early, but i also see it fail very often. Not just the tournament fubuky game comes to mind, but i also hosted a lorien v mordor game against luke and a erebor v isengard game against DSS ,where relatively early sieges failed, in my opinion because investing in siege units while your opponent invests everything into army is too much of a set back to overcome edain's high defenders advantage. Especially now with inflation.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: tolgayurdal am 29. Mär 2020, 19:10
There were a guy in moddb who i played with once (deleted the account later, don't even remember his name). He was Lothlorien and ambushed me all the time nearby trees where he is strong. Luckily i was Gondor, had to defense for a time but when i began to attack with toward guards and then cavalry to push him over, such a waste. And i sieged his castle following any ai castle/ camp/ outpost until saw everyone is destroyed after i start (because why not?). What is the suggestion so?

Try to reduce lorien archer units damage for hit and run gameplay multiple times than see how gondor siege units buffed against not only buildings but also nearby infantry.

However i can not play multiplayer for a long time unlike support Edain because i have other projects to work on (in real life, wind power plants in different city). So it is not a good time to invite me t3a or gameranger just for play (i nearly have not play v4.5), though try to follow the progress.

Note: I don't want to get in more personal facts to convience anyone, please let it end or i will.

Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Only True Witchking am 29. Mär 2020, 19:21
I don't think Lothlorien needs a nerf right now, as they are already the least played and most micro-intensive faction; and Gondor is already very strong, especially against Lorien, which is why I don' feel like they need a buff, certainly not to their siege units.

Signed,
The Only True Witch-king

PS: I hope I haven't misunderstood what you meant.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Elendils Cousin 3. Grades am 30. Mär 2020, 18:02
I would also like to see siege units being made much more accessible, since attacking someones base is the most natural way to force a fight in most other rts games. I know that some good players like Elendil like to siege early, but i also see it fail very often. Not just the tournament fubuky game comes to mind, but i also hosted a lorien v mordor game against luke and a erebor v isengard game against DSS ,where relatively early sieges failed, in my opinion because investing in siege units while your opponent invests everything into army is too much of a set back to overcome edain's high defenders advantage. Especially now with inflation.
We are planning on making this transition easier for the player by adjusting the buildcost (and cp cost) for siege weapons, siegeworks and outposts.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Big F am 31. Mär 2020, 13:46
that sounds great. This should give players more options for attack timings and should make the gameplay more dynamic. And  the time between winning a game and closing out the game will probably be reduced as well which is great
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Specter am 31. Mär 2020, 14:14
Foreword:
One thing is very important for me to mention in advance. I really like the universe of the RTS
It is very respectful for everyone who is programming and spending their free time in this project
without being compensated for it (by money).
The following points refer to the 1vs1 gameplay.
And I also fully understand that a game with so many different factions is very difficult
to balance. In addition, there is no professional balance team behind it.
I do not ask to see this as descriptive for the people who are currently responsible for balancing.

Part 1: Eco system and its consequences

Introduction (Eco system):
The game is currently very slow. In addition, map control hardly plays a role.
Both are the result of inflation, the increased cost of outside eco.
Another factor is the time it takes to research eco upgrades.
These take so much time AND cause so little extra income that it is not very relevant.
The reason why hardly any players take this upgrade if they are not already in the game well, it is not worth it.
To make matters worse, this does not affect all peoples equally hard, but I would like to go into this later.

Banner bearer / healing and its effects:
I have long considered whether I should call this point at all or if, then not under the aspect of Eco.
Probably even a taboo topic, since nothing has ever been changed in this regard, but I try anyway.

Banners are a mechanism that belongs to HDR, I understand that. however, it prevents "true harm".
Units fight, take damage and if they are not completely destroyed, they will be cured FREE,
no matter where they are as long as they are out of the battle. Above all, this makes KAV much stronger.
(probably many know what I mean and do not have to explain this further). The damage to the units is
So never "real damage" and gives the player an incredible advantage. This effect is intensified for fractions
that have a well that not all factions have.
Alternatively:
You do not automatically get banners with LVL 2, you have to buy them as a normal upgrade. Fountains are completely removed from the game.

Why does this point belong to Eco? Because you don't have to pay for this mechanism!

No other RTS has this mechanism and I believe for a very good reason. RTS and truer should always hurt
belong together.

Suggestion:
Troops with banners can only be healed in their own buildings (outside eco, inbase, outpost)
In addition, you should have to pay gold for each individual unit (as a button on the unit itself or on the
Buildings where they heal. So the chances (in this respect) are the same for all groups.


Economy:
Cost of outside eco: 150
Yield x2 for outside eco OR double tick speed
Research time for Eco 3x! so quickly, maybe even lower costs
Increase the effect of the eco upgrade: (The% number is very likely to be tested in many games)
Eco upgrades should be made equally accessible to all factions.
That means the same cost for the building, the same conditions for researching the upgrade.

Result: dynamic game, map control becomes more relevant

I hope for many contributions, opinions and above all that this proposal will be tested + feedback after the tests.
There is still a lot of room for improvement (in my opinion). Should this amount be taken seriously /
tested and feedback came after the test, I would have noticed even more: Spellbook, hero skills etc.

Kind regards
Specter
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Aiphaton am 31. Mär 2020, 14:30
Hello Together,

I‘d like to add something about the Lindon-Towers and the level three defense.

