Balancing and/or Gameplay issues

[Fulgrim88]

This thread is meant to collect serious gameplay and balancing problems.
It is NOT meant to wine about how your troops don't kick ass, unless it's unbalanced to the point of gamebreaking.
If this works out, i'd appreciate if it could be made sticky.

Edit Disclaimer:

Thanks for the replys so far, guys.

However, please try to keep this stuff short and precise (use the template, if possible), and most of all, refrain from lengthy discussions.
This thread is meant to provide some quick, community-based QA/info for the developers on what needs to be fixed. If you feel it's much, write much, but try to keep it precise. The dev's are already spending quite a lot of freetime on improving this mod, they shouldn't be forced to spend much time trying to make sense of our feedback

As for lengthy discussions, the main goal of this thread is to inform the Devs about gameplay- and balancing issues. As much as i hate to say it - (sorry to the mods in advance); If you feel the need for a more in-depth discussion of a certain faction, start a new thread.

Let's get started:

Faction: Dwarves
Unit: Dwarven Warriors
Issue: Sharped Spikes don't do any damage to cavalry riding through them.
Screenshot if applicable: N/A
Additional comments: tested at Siege Battles against Greenskin Cavalry and Squig Riders

Faction: Night Goblins
Unit: Ram
Issue: Ram tagged as artillery, not attacking the gates
Screenshot if applicable: [IMG=http://img704.imageshack.us/img704/1706/ram.png][/IMG]
Additional comments: Happened during the scripted attack of two Night Goblin stacks on Karak-Eight-Peaks. They spawned beneath the Fortress and attacked instantly. I don't know if it's a general bug of goblin-rams or just of that scripted armies

Faction: Various, tested with dwarves, observed on Chaos, Greenskins and Night Goblins
Unit: Various
Issue: Pathfinding issues when moving huge stacks in Siege Battles
Screenshots if applicable: N/A
Additional Comments: Units refuse to move if an area (or the way to an area) is too crowded. Sending them elsewhere won't work either, unless it's somewhere else entirely

Faction: Greenskins
Unit: N/A
Issue: Somewhat unbalanced in Autoresolve
Screenshots if applicable: N/A
Additional Comments: It's my third campaign where greenskins have steamrolled the southern Empire safe for Altdorf and the Theogonist's Lands within the first 30 turns. Dwarves where gone too, safe for the one campaign where i'm currently playing them. With a green tide like this, there's no need for the storm of Chaos

Faction: Various
Unit: Gate
Issue: Boiling Oil has a very small area of effect
Screenshots if applicable: N/A
Additional Comments: I don't know wether it's intended, but boiling oil kills extremely few units (about 1-2, even if hitting an area packed with units)

There are a few others that need further testing to validate wether they are really broken or not

[Blackomur89]

This thread is meant to collect serious gameplay and balancing problems.
It is NOT meant to wine about how your troops don't kick ass, unless it's unbalanced to the point of gamebreaking.
If this works out, i'd appreciate if it could be made sticky.

You heard him I will delete all of topic posts, and if it does work it will be a sticky in the Bug subforum.

[Gork Or Mork]

Faction: Greenskins
Unit: N/A
Issue: Somewhat unbalanced in Autoresolve
Screenshots if applicable: N/A
Additional Comments: It's my third campaign where greenskins have steamrolled the southern Empire safe for Altdorf and the Theogonist's Lands within the first 30 turns. Dwarves where gone too, safe for the one campaign where i'm currently playing them. With a green tide like this, there's no need for the storm of Chaos

Nice post fulgrim. I kind of agree and kind of disagree. I think a very subtle fix would help balance that out. Like making the orc faction heir's army start by grimgor instead of the border princes regions with that savage orc characters army. This would give empire more time to build up and perhaps help dwarfs for a while longer.

Also the greenskins did play a big part in the outcome of the actual SOC campaign. Perhaps they could add a script though that the orcs concentrate more on fighting chaos and night goblins attacking dwarves.

In my current campaign with orcs I made the mistake of not bum rushing empire from the border lands and by the time I was getting ready to they built up quite powerful. Also just as I was about to invade huge tzeentch armies spawned out of thin air and stole my occupied dwarf lands and half my border prince regions. That crippled me for quite a while and I had to call off the empire invasion or I would have been in serious trouble. I can't really say I like the idea of chaos ( atleast not mortal armies ) just spawning out of thin air but it does make things more of a challenge.

