Unfair advantages. (Core Game)

Development
21

While flat out hard limits could be bad I think that soft limits could be good, the best way to explain this is probably example so here goes.

If you had a particularly strong military it might negatively impact religion, trade, and culture by having the greater military presence making everyone just a bit more scared and afraid of going against the government. At the other end be a religious hub could boost trade but maybe most of your workers will take a day off every week and people might get unhappy more easily by going against the religion, like a pacifistic religion makes military make them less happy while a more violent one could do the opposite. For religions I believe hard limits could work a bit just to limit the amount you can use so you can’t do something like have Illitheria, Lady of Peace and Cluthgar, Lord of Pain as chosen gods because they aren’t compatible, you could just give massive debuffs to a ton of stuff while they’re both up though. A large economy would boost trade but make military more importent as people are more likely to want to invade you for resources.

Basically I’m saying that if something is particularly strong it should have logical effects on other things, military decreases culture, economy increases thieves, food increases hostile attacks by monsters, religion can cause dissent from not following it’s rules, stuff that make sense and make so that while being good at everything is fine being very good at everything is a difficult balancing act.

22

while it is a good idea to have some negatives from having a great empire, i do not think that it is the best idea to have negative trade and religion, example the Roman empire they had good trade religion and a huge army. now i think it should depend on how you act as a leader of your nation, like it should be easier to force your people to work their asses of if you have allot of troops, but not that it becomes like that just because. on a note most religious nations trou out history have had the mightiest armies, with the exception of the Mongol’s and some Buddhist nations. since most religions feel the need to expand and the best way to do that is trou war.
now my idea to balance is to have the religious nations to be able to have allot of cheap soldiers that are weaker than other normal soldiers, now if you are a trader mercenaries work just fine.
some perks and negatives that you could have for having different stats (think pie chart)
Military might

  • easier to force people to work harder

  • less risk to be attacked by goblins and other monsters (they know your power)

  • higher risk of attracting unwanted attention from big monsters

  • less crime and such

              trading/diplomacy

  • more gold and such from trading with others

  • easy time getting allies

  • cheaper mercenaries

  • more monsters and goblins attacking you and your caravans

  • more workers

            Religious focus

  • making people work hard with out getting them angry

  • cheep conscripts

  • summon beasts from the gods or what ever he now grants you

  • clergies that can heal and maybe buff soldiers

  • getting heretics that could summon dark gods

  • other religious nations will not like you

there are just some random things I came to think about, maybe some more buffs and negatives.

23

@xophnog I didn’t say that it should be the way, i suggested that is one way they could do it. And i stress repeatedly that it all depends on how they decide to make things work.
Another way i suggested is purely a matter of how you spend your resources, which seems more in line with what we know about the game right now. For example, they could balance it so that if you spend too many resources in the military portion of the game, you might not be able to develop as much in the diplomatic branch of the game.

Well the different races makes the idea that you will miss out on 2/3 of the gameplay by playing northsmen rather than Ascendancy entirely moot. Whatever you do as a human, you are missing out on content that you can only do or have as a dwarf. Their comment can now only mean that as a human you should not miss out on any inherent content of the human playthrough.
Though to be honest, i think you should, as that creates a reason to play again, and again, and again to see different results or aspects even in the same race. Replayability, not only modifiability is key to longevity :wink:

My main point tho, is that you should not be punished for not investing a bunch into the farming branch. Which you are not, you still get your crops and everything works.So this same philosophy should be applied to all other branches, for example if i do not want to focus intensely on military, i would be able to make some soldiers regardless, and that would be enough in singleplayer, but in multiplayer that might not work.

@Xavion And if you do not want to make a huge development into the monasteries, should someone with the clerics be able to steamroll you just because they have clerics? No, there needs to be a counter unit.
Especially in a sandbox strategy game where builds are driven by a wide variety of intentions for example “i want to make a religious capital of no comparison!” all the way through “I want to ignore religion and choose to build universities to improve technology!” So maybe some more steampunk-y units researched with high end educational building, and crafted using the engineer’s skills to counter clerics? I Dunno,
And if a balance between military and diplomacy would be near impossible, then everyone would just play focusing on military, making it a monotonous sea of samey samey.

