Ageless Era - Current Version: 4.41

[howwitty]

I thought this was a parody of my critique of adding Eastern European units from EEaW at first. Elves seems to be a generic term for non-human in a fantasy context. Factions like the Desert Elves are associated with lore from the UtBS campaign, which I guess is like Mad Max Fury Road but with Elves, and the base attributes including the unit models, the cost of units, unit advancement paths, and the unit sprites have all been altered to such a degree that it is distinct from the Default Era Rebels faction. Then there are also Dark Elves and Deep Elves, which did the same and simply use the Elf terminology for lack of a better word. Thankfully the creator of Yokai and Steelhive did not make this mistake and call them Japanese Elves or Machine Elves. We also have a new gnome faction, one has to wonder why it wasn't immediately included in the Default Era (possibly no lore yet?). I think the only other unique feature these eras may lack is some kind of novel game mechanic (or something like Imperialist sapper attack or artillery attack, etc. which are not used in Default Era). In that respect they are quite similar and just suffer from a perceived hybridization in name. However, the Default Era does not have an "Elf" named faction so this really just boils down to the name of each unit and I can't imagine why one would exclude a fundamental kind from their custom faction just to look different, which is why a lot of factions commonly have an 'archer' unit or a 'mage' unit. This is true within the context of the Default Era. So perhaps we should ask the Era makers to come up witha unique name for their faction the next time someone decides to make Elves in Space or Period Accurate Cowboy Elves from the 1890's American West except it's not American, it's just the same, but different Elves.

I too was skeptical of other eras such as the Armies of Amberan Era and Rashy Era which appear to be nearly identical to Default Era Loyalists and I generally ignore them as there might be some good reason I did not yet notice. Ageless Era seems to be a grab bag of many different units of a similar high fantasy/science fiction sort of theme, and EEaW is a little too on tbe nose in terms of historical accuracy. I don't think it was necessarily meant to play against Ageless Era factions and doesn't really benefit itself for being in Ageless.

[IPS]

Yeah it's pretty curious how most elf based factions are way too generic.... like it's a re-tuned rebels scout, archer, mage, figther with very minor stats difference but exactly the same role. EVEN THE SPRITE they use for the placeholder is too based from default... so there is not that much to do how to make them differ even more to defaults as in their vanilla design they were meant to be extremely similar to default rebels.

By far best elf based factions at this moment are MiE sylvans which adds some more original treefolks and the leaf wyverns.... still the sprite and the nymph they're the exact same thing from EOC ones... even I tried to make them slightly diferent at each version BUT STILL the diference is that one has poison-cute at lv2 and very very minor diference.

Welking also, are pretty special because they're elf-like while not, and even, I coopypasted the flying scouts of the welking and re-adapted it to AE desert elves as they were missing some damage types, unit I added AE desert elves before wiping the EOC Quenoth elves faction to merge with AE desert elves because being too similar to desert elves. Also AE desert elves are not as original desert elves from old versions that are 60% sand defense but this modernized version in AE are 50% at both sand and forest and also 1 Movement cost at both type of tiles, thing which adds better mobility but decreases defensive potential.

Vanilla Armies of Ambrerian was also.... extremely overtuned in contrast of default, at a point that the original stats couldn't be taken seriously because the power-creep was too big... so I took a more creativity-freedom to rewor the things to be more similar to default but at the same time way different (like ballistas and cannons having artillery range attack too, less underpowered units, reworked some movetype as in case of Nordic Jarldoms, and some more things over there.


Talking about Yokai, they feel like.... vay too outdated and way too chaotic to be that many units in one single faction... I still remember that guy that wanted to rework yokais and wipe the whole slurger line ... but before he made the new sprites or the stats he just dissapeared. That also remembers me of another guy that also wanted to add more factions to ageless some threads ago, but I was not reading wesnoth forums in that moments but found to read thatt ... unsure if this second guy is still alive or what been about him.

ZeroVirus made a couple of good sprites and cool factions like steelhive, which greatly differs with everything in Ageless as there is literally no futuristic faction with exception of them, and some few steampunk factions (Clockwork Dwarves and Runemasters, and few other dwarves with machines.... and some other exceptions with gunpowder weapons).


Would be also too odd to add Eastern Eupeean units to Ageless, firstly why there would be hungrarians or british using gunpowder weapons between the pallete of units of Ageless, and secondly they stats and gameplays are extremely diferent to default-like, which means the unit would need a massive rework at every aspect, name, stats, role, even gameplay... similar reasons why I wouldn't either add Great Steppe Era units, that would be that many rework and the unit would lose its original essence... but that's probably debatible point and I would only if players requests a lot for it.

[howwitty]

I didn't realize the Yōkai were unmaintained for 6 years, but would it not make more sense for the units to be included on the basis of the whole faction itself? Any of the units work fine as standalone units but removing them from Ageless Era would basically purge them from the game. Are you saying the specific units should be purged from Ageless Era or that the whole faction should be removed? A little confused because I think you recently added the level 2/3 and the removal seems to be slightly at odds with your other comments about sprite design and other aspects of which the Yōkai generally have no parallels besides a Monsters faction, which isn't less diverse or better maintained.

[IPS]

EOC - Quenoth Elves was removed from playable factions, and instead most of their units been moved to AE - Desert elves, making AE desert elves less incomplete at damage types and units roles alike, but you can no longer pick the "desert elves from EOC that used QUENOTH in their names" anymore. Similarly happened in the past with EE - Sylvns as they were only adding merman fighter and mermaid initiates and wose shaman, ONLY THAT, so to halve the chances of players getting just REBELS from RANDOM I decided it was a better idea to just remove EE - Sylvans from playable factions.

On the other hand I also added in 2026's the EE - Drakes which is a much better addition to drakes than Sylvans were to Rebels at the EE section.