Also Dwarfs and empire eventually allied with nightgoblins Those blasphemous backstabbing gobbo's.

[Action Fighter]

Nice idea. I agree with you on the most issues you posted. I'm playing as Middenland atm and have to run around the Empire saving my allies all the time. One time the Emperor died at the siege of grunburg(probably) at turn 5. A bit early for Karl Franz to die imo. Also when Chaos become undivided is severly unbalanced. There's actually no chance to beat all those stacks that spawn. I was playing with sylvania and had already wiped most of the Empire out when chaos became undivided at turn 42. I pretty much got my ass kicked in all my border provinces and now my full army is mustered at talabheim and i have to use extremely cautios cavalry tactics in order to beat a chaos army. Using blood knights best cav ingame too so says alot having to go cautios with 10 units of blood knights in order to beat a chaos army without halberds. But maybe that's the point with storm of chaos. I will most probably cope with the invasion and be able to retaliate in about 30 turns.

Also it's a bit annoying with the enemy getting full stacks out of nowhere early in game. They just move in and tear you empire apart.

[Jean=A=Luc]

I finally got to play it a little more.

I'm also annoyed by those early scripted armies that teleport in next to your city and attack it immediately. If nothing else the spawned army should at least wait a turn before attacking so you can get your general out of the city. Those scripted armies are a really crappy way to lose a general.

Also I get the impression that too many units have the "inspires nearby troops" attribute. I don't know if the effect stacks but it seems overabundant.

I don't think "free companies" should be recruitable in settlements, probably should just be mercs.

Building build times and costs also look weird (to me at least). For example a simple "town watch" that lets you recruit Empire Spearmen costs 5800 and takes 6 turns to build while the Reiksguard Residence that give access to some elites is 1000 gold and builds in 2 turns. Also brother is completely free to build but takes 7 turns. Is the jewelers workshop really worth 8000 gold?

In general the campaign feels very rough around the edges but I know the mod's still in an early phase. I forsee great things for it if it continues to improve.

[cedric37]

I have finished my M/M as Slaanesh (scripted battles off but army spawn on).

As my gaming experience may be not representative; i have noticed some points where balance could maybe be improved:
- in 125 turns i neer have been the target for any theogonist crusade; i find it weird, maybe me lucky one ? Or maybe chaos religion cannot be a target for crusades ?
- Chaos have it easy when fighting Empire, 1 stack of elite chaos can easily crush 2 of Empire. This is okay, but, the problem is that when you conquer an empire settlement, you can most of the time recruit empire soldiers to rapidly fill-in it. So you can continue marching with your big chaos horde and let the empire soldiers garrison your conquered cities. In this, you can really conquer fast; maybe a bit too fast. Could Chaos only recruit marauders and the like ? This way, they would have to build at least minor chaos barracks and then wait turns before to move to the next region.
- Chaos factions are not diversified once you are "undivided", you can evenly recruit all types of demons and chosen regardless of what is your original god. I like this diversity but it sort of kill the re-playability of chaos factions. Once having played with Slaanesh i don't see the point to try another chaos faction as they will end up with exactly the same troops and buildings. Maybe we should lower recruitment rates for other gods units (and possibly make some of them unavailable), so that you still have your chosen god 'colour'. Also some specific buildings linked to your god could add a 'colour' to your gaming experience. E.g. make Slaanesh have buildings focused on luxury and pleasure (bonus in entertainment); Khorne on gladiatoral fights and torture (bonus in order).
- sacrificial altars allow chaos to play gladiator games; the issue is that there is no counter-part to this; so you always end up with daily games. This should be differienciated (daily games = less income as people will assist gladiator games instead of working in the fields). Also could we change the white horse icon to a skull or an axe ?
- i believe maybe orcs and goblins can never be eradicated completly (maybe chaos as well) by just capturing settlements. Maybe could we make all these factions behaving like hordes (like the mongols).
- some factions died too early due to the lack of heirs like dwarves and orcs in my game.