@xwminsing Every city should do a little of everything, otherwise you miss out on base resources, it’s a question of more higher-end benefits like for example, focus military and get siege engines, focus religion and get a super-cleric/archangel, focus education and get steampunk-y weapons using the same model that if you focus on farming you get higher-end crops.
And i agree entirely with you, focusing in one area and not in another should not leave you an easy target and that specific balancing decisions depend entirely on how Radiant decides to handle technology, development of the branches of the game, or even resource management.

@Gamer36 I should edit my OP as that’s what most people seem to quote, and my views have evolved.
I’m now of the mind that while the cross dependency (tech tree isn’t really the right word, talent tree might be a better comparison) handling of the nonessential branches is one way of doing the balancing, i think relating it to resources would be better and also make it so that there are counter measurements available in high-end development of each branch, as mentioned above.
(Non essential, as in anything not needed to survive. Having a decent fam is necessary, even developing deeper into farming might be necessary. Having some soldiers to fight off the goblins is also necessary, especially as you grow richer, but having a military capable of wiping out an enemy player’s highly developed city, is not essential to survival.)

Anyways, It is great to see so many people of differing ideas come together to discuss their opinions. If anyone can think of other areas where problems like these could arise in the core game, do put it forward :slight_smile:

24

Why would they be able to? If you’re less developed at one thing it should be because you’re more developed at something else. Take the cleric balancing, here is a list of barely fleshed out ideas to counter them.
Religion
Clerics: Extra healing, more damage, cheaper
Special religion dependent spell (mass resurrection, clouds of lightning, plagues, etc.) cost is large scale rituals
Military
General: All military units are better and cheaper but not to the same degree as other specialties, civillian (carpenter, smith, lumberjack, etc. NOT things like geomancers or clerics or whatnot) classes get minor defence skills.
Unique Leader units for AoE buffs (Boosted damage and speed for nearby units, allows for special super fast change from civillian to military classes in case of emergency or war) cost is requiring high powered units for conversion to leaders and screwing up with the amount converted to military can cripple you while they convert back.
Trade/Economy
Mercenaries/Guilds: Access to better quality hireable units + Guilds set up in your city that can help defend it, access to more varied equipment.
Special rare “Hero” hireables that are attracted by your magnificent city (Max tier units like archclerics, grand knights, paladins, engineers, etc.) cost is money and potentially requiring special quests or items to hire, also expect to pay a hefty upkeep
Diplomacy
Allies: Recruit from allied races with significantly less cost and more loyalty than mercenaries, advanced spy units. Special spy units?
Can use special ability to summon allied help (Summons a variable (small, medium, large?) group of units from an allied nation to help, can be used for non combat purposes like summoning dwarves for building a giant stone building) cost would vary from faction to faction but generally they payed you a favor so expect them to hold it over you and make them a bit more greedy for a while.
Science/Magic
Advancement: More high level classes unlocked and more magic available with bigger and better results, things like golems and robots.
Special super skills for magic/science units (Earthquake for geomancer, missiles/guns for engineer, lava torrents for magma smith, demon summoning for planeswalkers) cost is having to sink more resources into unlocking magic and having the magic be able to cause a lot of collateral if aimed badly.

You could do more for things like farming builds or whatever if you wanted but that was just to show that you can balance things.

I didn’t say that, I just said that focusing exclusively on military should be massively easier than focusing exclusively on diplomacy to the point of trying to avoid having a military, essentially a pure war playstyle that is just Kill! Kill! Kill! should naturally be easier than a pure diplomacy style where you don’t have a military worth mentioning because of the setting which naturally lends itself better to pure combat then pure diplomacy.

