KaM Remake gameplay balance

[The Dark Lord]

I disagree that militia 'should only be used for flanking and emptying towers'. That sounds like it's more like a pig ready for slaughter than a human being. I don't know how these changes will affect militia (or rather: don't affect), but it raises some concerns.
The problem with raising attack power rather than giving them an extra life point is that they will still be as vulnerable against archers and crossbowmen. No one will recruit sword fighters as long as they get slaughtered by crossbowmen. For me personally, making crossbowmen less powerful would also do the job.

[Krom]

Militia (cheapest and least skillful) are by definition cannon fodder (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannon_fodder).

Units should be vulnerable to archers, cos if they are not - then whats the point of archers? ) Footmen have an advantage of storm attacks, when used properly that can reduce casualties noticeably.

[Da Revolution]

In the tutorial you can use your axefighter to fight the archers. You won't even lose a single axefighter.

[Siegfried]

Hi guys,

I've spent some hours yesterday evening to test the +1hp more extensively. I did it with formations of 10 vs 10 in two rows each. I can provide the test map if needed. I re-run every battle at least 12 times (the knight ./. pikeman more than 24 times), so the values that I will present are more precise and less dominated by chance.

From the years of working with the battle code, I know that it makes a difference whether a unit is attacking or defending. So for the knights ./. pikemen I've added both cases. I will provide two numbers for each result. The first one is the chance for the whole formation to win. If there stands 75%, than it means that the first group wins in 3 out of 4 cases. The second number will be given in brackets and has to be read like this: if there stands that your fighter has a 40% survival chance, that means that in avarage, out of you 10 units there will 4 survive.

The results:

Knights attacking, Pikemen defending
Chance to win for pikemen with traditional lp: almost 100% (69% survival chance for a single pikeman)
Chance to win for pikemen with +1 lp: 67% (18% survival chance for a single pikeman)

Other way round, Pikemen attacking, Knights defending
Chance to win for pikemen with traditional lp: 80% (33% survival chance for a single pikeman)
Chance to win for pikemen with +1 lp: 9% [this means the knights usually win!] (49% survival chance for a single knight - the pikemen usually loose thus the survival chance is meant for knights)



I have tested many other formations, most of them are like expected. It should however be noted that knights ./. lance carriers changes, because with the old system, defending lance carriers have at least a chance of 9% to win; with +1lp they don't even have the slightest change, the knights survive with 95%, so you can expect to not loose a single knight where you lost at least 2 knights before.

But the whole +1lp does not only affect knights, it affects also other shield carrying units. For example:

Scout ./. Swordmen
Chance to win for swordmen with traditional lp: almost 100% (76% survival chance for a single swordman)
Chance to win for swordmen with +1 lp: 83% (50% survival chance for a single pikeman)

So you see, the swordman becomes weaker! This cannot be intended and seems not logical if you only look at it in theory, because both would win one lifepoint. But what we experience here is the fact, that a scout is more likely to regenerate a lifepoint, so for this battle it's more or less a +1,5lp for scout, not only +1lp!


But the most intriguing result came from Pikemen ./. Axe Fighter. The pikeman has the same attack values and same life points as the axe fighter, but has additional armor. So it should be superior (which is intended because it's an iron soldier). The result:

Pikemen ./. Axe Fighter
Chance to win for Pikeman with traditional lp: almost 100% (58% survival chance for a single swordman)
Chance to win for Pikeman with +1 lp: only 33% - which means now the axe fighters are more likely to win now (23% survival chance for a single axe fighters)


Summary
The +1lp favours the horse units the most. This is not only due to the fact that they will gain the one additional lifepoint but also the fact, that they are now more likely to profit by lifepoint regeneration.
The pikemen suffer the most. Not only are they no longer stopping the knights (which they were before), but they also loose agains pikemen now. Summa summarum pikemen become needless. You can remove them, they don't win a single battle so why wasting your precious metal on those losers? This is especially bitter when you consider that they were the meant to counter knights, which became stronger.
Lance carriers also loose stopping power against horse units. Knights now have a 89% chance to survive contact with lance carriers, so forget about the lance carriers in this case. Knights cannot be stopped by any unit.
Sword fighters become weaker, too. This is also very bitter because they are a very expensive unit. So it's unlikely that anyone will rely on them. Compared to knights, they lost, too.

