Main Factions Balance

[ghype]

I agree with Penta on his statement. Start with a single faction. That allows you to go in-depth and if you put some efforts on showcasing your data in a pleasant way, people will engage much better with it.

A good example on how to propose a Faction Rework is this: Dunefolk Rework. You will more likely be able to change things this way rather then the mess in the current thread.

[Hejnewar]

In theoretical scenario where ToD is always neutral, luck doesnt give any advantage and traits doesn't matter (if not stated otherwise).
-Saur and Spearman fight each other with only melee combat Spearman usually wins with visible advantege.

-If they fight using the most efficient attacks (so saurian ranged and spearman melee) it's almost equal.

-When both have strong trait (keep in mind that in neutral ToD strong trait doesnt benefit spearman much because Saur resistances will mitigate it to 6 dmg anyway). With melee only its almost equal and for saurian its visible advantage when using best attacks.

-When both have resilient trait it's almost equal chance for win for both sides with melee only. But when using best attacks Saurian wins with visible advantage.

Conclusion: This fight is quite equal but traits and better ranged attack benefit Saurian quite a bit, but in real game you often doesn't have time to use ranged attacks and in that scenario Spearman has his advantage.

"3 Hp for +1 gold? I would never make that tradeoff, 3 HP is not worth +1 more gold."

I actually disagree with just this statement. It highly depends on unit if its worth it or not. For whose this is super bad deal and for spearman its just bad deal, but for augur because of it's high dodge as well as focus on everything but hp its not that bad deal, it will hurt augur a bit but it would really be very small wound. At the same time because of increase in cost and how unit cost interacts with unit upkeep this small wound would disappear pretty much, making him just a tiny bit worse at rushing and the same at anything else. You could take a bit more risks for a bit higher cost.

I didn't want to go into numbers too much but if it will be needed i can do so.

[radarsu]

Stats I have copied that are not actual, well then, you must mean some of the stats you used, like dwarvish fighter having 60% mountain defense.

You're an awful human being. I meant hills and it's absolutely not hard for anyone to guess and understand what I meant. And that wasn't important information at all, yet you keep bringing it for some reason? You have absolutely 0 desire to understand my point of view. Sometimes you just want to find non-specific words and stay in opposition to my opinions. Eh...

If what you weren’t wrong you would be right. And then I wouldn’t point out the errors.

If you really want to - you will find "errors" in almost every sentence said by anyone in the world. And that's exactly what you're doing. Sometimes at least.

What is your point? Are you saying that you think im some kind of a fanatic who could never be convinced that something is imbalanced? If so then im disappointed, maybe just the changes you proposed are bad.

I'm simply saying that you cannot see nor understand the scale of changes I'm proposing. And you are not able to perceive differences between some unit being +-1 hp and you can't even say if ghoul should be 32 hp, 33 hp, 34 hp or give any other number. You just don't know the best value and don't have your own opinion about that - so you think it should be untouched at 33 hp.

FUN FACT: if you attack orc grunt during day or spearman during night with ghoul (which sounds like a good idea, because of how poison works & their lowest damage output), your ghoul will likely be left with 15/33hp, generally easy to get finished off.

I have said about your merman hunter change that it would probably be good, so I could go with that. Talking about balance and which changes I think would be good and why is a massive topic, and I would rather not go too deep into it here. People have talked about default balance on the forum since forever, this is just another thread that proposes questionable balance changes.

And they'll keep on talking forever. And no changes will ever be applied - thanks to people like you - who instead of embracing changes or proposing their solutions - just deny everything and want "100% evidence" for every single change and tons of data - which are not possible to obtain (TO BE CORRECT: in reasonable amount of time and effort, because obtaining game statistics would probably mean scanning thousands of replays and analyzing units performance & matchups (...)).

Well, at least we both agree on merman hunter.

Doesn’t low defense (and also high hp) make them less vulnerable to rng, and therefore harder to kill just through a series of lucky hits? And if you have a lot of one type of units vs a lot of other type of unit, the influence of RNG decreases.