And no, slurgerswarms and anything is not going to be removed at yokai, just mentioned a guy who wanted to remake yokais and he planned to rework everything AND probably add new units or rework the existing ones but removing the slurger swarm and the rebel swarm lines. Still in the YOKAI aspect, there are some place holder sprites with spheres in their heads for the new introduced lv2-lv3 units that yokai did not have in their original/vanilla release. Daitengo and Lv3 Poltergeists both of them were not existing in Yokai, just that I created the units and they are now also part of Ageless... still they as said have no original sprite and instead it's the previous level with colored orbs in top of their heads as placeholder sprite.

While Yokai were not mantained in over 6 years from their original authors or anyone else, still in ageless they been reworked, rebalanced and even got added new units at AE's version at leasts, just by not making them stupidly underpowered and a self sufficient lose condition just because of getting them from random faction pick as vanilla yokais were incredibly underpowered even if directly compared to default.

[howwitty]

I do not think Yōkai units are necessarily underpowered, but rather that the unit design is not intended to be playable in the same context.

So, it does not make sense to compare a Lamia and a Northerner's grunt for the same cost of 12 gold as a "melee" unit. The Yōkai spriggan lore for all I know could be that one would encounter several of them at once in an area which they happen to be endemic, hence the cheap cost.

But the concept of Yōkai economy is utterly nonsensical - I would argue it would be counterintuitive to the entire idea of encountering Yōkai outside of civilization. I think I read somewhere they sometimes beg for money; this is a ruse. It is simply a solicitation of human victims for money which does not actually serve the same purpose as it does for any Default Era faction's currency, i.e. for retaining an army.

So perhaps Yōkai should be spun off into a standalone faction, as the difficulty seems to be that players have the option to accidentally pick the wrong faction (with which I disagree). These units are actually superior to many default era units in another context, such as the UWS scrolling survival, in particular the Onryo has more opportunities for the soultaker accrual of damage on its melee weapon than in a more finite setting. So thank you for not removing the faction

I am for the most part unfamiliar with the lore, but I was wondering why the level 2/3 were added. I think the AMLA bonuses are robust enough by default, but even if not I have seen other applications for it, such as in a Colosseum AMLA modification for the unit acclimation on terrain providing defense bonus.

[IPS]

I do not think Yōkai units are necessarily underpowered, but rather that the unit design is not intended to be playable in the same context.

So, it does not make sense to compare a Lamia and a Northerner's grunt for the same cost of 12 gold as a "melee" unit. The Yōkai spriggan lore for all I know could be that one would encounter several of them at once in an area which they happen to be endemic, hence the cheap cost.

But the concept of Yōkai economy is utterly nonsensical - I would argue it would be counterintuitive to the entire idea of encountering Yōkai outside of civilization. I think I read somewhere they sometimes beg for money; this is a ruse. It is simply a solicitation of human victims for money which does not actually serve the same purpose as it does for any Default Era faction's currency, i.e. for retaining an army.

So perhaps Yōkai should be spun off into a standalone faction, as the difficulty seems to be that players have the option to accidentally pick the wrong faction (with which I disagree). These units are actually superior to many default era units in another context, such as the UWS scrolling survival, in particular the Onryo has more opportunities for the soultaker accrual of damage on its melee weapon than in a more finite setting. So thank you for not removing the faction

I am for the most part unfamiliar with the lore, but I was wondering why the level 2/3 were added. I think the AMLA bonuses are robust enough by default, but even if not I have seen other applications for it, such as in a Colosseum AMLA modification for the unit acclimation on terrain providing defense bonus.

Vanilla Yokais are just horrible, look for example at 1.10 ageless yokais stats or WOTG's yokais. Inflated XP for stat gain in level up, low level cap means the unit will be weaker in endgame than if using another faction with less downsides (fire/arcane weakness is a serious problem for yokai). Like if you were using yokai at afterlife/top-scrolling-survival/digama-beach/WC-2 you would have a severe dissadventage over a player who just picked loyalists.

Yokais are no longer BAD because I buffed them. Yes lamias are quite decent for 12g but remember they have pretty awful resistances to also cold and if I'm not wrong also to arcane. Also in modern 1.18 - 1.20 wesnoth times having a whole faction that is in averages -10/-30% arcane resistance is nearly unplayable at late game situation.

I still remember a WC-2 game where a guy was playing another forest based faction the Wood Warriors, and when I realized in that map AI could build paladins I said HAHAHA that guy is cooked there is no way he can survive to paladins with that time's wood warriors everything being weak to arcane and bad terrain defenses, so in that specific matchup wood warrior player could not win. Similarly did happen to vailla/old yokais... at trying to playing them as a normal faction to realize you've lost at the game starts because of the insane bad arcane/fire weakness and being forced to maintain a frontline at somewhere of the maps. Could also tell you that yokais players before the more recent yokai rebalances were just SPAMMING plague slurger swarm becuase it was literally the only real good thing they had. Reasons why wood warriors been buffed several times to at least be as good as default.... same did happen to yokai.

Vanilla Feyborns were 6-3 blade ranged, lv2 and lv3 kitsune were high XP and very bad mages, even if not wrong lv3 kitsune was only 9-4 blade ranged magical or smth. If we talk about yokai being good it's just because I greatly buffed them at not being suck-auto-lose faction , and still there are matchups where you will still be in disadventage at using yokais but not horribly as bad as automatically losing ur game because getting yokais.

But if you got some time, try viewing vanila yokais.... they suffered from extremely infalted XP, bad endgame scalling because units capping at lv1-lv2-lv3, which means in scenarios where you want to live more than 40 turns like orocia you will have a severe stat disadventage because units capping at lv2 or even lv1, and all which did get to lv3 were inconsistent like feyborn lv3 not having any melee at least one random enemy with beserk was unallowing you to place the whole feyborns at castle tiles...


