VI Balancing

[Magyar Khan]

would it help enlighten some of u if i upload some replays of the boring battles with noncreative armyselections which are close to invincible?

its funny but i noted that i increase my change of losing for ever
shooter more than 3 (exception armies like turks)
cav less than 6

the ideal crusader army comes close to 3 pavs 8 cav 5 inf

i cant see why this is different to 5 musk and 7 ashi and 3 nagcav. maybe only now everyone can use succesfull cav. just throw them in like the early nagcav.

and still a big drawback of the game is that units esp cav gain valor during the game. the devs should skip this nonsense.

[Puzz3D]

Well I think MTW v1.1 is better balanced than WE/MI v1.02, but it's far from perfect. The basic army is 4 pav arb, 8 inf and 4 cav which is balanced and what I believe Crandaleon won the two tourneys with, and there are best units within the infantry and cavalry just like the pav arb is now recognized as the best ranged unit. You can vary that basic army somewhat and still be effective. At least it has the 3 elements of ranged, infantry and cavalry. There might be some unbalanced armies that can beat the balanced army, but they have counters so it's a bit risky to take an unbalanced army in MTW.

WE/MI v1.02 is a game that I don't like, and that's why I helped make v1.03. In WE/MI v1.02, you could take 8 musk and 8 yari ashi, and you didn't need anything else. You could take cav, but you didn't need it. Krast's 10 gun army was extremely difficult to beat. Most players ended up using the 4 max rule to limit muskets and yari ashi. If you could win the shootout with the equvalent of 2 musk units left, you had an easy win from that point on. If you went up against 6 musk with 4 musk, you had a lost game. It's not the case in MTW v1.1 that 6 pav arbs is a guaranteed win against 4 pav arbs. That's because the ranged fire doesn't determine the winner since the rate of fire is slow enough and the morale penalty low enough that you can advance in the face of fire. In an extended shootout, the arbs become exhausted to the point that they can't hit anything which frees the infantry to advance without any losses to speak of. In MTW, battles are primarily determined by the hand to hand fighting, but arbs do have enough potential that you can't ignore them. Archers you can pretty much ignore which is too bad.

Given the unbalanced nature of the game, of course players are going to eventually discover the most effective army composition after a while. After Viking Invasion comes out, the same process will happen all over again. Those players who find out what works and use it well will rise to the top. Those players who choose particular units for other reasons will find themselves at a growing disadvantage as time goes by. If you want a game where battlefield tactics alone determine the winner, then everyone in the battle has to use the exact same unit types.

How can a particular army configuration be close to invincible, when both players have access to the exact same army? That startment makes no sense to me.

[Paolai]

eemmhhh.....Cranda won the Koc/Skull tourney with the 5 cavs max rule...dont forget it....so, whats the difference between the 4 musks max?
And...beleive me, on the great part of mine MI games, I have played with 3 musks and I had not many losts: with Kujon ID I had a score of 40 wins and about 3 losts and I used always 3 musks and 4 archers (2 cav arch). No...on MI the army was less important than in MTW, you had always a spot for the fantasy and creativity, instead on MTW there isnt

[Puzz3D]

Paolai,

Maybe you won because you were better than your opponents. When the opponents were equal skill, 3 musk would not beat 6 in WE/MI v1.02. If Crand played with the 5 cav max rule, why did he take only 4 cav? And, there was no such rule in the other tourney.

If you always used 3 musk, 4 archers and 2 cav archers in WE/MI then it just means you were good enough to overcome the inherent disadvantage of that army. Muskets slam archers in WE/MI v1.02. STW, WE/MI and MTW, are all unbalanced. VI and RTW are going to be the same way.

[FearofNC]

i must agree with magyar... wich i dont do often... i brought the standered 4 pavs 8 inf 4 cav.. vs him and his 3 pav 8 cav 5 inf army... i would like to think that we are very close in skill... not equall.. but very competitive.. i never stood a chance in any of the battles.... cav used correctly will rule the day.. infantry are usless... pavs are usless... we bring them because they are part of the game... not becasue they are needed... now i grant you... he didnt walk all over me with my balanced army... and im sure with enough attempts i would win a few... but the fact is that unit selection means more now than it ever did..

a good example of one of these battles is here

[Paolai]

no....I mean I used on MI 3 musks, 2 foot arch and 2 cav arch....