So summed up, concerning the iron weapons we will see a focus on knights and crossbowmen only. Pikemen are utterly useless, and as the swordmen becomes weaker, it is likely that people will spend 5 instead of 4 militery units and build the superweapon (knight) instead.
The +1lp changes the ground troup balance dramatically. The interpretation - if you want this or not - is left to every single person.

[Mulberry]

Lewin, Krom, thanks for your will in finding a compromise. I think its the best way to work on projects together. Thank you very much.

It is clear for me that +1 HP is to much. What do you think of keeping balance as it was in RC1 but will add some extra atack for axeman and swordfighters against lancers and pikeman? I think its a good idea because crossbowman and archers are doing enought damage now and not so much as before. It looks balanced for me after we played battle maps a lot. The problem in my opinion is that lancers and pikes are good to mass because they dont have a counter-unit.

And also i think we need more tests for towers. Is it possible to find a compromise in tower accuracy before current tower abbility and r3392 tower ab.?
Or was that "1 step" change?

P.s. Disscusions here getting complicated. We can orginise evening conference in IRC chat for discusing this topic faster and more productive. What do you think about this idea? I can moderate/fasilitate it if its needed.

[-George Stain-]

It is clear for me that +1 HP is to much. What do you think of keeping balance as it was in RC1 but will add some extra atack for axeman and swordfighters against lancers and pikeman?

why do shield units better against pike units.?. they are enought good against them.. we must do shield units more resistant to archers..

My change is different.. + 1HP is like pierce armor, so it cen be used, but we must reduce attack of shield units, cos +1HP is helpfull against archers and melee units and this is too much. That is why they need reduce damage slightly..

BTW for all.. That idea comes from Pepa999 and I totally agree with him.. I know what he is talking about. we are discuting about remake every day. I just using stats which is easy to change for Lewin and Krom..

something like "counter circle" must be balanced (now are shield units way better)

thx for read. everything is just opinion. don't kill me for it

[Bo_]

I agree 10 knights vs 5 pikemen, the knights should win with minimal losses. But 10 knights vs 10 pikemen the pikemen should win with only moderate losses. From what people have said the pikemen take heavy losses so I'm not sure that's balanced. Knights already have the advantage of being fast that balances the fact they are more expensive. Therefore I think 10 pikemen should only take moderate losses against 10 knights.

Yes knights have that advantage, so that goes up with 4 corn. Don't forget they require also a shield.
And why does everybody keep comparing in 1 vs 1? Think about the looses with realistic amounts, like 10 vs 16. Then the pikemen take almost no loses.

I don't see how that's a relevant argument to singleplayer not being important. It's like saying "you can win multiplayer by putting everyone on the same team". Well that's true, but does that make multiplayer pointless?

I didn't use that as an argument against singleplayer, it was for you saying

I'm not counting it in the crash reports, although the fact that 50 or so different people reached TSK 19 shows there are a lot of people playing singleplayer)

I didn't think people were actualy stil playing singleplayer in the remake, but you know it way better than I do, so I won't talk anymore about singleplayer since it's none of my busines, I was wrong about that.

People can use whatever arguments they like, you still shouldn't insult them personally. In the example you gave of Pepa (I haven't read the mini-chat, I'm just going on what you said) you should have told him "no that's not right, knights still have more hp overall, try it yourself and you'll see". You shouldn't say something like:

No stop talking about something where you know nothing about..

This is a personal insult, it's not a constructive way to have an argument. What Siegfried wrote was subjective, it was his opinion.
You're free to argue that his opinion is wrong, but when you say "you know nothing about this" and tell him to stop talking, that's making it personal. This forum is designed for having constructive arguments where everyone's opinion is respected (even if that person used flawed arguments), but anyone is free to disagree and disprove that person's opinion. You must still be respectful towards their opinion, even if you think it's completely wrong and flawed. In that case it should be very easy for you to say why it's wrong, and more productive than insulting them. Remember not everyone sees things the way you do, things that are obviously wrong and not obviously wrong to others.

I'm so sorry if I hurted his feelings, but honestly I don't care.
Stil, I've read that post again an ok, there I didn't respect a constructive oppinion, it was wrong to refer to what he earlier said.

I actually agree with a lot of what Siegfried wrote that you were referring to:

10 knights vs 10 lance carriers with little to nil losses. That's terrible! Also 10 pikemen only barely survive 10 knights is imbalanced. Pikemen are the meant counter, don't forget that.

IMO 10 knights should beat 10 lance carriers, but with significant losses. And 10 pikemen should only suffer a few losses against 10 knights.

