who can tell me the principal of wesnoth balancing?

[AxalaraFlame]

l want to change my units' attributes fair and wise, and solve some problems which oppose common sense. But it seems that the balancing job of wesnoth is a chaos. There is actually no stable relationships between a unit's price and its abilities, nor do l find anything keeps the balance of level ups. Does anybody know some details about balancing works? or you have some formulas to calculate a unit's worth? l will be appreciated if there is some help

[ivanovic]

l want to change my units' attributes fair and wise, and solve some problems which oppose common sense. But it seems that the balancing job of wesnoth is a chaos. There is actually no stable relationships between a unit's price and its abilities, nor do l find anything keeps the balance of level ups. Does anybody know some details about balancing works? or you have some formulas to calculate a unit's worth? l will be appreciated if there is some help

There is no way to just have balancing done by some magic formula. This simply does not work due to too many factors being involved. For example balancing also involves considering the effects of available traits. In general balancing has to take the following things into account:

• HP
• XP required to level
• attacks (type, amount, damage)
• defence value on terrain
• MP and movement type
• abilities
• alignment
• possible traits
• gold for recruiting
• probably lots of stuff I forgot

If you stated that the gold required to recruit "higher level units" seems to be strange then I'd say it might be right since those are not as well balanced as the units available via factions in the default era. Those factions from the default era (with their respective units) are balanced in a way to ensure that the best of our players are basically even matched, no matter which faction they use.

At FOSDEM2012 in Brussels Jeremy Rosen (aka Boucman) gave a lovely talk about balancing and how it is done as part of the "Open Source Game Development" devroom. Basically it relies on the feedback of the top players as well as some good sense. The slides as well as an audio recording of this talk (as well as some other talks) are available here: http://files.unknown-horizons.org/~fosdem/
This is a temporary hosting solution and the plan is to move the files over directly to the fosdem site once the okay (or decline) from all speakers was given. Yes, only talks from speakers that okayed it are available there so far, more might follow.

[tr0ll]

(aside)
principal = most important person in a group or an amount of money to be repaid.
principle = idea or concept.

[ancestral]

Assuming that the default era in Wesnoth is fairly balanced, you can start by roughly modeling your units to those in the game. Then play-test and adjust accordingly, and go from there.

[Iris]

Moved to Faction & Era Development.

[Raket]

Hi,

I think Wesnoth is balanced in a matter of how factions, as a whole, operate.
Units are not balanced against eachother, but factions are.

Basically each unit has a bonus and downside,
the Orcish Grunt is the main staple fighter of the Northerners, and it has high damage but the downside is low strikes.
The Skeleton is the main staple fighter of the Undead, it resists pierce and blade, the most common attack types,
making it almost immune to the fighters of the other factions, but the downside is that is easily taken down by mages because it's weak to fire and arcane,
or by warriors with impact damage.

If the bonus is way greater than the downside, it has to be more expensive.
The Horseman for example can do tremendous damage on the offense at daylight, but in return it costs 23g and can be risky if used without caution.

To sum up the factions balanced playstyles;

Loyalists are balanced overall - no real strengths or weaknesses. very adaptable.
Rebels are flexible and have good movement, also terrain dependent (forests) which can work either to or against your favor.
Northerners are cheap, quantity over quality, overwhelming. downside is that the individual units tend to be weaker.
Knalgans are somewhat like the loyalists, adaptable but also terrain dependent (mountains). outlaws cover dwarves weakness and vice-versa.
Undead have unusual resistances or rely on annoyances, it forces other factions to counter you more than any other faction.
Drakes are the exact opposite of Northerners, quality over quantity. powerful individual units, but more expensive.

When balancing factions, just keep in mind that every faction needs the 4 main "classes" i.e melee staple fighter, an archer, a scout and a tank.
after that comes "specialty/situational" units that are unique to that faction. Make each unit different from other faction counterparts by giving it an advantage in something but a disatvantage in something else. i.e high power but low strikes, high strikes but low power, high HP but low defense,
high defense but low HP, on and on.

