Balance of the game

[Raliven]

Good afternoon, dear developers of Battle for Wesnoth!

I write to you to express my concerns about balance of the game. After studying statistics of the tournament games at Russian forum of the game http://tour.wesnothlife.ru/stats.php

Drakes - 54.91%
Loyals - 53.33%
Rebels - 48.43%
Northeners - 49.31%
Knalgans - 48.43%
Undead - 42.36%

I concluded that the fraction Undead has too small win rate, and that’s can ruin the balance of the game and threaten the equilibrium of Battle for Wesnoth world. As you can see, all the fractions have about 200 games and an inaccuracy in the statistics is very small, but undead has the biggest departure from the golden mean. I’d like to know, do developers have their own statistics of the game and could I see it? I’m afraid, that my child can get an emotional trauma if he will get the race, that has the least chances for the win. If Russian forum statistics is correct – confirm this, if it’s not – refute.


Best regards, Sheitan666

If you look at the order of the list of factions and their win rates, it's more or less a list of the most mobile factions to the least. I don't think that's a coincidence. Good players take advantage of the extra movement.

[Sulik]

By the time I was continuing work of tekelili with Ladder2000. I added around 200-250 games. That's the results:

As I remember results include matches from 1.8 to 1.10.

[poltergeist]

By the time I was continuing work of tekelili with Ladder2000. I added around 200-250 games. That's the results:

As I remember results include matches from 1.8 to 1.10.

if we look at your statistic, what really must be balancing is knalgan i guest at your screenshot,
knalgan only have high win chance against undead besides that knalgan almost have 30%+ chance against other faction

[Sheitan666]

I am wrong. This is statistics of ladder >1800 mmr:

Undead_vs_Loyalist 73 104 41,24%
Undead_vs_Rebels 91 104 46,67%
Undead_vs_Noserners99 100 49,75%
Undead_vs_Knalgan 95 80 54,29%
Undead_vs_Drakes 118 83 58,71%
Undead_vs_all 476 471 50,26%

Sry my bad.

[Ben24626]

Soooo was anything done about this or?

[Gyra_Solune]

There have been no major balance changes to the game since the time you've posted this - updates move slow and for multiplayer balance must be especially considered heavily and thoroughly tested before being implemented. Even the tiniest of changes drastically shakes up how everything else is arranged.

I'm definitely of the opinion that the Skeleton Rider (and then alt-promotion into the Chocobone most likely) from Liberty actually slots in almost perfectly to go into the Undead faction once what it attacks with is resolved. It should definitely be weaker and slower than the Cavalryman but how is of debate, along with whether it should get Charge or not. And I'm also of the opinion that the Knalgans are perhaps ever so slightly too strong? Their faction is set up almost entirely to go against their core, since the outlaws are mediocre at best, the Ulfserker is not often a good idea to use, and the Gryphon Rider is exceptionally expensive, and yet they are still extremely powerful and nigh-implacable with just their three main units (one of which is one of the least offensively powerful in the game, and another which is difficult to use on account of its one-strike primary attack). But then, I've no idea what could be done - strategically their lack of mobility and vulnerability on open ground is a huge malus but they're still an extremely flexible faction in spite of that. We'll see what will be constructed in the future.

[fabi]

Soooo was anything done about this or?

I would like to see the ladder people change the unit stats to their needs and gather more statistics.
Then we can talk about changing the default era.

Most likely they are the most profound mp balancers out there right now.
Changing unit stats isn't that hard, I can help a bit if needed.

That includes coding more abilities if needed.

[howwitty]

Soooo was anything done about this or?

I would like to see the ladder people change the unit stats to their needs and gather more statistics.
Then we can talk about changing the default era.

Most likely they are the most profound mp balancers out there right now.
Changing unit stats isn't that hard, I can help a bit if needed.

That includes coding more abilities if needed.

Hi fabi, I noticed that in Age of Heroes, the Lich cannot be advanced to an Ancient Lich. I assume this is due to balancing issues, with the return on investment diminishing significantly as units advance as well as steep xp costs. However, there are two factions in Ageless Era which contain the unit tree for dark adepts, one of which contains the Ancient Lich.

Based on what I have gleaned from my limited review of IRC logs, unit advancement and AMLA are two of the more challenging stages of learning WML programming. I'm sure a guru such as yourself could provide excellent feedback, though for ladder people not actively making changes, it's a matter of searching with a seemingly primitive search algorithm which provides search results that leave something to be desired. Even Google has routinely led to more interesting search results on the forum and elsewhere. The only other alternative is browsing through pages of threads.

I'm definitely of the opinion that the Skeleton Rider (and then alt-promotion into the Chocobone most likely) from Liberty actually slots in almost perfectly to go into the Undead faction once what it attacks with is resolved. It should definitely be weaker and slower than the Cavalryman but how is of debate, along with whether it should get Charge or not. And I'm also of the opinion that the Knalgans are perhaps ever so slightly too strong? Their faction is set up almost entirely to go against their core, since the outlaws are mediocre at best, the Ulfserker is not often a good idea to use, and the Gryphon Rider is exceptionally expensive, and yet they are still extremely powerful and nigh-implacable with just their three main units (one of which is one of the least offensively powerful in the game, and another which is difficult to use on account of its one-strike primary attack). But then, I've no idea what could be done - strategically their lack of mobility and vulnerability on open ground is a huge malus but they're still an extremely flexible faction in spite of that. We'll see what will be constructed in the future.