Knights suffer in equal amounts vs pikemen, but you have to compare them right. It's like in startcraft 2: There for terrans the most powerful flying unit is the battlecruiser, specialised in heavy dammage. They also have fighters (I'm not sure, if that's the correct name, I play the French version.) Figters are specialised in Anti-Air, but 1 fighter looses against 1 battlecruiser. Still this doesn't mean the battlecruiser is better, because it's over 3 times more expensive. So battlecruisers should still avoid fighters at all cost. That's a game balance almost used in every RTS, why is there 60 min pt in kam? Happy building hour?
Ok, knights have speed but that's equal with the cost of 4 corn.

So I don't see any point of keeping this discussion since you're stil fixed on the exact amount of soldiers. For me this just goes back to the Lances + xbow strategy. But yes, this is my oppinion.

That is my personal opinion, I don't necessarily agree with your opinion. But that doesn't mean I tell you to stop talking because I think my arguments are more correct than yours.

Well yes, you have a different oppinion too, and I don't tell you either to stop talking because what you say makes sence, even if I don't agree.

[sado1]

Good job Siegfried, before I saw your post I've been wondering why the results of the simulations done by different people in this topic, had so varied results, and thought "what if they didn't think that the fact who's attacking, makes difference?" Now we can see why some people said that in most cases knights are better, while other people claimed the opposite... Now I must agree, based on your tests, but I'd still want to see what happens if lance/pikemen got +1 attack point against cavalry. Also, I'd want to hear how that looks in practice, when different factors (like the most important: spam factor - remember, you still can have more lance/pikemen than scout/knight or axe/swordmen! and the only way to test it is to play it few times) also are considered. It'd be nice if Lewin made a unit.dat with +1 attack against horsemen for lance/pikemen, and if that ws thoroughly tested.

And speaking about pepa's theories... he is right about the fact that +1HP makes horse units better THAN BEFORE against shielded infantry - and Siegfried points it out now as well - but it's hard for me and many players to believe someone who refuses to play the game to see how his theories look when put into practice, and he shouldn't be surprised if what he's saying is ignored. (Another thing though, is insulting him, which is unacceptable!)

[Bo_]

Summary
The +1lp favours the horse units the most. This is not only due to the fact that they will gain the one additional lifepoint but also the fact, that they are now more likely to profit by lifepoint regeneration.
The pikemen suffer the most. Not only are they no longer stopping the knights (which they were before), but they also loose agains pikemen now. Summa summarum pikemen become needless. You can remove them, they don't win a single battle so why wasting your precious metal on those losers? This is especially bitter when you consider that they were the meant to counter knights, which became stronger.
Lance carriers also loose stopping power against horse units. Knights now have a 89% chance to survive contact with lance carriers, so forget about the lance carriers in this case. Knights cannot be stopped by any unit.
Sword fighters become weaker, too. This is also very bitter because they are a very expensive unit. So it's unlikely that anyone will rely on them. Compared to knights, they lost, too.

So summed up, concerning the iron weapons we will see a focus on knights and crossbowmen only. Pikemen are utterly useless, and as the swordmen becomes weaker, it is likely that people will spend 5 instead of 4 militery units and build the superweapon (knight) instead.
The +1lp changes the ground troup balance dramatically. The interpretation - if you want this or not - is left to every single person.

Thanks for the accurate tests, but I think you make a wrong conclussion. You realy think players will focus on knights and xbow only?
Before the changes, everybody did mass lances + xbow, but you agree with me that 1 axefighter defeats 1 lance?
And you also agreed that people made mass anti horse, even when there where almost no horses in the game?

Why do you think people made lances instead of axefighters, while they were stronger? Because you can make lance carriers way faster than axefighters. (Less buildings needed, less wood required) That's the reason why even with +1lp people still wouldn't just focus on knights + xbow, knights are too expansive to spam.
You shouldn't make conclusions of Battlemaps, economy is way too important for that.

But well the +1 attack for swordfighters and axefighters could also be a solution.

[Bo_]

Good job Siegfried, before I saw your post I've been wondering why the results of the simulations done by different people in this topic, had so varied results, and thought "what if they didn't think that the fact who's attacking, makes difference?" Now we can see why some people said that in most cases knights are better, while other people claimed the opposite... Now I must agree, based on your tests, but I'd still want to see what happens if lance/pikemen got +1 attack point against cavalry. Also, I'd want to hear how that looks in practice, when different factors (like the most important: spam factor - remember, you still can have more lance/pikemen than scout/knight or axe/swordmen! and the only way to test it is to play it few times) also are considered. It'd be nice if Lewin made a unit.dat with +1 attack against horsemen for lance/pikemen, and if that ws thoroughly tested.