25

Because if you assume the clerics will be battle healers, you can imagine how difficult it would be to defeat an incoming assault spearheaded by a military force and trailed by a regiment of clerics continually healing the troops, and now imagine if all you have is a few physicians.
Even with superior numbers your guys could easily be taken down.
So far the best answer to this dilemma is Radiant’s insistence that magic is rare, which would include any clerics or priests.
Religion:
This is nice and all, but the rituals won’t be too much of an issue for someone that has prepared for them, and i do not think they should be better healers than the physicians, because that most definitely will make them able to steamroll you with potentially endless troops as i pointed out above.
And resurrection will most likely not be a cleric spell, this much we know because they have said they want resurrection to be a rare thing with the consequence that if you do it often enough it could lead to a world ending catastrophe like a zombie apocalypse.
It is more likely to be a necromancer ability.
Military:
Not much to be said here other than that the leader unit seems more likely to be a recruitable hero unit.
Trade/Economy:
They have also hinted at the ability to hire guilds like thieves guild if your city has a thievery problem to lay out traps for the enemies or hire ninjas or something.
As for the hirable heroes you list, i’ve got some issues with your selection, but i know they’re only supposed to be examples. My issue being mainly that most of them should be high-end units available in their respective developments.
Diplomacy:
Not too sure about the summon allied feature, that would seem a bit too much like magic, which is supposed to be rare and exotic. but definitely recruiting allies, has been hinted at.
Science/magic:
Guns have not been accepted so far by the devs, and i would agree witht hem, it is too much of a modern technology. But there is still other things we can imagine from the engineer and from development into science/education, and into magic.

This is what i was talking about, that by making a diplomatic approach infinitely (as in not determinable) more difficult than a militaristic approach, you end up with the vast majority choosing to just play it militaristically, making all the diplomatic gameplay a huge waste of time, money and effort from the developers.
No, they need to be better balanced than that, otherwise there is no incentive to play diplomatically.

26

Alright time to go through and add more information to help here.
Religion
Just because you can get more stronger clerics that doesn’t mean you can easily have enough to make invincible death walls, they should be stronger than physicians but they’re considerably harder to get and likely include a period of training in wherever to level up from some minor religion class that’s pretty much useless into clerics. You seem to be subconciously powering up clerics to be much better healers than they actually would be, e.g. they could be roughly equivalent to a physician of 1-2 levels higher normally with the religion specialty adding another 0.5-1 levels on to that, good but not unbelievable super healers. Some of their use would come from their other skills like holy magic or whatnot.
For the rituals when I say large scale rituals I mean it, look at my examples, they’re all things that could be really, really powerful is used with good timing. Yes you could prepare for them, some you could probably even do to just before finished and then hold them there with a priest/cleric till they’re needed, but all of them will be expensive. I mean properly expensive, like 5ft solid gold statue as a requirement for location, requiring incense made from rare artic flowers, and only being able to be started on a full moon, they should be hard to actually do as they are the kind of things that can cause massive damage or benefit to whoever they’re cast on. So while yes you could eventually get to the point where it’s easy to get the resources by that point it wouldn’t matter what specialty you had you’d still be unbeatable through being able to get anything.
Military
Those buffs were probably overlooked because they seem simple at first but think again, units are likely to have enough stats that these buffs could be as much 5-10% for every unit. Your non combat units could be boosted to the point of a very low level soldier and your combat ones it would be like a level or so of power, enough so that with equivalent class and equipment they’d win a good bit more frequently. That when combined with the fact that you’d have more than most should make your army properly feared by foes while still being able to be counter by the fact that they don’t really have anything unique and they mostly rely on more mid-range units than anyone else can get but a fair few of the high tiers would require things like magic or science to get.
As for the leader, they’re going to be in charge of large chunks of your army, I wouldn’t let a hired unit take that role because they wouldn’t be trusted to lead part of your army if the only thing keeping them loyal to you is essentially bribes. That’s why I said they can be made from high level combat units, eventually the unit gains enough experience to lead and can be promoted to a leader to lead the people that they’ve fought with for years as opposed to some visiting hero that’s been hired to lead them which shouldn’t be as effective or really possible, loyal units only for this one.
Trade/Economy
Yeah so nothing wrong with boosted guilds and mercenaries from you so I must have explained this slightly better the first time.
The heros should be high-end units, you pay a small fortune to hire them and have a hefty upkeep to go with that but they have a lot of strength to match the cost. They should be able to turn the tide of a reasonably close battle, they won’t be as useful combat wise as a leader or the more combat oriented rituals but they’re also still going to be significant. While not as difficult to acquire in terms of time there wouldn’t being too many chances to get them but they should be awesome to help out, like “Ah! They’ve got Nyan Cat of Kittenville with them, they’re one of the faster archers there is! They’re said to have defeated the hordes of Zuul with only one hand.”. They should be good, if you wanted to be extra cool you could even allow them to be super strong soldiers that did something awesome from other games you/others have played to help add the feeling of them being a hero.
Diplomacy
Summon allies can passed off as non-magic, just a chuck a delay between use and appearance and make them all appear off screen and it’s like proper reinforcements.
Science/Magic
Even with no proper guns the engineer should still be able to build things like cannons, explosives, harpoons, ballista, and whatnot, they could all be scaled up and enhanced to be special advancements. Combination abilities could be good as well, like a magma smith and an engineer could build some kind of super powered steam engine machine of doom that’s powered by magma instead of coal, magma smith + geomancer combo could summon volcanoes, or a geomancer + engineer combo that could build magnetic harpoon cannons or something to throw off armored enemies maybe even as extreme as somehow building a magical railgun.