While I agree with you that the Knalgan faction is strong, you appear to be contradicting your own claim by pointing out weaknesses and claiming that there are "three main units" which is a gross understatement in its own right. Knalgan is a particularly difficult faction to play in a skilled match. Footpads, which have good defense on nearly all terrain, are essential in 2p matches when it's important to build up a substantial amount of income. I won't list the advantages of the other units you mentioned except to ask you to seriously consider what you mean by "not a good idea to use," because although ulfserkers should not be recruited and implemented in excess of their use, they are still used often. Much of the critique appears to be based on the cost of the units involved, which is why knalgan are not called dwarves, but instead thieves and outlaws are still main units.

TL;DR Any unit in a faction which is considered balanced is a balanced unit in that faction, regardless of the mediocrity of its resistances.

[Ravana]

Hi fabi, I noticed that in Age of Heroes, the Lich cannot be advanced to an Ancient Lich. I assume this is due to balancing issues, with the return on investment diminishing significantly as units advance as well as steep xp costs. However, there are two factions in Ageless Era which contain the unit tree for dark adepts, one of which contains the Ancient Lich.

Based on what I have gleaned from my limited review of IRC logs, unit advancement and AMLA are two of the more challenging stages of learning WML programming. I'm sure a guru such as yourself could provide excellent feedback, though for ladder people not actively making changes, it's a matter of searching with a seemingly primitive search algorithm which provides search results that leave something to be desired. Even Google has routinely led to more interesting search results on the forum and elsewhere. The only other alternative is browsing through pages of threads.

The actual implementation of advance tree is trivial. From what I have heard balance and story are the important aspects for modifying core. Also, one of the lines you mentioned is directly included from core, so by definition it cant be different.

Since level 4 balance is mostly irrelevant for core, that only leaves story reasons to disallow advancement.

Actually, creating units is really simple. More difficult is learning enough about preprocessor to properly include those units.

[pauxlo]

From the description, the Ancient Lich got ancient by being alive (or actually, undead) for several centuries, perfecting its magic.
That won't happen inside a single multi player game.

(This is the story reason.)

[Gyra_Solune]

Eh, there's plenty of Ancient Liches who have not been around for centuries. Mal-Ravanal and potentially Malin Keshar come to mind - though those who are indeed deemed Ancient are certainly more likely to be on that order of power.

I'm just personally in favor of consistency on the matter. At the moment there are a number of units who can promote to level 4 - the General into Grand Marshall, Enchantress into Sylph, Arch Mage into Grand Mage - and then a number who can not, namely the Runemaster to Arcanister, Inferno Drake to Armageddon Drake, the aforementioned Ancient Lich, and in the 1.13 versions, the Shuja cannot promote into the Khalid.

I maybe sort of see something of a pattern on those? Namely, the level 4 units that are available are not that tough, two of them being squishy mages with no other capacity besides powerful range, and the other being an average mixed unit mostly useful for leadership. The four that aren't available are somewhat tougher to really take down, though the Khalid doesn't strike me as being all that unstoppably powerful.

[fabi]

Okay, let's not get too much off topic.
The thread was started to improve the balancing of the game.
The fate of the Ancient Lich is a different issue, certainly adding Lvl4 units won't fix what the ladder community had in mind.

[Eagle_11]

I think competitive multiplayer should cap out at lvl3, that being the shade and great mage being disallowed, too, because the power gap between lvl 1 and 4 is enormeus, anything higher than lvl3 should be strictly restricted to coop and campaigns.
But besides that is debattable as how many times have i ever seen an lvl4 within an mp match at all ?

[Velensk]

I've been playing multiplayer wesnoth for 12 years now or so and I've only ever seen a lvl 4 once (it was a great mage on Loris River). The number of level 3s I've seen probably number only a few dozen.

Honestly, by the time that mage reached great mage the game had already been over for awhile (and would have ended so much sooner if it weren't for bats marauding everything).

[xhh2a]

Based on purely single player experience with Undead:

I think the mobile Undead units are very hard to level up compared to other factions at level 1. Their units are much more fragile. They do have the ghoul which has lots of health but that unit moves slowly. On the other hand, I absolutely loved the Spectre after they leveled up in Single Player due to their drain ability. The Spectre is strictly better than Nightgaunt due to survivability in a no-loss single player campaign against most factions. Long movement ranges and very hard to kill. The Draug is also pretty good due to high health.

Other notes:
Because of the way maps work, submerge generally isn't a useful ability to have.
The bat in my opinion is strictly worse than the ghost because the ghost has decent movement as well, doesn't start at level 0, and can level up to Spectre while the bat can only get to level 2. Also as a level 0 unit it simply can't hold the villages it can reach.
Also against heavy hitting early game factions (like Orcs or Trolls) bad luck with random rolls means that your level 1 units will die. Similarly at higher levels the only reliable units are draugs and necromancer/lichs as the spectre can still die.