disapointed with rtr, you are my last hope

**khelvan** · 08-09-2005, 19:46

We in EB have never said "history over gameplay," or any other such contrary position. We have always felt that this is not a zero sum game, that accuracy and gameplay go hand in hand.

Look at how successful and fun M:TW proved to be. The factions were not balanced, and part of the fun (for me, at least) was playing one of the factions who were described as "Hard" or "Challenging" in the faction description, rather than one of the "Easy" ones.

As a long-time strategy and wargamer, I would simply shake my head if someone made a game about WWII and made the production capabilities, unit capabilities, economy, and so on, of America, Russia, Germany, and the rest all the same, for the sake of "balance." Balance of capabilities has no place in any game that purports to depict a period of history. Balance comes, in successful versions of these games, through differing victory conditions for the various players. If the victory conditions were the same, certain sides would most certainly win.

No one complains when even a beer & pretzels game like Axis & Allies has imbalanced units and faction capabilities. The Total War series can only lose (and has lost) in terms of gameplay by moving in this direction.

**jerby** · 08-09-2005, 20:14

well. by balancing could one mean two things:
- different factions: same strength. all factions differ. but are equally strong. so someone might state the seleucids are overpowered at teh start: they get 2x as many provinces as sweboz
-all units are equally strong. in a head to head battle. the outcome of winning is 50% chance. (in this game without phalanxes) in this case seleucids are overpowered, since they have better armor (i believe i read that somewhere)
-or: nothing is extremely overpowered. units that were historically better, are better..wich is EB's take on balancing, afaik

am i wrong?

**Ninefingers** · 08-09-2005, 20:30

Actually by balance I don't mean any sort of homogenous armies or factions - not at all. Strengths and weaknesses are the bread and butter of strategy games, and I whole-heartedly welcome variety in both factions and "army lists". True purists will of course claim that a real strategist will defeat an identical army with superior tactics, but I'm not quite that hardcore and prefer a little variety. I hear it's the spice of life.

What I mean by balance is a general sanity in game design. Take for instance, the Roman legions in R:TW. Sure they may have been historically superior to their contemporaries, but to make them so absurdly good that a trained monkey could become Imperator by 255 B.C. is a bit much. In R:TR, mercenaries are so good and plentiful (and cheap!) that whatever pacification of campaign pace they may have accomplished with their admittedly ingenious AoR system is made redundant as it's no problem at all to recruit full stacks of experienced mercs on the fly.

Then there are little things: is one unit so good that it can dominate the battlefield alone, making the rest of that faction's units obsolete? Does any faction begin with so much territory and/or money (a la Egypt in R:TW) that it will inevitably dominate without player intervention?

These types of issues are sometimes obvious, sometimes subtle, but the disturbing thing is that very few designers actually take the time to consider their implications. It's one of the reasons why I swear by Blizzard's excellent RTS-games - they do balance right, and they certainly don't do it by making every faction/side identical.

Those are my concerns. One of your team already addressed the issue of faction dominance by citing the -ai results, and I'm relieved to hear you're conducting such tests. With such a dedicated staff and community anticipating your mod, I'm sure such issues will be hammered out in due time.

**GoreBag** · 08-09-2005, 21:41

Originally Posted by Ninefingers

It's one of the reasons why I swear by Blizzard's excellent RTS-games - they do balance right, and they certainly don't do it by making every faction/side identical.

What about Warcraft II?

**jerby** · 08-09-2005, 22:21

blizzard's diabloII is well balanced..at teh start.

**GoreBag** · 08-09-2005, 23:21

Originally Posted by jerby

blizzard's diabloII is well balanced..at teh start.

Ah, but the Diablo series aren't RTS games.

**Simetrical** · 08-10-2005, 18:17

Originally Posted by NeonGod

What about Warcraft II?

Well, the spells were different. And so were the missions. And I could've sworn that there was a five-point difference between the attack ratings of Elven Destroyers and Troll Destroyers. But pretty much, yeah . . .

-Simetrical

**GoreBag** · 08-10-2005, 19:05

Originally Posted by Simetrical

Well, the spells were different. And so were the missions. And I could've sworn that there was a five-point difference between the attack ratings of Elven Destroyers and Troll Destroyers. But pretty much, yeah . . .

-Simetrical

You mean the Human Destroyers? Nah, they were identical too. The Elven Rangers did have an upgrade for +3 damage, though, and the Berserker had a regeneration upgrade. The spells were different..but very similar.

**QwertyMIDX** · 08-10-2005, 20:28

Warcraft II was a joke, most of the units had the exact same stats just different models. Ogres and Knights anyone? The way the Ogres ran to be the same speed as mounted Knights was hilarious.

**khelvan** · 08-09-2005, 20:32

The only "balancing" we do is to ensure that given an overall look at two factions' unit lists, no one faction will consistently win due to the 20-unit limit in battles. That is, unit costs may give a faction a great advantage on the campaign map, allowing them to field hordes of cheap units, but since there are artificial limitations on army sizes in battle we need to be aware of then imposing an all but insurmountable obstacle for factions that have lesser, cheaper units as their main forces.

Units will have historical strengths and weaknesses, as best we can determine them, as will army compositions, faction capabilities and economies, and so on.

We will be playing with custom battle costs to make multiplayer fun and challenging.

Edit: Ninefingers, everything we do is geared with an eye toward the game system limitations. Our goal is not to make anything absurdly powerful at all, but to have the capabilities of the faction/unit in context. We have a system for unit stats, for instance - we give ratings based on capabilities of armor and weapons, and set values to add for things like morale based on unit composition, and set bonuses for things like chemicals or noted fanatacism. The unit stats system will be impartial in this respect. Romans were not supermen, and will not be depicted this way.

Having one uber-unit in battle, or one faction that has certain capabilities that allow it to run rampant over the whole map each and every game would not be, in our opinion, historically accurate. It is our opinion that the factions that dominated the world had advantages, yes, but did so through exploiting their advantages. Good leaders, the outcomes of certain battles, weather, and many things contributed to history; in our mod you can change history. Some factions will be powerful, but not so powerful that they always win, and a good leader will change the world.

I don't consider that balance, so perhaps this is simply a semantic misunderstanding.