Thank you all for the massive amount of feedback we have been getting in the past days. Please know what, while we have not always responded immediately, we did read everything you wrote. We would like to begin this post by replying to some of your questions and concerns, and then give you an insight in our plans regarding the Battle Redesign as a whole, as well as address some further community feedback we have received over the past days.
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.
That a unit is "good against" another unit means that they
will not have negative bonuses against such units. In case of the Treant II this means that they have a -30% defence bonus (so: less damage taken) against Light Melee, while they have a +40% attack and -80% defence bonus against Heavy Ranged. Note: all bonuses that your units have are positive for you - there is no such thing as a "negative bonus". While the Treant II may be a good choice against Light Melee, it would be a better choice against Heavy Ranged units, due to the distribution of the bonuses.
Also, when you compare the values to those of the old Treants (which you really shouldn't, because the system is entirely different, but you're going to do it anyways), please do note that the Treant's size has halved as well.
Did the game devs ensure that battles would be achievable up to the number of provinces required to fill the grid (beyond expansions given in the tech tree, etc) at each chapter in the research tree? If not, what is the expectation for # of purchased expansions so that players stay within "winnable" fights in province exploration?
No, we base our balancing on the amount of provinces we expect a player to have around a certain time. The max size of the city grid is not really a factor in that in that sense. Of course, we expect any player to make progress on the world map on a continuous (but not: superspeed) scale, and therefore we also do expect that everyone will get a certain number of expansions from world map progress.
Why not just make provinces inaccessible after we've expanded as far as the devs think is "appropriate" for our level? and unveil them a ring at a time when they deem us "appropriately advanced" to go further?
That would make many of our balancing problems disappear all in one go. But, what would be your response if we would do
that now? My personal guess: you would hate us for it and scream bloody murder. Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
edit: omg. I can't even win the first battle in the first province of the tournament!! I just lost all my troops. Is it because I have scouted "too" far and will face harder enemies than others from now on?
In the first level of a Tournament the enemy's squad size is always ~80% of your own. We balance our battles in a way that it is possible to beat an enemy army that is roughly twice your size (with a bit of luck in terms of obstacles and while manually fighting while making the absolute best decisions). When choosing the right units, beating an army with a squad size that's 80% of your own should be very much doable. You will lose troops, but that is always to be expected. Sorry, but the days of "sending only Granite Golems and Sorceresses and win everything without any losses ever" are over.
Since the squad size of the enemy troops in Tournament Provinces is directly related to your own on a relative scale, it does not matter how far you have progressed on the World Map at all while fighting Tournaments. To share:
0 stars: enemy size is ~80% of your own squad size
1 star: ~100%
2 stars: ~120%
3 stars: ~140%
4 stars: ~160%
5 stars: ~180%
Actual values can differ slightly due to rounding.
Can we have a confirmation that the huge nerf of the armories was premeditated or are they going to rebalance the amount of troops the armories allow to train to be in line with the increase of the squad size and bulwark rebalancing?
The Armories have also had their bonuses increased, they were not lowered. Also note that the production speed in the Barracks goes down very fast if you upgrade it. This will not make the amounts of units you can train per slot bigger, but it will empty the slots faster, of course. At the first few levels of the Barracks it may be slightly slower per unit (but then again: you will also need fewer units in the very early stages, because the squad size is lower than it was before), but after a few upgrades the training times go down very, very fast. To be able to train units nonstop (have production queued), you will now need to build more Armories in your city.
Furthermore, we received a lot of feedback, that we would like to address in general.
- You told us that you are losing more troops now than you was before. In some cases it seems (or: is) impossible to win a fight at all.
In the old system, we had several units that would be almost a guaranteed win in any fight, in any encounter, at any distance. We hope that we can all agree that those units were wildly overpowered and that, in order to restore balance, some drastic changes had to be made to those units. We're talking for example about the level 3 versions of the Golems and Sorceresses for the Elven players among us and the Paladins and Priests for the Humans. These units made it possible to win fights against enemies that were over three times their strength, without ever losing a lot. This should never have been possible to begin with, but it was, and it therefore needed changing. The fact that this was possible, gave us many problems: not only when it came to balancing other (new) units against those super-strong units, but also in completely different areas. For example, we have players who struggle with Event Quests, because those quests ask to scout a certain number of provinces, which is simply impossible to do in time if you are that far ahead on the World Map, because scouting times were also way too high in comparison. We always try to keep the scouting times and costs reasonable (that is why we have the Advanced Scouts technologies), and if you are within the range of amount of provinces that we would expect you to be at, e.g. the scouting times should always be less than a day for the chapters that we have currently available in our research tree.