Also very off-topic, but kinda simialr, the TOP 5 most buffed ever factions in Ageless:
1) BEEM - Calydonians: they used to have bad stats, XP inflation and high terrain movement costs (like 3 at sand, 4 at cave? FR??) , so they were extremely slow and weak.
2) BEEM - Anakes: they had a tons of downsides like XP infaltion and being underwhelming damage, yet lv0 cursed who can promote to demon who can plague more lv0 cursed and also promote then to healers is something pretty interesting....
3) AE - Yokai: Below average movement costs, extreme fragility to fire and arcane in the whole faction, which was leading players to just spam plaguing slurger swarms to either survive and just spam these or die prematurely in games.
4) BEEM - Wood Warrios: It is a mix between the shown issues of the other two BEEM factions and Yoai.
5) EE - Outlaws: With the more recent addition to witches they are now pretty viable, but back then they were in top 5 worst factions to use for survival game modes.

Other honorable mentions of previously horrible factions that got buffed to be viable:
- Most of Rashy Eras units, them being reasonably weaker than default in their original release.
- Devlings after they got reworked at EOM, which nailers which costed u money and also were free XP because of unplayable cost ineficiency, and several other big problems they got after their EOM rework...
- AE Dark Legion, chaotic loyalists with no healers or mages, to be honest, nobody liked that.
- EE in overall, XP inflation and units being inconsitently being too goated (nerf) or being too bad (buff)
- EFM in overall, having below average lv3 qualities with exception of Dalefolks melee mages and Storm Witches, Pygmies and Imperialists, but the entire rest were underperforming.
- MiE sylvan treefolks, on release they were unplayable similarly to vanilla yokais and wood warriors.

[ChaosRider]

I do not think Yōkai units are necessarily underpowered, but rather that the unit design is not intended to be playable in the same context.

So, it does not make sense to compare a Lamia and a Northerner's grunt for the same cost of 12 gold as a "melee" unit. The Yōkai spriggan lore for all I know could be that one would encounter several of them at once in an area which they happen to be endemic, hence the cheap cost.

But the concept of Yōkai economy is utterly nonsensical - I would argue it would be counterintuitive to the entire idea of encountering Yōkai outside of civilization. I think I read somewhere they sometimes beg for money; this is a ruse. It is simply a solicitation of human victims for money which does not actually serve the same purpose as it does for any Default Era faction's currency, i.e. for retaining an army.

So perhaps Yōkai should be spun off into a standalone faction, as the difficulty seems to be that players have the option to accidentally pick the wrong faction (with which I disagree). These units are actually superior to many default era units in another context, such as the UWS scrolling survival, in particular the Onryo has more opportunities for the soultaker accrual of damage on its melee weapon than in a more finite setting. So thank you for not removing the faction

I am for the most part unfamiliar with the lore, but I was wondering why the level 2/3 were added. I think the AMLA bonuses are robust enough by default, but even if not I have seen other applications for it, such as in a Colosseum AMLA modification for the unit acclimation on terrain providing defense bonus.

Vanilla Yokais are just horrible, look for example at 1.10 ageless yokais stats or WOTG's yokais. Inflated XP for stat gain in level up, low level cap means the unit will be weaker in endgame than if using another faction with less downsides (fire/arcane weakness is a serious problem for yokai). Like if you were using yokai at afterlife/top-scrolling-survival/digama-beach/WC-2 you would have a severe dissadventage over a player who just picked loyalists.

Yokais are no longer BAD because I buffed them. Yes lamias are quite decent for 12g but remember they have pretty awful resistances to also cold and if I'm not wrong also to arcane. Also in modern 1.18 - 1.20 wesnoth times having a whole faction that is in averages -10/-30% arcane resistance is nearly unplayable at late game situation.

I still remember a WC-2 game where a guy was playing another forest based faction the Wood Warriors, and when I realized in that map AI could build paladins I said HAHAHA that guy is cooked there is no way he can survive to paladins with that time's wood warriors everything being weak to arcane and bad terrain defenses, so in that specific matchup wood warrior player could not win. Similarly did happen to vailla/old yokais... at trying to playing them as a normal faction to realize you've lost at the game starts because of the insane bad arcane/fire weakness and being forced to maintain a frontline at somewhere of the maps. Could also tell you that yokais players before the more recent yokai rebalances were just SPAMMING plague slurger swarm becuase it was literally the only real good thing they had. Reasons why wood warriors been buffed several times to at least be as good as default.... same did happen to yokai.

Vanilla Feyborns were 6-3 blade ranged, lv2 and lv3 kitsune were high XP and very bad mages, even if not wrong lv3 kitsune was only 9-4 blade ranged magical or smth. If we talk about yokai being good it's just because I greatly buffed them at not being suck-auto-lose faction , and still there are matchups where you will still be in disadventage at using yokais but not horribly as bad as automatically losing ur game because getting yokais.

But if you got some time, try viewing vanila yokais.... they suffered from extremely infalted XP, bad endgame scalling because units capping at lv1-lv2-lv3, which means in scenarios where you want to live more than 40 turns like orocia you will have a severe stat disadventage because units capping at lv2 or even lv1, and all which did get to lv3 were inconsistent like feyborn lv3 not having any melee at least one random enemy with beserk was unallowing you to place the whole feyborns at castle tiles...