Otherwise the game is very very good and i really enjoyed it

Cheers,
Cédric.

[Karion]

some factions died too early due to the lack of heirs like dwarves and orcs in my game.

in the case of dwarf they die cause the king and his son are in the capital at the turn 16 when the 5 full stacks of tzeentch appear
that is a little exagerated cause they are divided so what is the point of chaos become undivided if they already can make full scale invasion and unleash all the fury of chaos and even not fight each other for the control
im not complain about the invasions, because is one of the good parts of the game but i just want to suggest that meanwhile they are divided they just can send small invasions (just one stack with more marauders than warriors and one hellcannon only) and when they become undivided yes they can invaded with all the chaos army united

[cedric37]

Hmmm, i started a dwarf campaign and of course put my king and my heir in different places, but the AI is not so wise

[Maias227]

Faction High Elves

General's Unit - Change the models to include normal plain silver helms and then simply intiate in the fluff that general's bodyguards, are first silver helms regiments as described in the army books? (the toughest silver helms basically)

Silver Helms - More armour. They have 15 right now as far as I could read and thats just not enough. They need to be somewhat on pair with the plain knights of the empire. Also as I looked over the knight stats, increase silver helms morale or reduce that of the knights

Spearmen - Their role in their army is debateable but right now they are just not good enough considering they should be the mainstay of the elven army. But needless to say compared to human troops either their attack or defence must be improved. Morale is alright but may need buffing.

Swordmasters - As far as I can see fine, a bit more armour wouldn't hurt.

Lothern Spearelves - these are the de facto mainstay regiment and need to be changed. Pikes should go and be changed to spears. Increase secondary attack 1-2, may need armour increase as well

Phoenix Guards - Loose the pikes, they're not pikemen otherwise good as they are.

White Lions - Might need a slight increase in armour but otherwise good enough as well

high elf archers/Lothern sea guard archers - Something is a bit off here. Lothern archers are the best on the paper but not very good. High elf archers are downright poor. They do just as well as empire archers which is definitely off.
Also looking at fluff, lothern sea guard are actually only equipped with bows while standard archers have longbows. It is the other way around here.
So my suggestion
- Buff elf archers, give them the greatest range, more arrorws, and at least 2-3 increase in missile attack
- Decrease lothern seaguard range and maybe make them plain infantry otherwise just with bows? They are not supposed to be better archers than the elf archer regiments

Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower - need something altered so it is more effective to this is a general thing about warmachines.

Faction Chaos (primarily those I have been fighting)

Generally morale is far too high across the line. Chaos knights are very tough and should remain so but morale in the 30'ties seems a bit much

Marauders generally have far too high morale as well. 14 morale for marauder horsemen? Thats more than silver helms, spear and the lothern sea guard. It is very hard to break any chaos units and marauder definitely shouldn't be so hard to break considering they're cheapskates chaos can get.
Something generally needs to be done against their armour against arrows.
In an experiment three regiments of lothern seaguard archers fired at a single marauder horsemen regiment and only managed to kill around 5 and even managed to loose more to their javelins.

All for now and still fantastic mod seeing your beloved warhammer models coming to life

[Warmaster Tibs]

UP= Under powered
OP= Overpowered

From looking at some stats it looks like the Dwarves would be UP. Theyre infantry should be stronger then that of greenskins and Empire units but smaller in number as it is in lore. Theyre gunpowder should be stronger in the form of artillery. Giving them 2 hitpoints with reduced numbers would go a long way in making them stronger. Same for elves minus the artilery. Theyre faction strength says the strongest soldiers but they are weak compared to chaos.

The Empire with proper upgraded units seemed a bit OP. I had a group of Halbradiers with 7 xp, double armor upgrades and 1 weapon upgrade utterly destroy a group of top tier black orcs. Though being part of the Empire I wont complain.

Pikemen formation are UP but with pikes its either UP or OP.

[Grakl]

Faction: Night Goblins
Unit: Squig Hoppers
Issue: Movement speed and charge speed is incredibly sub par. They can be run down by infantry.
Screenshot if applicable:
Additional comments: Night Goblin General's Bodyguard uses the Squig Hopper unit as their base and suffer the same issues. I believe Squig Hoppers are meant to be cavalry.

