MTW2 MP balance issues

[Paolai]

I do no hate cavs, but in MTW2 their charge is too strong (overpowered) thats all.

Spears are too weak.
Pikes are good for their job (vs cavs) but just 2 factions have them in early/high era= these eras are not balanced.
(but) Pikes are too strong vs Swords.
Musks are too strong.
Archers are too weak.


I mean, what Palamedes has tested? Why (if) he needed help he didnt asked for it?

[NihilisticCow]

It'd be nice if CA ran open MP beta tests like several other developers do, the MP community may not be large but there are enough dedicated players to make it worthwhile imo.

I would definitely agree with Paolai's list of balance problems. The game itself isn't that far away from being very good online if these are addressed (reasonably quickly).

[Darkarbiter]

I do no hate cavs, but in MTW2 their charge is too strong (overpowered) thats all.

Spears are too weak.
Pikes are good for their job (vs cavs) but just 2 factions have them in early/high era= these eras are not balanced.
(but) Pikes are too strong vs Swords.
Musks are too strong.
Archers are too weak.


I mean, what Palamedes has tested? Why (if) he needed help he didnt asked for it?

The swiss mainly used pikes and halbedeirs (the pike formations being similar to the macedonian ones) both were effective vs horses (pikes more so I think) but pikes also werent as effective vs sheilded infantry. As shown by the spanish infantry this was not invincible as it could be beaten by decent sheilded infantry. Therefore pikes shouldnt beat decent sheilded infantry (my knowledge based on the medieval art of war short ed.).

Apart from all else. Half of the swisses fame was gained by their good morale and excellent tactics and their fast movement speed and organisation. So they should (at least pikemen) get fast walk speed and high stamina rather then all around 1337ness vs infantry. Halbedeirs are another matter though.

[Puzz3D]

spears to counter cavs, swords to counter spears and cavs to counter swords.

That is what the gameplay is supposed to be. It creates a combined arms gameplay which is much more interesting than a gameplay where you figure out the best unit and use lots of them. In addition, the costs of the various unit types have to be adjusted to reflect the true value of the unit on the battlefield.

[Palamedes]

Great to see you guys have started the battle simulator balance discussions. Just to get you up to speed I am yet to see any issues posted we aren't fully aware of, so if possible please pretend we care and know what we are doing if you dont believe that to be true . That way we can move forward and get stuff done.

Best way to sum up the situation: It's a bloody huge game and unless you mind paying twice as much and/or waiting twice as long not everything will be spot on for every player. We have to set priorities and work down through the list. Just about every issue listed in this thread are the current top priorities. So from my end I am just happy to know what we felt were the next most important issues are the ones being raised now. I would be concerned if we were being hit with requests we never saw coming.

What I suggest is that you post threads titled "Can you explain?" and start with these issues i.e. "Can you explain Cavalry", "Can you explain Muskets" etc. Then direct me to the threads and I will engage you guys in an explanation of the current status, what we are thinking to do, and then find out what you guys think so we can get it spot on. Again to emphasise we cant address every requests known to man so please work together and set a priority list and lets address them together from biggest to smallest.

You can contact me at the clan site: www.brethrenclan.com or at work jturnbull@creative-assembly.com.au

Hope to hear from you soon,

Jason

[ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88]

My Concern really isn't the Cav, Jason, since IMO, the cav isn't that strong.. The Musketeer units and Handgunner units are way to Strong. I played serveral games lately where people get 4-8 gun unitts, mabye 5 musketeers and 3 handgunners, and they killed my archers like crazy, while they only lose mabye 2 units and that it.

I hope you guys can fix these ploblems in 1-2 patches :-) , and not 3-5 like some people been saying :-(

[Darkarbiter]

That is what the gameplay is supposed to be. It creates a combined arms gameplay which is much more interesting than a gameplay where you figure out the best unit and use lots of them. In addition, the costs of the various unit types have to be adjusted to reflect the true value of the unit on the battlefield.