Basically I would just lower the range of those external archers. The damage is okay, but the range is quite high. Especially on small maps (e.g. Westfold) you often want to help your army with Cav. However if there are Towers (which are a good option to boost defense because of the inflation issue we‘ve heard about) units often die already underway due to the range.

I‘d personally like to see a decrease on range of those towers in order to prevent a loss of cav just by mistake because you came to close to a tower.

Seleukos idea to decrease costs of outside eco is very good in my opinion.
I‘d also like to see an increase of costs for higher level farms.

Generally I’d like to see inflation being a little weakened. Right now it feels a little to strong and often forces long matches (as seen in the Battlezone cup).
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Smeargollum am 31. Mär 2020, 15:08
Hello everyone!
First of all I agree with most of the points made by the other players writing above.
I think everyone of the multiplayer community agrees that the gameplay is a bit too slow due to the strong inflation and other things that reward campy gameplay (as Fabian mentioned a few days past).
Outside farms need to be cheaper at level one, but I would like to see that they cost more when they level up as Seleukos suggested.
Furthermore, is the inflation too strong so that map control is not that relevant as before but it missed it purpose to make comebacks possible, in my opinion.
I also agree that wells are too strong but I don't think that you have to remove them completely from the game; I think it would be enough if they would get an active ability with cooldown or something similar (as suggested by kmogon in the "well-topic"). And I like the suggestion of Specter that units don't get a banner carrier as soon as they get to level two. That way you would have to buy it in order to regenerate your units.

About the towers:
I am not sure if they are a big problem but if they get nerfed, I would like it more to just nerf their range instead of their damage. So, they would be still really good in fights directly next to them but they couldn’t just snipe everything a long way off.

Best regards
Smeargollum
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: FG15 am 31. Mär 2020, 15:13
Suggestion:
Troops with banners can only be healed in their own buildings (outside eco, inbase, outpost)
What exactly do you mean by that? But in general it is impossible to target effects only at units with a banner carrier.


Also concerning banner carriers: Banner carriers have to be bound to a level. It has not to be level 2, but there has be a level at which they automatically appear or else players won't be able to purchase them with an upgrade either.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Nicipiz am 31. Mär 2020, 15:45
Hello everyone,
first of all I agree to most of the proposed changes.

Inflation System:
In my opinion, inflation is too high at the moment and a player who has gained the map advantage should be rewarded. Of course there should also be a comeback possibility, but in my opinion this is guaranteed by the current system of commander points. Furthermore the player with map control has to besiege the inferior player and use a lot of resources for this and should not have any disadvantage.

External Farms:
My idea would be to reduce the cost of farms back to 200 BUT increase the cost of farms with every level. Level one would cost 200, as I said, level two farms would cost 300 and level three farms would cost 400. This would only affect external farms, inbase farms are fine I think.
This would make the eg more dynamic because you can trade farms more easily (like in 441), but losing a level three farm in the lg would be more painfull and harassment could have more impact in the later game.
Ofc you could also make level three farms cost even 450 or 500, but I think 400 would be a good start.
I like the idea that harassment would be more more viable in the early and the more punishing in the lg. Furthermore, this would also make the eg more dynamic, because after the start you have more resources for troops, because the external farms cost less.

Regards
Nicipiz
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Big F am 10. Apr 2020, 14:53
A while back I made a somewhat larger post that summarized what most edain pvp 1v1 players think about the current gameplay of edain 4.5.
Now I want to present our ideas on what could be some solutions to the addressed issues.

Economy

The inflation can stay as strong as it is, but outside farms should cost at maximum 200 and the general income could be increased substantially.

Inflation is a good mechanic to curb edain's very strong snowballing. However, together with farms costing 300, it takes forever to afford anything and the gameplay is too slow. Increasing the income of economy buildings would not just speed up the gameplay again, it would also enable more strategies because you can afford producing units from 3,4,5 different military buildings and don't have to fill your base with 90% economy buildings. If this makes it too difficult to finish off a player that has lost all map control becauses the base still produces 2k resources a minute, then the defenders advantage should be decreased and siege units should become more potent.

Fighting over every single farm on the map was what Edain's early and mid game was all about. With outside farms costing 50% more than in 4.4.1 many players opt to just fill their base with economic structures. It is often not worth it to build a farm in a risky location. That might sound like it adds some decision making, but the less farms are taken on the map the less points of interest there are, the less reasons there are to fight over positions, the less opportunities think about tactics and maneuvers to conquer more positions. There is too much just running around in big clumps and doing nothing in the early and mid game because there is nothing to do besides some creeping.

Sieges
I think the only way to make sieges interesting is making siege units so accessible that a player that has a temporary military advantage but might be economically behind (less map control) can quickly start a siege and do some lasting damage. It doesn't even have to end the game. Destroying a barracks and and 2 eco buildings can be enough. The whole siege maneuver has to happen before the defending player with more map control inevitably mustered a stronger army. Sieges where the attackers has 100% map control will and should never have a real comeback potential unless the attacker does some major mistakes.

