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seingeist
Promising
Adventuring Hero
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posted February 10, 2012 01:06 AM |
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Average weekly faction damage
I wanted to see how the average damage of the factions compared to one another when we factor in weekly growth. Obviously, this is a very limited way of gauging damage potential (it takes no account of range penalties, unit special abilities, destiny/morale, Racials, might vs magic damage, opposing defense, etc.), but it can at least help give an idea of the raw unit power of each faction per week.
I'm sticking this here in the balance thread because it is yet another area in which the Necropolis is ahead of all other factions (that has to be a HoMM first - Necro with more damaging units than everyone else).
The gap at its largest, to give the outer dimensions of damage balance: Haven has the lowest min/max damage (minimum is w/ base growth, maximum is w/ all fortifications) and Necropolis has the highest, and it amounts to a difference of +23.6% min damage and +18.2% max damage.
Sanctuary, Stronghold, and Inferno are all virtually identical (none differ more than 3%). So there's a clear top and bottom (Necro and Haven, respectively), and the remaining three factions make up a boringly uniform middle. (It should be noted that the Sanctuary would be weaker were it not for its extra Champion/week).
The following numbers simply consist of the average damage of each unit multiplied by its min/max weekly growth, followed by the sum at the end, which represents the "total" raw average damage output of one week's worth of creatures.
Haven
Praetorian: 52.5/ 63
Marksman: 48/ 60
Vestal: 66/ 84
Imp. Griffin: 68/ 119
Bl. Glory: 82.5/ 132
Sun Crusader: 75/ 120
Seraph: 108/ 270
Sum Total min/max: 500/ 848
Inferno
Demented: 66/ 84
Cerberus: 60/ 82.5
Lilim: 66/ 84
Breeder Mo.: 82.5/ 132 (at medium or closer range)
Lacerator: 78/ 136.5
Ravager: 78/ 136.5
Pit Lord: 119/ 297.5
Total min/max: 549.5/ 953
Necropolis
Skelly Spearman: 77/ 93.5 (medium or closer range)
R. Ghoul: 63/ 84
Specter: 60/ 78
Archlich: 100/ 160
P. Lamasu: 96/ 144
Vamp. Lord: 105/ 150
F. Weaver: 117/ 292.5 (avg. between 2 forms)
Total min/max: 618/ 1002
Sanctuary
Wanizame: 60/ 75
P. Priestess: 60.5/ 77
Kappa S: 65/ 80
Mizu: 69/ 103.5
Yuki: 60/ 105
Kensei: 82/ 143.5
S. Kirin: 171/ 342
Total min/max: 567.5/ 926
Stronghold
Crusher: 48/ 66
G. Hunter: 52/ 64 (medium or closer range)
Fury: 65/ 84.5
Dreamreaver: 102/ 153
Centaur M: 64/ 112
P. Warrior: 100/ 160
E. Cyclops: 122/ 305
Total min/max: 553/ 944.5
To editorialize a bit:
This game really needs an increased overall damage output, as well as greater differences in damage output between factions. With the current balance between HP, Def, and damage, even the difference between Haven and Inferno doesn't amount to more than a few Core units killed per volley.
In any case, Necropolis absolutely does not belong at the top of this stack, and the squishier Inferno and Stronghold should both be more damaging than they are, especially Inferno.
Since an overhaul of the damage system is highly unlikely, I'd prefer the following:
Necro can keep their high numbers (it's fitting), but the unit stats need to be nerfed across the board.
Stronghold and Inferno both have decent unit stats (Stronghold wouldn't mind a bit more Defense and Inferno more HP), but they need more growth, again particularly the Inferno, which has the fewest creatures/week.
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Miru
Supreme Hero
A leaf in the river of time
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posted February 10, 2012 02:15 AM |
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Edited by Miru at 02:15, 10 Feb 2012.