On MTW if you have less cavs instead, probably you have already lost, no spot or creativity, no spot for fantasy The match is already closed when you choose your army and faction. Yuki...go on the foyer and read the hosted game titles...you can see titles like "No art, no Byz, max 5 cavs, no spanish, but if you choose spanish no lancers" How do you can consider this game balanced? I think, if you still consider MTW balanced, well, maybe you are so strong and skilled that you understood better than me and better than many others the mechanism of this game...yes this is a possibility, but beleive me, the games that I lost on MTW are not so many, but I know that I won the great part of mine games I have played only cause I choosed a good army, and not because I am skilled

[Swoosh So]

Hasent anyone mentioned that crossbows should only be able to fire in a straight line? so that at least archers could use hills etc to hit them, i mean my god an arbalister can fire through a forrest and hit something on the other side?

[FearofNC]

it would be nice if the host in vi or rome could set same armies for all players...

[Knight_Yellow]

ill be happy if anti cav units do their job and archers get a chance to kill some 1 without getting minced by pavs.

[Magyar Khan]

yup i agree with nc, he did suprise me by having some cav with 3 Wupgrades vs mine with all 1 upgrade and i lost control of a flank once in a while.

it is that rushes tires me faster than normal games that i dont do them often but i got to think 2 arbs are enuf. save the unitslot for more sensible units

the best step to solve the cav is to skip teh part where they can gain valour during the game.

i saved some replays of teh games vs nc lately and u will see 30 cav routing a clumped up about 100 h4 mil serg/h3 cmaa. well w ehad this topic a while ago.

[Swoosh So]

The topic may have been a while ago but its still an important point magyar, unfortunately with the release of vi just around the corner i dont think any of these changes will have a chance to surface in it, But my god theres thousands of players willing to playtest and give advice on balancing maybe ca should start using them, WE ARE FREE I know everyone cant be kept happy but i tend to agree with kocmoc the game is 2d, forrests dont really matter now and neither do hills, well not as much as they should its flat featurless map totalwar time and its sad, maps and terrain were really important in shogun and mtw has lost that, a great sp game with many more features but a complete step back in multiplayer. Give us a mp stat file to play with get all senior members of the community to work together to get these stats sorted out. Why not setup a team like you guys did with the mi patch to deal with all these issues and put them forward in a readable manner. Can giljay explain the exact hill bonuses also and woods bonusess and minuses? and the fact cav are so powerfull against spears is crazy and yes i know that they wanted cav to be powerfull so the game had a certain flavour but spear should beat cav easily - the cav can withdraw now anyways from the fight. The way i see it is if cav charge a spear unit front they should lose and if they charge a flank they should win (simple).

[Puzz3D]

Paolai,

I didn't say MTW was balanced. It's unbalanced, but at least you need all 3 types of units. More unit types doesn't make for a better game. It makes for a game where unit selection takes on increasing importance. This was discussed here long before MTW was released. Viking Invasion has added units to MTW. That's not going to improve the game from a balance standpoint.


NC,

The only way to find out how you match up to another player is to take exactly the same units as he does and play a long match. Unit selection is part of the game unless you purposely take the same units. The game is going to remain unbalanced because CA doesn't have the time to balance it, so, until everyone figures out what the best units are, you won't have people playing on an even field so to speak. LongJohn did say he would look to see if he could remove the battlefield upgrades from the MP game, but, if it wasn't a straightforward change, then it wouldn't get done since his time to spend on this was very limited. It's possible that the battlefield upgrades are tied so tightly with SP that a lot of coding would be required to separate them. Since nothing has been heard about this for several months, I'm not very hopeful that it's been removed.