Heroes
Hero's CP cost needs to be reflective of their power level. If you have 1300 out 1500 cp, there is simply no alternative, nothing could make your army stronger than spamming out all heroes at this point. If you don't do this but your opponent does, you lose the fight. It would make balancing heroes substantially easier if their CP cost was in line with other units.
Just as a comparison, the competitively played rotwk 2.02 has tier 3 heroes cost 100 out of 1000 cp points. In edain 4.4.1 they cost 30 out of 1800 cp points, 4.5 improved this but needs to go much further. 3000 resource heroes should cost 120 or even 150 command points. Even then they will still be the most Cp efficient units in the game.
Another important idea is to make heroes not improve their stats when leveling. Not just will a level 5 support hero win against a level 1 hero killer but if your opponent hero spammed early and has their heroes on level 4 already, there is no way to ever beat them with your own heroes or even keep your own heroes alive.
Another but more radical idea to curb hero's late game snowballing is making them respawn at level 1 when they die.
I would also like to see heroes doing no more than 100% damage against heroes so that the general army strength is more relevant than just who spammed out more heroes when it comes to hero battles and keeping your heroes alive.

Healing & towers
I already described why healing, especially healing near important positions is very toxic to fun gameplay. A popular solution was to make healing sources only heal existing units, but not replenish the battalions, only banner carriers should have this ability. This could be a sufficient nerf. Also the rohan assembly point is way to strong and annoying. It should be moved to the exile camp or taken out.
Also, towers outside of your base should see a significant range reduction, enough for self defense, but no longer enough to zone out the enemy.

Cavalry & Pikes

Cavalry is too oppressive. It is simply not viable to split your forces once a larger force of cavalry is on the field. Even sending out just individual pike battalions is not viable since 4 battalions of mobile cavalry will easily kill it and, if necessary, they just heal back up in the base. If healing gets nerfed like described above, the problem might be reduced. Another big problem is that pikes don't do 360° trample revenge. Cavalry gets 0 damage when trampling pikes from behind. This makes a combination of infantry + cavalry way too strong to hunt down armies, the cavalry can kill everything if charging in from behind and if the pikes turn around to face the cavalry the chasing infantry will kill the pikemen.

Outposts
Players get the dunedain camp, dale and laketown for their healing, their towers and ,in 4.4.1, their income. All of which should be nerfed as I described above. I would like to see outposts become a lot cheaper when it comes to making outpost unique units or preparing a siege but a lot more expensive when it comes to turtlely and boring tower-heal-income aspects. The mordor outposts and the exile camp are fine. But dale, laketown, the dunedain camp, dol amroth and ered mithrin could be reworked in this regard. Even better but more difficult would be to give outpost units more unique aspects that complement your normal army, players a willing to invest a lot of recources to get rohan captains, improved orcs, castellans or mirkwood units.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Vin55 am 10. Apr 2020, 15:09
Some interesting aspects there :) to work with. Altough I think cp wise heroes are ok just increase the amount of money like in Bfme2 for some Heroes. Otherwise great comment. Really like the idea about pikes and healing points and outsdie eco.

Yours kindly,

Vin55
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Elendils Cousin 3. Grades am 11. Apr 2020, 15:25
Another big problem is that pikes don't do 360° trample revenge. Cavalry gets 0 damage when trampling pikes from behind. This makes a combination of infantry + cavalry way too strong to hunt down armies, the cavalry can kill everything if charging in from behind and if the pikes turn around to face the cavalry the chasing infantry will kill the pikemen.

This is indeed very frustrating, especially when the engine and the delay decide that the enemy was somehow flanking your pikes when they actually just charged straight into them. The only solution to this - that I know of - is to make pikes not flankable period. They already have this trait in the porcupine formation, but that has other drawbacks. I'm currently of the opinion that a situation where pikes can under no circumstance suffer flanking damage (so no flanking damage from swords, archers, other pikes... either) is still preferable to the current one, but I'd be interested what you think of this.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Smeargollum am 11. Apr 2020, 15:58
I can't say much to that what Fabian wrote because I pretty much agree with everything he said and suggested but I just want to add my voice to his :D
And I think that it would be way better if pikes can't get flanking damage by anything in order to help out the engine a bit. So that would probaly be the best solution  ;)

Regards, Smeargollum
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Spartacus_ am 11. Apr 2020, 16:21
tbf, you can remove the flank damage to everything, since the engine is not precise .
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: dgsgomes am 12. Apr 2020, 12:49
I'm also 100% in favour of removing flank damage to pikes.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Big F am 15. Apr 2020, 23:57
An approach to reduce clumping armies into a single battalion size.

The engine allows and incentivises players to clump all their battalions together as much as possible. I am not talking about the deathball meta where people don'T split up their army for map control, that is another issue with other origins (outside eco). I am talking about unit formations when two armies engage. Having 10+ orc battalions clumped into one battalion size minimizes their attackable surface area while maximising the damage output at their frontal point.
Not just the frame rate suffers from this, but the gameplay as well. Microing would be much more fun if it was about establishing concave formations or using the terrain instead of just spamming move commands to clump everything together. It would making microing cavalry and pikes and archers more interesting and dynamic, but more to cavalry below.

My solution to this problem would be to give every faction a reliable source of small AoE damage, just a little bit smaller than 1 battalion size.
But isn't cavalry AoE damage?
No! cavalry makes you clump as much as possible, true AoE makes you spread out as much as possible.

