War Of The Gods, its a good day to post here feedback.

[Mabuse]

My Money is on Daishan.
ofc you should do

a vs b
b vs c
a vs c

3 matches


Daishan is not only OP ability/specialwise, but its also underpriced and it would be a surprise if they wont win.

As said as i looked first round results (when i discussed how unfair it is having 1-terrain only map) i looked at result vs elves (which had 70% def on whole map) and knew something was going with these. if it would have been balanced in one or other way, there is no chance to win against elves/elve-like on forest only.

(having said that: if other factions a similarily OP/underpriced then it maybe tension again)


EDIT:

btw, why even bother making an even bigger map for final, i doubt that it would add more dimensions to the game.

[ChaosRider]

Last battle of 6th round:

gremlins (winner)
harpies

Terrain type: Forest, Desert, Frost, Forest, Swamp, Swamp

Tournament Maps 2p (83x83) powtórka 20250606-102451.gz

(235.06 KiB) Downloaded 8 times

It took 2 days (which is way too long lol, 21 turns). Now I need to prepare next map.

Couples of 6th round:

Spoiler:

red-mechanical-orcs
daishan (winner)
done

rainy
jinns (winner)
done

gremlins (winner)
harpies
done

Winners of 6th round (Top 3 of all WOTG fractions):

Spoiler:

daishan
jinns
gremlins

[ChaosRider]

Map for final stage, 93 hexes, 4000 gold at start, 311 villages.

[ChaosRider]

Final fight between Daishan and Jinns. Jinns won this fight.

Tournament Maps 2p (93x93) powtórka 20250606-181134.gz

(212.03 KiB) Downloaded 6 times

[Mabuse]

Final fight between Daishan and Jinns. Jinns won this fight.

Tournament Maps 2p (93x93) powtórka 20250606-181134.gz

now i am able to watch the fights btw

jinn faction is even more crazy than daishan.

their extreme mobility gave them about 60% of the map, which is good economic advantage right away, but they also just burned through the daishan lines like nothing


but since i watched a replay with kremlins now, i think they are unstoppable, because of their ability to concentrate units via teleport and get instant reinforcements, only exception would be that jinns may turn out to be much stronger in combat

[ChaosRider]

Below list of costs changing for each fraction that won atleast once (this will be in next version of WOTG):

+ 5 gold

Spoiler:

daishan
gremlins
harpies
jinns
rainy
red-mechanical-orcs

+4 gold

Spoiler:

fire-empire
heavenly-knights
khthons
lagrian
northern-empire
true-vikings

+3 gold

Spoiler:

avians
blades-country
dwarves-default
kuandigin
lost-knights
nagas-vikings-trolls
primevals
prussians
tumens
unforgiven
winters

+2 gold

Spoiler:

centaurs-federation
deep-elves
despairs
dunefolks
flying_insects
free-saurians
goblins-monsters-ogres
horned-skeletons
hunns
knights
legion
lux
mandates
marauders
norse_jarldoms
pirates
rovahrian_elves
sky-kingdoms
steelhives
tatars
triththas-monsters
vixens

+1 gold

Spoiler:

altaris
aracayas
brungars
cossacks
crimson-legions
dark-elves
demons-monsters
destroyers
devlings
drakes-default
dwarves
emperors-guards
enchanters
equestrians
farengarian_dwarves_counties
farengarians_kingdoms
finn_empire
forest
forgotten_legion
galianos
highelves
humans-default
imperialists
khaganates2
kingdoms
kingdoms_rovahr
kolbolt
marashy
mauve_islands_federation
minotaurs
natives
neko
oracles
orcs-default
phantoms
quenoth
refuges
shadows
slavers
tharis
ukians
untameds
vaeringjar
wild-centaurs
wood-warriors
yokais

[Mabuse]

Below list of costs changing for each fraction that won atleast once (this will be in next version of WOTG):

while increasing cost can be an efficient and easy way to balance things i would suggest to overthink this.

