Unit Balancing

[Tsarsies]

Moral for undead and orcs etc, should be extremely high. to prevent them from retreating early, or if overpowered or charged into from a cavalry unit. even using 'lock_moral' for undead (meaning they will never retreat, they fight till slain. except for intelligent undead like vampires)

if your planning on factoring costs of spells to raise skeletons etc, then i would suggest possibly calling those units as 'untrained' but with higher attack values and moral to compensate. unless the unit being 'summoned' is like a legend or what ever...

before thinking of armor values you might want to think of which armour levels you want to use from the warhammer realm. and thus, how many buildings you will need for the upgrade levels. I dont have any warhammer reference books, otherwise id happily convert it all over to M2TW values for you. I dont doubt you are cpable of doing it all on your own, but if you want a little help, just let me know.

give me the values for warhammer and i'll have them converted to M2TW in no time!

base set of stats could be somthing like taking an untrained, unarmored and unarmed human, elf, dwarf, orc, skeleton, zombie, troll, giant etc. giving them unarmed attacke values corresponding to size and strength. armored values based on their agility, speed, size. keeping in mind these would be all untrained (Peasant-like) attributes. [Racial Mofifier]
then factor in what faction they would be recruited from and +/- a value based on the given faction. [Faction Modifier]
Then, once you have figured out the types of armour to use, associate a value to them. [Armor Value Modifier]

which gives you an untrained unit wearing that type of armour.

Similar to the armour rating you would decide what kind of shields you need, and base the shield rating on that. 1 thru 6 for example.

I think you would want to decide all the elements from warhammer you intend to use (even ones which may not work) before using mods like Real Combat and the various AI mods. because RC is not based on a human spearman up against a troll that is 3 times as large and 10 times as strong! so units like trolls, giants would have upwards of 5 or more hit points (in the M2TW world) and kill a shitload of human spearman with one connecting swipe of its barbed club! :)

one thing you said that sparked my interest is zombies being cheap to recruit but expensive upkeep wise... due to necromancers etc... i like the idea of that, but what about tying a resource to some units, meaning if you dont have access to the resource, you cant train them (i think that is possible to do, to some extent anyway)

Figuring in costs should be easy, a simple addition of Unit equipment, cost of spell components (if neccersary), etc

Anyway, as i said, give me the warhammer values you want converted and ill think of a way to convert it all over, or send me in the direction to find these values as i have no warhammer reference books.

[Zapp]

If I just could find the old XML file that RtG made... I think I still have it somewhere. I'll give you a PM if I find it...

Cause I guess RTW stats are pretty similar to those of M2TW, with a little modifying, right?

[Bwian]

Thanks Zapp ... I think the M2TW and RTW stats are virtually identical..r at least near enough so that only minor tweaking would be required.

As far as custom battle costs go, those ar ehe easy ones!

I can simply look at the stats in the Army Books, and see what...say... 1000 army points buys you. A simple conversion factor of...I don;t know... 5 Florins=1 Army point, and the prices will create themselves for me. It will ensure that a balance is created for costs.

Of course..that requires that first we get the correct relative balance of the units in terms of combat power. That is the primary task... and the unit cost will naturally follow.

Playtesting will be needed to make sure that our conversion factors actually do yield good battles in game...since, as has been pointed out, an accurate conversion of stats could result in stagnant battles. Not always a bad thing...but when units like Bone Giants, Trolls and Chaos Knights hit the battlefield, I expect to see the bodycount rise!

[messenger]

I was just thinking, rather than do all complex formulae and crazy things like that, why not make up the stats as you go along according to how powerful the unit's in question would be on M2TW?
That way you can probably have an advantage that GW don't, in that you can have minor stat differences while the Table Top has no such luxury, what with weapons like swords and axes that should have an effect, not do anything statwise as 1 strength point is very valuable in Warhammer.
Just my two cents...

[Bwian]

The trouble with just 'guessing it' is that it then becomes just out opinion ...and there are LOTS of opinions in Warhammer! IF we base it on some solid factual base, we are beginning from a solid foundation. We will tweak it from there to get a good game balance, and to allow for factors that we cannot directly duplicate in M2TW, and then we will playtest to make sure that no faction is overpowered or badly unbalanced.

Some factions should be easier than others...just as it is in the real game campaign...but all MUST be fair for the custom battles and online type games.

This is such an iportant thing for us that we MUST involve as many peole as possible and get as many opinions as we can before we start on the major stat work.

[messenger]

The trouble with just 'guessing it' is that it then becomes just out opinion ...and there are LOTS of opinions in Warhammer! IF we base it on some solid factual base, we are beginning from a solid foundation. We will tweak it from there to get a good game balance, and to allow for factors that we cannot directly duplicate in M2TW, and then we will playtest to make sure that no faction is overpowered or badly unbalanced.

Some factions should be easier than others...just as it is in the real game campaign...but all MUST be fair for the custom battles and online type games.

This is such an iportant thing for us that we MUST involve as many peole as possible and get as many opinions as we can before we start on the major stat work.

Yeah I suppose your right...

[Silly Knicket]

Is the goal to recreate the Warhammer universe in MTW2, or is it to recreate the tabletop game within the MTW2 engine, or something inbetween?

Whilst being quite similar approaches, I think there is a difference...