My point was about challenge levels of specializaton, like the pure diplomacy means that you would never have more than 2-3 military units so you’re forced to rely on diplomacy for everything from goblin attacks to rampaging titans. The pure military would be like a declare war on everyone and only war kind of thing, that should be easier for most people as it would be less complex then you’d have with trying to manage everything for diplomacy and you’d be fending for yourself and not relying on other civs which should also make it easier. The best method that most people would use would be a mixed version, try for peace most of the time but build a military as well, the diplomacy challenge would be kinda equivalent to a pacifist challenge but not quite.

27

I appreciate the thought you guys have put into this, but we still simply don’t know enough about how the game will actually work to start figuring out how to balance it. We need to understand the rules before we can claim they are broken.

-Will

28

Religion:
If the clerics are more powerful than the physician, then what about people that do not want to invest a lot into religion? Where would they get their powerful healer to counter this healer? They would need about 1.5 physician for every 1 cleric by your estimates, or 2-3 times the military units to beat the healing rate. That adds up to a huge number in the long run and makes religion a required investment.
This also builds on a model of magic that contradicts what RadEnt wants magic to be, making it something easy to do, but expensive.
Military:
Would this be a flat 5-10% shared across numbers, so that it’s still 5-10% stat even if you have 10 guys, or is it an additive buff, meaning that if you have 10 guys you’d have 50-100% stat? Because the latter would make a military build absolutely unstoppable as not only does he have big numbers, but every soldier is essentially a 1.5-2x stronger unit than a non-buffed soldier.
Trade/Economy:
Not really, it’s just that there wasn’t much of a disagreement about guilds to begin with and RadEnt have already shared their thoughts on it.
So an expensive hero unit should not be as good as an upgraded soldier (leader)? That leader unit would have to be extremely expensive to upgrade to make up for this, and it kinda defeats the point of having a hero unit. I don’t know how many games you’ve played, but in most cases, the hero ends up doing the local leaders jobs because they are more capable. And as RadEnt partially based their game off Zelda, that trend would be expected to be represented.
Diplomacy:
That’s why i said i wasn’t sure, i forgot to add in i wasn’t sure if you meant it as magic or as a call for aid (like gondor calling on rohan) which drastically changes my opinion.
Science/magic
Siege weapons have been mentioned as well and they said siege weapons would be defensive.
I do however like the idea of the epic units having combo abilities, but i do not see how that would be a priority as it would involve a lot of effort to code.

So a diplomacy build would make you so weak you cannot even survive the PVE without help? This alone would make diplomacy a huge waste of time to implement as no one would use it.
No, when i’m talking about specialization, i’m talking more than necessary to survive. If you need 10 units to survive the average goblin attack, you should be able to have that, and as the attacks grow in number, you can develop diplomacy to call in reinforcements.

@wminsing

I have pointed out repeatedly that i am not talking about specifics or talking about ingame imbalances. We are discussing concerns about potential imbalances, in order to share our ideas and thoughts about what we think the game should be like.
Once Beta comes out a topic like this would become even more relevant as it then changes to actual balance issues.
If i had the ability, I would pause this topic until beta release as we seem to be exhausting the current pool of ideas with no one really adding to it.
We’re only really discussing the same few points we put together so far.

29

Some unfair advantages like:
dwarves:
fast mining race:
finds ores quicker and more often then any other race.

human:
kingdom 1:
more carholic then other humans:
the gods often help you.

kingdom2:
all round human beings:
is good at everything,
but is not outbalanced.

kingdom3:
much stronger then other humans,
makes stronger weapons and armor.

something like that?

