Game Balance, or the lack there of.

[Fisherking]

As the game now stands the only weapons that have an accurate range are the muskets. Everything else has been halved or more for balance. But it hinders how units were used and how effective different types of units actually were. This is being further skued for the sake of more balance. But actually it is more unbalance!

Of course “Balance” is a big issue! And what does it mean?

When you talk of "Balance" in single player it is about a faction being strong enough to make it in the game. With all its units and so on. If someone has a very strong unit that is available late that may make up for the crappy ones it has to make do with for most of the game.

In multiplayer "Balance" is fairness. Everything needs to be a clone of the other and a unit is seen as unbalancing if it is seen to be "too strong", in other words effective.

Too many people in multiplayer have lost sight of the fact that there were historical differences in units and war is basically unfair.

Tactics are about using your men and equipment to best advantage against the enemy, even when they are not as good in some regards.

Making everything a clone destroys the feel of commanding a faction and the shorter ranges and less accuracy is also disconcerting.

I prefer historical accuracy over “fairness”, an that is not compatible with those who are looking for clones.

In this era Prussian infantry was the ideal. Not because of melee, equipment, morale, marksmanship, or anything else but firing five shots a minute. (quick shots but low percentage)

Other good infantry fired three shots but standard infantry only got off two. Those who faced Prussia quickly saw the value of the rifle. It was slow and difficult to load but you could shoot them before they got near enough to shoot back.

We can’t do that in the game because of design considerations...rifles have too short a range and are not available until too late in the game. Also most men with a rifle could easily hit targets at 200 yards or meters for that matter... Exceptional shots could double that or more. The one rifle I know with graduated sights, the Ferguson Rifle, had marks out to 500 yards. But even a “Saturday Shot” could hit at 200.

Battle Columns were another counter to this. Two shot infantry could still charge in mass. A few others used marksmanship and, the Americans in particular, but others as well, used buck and ball to increase effectiveness when firing.

All of these tactical options should be present and the player should decide how his men fight best and which units to use.

Level the multiplayer “fairness with costs” and not with “clones”. Artillery should also have its devastating effects and not softened because some lack tactical skill to counter it. Battle is about surprise and if one commander uses a novel tactic that the other is not prepared for, he usually wins. That is what it is about and not everyone having the same men and skill. It is using what you have to greatest effect.

To my way of thinking units should be portrayed as accurately as possible for each faction and not be standardized for fairness sake.

[Prussian to the Iron]

i agree 100% percent about the riflemen; they should be able to fire from farther(as should the cannons) and more accurately than any other unit.

[Marquis of Roland]

I'd be happy if riflemen just faced the right direction....

[Nelson]

I prefer historical accuracy over “fairness”, an that is not compatible with those who are looking for clones.


To my way of thinking units should be portrayed as accurately as possible for each faction and not be standardized for fairness sake.

AMEN! Since Shogun, all I have ever wanted from CA are accurately modeled units. For good or ill, make them reflect reality. The rock, paper, scissors paradigm can frequently lead to bogus unit values.

Some units were good at several things and others poor at everything. Light infantry for example. It was better than line in every respect. Militia was weak across the board. That’s how I want them to play. When overbuilding elite units is to be avoided then a cap needs to be enforced.

[Prussian to the Iron]

i think elite units should just be dramatically more expensive; i dont want to spam elite britsh guards and steamroll some puny french force of militia and demi cannons in 1793!!!

[Owen Glyndwr]

Or, for elite units, you could make it as in reality. The concept of maintaining a large number of professional, extremely well trained soldiers would be outrageously expensive. The cost of training them alone would dissuade even the most reckless of commanders from using them except for in the most extraordinary cases (Such as Napoleon with his elite units in Waterloo)

I mean, you might not even have to put in place unit caps. You could make it so that they are so expensive that you really could only afford to maintain a few divisions of them on the field at a time. Or you could make it so it takes a larger amount of time to train them (to account for the time it would take to get them to that level of discipline.)

[AggonyDuck]

When you talk of "Balance" in single player it is about a faction being strong enough to make it in the game. With all its units and so on. If someone has a very strong unit that is available late that may make up for the crappy ones it has to make do with for most of the game.