Those toxic clumps, especially once they are archer clumps, are very punishing to engage into, especially with cavalry. But if players know their opponents have an AoE spell with the diameter of approximately 1 battalion size, players will make sure to de-clump their army all the time.

But isn't cavalry so strong that you will totally die if you don't clump everything on top of each other? well yes, yes it is. Cavalry already needs to be reworked and when players can't clump their foot army on top of each other anymore the damage of cavalry tramples needs to be reduced even more.

This reliable source of small aoe damage could come from units, heroes or most probably the spellbook. Lorien's arrow volley would only need a slight adjustment to function as this de-clumping threat. It would need to have a smaller radius but do more damage. Right now, especially when off host, it is just unavoidably, moderately damaging your entire army no matter what. With higher damage but a smaller radius, it would only kill 1 battalion if you have a nice spread out army formation but kill 15 battalions if you clump everything into one battalion size.


This AoE damage could be made thematically very consistent with each faction's aesthetic. Rohan's yolo cavalry could be roworked to be more like eomer's lvl 10, just working for a much smaller radius. Gondor's barrage could be slightly adjusted. I am sure every faction has some things that could be reworked into this kind of small but potent AoE damage
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Vin55 am 16. Apr 2020, 00:05
Sounds very nice :)

Yours kindly,

Vin55
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Halbarad am 17. Apr 2020, 15:15
Sounds interesting and I would be open minded for your suggestions, still I think you have to keep some things in mind
1. We already have many counters to this: Catapults already punish this, every faction has heroes that do that too (Galadriel, Necromancer, Gandalf, Saruman, Witchking/Zaphragor, Eomer, Dain and even Merry, Pippin, Drauglin, Nori at level 10) and as you said there are already some spells like arrow volley, stone volley, Gandalf, ... and also units (Imladris Loremasters, Sorcerers of Angmar, Monsters, ...)
2. Players are forced right now to clumb their units on fortress walls, since units don't split up automatically up there. Also defending your fortress would be much more difficult, since you don't have that much space to run away from such attacks as the enemy does. So defending players would suffer more by these changes and sieges could become more frustrating to defend.
3. I don't like your suggestion for a changed arrow volley. In fact I don't even think that it would help that much against clump, since the players units would have less way to go to run away from it - so the clump just have to move a bit fore- or backward. I do like it the way it is right now, killing Mordor orcs but not Gondor infantry. The damage it gives right now is still punishing the player (and doesn't it kill rangers so it is even more usefull against archer clumps?).
I think the best way would be to make spells/ abilitys/ units, that give low unit damage with middle area of effect (like arrow volley) or middle damage with small aoe (like Eomer spear), while both of them can be reused pretty fast. That way, your enemy can't just split up his units for a second and then go again into clump again. Another idea would be to implement a sickness state: Units that are sick don't get damage themselfes, but damage allied units very close to them (could be looking like poison but yellow instead of green). If your own units can damage near other units of yourself, you are in need to keep them away from each other. This could be added for Sorcerers of Angmar for example.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Smeargollum am 18. Apr 2020, 14:10
Hello everyone!
This is a very interesting suggestion by Fabian which would improve the gameplay of edain in my opinion.
If every faction would have a reliable aoe damage (not like Eormers spear throw which sometimes just hits a single guy but sometimes kills a lot) and cav would be nerfed the players could split their army in different part to fight for mapcontroll, which would be way more dynamic that it is now, and you couldn’t just clump everything together in a fight, which would increase the micro potential in a battle.
Further I agree with Fabian that it would be probably the best way to find such an aoe damage in the spellbook (like arrow volley, barrage, Rohan cav summon, etc…). But I also think it would fit to units like monsters (trolls, beornings, werewolves, …). If those units would get a higher splash damage with their standard attack but therefor can’t trample units (so they can’t take crush revenge damage from running in pikes because of delay) they would be a great way to implement aoe damage by units. Or as Halbarad already said, sorcerers by Angmar or maybe even loremasters by Imla are a wonderfull units for that purpose :D
And I also think it is important that this kind of anti-clump stuff is available early in the game and not just with a 3k hero (like Gandalf, Saruman, Galadriel …) or a level 10 spellbook power (like the Isen mine, etc.) but by either early powers (like the arrow volley) or units you can get early in the game (like trolls).
So all over I think that such a change would improve the gameplay around the stage of the game where you fight for the mapcontroll (so not in a siege) by a lot. But since sieges are not competitive as I see it that is not a real problem.

Best regards
Smeagollum
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Adrigabbro am 18. Apr 2020, 15:23
Is it by the way engine-wise possible to prevent clumping?

EDIT: The way I see it this is the best solution but it would obviously completely change the dynamics of the game. Many aspects would have to be modified/rebalanced.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Elendils Cousin 3. Grades am 18. Apr 2020, 15:32
It is technically possible, but the impact on pathfinding is so terrible that clumping is the lesser evil.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: tolgayurdal am 19. Apr 2020, 12:16
Is it by the way engine-wise possible to prevent clumping?

