How to balance your faction

IPS · Post by **IPS** » November 16th, 2010, 5:29 pm

Dixie wrote:
it costs almost a 33% more (so the 133% of the price of a spearman)
Nitpick: Mages cost almost 50% more than spearmen, hence near 150% of the price, not 133%. To be more precise, it would be around 143%. Try it: 20/14 * 100.

Yeah, for more presicion I must done 20/14 like you said

Dixie wrote:
Then, again, the mage, although underpowered, is a necessary addition the Loyalists and Rebels, and the decrease in power doesn't impair that: factions are balanced vs factions, not units vs units.

Can sound weird to you, but I do not belive at all in this "faction are balanced vs factions"

This spoiler is a reasson of why I'm not right in this:

Spoiler:

fog_of_gold · Post by **fog_of_gold** » November 16th, 2010, 5:59 pm

IPS, as you already said, there isn't magic, an important special. This is what I mean by just believe me.
For your system of gold cost, allow me to give an example:
unit1:
5 hits
2-1 dmg
2 coins to pay

unit2:
5 hits
1-1 dmg
1 coins to pay

you are able to get two unit2s against one unit1.
For easier calculations, there's no luck and they will only die after a round.
Rxy:="The hitpoints after the round x of the unit y"
unit one is from the type unit1
unit two is from the type unit2
unit three is from the type unit2

R11=3
R12=3
R13=5

R21=1
R22=1
R23=5

R31=-1^=0 -dead-
R32=-1^=0 -dead-
R33=4

That means, the unit2 won with nearly the half of his army.
My formula will therefore work while yours won't.
If you want to see a reasoning for this, admittedly weird, formula, look at the end of the reasoning in my first post:
"It might be logical that you just need to divide the result by the cost to get it included. But that's not right. One example:
You have a unit with 10 hitpoints and 1 damage costing 2 gold. It's power is therefore 5. Another unit have 5 hitpoints do 1 damage and costs one gold. It's power is therefore also 5. The second unit costs half than the first one and you can therefore recruit two of them to kill one of the first one. The problem is, that the power of the army of these two units 2*(5*1)=10 is. This is more than 5.
The thing is missing here, is, that one more unit doesn't mean one more of its power. The power of an army is able to be gotten by: ([hits]*[amount])*([dmg]*[amount])*([moves]+1). You have a special amount of gold. It's named g. You can recruit g/cost units now. This means, [amount]=g/[cost] and therefore what we need to use is: [hits]*[dmg*([moves]+1)/[cost]²/g² g doesn't depend on the unit and can therefore be a part of the other side of the equation."

Also: "This spoiler is a reasson of why I'm not right in this"
You are right, you aren't right about this.

If you mean "this is the reasoning why I'm right, why I don't agree that you should do faction vs faction balancing", please allow me to ask, what your undead's strategy has to do with unit balancing.
In my opinion, you need both, unit balancing and faction balancing.
I have an example for both possiblities:
no UvsU:
have a spearman with 100% to all damage types expect one - there, you have -520%. Such a unit can, if you have one for every damage type, be balanced. But it won't be lonly.
no FvsF:
Why not include a unit with 1 hitpoint, 1 damagepoint, 1 move and 100 gold cost into mainline? -Such a unit is always counterable and it won't decrease the faction's power. It therefore won't change the FvsF balance. This is the reason you also need UvsU.

IPS · Post by **IPS** » November 17th, 2010, 2:55 pm

fog_of_gold wrote: no UvsU:
have a spearman with 100% to all damage types expect one - there, you have -520%. Such a unit can, if you have one for every damage type, be balanced. But it won't be lonly.
no FvsF:
Why not include a unit with 1 hitpoint, 1 damagepoint, 1 move and 100 gold cost into mainline? -Such a unit is always counterable and it won't decrease the faction's power. It therefore won't change the FvsF balance. This is the reason you also need UvsU.

The thing of the unit of 100 cost price and with 1 hitpoint, 1 damagepoint and 1 move sounds really interesting, it shouldn't change the faction's balance because nobody will want to recruit it

Wondering this idea, I think wesnoth done that to the mages don't be a mainline unit, but it converts it as an optional unit. Spearmen as an example are also more obligatory to build, they have more hp and good offensive for a cheap price. A guy in my team told me the reasson of why the spearmen and the bowmen spamming is that cheap, he said me it's because it's not balanced, if you risks to build only spearmen and bowmen then a bones spamming can crush you; but he told me if he see skeletons in the enemy line, then he buy mages and with that completes his balance.

After watching this too, I changed a bit my vision of the mages, but if his oponent were a bit better than that noob what he crushed, he must had an harder game than this ... no adepts in the udead faction means only death.

When I was a noob, I have heard once the HI + mages are the solution to kill every undead player. But a day a undead player crushed me with a dark adept rush, then I have noted the Dark Adepts are effective againist the mages and the heavies.