In multiplayer "Balance" is fairness. Everything needs to be a clone of the other and a unit is seen as unbalancing if it is seen to be "too strong", in other words effective.

For MP to be balanced it doesn't require every faction and unit to be identical, but it does require that they can bring an army that has an equal chance of beating any army that the opposing factions can create. If some factions are superior to others, then those factions will get considerably more use, making other factions very rare, thus robbing the game out of a lot of variation. You could even end up with only one faction being used, which would make for a rather boring game.

[NihilisticCow]

MP isn't exactly about fairness, it's about being able to counter what your opponent is doing whatever army he takes; some things should be harder to counter than others. Units don't need to be clones (though there are minor differences between lines, and more noticable between rifles, I think this is due to CA trying to keep the balance simple), they can't be unstoppable killing machines either, and there does need to be balance between factions, otherwise weaker factions just won't be used, and challenging games will only consist of the most cost effective units from the most powerful factions, which in itself just gets repetitive in playing against the same armies from the same factions all the time without a sense of variety or not knowing what exactly you're going to be facing.

The rock-paper-scissors idea is about giving people more than one option in how to play so enhancing creativity and making the game more interesting. Yes it does tend to be less historical, but I tend to see historical accuracy is what mods are ultimately for. MP has to be played on the vanilla version of the game, as there never has been any real wide consensus to play a certain mod online (excepting certain areas such as NTW) as different people have different ideas on what constitutes balance.

Arty has always been a bit of a mixed bag, make it too powerful and games come down to who wins at the random number generator, which is rather unsatisfactory. Yes of course this is somewhat different in SP.

Ultimately I see ETW as a game based on an 18th century historical background and CA's focus should be on gameplay itself not full historical authenticity. People will inevitably mod the game (or play mods created by others) for greater historical accuracy for single player anyway if that is what mainly interests them. It's not however something that greatly interests me. It's always a hard balance between all the people that play a game wanting different things.

[Fisherking]

I understand why they limit the cannon ranges in the game and I doubt that will ever be made longer.

Rifle range should be long enough to at least get off two shots before they need to pull back.

Skirmishing units should be made to face the enemy they retreated from and give them another volley. They did this in the other TW titles I believe.

As the game now stands units are quite expensive enough without making select units more expensive and the term “Elite” applies to such a wide verity of types you might not like that outcome. I would say that maybe the top guards and cavalry units might need a longer time investment in their creation, say two to three years (4 to 6 turns). I don’t think the men were paid much better than standard units you know, and most equipment was basically the same. Time is a more accurate portrayal of the making of an elite force than just buying it outright.

As to the balance of artillery and its accuracy, to my way of thinking I have not found it so devastating. But then again if I expect to face artillery in strong numbers I deploy my troops differently to minimize casualties.

I think that a lot of the complaints have been shortsighted and knee-jerk reactions to being pummeled by the enemy when they deployed their troops in a mass.

If you don’t develop tactics to counter a threat it is not unfair to loose.

I think that some people are have an idea of standard doctrine of the era and think that it is “the way” instead of thinking tactically and reacting to the situation they find on the field.

Artillery and breach loading rifles put an end to massed line infantry doctrine though it took about another 150 years for it to sink in. With weapons ahead of their time on the field, not using tactics dictated by their presence might cause you to loose.

When something has an accurate portrayal, rebalancing to make it less effective is not the proper way to deal with the subject.

Or at least that is my opinion.

[Durallan]

ummm... patch comes out tomorrow?

I'm gonna wait till the patch and start a new game before I once again start criticising CA. Fingers Crossed!

[Fisherking]

I am glad some people from the MP point of view have posted.

I don’t want this to be an us vs. them sort of thing and the input is valuable.

I don’t see accuracy and who gets played because of balance in the same light.

The Cost points may be what needs adjusted more than the units themselves. I know it is not so easy to put a price on quality but it is better than making every unit like every other unit. Then everyone is just playing the same guys and only the uniforms change.

This is not a direct criticism of CA.

After all they keep trying to give us what they perceive as what we want.