Well yes, people are too much talking about battle, it's like economy isn't important just spam everything.

And speaking about pepa's theories... he is right about the fact that +1HP makes horse units better THAN BEFORE against shielded infantry - and Siegfried points it out now as well - but it's hard for me and many players to believe someone who refuses to play the game to see how his theories look when put into practice, and he shouldn't be surprised if what he's saying is ignored. (Another thing though, is insulting him, which is unacceptable!)

Well actualy he said that swordfighters are stronger against knights than before, and that's true. With 5 hp for knights and 4 hp for swordfighters knights are only 25% stronger, before they were 33% stronger. But the same problem again, he forgets to think about economy...

[Siegfried]

You shouldn't make conclusions of Battlemaps, economy is way too important for that.

Absolutely you should. Because the whole economy part is not affected by the +1 lp change. It's a battle change only.

Building the economy is the same procedure, nothing has changed. It's really just the results of fighting that change with the +1 lp. And only then, of course, the expected fighting results have a restrospective effect on the economy building procedure as people will try to make the optimum out of their city.

Of course it's true that the economy has an effect onto the building rate of units. But so far another aspect was neglected, that also influences the build decision. And this is the finiteness of resources. Especially the chests are the limiting factor here (because you could procude an infinite number of wooden military parts).

In the end, on every map each player has (more or less) the same amount of resources. For example, every player has 500 chests available. And people have to decide how to spend this 500 chests. One choice is to spam units. But it's only possible to spam the very weak units because they need little resources. Let's say 120 chests already go into civilians.
So what happens now if you build a 100 chest weak army that can be countered by a 40 chest elite army? Exactly, it's not promising, thus this tactics won't be applied. An over-effective counter will ruin this gameplay style, thus ruining gameplay balance. You see, the unit spammer already goes high risk. If he doesn't win with the first one or two attacks, he will be in the disadvantage because he has lost to many chests. Knowing that spamming isn't promising any more, people will concentrate on elite army only, because that's the only way to win in the long run.

It's always been the same story in almost all strategy games. Going for elite troops leaves your base in a weak state in the beginning. You will definately win in the long run because of the better units that you produce. This is countered by the rush tactics, which aims to exploit the initial weakness of the enemys city before he can produce too many elitist troops. On the other hand, you have to be quick because once you missed the right time, you are in disadvantage.

In KaM this whole story is worse than in other strategy games because the availability of gold chests is smaller on many maps. So you're very limited in resources which already make it quite appealing to go for the elite troops. As an addition, there comes the peace time that so many players demand. So a rush is already impeded. Please don't make it impossible.

I think I might need to stress once more, that I'm also not completely happy with the current situation, because long distance fighters still act too good. My proposals were lost in the +1 lp discussion. They were:
-> increase lifepoint regeneration only a little bit; this will improve all hand-to-hand fighters, the horse units even more than the rest. The long-distance fighters are weakened as solely they don't profit. Also this makes battles a bit more longer. This results in an additional bonus for heavier armed troops (and a malus for units with a lower attack value like lance carriers agains non-horse units) as they are more likely to recover a lifepoint. I think this is worth being discussed as this may ease many of the discussed problems at once.
-> make long distance fighters a little bit more inaccurate
-> don't let the long distance fighters be able to defend their own formation.

Let's explain this once more: if you have 10 crossbowmen standing in two rows, 5 men each and one militia managed to come through the defenders (or towers ) and attacked the formation. In TPR (and TSK) the crossbowmen were not able to defend themselves, the one milita killed all 10 crossbowmen. The change to win was 100% for the milita.

In the remake, especially in the random targeting situation that was introduced now, the militia will be attack by the most distant two crossbowmen. Each shot by a crossbowmen reduces the lifepoint of the milita by one. So the militia makes exactly two strikes before he dies. So he can kill 2 crossbowmen at most and then dies. The chance to win is exactly 0%, the crossbowmen will always win.

This possibility to self-defend make the crossbowmen even stronger. In reality, usually even three axe fighters are killed by 10 crossbowmen's self defense. I've seen this more than once.