I can confirm that as long as the player becomes problem-solver. Also the contributions are always welcomed upto balance of course.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Big F am 19. Apr 2020, 18:38
i just wanted to add to my idea about small strong AoE against clumping.
I think it's very important that those abilities work pretty much instantly. If the clumping opponent (especially when they are on-host) can simply spam "r" when hearing a warning shot it won't prevent them from clumping in the first place.
There needs to be a constant threat so that players start to pre-split and just make sure that their units never clump too much.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Big F am 29. Apr 2020, 16:16
Again just something to add to my idea about why more strong small AoE damage would be good for Edain. It is a well known effect in other rts that being able to clump several units into a single unit size kind of breaks the usual logic of good formations like forming concaves. It is for example a classic tactic for mutalisks in starcraft 1 or phoenixes in starcraft 2. The way the engine works in rotwk just makes this 1 size battalion clumping the optimal way to fight melee engagements, even more so ranged engaments and also protects from cavalry. I wouldn't be surprised if this is exactly the reason why vanilla and the fan patches have so many devastating AoE spells and unit abilities. So i just think that this engine needs strong AoE damage to keep the game dynamic and fun, so that you can actually micro battalions in good formations, like trying to prevent getting individual battalions trampled or kiting with individual archer battalions back etc etc
Mass slaying abilities in edain have often been seen very negatively, but this has much to do with the fact that remaxing after losing your army is like 3 times harder than in vanilla (ca. half the income and 50% more CP compared to vanilla). Losing too many troops in edain often means losing the game not matter how far ahead you had been in any other metric, which is why players traditionally hated to much mass slaying abilities.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Big F am 29. Apr 2020, 18:53
i wouldn't decrease inflation, i would actually increase it but do some other key things

hi, when talking about edain gameplay, comebacks, sieges and inflation i have been hearing some people saying that you need a certain amount of snowballing so that one player can eventually win. Others use the term as if it means nothing more than "getting ahead". Both of these ideas are so wrong that i needed to write about :D
snowballing should mean that having an advantage now will grant you an even bigger advantage soon. For example if you have an advantage in Tennis, you don't have a better chance of winning the next point. There is 0 snowballing, it doesn't need snowballing, and it's much better because of it.

Edain (especially before inflation) had absolutely insane snowballing, even for an rts game . So much so that winning a small engagement in the early game could often decide the game, the only reason you "needed" so much snowballing is because the defenders advantage is so disgustingly high that you otherwise would need 2 hours to win the siege of a game that was decided after 5 minutes. For example, just being ahead a single battalion in the early game means you're gonna win the fight over the farm, so now you are ahead 1 battalion and 1 farm. Also 2 battalions fight against 1 battalion so efficiently that they barely lose any units. So it just keeps snowballing if no massive blunders occur. Another source of snowballing is the way spellbook points are gathered.

Inflation is one of the biggest counter mechanics to this high snowballing. It keeps the game open and undecided for much longer, you need to play well to win even when ahead or you lose your advantage. I would definitely not decrease inflation. I think people didn't like it because you don't have money for anything and because sieges take even longer that before, and more people are trying comebacks nowadays so sieges are more common.

Instead of decreasing inflation, how about edain makes winning sieges  easier and quicker through various means, increases the general income from farms so people finally have some money to spend in the midgame and yes, actually *increase* inflation a little bit more while decreasing the cost of outside eco. This way you would still be fighting over all 14 outside farms but getting more than say 16 farms in total wouldn't give you any more money. So you only build 2,3 inside eco and the rest is tech and production buildings. This would harmonize well with the increased general income so you can actually produce units from 2,3 or 4 unit production buildings. Which also allows for more playstyles and unit compositions.
A higher economy and more production buildings could also solve another problem that makes edain campy. Namely that losing units is often game losing because remaxing takes so long that you cannot fight your opponent for so long that you lose all map control because of it. Also,
the strong small AoE damage spells that i had suggested earlier would also have less danger of being game ending if remaxing would be easier.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Smeargollum am 1. Aug 2020, 16:55
Hello everyone,
I would like to talk about the tower on level 3 farms (once again :P).
At the moment each farm on a settlement get's a little ... I mean big tower when you have the level 3 economy upgrade researched.
In my opinion this tower deals too much damage so that it forces harassing battalions to retreate and wait until the tower stops shooting as it can do this "only" with an acitve ability. Even though you might think that this makes for some nice interaction between the players in the "harassing game" it just slows down the overall gameplay and it rewards the player that forms a deathball while it punishes the player that trys to splitt and harass at many diffrent places, in my opinion.
The investment in the economy upgrades would already be worthwhile without the defensiv tower because you get more money.
In order to have some access to the tower on the farm I would suggest to have it as an upgrade you can buy on each individual farm that enables the player to use the active ability for the tower.

In short (and maybe better understandable :D) form:
Remove the tower on level 3 farms as it is now because it slows the gameplay down.
Instead add it as an upgrade you can research on each level 3 farm (I hope that would be fine for playing vs the AI ...)

What do you think?
Best regards,
Smeargollum
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: FG15 am 1. Aug 2020, 18:33
There aren't any visuals for such an extra upgrade.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: JoJo(TheRealOne) am 1. Aug 2020, 22:42
Hello,

I just noticed that bannercarriers can survive more trampels then the battalions they belong to do. That shouldn't be the case in my opinion. Banners are strong enough by themselfes and don't need to save a unit from being wiped out by a cav charge. So I suggest to reduce their hp/armor to the amount the usual archers have.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: FG15 am 1. Aug 2020, 23:05
Are you talking about banner carriers in general or those of archers? Because usually different units use the exact same banner carrier, such that a change to the banner carrier of archers would affect the one of swords or pikes too.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Seleukos I. am 9. Aug 2020, 14:57
Hello there :)

I’d like to suggest to reduce the ranged-damage (PIERCE)  taken by cavalry from 100% down to 65% by changing their armorset.