[Valiant Champion]

Faction: Night Goblins
Unit: Squig Hoppers
Issue: Movement speed and charge speed is incredibly sub par. They can be run down by infantry.
Screenshot if applicable:
Additional comments: Night Goblin General's Bodyguard uses the Squig Hopper unit as their base and suffer the same issues. I believe Squig Hoppers are meant to be cavalry.

That can probably be easily rectified through move_speed_mod

[King Siegfried]

The High Elves, even from simply playing in Custom Battle, are indeed underwhelming. Which is too bad, because they should be the equal of other units. I completely disagree with giving entire factions 2hp for each unit. 2hp should be reserved for special, rare units. In the case of the High Elves, the only unit I would give 2hp would be the Phoenix Guard to represent their 4+ Ward Save from the TT. And, to help balance them out, their unit size could be trimmed down a bit. In my personal file, while the spearmen have 150 men and heavy infantry have 120, I gave the Phoenix Guard 90. So they pull a Forlorn Hope in that regard.

To improve the balance of the game, I personally feel that some standardizing of the stats needs to occur. Chaos morale is indeed way too high. It is one thing for the Knights to be fanatic in killing for their gods, but the Marauders need to be roughly equivalent with the Empire soldiers because they're normal humans. The High Elves had some of the greatest leadership in the TT, and considering Chaos Warriors don't have more than 8 leadership, then Chaos should be comparatively lower than the Elves. And Marauders should be even lower, with their 7 leadership. If you wanted to double the leadership to result in a baseline morale, that could be an option. High Elves would end up with 16 to 18, Chaos Warriors with 16, and Marauders with 14? But even that may be too much. Morale should be balanced just as much as attack and defense.

I don't remember where this was said previously, but it is a little redundant that so many units Inspire Nearby Troops. I personally think that very few units should have this attribute beyond the General's Bodyguard. You don't need to give each unit a special attribute to make them effective or fun. And this one just helps ensure that nobody routs (essential to a TW game).

Regarding specific units and modifications that should be looked into...
- General's Bodyguards are fine as is. Though I would give them the Inspires Nearby Troops attribute if they don't have them already.

- Silver Helms are seriously underpowered. These guys were the equal of the Empire Order Knights in the TT. I know that you didn't give them a shield (and that's in line with the TT giving the option of purchasing one for your unit), but it hurts their efficiency. A good solution would be to either give them their shield or make a new knight unit to fill the role of "decent knights". It's currently a very large leap from Silver Helms to Dragon Princes. Also, why do half of the Silver Helms have gold helmets? This is silly. If they're called the "Silver Helms", their helms should be just that: silver.

- The High Elf Spearmen are indeed underwhelming. I'm not even entirely sure how to improve this. Recruiting-wise, they should be the cheapest and most readily available unit available to the Phoenix Guard, as per the TT. But since the TT allows them to fight in three ranks AND they always strike first, that's an efficiency that is hard to match within the TW engine. Perhaps you can give them a very fast animation. With that, they can compensate for their weak attack and defense with the ability to easily handle hording enemies. Oh yes, and they need to have just one shield. The standard star-burst shield makes them look MUCH better (trust me, did it in my game. It rules).

- Lothern Sea Guard, as the good sir Maias227 already pointed out, needs revision. In the TT, they were simply Spearmen with bows. What made them good was the ability to shoot people until they reached the front line. I have actually created the appropriate files to give them bows as their primary and spears as their secondary, and the unit works well. Though they will never receive charges very well, their ability to shoot and perform well in melee makes them an invaluable unit.

- As Mr. Maias227 stated, the High Elf Archers need to be a better archery unit than the Sea Guard. They are equipped with longbows and therefore, at the very least, need to have greater range than their Lothern brethren.

- The Swordmasters of Hoeth are also sadly underwhelming, given their star status in the TT. Striking first in any engagement with two attacks from a greatsword meant that the Swordmasters could end combat in the first round. Because of this, I think they need an animation at least as fast as the Spearmen. They don't need to hit as hard as the White Lions. They don't need to be as tough as the Phoenix Guard. But they should be rightfully deadly. They should also be an elite unit right off the bat. Four upgrades is too much for these guys.