This is the reasson of why my strategy has much adepts: they are effective againist loyalists, but this is not enought. To compense, I use skeletons and skeletical archers ... well ... more skeletical archers than skeletons ... this is because I have noticed in a game the calvary is effective againist the dark adepts because their 20% res to cold, I could watch this because for a misstake what I done, I have thinked the calvary will make me lose the line, it has only a hp like 19, it was afternoon and only a dangerous unit could reach it (that adept), but the adept dealed to it 8-2 and after I have noticed of it's high ressistances. To compense the ranged part of my strategy I use skeletons, this is to crush mages by mele and this helps a lot my adepts to take less or nothing of dammage by those mages. Bats are to take neutral and enemies villages and for spying

fog_of_gold · Post by **fog_of_gold** » November 17th, 2010, 5:56 pm

IPS wrote:
fog_of_gold wrote: no UvsU:
have a spearman with 100% to all damage types expect one - there, you have -520%. Such a unit can, if you have one for every damage type, be balanced. But it won't be lonly.
no FvsF:
Why not include a unit with 1 hitpoint, 1 damagepoint, 1 move and 100 gold cost into mainline? -Such a unit is always counterable and it won't decrease the faction's power. It therefore won't change the FvsF balance. This is the reason you also need UvsU.
The thing of the unit of 100 cost price and with 1 hitpoint, 1 damagepoint and 1 move sounds really interesting, it shouldn't change the faction's balance because nobody will want to recruit it

Yes, you won't. This is the reason you also need unit balancing. You can't include such a unit in mainline.

IPS wrote:Wondering this idea, I think wesnoth done that to the mages[...]

Mages are, if you want to say that, not useless. They're need against saurians, dwarvish and elves to move them out of good terrain. But this exactly is faction vs. faction balance.

IPS · Post by **IPS** » November 17th, 2010, 6:47 pm

fog_of_gold wrote: Mages are, if you want to say that, not useless. They're need against saurians, dwarvish and elves to move them out of good terrain. But this exactly is faction vs. faction balance.

I'm right with this point. They are useful againist every unit in high defense, and lowly more useful than a spearman to kill some units in plains. But I think the dark adept is much better, costs less for the same job and it works good againist every unit and have some more hitpoints.

Well ... noway, thanks for the talk, I may come back for more other day

Tet · Post by **Tet** » March 28th, 2011, 6:23 pm

I have to resurect this.
Basically there are two values of a unit: fighting power and mobility. Fighting power allways is hits times damage. How much they can deal while tanking basically. Move is a value of itself as this is the tactical option of availabilty on the field. Othere thinks like poison, (berserk), slow, healing are options which have a value regardless off the units power. The original excel really does not work here very well. The addition of all the different attacks is really not so good as we are looking on options here. I would recommend strongest (melee or range) attack full second (range or melee)attack half. Only if one is melee and one is range. Magical needs consideration. You multiply with 1.4 wich is a lot, but maybe ok.

Resistance is good, but only affects the tanking. So it belongs to fighting power. 2-yourvalue does the job. Please note: It is the value against the actual oponent and not the average which counts. Ok let leave the average, I am basically only using your data.

Missing is defence: you need at least an average value for all units and it will go into power. The fencer is in example a week unit but has great defences as has the footpath and the assasin.

Missing is the Movetyp. Some unit have a better movetyp than others. Building an average would be better than nothing. Flying is basically better than heavyfood or so. You do not provide data. So no consideration. It would go into mobility of course. And of course the actual map would affect the weighting. A water map needs other types than a cave map or a snow map. But average weighting might be ok. Movetype is definetly missing in your logic.

I can not follow your arguments about cost. If you pay twice you should get double NOT quadruple. We really would need higher level units data to check the formula.

I put a weighting in to balance the deviation between speed and power. 55%speed and 45%power is the average. It brings the deviation down to 11%! So move is important. But you proberbly know that quick is considered the best trait together with intelligence for standard units. Of course the actual value would shift according to map and task. But the value is choosen to bring the deviation down. 50/50 has a deviation of 12%.

Goblin spareman is the winner, but the fellow has no zoc and is the only level 0 in your list.
Ulfsker is the looser. These fellows really suck. But you could bring berserk into consideration by doubling or threebling the attack power. Mages are bad. And they are bad. We just need the higher levels so what to do? Fencer and Assasins are bad (use defence for weighting)

here is the data:

Spoiler:

naxoegg · Post by **naxoegg** » March 31st, 2011, 5:45 pm

damn lots of technical stuff here

Post by **thespaceinvader** » April 3rd, 2011, 1:37 pm

naxoegg wrote:damn lots of random nonsense that looks like technical stuff here

I fixed it for you

Tet: no, you really didn't have to resurrect it.

Accordingly, locked.

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