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I like the damage::health in heroes 6. The longer battles are much more fun. Based on your numbers haven appears grossly underpowered, but they have other things to compensate their sub-par damage. Once again however, it is clear that Necro needs nerfs. Aside from no access to fire/light magic (which are better than water and air IMO, though I don't want to start an argument over this), is there any respect that Necro isn't the best in?
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Undeads in Homm 6 may be strong on paper, but they re not that hard to beat in pratice.
Against a undead might hero :
Do wait and attack at the end of the first round instead, using your initiative and movement bonus, if its a good idea to do. Otherwise, simply send in your biggest units up front, and your core melee units at the end.
Retreat your units that are close to die, with the hero attack debuff, out of reach.
Suicide any units that are close to death, but without the hero attack debuff. Make em take a counter attack.
Dont be scared if he turns his fate weavers in shooter mode... no real need to prevent em from shooting.
Against a undead magic hero :
Get petrification and time stasis spells, if you can.
Get haste mass and, or inner fire mass if you re a might hero
Get dispell and aoe dispell magic to remove his petrification
Find the front unit you can beat easily, focus fire him, and place a melee unit next to his shotter, or shotters, as soon as possible. TO do that in the first round, before letting him cast his first spell, you need cleave and the perfect tactics 2 positionning + inner fire mass or haste mass mentionned above.
Necropolis is rotten cake compared to haven.
... That isn't actually anti undead strategy, thats just strategy basics that work all the time.
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I wish I were employed by a stupendous paragraph, with capitalized English words and expressions.
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seingeist
Promising
Adventuring Hero
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posted February 10, 2012 04:53 AM |
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Quote:
I like the damage::health in heroes 6. The longer battles are much more fun. Based on your numbers haven appears grossly underpowered, but they have other things to compensate their sub-par damage. Once again however, it is clear that Necro needs nerfs. Aside from no access to fire/light magic (which are better than water and air IMO, though I don't want to start an argument over this), is there any respect that Necro isn't the best in?
I think that a bigger problem than the length of the battles is the lack of serious power differentiation between the tiers. This is probably also evident from the numbers above, in which the Core units can in some cases almost match the Elite units in terms of "weekly" damage output.
You're right about the "other things to compensate" for the Haven. That is what I was presupposing when I was saying that there should also be greater differentiation in damage between factions, because they all compensate in various ways. The Haven has excellent defensive stats and abilities and significant recovery potential, so top-notch damage would be OP (they're close to OP as it is).
The Necropolis, of course, has historically had weaker unit strength (even factoring in growth) to balance its peerless recovery potential. In this game, for whatever reason, that's been turned on its head. They still have the best recovery, but now that's combined with the most damaging week's worth of creatures. Their one conspicuous downside (relatively slow movement and initiative) is compensated for by the most powerful archery in the game.
The Inferno, on the other hand, is severely lacking in recovery potential and has only mediocre (or worse) defenses and HP. Additionally, they are lacking in "synergy," as JJ maintains above. The compensation for this ought to be supreme damage potential, which they basically have in their unit stats but lack in their growth.
Personally, at the very least, I'd say +1 Demented, +2 Hell Hound/Cerberus, +1 Breeder/Breeder M, +1 Lacerator, and +1 Ravager.
Even with these changes, their damage would still only barely edge out the Necropolis - they'd be essentially the same. The Necro would actually still have a large advantage against the Inferno due to various other factors.
And on a side note, give the Pit Lords more HP - (why are they gimped?). They have the lowest HP excepting the 3/week Sacred Kirins.
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Miru
Supreme Hero
A leaf in the river of time
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posted February 10, 2012 06:53 AM |
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Considering that Necro has 3 shooters I would expect that when all balancing is said and done they still have decent average damage, but are lacking in hp. They aren't actually that slow, only the ghouls and vamps really go out to fight and they are both fast, the fact that lamasu, liches, and skeletons are abysmally slow doesn't really matter. Maybe there should be more maniacs, but I would rather buff the other units than make more of them. I don't really think of inferno being the swarm type, that's more undead.
