Balancing attempts can unbalance ?

[Yomar]

'Hello to everyone, do someone think that some balancing actually unbalanced the game ?

I actually find v1.8 of Wesnoth the most balanced one, (I'm referring to the multiplayer default era not other things, like the campaigns for example).
Time ago I proposed to increase a little bit the mage's Hp (even just 1 Hp), also because the loy's cavalryman was nerfed a bit too much I think.
I mean the cavalryman was considered fine for years, then suddenly he gets a reduction of 4 Hp, that's a bit exaggerated I think.
Now after years of playing I can agree that maybe they were a bit OP, but that balancing attempt gone too far, I would have agreed if they were nerfed by one , two or even 3 Hp at most, but four ?

I'm going to explain, before I don't cared too much which faction I would get, but now I dislike Loyals a bit.
For example I can counter them much more easily, with the various factions, but this is not exactly the point.
For example till the Cavalry nerf, I used to win and lose evenly against Loyalist with Rebels, but now it's much easier to counter them, and I have much more trouble when I'm the one controlling them.

Here is why, now the mage is almost a "must" recruit in many situations, before Woses, Grunts, Griffins, Elvish Fighters and Elvish Riders (on favorable terrain) Griffins, Saurs, etc., could be countered with Cavalry, but now you need to recruit more often those expensive mages, that are so frail, many time just one unit is enough to kill him, and he does not have a favorite terrain where to hide, I know that he is not an defensive unit that's need protection, but even on offense he struggles, because most units survive to one mage, but the next turn they can kill him in one go, and it don't has even to be enemy's favorite time of the day.
Whit 24 base Hp even just the retaliations of two Elvish Fighters (or the same) with dex. trait is enough to kill a mage, you need at least 2 mages to kill a Wose but only one Wose to kill a mage (andWoses regen).
last thing is also that he needs a lot of Xp to evolve so you get rarely a Lv2 mage in multiplayer, or he dies before or the game finishes.
Before the Cavalryman nerf, you could counter the Woses better, Ok you still need at least 3 lucky cavs to kill a Wose in one turn (not conidering traits), but at least before the nerfing they could withstand some more retaliation, now during day just one Wose (or two if in the same turn) can kill a Strong and Resilient cavalryman (10x4= 40), like when you get 20 Hp in retaliation and another 20 during Wose's attack turn.

Rebels don't have the problem of being "forced" to recruit mages, cause they are more versatile, they can recruit Druid's, Woses, or Fighters to counter many enemies that otherwise would require a mage, (Saurs, Woses, Undeads etc.), same for removing units in villages or entrenched, they have various options, like hit with Woses and if they survive finish with archers or fighters, or slow them with Druids and attack without too much fear using any unit you want, if he survives you have an another turn without even the need to slow it again.

These were some consideration, from the experience from games played whit my friends.

In conclusion, increasing the Mage HP would rebalance the game, but the best thing in my humble opinion would be to give back to the cavalryman some HP (not all of them, that would OP him a bit), even just one would change things, after all he can not get more than 40% def anywhere, is slowed down by many terrains, not cross some that other scouts can and is also not the fastest scout either.

The game is still pretty balanced, I just say it can be still fine tuned even more.

I would also like the opinion of other experienced players.

[Heindal]

There has been discussion like this, since the game existed. I personally think that the rebels have been a strong faction ever since. They have good defense on grass and supreme defense on forest and those are the main components of a basic map. However thinking that way, you will get quickly defeated as every faction has its drawbacks.

The Rebels for instance don't have many units with impact, except the wose which is very expensive and vulnerable on every other terrain, except for forest. With an army of skeletons, which are not so affected by pierce ranged attacks, the elven units can get in serious problems, while they are the fear of any draken commander. I personally believe that you can counter any strategy with clever tactics and knowing the enemy units.