- The Phoenix Guard is also another hard unit to translate, but I think they're more easily done than the Swordmasters. Higher leadership than the other Elves, causing Fear, and that amazing 4+ Ward Save. Well the leadership isn't much of a factor. According to the lore of the Phoenix Guard, they know when they're going to die and don't care, so I don't see them routing. A lock_morale seems appropriate. And it's easy to give them the Frightens Enemy Troops attribute (not OP due to the huge amounts of morale everyone has). But that Ward Save is a pain in the arse. I personally solved that by reducing the unit size and giving them 2 hp, but I could see how that might unbalance them. But if there's only one per army (long recruiting time, even longer refresh rate, etc), then this shouldn't be an issue. They ARE the Phoenix Guard, after all.

- White Lions actually seem pretty okay to me. They hit like trucks, as they should. But they may actually hit a little TOO hard. 14 Attack and 12 Charge on top of that is phenomenal. They hit harder on a charge than the Dragon Princes do. And I'll be honest - that's retarded. The Dragon Princes should be the heaviest hitting Elven unit on a charge, period (but we'll get to that later). But the HE are seriously lacking many units on par with Chaos Chosen. So while this may be a necessity at the moment, hopefully this will change with the new roster.

- Ahhh, the Dragon Princes of Caledor! The famed greatest cavalry in all the Old World (second only to those retarded Blood Dragons). These guys aren't even the equal of the Chosen Knights of Tzeentch. Considering how expensive the Dragon Princes are in the TT (and should be in CoW), they need to be the best cavalry in the game (besides the Blood Dragons of course). Otherwise they aren't the Dragon Princes.

- Repeater Bolt Throwers don't have their proper model for some reason. I myself have no idea how to solve this. Frankly, I haven't played much with these guys. But from I have seen, their ability to skewer entire columns of men make them absolutely vital if a HE general is trying to tackle Chaos. But perhaps there is a way to give the machine the Volley ability (and make it not suck?), as per the TT's Bolt Thrower's ability to fire 6 missiles at one unit. In the TT, a HE general chooses the Volley mechanic over the single shot almost every time, so it would be nice if this could be achieved. If not, then it's not that big a deal.

Okay, as we draw near the end of this essay, I would like to make a few statements regarding the CoW team. They clearly had a lot on their plate. And they did a pretty kickass job so far. AND on top of that, I'll be the first to admit that the High Elf armylist is a pain to translate. With only the Spearmen, Archers and Lothern Sea Guard as "standard" units, and the armylist being littered with extremely powerful (and expensive) special choices, it must be very hard to balance within the TW engine. After all, in the TT, you really only had the ability to field a decent-sized unit of 1 or 2 of these special units. I myself, in my 2250 point army, only had 6 Dragon Princes and 18 Swordmasters. The rest was all spearmen, a couple archers, and bolt throwers.

However, if it is simple a lack of units that is causing a problem within the HE roster for CoW, then perhaps we need to do some delving and create some new units from lore. The HE army book, unfortunately, only mentions one potential new unit: Reaver Knights, most likely from Ellyrion. These Reaver Knights could be an in-between of the Ellyrion Reavers and the Silver Helms, heavier in armor and charge than their archer brethren, but do not have the power of the superior Silver Helms. And the HE army book even provides a shield one could use! With the inclusion of these said Reaver Knights, we could have Reaver Knights, Silver Helms, then Dragon Princes as the progression for the HE cavalry, with the soon-to-arrive Chariots also helping out.

For my closing remark, I'd like to again summarize how the High Elf army should look like, of course doing our best to keep it as much like the TT as the TW engine allows. These guys are elite soldiers, meaning that they should be better than Empire, Greenskins, Dwarves, and definitely rival Chaos. But since they're few in number, their refresh rates should be comparatively low, especially for the Special units. In fact, the Special units may need to take 2 turns to build. Maybe. What one should strive for with the HE is to make it more time- and resource-consuming to put together a full-stack army, but one full-stack HE army could tackle a full-stack Chaos army.

