[Discussion] Behind the Scenes: Battle Redesign

[Jixel]

Honestly, I believe completely changing the battle system at this point in the game is a poor decision on Inno's part.

I understand they may have had some "technical debt" in the underlying code which prevented them from introducting the Fairy units, but I believe this solution is a case of "throwing the baby out with the bathwater".

This should be a "mature" game by now, with only incremental improvements and fixes, and as the battle system has become so crucial to gaining expansions, gaining relics for their precious spells, and for tournaments, making changes on this scale should not be considered.

Especially as there are literally hundreds of other changes and fixes that the players are asking for, and no-one among the players was asking Inno to completely change the combat system. Please listen to us ? Before we all just walk away and get on with our lives ? It's not like (with a full-time job and two small children) I'm lacking in things to fill my little free time with - I could be out catching Pokemon or something instead

PS While talking spells ... there still aren't any spells that assist in battle ? Really ?

 

[DeletedUser1345]

Oh yes, it seems to be universally hated. Some players are waiting to see how the tournaments will work. This batch om mistakes was one that was worked long and hard for. So there will not be a repeal. I promised to report the updates here in the US server, so I can't quit yet. Once the final nail has been driven in, adios!
I was considering just not logging in for 30 days instead of quitting, and encouraging those who want to end this game as well to do the same. I don't think there is any point.
The mentality of the developers is us vs them. When we are enjoying the game wrong, they must come up with ways to penalize us. Forgetting that we are free willed beings with options.

 

[DeletedUser651]

Frankly, I think all of us are dispensable beta testers, even all the people on the live servers. They watched us, saw how we played, decided ways to make money on a different game and if all of us, to a person, walk out, that wouldn't make any difference to them at all. They have never once cared about customer retention. We are the rats, this is their maze.

 

[DeletedUser1548]

I managed to train few squads and decided to try a fight. I can't put screenshots here so I will describe this.

• Crystal Province - no Orcs required and I am at the beginning of Drwarves Chapter (don't even have Portal yet).
• Enemy:
  • size: 913.
  • Cannoneer II - 183 units in a squad - 3 squads.
  • Enchantress II - 274 units in a squad - 1 squad.
• Me:
  • size: 288.
  • Treant II (good for CII, weak against EII) - 48 units in a squad - 2 squads
  • Sorceress II (good for CII, neutral against EII) - 72 units in a squad - 3 squads.
• Battle:
  • Sorceress II move first - I moved.
  • Then Enchantress II and Cannoneers II move - they attacked...
  • 2 squads of Sorceress II died. Mostly because of CII shots, even though SII has 50% defence bonus!
  • I decided to surrender.

I was extremely bored fighter before and now I'm disgusted.
Probably my 146 provinces is too much, Inno expected me to have 100 when I'm at the gates of chapter VI. No more, no less.

Let's just hope @Muf-Muf will tell us that Armories are bugged...
And maybe the other 2 parts of fighting system help?
Also... It won't be launched to live servers in 2 weeks, right..?

@Goryn , your battle guide, please? PLEASE?!

 

[SoggyShorts]

I managed to train few squads and decided to try a fight. I can't put screenshots here so I will describe this.

• Crystal Province - no Orcs required and I am at the beginning of Drwarves Chapter (don't even have Portal yet).
• Enemy:
  • size: 913.
  • Cannoneer II - 183 units in a squad - 3 squads.
  • Enchantress II - 274 units in a squad - 1 squad.
• Me:
  • size: 288.
  • Treant II (good for CII, weak against EII) - 48 units in a squad - 2 squads
  • Sorceress II (good for CII, neutral against EII) - 72 units in a squad - 3 squads.
• Battle:
  • Sorceress II move first - I moved.
  • Then Enchantress II and Cannoneers II move - they attacked...
  • 2 squads of Sorceress II died. Mostly because of CII shots, even though SII has 50% defence bonus!
  • I decided to surrender.

I was extremely bored fighter before and now I'm disgusted.
Probably my 146 provinces is too much, Inno expected me to have 100 when I'm at the gates of chapter VI. No more, no less.