[Thorakh]

Isn't it unfair to directly compare 10 knights against 10 pikemen? One could argue that in the same amount of time the knight making player would have 10 knights while the pikemen making player would have 10+ pikemen.

It would make more sense to compare 10 knights against something like 12-15 pikemen.

And about the single player, the campaign should simply be entirely rebalanced once proper building and combat AI is in place.

[Jeronimo]

@Bo: Thanks man for supporting the +1 hp while I was absent... game is military and economics.
@Siegfried: Market for extra gold (tough never for extra iron). Result -> Leather rules sooner or later.

And now.... Jeronimo descends from the skies with a real proof to validate his conclusions:
http://www.mediafire.com/?ceoxfhgg5xdnkdx -> the replay shows most controversial matchups (place it "Saves" singleplayer).

I made double tests in most cases to see if I got different results (also trying viceversa, one attacks/one defends).
Above: Pikemen vs Knights -> 11v11 13v11 / Knights vs Swordmen -> 11v11 13v11
Center: Pikemen vs Axemen -> 11v11 (x4) / Pikemen vs Swordmen -> 11v11 13v11
Bottom: Lancers vs Knights -> 11v11 15v11 19v11

Pikemen vs Knights: pikemen always win, tough having a few +pikemen than nº of knights changes result with -3,-4 loses.
Knights vs Swordmen: in general I'd say that knigths crush swordmen, it could happen that a swordman resists longer, thus for the final "obvious" result gets inversed.

Pikemen vs Axemen: just wow! Never seen a more 50/50 unit matchup.. It makes me think that "+1 armor" is like "+1 hp" (referring to pikemen), so in general terms both would have "5 hp 2 attack", being pikemen overall more useful with his anti-cavalry bonus UUUU.
Pikemen vs Swordmen: A waste of time, Swordmen own them with few loses, as meant too (with 3 hp, swords take more casualties).

Lancers vs Knights: the final surprise. As long as we slightly increase the number of lancers (a little +4 units), we see how the knights start becoming owned, and in 19v11!!... I think in 20v10, lancers will ALWAYS win.

Conclusions: I really love this, because if I had to choose between the 2 options (original or living shield), I prefer to see variety rather than lancers + Xbows (or just militia + Xbows chinese style ).
As aside note, Percentages wont help you get reliable conclusions, sometimes the results go too random depending in how the units reacomodate while fighting (check Knights vs Swordmen 13v11 fight).

The battlefield becomes more tactical IMO, if I had to redesign a good Army in this set-up, I would honestly have to train a bit of everything... take my words as a real fact. I think now of many possible good combos.

About Singleplayer: I understand this change could increase difficulty in some singleplayer maps, but that could be arranged by reducing a little the number of those "shielded troops" or less weapons at barracks from those types.
I still wouldn't change anything... just saying if someone offers to rebalance quantities respect this new great military balance.

[T*AnTi-V!RuZz]

Isn't it unfair to directly compare 10 knights against 10 pikemen? One could argue that in the same amount of time the knight making player would have 10 knights while the pikemen making player would have 10+ pikemen.

It would make more sense to compare 10 knights against something like 12-15 pikemen.

And about the single player, the campaign should simply be entirely rebalanced once proper building and combat AI is in place.

No. Because now you're assuming that everyone builds at the same rate, while that almost never the case. Some build slower than others.

[Bo_]

Sigfried, you're saying there are a limited amount of resourcers, like gold. True, but iron and coal are also limited.. Since knights are very expensive on coal and iron, you will have less iron left for other units and less coal for gold. And if you mean with elite army knights again, good luck with training 40 knights without using a market and without starving, and believe me even if you had them, you would stand no chance against a player with 60 lances and 40 xbow.

The problem we had before was that people made only lances and xbow, you can't, no realy you can't make an army of xbow and knights only...
For example last game, I was focused on xbow and axefighters. Very efficient, except when I had to face with knights. this means I also needed to build some lances, about 15, to counter enemy knights. 15 lances takes about 4 min to train, while 10 knights takes you about 15 min. But what happened is that I didn't had to make lances because annother player in my team made lances. Every player had their own army. Don't you think that's better than just Lances + xbow?

Also what you're saying about self defence of xbow, sometimes you're just out of melee, but I don't think that should be a reason to loose all of your xbow just because of 10 militia. Try to flank those xbow with 2 knights and you'll see that xbow are still very vulnerable...