Unit balancing, discusion and suggestion.

[Jakeford]

Undyingnephalim has said on the announcements thread that every faction has 12 units (many of which are broken), he said that he is happy with this amount and he will save what little unit slots remain for the Hyrule Historia. He has also said many times in the past that he wouldn't work on balancing until all the units are added... which is now! To add to that Undyingnephalim has said he plans on reworking the freeform campaign tech trees, which is a different kind of balancing.

This is a message to Undyingnephalim, it is time to balance this mod! The only thing really left are armor upgrades, which can use a simple system of adding 1 or 2 armor points to the unit per upgrade.

So how can we help? Well, we can we can offer him help! Apani, The Holy Pilgrim, and I have all made an attempt at balancing. Apani might still be working on his.

I feel that balancing is very important for this mod, both the Hyrule Historia and the freeform campaign; I am sure anyone who has been disappointed by the performance of their elite units, had there entire army wiped out by a few goron units, or had easily destroyed an entire enemy stack with only some mages, will agree.

Edit: It turns out that balancing takes a great deal of animation editing to get just right, in the mean time this thread should be used for discussion on balancing for both the main mod and submods.

[Duke Serkol]

Are you sure when he said all factions "have" 12 units that he didn't mean "will have"? Are they really all done?

[Cameron Shutters]

Let Neph balance when he wants to otherwise just use any of the numerous submods available. Let Neph make his own balance topic when he needs help doing so. Let Neph make his own damn mod.

Have you considered that he may want to work on it after Hyrule Historia? Have you considered that he may want to work on it after the map is done? Have you considered the affect that resources will have on balance? What about armor upgrades?

[SirMark9]

I'm afraid balance is typically one of the last things worked on in any project. The game (or in this case, mod) needs to be practically finished before proper balancing can begin. Just having all the planned units implemented is not enough, there are other variables that need to be addressed such as the possibility for more units, upgrades, and so forth. Just because there is a development plan doesn't mean there may not be revisions down the road.

If we attempt to start balancing, how will it be directed? Do we focus on balancing units in the Freeform Campaign, Custom Battles, or even the Hyrule Historia? Do we start efforts now to balance what we have only to be disrupted when new additions are implemented? What if there is a revamp of an existing faction?

The game has to work first alongside its features. Yes, it can be annoying to have imbalances while playing, but one has to remember that Hyrule: Total War is not a finished product. One should expect such issues when experiencing the mod. Overall, the current state of the mod is playable and enjoyable enough, in my opinion, to overlook the balance problem. Balancing will eventually take place, but right now I would not list it as a priority.

[Jakeford]

Let Neph balance when he wants to otherwise just use any of the numerous submods available. Let Neph make his own balance topic when he needs help doing so. Let Neph make his own damn mod.

Have you considered that he may want to work on it after Hyrule Historia? Have you considered that he may want to work on it after the map is done? Have you considered the affect that resources will have on balance? What about armor upgrades?

Nephalim can balance the game when he wants, I am not forcing him to do anything. Balancing is seriously one of the most important things in an RTS Cameron. You know as well as I how much the balancing of this mod tears down the battles after the initial fun you have simple making armies from Zelda fight. That is why you made submod that fixed major issues after all.

Undyingnephalim said he wants to balance it when every unit is done, not when the mod is done. Yeah, I suppose we can wait another 2 - 3 years (a long wait) so that the Historia can be done, which is also affected by the unit stats and balance (it would certainly be less time consuming to make the mission battles with the permanent balancing in mind rather then doing them all and then going back and changing them to accommodate a rebalance). Did I not mention armor upgrades in my post?

And what's this about numerous submods? You have yours, which only fixes major issues, it doesn't balance the game. Then there is my submod, which is better then vanilla HTW, but is still somewhat lackluster. We have Apani's submod, which isn't anywhere near complete, and The Holy Pilgrim isn't even working on his at the moment. Even if there was reliable submods to choose form right now Hyrule total war itself still won't be balanced; a mod shouldn't have to rely on submods to fill in for such an important thing.

@Duke Serkol. Yes your right, the mod will have them, not all of the units are in 3.5. However Undyingnephalim has all of his units so he can work on a balance with them all. They are all done, Undyingnephalim said he has finished them.

@SirMark19

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Balancing should be done with simply the units, the Hyrule Historia should then have the armies of you and the enemy put together with the balance in mind. The Freeform Campaign's tech trees and replenishment rates should be made with the balance in mind.
I suppose we could wait for armor upgrades, which will be added in the next version or the one after that. Also, There is no possibility of new units, Undyingnephalim stated a while ago that he has almost reached the unit cap and would like to save what slots are left for the Hyrule Historia.(making it impossible to add anymore) I don't think any faction redo's will happen either. in over 3 years of this mod the only faction to be redone was the Deku Tribes, and Undyingnephalim redid them because he felt unsatisfied with them.