Let's just hope @Muf-Muf will tell us that Armories are bugged...
And maybe the other 2 parts of fighting system help?
Also... It won't be launched to live servers in 2 weeks, right..?

@Goryn , your battle guide, please? PLEASE?!

I believe they balanced the game around the players clearing the minimum number of provinces to advance.
If you had scouted the last 46 of your 146 after getting the 2 advanced scouts techs(dwarf and fairy) the enemy stacks would be smaller, maybe as much as 24% smaller, and you would have 4 or 5 more squad upgrades almost doubling your stack size.

Whether or not the NPC units in the province will outnumber you depends mainly on the distance of the province, and on the scouting costs for a province. This is also where the Advanced Scouts technologies give an edge: with lower scouting costs, you will also have a lower enemy squad size in the encounters. Also, to continue on this path: this is also why it becomes harder and harder to fight encounters when you are far ahead. The scouting costs will then be a lot higher, and therefore you will face bigger groups of enemies. Note: once scouted, the province's difficulty does not change anymore.

@MUMUF can we know how much smaller enemy stacks are with each level of advanced scouts? if the cost goes down 12% do the stacks go down 12% too?

 

[DeletedUser1657]

I believe they balanced the game around the players clearing the minimum number of provinces to advance.

I had a quick look at some fights and was woefully outnumbered for a town in tech era 3 at or behind the provinces needed to clear the chests. I will try a deeper look tonight when I have more time but the number of troops to train and the rate I will lose them learning might slow this down. Either way the first look was not pretty.

 

[DeletedUser651]

I just tried a part of a fight before I surrendered with heavy losses. I faced 3 squads of 1340 orcs, 2 squads of 447 ferocious swamp monsters, and one squad of 2680 nasty theives. According to that "'pentagon" chart I am supposed to use treants against the orcs and archers against the swamp monsters. The treants can barely move and they were blocked in by obstacles. Let's forget the fact that the archers had no place to run and the orcs went straight for them and killed them in one blow. Ok..ok...maybe I could learn to move differently. Forget about the dead archers.

But what happened with the treants and the orcs? (By the way, I have elder treants...the strongest treant on the planet.) My pathetically sized 151 treants vs 1340 orcs. One hit by the orc and 52 treants died....1/3 of the squad. When I hit the orc, I killed 150 of them.....about 11%. They have more squads than I do and they kill 33% of my squad vs. me killing 11% of their squad.
Let me repeat....I kill 11% of their squad, they kill 33% of my squad.....and they have more squads. That is impossible.

Question: @Goryn you once said that all fights are winnable if you use the proper units. Is that currently true?

And if that is true, then tell me what I should put up against this combo: 2680 thieves, 1340 brutal ancient orcs, 1340 brutal ancient orcs, 1340 brutal ancient orcs, 447 ferocious swamp monsters, 447 ferocious swamp monsters. Is that fight winnable for me and what would I use and where to win that battle?

(Maybe tomorrow I can try this again, but I don't have enough troops to try half a battle again).

 

[DeletedUser1513]

Just reviewed the TV episode:
There Rika indicated clearly to Timor that she didn't want be the bringer of bad news.
So INNO is very much aware that it would screw the game.
Rika said figthing stays optional in this game... But never expected that INNO would make it soo OPTIONAL!

 

[DeletedUser880]

I have tried my first battles since the update and am astounded by the scale of the changes. I tried a crystal province which I had always found easiest to win, but using all combinations of troops at my disposal I could not get close to defeating a single crystal army.

It appears that the intention of the developers is to prevent players winning fights in provinces making them rely on negotiation in all cases - maybe it was too easy to win battles before but the change seems to be a massive overkill (not meant to be humorous).

 

[DeletedUser118]

Well, if you wanna see it that way. If you cannot fight any longer and are blocked by the requirement of Orcs. What other option do you have to get Expansions but to buy them?

As we germans would say: Ein Schelm wer Böses dabei denkt.

