Quote Originally Posted by rios
Certain aspects such as attribute balances between the units can shift via modding, but the basic physics can only be altered by developers.
We all know developers have their limits, but how much more efforts and responsibilities can modders bring in comparison?
They can bring more commitment to balancing than does Creative Assembly. I chose to build Samurai Wars around the MTW engine because it's better than the RTW engine, and it provides a modder with control over all the parameters necessary to balance the tactical battles except for fatigue rate.


Quote Originally Posted by rios
These numerical changes can significently shift the balances and often destroying them. In my opinion, mods generally take away some options to creat a confined and sometimes redesigned balance. To refabricate such balance in modding is also more difficult since it not only take lot of math, the fact game mechanism isn't fully manipulatable further limits the number of partial solutions modders could achieve.
Samurai Wars didn't remove any gameplay options except upgrades which damage the playbalance. Also, we understand the math of the STW/MTW battle engine very well. Samurai Wars is based on the STW unit parameters as developed by LongJohn who designed the tactical engine. It's a refinement of the balance of the original STW stat with changes kept to a minimum. In that sense, it is an evolution of the balance of the original stat which is something that Creative Assembly has never succeeded in doing. Creative Assembly has oscillated around the playbalance solution in every game since original STW because they don't go though enough iterative balancing steps after doing the initial analytical calculations. They wouldn't even allow the STW/MI beta team to go through another iteration of the v1.02 rebalance stat to improve their game eventhough we were willing to do that for free. That's the kind of commitment to playbalance that Creative Assembly exhibits. You're not going to convince me that Creative Assembly is going to do a great job balancing M2TW with their attitude toward balancing.