-pixel

30

Right, but most of the perceived imbalances are the result of making giant leaps of assumption about how the game is even going to work, when we don’t even have the data to speculate as what the game is really going to be geared towards. For example will there be a religious aspect at all? Will magic focus be a viable route given how rare Radiant wants to make it? We just don’t know right now. As you said, better to wait on the Beta.

-Will

31

tom spoke of this topic in one of the livestrems, he said that he used to play star craft and that he really liks the concept that you can, lets say, invest all-out of your earlly game building your aconomy, what will make you stronger in late game but also make you vulnerable in the beginig, and that he whant to applay this into stonehearth, so you will be able to focus on one thing and make it strong as possible or try evrething what will take more time and more resurses. so, for axample, someone who disided to focus one milletery will be able to get diplomacy but it will be harder to make it into an high level.
In short i am sure that those awesome developers will make the game well balenc and as fun as posible :smiley:

32

@wminsing
Like i have already said plenty times already, we are not talking about what WILL be in the game, so we are not making giant leaps of assumption. We are sharing our thoughts on what could potentially be bad balancing decisions from our points of view.
We are sure tom and tony will do their best to balance the game as they are big fans of starcraft and strategy games, which puts a big emphasis on balancing, we are just sharing our thoughts on what should be avoided.

Come beta maybe we can start talking about actual imbalances, which is why i didn’t name my topic “imbalance issues”, i named it appropriately to cover both possibilities.

As far as i know, there is a chance religion will be implemented, but it is not decided to what degree, or if at all. And i have expressed repeatedly that i doubt clerics will be healing units on par with physicians because Radiant wants to make magic a rarity.
But we won’t know, so all we can do is discuss how making them a magical unit could affects the balance of the game.

@jonyon54
I am well aware, and i have a lot of confidence in Radient, otherwise i would not have put 50$ into the kickstarter when i barely even have an income myself. But this is as i said not about actual imbalances, but about concerns for potential imbalances, at least until we can actually get to play the game and work out what is imbalanced.

@pixelfreak Not entirely sure what you mean, these could just be specializations. For example the dwarves having a harder time getting certain things because of a scarce access to wood. (siege engines require lots of wood)

33

something like that.

34

i understand, but as you said we just need to wait and see and if something is imbalance let the developers know what we think.
i dont think that their is a point to speak about this subject befor we get any informantion or see some gameplay.

35

My general opinion on things is that your advancement on one branch of the techtree should never take away the option to follow another branch as well. And you should never have to label your city as military or religious or something else to get special units or abilities (as I’ve seen hinted sometimes). This should all be a matter of where you spend your resources, people and time.
For balancing I think that as long as you play the game right it shouldn’t matte what you focus on. Your city should be powerfull in its own way. If you don’t focus on the military then sure, one on one you will lose on the battlefield against a military nation, but you should have the means to avoid a fight or have others fight for you.
Non of this is new. Just letting you know what I vote for.

About cities focused on religion:
If you make your city a religious center then other cities with the same religion will more or less automatically become your allies. Sending soldiers to guard your city and giving you better prices when trading in return for your blessing. And the religious branch can have a military branch as well. Templars, paladins, clerics (jedis :stuck_out_tongue: ).
A suggestion: They all have higher morale (if there is such a thing). Templars is an upgrade to the soldier. Paladins can do a little “holy magic” and get mp for every kill. Clerics have more holy magic but get mp through prayers and ceremonies so they need to stock up before a battle.
There are many ways to balance the clerics so I don’t think we have to worry about them being overpowered.

About diplomacy:
I find it odd that you talk about focusing on diplomacy. To me, diplomacy is nothing on its own. You can’t convince a war lord to not sack your city simply by being polite. You need to offer him a better deal and that means you need goods or services to trade with. Same thing if you negotiate something with an ally. You need something to offer. Your level of diplomacy only affects how good the deal is for you.

36

i think the same, you should be able to do evrething but it will take more time and resoursrs, judging by what the developers alredy said i also think that this is what will be in the game.