[Zarky]

I think the actual problem is that they can't make any country superior to another because then there would be even more whining, stuff like "I can't beat half stack of prussians with 1 full stack that is OVERPOWERED OMFG!!111LOLXD"
I don't know if it was my lack of skill or what but one of my earliest games as Prussia I didn't have much trouble with any battles but my economy was a mess and as I tried to revive it my actions were much like in South Park episode Margaritaville... Continental powers like Russia, Austria, Prussia and Poland-Lithuania are econimically screwed from day 1 (not to mention they all have to fight each other to further screw them up) leaving them easy pickings for trade powers like France and Great Britain.
And what annoys me the most is that minor nations either trade each other technologies or get major boost to their research. Unless I concentrate on enlightment tech or have lots of schools from start all German minors get Modern Universities way earlier than me.

[AussieGiant]

Bottom line:

Multi player is to Single player what an Orange is to an Apple.

MP dynamics are so fundamentally different to SP that any consideration being made to balancing for MP purposes will nerf and neuter SP. Because of this MP and SP unit should in fact be totally separated in my view.

CA has a real problem here.

I follow Nelson's line of thought on the matter. There has to be historical referencing to create immersion and realism in this type of game.

CA are treading a delicate and potentially troubling line of reasoning.

So far I can see the historical and game play situation vaguely working. Making canons more relevant is needed as no one really used them...however the range and accuracy adjustments, if for MP reasons is a concerning move. I'll see how this plays out in the next few weeks with the patch.

It may work...well will see.

[Zenicetus]

For MP to be balanced it doesn't require every faction and unit to be identical, but it does require that they can bring an army that has an equal chance of beating any army that the opposing factions can create. If some factions are superior to others, then those factions will get considerably more use, making other factions very rare, thus robbing the game out of a lot of variation. You could even end up with only one faction being used, which would make for a rather boring game.

That design paradigm can work for a game designed from scratch, without constraints. For example the Warcraft and Starcraft series. The Total War series has, or should have, realistic constraints based on the history of these factions. Otherwise why are we playing this game instead of Warcraft?

As someone who only plays single-player (at least for this type of game), I have zero interest in perfect balance. In fact, I want seriously unbalanced factions. I want some easy, powerful factions (like Spain in M2TW), that I can use for my first campaign to learn the ropes. Then I want to play progressively more challenging factions -- ones that are underpowered in tech and economy, or with terrible starting positions -- as I get better at the game. That's the only thing that keeps me playing a TW game for a year or more. There is no replay value in a single player game, if every faction is equally powerful. I'm not going to start a new campaign just to see different colored uniforms.

You can't have the same game both ways, unless there's some kind of handicapping system for multiplayer. CA could easily turn off a big portion of their player base for future TW games if they go too far down this path.

P.S. I'm not trying to bash MP players here, just pointing out some basic incompatibilities. We all have our priorities. From my perspective, I'd rather see realism with handicapping for MP, instead of compromised realism and zero replay value in single player campaigns.

[NihilisticCow]

That factions physically have units in their roster that enable them to compete effectively online doesn't mean they're any weaker or stronger in SP. The strength of factions for SP is much more determined by their starting positions and economic issues. It doesn't matter if a faction has powerful units if they're not able to afford to maintain them or tech to them. This is kinda where I see the single player balance and challenge.

People seem to be missing the point though, for MP differences between factions are good, otherwise why bother having them, but factions still need to be able to be competitive and to have more than one option so as to not be predictable. This has nothing to do with starting areas, surrounded by enemies with a poor economy.

[Prussian to the Iron]

i think every faction needs a different roster. even if you just edit names/stats a little, it goes a long way. i'd rather have Russian Cossack Line Infantry -with boosted accuracy, attack, and hiding skills and lowered reloading and defense skills- than run-of-the-mill russian line infantry with roughly the same stats as just about every other euro line infantry.

every country needs different units, stats, and appearances. no one faction controlled the whole of any continent during the 18th century; the balance is already there. all we need to do is copy the 18th century units and stats, and we have an already balanced game!

[Sheogorath]

Napoleonic Total War certainly wasn't balanced, but it sure was fun. I recall that the British, Russians and Prussians had a major advantage, and the French...well...The French were quite nasty, although they nerfed them a little in later versions.

The point, though, is that every faction was different. Most Russian infantry couldn't hit the broad side of a barn from inside the barn, but if you put them in melee they could outfight anybody. The British were deadly accurate, but their line infantry cost 100 points more than anybody elses. And so on.