I disagree... Id rather not be playing the grand strategy equivelent of starcraft with only 3 units. It should be more complicated then that take RTR for example.
You get a choice of having a core of...
Phalanx (harder to reposition line and move slower)
Legion (move slower+dont have long spears like phalangites do)
Barbarian infantry (usually moves fast and causes fear but has lower defence stats and lower morale but higher attack)
Horse archers (very trickey but you can get away with no losses if the enemy has no ranged units)

Then you add in unique units, elephants, cavlry and archers/slingers/javelin throwers to the equation and things get complicated but in the end it works.

Now i know medieval times werent quite that complicated but surely theres more to battles then simple spears<swords<cavlry<spears equation?

Now as said previosly i havent played m2tw but I know about the period and what other ppl are saying. Now what would make sense is.
Your standard swords/spears and some hybrid archers are holding troops and make up the main battle line.
You have archers firing at important targets.

In terms of ranged stats and ways things work...
Longbowmen should have long range and reasonable rate of fire and arch projectory and should be able to effectively attack highly armoured knights.
Crossbowmen should have slightly less range and a more flat projectory and a slower rate of fire.
Normal archers should have problems with units with (metal) sheilds and or heavily armoured soldiers. Crossbowmen with pavises should be all but immune to them.
Pavise crossbowmen and longbows should be about equal with longbows having greater range and reload speed but pavis crossbows having greater ranged protection and perhaps melee skill.
Now from what i heard guns pwn all archers... thats unhistorical... they were mainly used for their ease of training and fear factor.
The way guns should fit in is their pretty innacurate at anything but short range but likely to kill and very scary when they do. Longbowmen should be better then gunners in general except for causing fear. Although gun militia should be more effective then archer militia in general with minimal gains in performance even when their elites. They should also have pretty slow reload.
So for the most part guns should be used for causing fear and doing a bit of 1 shot damage at close range. None of this pwning all archers shite.

Now ofcourse changes are gonna annoy people somehow and its usually not a good idea to annoy people if your a corperation but I think that someone at least should do something similar to what i just said.
Anyway what do people think of this model?

[Paolai]

Spears are too weak = give them a bonus vs cav charge, or a penalty to a cav that charge a spear


Pikes are good for their job (vs cavs) but just 2 factions have them in early/high era= these eras are not balanced. =give to the spears vs cav charge a bonus or a penalty to a cav that charge a spear

(but) Pikes are too strong vs Swords. = give to the sword a bonus vs pikes, or a penalty to the pikes that fight a sword

Musks are too strong = range is too high, change that and not more.

Archers are too weak = give them a little armour piercing.

This is if you want realease a little and FAST balance patch.

If you need help for tests PM me, I dont wanna money, just a better game.

[Orda Khan]

Thanks for dropping by the MP forum Palamedes
It is reassuring at least, to hear that you are aware of the issues raised so far.
I will start a new topic entitled "Can you explain..." as you requested. Please feel free to comment on any questions raised there. Interaction is the best way to pinpoint any adjustments required to achieve the best gameplay and I am sure we would all appreciate developer involvement

......Orda

[Puzz3D]

Now i know medieval times werent quite that complicated but surely theres more to battles then simple spears<swords<cavalry<spears equation?

Yes it's more complicated than that, but you have to get a basic relationship working before you can build upon it. In Samurai Wars, there are 3 RPS systems working across a set of 14 unit types all of which are useful. The gameplay is highly complex. Just look at some of the Samurai Wars replays I posted if you don't believe me. There were fewer useful units in MTW with its 100 unit types.

It's certainly more complicated than Starcraft because TW has fatigue, morale, various unit movement speeds, various combat resolution times for different matchups, effect of slope on combat, morale and movement speed, line of sight for individual men in ranged units, vacuum physics ballistic model for projectiles, various armor levels, weather effects on combat parameters, charge bonuses, flanking bonuses/penalties, outnumbering bonuses, squeezed too tight combat penalty, robust statistical model for combat and more.

