Official Unit Gameplay Balance Thread

[Guiflick]

1. The date of the mod version when released.
November 11, 2016

2. The unit(s) that is to be changed, and it's faction(s).
English Foot Men at Arms Tier 3
English Serjeants (Late) Tier 3
Heavy Billmen (Late) Tier 3

3. What is the proposed change to the unit(s)?
English Foot Men at Arms Tier 3 - Need to have a better melee defense, its way worse than French Men at Arms Tier 3 and maybe a little buff in armor too, its worse than other factions too not only French.
English serjeants (Late) Tier 3 - It needs to have better armour stats and maybe a little buff in melee defence, the armor is really week comparing to some units from other factions and melee defense just a little bit worse. See the prints below for comparison.
Heavy Billmen (Late) Tier 3 - They are not Heavy, they are Tier 3 medium polearm infantry I cant even compare to other factions tier 3 heavy polearm infantry so I compared with French "medium" polearm Infantry, I think that england need to have a Heavy polearm infantry too.

4. Explain why the change of the unit will benefit and improve gameplay.
Its just for sake of unit balance, most battles if you take these guys that I mentioned and put them against some other factions they will lose because of those stats.

5. Describe the situation. Describe the environment settings if possible. How can somebody else besides you recreate the scenario that resulted in your appeal to change the unit(s)?
take these units that I mentioned and in the prints below and put them face to face and then attack with them together, the english ones will always lose.

6. (optional) Provide any screenshots or videos of the gameplay that supports the need of the change.

Men at Arms Tier 3

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Serjeants Tier 3

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Infantry Tier 2 - just to show that the Tier 2 units are "right", I compared to other factions too.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Heavy Billmen (Late) Tier 3

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Thank you for the attention, you guys are creating a awesome mod and I'm just trying to "help" a little bit the way I can. Thank you for the great mod!!
If you guys need I can take some more screenshots comparing to other factions too.
If I did something wrong, sorry!
(english is not my primary language.)

[Blak]

Sly, you can't simply "reducing projectile damage for arrows and javelins to a pitiful level". What we should do instead, is rescaling. For Armor, make the armour value between armours more pronounced, or in your own words, more exaggerated.

Its also not just a simple projectile damage reduction - but also rescaling to proper effectiveness against different kind of targets. On how you talk about projectile damage its as if you're not aware that missiles have 2 damage values: normal and AP. Normal damage should be rather unchanged assuming we do not change battle entity HP as well with the armour value, but the AP value should be recalibrated against which kind of armour its effective against, and what its not.

Making Javelins weak but having a lot of ammunition doesn't make any sense either. Javelin are slow compared to arrows and bolts, but they are big and heavy, means it still packs quite a kinetic punch. Also because they're big, an entity would only carry 3-5 tops. Making javelins weak means rendering an entire class of units useless.

If it matters at all, I side with you on this one, purely because as an ordinary player it sounds more realistic and non arcady that way

[Vakko]

Is there a spreadsheet on unit stats at all? I think that will help with "balancing" if we can get the information to be easily accessible?

[Bobi_TWR]

1.28th of February 2017
2.The unit(s) that is to be changed, and it's faction(s).
All spear infantry from all factions
3.All spears need a lot more melee damage it is far too low
4.In current state of the mod every spear unit except pavisiers are useless
5.Sword units and especially polearms do a lot more damage vs cav than spears and in inf vs inf combat spears die to anything

[Heisenburrg]

1. 28th of February 2017
2. All two-handed-weapon-units of the HRE, especially the "Dismounted Ritter" tier 3
3. All in all they need stronger stats (armor melee defense/offense), Tier 3 is weaker then tier 1 and 2
4. They are meant as equivalent to the dismounted (often one-handed) knight units of other factions, but they can´t stand them in close combat, Aussöldner doesn´t close the gap too. (plus have the disadvantage of poor missile blocking).
"Dismounted Ritter" Tier 3 are even weaker then the "Dismounted Ritter" Tier 1 and 2 in this point! They should keep the poor missile blocking chance but then they should be devastating at least in close combat.
5. See above, Tested units against France´s late close combat units (especially "Dismounted gens d´arme" and "Hommes d´arme")

All other stats in this roster seem to be fine.