You had to figure out a different way to play as each faction, because NONE of them were identical. If you tried to play a French army with Prussian forces, you'd get your butt kicked, because Prussian cavalry wasn't so hot next to the shiny French Horse Grenadiers. You would CERTAINLY lose if you tried a conventional, stand-up fight against an equivalent force as Spain, but I do enjoy telling people about the time I routed two armies with a single force of Spaniards though sheer, ballsy, cleverness. And grapeshot.

Anyway, not all factions should be equal. This is true. Some factions should be better than others at some things.

Rock, Paper, Scissors is the ultimate in strategy-game stupidity and should die a horrible, horrible, death.

Light infantry and grenadiers should also come in units equivalent in size to standard line. That annoyed me right from the start.

Get to work, CA!

Oh, wait, I'm not a screaming MP fanboy who's only other strategy game experience was Starcraft. Curses.

[Prussian to the Iron]

^exactly. GB should be able to easily beat most others in stand-up line battles, whereas they would get their asses kicked in hand-to-hand. of course, Prussia would be nearly invincible with their infantry, but cavalry would be lower-than average and arty would be average.

everyone see how this works? no? i'll list it:

key: Amazing, great, average, below average, crappy

Ottomans=amazing arty and cav, crappy inf., average light inf.
Russia=great cav, average arty, below average inf., amazing light inf.
GB=great inf., crappy cav, great arty, crappy light inf.
Prussia=amazing inf., crappy cav, average arty, great light inf.
Austria= great cav, average arty, average inf., great light inf.
Poland= amazing cav, below average inf., great arty, average light inf.
U.P.= great inf., below average cav, amazing arty, great light inf.
Sweden= amazing inf., below average arty, average cav, great light inf.
Marathas= amazing cav, great arty, below average inf., amazing light inf.
France= great cav, average inf., great arty, crappy light inf.
Spain= great cav, below average inf., average arty, great light inf.
U.S.A.= average cav, average inf., great arty, amazing light inf.


anyone contest this chart?

[A Very Super Market]

Most of them sound abitrary. What's wrong with Prussian cavalry? Why would Britain be bad at hand-to-hand, seeing how they developed the bayonet drill in the first place? There should be no balance, just realism.

[Husar]

That they invented it doesn't mean they mastered it.

I'm also on the realism > balance side and as has been said, MP can be balanced by adjusting the prices, prices in MP and SP wouldn't have to be the same anyway, but for stats that would be nice to avoid too much confusion.

Let's say Poland has worse but way cheaper units than the UK in MP, that means they can get a full stack and up the experience of their units while the british would have a hard time deciding whether they take this hugely expensive elite infantry that can take on 3 polish infantry units at once or whether they'd rather take two artillery pieces etc. etc.
That way MP could turn out very interesting, yet SPers would get the realism they want, I hope.

[Sheogorath]

^exactly. GB should be able to easily beat most others in stand-up line battles, whereas they would get their asses kicked in hand-to-hand. of course, Prussia would be nearly invincible with their infantry, but cavalry would be lower-than average and arty would be average.

everyone see how this works? no? i'll list it:

key: Amazing, great, average, below average, crappy

Ottomans=amazing arty and cav, crappy inf., average light inf.
Russia=great cav, average arty, below average inf., amazing light inf.
GB=great inf., crappy cav, great arty, crappy light inf.
Prussia=amazing inf., crappy cav, average arty, great light inf.
Austria= great cav, average arty, average inf., great light inf.
Poland= amazing cav, below average inf., great arty, average light inf.
U.P.= great inf., below average cav, amazing arty, great light inf.
Sweden= amazing inf., below average arty, average cav, great light inf.
Marathas= amazing cav, great arty, below average inf., amazing light inf.
France= great cav, average inf., great arty, crappy light inf.
Spain= great cav, below average inf., average arty, great light inf.
U.S.A.= average cav, average inf., great arty, amazing light inf.


anyone contest this chart?