Also very off-topic, but kinda simialr, the TOP 5 most buffed ever factions in Ageless:
1) BEEM - Calydonians: they used to have bad stats, XP inflation and high terrain movement costs (like 3 at sand, 4 at cave? FR??) , so they were extremely slow and weak.
2) BEEM - Anakes: they had a tons of downsides like XP infaltion and being underwhelming damage, yet lv0 cursed who can promote to demon who can plague more lv0 cursed and also promote then to healers is something pretty interesting....
3) AE - Yokai: Below average movement costs, extreme fragility to fire and arcane in the whole faction, which was leading players to just spam plaguing slurger swarms to either survive and just spam these or die prematurely in games.
4) BEEM - Wood Warrios: It is a mix between the shown issues of the other two BEEM factions and Yoai.
5) EE - Outlaws: With the more recent addition to witches they are now pretty viable, but back then they were in top 5 worst factions to use for survival game modes.

Other honorable mentions of previously horrible factions that got buffed to be viable:
- Most of Rashy Eras units, them being reasonably weaker than default in their original release.
- Devlings after they got reworked at EOM, which nailers which costed u money and also were free XP because of unplayable cost ineficiency, and several other big problems they got after their EOM rework...
- AE Dark Legion, chaotic loyalists with no healers or mages, to be honest, nobody liked that.
- EE in overall, XP inflation and units being inconsitently being too goated (nerf) or being too bad (buff)
- EFM in overall, having below average lv3 qualities with exception of Dalefolks melee mages and Storm Witches, Pygmies and Imperialists, but the entire rest were underperforming.
- MiE sylvan treefolks, on release they were unplayable similarly to vanilla yokais and wood warriors.

Since you mentioned WOTG in bad light I have few questions.

1. Who decides changes to do in Ageless factions? Do you have a discord channel where you discuss each unit change with other players or are you the only one who decides it?
2. Why do you think your changes makes factions better when they are far from original versions made by their authors which may be inactive now and maybe they didnt want such a changes?
3. How do you decides how much increase unit cost after changing it stats? By guessing or do you have a tool for it? Cause WOTG has CountUnitsCost mod.
4. On how many replays of games with factions that you have changed their units stats do you base decision?
5. How can you be sure that all changes you did and took your time were improving balance between factions? Maybe the effect of this changes is opposite to what you tried achieve?

[howwitty]

I think it's more of a vibes based balance change in Ageless Era, but I have played a series of 1v1 games with random Ageless factions with another player, which is what I assume is generally used for "balance" even if pairwise combinations of factions don't imply a balance in any other map like the 3,4,5, or 6p maps.

[IPS]

Since you mentioned WOTG in bad light I have few questions.

1. Who decides changes to do in Ageless factions? Do you have a discord channel where you discuss each unit change with other players or are you the only one who decides it?
2. Why do you think your changes makes factions better when they are far from original versions made by their authors which may be inactive now and maybe they didnt want such a changes?
3. How do you decides how much increase unit cost after changing it stats? By guessing or do you have a tool for it? Cause WOTG has CountUnitsCost mod.
4. On how many replays of games with factions that you have changed their units stats do you base decision?
5. How can you be sure that all changes you did and took your time were improving balance between factions? Maybe the effect of this changes is opposite to what you tried achieve?

1) I rarely see or read feedbacks from players because it's extreme rare that people talks about balance the most. I make decisions about balancing by myself based in what I have watched in long in multiplayer lobby games viewing random situations of players dealing in PVP (afterlife, digama beach etc) or PVE situations like WC II, top scrolling survivals (the one made by quequo). Still the few things I could constantly read were players cussing about the other picking EOMA to just win easier and mayn games not even starting because the 2nd player views the faction the other guy picked and decides to leave instead of even starting the game.

I know very well Ageless era itself because first, I have watched hundreds of games in multiplayer lobbies and also played literally lots of games at multiplayer lobbies in the past years 2020 to 2024, so in base what I have watched, realized by myself I can really know the real sitaution of almost every unit in each faction.

If I realize I misstaken at something, I just fix it again to suit in more fair situation on another release. I have also read from Wesnoth Modder's community Discord server that ageless is not dead-weight / a musseum of old unwanted eras because of my contasnts refreshes to the mod.

But it been literally pointless trying to balance let's say EFM vs EFM faction if people will do 80% of games at random faction picking all players or either with the random recruits mod or a 3rd scenario the case of hard picking a faction, they will just pick EOMA destroyers or summoners to just have magical melee/ranged with crazy good resistances and above average movement costs. Lit, players winning very tough scenarios is just by spamming the creme of the creme of the best units in the whole Ageless Era.... same thing also happens at WOTG games, players don't want to bother recruting the mid or bad units if they can of recruit the few WOTG that are broken.

2) Already pointed that, I realized nobody cares about original faction balancing in ageless, they either hard pick random or if pricing faction they will just pick strongest of EOMA to decrease chaances of being defeated.

3) Unit price is secondary thing, more important that the unit is not being AWFUL bad and useless at late game because being "too [censored] to be reliable". Most important price balancing is at lv1-lv2 , while lv3 and lv4 are just aproximations to not make the unit be crazy underpriced like a lv4 unit costing only 20g because original author was lazy about editing the unit's level because it's 99.99% of games not recruitable by players. Also as price criteria it's aproxiamtion about how much they would cost at default era based in their stats overall.

Also, you can't fix what's too [censored]-useless with just discounting the unit price at -40% or smth like that, many units in recent balance changes got their price increased by a bit but got buff as well because in their previous stats/design the unit was completely useless and it was not countering or not serving a real purpose to that faction.

Also if you question me, I would tell that XP balancing (XP spent stat gain, etc) is probably even more important than lv1 unit gold cost, the most at lv2-3 situations where by just spending wrongly the XP can literally cost you the game you could've won. Nobody cares spending 2-3g more gold coins in certain unit as long as the unit can be useful the whole game instead of saving 2-3g for something that only works for early game and then just bothering at being junk/bad unit xD

The other reason why you cannot balance everything just by lowering or increasing prices only is because if the unit costs too little, let's say a ver bad lv1 unit for 11g , it can of work somewhat but if players spam too much lv1 unit then they increase their army upkeep which means less future money... and if the unit is underpowered as hell (not cost ineficient JUST BAD) it's still 8 XP for the enemy unit training whenever the unit is slain, so hypothetically saying you would not want lv1's unit costing less than 12g at alls.


