Main Factions Balance

[Soliton]

Many changes were made to mainline units that the competitive players did not like. Cavalry movement, Orc Archer buff, Footpad nerf, etc.

Did those competitive players voice their opinion when those changes were discussed? (Here for example: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=32430&start=105#p484916)

many many times, over many threads, different forums, in game chat, and pms

Excellent, I was worried there was a group of competitive players whose opinion was not heard or that you for some reason was speaking for all of them.

[sergey]

People who think that the new dwarvish trait "hardy" is overpowered. Are you interested in trying it? It could be implemented, then tested and rejected.

[Crimson_Conure]

@Crimson_Conure Thank you for putting effort into your post, but if you want your ideas to really help, gain some experience playing with some veterans beforehand.

Spoiler:

Related, the loyalist combination of heavy infantryman + mage (and horseman for scouts) seems too powerful because the heavy infantry man is very resistant and a heavy hitter, whilst the mage is a heavy magic hitter. I think in order to balance this, make heavy infantryman more expensive, like as expensive as knights. So 24g.

Honestly, if you play against less experienced people they will let your HIs and mages hit hard during the day. And then you think, "oh this is overpowered". But more skilled players know that HIs are slower than adepts and skeletons - so you can safely run away from them at the day, and hit hard at night with adepts - note HIs have -10% cold vulnerability. Also, because they are slow and expensive, they are less useful when it comes to defending flanks from scouts. I consider HI to be already an expensive unit for its real value. The more expensive units you get, the fewer units you have in total, and that makes controlling villages more difficult - so you can lose your villages, lose income and your opponent will outnumber you. The same applies to mages, who do deal great damage at day, but they are very fragile and expensive at the same time - and almost useless at night. So in general, at the intermediate level of play, you may think some unit composition is crushing, but it always has some flaws that more experienced people can exploit.
HI 19g->24g - Nope. Be really careful when it comes to making drastic changes to the balance - the effect may be opposite to the intended: HI would be unplayable afterward.

In order to balance Knalgans against Rebels (rebels have a somewhat substantial advantage against knalgans it is not really even fair), I think add some sort of magic/arcane attack somewhere. Every faction has magic except for knalgans, but why?

I think maybe if you made some unit have an arcane attack or something like that (stalwart?), then that would help knalgans be a more flexible faction that can basically handle loyalists better...It could be a good counter to spearmen in good terrain maybe. Add new unit like runemaster from AoE; it can have a magic hammer and wesnoth is supposed to be a fantasy game after all

By doing so, you totally change the characteristics of the factions. Now I think that what we want to do is to make the already existing factions fairer without losing their flavour. So Knalgans get opponents out of villages in a different way than magic: either by an initial outlaw rush with thieves backstabbing or with ulfserkers.

@ForPeace Sorry, I hope I do not sound rude, but...I just don't understand why you assume I don't have play experience with veteran player; I have plenty of experience with some high level players. I have played with Computer_Player, Krogen, Danniel_BR, and many other strong players from long ago (like Elvish Pillager and Noy..but well, I do not really remember many others). I was not very good back then...But recently (as of this past few months after getting back into Wesnoth), I got much stronger.

I mostly studied Sulla's ruins and watched many replays. And I played some practice games locally and noticed I have improved a lot as a player (I don't know how much yet).

Well I mean also, I don't really think experience with veteran players is relevant anyway? Anybody can say the right stuff or the wrong stuff no matter their strength or their experience/wisdom...Thereby, I think reasoning is king :shrug: You have to validate or invalidate my points by experimenting and putting it to the test. I really am trying to help the ladder community with my suggestions.

Well HI are slow that's why cavalryman will be helpful too, for all the scouting. And cavalryman are pretty venerable units in themselves too. You can rush with HI and mage and deal lots of damage, especially to undead. I think this is why we need maybe a ghoul buff or something so that the undead can support their skeletons and adepts with them...It would help fend off heavy infantrymen and poison melee attackers. HI are already expensive for a good reason, but should be more expensive I think.

About your point of completely changing the nature of Knalgans, well it would be a big change but also ages ago the undead's adept was changed from not arcane to arcane. So I think it is somewhat of an acceptable change. In the game you already have Dwarvish Runesmith and Runemaster, I think there should be a level 1 version of it.