I think you'd need to be more detailed. Sweden's standard line infantry, for instance, were basically disciplined militia. They had quite good guards, but their strength lay more in leadership. Russia's line infantry were feared across Europe, not for their amazing musketry, but for their stubbornness. Properly equipped, Russians were considered, even by Napoleon, to be the 'ideal' infantry, simply because they obeyed orders and didn't think for themselves (the problem was, of course, that most Russian officers followed the same trend :P)

Most of them sound abitrary. What's wrong with Prussian cavalry? Why would Britain be bad at hand-to-hand, seeing how they developed the bayonet drill in the first place? There should be no balance, just realism.

Prussian cavalry where fine in NTW2, just not as good as French cavalry. The French were, as I recall, mostly 'above average' with the best elite units available in the game.
The British weren't BAD at melee, but the Russians were the masters of it.

[AggonyDuck]

^exactly. GB should be able to easily beat most others in stand-up line battles, whereas they would get their asses kicked in hand-to-hand. of course, Prussia would be nearly invincible with their infantry, but cavalry would be lower-than average and arty would be average.

Prussian cavalry was among the best in terms of battlefield achievements during the 18th century and does in no way warrant a 'crappy' tag. The prime example would be the Battle of Rossbach.

As to historical realism, I'd like to point out that the TW games have never really been about recreating history and more about creating new histories. For a mod like NTW where the time scope is much smaller, I can understand having unit stats accurately based on historical performance, but for a game that takes place during a century it makes very little sense. Firstly we need to recognise the fact that the quality of units does not stay constant. An excellent example of this is the Prussian army that was propably the best in Europe during the mid 18th century, but by the end of the same century the Prussian army was outdated and in dire need of a reform. Perhaps if a certain quality stayed constant throughout the era, I would think about adjusting the unit to live up to those qualities. In terms of SP campaigns, I don't believe that just because for example Russian line was poorly trained historically, that it should be heavily reflected in their unit stats, especially if my Russians happened to be prosperous and well educated and could actually afford better training. After all we are very much dealing with alternative history and not recreations.

As it is I believe CA has done a good job with balancing the units and still providing stat variation, although that said, I can not understand why Sweden of all factions have oversized cavalry units?

[Yun Dog]

I seem to recall we've had this discussion every title and each time come up with the same solution.

MP needs to be detached from SP

In an MP game you really do want two similar armies so that the only difference comes in how you use the armies.

you dont want it to become a competition to see who can spam the cheesiest units

MP needs to be able to be 'balanced' independently of SP.

in SP you want different rosters and elite forces etc

But in MP the whole philosophy is different

I dont want to have to know every unit of every roster so that if my opponent picks a certain nation I need to know hes going to spam head throwing amazons or flaming pigs

Yes if you want MP to become about who can spam cheesey tactics to win, hey who knew those US rifles could hips before someone used it to ambush your general. Then everyone is doing it, need a new cheezy tactic

To some extent you want to eliminate the units as a factor, have a level playing field. In STW you could count on a certain army makeup, the only factor was did you think it would rain which if you brought guns could ruin you, that and the obligatory monk rush army. Progressively the Mo units crowd has been the one heard and the game ceased to become about tactics and became all about cheezy unit spam.

This results in a short lived MP community, you try it out, find out everyone is using some cheezy tactic to win, and soon leave for another game - this is the result of pandering to the insta gratification vocal mob.

Bottom line

SP and MP are totally different games and need to be treated as such

MP needs certain tweaks to make it compeditive and balanced so anyone feels they could win or stand an 'even chance' - this would wreck SP and visa vie changes to make SP better will destroy MP

GAH

[A Very Super Market]

Couldn't you just use the same faction for an MP game? There, completely balanced.

[Prussian to the Iron]

Prussian cavalry was among the best in terms of battlefield achievements during the 18th century and does in no way warrant a 'crappy' tag. The prime example would be the Battle of Rossbach.

really? i just figured prussian cavalry weren't that great.

of course, there needs to be some balance, just not so much that every faction is basically a clone of eachother.

other than prussian cavalry and brit melee, does anyone have any qualms about my list?


i think we can all agree that we want more historically accurate unit stats; i don't want to be able to go head-to-head using poland against france in a line inf. battle and have a chance of winning! if i use a certain faction, i want to be forced to adapt to its specific limitations and advantages.

poland and russia should be mostly about cavalry, and it should be made that way. i know that there has to obviously be at least several types of inf. for them still, but why not change stats? if i bring a russian line inf. unit versus a british line inf. unit, i should lose unless going into a melee. by a significant amount-not just by a couple men.

if anyone is interested in seeing some examples of varied units (not stats, but great units nonetheless) check out the AUM-Additional Units Mod- on TWC. its great

i believe that if we dropped and raised certain factions' stats for certain units by 8-25 points in the gun department, and 2-6 in the melee department, we can have a more realistic and dificult game.

as i said before; 18th century balance is already there; we just need to implement it.

i may or may not try this out on my AUM mod. i'm not sure exactly where the original units data is, so ill hae to do it tomorrow.

wish me luck!