The main purpose of balance changes it avoiding BOTH situations of AUTOMATICALLY WINNING or AUTOMATICALLY LOSSING by either the leader choice or the faction choice. I have a personal view that game shouldn't be decided from turn 1 based in starting conditions... while the most at PVP gamemodes as in afterlife or highly modded digama-beach/tops-scrolling-survival

4) I have watched more than a lot of games (50-200 or even more) at multiplayer lobbies as spectator mode, I see interactions and see notes of things that shouldn't be THAT GOOD or THAT BAD because trust me, I've heard complaints of people hating the powercreep of best of EOMA units against the otherr ageless content, reason why many balancing choices (magic-counter / dodge , extra cold attacks) are just to be less undefended againist the real meta and allowing the factions to be less incomplete than even default becuase of just spamming blade/pierce/arcane attackers but nothing else, as most factions designers had no idea how to make their factions for a PVP environment (which, ageless is most often used at multiplayer or PVE at some of previously mentioned maps).

I'm among devs in all the multiplayer envoiroment who when is active in multiplayer lobbies is among most connected and interactive with the community who uses their gamemodes/add-ons. At 2027 or when 1.20 wesnoth gets released it's when we test how does all the changes I propossed, but I just edited what either being too useless or too strong...

5) Based in previous experiences in the past years, my games, other's games, did the changes and not blindfolded editing units because I liked the idea to change them, knowing almost every unit at this massive era and got a guess which factions does better based in my vast and massive experience from both played games and people watched using ageless. I do not use AI vs Ai to balance things because it's more honest viewing how real people uses these units and conclude.

[howwitty]

But it been literally pointless trying to balance let's say EFM vs EFM faction if people will do 80% of games at random faction picking all players or either with the random recruits mod or a 3rd scenario the case of hard picking a faction, they will just pick EOMA destroyers or summoners to just have magical melee/ranged with crazy good resistances and above average movement costs. Lit, players winning very tough scenarios is just by spamming the creme of the creme of the best units in the whole Ageless Era.... same thing also happens at WOTG games, players don't want to bother recruting the mid or bad units if they can of recruit the few WOTG that are broken.

2) Already pointed that, I realized nobody cares about original faction balancing in ageless, they either hard pick random or if pricing faction they will just pick strongest of EOMA to decrease chaances of being defeated.

3) Unit price is secondary thing, more important that the unit is not being AWFUL bad and useless at late game because being "too [censored] to be reliable". Most important price balancing is at lv1-lv2 , while lv3 and lv4 are just aproximations to not make the unit be crazy underpriced like a lv4 unit costing only 20g because original author was lazy about editing the unit's level because it's 99.99% of games not recruitable by players. Also as price criteria it's aproxiamtion about how much they would cost at default era based in their stats overall.

Also, you can't fix what's too [censored]-useless with just discounting the unit price at -40% or smth like that, many units in recent balance changes got their price increased by a bit but got buff as well because in their previous stats/design the unit was completely useless and it was not countering or not serving a real purpose to that faction.

How can the game be strategic without economizing on the cost of a specific unit?

Without a fixed unit cost the balance becomes circular, like rock paper scissors, or else you get into Yugioh territory where the attributes are of a large magnitude, but with no better denomination than a decimal system. And I think most players will agree that the cost of the unit is foundational to the era too, unless we are talking about monsters in the wild. You can balance with the unit cost, that's why a tier 2 unit can cost more than its prior tier 1 while a unit like a Northerners warrior is the cost of a gryphon. They can also be the same. One can't simply make all of the units so impressively pronounced in that they have a bigger number attack with bigger defenses and more flashier weapons specials. It would simply make them equally uneconomical. Hence why Ageless Era uses the same approach for any tier of any faction, adding another tier won't change that after tier 5 if it didn't change it after tier 4, and so on down the line.

If the player is willing to spend 5 minutes per turn, then it would seem to be gamebreaking to try to "fix" balance by increasing attack, increasing hp, increasing xp required to advance to another tier because now instead of economizing on the unit cost the game needs to squeeze more kills and more damage and more things into the time of each player. So for multiplayer, I think it's enough at 1 or 2 tiers, and of course we occasionally see the exception at tier 3 or 4 or 5. But the Ice Mammoth unit for example is just ridiculous.

What's next, a skinwalker? Jesus 2? Maybe a basilisk?

[IPS]

But it been literally pointless trying to balance let's say EFM vs EFM faction if people will do 80% of games at random faction picking all players or either with the random recruits mod or a 3rd scenario the case of hard picking a faction, they will just pick EOMA destroyers or summoners to just have magical melee/ranged with crazy good resistances and above average movement costs. Lit, players winning very tough scenarios is just by spamming the creme of the creme of the best units in the whole Ageless Era.... same thing also happens at WOTG games, players don't want to bother recruting the mid or bad units if they can of recruit the few WOTG that are broken.

2) Already pointed that, I realized nobody cares about original faction balancing in ageless, they either hard pick random or if pricing faction they will just pick strongest of EOMA to decrease chaances of being defeated.

3) Unit price is secondary thing, more important that the unit is not being AWFUL bad and useless at late game because being "too [censored] to be reliable". Most important price balancing is at lv1-lv2 , while lv3 and lv4 are just aproximations to not make the unit be crazy underpriced like a lv4 unit costing only 20g because original author was lazy about editing the unit's level because it's 99.99% of games not recruitable by players. Also as price criteria it's aproxiamtion about how much they would cost at default era based in their stats overall.