I think what you mean is that drakes are vulnerable and they take a lot of damage, it is true, they are vulnerable to certain damage types like pierce and cold, and they do often take a lot of damage in general, but their balancing factors are their mobility, which allows them to choose engagements more easily, their high damage output, and their raw hp which means that even though they will take a lot of damage, they can then run away and heal in villages or with help of augurs, basically hit and run tactics.
They are expensive and not very survivable for the cost, but nevertheless their raw stats are very high, and they have the mobility to attack whenever they want and wherever they want.

Yes, that's what I mean. First of all - I don't intend to decrease RNG in drakes faction except for augur. That's not in my proposals. But just for a discussion purpose - how likely is it for 60% defense spearman, dwarf fighter, orc grunt or any other "base unit" to die to attack of 1 or 2 attackers? And how likely is that for burner, fighter, clasher (clasher might be able to survive in most of cases on very low hp, but it's 19g unit, not mobile like other drakes and his damage is low for that price - 6-4 just like elf fighter)?

To sum up - what makes drakes feel "RNG-based" in a lot of cases you cannot leave any drake open to 2 attackers, because it has huge likelihood of dying (like 60%). Other factions can leave their base units open to 2 attackers and feel pretty safe (probably it has 10% chance to die).

Also skirmisher can level up easier than spearman, if intelligent it has 18 xp vs 24 xp of the spearman, meaning it can level up after 2 kills and 2 fights, its an important advantage. Augurs also level up very fast, if you mix both and manage your xp well you will get level 2s way faster than your opponent.

The thing is - levelling up a unit is often tricky and requires some luck. Even if you secure saurian to gain exp, it can be easiely killed by single smash of enemy. And - I find it easier to level up 24 exp requiring spearman (which in general has 40 hp) than 25 hp saurian that requires 18 exp. Simply because saurian can die in so many occasions - and spearman will not.

Saurian is definitely not as hard a counter to spearman as HI is to skeletons, countering spearmen and beating them is not their only job.
In Wesnoth units don’t fight alone, skirmisher has skirmish and so can attack spearmen from more sides or can block them. And lets take your hypothetical situation as an example, say that spearman on 50% attacks the saurian on 60%, they trade roughly equally, with spearman taking a bit more damage, what happens next? Saurian runs away, its night and other saurian like augurs attack spearman and kill it and take its position, loyal loses the fight in this scenario.

Saurian is such a weak counter - that actually he can be not considered a counter at all. Do you think you would win a game recruiting only Saurians vs only Spearmans? Would that be easy game? I don't think so. Maybe it would be 60%-40% win for drakes, maybe for loyals. Remember that spearman is still cheaper unit.

@Pentarctagon

I would recommend first reducing the scope of your changes to a single faction that you believe the Undead have trouble with, at a minimum. Also, frankly, you're going to need to provide more evidence than you have so far.

How?

[Krogen]

„You're an awful human being. I meant hills and it's absolutely not hard for anyone to guess and understand what I meant. And that wasn't important information at all, yet you keep bringing it for some reason? You have absolutely 0 desire to understand my point of view. Sometimes you just want to find non-specific words and stay in opposition to my opinions. Eh...”

I absolutely understand your point of view, I just care about facts. I guess now simply correcting errors is being an awful human being.


“If you really want to - you will find "errors" in almost every sentence said by anyone in the world.”

Are you sure about that?


“And you are not able to perceive differences between some unit being +-1 hp and you can't even say if ghoul should be 32 hp, 33 hp, 34 hp or give any other number. You just don't know the best value and don't have your own opinion about that - so you think it should be untouched at 33 hp.

So if I don’t think some unit should be changed then that means I don’t know how it should be changed and why its not balanced? Funny.
I said I won’t talk about all the balance changes here, nothing would come of it, please accept that instead of continuing to trying to provoke me.