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I wish I were employed by a stupendous paragraph, with capitalized English words and expressions.
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seingeist
Promising
Adventuring Hero
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posted February 10, 2012 08:41 AM |
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Quote:
Considering that Necro has 3 shooters I would expect that when all balancing is said and done they still have decent average damage, but are lacking in hp.
I don't really understand the correlation here. Shooters usually have lower damage than their melee counterparts, so I'm not sure why the prevalence of archers would necessarily entail "decent average damage." Of course, this is just another area where Necropolis violates the rule, with its archer Champion doing the highest damage of all Champions and the Archlich being just a hair behind the Kensei for the same honor among the Elites.
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They aren't actually that slow, only the ghouls and vamps really go out to fight and they are both fast, the fact that lamasu, liches, and skeletons are abysmally slow doesn't really matter.
I just mean that looking at their stats, the only area that lacks for them is initiative/movement, and it's not a lack that does them any harm. It is odd that you say that the lamasu don't "go out to fight," though. They're flyers, and their debuff works on adjacent enemies, so they really want to be in the thick of things.
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Maybe there should be more maniacs, but I would rather buff the other units than make more of them.
Well, the thing is that, generally speaking, they already have pretty decent stats, excepting HP. I like increasing growth because it kills many birds with one stone: it makes the Inferno more damaging, it makes them hardier by virtue of the extra units, it improves the numbers in their gating, it makes upgrading Elite dwellings in town more viable, etc.
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I don't really think of inferno being the swarm type, that's more undead.
But isn't that the whole point of Gating?  Or the "Proliferation" of the Breeder Mothers?
I think that "swarming" seems appropriate enough for these hellspawn. Remember the demon in Mark 5:9, for example: "Then Jesus asked him, 'What is your name?' 'My name is Legion,' he replied, 'for we are many.'" 
In any case, the numbers I was offering hardly constitute "swarming." Inasmuch as the Inferno currently has fewer units per week than any other faction, it would simply amount to bringing them in line with the rest (growth-wise). It's still a far cry from 15 Praetorians/week or 7 Vampire Lords, for example.
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted February 10, 2012 08:54 AM |
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Quote:
I like the damage::health in heroes 6. The longer battles are much more fun.
The long battles was one of the thing that gave me serious pain when I played the Demo. I remember the Sanctuary map, where I had 17 Kenshi or whatever they're called, and sure, they were not upgraded, but when they only killed 2 or 3 Praetorians in one attack, I was considerately disheartened. Endless brawls with my Kenshi killing 2 cores units, and the core units doing 5 damage in return each turn is not fun, it's just plain boring.
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What will happen now?
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Dave_Jame
Promising
Legendary Hero
I'm Faceless, not Brainless.
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posted February 11, 2012 12:37 AM |
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A question on JollyJoker
I do not have the time to read all the posts but.
You say that luck influence is lower, but did you take in account that unlike Magic and Might attack it boosts all units?
Magic Attack boosts Magic units and spells
Might Attack boosts Might units.
Luck boost all of them regardles af attack typ.
So if you take +1 to might attack, you give its bonus to ex. 5 out of your 7 creatures. In many factions even less.
While Luck gives all units (7 out of 7) a bigger chance to do 1,5x damage.
I do not want to justify the curent system, but wanted to know if you thought about this whyle making these statistics.
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I'm just a Mirror of your self.
We see, we look, we gather, we store, we teach.
We are many, and you can be one of us.
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odium
Known Hero
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posted February 11, 2012 01:16 AM |
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Edited by odium at 01:21, 11 Feb 2012.
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There were several people that took that into account in their mathematical models. Even though numbers didn't coincide (and there was a heated debate for this ) all of them confirmed JJ statement.
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Miru
Supreme Hero
A leaf in the river of time
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posted February 11, 2012 09:58 AM |
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Quote:
Quote:
I like the damage::health in heroes 6. The longer battles are much more fun.