[LittleDwarf]

Elves better than Dwarfs? Bull!@#$%. It's not that I am a Dwarf fanatic... Well, I am, but thats not the point. The point is, that the Dwarfs and High Elves are BOTH superior races, and I would even say that Dwarfs are better, becouse they won in the War of Vengeance (when the High Elven and Dwarfen empires were at the top of their glory) with Elves scoring only the one major victory (when in -1974 IC Caledor II slew Snorri Halfhand, son of the Dwarf High King). And Dwarfs were actually attacking, not defending, winch is harder. My point wasn't to show how the Elves are, but to show that both High Elves AND Dwarfs are superior races compared to others and generally, their only weakness is their low numbers. While Elves mostly concentrate on highly-disciplined excellent missle troops and quick, swift attacks, Dwarfs concentrate on slow, but powerfull attacks of good armoured and disciplined infantry, supported by superior artillery. Both tactics proved their worth, becouse if one would be definitely better, War of Vengeance wouldn't last for 500 year. Both sides of conflict were superior warriors even at the time when humans was hiding in their caves, fighting with wood branches . Their technology has improved since then, but the numbers of both races has decreased a lot, and that is the primary reason of why they are loosing sometimes.

ActionFighter : Maybe not, but, thanks the Ancestors Gods, there actually AREN'T whole ARMIES of Vampires in the Warhammer world, so... Even Elves and Dwarfs outnumber them . Anyway, nothing stands taller than the might of the Dwarfs :<

[Action Fighter]

I noticed Empire is seriously underpowered against Chaos. I need to rely on the use of cavalry to be able to even cause causualties on the enemy side. It often ends up with me just standing back with the army and using repeated charges with the cavalry. In a siege battle i'm basically chanceless, i mean autoresolve is better and those hellcannons can tear a whole side of the city walls apart. When i'm playing chaos it's the same issue, it's just all too easy to crush the Empire.

Littledwarf: Elves and Dwarfes superior to Vampires? Dont think so.

[cedric37]

AF is right, Chaos is incredibly more powerfull than the Empire. If you fight a horde of marauders it is okay, marauders + chaos warriors starts to suffer, but demons + chosen + chaos warriors... Empire cannot win a single fight unless attacking on a 3:1 basis. But i think this is also as designed. And look at the cost/upkeep of elite chaos units: ouch!

But still Chaos is advantaged and yes playing as Chaos is sooo easy. I don't think the issue is chaos being overpowered actually but maybe the fact the Empire is underpowered ? Maybe if we lower the cost/upkeep (maybe recruitment rate is ok) for higher quality Empire units, then Empire can stand the ground.

[Karion]

Like Siegfried say, the problem with chaos is the high morale, in a siege to a imperial city, 5 or 6 marauders and 1 horsemen squads practically lose all his troops but they never flee, they fight to death against a combination of halberds, swordsmen, bodyguards knigst and handgunners, the result was that just a few bodyguards live, the rest of the imperial soldiers die and the few marauders live take the city, oh and btw i was still having 4 chaos warriors waiting to fight, 3 knights, 2 axe throwers and my general
that is the power of a realy high morale

[Fulgrim88]

Thanks for the replys so far, guys.

However, please try to keep this stuff as short and precise as possible, and most of all, refrain from lengthy discussions.
This thread is meant to provide some quick, community-based QA/info for the developers on what needs to be fixed. If you feel it's much, write much, but try to keep it precise. The dev's are already spending quite a lot of freetime on improving this mod, they shouldn't be forced to spend much time trying to make sense of our feedback

As for lengthy discussions, the main goal of this thread is to inform the Devs about gameplay- and balancing issues. As much as i hate to say it - (sorry to the mods in advance); If you feel the need for a more in-depth discussion of a certain faction, start a new thread.

No pun intended to any of the posters so far, it's all fine. I just want to make sure things stay on-topic, in advance

[Mile83]

Faction: Dwarves
Unit: N/A
Issue: Dwarven Fort is on strategy map a stone fort and on battle map a wooden fort
Screenshot if applicable:

Additional comments: The orcs made some ladders and even a siege tower but I only have a small wooden wall
( its also called 'Dwarven fleet' on the strategy map but thats probably some translation mistake )

[Mile83]

Issue: Sharped Spikes don't do any damage to cavalry riding through them.

They ran through them or just walked? Cavalry can walk through sharpened stakes.