I don't think infantry and arbs are useless. Not long ago many players were claiming the all cav army could beat a balanced army almost all the time. Crand, Cheetah and I showed that it's not the case. The balanced 4 arb, 8 inf and 4 cav army can win convincingly. Even AMP participated in this test and lost with his all cav army. What you can't do is go chasing the cav army with the infantry army because the cav is faster. These opinions that the all cav was practically invincible were formed because some players didn't know how to play the balanced army properly.

It could be that the 3 arbs are better than the 4 arbs because you have an extra melee unit, but the player with the 4 arbs can force the other player to attack, and attacking incurs a fatigue disadvantage. Cav don't fatigue as fast in v1.1 as they did in v1.0, which was a community requested change, so they won't be at as much of a disadvantage as the inf during the attack. The infantry could just walk forward to minimize fatigue, but they will take more hits from that extra arb if they do. I'll watch your replay later, since I can't right now. The fatigue makes MTW less of a rush game than STW was, and requires that you consider fatigue in your planning and rest your units. I do think that fatigue in bad weather is too high, and in good weather is rather high. Fatigue means you have to watch those arbs and rest them also.


Swoosh,

CA will never bring the players into their program development. It's seen as too much of a risk.

The game is not really 2D. I measured a combat advantage of 1.5:1 for a 45 degree slope in MTW. It does appear to be less than it was in STW, but the hill bonus was rather large in STW. Remember how tough it was to take that little bump of a hill on Totomi or that ridge? In anycase, LongJohn said that the downhill combat bonus was not changed between STW and MTW. So it's a mystery why it is less, but it's not zero. Also, ranged weapons gain considerable effectiveness from even a small height advantage.

MTW tree density is 1/2 of STW. The trees are larger in diameter to compensate somewhat. There was a technical programming issue that required the reduced tree density, and I think it had to do with having larger maps. Spears loose their rank bonus in trees and cav loose 4 combat points in trees and move through trees slower.

There was a long thread back in Sept about spears vs cavalry in which many historical examples were put forth that cav could penetrate spear formations. As a result of that, in the v1.1 cav was given a chance of pushback on a man holding a spear who is facing the cav. In another thread at that time, it was argued that swords were not beating spears the way they should, so swords got a combat boost vs spears and spears got a cost increase. Cav was also considered overpriced in a different thread, and it got a cost reduction. The interaction of those changes resulted in spears that don't do too well against cav, although, it did stop the battles from becoming an all spear affair which was the path players were discovering worked best in v1.0. Spears are also a defensive unit, so they don't kill very fast. They are really the only defensive unit in the game. Their low morale tends to have them run away too soon for a defensive unit which should be able to block an enemy for a long time. Viking Invasion has +2 morale, so that should hale spears stand an fight, and maybe spears got a cost reduction, but I don't know for sure. Polearms are faster cav killers.

Cav are modelled to win by routing the enemy on contact. You can see the ineffectiveness of cav by turning morale off. Lots of players complain about this routing, but that's how it is. The small cav units don't have much chance of winning a melee against big infantry units unless they rout them. The +2 morale in Viking Invasion is going to reduce the effectiveness of cav a bit. The battlefield upgrades changes cav quite a lot later in the battle by making cav so strong that it can win melee against much bigger inf units. The battlefield upgrade also increases the charge bonus since the attack factor which is increased by valor gain is added to the charge. It will defeinitely help things if this has been removed in Vikings.

However, I think archery is still going to be relatively weak in Vikings.

[CBR]

Quote[/b] (Swoosh So @ April 29 2003,14:57)] I know everyone cant be kept happy but i tend to agree with kocmoc the game is 2d, forrests dont really matter now and neither do hills, well not as much as they should its flat featurless map totalwar time and its sad...

No offense but have you played the game at all? Yes bonuses are smaller than in STW so I guess that is a matter of taste of how big a hill should be to give a certain bonus for a defender. But to say the game is 2d is a silly comment..sorry.

Even a small rise in the ground gives your missile troops an advantage..a bigger hill gives lots of bonuses for your melee troops. And of course woods matter as spears lose rank bonues and cav is weak in woods.