The long battles was one of the thing that gave me serious pain when I played the Demo. I remember the Sanctuary map, where I had 17 Kenshi or whatever they're called, and sure, they were not upgraded, but when they only killed 2 or 3 Praetorians in one attack, I was considerately disheartened. Endless brawls with my Kenshi killing 2 cores units, and the core units doing 5 damage in return each turn is not fun, it's just plain boring.
Tank vs Tank isn't fun, but before the epic battle against the enemy which more or less determines who wins would be over in like 5 rounds, and mostly decided in the first 3 rounds. Normal creep battles are still usually a round or less, for a general town wide army its fairly well balanced.
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I wish I were employed by a stupendous paragraph, with capitalized English words and expressions.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted February 11, 2012 10:03 AM |
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Yes, I did. It's just that you need one point of each Might and Magic Attack to influence all units, just as Luck. Luck is one half Percent added damage with the added plus that it this half percent is added to ALL damage, that is, to the modified damage-
It has, however, the added MINUS, that you cannot rely on Luck, and therefore you cannot plan with it in more than a hypothetical sense, which means, that in reality the damage will be less than that because there will be involuntary overkill.
So what you compare is the effect of one Luck point with 2 Attack points. That is, we start out at 0.5% for Luck and 1.25% for 1 attack ppint. If we have 50 points of M&M attack, we are at 2.4% for attack, while Luck is, even if we consider that Luck is profiting from high attack values at 1.38 - but just because Attack is so high, so attack is still nearly doubly as good.
So Luck is, without doubt at most half as good as Attack.
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hobo2
Promising
Known Hero
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posted February 11, 2012 12:23 PM |
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Quote:
Yes, I did. It's just that you need one point of each Might and Magic Attack to influence all units, just as Luck. Luck is one half Percent added damage with the added plus that it this half percent is added to ALL damage, that is, to the modified damage-
It has, however, the added MINUS, that you cannot rely on Luck, and therefore you cannot plan with it in more than a hypothetical sense, which means, that in reality the damage will be less than that because there will be involuntary overkill.
So what you compare is the effect of one Luck point with 2 Attack points. That is, we start out at 0.5% for Luck and 1.25% for 1 attack ppint. If we have 50 points of M&M attack, we are at 2.4% for attack, while Luck is, even if we consider that Luck is profiting from high attack values at 1.38 - but just because Attack is so high, so attack is still nearly doubly as good.
So Luck is, without doubt at most half as good as Attack.
Your basic conclusion that Luck is crap is correct, but your explanation for why is basically completely wrong. Involuntary Overkill is a concern, but front-loaded damage reducing counterattacks is an equal concern in the other direction. Over the long haul, luck's random element is good exactly as often as it is bad. That's how fair random chances work. Then, because Luck affects both Might Attack and Magic Attack (and all three stats have equal cost), you shouldn't compare 1 Luck with 2 Attack, but instead 2 Luck with 1 Attack. The comparison is a 1% overall increase in damage from 2 points of Luck vs. a 1% increase in base damage before being raised to the 2.5 power for having 1 point of Magic Attack and 1 point of Might Attack.
And that is I believe the problem that Black Hole has. For some reason they don't seem to understand that 1% at the beginning of an equation is not at all the same as 1% at the end of the equation when you have exponents involved.
The equation is essentially:
{1 + (.01*A)}^2.5 * {1+.5*(0.1*D)}
And they seem to think that the fact that there's a .5 in front of the Destiny modifier cancels out the fact that it adds to both types of attacks. But the thing is that D is still a linear 1% and A is still a super quadratic 1%. At base zero, an increase in A represents +2.5% base damage and an increase in D represents only +1% base damage. At base attack and destiny 50, an increase in A represents an increase in damage of 5.77%, while an increase in D represents only a 2.76% increase in damage.