“FUN FACT: if you attack orc grunt during day or spearman during night with ghoul (which sounds like a good idea, because of how poison works & their lowest damage output), your ghoul will likely be left with 15/33hp, generally easy to get finished off.”

Got any more knowledge to enlighten me with? In your example if you attack orc grunt during day, if strong ghoul will take 14 damage max, if not strong it will take 12 damage. When attacking spearman at night the ghoul, whether its strong or not ghoul will take 12 damage max, in no case the ghoul takes 18 damage as you said.

But I bet now you will say that it doesn’t matter that your “FUN FACT” was totally wrong because im not trying to UNDERSTAND your point of view and I shouldn’t point out your mistakes.
You absolutely do not care about being correct, just about framing me and pushing your changes, you have shown exactly that.
You get things wrong and then just dismiss it when somebody corrects you, I don’t think anybody should even listen to you.


“And they'll keep on talking forever. And no changes will ever be applied - thanks to people like you - who instead of embracing changes or proposing their solutions - just deny everything and want "100% evidence" for every single change and tons of data - which are not possible to obtain (TO BE CORRECT: in reasonable amount of time and effort, because obtaining game statistics would probably mean scanning thousands of replays and analyzing units performance & matchups (...)).”

Another strawman, great.
I have made my position clear, you should start with accepting that your suggestions are not correct. And you seem to think that you know more than the top ladder players.


“But just for a discussion purpose - how likely is it for 60% defense spearman, dwarf fighter, orc grunt or any other "base unit" to die to attack of 1 or 2 attackers? And how likely is that for burner, fighter, clasher (clasher might be able to survive in most of cases on very low hp, but it's 19g unit, not mobile like other drakes and his damage is low for that price - 6-4 just like elf fighter)?”

Is that a real question? It depends on damage.


“To sum up - what makes drakes feel "RNG-based" in a lot of cases you cannot leave any drake open to 2 attackers, because it has huge likelihood of dying (like 60%). Other factions can leave their base units open to 2 attackers and feel pretty safe (probably it has 10% chance to die).”

Really? You are probably talking about spearmen at day, who are a counter to drakes.


“The thing is - levelling up a unit is often tricky and requires some luck. Even if you secure saurian to gain exp, it can be easiely killed by single smash of enemy.”

You have to put units that you gave xp where they are the least likely to die. And if its intelligent its just 2 kills, you get 1 kill, enemy tries to kill it, fails and you can level it up. You just have to get better at xp management.


“Saurian is such a weak counter - that actually he can be not considered a counter at all. Do you think you would win a game recruiting only Saurians vs only Spearmans? Would that be easy game? I don't think so. Maybe it would be 60%-40% win for drakes, maybe for loyals. Remember that spearman is still cheaper unit.”

Yeah I think I would totally win that (maybe it would be a bit harder if enemy had red mage leader or lieutenant), I would just attack at night and spearmen can do nothing against 60% saurian at night, and they will struggle even with ones on flat, though they will kill them.
And know that I have never lost a ladder game as drakes vs loyalists. It doesn’t mean I would win 100% but i have a general idea about how the matchup is played.


On a final note, thank you Hejnewar for checking that, btw Hejnewar has talked more in depth about balance in his posts, his last post is an interesting read.

[radarsu]

So if I don’t think some unit should be changed then that means I don’t know how it should be changed and why its not balanced? Funny.
I said I won’t talk about all the balance changes here, nothing would come of it, please accept that instead of continuing to trying to provoke me.

What I mean - if the ghoul had 1 hp currently and we would like to make him balanced - u wouldn't know if to achieve the best balance we should make him 30, 33 or 35 hp. Or you think 33 is the value that you would definitely pick?

Got any more knowledge to enlighten me with? In your example if you attack orc grunt during day, if strong ghoul will take 16 damage max, if not strong it will take 14 damage. When attacking spearman at night the ghoul, whether its strong or not ghoul will take 12 damage max, in no case the ghoul takes 18 damage as you said.