[UndyingNephalim]

Other then Hyrule Historia units I will not be adding any other units to any factions, unless there miraculously ends up being enough space in the end or Creative Assembly honors me with a patch that punches stupid hardcoded limits in the face. This I can confirm.

The funny thing is though a few months ago before the last release I actually took a lot of balance suggestions and implemented them from this thread: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...n-Wall-of-text

I suspect no matter how I balance units, there's always going to be some people that find something unbalanced because of differening playstyles, skill levels, and whatever. It doesn't help how asymetrical the factions in the mod are (and especially how they are set up on the campaign map). It's not an excuse to abandon the concept of balance, but it seems my silent experiment has proved a little point. I'm always trying to balance units here and there based on suggestions people bring up, but some of the time those suggestions conflict and are rarely universal.

undyingnephalim said he wants to balance it when every unit is done, not when the mod is done.

By this I mean I use a forumla to get a rough estimation of balance between all units, in a manner similar to how the developers of Fleet Ops determined their weapon damage values. It needs every unit in the game to exist so their stats can be compared against each other. Even with things more numerically perfect, it still doesn't take into account other things such as positioning and the effect of morale. People don't seem to realize how absolutely critical the positioning of units are, regardless of their stats. I'm not even sure Creative Assembly intended for it. A group of units on both sides of a unit will damage their morale far faster for instance. And then there's the whole issue of units with 1 attack being able to outlast a Darknut because of how the engine works and actually takes the speed of animations into account, but that's a whole other ballpark. The Total War engine is shockingly detailed and nuanced in this regard, and I again do not think Creative Assembly even intended for this.

Simply put, making things balanced depends on a lot more then the numbers in the EDU file, and other then EDU edits I don't plan on spending too much time messing with every single animation in the game yet to make it so Hylian Knights have a 0.3 second faster "being hit" animation to allow them to compensate for Ordonian Farmers attack rate.

[Brihentin13]

2 Things:

1. This is Neph's mod, which he has envisioned and labored over BY HIMSELF for years. I know that you didn't mean to be rude, but I still feel that trying to tell Neph what to do is rather presumptuous of any of us. The man is giving us the mod of our dreams for free, so I'm not going to complain if the eventual balancing takes a long time. Hell, even if Neph NEVER balances, we still all owe him a debt of gratitude for his fine work already. If you absolutely must have your balance right now, then I advise continuing your own submodding.

2. Speaking of balancing, I would like to point out the way that Starcraft did their balancing ages ago. The units were balanced for multiplayer to keep the online play as fair as they could, but the single player campaign was not touched. Why, you ask? It's because the single player campaign was designed around the pre-existing unit stats, and altering those would alter the missions to their core.

I think that the same principle would be of use in HTW balancing. The HH missions that Neph makes are already balanced simply by the composition of the units that are placed in them and by their positioning on the map. Sure, Neph might end up re-doing a few things as he pleases, but the changes that are made to the free-form campaign do not necessarily need to be made to the HH campaign.

Let's say Neph finishes HH before unit balancing(which I believe is the plan). The HH would be already done with the default stats in mind, so changing stats would screw up the mission structure. Some places would be too easy, some too hard, etc, etc. There's no need to enforce the balance that is needed only in a freeform scenario upon a story driven mission structure. So yeah, there's my idea of simplifying balance changes. I probably missed a few things, but I just figured I'd get it out there and let the powers that be mull it over.

The important thing to remember here is that this is Neph's game based off of Neph's lore, and it will be finished in Neph's time. God bless the man for what he does. I'm willing to wait as long as it takes so that Neph will never have to compromise on his vision that he is saintly enough to share with us all. So give the guy some slack. Hell, Europa Barbarorum II has a whole damn team working on it, and I'll still probably die of old age before that get released, much less patched or balanced. These things take time.

[SirMark9]

I forgot how Starcraft did its balancing and I can see H:TW going the same route. My wall of text essentially boiled down to "I can wait", but I know that balance is important. It is easier and more practical to balance the Freeform Campaign and then make modifications to the Historia as needed. I state the Freeform Campaign instead of Custom Battles as the campaign seems to be the main draw for the mod, so balancing around that would make sense.