[CeltiberoMordred]

I think still it's too soon to ask for balancing. A week or two is not enough time to stablish if muskets are too strong (and in which circumstances are too strong), of if pikes are far better than swords and swords need a boost vs pikes.

First of all, we should try to understand how game mechanics works. I have the suspect that something in charges is broken, but I'm not sure. At the moment good charges are powerful, not only for cavs but also for infantry, which can make 20 kills charging (medium size). Stats are not an useful guide to know which unit is better than others. We still don't know anything about the hidden stats that makes a JHI defeats varangian guards, having worse at/def stats. I don't know how powerful is armor piercing, or if it's worth to get units with armor piercing Vs armoured units or not; still I can't find why spears are better vs cavalry than swords, because my feeling is that they perform in the same way...There's a lot of stuff to test, and I don't dare to advice what needs to be changed yet.

Regards.

[tootee]

The cav charge is so strong that you can kill about 3/4 of a unit spear just charging without loosing 1 cav and this is imho ridicule. The cav charge is so strong to seems bugged.

not sure if 3/4 is too much, but i had a unit of armoured sergeants going down to 15+ men after received two cav charges (almost simultaneoulsy). the cav were probably down to 35+ each before w/drawing.

Righ ok, then I assume that you are agree with me: spears are a joke. To counter cavs charge you need another cav charge. And is it good for you?

imo spear in TW (not sure about historically) isnt a cav counter, more like a cav deterrence; and to fight in h2h. I'm not familiar with history, but were the pike invented just for the cav? sounds funny to me considering they can never attack the cav. Pike looks more like a reinvention of the phalanx, a unit good at holding ground vs not only cav, but other infantry? Shouldnt they be decent vs sword/axemen?

To me, the spear needs less training than using a sword, so is cheaper, not as deadly in single h2h (unless they trained like Jet Lee).. not sure if historically can one withstand a cav charging.

So to counter cav, is to use another cav. And manoevure like Cheetah mentioned, whereby you protect against / deter the cav with spear from hitting certain spots.

But cav should not be able to rout a decent h2h unit which is not engaged, fully prepared and ready mentally for a single cav charge imo. so far for my games m2tw is realistic in this aspect.

[tootee]

I think still it's too soon to ask for balancing. A week or two is not enough time to stablish if muskets are too strong (and in which circumstances are too strong), of if pikes are far better than swords and swords need a boost vs pikes.

First of all, we should try to understand how game mechanics works. I have the suspect that something in charges is broken, but I'm not sure. At the moment good charges are powerful, not only for cavs but also for infantry, which can make 20 kills charging (medium size). Stats are not an useful guide to know which unit is better than others. We still don't know anything about the hidden stats that makes a JHI defeats varangian guards, having worse at/def stats. I don't know how powerful is armor piercing, or if it's worth to get units with armor piercing Vs armoured units or not; still I can't find why spears are better vs cavalry than swords, because my feeling is that they perform in the same way...There's a lot of stuff to test, and I don't dare to advice what needs to be changed yet.

Regards.

Agree totally

Fixed all the bugs and lag issue in the first patch. Make 4v4 playable is utmost important. But is CA willing to support the community with multiple patches like STW? or just a one patch thingy?

[Kalle]

Originally Posted by CeltiberoMordred
I think still it's too soon to ask for balancing. A week or two is not enough time to stablish if muskets are too strong (and in which circumstances are too strong), of if pikes are far better than swords and swords need a boost vs pikes.

Also agrees totally!

Perfect unitbalance for all units in this game is not what will ultimatly determine if it is a multiplayer hit or not. MTW was not prefectly balanced in many veterans opinion and still it hit the spot! There are other factors that should be looked into with at least as much effort as unit balance.

For instance I just started playing a little Mark of Chaos and its remarkable how they seem to be able to get the units very clear and nice from far away which seem very hard for totalwardevelopers. In short better overview is wanted.

Logfiles and replays, anyone have checked if these things makes sence?