Also, you can't fix what's too [censored]-useless with just discounting the unit price at -40% or smth like that, many units in recent balance changes got their price increased by a bit but got buff as well because in their previous stats/design the unit was completely useless and it was not countering or not serving a real purpose to that faction.

How can the game be strategic without economizing on the cost of a specific unit?

Without a fixed unit cost the balance becomes circular, like rock paper scissors, or else you get into Yugioh territory where the attributes are of a large magnitude, but with no better denomination than a decimal system. And I think most players will agree that the cost of the unit is foundational to the era too, unless we are talking about monsters in the wild. You can balance with the unit cost, that's why a tier 2 unit can cost more than its prior tier 1 while a unit like a Northerners warrior is the cost of a gryphon. They can also be the same. One can't simply make all of the units so impressively pronounced in that they have a bigger number attack with bigger defenses and more flashier weapons specials. It would simply make them equally uneconomical. Hence why Ageless Era uses the same approach for any tier of any faction, adding another tier won't change that after tier 5 if it didn't change it after tier 4, and so on down the line.

If the player is willing to spend 5 minutes per turn, then it would seem to be gamebreaking to try to "fix" balance by increasing attack, increasing hp, increasing xp required to advance to another tier because now instead of economizing on the unit cost the game needs to squeeze more kills and more damage and more things into the time of each player. So for multiplayer, I think it's enough at 1 or 2 tiers, and of course we occasionally see the exception at tier 3 or 4 or 5. But the Ice Mammoth unit for example is just ridiculous.

What's next, a skinwalker? Jesus 2? Maybe a basilisk?

In short, what I meant to say with the previous post what's the point of even adding one recruitable unit (let's say THE WARG), having FOUR blade melee attackers (while faction was fine with 3 at most?) and even lack of other damage types in that faction. Why does even one faction needs 4 whole blade melee fighter attackers with just different amounts of health and terrain defenses? . It's not just add unit to the faction because it looks cool, just that in cases several units been "junk units" with no real purpose. The worst one the shapeshifter at recent times I also convinced the Era of Myths autors to rework that unit to make him an hybrid figther who focuses more at impact ranged. Aredians faction did have this same problem, same thing happened but instead with one of the advancement paths now switching to impact melee instead of blade.

Thing is that some authors had no multiplayer experience and repeats too many units with the same damage types unallowing them to do well againist specific opponents, like vanilla deep elves were just literally spamming blade and arcane attacks and almost nothing else because all the four other damage types and on this case all units had the same foot-type (resistances, movement costs....) so ehhh... that's also not a sincere good way to make one faction.

Main point of this is that in a certain faction you can't just fix an unit that is literally useless because others units in the same faction just does better the same task, or the unit being too inefficient at doing something well as much that hiring this specific unit just making your game harder.

Also howwity, I'm aware how to price units well too but what I did want to mention is that you can't just fix a bad unit design by just lowering its price.... if it doesn't serve a purpose or role or doesn't counter well what factions needs to then that unit is just bothering and will secretly sabotage your game to harder. Best example was after EOM reworked Nailers with something like 24 HP or something for a lv1 with no upkeep, you say yikes the unit costs 11g or smth and no upkeep (and no zone of control), but unit cost efficiency was that bad that recruiting this unit was literally increasing advantage to opponent because it was 8 free XP. Vanilla reworked nailers were not adding cheap damage nor cheap health, in that case scenario you can't fix the unit by making it cost 9g because even a gobling spearman is more useful because having more damages and no upkeep. You can't pretend to say it's balanced because I can fill the map out of them, but guess what the time all the slain units just made a lv2 unit on the opponent side to just gg's.

The point is that you cannot fix very bad units with just making them cost like -40% less...

Also if we talk about prices I can explain that by far there are extremes differences in lv2 units, the cheapest being the Great Albatros and with it's current stats and etc it has a cost of like 18g or 19g , which ehm, it's still a lv2 with near as much stats of a 1 with lv2 upkeep, while the most expensive lv2 unit might be one of the Knight variants having a price of around 45g to 50g.

I personally believe that an unit has to at least be useful or serve a faction a role or something to do and not being just cheap junk that is just there for placeholder and be outclassed. In default era only one unit has this role of junk unit that bothers to the owner of it... which is the Heavy Infantry and almost in that tier are the Skeleton archers at undeads which literally just exists to counter ONE unit named loyalist calvaryman , and default has that problem that they cannot make HI (Heavy Infantry) really good because it would become dwarf killer and hard-counter the whole KNALGAN faction. And problem in there is not Heavy Infantry as a unit... instead of Knalga being too limited in its base design.


Probably I exaggerated too much that some other aspects of the units does matter more than gold cost, but you can't literally fix every unit in a whole era by just adjusting their price if they're still junk or overpowered units for their respective levels because wesnoth also has some other aspects like unit leveling system which are also very important and ofc, the strategic thing about armies synergies like spending 100g for something that as a whole does better together than 100g spent in spamming the same unit.

Meanwhile in the XP aspect, like an unit with so little gain of stat needing whole 80-100 XP to get to lv3 which focusing at leveling this unit would be GG's because horrible high XP inflation for something that doesn't even deserve it. Even in more recent times even default had this problem which they just fixed just in 1.18 times...

the strategic thing about armies synergies like spending 100g for something that as a whole does better together than 100g spent in spamming the same unit.

Well it should be like that, but players are lazy and will just spam what's best and pretend to win with the lowest possible effort by spamming the same few broken units, and most balance changes are precisely to increase the viability of most units and nothing be completely useless or junk unit and not letting players win easily by just spamming the same 2-3 units the whole game that easily.