Basically the long and the short of it is that having used a non-integer exponential scaling as part of their damage calculation, the folks at Black Hole do not understand how it works. They are looking at half a percent adding to two things and 1% adding to one thing and concluding those are balanced even though those things are in no way equivalent.
And that's even before we get into the real kick in the nuts: which is that Might and Magic Attack skills of the hero add to base Warcry and Spell Effects, and Destiny only adds to damaging attacks. And the damaging attacks are for the most part the worst of the spell options.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted February 11, 2012 03:23 PM |
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Quote:
Your basic conclusion that Luck is crap is correct, but your explanation for why is basically completely wrong...
And that is I believe the problem that Black Hole has. For some reason they don't seem to understand that...
The thing that YOU don't seem to understand, that we have not been hired to put the game's workings on a mathematically sound foundation. WE have not the slightest clue what their idea of balance is, and the MAIN problem is that the primary stats are basically incongruent - you cannot really balance them in an absolute sense. The reason is, that Might and Magic attack affect different things in addition to simple creature damage, while the effect of defense values is even more difficult to assess because it's worth is based on assumptions.
My main intention has been to make an assessment of the Luck skill, and what you can safely say is, that a point of Luck skill adds .5% to all-around creature/Hero-attack damage.
Insofar, that this includes a bonus to all skills and attack boni the hero gets in the course of the game, it means, that Luck gets better, the better the REST of the hero is, which in turn means, that it MIGHT make sense to take Luck LATER in the game - but that option isn't there. The hero picks "automatically".
The same thing cannot be said about attack. Attack gets better, not with time, but CONSECUTIVELY: You MUST PICK attack, so that your next attack pick has a slightly higher effect.
Since it's BH's task to get the balance right, the only thing that needs to be shown is, that Luck is generally underpowered AND the general Luck characteristics are in open contradiction to the fact that Inferno needs it from the beginning (meaning that Inferno needs to boost an inferior skill in order to profit from their racial).
Now, whether you like it or not, what I compare, adding a point of Might and a point of Magic attack to cover a boost for the whole army is a good move to find something like a base. We CAN say, that when the hero gains 1 point Might and one point Magic attack, army/Hero-sttack damage has gained 2.5%, whereas when we get 2 points of Luck we got a 2% probability to add 50% or 51.25% respectively, if we add keep the two attack points in mind, which means, the first two Luck points are worth 1.025%.
The rest is basically irrelevant because skills that influence damage are profiting from both Luck AND Attack. EXCEPT where the skills are boosting things like Mana and the EFFICIENCY of skills, which means, that Luck is WORSE than what we get when comparing basic effects.
If we follow the line through hero development, at 50 attack 2 points are 4.7%, while 2 points of Luck at that stage are at 2.76%. However, this is JUST to be seen in relation to the attack skill - if you have no attack skill, but more defense, than Luck is worth LESS.
Now, since we know what happens at each level-gain, you can basically determine the worth of every single point of Luck when it is given, but it will never be better than 60% in any halfway normal game, and that is ignoring the additional benefits of attack points.
I think, this means we can safely say that Luck is AT LEAST only half as good as attack, and more isn't necessary.
Oh, and front-loaded damage reducing counterattacks does not in any way make up for overkill losses. What I am looking at is the fact that the effect of Luck isn't plannable. And since it isn't plannable, it means, the actual net effect will ALWAYS be less then the statistical percentage (that is, you will not get 50%*Luck/100 damage, but less, because you cannot make full use of it).
Lastly, we should not forget that it wouldn't matter at all how good Luck is compared to the rest, if a) Luck was the same for everyone and b) Inferno wouldn't need it for the racial to work.
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Miru
Supreme Hero
A leaf in the river of time
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posted February 11, 2012 10:15 PM |
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Quote:
Quote:
Your basic conclusion that Luck is crap is correct, but your explanation for why is basically completely wrong...
And that is I believe the problem that Black Hole has. For some reason they don't seem to understand that...