[AxalaraFlame]

thank you all, but at last does someone know about some details, for example, a faction's atk level on which kind of atk and range or melee, or a faction's hp level setting.

those things are absurd, which break the common sense, l think:

heavy infantry man doesnt resist impact well. but if strengthen its impact resistances, knalgans will get a little bit hard in dealing with them

elf fighter's bow has a minium damage of 3, which is unreasonable

[ivanovic]

thank you all, but at last does someone know about some details, for example, a faction's atk level on which kind of atk and range or melee, or a faction's hp level setting.

those things are absurd, which break the common sense, l think:

heavy infantry man doesnt resist impact well. but if strengthen its impact resistances, knalgans will get a little bit hard in dealing with them

elf fighter's bow has a minium damage of 3, which is unreasonable

They are not absurd since the balancing is also based on how everything interacts faction wise. So yeah, elf fighters just get a tiny little training in using bows, so they are not good with it. The heavy infantry armour on the other hand might be worked in a way which makes it a little more vulnerable to impact attacks...

Yes, not everything in balancing has to be 100% logical, but if you think enough there might be some reason to state why this is the case, though the real reason is plain and old balancing.

[Araja]

Not sure how helpful it is, but as a rule of thumb, units do roughly 10 damage for each level, starting at 0.

Level 0s do roughly 10 damage, level 1s do roughly 20 damage, level 2s do roughly 30 damage, and so on. It can vary by a few numbers either way and there are of course exceptions, but it's usually true.

Taking the ever-popular example of the loyalist spearman:

L1 - Spearman 7 x 3 = 21 (roughly 20)
L2 - Swordsman 8 x 4 = 32 (roughly 30)
L3 - Royal Guard 11 x 4 = 44 (roughly 40, but admittedly stretching a bit)

Before I get torn apart by various people, I know there are any number of exceptions like the unusually weak ghosts and assassins, or the Inferno Drake and Arch Mage which laugh at my system by totalling 48. That being said, those are either specialists who compensate with abilities, or 20 gold units at level 3.

[AxalaraFlame]

[/quote]
They are not absurd since the balancing is also based on how everything interacts faction wise. So yeah, elf fighters just get a tiny little training in using bows, so they are not good with it. The heavy infantry armour on the other hand might be worked in a way which makes it a little more vulnerable to impact attacks...

Yes, not everything in balancing has to be 100% logical, but if you think enough there might be some reason to state why this is the case, though the real reason is plain and old balancing.[/quote]

nonono...you may misunderstand m,y idea. l mean thaty elvish fighter's 3 damage, as the minium damage of bow based weapons, offenses common sense. After all they are elves. Even if their anbility majors in melee combat, their each arrow shall not be weaker than woodsman, right? (then they are lame lol~)

So l suggest to set their range attack at 4*2, however, add another hp point as compensation

[AlaskanAvenger]

The archer is only 66% better then them in damage per strike and they spend their whole lives practicing with the bow.. same is true of the woodsman. The fighter on the other hand spends his time learning to fight with a sword which is totally different skill and requires different muscular development. Add on the fact that their bow must be smaller and easier to carry around then the Archer due to their increased equipment as well as probably of worse quality and it all makes perfect sense

[AxalaraFlame]

The archer is only 66% better then them in damage per strike and they spend their whole lives practicing with the bow.. same is true of the woodsman. The fighter on the other hand spends his time learning to fight with a sword which is totally different skill and requires different muscular development. Add on the fact that their bow must be smaller and easier to carry around then the Archer due to their increased equipment as well as probably of worse quality and it all makes perfect sense

you are kidding me, dude...then answer me this: since they suck in bow arts, why can they still shot out 3 arrows? They are worse archer than woodsman, l cant deny, but do you think 4*2 is better and make more plausible sense than 3*3?

[AxalaraFlame]

Aha! About heavy infantry man. l think there are two ways to solve this absurd problem.