1) it would need more pairings and at least 1 or 2 other "tournaments" on preferrably smaller and more mainline maps
to evaluate more (as already stated earlier by IPS, a STRONG and unbalanced faction that got paired in round 1 against tournament winner like jinns for example would recieve no penalty, but may be OP in comparison to other Round 1 losers)

2) the flat +X Gold approach is questionable, because it is completely different to add 5 Gold cost to a lvl 0 or lvl 1 unit than adding +5 gold to a level 4 unit (in this case better go increase prices in %, e.g. +5%, +8%, +10%, +13%, +15%)

3) a much slower but more detailed approach would include more analysis about why certain factions perform so much better and then come to a balancing conclusion which may also include increased costs beside other penalties or nerfs

[ChaosRider]

Jinns vs Gremlins. Jinns won the match. Now only Daishan vs Gremlins. Now we know that number one of 181 fractions are Jinns.

Tournament Maps 2p (93x93) powtórka 20250608-134648.gz

(197.37 KiB) Downloaded 3 times

[ChaosRider]

Below list of costs changing for each fraction that won atleast once (this will be in next version of WOTG):

while increasing cost can be an efficient and easy way to balance things i would suggest to overthink this.

1) it would need more pairings and at least 1 or 2 other "tournaments" on preferrably smaller and more mainline maps
to evaluate more (as already stated earlier by IPS, a STRONG and unbalanced faction that got paired in round 1 against tournament winner like jinns for example would recieve no penalty, but may be OP in comparison to other Round 1 losers)

2) the flat +X Gold approach is questionable, because it is completely different to add 5 Gold cost to a lvl 0 or lvl 1 unit than adding +5 gold to a level 4 unit (in this case better go increase prices in %, e.g. +5%, +8%, +10%, +13%, +15%)

3) a much slower but more detailed approach would include more analysis about why certain factions perform so much better and then come to a balancing conclusion which may also include increased costs beside other penalties or nerfs

1st of all WOTG has over 5500 units. Its huge amount of units. Im using notepad++ so thx to it I can open like 1500 units files and change many files at same time. For example look for words like "cost=65" and change it to "cost=70" and so on for lower prices (64 to 69, 63 to 68 and so on). Changing it by each file separetly it could take month if not longer.

Doing another Tournament without top 6 fractions from 1st Tournament it also will take a time. Again to set randomly couples for the matches still will be depending of the luck who vs who.

New version of WOTG will appear after doing match between Daishan and Gremlins (this can take 2 days lol if not longer). They are fighting to decide who is second and who third faction from best of WOTG.

[Ravana]

The fact you use notepad++ is your design choice. For ageless I have done changes with python.

[Mabuse]

1st of all WOTG has over 5500 units. Its huge amount of units. Im using notepad++ so thx to it I can open like 1500 units files and change many files at same time.

With proper evalutation maybe its not needed to change all 5500 units

(also you could use things like wildreplace.exe and replace strings in many files at the same time, without opening them. but be careful about this, you would need to ensure that changed values wont get changed again, this may be done via special strings that get added and then deleted at end at once)

For example look for words like "cost=65" and change it to "cost=70" and so on for lower prices (64 to 69, 63 to 68 and so on). Changing it by each file separetly it could take month if not longer.

well, since WOTG is out for some time by now, i dont see reason to rush the "balance" since the possibility of messing things up is very well possible

Doing another Tournament without top 6 fractions from 1st Tournament it also will take a time. Again to set randomly couples for the matches still will be depending of the luck who vs who.

maybe using smaller maps and standard settings could speed things up.
will take some time, but its fun also, or not?

New version of WOTG will appear after doing match between Daishan and Gremlins (this can take 2 days lol if not longer). They are fighting to decide who is second and who third faction from best of WOTG.

as said, i dont see reason to rush it, tbh

maybe for the top 3 factions some changes could be applied, but i think its more important to analyze WHY they did so much better and then adress these things in one way or another.

but its your choice.



let this sink in:

with your changes DEFAULT (!) knalga gets +3 gold on all units while DEFAULT Elves remain at their normal value.