The thing that YOU don't seem to understand, that we have not been hired to put the game's workings on a mathematically sound foundation. WE have not the slightest clue what their idea of balance is, and the MAIN problem is that the primary stats are basically incongruent - you cannot really balance them in an absolute sense. The reason is, that Might and Magic attack affect different things in addition to simple creature damage, while the effect of defense values is even more difficult to assess because it's worth is based on assumptions.
This is a thread discussing balance. How can you expect him to do anything other than mathematically show an aspect of the game is imbalanced? And while you cannot perfectly balance them, you can make them balanced on average, as opposed to now where luck is consistently worse.
Quote:
My main intention has been to make an assessment of the Luck skill, and what you can safely say is, that a point of Luck skill adds .5% to all-around creature/Hero-attack damage.
Insofar, that this includes a bonus to all skills and attack boni the hero gets in the course of the game, it means, that Luck gets better, the better the REST of the hero is, which in turn means, that it MIGHT make sense to take Luck LATER in the game - but that option isn't there. The hero picks "automatically".
The same thing cannot be said about attack. Attack gets better, not with time, but CONSECUTIVELY: You MUST PICK attack, so that your next attack pick has a slightly higher effect.
1st point, irrelevant. In the same way the might makes luck better, luck makes might better. 2nd, The way to fix luck is not allow people to pick their stats and then never pick luck until late game, but to make luck about as good as might.
Quote:
Since it's BH's task to get the balance right, the only thing that needs to be shown is, that Luck is generally underpowered AND the general Luck characteristics are in open contradiction to the fact that Inferno needs it from the beginning (meaning that Inferno needs to boost an inferior skill in order to profit from their racial).
You just said "we have not been hired to put the game's workings on a mathematically sound foundation" when hobo did just that.
Quote:
[the exact same math showing that luck is bad that we have all seeing since page 2]
I think, this means we can safely say that Luck is AT LEAST only half as good as attack, and more isn't necessary.
We already know this.
Quote:
Lastly, we should not forget that it wouldn't matter at all how good Luck is compared to the rest, if a) Luck was the same for everyone and b) Inferno wouldn't need it for the racial to work.
That is a terrible proposal. Why don't we just make everything in the entire game the same then? It would be balanced, but it would be boring as snow.
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I wish I were employed by a stupendous paragraph, with capitalized English words and expressions.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted February 11, 2012 10:54 PM |
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted February 11, 2012 10:55 PM |
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So basically, what it boils down to at this point is to make Luck/Leadership points add 2 % chance to trigger instead of 1 % (or conversely, give 2 at each gain), and to increase Lucky attack damage to somewhere between +60% and +75% instead of +50 %, and we're already a good step better with the balance in this regard?
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What will happen now?
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hobo2
Promising
Known Hero
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posted February 11, 2012 11:27 PM |
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Quote:
So basically, what it boils down to at this point is to make Luck/Leadership points add 2 % chance to trigger instead of 1 % (or conversely, give 2 at each gain), and to increase Lucky attack damage to somewhere between +60% and +75% instead of +50 %, and we're already a good step better with the balance in this regard?
That would be a lot better, yeah. It's problematic because the damage equations are based on a non-integer super-quadratic progression, which is so complex that even the designers clearly don't know how it works. That whole piece of the engine needs to be scrapped and replaced with something more intuitive so that people can get a feel for where the cutoffs are or even do the math in their heads. That is obviously not going to happen with non-integer power functions.
But yes, if a point of Destiny gave a 2% chance of doing 60% more damage instead of what it does now, then Fortune's Chosen would be a better choice of a spent skill point than buying Might Attack as a Tears hero. Which it presently is not.
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Miru
Supreme Hero
A leaf in the river of time
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posted February 12, 2012 12:22 AM |
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I'm a big fan of exponential growth. e^rt, 's where its at.
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I wish I were employed by a stupendous paragraph, with capitalized English words and expressions.