37

I’m not sure I understand the topic of this thread but I’ll try to answer what I think it is your asking. I believe you’re speaking about development and how you choose to nurture your society. I don’t believe leaning towards one side or the other will inhibit your growth in another. I think the way the game is being developed is that military is independent of religion and independent of “science”. The developers seem more set on a build your own type mindset and that being the case I think the balancing will come from what you choose to focus on rather than being locked out or inhibited in other places. For example if you focus more on military some of your basic structures of society will not be as well developed and you will quickly expand further than you can support. Which will either cause you to grow your basic structures (e.g. food/ medical/ religion) or your army will begin to deteriorate to try and defend from enemies because they won’t be supplied properly. Inversely if you have a great infrastructure and haven’t bothered with a military then you will have issues when raiding parties stroll through and take what they like.

To me it would be a lot less fun to be inhibited because I chose one path in the beginning. Just as the pace and game play evolve so should your strategy. Stopping people from reaching higher tiers because they started one way seems like too much of a handicap when the AI changes its own strategy. Moreover we have no idea what religion will play as in this game. It’s very possible that religion will be a need as opposed to a healing (They aren’t on the same branch of the tree). I see it similar to Tropico in that religion may enhance morale or make people happy, this is after all a medieval style game and secularization was not very common in that time. It’s also possible that religion may advance technology as most breakthroughs in that time came from highly educated Jesuit priests (A ton of pre-enlightenment discoveries came from priests) and they are on the same branch as scholars (which would be the religious in this time anyway). I believe it will be highly unlikely that the developers would inhibit you in any aspect seeing as they view the game to be a creative expression.

38

But what is a ‘bad balancing decision’ depends in large part how exactly the ‘rules’ for those aspects of the game work. How does trade actually work; is it simply barter or is money involved? Do you need to reach a certain class to mint money? Is there a banking system? Do different neighboring races have different trade preferences? The answer to each of these is ‘right now we don’t know’ but each of these questions have a huge impact on whether a particular aspect of the gameplay is ‘balanced’ or not. We need some level of detail in order to evaluate in a meaningful way. Otherwise everything right now is a total SWAG.

By all means, keep speculating; it’s not like we have anything else to do in the meantime until the Beta! But I suspect what we actually get as a game is going to render a lot of these discussions moot in the long run.

-Will

39

I was under the impression that the city raids are the only form of direct player vs. player and I seem to recall that it would happen against a shard or copy of the target’s city so as not to have direct repercussions if someone with their 10-month-old city goes against my poor 1-month old city. Or is this conversation more in the realm of single-player?

One distinction I feel should be made is the difference between diplomacy and economy. I’m not sure I’m following the vibe of this thread exactly, but you’re talking about going pure diplomacy when it sounds like pure economy. To engage in diplomacy, you have to find someone else to be diplomatic with first, which generally means scouting early and often. You should never be surprised by an invading army that just shows up on your doorstep. And if your scouts find aggression, then in theory you’ll have time to respond (if they went straight offensive, then their early units will be basic and hopefully you have researched something that lets you build a more advanced unit to make up for your fewer numbers).

From the context that I’ve seen of single player, there are thresholds and events that cause military aggression - either by the player expanding or getting too plump in the wealth-to-military department. That’s a play choice and part of the game play - if you get your city too far out of balance, there should be repercussions.

Just some thoughts from an abstract “we know nothing about the game yet” point of view.

Peace!

40

@wminsing

Yes, there are a vast range of possibilities. And we are here to discuss until beta creates a ground plan; how certain potential gameplay decisions could affect the balance of the game based on rudimentary information on what Radiant would like to do with their game. Gained through the livestreams or otherwise.

@Riggy

Thank you for sharing your thoughts on the topic. And yes, we’re all (or at least that is the intention of this topic until beta comes around) talking abstractly.
You bring up a good point; would any of this be valid if the multiplayer is just invasion of a virtual copy of the target’s town?
The answer to that would be, none of this would matter. But to the extent of my knowledge, they did not specify that would be how it would definitely work, only that that could be one way of making it work.
But post-release, i can imagine there will be a consumer demand for some more direct pvp or multiplayer modes. And those modes would make balancing very relevant.

I agree that economy and diplomacy are separate domains, i only talked about them together because that is how the person i discussed it with framed the format for discussion.
But it is also to be considered that diplomacy does depend on economy, for example your diplomatic decisions might heavily depend on the status of your economy, that is not saying they would have to be unison however.

~Peace and Prosperity.