[Bobi_TWR]

I suggest we make steam group about testing balance and make tons of tests in order to say what is unbalanced correctly,because without testing all of these suggestion are prob personal opinions and saltiness due to lost battles

[gloin99]

1. 28th of February 2017
2. Kharsh, Golden Horde and Ilkhanate Horde
3. They should cost ca. 20.
4/5. Whatever their value is it is > 0, especially in MP where cannon fodder is quite important for absorbing missiles, disrupting charges(!) and harassing missile units. They could even be used to just have them standing in the enemy's back to cause a morale penalty. They could be used as free canon fodder to conquer watch towers while other factions have to sacrifice a lot of (costing) men. At least bump the price up to 20. Otherwise the unit will get spammed and exploited. Also think about the different fund levels. When playing with smaller funds this unit would be spammed even more. It would allow to always bring 20 units while the opponent may only use a fraction of that.

1. 28th of February 2017
2. Kurdish Brigands, Golden Horde
3. Drop the price from 750 to ca. 450.
4/5. This has to be some kind of mistake. This unit is extremely overpriced. It has significantly worse stats than the equally priced Dismounted Druzhina and even than the cheaper Siege Swordsmen. Their stats are roughly comparable to units at the price of 450-500. They are almost identical with those of the Ayyubid Jund Swordsmen which cost 550 and are already very overpriced compared to their European counterparts.


On a different note:

Correct me if I'm wrong. I don't know what your process for balancing is but it seems like every faction is created and balanced seperately. There's is no common basis. Factions and units partially have no reasonable relation to one another. That's why I would suggest the following methodical approach.

Create a generic base faction for the sole purpose of balancing and give it every unit type and units of several price levels. That faction could be used by testers to find the best unit balancing and by creators as a basis for their units. In the following example I'll use a single arbitrary stat which may represent a units strength.

Base Faction Roster:

Unit | Price| Strength

Melee Infantry:
Peasants | 50| 21
Low Tier Swordsmen | 500 | 67
Middle Tier Swordsmen | 500 | 67
Elite Swordsmen | 750 | 89

Missile Infantry:
Peasant Archers | 100 | 15
Low Tier Archers | 200 | 20
Middle Tier Archers | 350 | 36
Elite Archers | 550 | 45

Now let's say we want to create a new faction. We'd know what stats units should roughly have and would only have to adjust them to the specific unit and faction traits. If we were to create a European faction we might give the melee units better armor than the basic units and better shock cavalry but higher prices (or whatever might be more historically accurate). If we were to create an Islamic faction we might give them slightly weaker swordsmen, better archers, faster cavalry and so on and so forth.

It would take some initial work but in the long run I think it would save much work and yield much better results. This way you wouldn't have to test thousands of faction pairings or rely on random feedback without common basis. Or as an alternative you could extensively balance an existing faction (e.g. HRE) and then use it as base faction. The problem with that would be that existing factions only have a very limited amount of units and that their relative strengths and weaknesses would have to be taken into account everytime you balance a unit/faction which makes the process very vague.

If you really want to go the extra mile you could even create base factions for different cultures (European, Islamic, African, Nomad...). In that case it might even be feasible to pick existing factions, one for each culture, to balance them extensively and explicitly use them as common basis. The latter might even be the most cost-efficient way.

[You_Guess_Who]

On a different note:

Correct me if I'm wrong. I don't know what your process for balancing is but it seems like every faction is created and balanced seperately. There's is no common basis. Factions and units partially have no reasonable relation to one another. That's why I would suggest the following methodical approach.

Create a generic base faction for the sole purpose of balancing and give it every unit type and units of several price levels. That faction could be used by testers to find the best unit balancing and by creators as a basis for their units.

Now let's say we want to create a new faction. We'd know what stats units should roughly have and would only have to adjust them to the specific unit and faction traits. If we were to create a European faction we might give the melee units better armor than the basic units and better shock cavalry but higher prices (or whatever might be more historically accurate). If we were to create an Islamic faction we might give them slightly weaker swordsmen, better archers, faster cavalry and so on and so forth.

It would take some initial work but in the long run I think it would save much work and yield much better results. This way you wouldn't have to test thousands of faction pairings or rely on random feedback without common basis. Or as an alternative you could extensively balance an existing faction (e.g. HRE) and then use it as base faction. The problem with that would be that existing factions only have a very limited amount of units and that their relative strengths and weaknesses would have to be taken into account everytime you balance a unit/faction which makes the process very vague.