Do the controls give that perfect feel as at least I felt I had in original MTW, so far my opionion is no. Handling groups is more clumpsy and im not sure the units and groups do exactly what I tell them and when I tell em. For instance if I have a group of archers and give them a groupcommand to aim for a new target will they all obey?? I think I have seen that they dont, correct me if wrong. It seem better then RTW (delay gone??) but not apar with MTW.

Morale is not presented in numbers along with other stats?

Exact unitbalance (whatever it means) is imo secondary to exact many other things.

Are we happy with all other things?

Of course I agree unitbalance should be discussed but it gotta be impossible to have tried everything allready and tried enough many times to know for sure what should be done.

Kalle

[Darkarbiter]

not sure if 3/4 is too much, but i had a unit of armoured sergeants going down to 15+ men after received two cav charges (almost simultaneoulsy). the cav were probably down to 35+ each before w/drawing.



imo spear in TW (not sure about historically) isnt a cav counter, more like a cav deterrence; and to fight in h2h. I'm not familiar with history, but were the pike invented just for the cav? sounds funny to me considering they can never attack the cav. Pike looks more like a reinvention of the phalanx, a unit good at holding ground vs not only cav, but other infantry? Shouldnt they be decent vs sword/axemen?

To me, the spear needs less training than using a sword, so is cheaper, not as deadly in single h2h (unless they trained like Jet Lee).. not sure if historically can one withstand a cav charging.

So to counter cav, is to use another cav. And manoevure like Cheetah mentioned, whereby you protect against / deter the cav with spear from hitting certain spots.

But cav should not be able to rout a decent h2h unit which is not engaged, fully prepared and ready mentally for a single cav charge imo. so far for my games m2tw is realistic in this aspect.

The swiss beat every army except a spanish all infantry army of men with sword and sheilds (swashbucklers) but for the most part they were anti cavlry. Historically yes they were described as being similar to Macedonian phalanxs. The other main reason why the swiss were so successfull is because of their organisation and training. So they should be near invincible to cavlry from the front and pretty effective to unsheilded units (but unless anythings changed im pretty sure sheild is just the same as defence skill so thats impossible to program). So for example where a 2h swordsmen might be good in melee against the average person and a man with a sword and sheild is worse the man with the sword and sheild would be better agains a swiss phalanx.

P.S. The average non cavlryman in the medieval era wasnt very decent!

[Mordred]

Also agree to focus on the basic issues to get a decent multiplay.
MTW balance sorted itself out by playing, despite its imbalances.
Players just didn't use a lot of units, in the end it came down to using a variety
slighty bigger as the number of units available in STW. Which is ok.
So focus on biggest exploits, bugs and unit behavior not supposed to happen.

[Fenix7]

So focus on biggest exploits, bugs and unit behavior not supposed to happen.

Aye.

[Sephriel]

one word from me to the swiss pikes:
pike formations are rather not offensive units. its rather that the enemy wont come in 3 lines of pikes. what pikes can best is just to stand still an block a piece of field into a single direction. though slowly walking forward they'll push most of units just away, as everyone tries to avoid getting nto the pikes range. getting onto pikes frontally, theres only 2 handers and shields, but, even with a shield it is quite difficult, as most shields dont cover lower legs as well as the head.

afaik, in switzerland, the halberd was more often used as the pike (at least thats what i hear in all the museums here in switzerland :D ). a very common way of halberd formation was, not really as in the game, that the second line held their weapons vertical, ready to let their halberds crush on every enemy that had managed to come between the halberds of the first line, and, at the same time blocking high attacks of the enemies long weapons. as the first line was hacking especially on the enemies legs, this was a tacitic wich is very effective against infantry an a bit less against cavalry (but there also very effective).

one other thing that made swiss mercs famous was their loyalty; as most of them were not fighting for glory or money, but had just escaped the everlasting lack of food in switzerland, not actually beeing ambitious but rather searching for a place to survive.