I didn't mean to give a 100% correct hp value. The quintessence of my statement was - ghoul, when poisoning melee fighters - almost always gets hurt badly - what leads to undeads losing their main "tank". In my opinion this is much worse unit than orcish assasin, which poisons without retaliation, is much faster, levels up faster (and has better defenses, actually assasin has very often better survive-ability than ghoul).

Is that a real question? It depends on damage.

That was rhetoric question, as answer was quite obvious, but for you it seems to be an actual question.

Really? You are probably talking about spearmen at day, who are a counter to drakes.

Spearmans & mermans & clashers during day, grunts/gobs/skele archers/saurians during night, thunderers/elvish archers during any time. Quite a bunch of units can do that. Especially if you don't get 47 tough drake, but a 37-40hp one. And you have only 30-40% defense, so getting 2-4 attacks in row is very likely.

You have to put units that you gave xp where they are the least likely to die. And if its intelligent its just 2 kills, you get 1 kill, enemy tries to kill it, fails and you can level it up. You just have to get better at xp management.

Yeah, you put full-hp 8/15 exp augur on safe spot, where only almost-dead dwarf fighter can touch him. And then it kills it in 3 lucky shots. I'm not saying drakes are bad or weak (on medium maps) - but the RNG when playing drakes is a big thing.

Would you argue that thunderers are more RNG-based units as well? If yes, I don't have any more questions.

Yeah I think I would totally win that (maybe it would be a bit harder if enemy had red mage leader or lieutenant), I would just attack at night and spearmen can do nothing against 60% saurian at night, and they will struggle even with ones on flat, though they will kill them.
And know that I have never lost a ladder game as drakes vs loyalists. It doesn’t mean I would win 100% but i have a general idea about how the matchup is played.

"spearmen can do nothing against 60% saurian at night". 5-3 damage (TO BE SPECIFIC: possibly 4-3 if not strong?) at 25hp unit is nothing?

[Pentarctagon]

@Pentarctagon

I would recommend first reducing the scope of your changes to a single faction that you believe the Undead have trouble with, at a minimum. Also, frankly, you're going to need to provide more evidence than you have so far.

How?

By doing some of the things you're saying would take too much time and effort, really. If you want to tweak stats and see if the balance turns out better because of them, then that's something you would use a custom era for. You aren't going to be able to get the stats of, especially, level 1 Default Era units changed in the official game without putting in a bunch of work to at least show that you won't be creating any problems worse than you're attempting to solve - if not because of balance, then because changing the stats of MP units between Wesnoth versions will cause OOS errors.

[Krogen]

This is the last post I will make here. The only reason I responded to this thread in the first place is because I dont want anyone to actually believe the things you said make sense. Responding further is pointless.


“Spearmans & mermans & clashers during day, grunts/gobs/skele archers/saurians during night, thunderers/elvish archers during any time. Quite a bunch of units can do that. Especially if you don't get 47 tough drake, but a 37-40hp one. And you have only 30-40% defense, so getting 2-4 attacks in row is very likely.”

You are going to enumerate all the non-drake units in Wesnoth? Some of the units you mentioned deal way more damage than others, try doing some math using the attacks of units you mentioned and you may find out something interesting. Im not going to go over every single unit here and all the possibilities and write down the chances for you.


“Would you argue that thunderers are more RNG-based units as well? If yes, I don't have any more questions.”

This is not an examination. And now you are talking about a completely different unrelated thing, thunderer has a single attack which has nothing to do with drakes, single attack is the only reason why it could be considered “more RNG-based”

[radarsu]

The only reason I responded to this thread in the first place is because I dont want anyone to actually believe the things you said make sense.

That's exactly what I felt. So your purpose wasn't either help or suggesting other balance changes. At least somehow a miracle happened and I forced you to agree that merman hunter could have 1 or 2 hp more.