[Yomar]

Yeah, but I took Rebels only as example, Goblins, Archers and even Grunts are more dangerous against Cavalryman cause his low defense (at least the elvish horse can try to hold the ground on an favorable hex).
As specifically for Rebels, they don't have so much trouble against Skeleton, Druids coupled with some fighters and a Wose crush them.
I have the impression that Elvish units are powerful (quick,good defenses, many special abilities and most have meele and ranged attacks.
I think that the Elvish Fighter should have his ranged attack lowered by one point (I mean whith Dextery trait he becomes almost a ranged unit), but I know that this will not happen, because there are a lot of Elvish "Fans" that would get angry and developers are probably scared of their reaction, lol.

But still not too much time ago the Cavalryman was nerfed, Ok maybe after some discussions he was considered a bit OP, but a 4 HP nerf seems an exaggeration to me, 1 or 2 would have been more reasonable (and for sure not more than 3), and unballanced the game.

Beside someone can link me to the discussion, where they decided to apply this Cavalryman nerfing ?

[Eagle_11]

The name of the lvl1 unit is somewhat misleading, it should be 'Mounted Infantry', which actually does better to reflect what it actually is: an infantryman, armed with an blade, mounted on an horse for superior mobility.

He is not an heavily armored knight(ironically, knights seem to be lighter armored than cavalry in wesnoth) that could tank the damage, nor is an superior unit towards other forces in it's lvl range.

[Yomar]

The name of the lvl1 unit is somewhat misleading, it should be 'Mounted Infantry', which actually does better to reflect what it actually is: an infantryman, armed with an blade, mounted on an horse for superior mobility.

He is not an heavily armored knight(ironically, knights seem to be lighter armored than cavalry in wesnoth) that could tank the damage, nor is an superior unit towards other forces in it's lvl range.

Interesting comment, but that was not the point of this topic.

[Velensk]

I really don't think the cavalry nerf was in any way too severe and still consider loyalists to be very strong. It's actually kind of funny that cavalry can still be so oppressive despite being one strike more frail in almost all instances.

However on the actual name of this thread: Of course they can. It's inevitable. If you've ever spent multiple years attempting to balance an era even with fewer than 6 factions you'll see how this works. There's quite a bit of work that could be done to change the balance around in mainline Wesnoth and a few obvious problems that don't yet have patches. There are several reasons for this but just to list a few:

--One problem is that not everyone, even all the experienced players, agree on exactly where these are or how they're to be fixed (for instance, I don't mind playing undead vs rebels on most maps but a lot of people would highlight that match-up as an issue). About the only thing I am aware of that is universally considered a huge problem is the undead vs knalgans match-up.

--Even if you do identify an issue that needs fixing, actually fixing it can be an issue. If you want to prove empirically that any change will fix the problem (or even just be an overall improvement), it takes convincing a lot of other expert level players to play with a modification (a lot of them don't want to bother) and play repeatedly enough that you can get a good sample size for all 6 (or 5 if you ignore mirror) match-ups affected.
---You can simply upload changes to the current development version but you basically have the same challenge. It's a little more convenient for them but at the same time splitting your multiplayer community between a development and main server has some downsides.

--The above is just for what happens when you want to make minor changes. If you want to make more major changes like adding a new unit (which is something I'd actually advocate for the undead given free reign and enough time/energy to push the agenda) then people start demanding that you give a good reason for the change and empirical proof which in my experience it's even harder to get people to test, and sometimes the need for some other support (like an artist to make/animate the unit).

The net result, is that frequently when a change is identified and everyone can agree that it's urgent (like the cavalry certainly were) it's a lot easier to just make something official happen right away and see if it works than to go through any kind of process to see that it won't cause other problems. A -4 hp change to cavalry is simple enough that even if there are consequences, they shouldn't be so far reaching as to throw everything so far out of whack that it'll destroy everything. IMO this change worked out fairly well.

I would like it if some similar change was made to help the UD vs K matchup some however, due to the causes for that particular imbalance, there's no simple change that would actually fix the problem. The further you get from a simple change the more potential you have to cause problems and the more needed it is to go through the exhausting process of convincing experts to play with you and give feedback. As I mentioned earlier, the way I would like to try and solve this issue would be to give the undead a new unit but this certainly falls into the 'this would have to be heavily tested, you'll have to put up with a ton of debate and pushback ect.' category of changes and I don't have the time or energy to embark on such a project at the moment. In all though, I'd rather someone take the time to make some kind of change that might unbalance things than that nobody work on it at all and leave the issue untouched.