I'm the type of guy that either goes all out or sits back and waits instead of making little progress at a time. If balance is indeed a pressing concern, submods can possibly remedy that. A more permanent solution is to take the vanilla mod and do extensive analysis on the factions and how they compare to each other and to place this analysis in an accessible location, similar to the thread that UN posted. Some observations have been reported in isolated topics or simply remains in the back of the head, gathering them together can speed up the balancing process.

However, once again, I'm content with the way the mod is now and am in no rush to start posting balancing suggestions save for the fact the Battlecrabs are OP. :D Besides, balancing is not my strong suit so that will have to be handled by someone more proficient in that field.

[fernavliz]

UndyingNephalim, I have a question if it is not too off-topic: will every unit for each faction be balanced in term that each one will have a counter-measure unit or do some units will be so powerful that they have to be countered by strategy (surrounding, taking advantage of terrain, make them attack first and then counter-attack,etc..) and many units?

[starwars90001]

you really can't fully balance this game without making everything faction the same. some factions are just more powerful than others, I mean when you have a race of plant people go up against humans with swords and fire arrows who wins, the people of course. balancing can only be done to a certain point before every faction the same. like the fairies of tarm have the best range units in the game in turns of damage cause they shoot lasers, most of their range units could destroy anyone but you really can't change that without making their main units range weak.

[Apani]

I feel your pain, it's like driving a malfunctioning Ferrari; it doesn't suck, but it can never be as awesome as it should.
If the thought comforts you, I have pretty much done the Kokiri:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Detachments and Minutemen perform pretty realistically, and by that I mean that they will die pathetically in any direct encounter. But their better units are on par with average Hylian troops and Koroks can take on Hylian Knights, which are no little matters. Sadly Wolfos are a joke unless used for hit and run or flanking, but so are Wolves. I have also mostly done the units of the first missions, barring the Huskus.

I'm basing on the Real Combat formula for my submod. Even if it doesn't account for all those fantasy units, I can just modify some paraters for other races and add new weapons. In fact, There has been a submod that applies it to TATW.

But my rebalancement submod has hit a bump with cavalry units. I don't really know how to deal with a huge rock man riding a dinosaur and wielding a hammer, nor the dinousaur alone. And most of the Gohmas are cavalry units, so they work rather akwardly, especially the "elephant" ones like Tanks. I'll have to see how they dealt with Wargs.

That said, we can "easily" counterbalance the natural unbalance a race of puny plant people has with training costs, replenishment rates, buildings, et cetera.

[Avatar of the Ice Wolf]

I strongly disagree with nerfing the Wolfos to such a degree. They were fine as they were. Against lightly armored units and other monster cavalry, they performed well, but were all but useless against heavily armored units, were easily outclassed by horse cavalry, and died very quickly (especially against supermen) in prolonged melee due to a low defense rating. They are the only cavalry the Kokiri have (unless you count the Deku Trees, which are technically elephants), and I think such a reduction in their usefulness is a great disservice to the faction.

In the same manner, the Mudmen were already a joke. What was the point of nerfing them further? If anything, they needed to be stronger. They had a kill/death ratio of 1:1 against Lanayru Cavalry for crying out loud, and they are the Kokiri's only spearmen. Unless the cavalry get bottlenecked, they become a real problem, and the Mudmen don't help much unless the cavalry just sits there in melee, and even then the Mudmen take high casualties. By lore, these are supposed to be the battle hardened Kokiri, and they end up being among the weakest in practice.

I'm fine with the Minuteman nerf though. They were a bit too effective for low tier infantry with no combat experience that is supposed to be reliant on swarm tactics.

I apologize if I come off as abrasive after your hard work, but understand that the Kokiri and Zora are my favorite factions, and I will be a very harsh critic if I feel they are being messed with.

[Apani]

I don't mind you overreacting that much, you can have your standpoint.
That said, let me specify I haven't been nerfing or boosting anybody: what I've been doing was to rewrite everybody's stats from scratch.
I didn't simply say "This guy is too powerful, let's subtract some attack points". I said for example "This guy is wielding an Arming Sword Cut&Thrust and has Average quality, so he gets 4 Attacks points, 3 Charge, 5 Defense, etc.", with some other variables.

As for Kokiri (I spoiler it since it's a bit off-topic):

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I said nothing about the Mudmen, I said Detachments, who are scouts. Mudmen can face Swordsmen Recruits and defeat Mounted Recruits, thought they aren't that good at holding the impact charges due to their low mass; I think Neph should give them a shield to make them somewhat more durable (I say "Neph" because I seemingly can't do that).
As far as Wolfos perform, they are still able to charge head on lightly armoured units like, let's say, Swordsmen Recruits (and by this logic, they should be ripping to pieces smaller Blins), but they can only do so only thanks to their violent charges, and they seem to perform quite terribly in proper combat with heavier units. So they perform pretty much the same. Also, I gave the Riders spears instead of those puny knives.

