Archaic Era (BfW 1.18)

[doofus-01]

Some problems about playability on mainline maps:

Ukian faction can't enter deep water at all. This allows forcing draw in larger patches of deep water if opponent leader can reach deep water (which majority Archaic Era factions can do). This can be abused for example on Fallenstar Lake at 21,16.

Despair can enter impassable, including some leader units. This could be most obviously abused on map Aethermaw.

Note: In MP maps are expecting, that no one can reach impassable, some factions can reach unwalkable (but not all of them, so every unwalkable hex must be able to be attacked from "walkable" terrain). And every mainline faction can access deep water.

I think that giving deep water movement to Ukian dogs and runners + disallowing impassable movement for despair in MP could fix those problems

OK, sounds like a reasonable thing to do. I'll put that in the next update. Thanks.

[Battlecruiser_Venca]

As looking into factions in more detail, I have some questions, all of them are of balancing (like the Cavarlyman vs Primeval problem):

What are the Undead supposed to do against South-Seas Arsonist spam? Adepts nor Skeletons don't look here doing so instead of Default's UD vs Drake Burners.
Undead vs Khthon. UD goes Ghost spam.
Khthon vs Loyalists. Khthon spams Yaks. This might be a problem for each enthrallable faction, maybe make Yaks (or more Khthon) fire-weak since enthrallable factions have fire (except Ukians) while immune don't?

[AI]

The output of the wescamp script:

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[WARNING 2014-04-11 13:06:40,594]
pot-update in addon Archaic_Era:
expected closed node 'top' got 'abilities' at ./Archaic_Era/utils/Archaic_abilities.cfg:187 at /home/ai/bin/wmlxgettext line 179, <FILE> line 187.
WML seems invalid for ./Archaic_Era/utils/Archaic_abilities.cfg, node info extraction forfeited past the error point at /home/ai/bin/wmlxgettext line 210.

You can get around this by using #wmlxgettext comments, as you can see for the feeding ability in core/macros/abilities.cfg

[doofus-01]

The output of the wescamp script: ...

Thanks. I think I've fixed it, will upload tomorrow.

What are the Undead supposed to do against South-Seas Arsonist spam? Adepts nor Skeletons don't look here doing so instead of Default's UD vs Drake Burners.

OK, I've made them slightly more vulnerable to cold.

Undead vs Khthon. UD goes Ghost spam.

That I will have to think about. Maybe reduce their arcane vulnerability.

Khthon vs Loyalists. Khthon spams Yaks. This might be a problem for each enthrallable faction, maybe make Yaks (or more Khthon) fire-weak since enthrallable factions have fire (except Ukians) while immune don't?

Hrm, maybe... I'll need to think about this too.

Thanks.

[Battlecruiser_Venca]

What are the Undead supposed to do against South-Seas Arsonist spam? Adepts nor Skeletons don't look here doing so instead of Default's UD vs Drake Burners.

OK, I've made them slightly more vulnerable to cold.

I'd think more about reducing their melee (like to 5-2), raising the cost (17 gp) or adding a blade weakness. Their problem is, that they're too effective vs UD in both melee and ranged

[doofus-01]

I'd think more about reducing their melee (like to 5-2), raising the cost (17 gp) or adding a blade weakness. Their problem is, that they're too effective vs UD in both melee and ranged

Raising the cost sounds best, it will screw with Trinity the least.

Undead vs Khthon. UD goes Ghost spam.

That I will have to think about. Maybe reduce their arcane vulnerability.

This I have now done.

Khthon vs Loyalists. Khthon spams Yaks. This might be a problem for each enthrallable faction, maybe make Yaks (or more Khthon) fire-weak since enthrallable factions have fire (except Ukians) while immune don't?

Hrm, maybe... I'll need to think about this too.

I've raised the Yak price to 17g, added a slight vulnerability to fire, removed their slight resistance to pierce (not sure how that fit thematically anyway). I'm reluctant to give the whole faction a weakness to fire because they already have a handicap in not having much ranged attack. It would also screw up the campaigns, and I don't want to have different stats for MP Maps vs Campaigns. If thralls are too good an antidote to no-ranged handicap, maybe their HP could be lowered.