In regards to your comment about mages getting more hp: You could definitely work to balance wesnoth around mages having more hp but as wesnoth currently stands it's designed around mages being intentionally the least efficient units in the game. It puts what strengths they have at a premium (which helps emphasize the importance of terrain) and helps undead have a chance of not being horribly crushed by loyalists and rebels each game. However know that the effects run deeper than you might think. If mages took even 1 more hit for undead to kill on average, that would be a significant change. If you want to take the time to try to make all of the little (or possibly not so little) adjustments to make that work I don't think anyone would object on principle but it could end up being a lot of work.

[Yomar]

Velensk, your comments are always very interesting to read.

Ah yes, Knalgan Vs Undeads, I don't even try to write anything about that match-up, first because it would take too much time, second because other ppl already wrote a lot about it.
By saying it clear, the Knalgan faction is way to overpowered against Undeads, yes you can still win as in every other game (luck, map, situation, ecc.), but I won many times easily against Undeads when I had the "luck" of getting Knalgans, and also saw very good players loosing against less than average ones.
I wonder if they nerfed footpads trying to balance this particular match-up.

Returning to the cavalryman, usually you change the attributes just a bit, then after some time ,if its not enough, you change it more, you take off 1 or 2 Hp, not 4, 5 or whatever.

[Wesnother]

I think that the Elvish Fighter should have his ranged attack lowered by one point (I mean whith Dextery trait he becomes almost a ranged unit)

Very true, they are the only melee fighters that with their bows, given the right circumstances, can do the same amount of damage as some ranged specialist like poachers and augurs.

The Rebels for instance don't have many units with impact, except the wose which is very expensive and vulnerable on every other terrain, except for forest.

Same is true for loys but just worse, almost same cost but less hp, less access to hexes, more slowed by terrains and no regeneration.

[name]

I really don't think the cavalry nerf was in any way too severe and still consider loyalists to be very strong. It's actually kind of funny that cavalry can still be so oppressive despite being one strike more frail in almost all instances.

What was the goal of the cavalry nerf, btw? Was it specifically to help northerns when up against loyalists?

As I mentioned earlier, the way I would like to try and solve this issue would be to give the undead a new unit but this certainly falls into the 'this would have to be heavily tested, you'll have to put up with a ton of debate and pushback ect.' category of changes and I don't have the time or energy to embark on such a project at the moment. In all though, I'd rather someone take the time to make some kind of change that might unbalance things than that nobody work on it at all and leave the issue untouched.

An undead unit to counter dwarfish fighters?

What features would you give your new undead unit, if you did have the time to pursue it?

[Velensk]

Cavalry were not just oppressive vs northerners, they were pretty oppressive for everyone except drakes and other loyalists to deal with (and to a lesser extent knalgans could resist them though they still made attacking hard). Even undead would have problems as skeleton archers would still lose to cavalry at day and with cavalry being so mobile you'd never catch them any other time. Northerners were just the worst case (though that was as much addressed by making the northerner archers stronger as making cavalry weaker).

Dwarf fighters aren't at all an issue for undead. Undead have always had efficient enough tools to deal with them given their relative mobiility. The primary issues with the match-up is how footpads and ulfserkers can be used on combination to suppress the options the undead have.

The key points for the unit I would like to give undead would be that it should be slightly more mobile than the undead are in general, it should be a good counter to ulfsekers (drain is a good tool for making a unit better against ulfserkers without making it necessarily a strong melee unit) and it should be relatively resistant to footpad harass. In general I believe that both for the sake of balance and in fitting with the undead theme it should be a fairly specialized unit in general.
---This may sound something like the ghosts but ghosts don't work well enough here as if you mass deploy ghosts, you may be resistant to footpads but you can't kill them and ghosts are too expensive to give you full village coverage. The new unit would need to be able to threaten footpads so that the moves they can currently do safely become overextending.