[Avatar of the Ice Wolf]

Misread the mudmen, sorry. Epic fail on my part, as I managed to misread Minutemen as Mudmen while still taking the Minutemen into account and forgetting the Detachment together. That's what happens when I post while eating breakfast.

Detachments were kinda weak to begin with, so I guess that really doesn't matter much one way or the other. The Wolfos you threw me off due to saying that they are a joke unless used for hit and run or flanking. The way they are used now, they are far from a joke. Kinda mixed onn giving them spears, but I suppose it makes sense.

[Bu11seye00]

As a complete outsider it does seem rather strange to me that he is focusing on what are essentially just a series of unique battles, as opposed to finalising and balancing the campaign (both strategy map and battle map) aspect of the game. It's the campaign that will potentially keep people playing this mod for years to come, not the hyrule historia.

[Apani]

As a complete outsider it does seem rather strange to me that he is focusing on what are essentially just a series of unique battles, as opposed to finalising and balancing the campaign (both strategy map and battle map) aspect of the game. It's the campaign that will potentially keep people playing this mod for years to come, not the hyrule historia.

Of course he's put some thought on the entire game, it's just that most of it is not well realized yet. He works so much on those battles because his main scope is to basically narrate an "Epic of Zelda" throught those missions.
As they are now, they feel quite broken at times (why can't I even tear down the walls of Lon Lon Ranch? ) and are not very funny to replay (really, the only fun part is the cutscenes, and that's what takes most of his time), but I think that they could be much improved and feel much greater with proper handling.

[VictorAYorke]

@Apani, Wolfos and the RC Submod
If you don't mind me asking, how did you interpret the effect of the Wolfos' own contribution to melee? It's not something that's incorporated in the art or animation, but I'd be surprised if the assumption is they operate just like horses while the rider does the heavy lifting.

Which leads into another question - It occurs to me that Real Combat, while it does take a lot of things into consideration, is basing a unit's statline at least partially on the art that serves it. Is this going to throw up problems later? (especially with factions whose more elite options appear lightly or partially armoured, such as Fairies or Gerudo)

@Bifrons
There's quite a few tactical gaps in quite a lot of factions, and Gerudo shock cavalry is one of them. There's been some early whispers of a Campaign-Oriented Submod, for which I may begin asking for requests / wishlists sometime soon, but at the moment we've got what we have.

@Avi
Don't knock Lanayru cavalry; their decent numbers and 7 charge make them dangerous in the right hands and troublesome even under AI control. I've routed greater quantities of Hylian Infantry in an isolated engagement with them, and I'm terrible with cav They either need some subtle nerfing, or to be made less attainable in campaign plus have more validation in the lore (I vote latter).

[Apani]

I tried to give them some bonus like bigger attack and charge, but the rider-mount dinamic still remains one of the biggest bumps I hit while working.
As for the look-stats coherence, Neph has said he has yet to do armour upgrades, which will surely bring new armours to many units and change things a lot. As for Light Elite units, those have other strenghts and aren't meant to take on heavy foes anyways.

[Jakeford]

Apani that metaphor describes this mod perfectly.

I suppose I should give an explanation on how I think the mod should be balanced if I am going to make a statement like this.

Undyingnephalim seems to be doing this, which is good, but to all of you who are saying that the units should be balanced for either of the campaigns, no, that is not how you balance units in a total war game.

You use a formula for units are just work on it slowly and you build a unit balance based on simply the gear, background, and quality of the soldiers. You don't build a balance based on the campaign, you make the campaign with the balance in mind.

As for the Hyrule Historia, only 16/70 of the missions are done, therefor it would be much easier to finalize the unit balance, then rework 16 missions rather then making all 70 missions, and then reworking them all. The idea to wait to balance the mod until the Hyrule Historia is finished is a very silly idea and was never the plan.

@Undyingnephalim. I appreciate that you do take measures to do some light unit balancing, although I think the main problem is that their is no set formula.
Units stats are random and things are not set in at all. Another thing is the fact that most elite units have very little strength over poor units, just look at Knights of Hyrule, they have full platemail yet they have an armor value of 3, they have metal shields yet only a value of 2. Look at Labrynna, there gunners are broken and the Knights and Palace watch have the same defensive value as the home guards do

[Bifrons]

Welp, there goes my hopes for Gerudo lancers (or any heavy cav). Otherwise, it's good news.