narf... why did you have to mention the swiss pikes... this isnt what i wanted to write.... : /

actually, imo, balancing is great so far. there really is no overpowered unit: -ie. spears only cost 2.5 less than decent cavalry... 5 levy spears beat easily 2 feudal knights....
-musketeers have actually quite a slow rate of fire imo and cant shoot through your own unit (yes they can but my pikes only held one volley of my muskets before they ran off... *g* ;) ), whereas you can hides archers behind cheap units with shields (ie. levy spearmen ;) )
-artillery can have great impact but only hits seldom and is quite expensive
-pikes are good against h2h units but very vulnerable against ranged attacks and very slowly moving in formation,
and so on...

it's true that heavy infantry is getting less and less useful with guns and pikes, but thats just the way it was in medieval times ;) , and muskets were cheeper than bows (and faster trained), that's just how it was

what i have noticed so far:

-musketeers seem to have a really long range (this can really bug sometimes)
-musketeers have awfully long to change lines in volley fire
-an issue of ai (though its probably the wrong thread ... :P ): when commanding big groups the commands sometimes arent assigned properly or dont seem to work at all.... i have to choose the group, ungroup it, assign the command and then group them again... speaking of ai: the sieges bug is known (can get extreme lags as well as a totally crappy ai) ?

cheers :D

[JeffBag]

Spears and archers aren't that bad, use archers to disrupt the formation so you can prevent their cavalry/heavy infantry from getting a 'perfect charge', then your spears can kill all their horses. Archers aren't bad, they just aren't the uber kill all Pharoah bowmen of RTW; their purpose now is not to kill, but to disrupt enemy formations just before the clash of arms. Since infantry can kill almost 20% of an enemy formation in a perfect charge, disrupting their formation is very, very crucial.

[RTKBarrett]

Hey Paolai, havent seen u in the lobby yet :D

[resonantblue]

That is what the gameplay is supposed to be. It creates a combined arms gameplay which is much more interesting than a gameplay where you figure out the best unit and use lots of them. In addition, the costs of the various unit types have to be adjusted to reflect the true value of the unit on the battlefield.

I wouldn't like a game with that kind of gameplay. I like non-linearity. Whether that's the storyline for an RPG or the balance in a multiplayer game. Starcraft did this so well, which is why it is one of the most played multiplayer games in history.

[Massi]

I wouldn't like a game with that kind of gameplay. I like non-linearity. Whether that's the storyline for an RPG or the balance in a multiplayer game. Starcraft did this so well, which is why it is one of the most played multiplayer games in history.

sorry, but what do yo mean? non-linearity? the post you quoted talks about "balancement" which means that every unit has a sense and a use on the battlefield. Something like:

spears<swords<cavalry<spears

is this non-linearity? or is it linear, therefore boring? so lets have supercavalry that beats everything and end to all cav armies? Is it this what you mean?

[KrooK]

Guys remember that we are talking about Medieval times. High is era when knight charges decided about battles. It has been stopped in late, mostly due to english longbowmen, swiss infantry and czech tabor.
But what is really annoying into mtw 2 is that husaria does not have bonus vs phalanx and armour piercing bonus :) Into reality they had.

[UglyandHasty]

yesterday i try an all cav army in a 2vs2, but the host put 15k each. I had 8 heavy cav and 12 lighter cav(hobilars x 6). Our two opponent had a balanced army, were moving grouped. It was a quite easy victory. Charge after charge i have breack the ennemies. Sure it wasnt 10k, but it give a hint.

[Paolai]

Hey Paolai, havent seen u in the lobby yet :D

me too havent see you yet


Barret and Cow, plz help me here!
People are understanding littel by little that I am right, but maybe they need also other voices cause you are both nice and talented players. I am sure also you have my same feelings about the imbalances that I have mentioned. Lets try to have a better game.

[RTKBarrett]

As long as palamedes is aware of these threads im sure he can make his voice heard and the patch can take care of ure worries ;-)

[Paolai]

ok lets wait and hope then.