Would you say:

a) this is a definately an improvement

or

b) maybe some things got messed up

[IPS]

As I've said, in gremling faction at least there were some units that were underpriced for like at least 3g's (the hacker, the fire skirmisher and mages), but some other were just so bad, like the 5-3 blade attack on lv1, which is only good on lv2.

As mabuse said, it should be proportional to unit's base price an increase by a percent.

Also in my case I would also consider how high the stats are on the base unit, because teleport doesn't scale lineally as "an unit with teleport SHOULD be 3 more gold cost", because it would variate between units.... But notable mentions about severe underpricing in GREMLINGS:

Gremling Hacker: the unit is underpriced by at least 3g , 24 blade melee dmg on a lv1 which is a lot, decent HP, 50% on flat, 30 dmg if strong, which above lv1 averages.
Gremling Harbinger: the unit is underpriced by around 4g's , while not as solid damage in one range, skirmisher makes it so deadly considering it has teleport.
Gremling Acolyte: the unit is underpriced by at least 4g or 5g , not as tanky as other gremling units, but teleport with TWO different types of ranged magical attack (one magical, one physical) makes this unit extremely strong against most units. OP mostly because having 20 magical physical damage and 21 arcane magical damage as another attack.
Willl of Wisp: This scouting unit is underpriced by like 3g to 6g, it's their scout which allows them to grab the villages which allows them to telpot in early game. THIS SCOUT HAS 1 MP COST IN EVERY PLACE, which means, it doesn't discriminte in terrain to expand like rabbit and take villges , while if extremely frail if unlucky to melee attackers, it also adds a lot of utility to this unit because SLOWS is the best debuff in the entire wesnoth... so if this unit gets more expensive, you would directly nerf gremlins's early game because of less dominance of villages further in the map.

Units that seem alright or doubtful, with points
Gremling Hulk: worse and more expensive version of Gremlin Hacker, it should even be cheaper than Hacker... 7 hp for one less movement and 3 less blade damage (-6 dmg if both units strong), this unit is for sure much less underpriced than hacker is.
Gremlin Hunter: this unit at leasts in his lv1 is not that great, terrible base HP and only 15 blade attack makes it pretty crappy if directly compared to hacker, not worth to consider if not promoting this to lv2 which is trully strong unit because of cheap 8-3 BACKSTAB melee.


Also consider that maps without villages or so few scrolling survival maps, do not have so many villages to use for teleport cheese.... So nerfing all by making the whole army be 5g more expensive on this case is a very bad idea because some units are trully more overpowered and underpriced than others, even if talking about units in a same faction...


Could do as well some comparations with harpies and other factions, but gremlins is I think the easiest example and way to explain why you shold just increase gold costs to really good units and not touching so much mid ones... other things I could mention is also you can mind also to increase XP values on few pecific cases if you mind the rewarded unit is too cheap for the amount of XP spent in it.


Last thing I want to mention, is, price nerf will not change matchup ressults in this type of tests, because if the AI starts with like 1500 gold, but it didn't spend at least 900g in recruiting, but already won the game by just spending 60% of that money, means the unit/faction won not because of being underpriced, just because of having TOO HIGH STATS / OP SPECIALS (being OVERPOWERED, not UNDERPRICED) and not being just a price problem.

My point is, if you do tests with large mounts of golds in very large maps, you nerf more the faction by decreasing movement of their scouts from 8 to 7 than increasing all units in faction by 5g more cost.... because this means they reach to less village this early, which means more chances for enemies to grab more neutral villages.

And a why not test, do 1vs1 against AI using strongest WOTG factions and you using any faction you want to test ... and face by yourself the trully OP things of each faction so you can judge more correctly what needs to be really nerfed.... You now know which factions are trully OP, you can now do 1vs1 matches with some of the factions using any faction and view by yourself more details on things you spot that are just unfair.

Cuz wesnoth AI is dumb (it is a really bad player) and will never use to maximun potential some units, so you also require some human testers (even yourself) to spot things that AI will never be using to its maximun potentials.