If you really want to go the extra mile you could even create base factions for different cultures (European, Islamic, African, Nomad...). In that case it might even be feasible to pick existing factions, one for each culture, to balance them extensively and explicitly use them as common basis. The latter might even be the most cost-efficient way.

What you're saying is exactly something we're currently discussing on the dev forums - And I agree this is really needed, considering balance on this mod is still bad.

[KAM 2150]

Also at one point you guys should reworkd very important tables regarding combat, that I think are or at least were missing in previous update like morale and fatigue tables.

[Knight2708]

9th March 2017:

Units that are to be changed: Foot Men at Arms (England), Dismounted Ritter late (Holy Roman Empire, Saxony, Bavaria, Brabant, Austria) Dismounted Portugese Knights late, Crusader Armati late (KJC) Stormaend (Denmark) Anglovarangoi late (Nicea, Epirus, Trebizond) Dismounted General's Bodyguard and Men at Arms (Swiss)

Proposed Change: Increase armor to about 75-85

So I've been looking over some of the armor values of tier 3 units and dismounted knights in tier 3 have generally way too low armor values compared to late period Serjeants, Aussoldner, Scoutatoi swordsmen and similar units. Most common is for dismounted knights tier 3 to have an armor value of 58, while serjeants tier 3 have an armor value of 59. This is very unhistorical, as knights would always have much better armor than more common soldiers, as they had the resources to buy the best equipment available. Their armor would commonly be of higher quality steel and craftsmanship, and because it was a single suit that was fitted for them specifically it would provide better overall coverage and also be more comfortable than the equipment of lesser troops that was often acquired piece by piece and of lesser quality overall.
It also makes more sense balancing-wise for knights to have better armor, as the serjeants already have a shield to protect themselves. Currently serjeants and similar units have a significant defensive advantage that they should not have.

Also Crusader Armati late are inferior to Dismounted Frates Milites Templar and Hospitaler late in every single stat, despite costing 50 gold more.

[You_Guess_Who]

You're seeing Shield stats adding to the armour stat in the front-side only - The actual underlying armour of knightly units are actually higher.

Should shields add armour stat, or should it only adds missile block chance and melee defence only? That's a question that we're pondering about - This is a key difference of how shields work on Attila's Grand Campaign compared with Age of Charlemagne.

[Bobi_TWR]

9th of March 2017

Units that are to be changed:
All heavy cavalry
1.Too tanky
2.Too OP vs inf not in shield wall
3.When pulling back losing ton of men
Proposed Change:
I think good change would be to give shock cav massive charge bonus but make their melee defence close to 0(you can take rome 2 cav mechanics as example)
Give melee damage to melee cav(close to shock cav MD).Also reduce mass little bit and Double delay between melee attacks from 0.7 to 1.4 so cav which are pulling back wont lose half of their unit(not sure about where you can change this,just copying it from the best balance mod for atilla)

[lion8000]

Well I don't think that they should make all heavy cavalry's (especially knight unit's) melee defense close to 0 because they were the most elite units and particularly the high and late era one's armor was so good that swords should do almost no damage to them.

[banskie100]

what is the purpose their names of "Heavy Cavalry" when they cant damage their enemies?

how to kill them? use spears, pikes and polearms.

[Bobi_TWR]

@lion8000 Armour is NOT melee defence,your comment doesnt even make sence,eastern cataphracts were the most armoured units in ancient era and still they got extremely low melee defence and worked rly well,ofc mechanics in atilla are diffrent than rome 2's but i think this will balance out shock cav
@banskie 100 Spears suck due to low melee damage polearm suck because they dont have shield wall so the mass of cav reks them and nobody will charge pikes
Also balance have nothing in common with historical accuracy,if it did gameplay would have been extremely boring and everybody would spam late period units

[lion8000]

My point was that knights (especially) should also be formidable in melee combat and it is logical that late era units are superior.