[name]

Given the narrow specificity of the problem you describe, it does sound like you are less talking about a new unit and more a modified ghost... or a modified bat.

Like reduce the recruit cost of a ghost to 18 or 19 or make the level one blood bat the default recruitable bat?

[Velensk]

Cheaper ghosts would not be the answer I'd go for and making blood bats recruitable wouldn't really change the situation at all given their price. Ghosts are actually already quite powerful in a way, it's simply that they are not a quickly lethal threat and the toughness that is a part of their utility is conditional on the enemy not having fire/arcane. Knalgans lack magic and their best answer to ghosts are unreliable. Much cheaper ghosts would help the early game battle for control in this match-up but could make the endgame pretty one-sided in favor of the undead. That said, I imagine a small change in price would probably not be too devastating to balance, but I'm not sure a small change would be enough. Early on footpads could still pin the ghosts, later on the knalgans still wouldn't have any good answers to ghosts but it probably wouldn't matter because a large number of ghosts would still be too damage inefficient (until you have a critical mass of both ghosts and adepts at which point the knalgans really have no good answers at all).

I will say though, that you really don't want a strategic requirement for there to be lots of ghosts simply because it simply wouldn't be very fun.

The theme I had in mind was Vampire. Relatively resistant to blade/impact and vulnerable to pierce. Backstabbing drain attack with just enough damage to beat or almost beat ulfserkers on defense most of the time given both sides blade resistance(fangs), alternate blade attack for conventional fighting (claws). Somewhat more mobile than undead typically are and tough enough to survive a lot of things that normally kill undead but not enough damage/expensive enough to not be a good line unit. Backstab in particular could make a lot of the typical footpad shenanigans much much riskier (and also make situations where it can attack the ulfserker directly with nearly no risk of losing).

[Yomar]

I think that the main problem are the footpads, if it was not for them undead players could cover adepts more easly against ulfseekers.
I always thought that Footpads are a bit too resistant to be elusivefoots, the combination of beign cheap+fast+high defense+ impact dammage type+ having both melee and ranged attacks+relatively high hp, makes them a problem for every enemy side, you can use them to press any faction at night, (and in many situations keep the ground during day) ever heard of Hodor ?
Beign hard to hit on almost any terrain is ok if you have little hp but footpads have a little bit too many, something that allows them to resist to that extra blow that would just kill a thief or a fencer for example.
So I would try to reduce his hitpoints a bit, before attempting to introduce a new unit, that would require more time, work, testing, and may bring balance issues.

P.S.
But I always had the feeling that undeads should have vampires, and always wondered why they were missing in this faction.
Maybe lv.1 vampires should be a sort of slave vampires or semi-vampires and become true vampires only at lv.2, then vampire lords, elder vampire, ancient vamire and so on.

[Gyra_Solune]

Cheaper ghosts would not be the answer I'd go for and making blood bats recruitable wouldn't really change the situation at all given their price. Ghosts are actually already quite powerful in a way, it's simply that they are not a quickly lethal threat and the toughness that is a part of their utility is conditional on the enemy not having fire/arcane. Knalgans lack magic and their best answer to ghosts are unreliable. Much cheaper ghosts would help the early game battle for control in this match-up but could make the endgame pretty one-sided in favor of the undead. That said, I imagine a small change in price would probably not be too devastating to balance, but I'm not sure a small change would be enough. Early on footpads could still pin the ghosts, later on the knalgans still wouldn't have any good answers to ghosts but it probably wouldn't matter because a large number of ghosts would still be too damage inefficient (until you have a critical mass of both ghosts and adepts at which point the knalgans really have no good answers at all).

I will say though, that you really don't want a strategic requirement for there to be lots of ghosts simply because it simply wouldn't be very fun.