[NihilisticCow]

Personally I don't see it as important what happened in history, no one knows that much, one persons fact is anothers fiction. The nobility that fought on horseback wanted all the glory, whether they actually gained it or not, so it was recorded that way.

In the game one stationary specialised anti cavalry unit (that doesn't fair that well against infantry) should not be wiped out by one head on charge from one heavy cavalry unit. Otherwise there isn't much point taking anything apart from cavalry and I'd rather have a more interesting game.

The other issues that I think are important were as Paolai mentioned:

Pikes are too strong vs Swords.
Not quite as major, but why should so cheap units beat so expensive infantry so easily head on? Yes I know how to beat them and phalanxes in RTW, but I never felt them that ideal either...

Musks are too strong.
Simple one that most people agree with.

Archers are too weak.
I assume Paolai means the same as me; I'm not referring to crossbows that are quite effective, but the standard non armour piercing units. At the moment, there isn't an advantage to taking them over crossbows given a choice. Archers fire a little quicker than crossbows, but do lower damage and have no armour piercing so they're so much weaker against armour, so all that happens is they run out of ammo after not killing much, even through shooting in the back. I think their attack should be boosted by a couple of points, so the basic damage is the same as an equivalent crossbow (who of course will still have armour piercing, so will get big bonuses against armour). After all why would an arrow hurt an unarmoured unit any less than a crossbow? I think this should give standard archers a slight advantage over crossbows in a shootout with their slightly faster rate of fire, so it's not such a simple choice which one to get. Also it would help to kill horse archers a bit quicker, so make cantabrian a bit more of a necessity.

[Darkarbiter]

Personally I don't see it as important what happened in history, no one knows that much, one persons fact is anothers fiction. The nobility that fought on horseback wanted all the glory, whether they actually gained it or not, so it was recorded that way.

In the game one stationary specialised anti cavalry unit (that doesn't fair that well against infantry) should not be wiped out by one head on charge from one heavy cavalry unit. Otherwise there isn't much point taking anything apart from cavalry and I'd rather have a more interesting game.

The other issues that I think are important were as Paolai mentioned:

Pikes are too strong vs Swords.
Not quite as major, but why should so cheap units beat so expensive infantry so easily head on? Yes I know how to beat them and phalanxes in RTW, but I never felt them that ideal either...

Musks are too strong.
Simple one that most people agree with.

Archers are too weak.
I assume Paolai means the same as me; I'm not referring to crossbows that are quite effective, but the standard non armour piercing units. At the moment, there isn't an advantage to taking them over crossbows given a choice. Archers fire a little quicker than crossbows, but do lower damage and have no armour piercing so they're so much weaker against armour, so all that happens is they run out of ammo after not killing much, even through shooting in the back. I think their attack should be boosted by a couple of points, so the basic damage is the same as an equivalent crossbow (who of course will still have armour piercing, so will get big bonuses against armour). After all why would an arrow hurt an unarmoured unit any less than a crossbow? I think this should give standard archers a slight advantage over crossbows in a shootout with their slightly faster rate of fire, so it's not such a simple choice which one to get. Also it would help to kill horse archers a bit quicker, so make cantabrian a bit more of a necessity.

Thats one of the problems with RTW code :(. Heres an example... say a unit has 10 armour and 10 sheild. A crossbowben firing from the front needs to worry about 15 ranged defence. While an archer needs to worry about 20. A crossbowmen firing from the back only needs to worry about 5 and a archer still needs to worry about 10. Making this better requires a lot of balancing.

[NihilisticCow]

Thats one of the problems with RTW code :(. Heres an example... say a unit has 10 armour and 10 sheild. A crossbowben firing from the front needs to worry about 15 ranged defence. While an archer needs to worry about 20. A crossbowmen firing from the back only needs to worry about 5 and a archer still needs to worry about 10. Making this better requires a lot of balancing.

Yes, but that's against armour, I was suggesting the increase in archer attack so that they're a better unit to use against unarmoured units, such as other archers/crossbows.