[howwitty]

You keep saying players are spamming. I don't know why you think that's happening. Evidently you have a narrow view of a particular class of players or else you are referring to some historical series in Isar's Cross with the same group of four players in every game. I don't think anyone is making a habit out of doing this unless they do not understand how to play the game. It's just one of the options that any player can use, especially if the game is poorly balanced. And yes, I have witnessed the Heavy Infantry spam. It does not work 99% of the time, probably because the starting gold and income you are using for balance testing leave a large remainder of (unusable) gold and cannot sustain enough units of cost 19 for sufficient map coverage.

If you want to spam heavy infantrymen you need to either raise the gold or else shrink the map down small enough that the keep and the villages are within 4mp and the total number of hexes occupied by either constitutes ~1/3, while removing all mountains, i.e. extremely optimized to such a degree that it becomes not playable for any other faction and the heavy infantrymen can all move around aimlessly with no object. I don't think that's what your goal is, I think I can infer the highly specialized attributes in the context of one of the units in Dimaga would be appealing. Since these units can cross the entire map in two moves it would make more sense why the unit might seem effective against other strong units, like dwarves, but this is non-functional approach to intra faction specialization when applied in the context of an era. And this type of redundancy does make sense for a situation with less gold and no upkeep if the player is optimizing for a single unit's survival, which is a completely different reason for spamming.

I think we can at least agree that one player who has a preference for a particular kind of unit in Dimaga is not 'spamming' in the same way that another player selects for one kind of unit and spams only that unit in the other differently designed maps. Or, perhaps you were thinking of Undead Empire. But I can't seem to recall the last time I saw anyone playing on the Age of Heroes, for example, who decided it would be a good idea to recruit only the level 2 gryphon unit in a random 40x20 map. Maybe sometime in 2019.

[Ravana]

You are free to recruit only one unit. We just do not want it to be efficient.

[IPS]

You keep saying players are spamming. I don't know why you think that's happening. Evidently you have a narrow view of a particular class of players or else you are referring to some historical series in Isar's Cross with the same group of four players in every game. I don't think anyone is making a habit out of doing this unless they do not understand how to play the game. It's just one of the options that any player can use, especially if the game is poorly balanced. And yes, I have witnessed the Heavy Infantry spam. It does not work 99% of the time, probably because the starting gold and income you are using for balance testing leave a large remainder of (unusable) gold and cannot sustain enough units of cost 19 for sufficient map coverage.

If you want to spam heavy infantrymen you need to either raise the gold or else shrink the map down small enough that the keep and the villages are within 4mp and the total number of hexes occupied by either constitutes ~1/3, while removing all mountains, i.e. extremely optimized to such a degree that it becomes not playable for any other faction and the heavy infantrymen can all move around aimlessly with no object. I don't think that's what your goal is, I think I can infer the highly specialized attributes in the context of one of the units in Dimaga would be appealing. Since these units can cross the entire map in two moves it would make more sense why the unit might seem effective against other strong units, like dwarves, but this is non-functional approach to intra faction specialization when applied in the context of an era. And this type of redundancy does make sense for a situation with less gold and no upkeep if the player is optimizing for a single unit's survival, which is a completely different reason for spamming.

I think we can at least agree that one player who has a preference for a particular kind of unit in Dimaga is not 'spamming' in the same way that another player selects for one kind of unit and spams only that unit in the other differently designed maps. Or, perhaps you were thinking of Undead Empire. But I can't seem to recall the last time I saw anyone playing on the Age of Heroes, for example, who decided it would be a good idea to recruit only the level 2 gryphon unit in a random 40x20 map. Maybe sometime in 2019.

In short if there was no rebalancing , you would just see players spamming fire gods, maras, infernal vortex and air gods and make the game completely unplayable to others players when them matching other players in afterlife or digama race. Nobody would be taking ageless seriously if hard picking gives that massive advantage over the other player.

Heavy Infantry is underpowered as hell for its costs of 19g why I would spam that junk unit if it's defenitively considered THE WORSTS default unit by almost all serious players , more debatible is about players spamming dwarvish figheters and winning the game. Even default itself is doing balance changes recently. And if you ask they increased lv2 steelclad XP to become a Dwarvish Lord but alike they decreased needed XP for all the other units. Default balancing is also doing what I'm doing.... nerf the OP but instead buff what's out of the meta.


Also why a win condition is making your army 80-90% of the same unit because it's by far more powerful than the entire rest of their faction but also stronger than almost the entire content in the era? as by far a strategy game is meant that whatever you do if you do it well you should be winning.... but it's just NOT like that if the powercreeps is as big as of now...

But you all seem to not care about the actual situations which players are instantly winning or instantly losing from their picks at turn 1 because the powercreep of some factions and some units is that notable that it decides matches instantly. I still remember a very specific game in the Beach version of Top Scrolling survival as me playing with the ME - Cult Faction , I still remember I could not get past the boss who were recruiting kamikaze goblins just because the cult had nothing good to kill the Lv3 miners at 70% mountains defense and just lost regardless of how nice I was doing the entire match. Wave and turns I did just pass easily by even playing worse with many other randoms factions, including default loyalist getting farther with no problems.

The idea about balancing is making all the over 5000 units and most of the over 100 playable factions be fun to use .... as in the current state of the era people only picks 9 of strongest faction and beat others because of the powercreep, or even more crazy the same 250 peak units making the entire other 5000 units nearly unplayable in more specific situations because of starting advantage... so people caring about so few factions and units is not a good topic of design at all... while yes, maybe one player may like 1-3 factions, but what about about from 50 players they all like the same 4-7 factions but nothing else? FROM OVER 100 FACTIONS TO PICK? that is also a problem.