By doing some of the things you're saying would take too much time and effort, really. If you want to tweak stats and see if the balance turns out better because of them, then that's something you would use a custom era for. You aren't going to be able to get the stats of, especially, level 1 Default Era units changed in the official game without putting in a bunch of work to at least show that you won't be creating any problems worse than you're attempting to solve - if not because of balance, then because changing the stats of MP units between Wesnoth versions will cause OOS errors.

You're asking me for means months of work worth approximately ~10 000 USD just in purpose to tweak some stats by 1 hp. If the game had 10000 avg players I would understand such approach and would think about making some wesnoth-stats.com website with advanced data analysis. But it's niche production played in average by ~119.8 players (data from last 30 days on steam) and my efforts wouldn't even increase game popularity by 1%.

When I saw topic from 2015 about win-rate stats I thought opening a thread about balance, because according to many games I play & watch everyday it didn't look to well to me. But the previous topic died and nothing has changed ever - so I thought opening new one is hopeless. Only some people convinced me that community actually cares about the game and might be open to changes. They were wrong.

We can close a thread. With such attitude our only option is to leave Wesnoth unbalanced (if you prefer: balanced as-is) forever. Or maybe I'll just create Ladder Era.

[josteph]

I recommend you to write an addon that implements your changes (factions, maps, whatever you want) and get people to playtest it.

[Hejnewar]

You're asking me for means months of work worth approximately ~10 000 USD just in purpose to tweak some stats by 1 hp. If the game had 10000 avg players I would understand such approach and would think about making some wesnoth-stats.com website with advanced data analysis. But it's niche production played in average by ~119.8 players (data from last 30 days on steam) and my efforts wouldn't even increase game popularity by 1%.

When I saw topic from 2015 about win-rate stats I thought opening a thread about balance, because according to many games I play & watch everyday it didn't look to well to me. But the previous topic died and nothing has changed ever - so I thought opening new one is hopeless. Only some people convinced me that community actually cares about the game and might be open to changes. They were wrong.

We can close a thread. With such attitude our only option is to leave Wesnoth unbalanced (if you prefer: balanced as-is) forever.

This game was created for free. People work on it for free. No-one here is getting paid for what they do. When I and some other people wanted better Dunefolk we started to work on it and we are trying to make them as good as we possibly can. Not to mention developers who work on this game for years now and never asked anyone about money. I'm not sure if they can even get any references from working on this game. And they are still doing that.

[ghype]

I doubt Steam data is appropriate to declare BoW player base.

[EarthCake]

I doubt Steam data is appropriate to declare BoW player base.

Look at Steam Charts Battle for Wesnoth. Here is the link:https://steamcharts.com/app/599390

[Hejnewar]

I doubt Steam data is appropriate to declare BoW player base.

Look at Steam Charts Battle for Wesnoth. Here is the link:https://steamcharts.com/app/599390

I believe that ghype was referring to fact that not every player is using steam version of this game.

Edit:
In poll that was done on polish site only 56% of players stated that they are using steam version of this game.

[EarthCake]

I believe that ghype was referring to fact that not every player is using steam version of this game.

Hmm, I myself don't use the steam version of this game, but I think it doesn't matter.

[radarsu]

This game was created for free. People work on it for free. No-one here is getting paid for what they do. When I and some other people wanted better Dunefolk we started to work on it and we are trying to make them as good as we possibly can. Not to mention developers who work on this game for years now and never asked anyone about money. I'm not sure if they can even get any references from working on this game. And they are still doing that.

I totally understand that. I've worked on such projects for a long time, for years, spending months happily to upgrade them. But the scale of requested work is unacceptable for changes requested. I was pointing out like 10 times, that my aim was doing as minor and tiny changes as possible - that could resolve problems I see in few units/factions balance. Just to remind, I asked mostly for +-2hp changes, not reinventing whole game balance. And what is requested from me suits the second one.

I doubt Steam data is appropriate to declare BoW player base.

Steam shows also players who are playing solo and tons of people idling in lobby. But that doesn't matter, game is not too popular - and everyone plays something else - so number of people playing actual default era battles on decent maps is sadly low.