Hell yes this game is not balanced and it could be improved but it would be a lot better if we focus on the real problems...please

Why should spears defeat cav easily? If you want to kill cav fast buy some halbs/bills. Nothing crazy about that really. The main problem is too powerful swords that forces people to buy loads of swords instead of spears if they want to win. Yes cav can withdraw so what? The enemy has just sent his cav into range of your arbs and you might be able to counter attack while he is disordered.

CBR

[Tempiic]

Hmmm some curiousity...

Those people who complained bout too strong spears and too weak (i get that impression) pre-patch are they the same roughly who complain now about too weak spears and too strong cav?

BTW i'd like to see the valour upgrades during the game be gone too, though these valour upgrades are partially influenced by your own casualties as well as your kills/prisoners

[CBR]

Well I can only speak for myself

I was very active in the "cav should be better" threads but I was a just a young and innocent noob back then (now I'm just a noob) and didnt care much about the spears versus sword treads although I would be arrogant to think I could have influenced anything there

But improved swords killed the whole idea of stronger cav as spears just became too weak.

Thats the problem with loads of people coming with shitty suggestions. Noise level is too high and its difficult to understand the overall effect of all the changes...oops sounds a bit arrogant..oh well.. my therapist said I should try and believe in myself a bit more

There were several things I wanted changed..primary reason why I started modding and ended up with the idea of MPwars.

CBR

[longjohn2]

I did take out the updgrading of units during battle for MP only. Sorry if I forgot to tell you that.

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

[Puzz3D]

Thx LongJohn

Removal of battlefield upgrades in MP should make a big difference in gameplay. The relative balance of the units will now stay constant throughout the battle, and cavalry won't become stonger just from chasing down routers. This combined with the higher overall morale will tone down the cavalry relative to the infantry. Also, the MP Wars mod will benefit greatly since you play that with units at valor 0 where the battlefield upgrade is at it's most apparent.

[Mithrandir]

Not a question of balance sorry (and sorry if this can be read in this thread/somewhere else too), but is the option to declare war on your allies in MP taken out ?

I _hate_ this option, and many with me, perhaps make it an option for the host to enable...

[TosaInu]

Spears in 1.0 are quite different from spears in 1.1: 1.0 spears were quite powerful, 1.1 are quite weak.

-Increased upgradecost (to 70%) -> upgrading cheap units didn't make them better than expensive V0 units. Many spears fit that category.
-Basecost of spears increased.
-Sword (?) units gained +1 attack when fighting vs spears.

Also:
-Some swords cheaper.
-Cav cheaper.
-Something seems done to morale.

All effects stacked, make for a huge effect.

VI will (as far as I know/remember correctly):
-Remove battlefield upgrades (will 'hurt' cav and small swordunits).
-Add +2 honor (units will fight slightly longer and the effect of cavcharges and proximity effect will decrease).
-Decrease the basecost of some spears.
-Remove pavarb from the high era.
-Improve effectiveness of arrows.

Looks fine to me. We'ld have to play it to see how good it is, but it'll undoubtly change the game as we know it. I expect it to become better.

Edit: Mithrandir, I've declared war on my allies when the victory was near more than once and didn't even notice it. I've played 100's of STW games and never had that happen.

[GilJaysmith]

Quote[/b] (Mithrandir @ April 30 2003,20:50)]Not a question of balance sorry (and sorry if this can be read in this thread/somewhere else too), but is the option to declare war on your allies in MP taken out ?

I'm fairly sure we took that out too.

[Mithrandir]

Quote[/b] (GilJaysmith @ May 01 2003,14:46)]

Quote[/b] (Mithrandir @ April 30 2003,20:50)]Not a question of balance sorry (and sorry if this can be read in this thread/somewhere else too), but is the option to declare war on your allies in MP taken out ?

I'm fairly sure we took that out too.

Thanks

the pop up message is annoying since you cant order your units to do anything else while it's there.

I've had about 3 times that I declared war on my allies due to fast and stressed clicking, thanks a lot

[CBR]

Quote[/b] (GilJaysmith @ May 01 2003,21:46)]I'm fairly sure we took that out too.

Oh no...what else can we find to complain about now??

CBR