The theme I had in mind was Vampire. Relatively resistant to blade/impact and vulnerable to pierce. Backstabbing drain attack with just enough damage to beat or almost beat ulfserkers on defense most of the time given both sides blade resistance(fangs), alternate blade attack for conventional fighting (claws). Somewhat more mobile than undead typically are and tough enough to survive a lot of things that normally kill undead but not enough damage/expensive enough to not be a good line unit. Backstab in particular could make a lot of the typical footpad shenanigans much much riskier (and also make situations where it can attack the ulfserker directly with nearly no risk of losing).

To me the ideal unit you describe immediately makes me think of the Skeleton Rider unit that's in a few campaigns - though it could use some adjustments. Cavalry units are typically weak to piece but resist blade/impact - since it's an undead unit it might be a middle ground between that and typical undead resists. It'd likely be just about as fast as a Ghost (and thus a Footpad, and have decent offensive power...perhaps even a charge attack? But maybe impact, and one that hits a number of times since that tends to work a little better for elusive units. If we go for charge, maybe something lower-end like a 4-3 trampling attack (though 10-3 offensive damage at night is pretty good, especially if this is on something like a 17-18 gold unit - leaning towards 18 on this). If we don't, a 5-4 mace perhaps? And something like...20% pierce resist, 40% blade resist, and 0% impact resist, along with typical cavalry terrain bonuses, but only something like 32 HP.

Alternately, a somewhat silly idea I've been entertaining recently - some kind of Skeleton Monk as an alternate promotion to the Skeleton Archer. Primarily inspired by how at level 1 it has an Impact sidearm - namely its bare fists - but at level 2 it ditches that for the typical archer's dagger, and technically speaking you're not supposed to totally abandon options like a melee impact thing. I'm thinking it'd look more like the Duelist/Man-at-arms than anything else, it'd be really fast and elusive but with only barely any more HP (something like 36), and possibly something like a 4-4 backstab fist attack along with its 6-3 bow retained.

The first seems like it'd solve the problem better for sure ^^, but I do agree the Undead could use some kind of alternate unit - although, to be honest, I've sort of had decent success using a lot of bats when dealing with footpads and berserkers, so maybe it was designed so that matchup would have bats be the dominant unit in the early game?

[Velensk]

So I would try to reduce his hitpoints a bit, before attempting to introduce a new unit, that would require more time, work, testing, and may bring balance issues.

I do agree the Undead could use some kind of alternate unit - although, to be honest, I've sort of had decent success using a lot of bats when dealing with footpads and berserkers, so maybe it was designed so that matchup would have bats be the dominant unit in the early game?

I think this thread is a good demonstration of what happens and is part of the reason why I didn't really wish to give more specifics earlier.

I don't actually want to discuss the implications/viability of any new unit unless there's a serious chance that it'll get tested.

Just so that it can't be said that I'm ignoring your responses:
@Yomar: The problem is, that footpads are only incredibly strong in this match-up and yet they're important in more more match-ups where they're barely strong enough to fill their role. Making them weaker makes the loyalist and northerner match-ups in particular more difficult. The moment they're no longer at the whim of traits as to whether or not they can survive 2 grunt hits, or anything that makes one of the few good knalgan answers to heavy infantry worse, they become rather unreliable. It's intentional that footpads are very resilient for an elusive foot, it is their role. Footpad sell themselves entirely on 7 mp, impact damage and the fact that their hp is just enough higher than all the other elusive that it takes one more strike to kill them, and that one extra hit can be hard to get vs an elusive. If you take that away and neither the 7 mp or the impact damage will matter as much anywhere except vs undead. There's plenty of reliable answers to them, undead has reliable answers to them, it's just that all their answers are vulnerable to ulfserkers, and even a poisoned 1 health ulfserker is a major threat to undead if they can't get a unit to it to finish it off.

@Gyra_Solune: There are a lot of potential units that could work. A lot could be said in discussing the various merits of each but I've reached a point where I find it unsatisfying to spend a lot of time discussing things that aren't going to be acted on. I'll admit I find your talk of beating footpads and ulfskerers with bats to be interesting and unlikely against a good player. Footpads should be able to do fine against bats and if you invest heavily into bats you should be incredibly vulnerable to a second day attack using more conventional forces. At day, even ulfserkers do fine against bats.