You know that if it wasn't because of the rebalances, the era would be instantly unplayable because of people abusing air elemental, maras and fire gods and nothing else stopping that? I've been in many situations which game doesn't just start because in past times of ageless the 2nd player was instantly leaving as soon as realizing the opponent picked destroyer or summoners or at turn 1 remaking the game because the other player got any of them by random ...

As in a previous moment, I was balancing out of making all matching with default, but there is the EOMA problem that if everything is default like then players who just picks EOMA will crush the entire game and win games that otherwise with their skill they would have not won.... over players who were truly more skilled than them. So the new focus is basing Ageless in such balancing that is just better taking away the 6 default factions but making the gameplay of the entire rest really viable. And even if most factions will slightly overtune default almost all factions (with exception of darkes , undead and northerers) are pretty viable even after balance changes of 4.41

The main magic of default is that whatever of the 6 factions you become good at you will win more games, which in ageless or where powercreeps are that big it's not the case...


But as said, I'm also a player, and unlike most developers I do really care of each unit and each faction in the era. I just want that gameplay feels the most correct and fair at any situations, while focusing the most at random faction and random recruits mod at attempting to players not instantly winning because of rolling a good faction or a pair of units that would decide the 1vs1 afterlife or smth or even crazier just because of starting leader. As well you not needing to know what's strongest to actually win afterlife and also making the game much more friendly for who is new at the mod.

But in resume, the idea of the balance changes is to make the game way harder for who spams good units and make the game overall easier for whoever does anything diferent.

[IPS]

Been a while from the last forum posts, I will just do a a list (wanted to make the post short but lol explanations aint' short) of the goals and the things I'm trying to fix with the massive balance changes in the last few updates.

Spawn Killing instant win gameplay
For if you didn't know, I'm fan of a family of scanearios made by quequo named ultimate scrolling survival or somethin like that, and ye, some of his testers uses peak and best units of ageless units to get further at longest 150-160 turns map ... and their performance as testers (which I'm one of them) , drastically changes the direction and balancing decisions which quequo makes his creations. There are multiple difficulties, but the few ones that matters are hard (2nd highest) and insane (the highest) if I'm not wrong.

Well, in such high difficulty settings, a decent (NOT GREAT, NOT PRO PLAYER) can place his OP SS tier units at front reading "random lv2" spawning where a labbel says there will be a lv2, lv3 etc unit. Basically being at front and un-allowing / body blocking and negating enemies spawn to even move to somewhere else instead of just the tanky OP modded air god/mara/fire god... then it drastically makes the map look easier and then quequo ruining the two highest difficulties for the entire rest of ageless... just because of what of the few tester do.

While I play like twice better than such tester with basically ANY random ageless faction you can imagine (I'm randomist, I do well with every faction), if I even struggle at winning hard difficutly if not trying to abuse peak units while testers can nearly beat insane out of the peak units then there is a severe issue to address overthere... so if more units are no longer harmless for the body block meta unit in that such scenarios... then placing in front the peak units and guessing you have over 95% of not losing it ... not being something real anymore THEN we've made a big success at at least not allowing someone do spawn killing enemies with almost total safety.


Afterlife Meta
Similarly to the first case, the amount of skill a player has to defeat someone using the peak units with basically a random A-B tiered faction is huge, while not impossible, clearly the other player with random faction has to be MUCH better as if they are similar skill set.

For previous case I would bet that the one using the peak faction instead of random unlike the other player and if both are at similar skill level , from 10 games peak faction player will win 8 or 9 of 10. With intended changes I want to lower the winrate of peak faction player from 8-or-9 games to between 6-7 games. respecting a bit the tier list but not at making it game decisive.

In the other case, which is that while this point is mostly for random recruits and random leaders setup , but the goal is that you don't instantly win or lose because of LEADER roll or two-three lucky good recruits... this point also applies to race of digama scenario.


Results and outcomes matters (and how it did happen)
While either playing or spectating, as said, if player was auto winning or either being from turn 1 in an hopeless situation just because of a bad matchup at let's say WC II , then something has to be fixed. Certain player used a highly weak faction to arcane (wood warriors) and AI had access to loyalist paladins, more money and random flood which lead that specific wood warrior player to impossibly win that WC II specific game just because of his starting faction? a game that if used loyalist or any more stable faction he would have defeat that specific island and gone further... yes. And that's a very old relatable story because wood warriors are already fixed from this critical misstake so that's no longer the case.

In another case as mentioned, in one of scrolling survival variants made by quequo, I still remember a specific game while doing great, ME cult could not kill a miner at 70% mountain defense because no magic, no accuracy attacks and poison works too slow.... then being swallowed by lava in a stage of that map which I easily defeated with loyalists or similar factions.


Most game data by spectating been useless
From like every 20 game I spectate, 17 were with outcomes like player dies survival or losses to his opponent prematurely because of unskill so nothing to conclude from there, other common scenario been like spectated a game and spotted something which I already realized which let's say happens 1 or 2 of the 20 observed games. Then randomly... the 1st of 20 games or smth which something interesting happens, something shinning being wrong like "new unit is way too weak" or "this unit is slightly overturned because of..." or "lol why that heck has this has this stat like that lol" , or anything similar. Not all things hits the wanted ressults on its first attempt but most likely in many cases the new misstake is most often smaller than the older addressed issue at same unit/faction..



Own game experience and random testers results matters
Ye, unlike most other multiplayer eras, ageless is purely based in multiplayer performance and mutates from it. It's balance is literally guided by someone who plays who also makes for other real players, instead of focusing at adding content for just having more content. (while I've been not playing this year, I did in other years and I plan to return SOON at wesnoth 1.20 release).



And btw, I will do some slight adjustments to few units in the upcoming days of October but the final notes will be added much later. Even if, the units I have in mind right now are few, I don't now how much I will add to the already planned lol