Maybe he can be with a cloak and a magic/arcane hammer. Either that, or he could have an attack ability to cast a rune. I do not think it would change knalgans too much because magic units in dwarves already exist, it's just that they are not in default era for wesnoth.

@Cackfiend I would love to play with you!!
i know how to play undead but they are just simply disadvantaged (again low health etc.) only they can fight drakes at a relatively high level.

When do you want to play?

[Cackfiend]

@Cackfiend I would love to play with you!!
i know how to play undead but they are just simply disadvantaged (again low health etc.) only they can fight drakes at a relatively high level.

When do you want to play?

are you in discord? i live in the USA so it might be tricky to get a game easily

[Crimson_Conure]

Hi Cack, yes I am on discord

I am also in the United States! So I am very excited to get a game

[sergey]

I have a proposal on the dwarvish trait to make it balance changing effect more predictable.

Currently.
Healthy trait: always rest heal, +1 hp, +1 hp per level.
Always rest heal means they regenerate 2hp if not poisoned and loose 6hp if poisoned.

Proposal.
All dwarves loose 6hp if poisoned.
Healthy trait is not removed, healthy dwarf still looses 6hp when poisoned as any other dwarf.
As a result, healthy dwarves will not be affected by this change. All other dwarves will get buff against poison.

Thoughts?

P.S.
Some math statistics. Dwarf has 40% to get the healthy trait and 60% to not get it. Thus, 60% of dwarves will be affected.

[Cackfiend]

the main reason to get rid of healthy trait is to have a better chance of getting the other traits, so it has to go

[CrossBreed]

I want to weigh in for keeping the Healthy trait. It increases variety among the factions and I think it fits dwarves very well in terms of lore.
If it's deemed too weak i would rather opt for buffing the trait itself. Personally i feel it's not too terrible anyway, but that's a different matter.

the main reason to get rid of healthy trait is to have a better chance of getting the other traits, so it has to go

I still think removing it is the wrong way to go. What speaks against buffing the trait to the point where it can compete with other traits? For example, improve the base HP bonus or the heal amount. Besides, it would also possible to balance out a worse trait set by buffing dwarves some other way.

Removing the trait from the game would make the faction somwhat less distinct from the others, which would be a loss imo.

[Cackfiend]

I still think removing it is the wrong way to go. What speaks against buffing the trait to the point where it can compete with other traits? For example, improve the base HP bonus or the heal amount. Besides, it would also possible to balance out a worse trait set by buffing dwarves some other way.

Removing the trait from the game would make the faction somwhat less distinct from the others, which would be a loss imo.

Did you play competitively when Healthy didnt exist? Dwarves were fine. There were a lot more fast and strong dwarves. After Healthy was put in place (mostly to combat how much orc assassins destroy dwarves) it was a huge nerf to dwarves in general for 1v1 competitive play.

[EarthCake]

I would agree that removing one trait from the dwarves would be bad. Perhaps adding a new trait instead of healthy would be good.

[sergey]

@Cackfiend - buff against poison for all the dwarves is also an essential change?
If not, what about removing healthy + resilient and adding a new trait that is a combination of the removed?
It could be: always rest heal, +2hp, +1hp per level.
Since there will be less possible traits, that will also increase the number of "always rest heal" dwarves.

P.S. And to be honest it is significantly easier to code and test.

[Hejnewar]

So if you really think that removing healthy makes dwarves better, then why at leats 3 other traits are better than healthy? And are they better in every case on every dwarf unit? If we considered two of these traits to be worse than healthy, then that would mean that leaving healthy might be good but might be bad and this would need to be further investigated.

I'm assuming that you can only remove healthy.

[Cackfiend]

@Cackfiend - buff against poison for all the dwarves is also an essential change?
If not, what about removing healthy + resilient and adding a new trait that is a combination of the removed?
It could be: always rest heal, +2hp, +1hp per level.
Since there will be less possible traits, that will also increase the number of "always rest heal" dwarves.

P.S. And to be honest it is significantly easier to code and test.

It's pretty important that for the first test version of the ladder era that healthy is removed. if you cant code a 'hardy' type trait like i suggested then i would compromise with just removing the healthy trait

[sergey]

if you cant code a 'hardy' type trait like i suggested then i would compromise with just removing the healthy trait

Ok, I will code it. Also I have an idea how to make it better than I initially though. I mean to show -6 in the UI instead of -8 and then +2.

[EarthCake]

Well I think it already is -6, rather than -8 +2.