Now you may wonder why I do suggest that. Let me explain:

Let’s look at other units that counter each other:

Cavalry is the counter to swordsmen, because of that cavalry deals more damage vs swordsmen (135% of their normal damage), and at the same time swordsmen deal less damage (only 30%) to cavalry.

The same goes for swordsmen countering pikes: Pikes suffer more damage from swords (135%) while dealing less damage to them as well (only 65%).
Archers deal more damage to pikes (135%) because they counter them, this means pikes also deal less damage to archers.
It’s the same with cavalry and pikes; pikes deal bonusdamage vs cavalry and cavalry deal less damage to pikes.

Now we look at cavalry vs archers: The first part is the same, cavalry deals 135% damage vs archers … and yet archers deal a full 100% damage vs cavalry.

In my opinion that doesn’t really make sense. Every unit deals reduced damage to it’s counter except for archers.

The suggested change however would not only bring in line some numbers, but also affect the gameplay in a positive way.
Right now it can be observed quite often that cavalry – even expensive elite units – are simply shot down before reaching the enemy archers, the units they are supposed to counter. Increasing their resistance to archers would reward players who try to outmicro the enemy pikes over those who rely on own archers to “counter” enemy ranged units (which atm can lead to a rather campy and clumpy gameplay).


Best regards,
Seleukos

PS.
I know that with the logic of our „real world“ this change doesn‘t make too much sense, since archers were a good counter to charging cavalry. This is a game however, and in terms of gameplay cavalry is the counter to archers and that means, imo, that archers shouldn’t deal a lot of damage to cavalry. :P
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Smeargollum am 14. Aug 2020, 14:18
Hello everyone!
Today I would like to talk about some mechanics I don't like about some factions specific outposts.

Immediate autorepair:
At the moment outposts like the Dunedain, Dale, Laketown, Mirkwood, etc. repair themselves as soon as they are no longer under attack, just like a citadel.
That is in my opinion way too strong because, unlike the citadel, such an outpost does quite a lot for a player. You can buy a tower that does a lot of damage, it has a heal and leadership, it gives you some money, ...
It is always quite a committed attack when you attack such a defensively strong outpost, but right now you have to be really certain to crush the enemys army because when you don't manage to win the battel and destroy the outpost all your effort was for nothing because the outpost is immediately repaired again.
So I would suggest to simply remove this mechanic and let such outposts get repaired just like every other building (after some time a worker appears who slowly repairs it.


Having a permanent heal in combination with a strong leadership:
Occures for Dunedain, Dale and Laketown Outpost (maybe also some other one I don't remember rigth now). That is in my opinon also way too strong for the defense. I think just the heal is not that big of a problem since it still takes some time to heal your army, but in my opinion it is too much when you get basicly the boni of a well and a hero statue because the leadership makes it almost impossible to fight near an outpost.
So I would suggest to leave the heal as it is now but remove the leadership.

What do you think about this problematic?

Best regards,
Smeargollum
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Snens am 14. Aug 2020, 14:37
The first point is really good, those outposts get repaired way to fast, since they get repaired between 2 shots of the same catapult. That shouldn't be a thing imo.

To your second point: I agree that the leadership combined with the well is really strong, or even too strong; It's awful to fight a Dunedain outpost, with this healing tent and gets even worse when he has the tower, but for me there would be no reason to build the dale or laketown outpost anymore, if the leadership gets removed, because they're already to weak; Maybe they should get better Heroes/units in return? Same goes for the special Gondor outpost, dk how its called.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Seleukos I. am 14. Aug 2020, 15:24
I too agree with Gollum. I think removing the insta repair as well as the leadership would be a good idea for sure.

I also agree with Snens that some outposts aren't that usefull without that leadership. However, the Dunedain outpost already got some nice changes (making it cheaper and allow unit recruitment from the start) that gives the outpost a better role in Imladris' gameplay.
I think if the same would be done to the Dale and Laketown outpost it could offer some nice builds focused on faster units early on.
I also don't think the Dol Amroth outpost is a problem, as far as I know it has no insta repair and it costs far more.

Also, I'd rather have a useless outpost in the game than an op one :D But I don't think Dale and laketown would be totally useless if you can build units from the start (even without the leadership).

Best regards,
Seleukos
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Snens am 22. Aug 2020, 12:41
Hello guys,
lately I have had some really antifun games, when one Player managed to conquer the whole map, while the other one had to hide in base. (4.5.2 flashbacks, I was sweating:D )
At some time "player 1" , who has the map, is building catapults to force the basecamping player 2 out of his base.
Right after he was done removing the annoying tiny walls at the Isengart base, he decides to destroy the furnace in front of him, but then he sees his catas damage, bruh...
One Rohan catapult needs exactly 14 shots to destroy a level 3 inbase eco building (e.g. furnace) and that is imo way to much. ( 5 shots would be fine )
End of the story is that basecamping player 2, with the better late game faction, wins the game, since he just doesn't destroy the catas as they deal minimal damage, so he focuses on upgrading his army/building heroes. At some point, hours later, he reaches the point, that his army is unstoppable and can easily face the enemy, as player 1's current army is aswell weakened in direct fights, since he is blocking some CP with catas.