 

[DeletedUser1345]

Three encounters in ring 13. Perhaps there are possible solutions.
Magic Dust - 2 Squads of 557 Rigid Steinlings, 6 squads of 557 Devilish Enchantress, 2 squads of 2229 Feral Wild Archers
Planks - Squad of 630 Ferocious Swamp Monsters, 2 squads of 3782 Feral Wild Archers, squad of 1891 Brutal Ancient Orcs
Marble - Squad 459 Crazy Cannoneers, squad of 688 Brave Knights, 6 squads of 2752 feral wild archers.

All researches have been done, so using squad size at 1140, how are these fights to be approached?

 

[DeletedUser1570]

So according to the pentagon Treants are supposed to be GOOD against light melee units. I currently only have Treant II, and what do I see? They have NO attack bonus against light melee, but they have a 30 % defense bonus against light melee. Is this what GOOD AGAINST is supposed to mean? Compared to what was before, this is a HUGE nerf.

 

[DeletedUser1589]

I noticed that several units now have higher negative "defense bonus" than attack bonus. Does this mean that they are very disadvantaged against the enemies that they could theoretically do damage to? How does this help?

Perhaps I'm wrong but as far as I can understand from Wiki a negative defense bonus means that the damage you receive is reduced by that bonus e.g. -80% = only 20% of damage

 

[DeletedUser1513]

Well, if you wanna see it that way. If you cannot fight any longer and are blocked by the requirement of Orcs. What other option do you have to get Expansions but to buy them?

I was already wondering what the business plan behind this change... YOU GOT IT!

 

[DeletedUser]

Houston we have a problem or we don't #InnoOneWaySolutions.


Can someone post armory squad sizes and barracks training times of each unit?

 

[DeletedUser1657]

46/50 provinces done in the third era so about on track with were where I should be.
My squad size is 51 and enemy is 105 at ring 4 for a 5v5 fight.
My squad size is 51 and enemy is 158 at ring 5 for a 5v5 fight.

Due to the tech changes I need to research squad size 6, 7 and 8. So that is 18+21+24 = 63 additional squad size potentially but still outnumbered for ring 5 which I need to fight to unlock the chest (2 ring 4 provinces left so at least 2 ring 5 provinces needed). I can now research golems and sorceress
but they are unlikely to make the fights doable just provide options against the mixed unit types. Although it will take a while to unlock the techs.

Currently negotiating is by far the easiest option for me, only 80-350 goods tier 1 goods per encounter. Sadly in the long run this wont be best as I need to learn the new system while the cost is "cheap".

 

[Dony]

well the question is why you even want to buy new expansion and not just go to other more fun game.

 

[DeletedUser283]

this is stupid
totally stupid, bad design, wrong choices, idiot decisions

first, game designers should stop pushing us around to force us through the path they have decided;
if there is an alternate way in the game design, we will find it because we are players, and that is how we work, and should this alternate path exist, it is because of game design in the first place, so we should not be punished for our actions.

second : the way enemy troops on the map evolve according to our progress on this same map was flawed, we saw it in the last video from Inno TV, where a nice diagram explained that enemy troops were getting stronger faster than our squad size evolved;
has it been corrected ? I don't think so.

third : once again, we are punished for having played enthusiastically;
we have conquered/negociated provinces because this is a frigging city builder where building space is paramount and we needed the expansions;
then came the orcs in the negociation process, and they were a message from the devs saying : "if you are asked for orcs in negociations, and you cannot produce them, then you have advanced too far ahead."
in short, we have been punished for playing the game;
now we find out that because of our excess in scouting on the map, enemy forces are way stronger than ours;
we are punished a second time for playing the game;

I would be delighted if game designers would be kind enough to indicate precisely what they expect form us instead of continuously letting us hurt ourselves by hitting brick walls in the dark;
in the mean time, do not expect any money from me.

 

[DeletedUser]

Save old info/stats from wiki. Before it gets replaced.

 

[Deleted User - 60107]

It's the same with the basic Elven Archer: The new one costs 14 Supplies per unit and takes 12 minutes (with Barracks level 1). The old cost was 12 Supplies and 3 minutes per unit. The UPGRADED versions might be cheaper than before, but the basic ones are definitely more expensive.