[Durallan]

Prussian cavalry was among the best in terms of battlefield achievements during the 18th century and does in no way warrant a 'crappy' tag. The prime example would be the Battle of Rossbach.

As to historical realism, I'd like to point out that the TW games have never really been about recreating history and more about creating new histories. For a mod like NTW where the time scope is much smaller, I can understand having unit stats accurately based on historical performance, but for a game that takes place during a century it makes very little sense. Firstly we need to recognise the fact that the quality of units does not stay constant. An excellent example of this is the Prussian army that was propably the best in Europe during the mid 18th century, but by the end of the same century the Prussian army was outdated and in dire need of a reform. Perhaps if a certain quality stayed constant throughout the era, I would think about adjusting the unit to live up to those qualities. In terms of SP campaigns, I don't believe that just because for example Russian line was poorly trained historically, that it should be heavily reflected in their unit stats, especially if my Russians happened to be prosperous and well educated and could actually afford better training. After all we are very much dealing with alternative history and not recreations.

As it is I believe CA has done a good job with balancing the units and still providing stat variation, although that said, I can not understand why Sweden of all factions have oversized cavalry units?

I completely Agree. Actually instead of total realism, which can be left for mods, you can have some sort of modifier that bases your armies professionalism on how much you spend on your army compared to home projects, there is a way to choose how much you spend on research military and social production in a little strategy game called galactic civilizations 2. now while ETW is quite different you could use some sort of calculation to decide how professional your army was compared to others, like britain would have to concentrate on its navy as well as its army and thus maybe not have quite as high as a country like prussia who has no navy to begin with. And then this can all change during the game as you change your countries army navy make up or whatever. You could give the armies a slight bonus or penalty depending on what your doing, like if you want to spend alot of money on research one turn you get a small bonus to research and a small penalty to army upkeep or costs and vice versa, the idea would be to give each country bonuses and disadvantages to battles, that way a tiny provice's one army guarding it's city would be a force to be reckoned with and the larger nations would have to invest a little more, it would reduce a world war where every nation is at war possibly, anyway just a good idea I think.

[Didz]

To my way of thinking units should be portrayed as accurately as possible for each faction and not be standardized for fairness sake.

I agree....otherwise all we are playing is Halo 3 with muskets.

[Prussian to the Iron]

halo 3 with muskets? how does halo 3=standardized clones?

[johnhughthom]

He means it takes away a lot of the tactical elements of the battle simulation.

[Durallan]

I would like it if factions were historically accurate at the start of the game from 1700, and maybe faction unique units, research or advantages included that you couldn't trade would be good (become general knowledge after everyones researched the tech above it unless its something truly unique to one people) but from that point on it should be up in the air. We know whats historically accurate, we call it history, if we make everything down to the little buttons on their uniforms (granted I'd like accurate uniforms) well there'd be no suprise. Britain rules the north seas, spain rules the carribean until they invent frigates and galleons become a joke, france kills king louie and declares a republic, the english settlers tell george to stuff it, a couple of people try taking over the world but they end up failing miserably and the people of europe group up together to form nations left over from the ashes.

What we want in this game is like sliders (if you've seen that show) maybe napoleon won the battle of waterloo, or france didn't help the american republicans and it became the largest english colony in the world, or our reinforcements arrive too late to help our army successfully attack another nation, or by stroke of luck a king dies suddenly and we can lay claim to his kingdom, or the republicans want to free the repressed of other monarchies, stuff like that I spose, where you can craft an empire with it seeming like its exciting, other nations react to your decisions and it taking alot of effort to carve an empire, enemies attacking you because you farted in their general direction and the game telling you that. At least thats the kind of things that make movies great, or games great if you can make it work.