[Battlecruiser_Venca]

Thralls in MP do appear vs specific factions only. Khthon do face fire in Trinity when sieging Weldyn and when Haldrad is attacked by them near Weldyn when player has mages. And don't forget about vector, it is a way of some kind of instant heal (and it destroys one enemy unit too). But this works only vs some factions too. And since immune races don't have fire, I believe, that fire resistance is the point of balance (btw have you considered adding a fire attack to Ukain Archers like their higher levels do have? I haven't looked much about Ukian vs Phantom or Despair MU a lot but it'll help them also against UD)

[doofus-01]

But this works only vs some factions too. And since immune races don't have fire, I believe, that fire resistance is the point of balance

Looking at the era CFGs, I remember now that I'd decided that Phantoms and Primevals were not going to be balanced, and didn't include them in the random faction option. But then I failed to advertise that in any useful way... I've now mentioned this fact in the Era description, and appended "(overpowered)" to those two faction names. So, let's leave them out of this for now.

As far as the others go, just to spell it out for myself:
0. Khthon - don't really have ranged attack, weak against arcane -> should change to fire?
1. Loyalists - enthrallable, have fire, have ranged
2. Orcs - enthrallable, have fire, have ranged
3. South-Seas - enthrallable, have fire, have ranged
4. Despair - not enthrallable, don't have fire, have ranged
5. Undead - not enthrallable, don't have fire, have ranged
6. Ukians - enthrallable, don't have (recruit-able) fire at the moment, have ranged

I guess I agree about the fire then, if ranged attacks isn't enough of a handicap. But I'm still not sure about that yet.

btw have you considered adding a fire attack to Ukain Archers like their higher levels do have? I haven't looked much about Ukian vs Phantom or Despair MU a lot but it'll help them also against UD)

I don't want to give the archers fire because that will make them too much like orcs (they'd be a form of [acronym=which I can't link to because I don't know how to group two words in the forum search]swamp elf[/acronym] ). But I can edit the vassal (horseman) things to have a torch - that is not an important unit for the campaigns, so nothing to worry about there. I think Ukians are a bit weak against Despair, so if I make Despair a little weaker to fire, maybe that fixes it.

Thanks for your help with the balancing.

[doofus-01]

1.4.13 has gone to the BfW 1.12 server. Most changes are the things discussed in the last few posts. There are also some small graphics updates.

[Battlecruiser_Venca]

The Despair Impasabble problem hasn't been fixed yet.
And I'd raise runner and dog defense in water to 40%.

[AI]

The output of the wescamp script: ...

Thanks. I think I've fixed it, will upload tomorrow.

You also need a # wmlxgettext: [abilities] line at the start so it has a "pre-existing" tag to exit out of.

[doofus-01]

OK, I just sent 1.4.13a to the server. Hopefully the gettext stuff really is fixed now. I've commented out the impassable movement for Despair movetypes and gave the dog & attack dog 40% defense in water - I'm not sure about the runner, I don't like it thematically.

Thanks, both of you.

[AI]

It works now:

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[INFO] New version of addon 'Archaic_Era' uploaded.
[INFO] Checking if build system for add-on Archaic_Era needs to be updated
[INFO] Build system for add-on Archaic_Era is up-to-date

[doofus-01]

1.4.14 was just uploaded to BfW server. I replaced the woodsman in the Khthon MP faction with a toad. Not sure how balanced it is, but it is supposed to counter Undead's Ghosts.

[Battlecruiser_Venca]

Antoher thingy what came into my mind:

After playing BMR and Trinity, I can't say, that the Primevals are really the bad guys in the campaign as you describe. They just hate Khthon, their ancient enemy, fighting with them and endless war. Player fights them in two scenarios IIRC (and avoids fight with them in another one [the one, where I've reported the bug with Ares]).

I'd raise cost of vapor to at least 5g. At 2g without time limit, the vapors are too effective for phantom to maintain map control (and AI overrecruits them in the campaign, I think, that AI should do something else there, than go 90% to vapors).

PS: I'd look into South-seas healer as the healing branch really overpowers the other one, especially when combined a strong tank to protect them from receiving damage (in Trinity, you can use Nemesis or later Bresda for that) while the other branch lacks both healing and damage potential. Note that nerfing this may shift balance across Trinity, where a hard hitter is required. Another similar thing is between Primeval Escort vs Striker (where Escort has 11-3 blade, higher HP and better resists, while Striker has 8-4 impact, but 1 MP more, I think that 8 MP for Striker as its L3 has and/or -1 dmg to Escort could do the thing)