What I want to say is that all catapults, even Gondor catapults with the fire upgrade and Mordor trollcatas etc. should get a huge damage buff against buildings, as they deal no serious damage to buildings in base and have high costs and block many CP.
It get's even worse when you try to destroy a wall of a good faction's fortress with catapults, as they have even more HP then most of the other buildings and u can't even target them half of the time due to bugs...
Right now catas are way more efficient against soldiers than buildings, change my mind.


PS: Lorien base is pure cancer to siege, as the troops can even hide when they're far from the fortress, so upgraded archer's can take catapults out easily, even though you don't even need to kill the catas, since the bridges and platforms can tank the catas for hours before they reach actual buildings.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: The_Necromancer0 am 22. Aug 2020, 12:51
A replay if possible would be of great help in this discussion.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Snens am 23. Aug 2020, 13:41
Here are some replays, in both games lothlorien was completely out of the game, but managed to win due to the cancer base, that you cannot siege.
Actually i forgot to save the Isen-Rohan gameplay but these replays should show my problem too.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Seleukos I. am 23. Aug 2020, 15:22
Hi :)
I know what you are talking about and I agree on the general problem.
The most problematic factions are Isengart, Mordor and Lorien, I'd say, because they all have a very strong lg that is close to unbeatable for some factions and they all three can camp very well.
With their much stronger lg these factions force you to finish them early on, but that is very risky, because you invest a lot of money in siegeweapons and they have the defenders advantage (towers, healing, fear effects, (Angmar walls), attacking units hit buildings instead of enemy units, and so on).
Now as far as I know one of the "goals of 4.5" was to make comebacks easier. Changes like the inflation and the central CP-upgrades help with making comebacks easier.
Also, according to  this article  (https://modding-union.com/index.php/topic,35430.0.html) catapults should not be able to destroy an entire base and rams combined with infantry should storm the enemy base.  The problem is, that you often can’t attack a base with rams and melee units, especially not one of the named factions: Lorien for example can build the statues that cause your units to run away all the time. Two or three of these make any ram based attack impossible. Mordor also can build the watcher expansions to make any enemy run away in fear. Unless you have a permanent fear resistance in form of a hero you can’t attack.
Isengart has strong towers and warg expansions (you basically can’t kill the warg, as soon as the first one dies another one spawns) and can produce a lot of units very fast.

I don’t really have an idea how to solve this problem tho.   
Nerfing towers would certainly help, but it could lead to other problems (baserushes could be to strong again, like they were in MEGA).
Buffing catapults would kinda undermine the attempt of making sieges more dynamic and fun to play.
Some changes could be:
-nerfing of the warg century by adding a timer before the next warg spawns 
-removing the little wall parts of Isengart and Modor bases that make it impossible to shoot over them
-giving reliable fear resistance to all factions and/or removing the fear expansions Lorien and Mordor has
giving all factions a way to permanently reveal stealthed units at range and/or changing/removing the mist upgrade of the Lorien base

Also the walls and bridges of the Lorien base has a lot of hp, maybe that could be reduced as well (or the expansions should be attackable separately).


That are my thoughts on that topic for now :)

Best regards,
Seleukos
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: The_Necromancer0 am 23. Aug 2020, 16:34
Zitat
-nerfing of the warg century by adding a timer before the next warg spawns

I think the same should be applied to the Dire Wolf expansions of the Angmar Castle, if my memory serves they spawn basically non stop, worse than the spider catapults of 3.8.1

About the fear expansions, I think the cooldowns should be a lot longer, it has always seemed quite short. There is also the option of making it an activatable that the player has to click on (with an even longer cooldown since you get to pick when it activates).
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Le Sournois am 8. Nov 2020, 18:57
Hello,

My idea here is that pikes in general are too strong when they get heavy armors compared to swordsmen.
Swordsmen vulnerability to archers is 100 %  and when they get heavy armors, it is reduced to 65 % = -35 pts

Pikemen vulnerability to archers is 135 % and when they get heavy armors, it is reduced to 85 % = -50 pts, which is a lot more difference than for swordsmen.

Often in late game, I make a lot more pikemen because it is far easier to manage (moreover they get a better range in their attack, if I'm not mistaken ? so that they are not that bad even against swordsmen)

Above all, a very great and nice change in Edain 4.5.4 included the knight shields to protect the calavry even better against archers (which improves the gameplay in my opinion). But this change has made pikes even better than before because cavalry are even more vulnerable to them even with these shields.

To make up for their bad performance against cavalry, I suggest archers to do 100 % damage instead of 85 % against pikemen with heavy armors, which would make a difference of 35 pts as it is for swordsmen.

I feel that one of the strenghts for swordsmen is their reliability against archers, and that strenght should be emphasized even better when they get heavy armors whereas for pikemen, ennemy archers is supposed to be a weakness and that's not coherent in my opinion that their weakness is turned to a strenght once they get heavy armors.

