multi-player price balance

**kuaminifu_mwenzi** · February 22, 2016, 04:46 AM

multi-player price balancing is woefully... inadequate. i get that its almost a non issue for you guys since you're all about that campaign action, but after testing it extensively with a couple of mates, its clear that there are many issues. Happy to discuss more

**Augustusng** · February 22, 2016, 11:10 AM

Okay, so discuss it more.

I mean, I'm interested to hear what people think could be changed for multiplayer pricing. The team does usually focus on campaign stuff, but I think DeI could make for pretty good multiplayer games as well.

**TFCAliarcy** · February 22, 2016, 02:04 PM

18500 seems to be adequate for most builds I make.

**kuaminifu_mwenzi** · February 22, 2016, 02:40 PM

Well I'll need to consult more with my friends, as we all have some ideas, but the over all theme is that the civilized nations are way overpriced and that there are many issues with variation in pricing. In this way, any barbarian faction will almost always win against roman and especially greek on any funds level lower than ultra/custom.
Just as a couple examples of price variations:
hastati being near 800 and principes being near 1100 just makes it impossible to field enough units to fight say the Boii who get far far more units. (i would recommend something around vanilla for pricing in mp)
another example is the differences between pricing of legionaries to aux units. My friends and i both agree that, along with the too high pricing of both core and aux units, that the stats and prices of the aux units should be lowered to give them some actual value in mp.
Same goes with the thureos swords vs the thorax for the greek factions, too high pricing makes any balancing vs barbarians broken. In the end, thureos swords are not a cheaper alternative for lower quality as their prices are too close for that to actually be an option.
Finally, just want to read out an army list affordable for both romans and Iceni at medium funds:
Rome: 1 preatorian guard general, 3 marian legionaries, 2 marian legionary javs, 2 aux spears.
Iceni: 1 kingly champion, 3 britannic skirmishers, 1 britanic medium inf, 1 chosen sword, 1 chosen spear, 3 brythonic swords, 2 brythonic spears, 1 painted sword, 1 silures warband, 1 naked spear.
Thats 8 v 15, which in the end just does not hold up in a fight. if it was 11 or 12 v 15 i could understand, especially with square. but this level of unbalancing is ridiculous.

**Dresden** · February 22, 2016, 04:58 PM

All unit prices, as in the campaign, are based on formulas that center around their stats. Those stats depend on the unit type, but usually its armor and other things.

**TFCAliarcy** · February 22, 2016, 05:55 PM

Another thing that I think should be done is that certain factions in MP should get the surrounding AoR and mercs or any mercs or AoR that they historically employed often. That gives the Greek factions access to their high armor core units and their low armor AoR and mercs such as Galatians, Thracians, Easterners, and Agrianians.

**FlashHeart07** · February 23, 2016, 12:10 AM

There is a limit to the number of units and adding all of these will crash the game.

**kuaminifu_mwenzi** · February 23, 2016, 04:27 AM

Unfortunately stats is just not enough, as it is, i don't care how good a unit is, when you can get 20 units vs 8, the outcome is the same every time. But it seems the team has already made their decision on the matter

**FlashHeart07** · February 23, 2016, 04:51 AM

By what comments do you conclude that the team have already made their decision on the matter?
Augustusng wanted to discuss it more, Dresden informed you how the prices have been calculated and I informed that adding AOR and Mercs can crash the game.
But giving all units the same prize will unbalance the battle in favor of the more heavy units like the Romans.
When you and your friends come up with an idea to how units could be prized and still have it balanced according to some units being better than others. Then we can begin to tweak and test for the perfect values.
But in no way have the team set their minds to a specific decision on this matter.

**kuaminifu_mwenzi** · February 23, 2016, 05:35 AM

Lad, chill
Like I said, we are working on figuring it out, experimenting with the prices and self restrictions and whatnot but i wasn't trying to infer anything, just that Dresdens comment seemed somewhat final, thats all

**FlashHeart07** · February 23, 2016, 06:29 AM

Im always chill.

I was merely informing you that none of the comments from the team should be interpreted as us making a final decision on the matter.

**Dresden** · February 23, 2016, 02:49 PM

I was just letting you know how the prices are calculated

We can do separate price calculations for multiplayer in a future update if it seems warranted.

Prices based on unit quality is an important part of any system, though.

**kuaminifu_mwenzi** · February 23, 2016, 11:59 PM

I can understand that, and I don't have a complete layout or anything (tho i plan on reking myself one night getting it done soonish) so all I can do is describe problems we've been having thus far, in this case the general trend of barbarian v rome = barbarian win 90% of the time, but I will expand on this at a later date.

**Dresden** · February 24, 2016, 01:00 PM

One possibility is reducing unit costs by a percentage (such as 20%) which would affect more costly units to a larger degree.

**zonks40** · February 24, 2016, 05:43 PM

Disregard, did not read the original post correctly, thought it was campaign related.

**kuaminifu_mwenzi** · February 25, 2016, 01:02 AM

again I intend to actually put in the effort and write a decent recommendation and test behind it, but my first inclination is a reduction in roman and greek factions for mp by about 20% maybe even just 15. it goes deeper than that however as i think that, since they are included in the mp rosters for roman factions, the aux units need a decent reworking of their stats and prices (just for mp) otherwise there is 0 incentive to use them thus taking out what could be some interesting variety in army comps in terms of cheep heavy/medium swords v expensive very heavy legions. But this would take quite some work and might be impossible to have different stats to units between MP and Campaign, just a thought