1. set imp resistance at 0%, because "their armor are too heavy, thus they cant withstand relentless big hammars and vile rocks well". As compensation, their hp can be set at 42, atm set at 12*2, price set at
$20

2. set imp resistance at 30%, which is more reasonable. that way, we have to introduce thugs to knalgan alliance

[AlaskanAvenger]

You are really over analyzing this.. and its not gonna be changed just because you think it is unrealistic. That said, it is fairly easy to explain minor details like that. Heavy plate armour provides excellent defense to blade because a sword relies on cutting which doesn't work that well on iron. Pierce is a large amount of pressure on one point, and especially if applied to joints is more likely to penetrate thus causing more damage. Impact on the other hand can just smash in heavy plates, breaking bones, dislocating joints, or if landing on the head, can still break the neck or dent the helm in thus inflicting skull injuries. If you want a demonstration of this, go take a machete, find a piece of metal, and try hacking at it... your not gonna do much to it. Take a spear or whatever you can get close to that and do the same. Then try a hammer.. there will be a drastic difference. (an old junkyard car would work great for this )
As for the elvish archer, I am a pretty poor archer myself, but I can fire almost as quickly as some much more proficient friends. The difference is in my accuracy and strength of the bow I use. An elvish archer able to hit primarily in the chest area is going to deal much more damage then a fighter using a weaker bow and hitting with a wider scatter. Increasing the damage and decreasing the strikes just makes the elf sound more clumsy and not elf like at all.

*edit. Have you ever actually practiced archery or participated in medieval style fighting?

[AxalaraFlame]

You are really over analyzing this.. and its not gonna be changed just because you think it is unrealistic. That said, it is fairly easy to explain minor details like that. Heavy plate armour provides excellent defense to blade because a sword relies on cutting which doesn't work that well on iron. Pierce is a large amount of pressure on one point, and especially if applied to joints is more likely to penetrate thus causing more damage. Impact on the other hand can just smash in heavy plates, breaking bones, dislocating joints, or if landing on the head, can still break the neck or dent the helm in thus inflicting skull injuries. If you want a demonstration of this, go take a machete, find a piece of metal, and try hacking at it... your not gonna do much to it. Take a spear or whatever you can get close to that and do the same. Then try a hammer.. there will be a drastic difference. (an old junkyard car would work great for this )
As for the elvish archer, I am a pretty poor archer myself, but I can fire almost as quickly as some much more proficient friends. The difference is in my accuracy and strength of the bow I use. An elvish archer able to hit primarily in the chest area is going to deal much more damage then a fighter using a weaker bow and hitting with a wider scatter. Increasing the damage and decreasing the strikes just makes the elf sound more clumsy and not elf like at all.

*edit. Have you ever actually practiced archery or participated in medieval style fighting?

well, your point on heavy infantry's impact resistances is plausible. l do know how powerful it is(acroding to my experience of working in my dad's workshop) to simply smash something which seems to be heavy and hard to break, because they are brittle on the other hand, like ceramics. But how will you explain swordsman's 20% resistances against impact weapons? If the portraits are professional, we can readily recognize that their armor are made of plate too, though a little bit lighter than shock trooper's.

So l think, they can't undertake imapct weapons well is not of the reason that "heavier things are easier to break by heavy force". They are weak against hammars, l think, is because that their armor is too heavy, so when a great force smashed on HIs(remember they are still human, not trolls), they can't even keep balance or stand firm. Awkwardness finally ends up their future. While the same time, light armored swordsman are more dextrous, thus resist hammar based weapons better.

Another problem is elf fighter. Well l would not agree with your "rather shot faster than shot stronger" theory. Horse based elves can only shot 2 arrows; don't explain some reasons like riding horses may not be easy to traget to me. After all, as you said, they are elves. If that would be an answer l beg you please explain the principle of their greet velocity of riding in forests (and hills and mountains). l think elves are not warlike. They hate wars. Shoting 3 arrows can not suit their inhenrencies. Futhermore, elf fighters are noobs in using bows. They can shot 4*2 without disgracing their kins, because they will finally level up and get stronger and more strikes.



P.S. Heavy Infantries are lame on network games. Another question that both of us may get no answer is: HI can't withstand some weaker impact weapons, like fists(any fists) and footpad's clubs. After all these weapons are NOT like hammar.