Another suggestion :

To improve the gameplay even better, I think it would be a good idea to reduce slightly structural damage against heavy armors maybe (130 % instead of 150 %) and also to reduce very slighty the hero damage against heavy armors (140 % instead of 150 %) so that heavy armors would not result too much in a disadvantage as it can be sometimes. And that would make the idea that towers are OP in Edain less true as well.

Thank you

Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Gnomi am 8. Nov 2020, 21:47
Hey, just a smalll note on your beginning about the difference:
Zitat
Swordsmen vulnerability to archers is 100 %  and when they get heavy armors, it is reduced to 65 % = -35 pts

Pikemen vulnerability to archers is 135 % and when they get heavy armors, it is reduced to 85 % = -50 pts, which is a lot more difference than for swordsmen.
You did a small mathematical mistake here. You should not talk about explicit numbers and therefore not use subtraction, but about percentage differences and hence use division. Sutractions will look right in the first place, but there will be some errors, which will make these arguments wrong. In reality the difference is marginal - is is 63% for pikes and 65% for swords, so it is basically the same.

Please notice that I do not talk about any problems in particular (and I don't say that your points are wrong) - I just say that your mathematical argument is completely wrong.^^
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Le Sournois am 11. Nov 2020, 16:52
I admit I had not made maths advanced studies :D

Thank you for the complete answer and your correction. There is then not a difference between pikes and swordsmen when they equip heavy armors.

What remains of my point is only that then :
Cavalry is a better counter to swordsmen than swordsmen are to pikes because cavalry can trample and make the ennemy unable to attack back during a short time whereas swordsmen simply attack normally and seem sometimes to be more passive in combat than the pikemen (because of their poor range it seems).

Then archers could be a slightly better counter to fully upgraded pikes
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Elendils Cousin 3. Grades am 11. Nov 2020, 18:21
Cavalry is also twice as expensive as swordsmen. Additionally, pikes also are more vulnerable to archers, which only makes them effective against cavalry - they need to be a harder counter to cavalry to make up for that.
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Le Sournois am 14. Nov 2020, 10:40
Sorry, I have just a little question at last about elemental damage :

As pikes and swordsmen are vulnerable to 100 % to elemental damage,

if an archer do 100 damage, and equip fire arrows against ennemies with heavy armors, does it do :
85+100 = 185 damage against pikemen
65+100=165 against swordsmen

which seems quite negligable a difference, and that's what I thought at the beginning when I wrote my posts.

OR

85*2=170 damage against pikemen
65*2=130 damage against swordsmen

?

Thank you

Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: The_Necromancer0 am 14. Nov 2020, 10:56
Let's take an example using the Edain searcher (great tool btw (https://modding-union.com/index.php/topic,33200.0.html)). We're gonna have a look at the Gondor Archer.

The gondor archer deals 25 PIERCE damage and, when upgraded, an additional 15 FLAME damage.

When that archer fires at a Gondor Soldier they deal:
25*100% + 15*100% = 40 damage

when the soldier has heavy armor it becomes
25*65% + 15*100% = ~31

against gondor pikemen with heavy armor it goes from:
25*135% + 15*100% = ~49 (when they don't have heavy armor)

to
25*85% + 15*100% = ~36 (once upgraded with heavy armor)
Titel: Re: General Balance Discussion
Beitrag von: Vladimir am 4. Nov 2021, 19:59
Hi,

could you please buff Imladris on the map "Mission: Sturm auf das Auenland" (the tower defense map)? Compared to other factions, they are way to weak in the early game and are surely the worst faction. I have played them multiple times now in the early game and they are way way harder to play than other factions. It would be great if you make them viable because their late game is cool (I have never actually made it that far with Imladris but I guess the concept is nice lol).

The main reason why they are so weak is quite easy to fix: Dunedain Swordmen are way to overpriced. They cost 40 gold and have 450 hp and 40 damage. Now compare this to a Gondor Swordman that costs 30, has 400hp and 40 damage as well! So you are actually paying 33% more for the Imladris starting unit to get a 12% increase in HP. But this is not the only disadvantage for Imla...

The second problem is that the early game is all about spamming units to avoid getting flanked because if your troops get flanked, they will die instantly. Since the Dunedain cost 10 gold more, you will always have 3-4 less units on the field in the early game compared to Gondor or other factions, meaning you get flanked more easily. I have tried like 15 runs with Imladris in the early game (with different micro, positioning, etc.), and in only 3 or 4 I actually managed to clean-sweep the first ten waves (by sheer luck due to the enemy not clumping on one guy). And in this game mode it is crucial that you don't miss the gold in the early game, as you need to get that unit spam going, otherwise you don't kill the enemy --> no money --> no troops and more flanking damage.

To summarize, Imladris has two main problems here: 1) Their value in terms of HP per gold is bad, and 2) the higher unit costs results in you having less units on the map which means more flanking damage.

Solutions
A) You increase their health to at least 500, then you are getting a 25% increase in health when paying 33% more (Gondor soldiers as the base line).
B) Or you could decrease their cost to 35: Then you would get a 12% hp increase for a cost increase of 16%, making this more fair.

It would be really really nice if you could just fix this in the next patch because it is such a great gamemode! It shouldn't be such a big deal to change the numbers I think (**)

Edit: Compared to Lorien that also has 40 gold melees, Lorien swordmen at least one-hit most of the early enemy units, so you don't have that flanking-damage problem.