[Knight2708]

9th of March 2017

Units that are to be changed:
All heavy cavalry
1.Too tanky
2.Too OP vs inf not in shield wall
3.When pulling back losing ton of men
Proposed Change:
I think good change would be to give shock cav massive charge bonus but make their melee defence close to 0(you can take rome 2 cav mechanics as example)
Give melee damage to melee cav(close to shock cav MD).Also reduce mass little bit and Double delay between melee attacks from 0.7 to 1.4 so cav which are pulling back wont lose half of their unit(not sure about where you can change this,just copying it from the best balance mod for atilla)

I've never had any significant problems dealing with heavy cav, so I really dont get your argument balancing-wise. In fact I'd say heavy cav are some of the better balanced units in the game currently. Heavy cav can be one of the most threatening units in the game, and they will rek melee infantry that's what they are supposed to do, but there are also a lot of counters from the most obvious one bringing your own heavy cav. to missiles that shred them atm, pikes, meatshields, engaging them with cheap melee cav and than charging in polearms and other damage dealers, kiting them with horse archers and other mounted skirmishers, etc. I will openly admit that I am not very good at this game, but I have had little trouble so far dealing with enemy heavy cav.
Giving them a melee defense pf 0 is also incredibly unrealistic. Having cav die almost instantly in melee like it was in M2TW (never played Rome 2, so cant comment) is incredibility arcady and unhistorical and pretty much the exact opposite of what this mod is goinf for..

[Bobi_TWR]

Examples from cav stats in vanilla atilla:
Sarmatian Cataphract Lancers
cost:1200
Charge bonus:260
Melee Defence:25
Noble Steppe Cataphracts
cost:725
melee defence:7
charge bonus:230
Gyan-Avspar
cost:950
melee defence:25
charge bonus:245
Cav is one of the least balanced unit types xD.Cav vs Cav fights are way too long,cav die only if you charge them with inf after they are already engaged with cav,player with okish skill level will get atleast 100-200 kills with every unit of cav,in a 2v2 battle i charged cav unit with 2-3 inf + 2 cav units and the cav died after 2-3 minutes which is rly bad(won the battle ez because there are very few ppl with good skill lvl in lobbies so not salty at all)

[Danishmend]

1. 28th of February 2017
2. Turkoman Horse Archers, Sultanate of Rum
3. Turkoman Horse Archers need better stats
4/5. Turkoman Horse Archers are more expensive (650) than Turkoman Raiders (450) and yet they have worse stats. The unit (Turkoman Horse Archers) was originally created for Empire of Nicaea though (as an auxiliary unit), so there might be some mistake too, perhaps they shouldn't have been in the Seljuk roster? They weren't in the Sultanate of Rum's roster before the latest release.

[You_Guess_Who]

9th of March 2017

Units that are to be changed:
All heavy cavalry
1.Too tanky
2.Too OP vs inf not in shield wall
3.When pulling back losing ton of men
Proposed Change:
I think good change would be to give shock cav massive charge bonus but make their melee defence close to 0(you can take rome 2 cav mechanics as example)
Give melee damage to melee cav(close to shock cav MD).Also reduce mass little bit and Double delay between melee attacks from 0.7 to 1.4 so cav which are pulling back wont lose half of their unit(not sure about where you can change this,just copying it from the best balance mod for atilla)

Near to 0? Denied. Knights who trained in martial arts since young shouldn't suck at melee defence. It can be reduced when mounted, but no way to a very low level.
Melee attack delay? Now that's something to think about. What mod?

polearm suck because they dont have shield wall so the mass of cav reks them

There are long polearms (halberds, voulges, bills) and poleaxes - different thing. 2 handed foot nobles in this mod doesn't have defensive formation unlike long polearms that have pikewall ability. But they cannot have shieldwall...because they have no shields. Hmmm, add squares? give spearwall? or create a new "brace" formation?

everybody would spam late period units

Of course. In Late Period gameplay, every unit are late period, even peasants are late period.
We're not subscribing to the idea of all rabbles->professional->elites unit roster; but few nobles + lots of peasants -> few nobles with more advanced equipment + lots of peasants with better training.

1. 28th of February 2017
The unit (Turkoman Horse Archers) was originally created for Empire of Nicaea though (as an auxiliary unit), so there might be some mistake too, perhaps they shouldn't have been in the Seljuk roster? They weren't in the Sultanate of Rum's roster before the latest release.

You're spot on with that roster inclusion suspicion.