Another reason why it is possible to lose so many troops, is especially apparant for those who use auto-fighting a lot. Our AI is not perfectly adjusted to the new system yet (it's a work in progress and we're continuously finetuning it!), which affects the enemy troops, but also your own if you are using auto-battle. In general, this should not be a huge factor, but depending on e.g. the obstacles within an encounter, it can still be a significant difference. As said, this is still a work in progress and we are eager to make more changes there, but it is currently not yet perfect. On top of finetuning the AI, we have also started investigating how we can make the battlefield itself better: we do not want the obstacles to be a determining factor in battles: you should be focussing on fighting the enemy
units, not on fighting the obstacles themselves.
- Armories, Ancient Wonders and Barracks are not being buffed enough to adjust to the new training speeds. It's therefore no longer possible to keep the Barracks running at all times without building more Armories, like before.
This is a correct observation. While we did not lower the bonuses of the Armories nor Ancient Wonders in general, it is indeed no longer possible to keep producing as long as was possible before without having to log in again. In general, we significantly increased the training speed of units, which in turn also lowers the total training time in the Barracks' queue, of course. We do believe that this is correct in terms of balance, though. For those players who like to fight their way through the World Map, fewer Manufactories are needed (because no goods are needed for negotiation). It would be unfair for those who predominantly trade, if they need more space in their cities for more Manufactories (and culture buildings to provide the necessary culture), while those who fight can use that space for other buildings. To make up for that imbalance, it would now be required to build one or more "extra" Armories.
Our suggestion: Every player should at least have one Armory, and two if you fight a bit more. If you are a heavy, hardcore fighter, we would recommend having at least three or four Armories in your city. Of course, we mean to have them at the maximum level possible, not at level one or something. If you fight a lot, we would also recommend to build one (or more) of the battle-related Ancient Wonders
and upgrade those. Ancient Wonders are always an investment: at their lower levels they don't give super-high bonuses, but those can rise quickly once the buildings are upgraded to the highest levels.
- Because of the changes, fighting has become virtually impossible for those advanced far on the World Map, meaning that this feature is no longer a viable option for those players.
Just like the Orcs (required to negotiate at Provinces in the 11th ring and further), the difficulty of battle is a sign to players to not scout out too far too fast on the World Map. It should never have been possible to get as far as some of you may have gotten, but due to the overpowered units we talked about above, it had become a possibility. Due to this, we had to do something, and we did that now.
Of course it is not our intention to block players from fighting altogether. What we
do want, is to have a way where people are excited to gain more Squad Size Upgrades (because they give you a great advantage in battle) and unit upgrades (or even new units) in the research tree. We have a lot of feedback from players who say that scouting times become too long and scouting is too expensive, that it takes ages to unlock new city expansions on the World Map, and who have problems completing quests surrounding those topics because it is all taking way too long. Many of those players are far beyond the point where we would "expect them to be", so to say. In general, we would expect you to be just a few provinces above the number of provinces needed to unlock the next chapter in the research tree (so: these chests should, for the average player, never be any problem at all).
For those who want to fight more than what we would expect on the World Map, we have come up with another solution: the Tournaments. In that feature, it is very well possible to do more fights, without progressing further on the World Map itself directly. This means you still have access to the beloved Battle feature, but without the downside of insanely high scouting costs and times (which in turn
directly influence the squad size of enemy troops in the province). It should always be possible to win against units that are roughly your strength, given that you pick the right units for your fights. If you are progressing on the World Map at average speed, this will always be the case: the enemy troops will become stronger, but so will yours. If the enemy troops in provinces on the World Map are significantly stronger than your own, you might want to slow down a bit. On the other hand, if your troops are a lot stronger than those on the World Map, you should maybe finish some more Provinces, in order to be able to unlock the next chapter in the research tree.
We hope that this posts gives you some insights in our decisions. As always, we encourage you to share your feedback and ask the questions you have! We look forward to reading and answering them.