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hobo2
Promising
Known Hero
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posted February 12, 2012 08:14 AM |
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Quote:
I'm a big fan of exponential growth. e^rt, 's where its at.
For exponential growth there is no "cutoff" in which attack power becomes better or worse. If damage doubles every 20 attack power you have on them (for example), it will also halve every 20 defense power the enemy gains and so on and so forth. Every point of attack or defense is exactly as proportionately useful as the one before it. That's great for "fairness", and a lot better than what we have now.
But for a strategy game, you probably actually want a system with break points. For example: in King's Bounty, having excess Attack gives you a linear percentage damage bonus and having excess Defense subtracts a linear percentage from the amount coming in. This means that while the proportional bonus from having a small attack bulge on your opponent's defense is bigger than the proportional bonus from having a small defense bulge over your opponent's attack - the proportional benefit of Attack falls as you get more and more of it, while the proportional benefit of Defense gets more and more. That kind of tradeoff is intuitive and makes for usefully different decisions to make as far as investment in skills goes.
On an exponential scale, you might as well just put everything into Attack, because the proportional benefits are always the same and the absolute benefits are bigger and bigger the more you have.
TL;DR: for a game it is probably a bad idea to make perfectly scaling exponential functions. Not because it's hard to do, but because it is actually advantageous for a game to have breakpoints in it so that people can learn where those breakpoints are and utilize them.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted February 12, 2012 10:13 AM |
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Quote:
So basically, what it boils down to at this point is to make Luck/Leadership points add 2 % chance to trigger instead of 1 % (or conversely, give 2 at each gain), and to increase Lucky attack damage to somewhere between +60% and +75% instead of +50 %, and we're already a good step better with the balance in this regard?
No, that would NOT be a lot better, because it would "halve" the distance to 100%. Highest Luck value would be 50 then, and it would be too easy to reach Luck values of 60, 70%.
There is the additional problem that, while BAD Luck is part of the game mechanics, it's virtually non-existant, which is silly, because it leaves out a chance of losing 1/3 (!) of the damage, when your Luck value is negative. However, there is just one skill in the game that reduces Luck (plus two racials).
Note, that the problem with BAD MORALE is much more pronounced than with Bad Luck (damage shouldn't be halved, but lose a third): If you gain 50% for good morale, what should you lose for bad one? One tird of your move and damage?
It would be better to just double the gain of a level-up (give 2 points for Luck and Moral, when you get a level-up in Luck/Moral). This would also mean that the starting values for Heroes and creatures would be adjusted as well (in the sense, that a unit starting with 10 Luck would actually have gto invest only 5 "points" of Luck to get there, instead of 10), so other stats could be strengthened, while the Heroes would start with double their value in Moral and Leadership, while you could reduce the amount of Luck/leadership level-ups for heroes.
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The right way to deal with Luck and Moral has been questionable all along. It is clear, that the most important thing is the gravity of the effect. Mathematically it makes no difference whether you have a 10% chance to do 100% more damage (or get a full turn) or a 50% damage to do 20% more damage, but since the absolute number of trigger chances in any given battle is limited, if the effect is too big and the trigger chance too low it becomes indeed a game of luck.
On the other hand, once chances are too big, things become too plannable. Once the chances are better than 50%, it's suddenly not Luck when you get it, but bad luck, when you don't.
So basically and realistically, Luck and Moral must be geared so that it would be difficult to have better than 50% chances (without spells).
Generally, the +50% regulation (and conversely a -33% regulation) seems pretty good, and the actual Luck values reached are good as well. It's just, that units/heroes in general "pay" too much to get there, and this becomes obvious when looking at Inferno whose racial depends on it. So for the Inferno there should wither be some way to boost Luck and/or get points for their racial with an additional mechanism, like Haven.
Let me close this with, saying again, that there is no way to mathematically pinpoint the effects exactly, which should be clear when looking at Moral. You cannot determine the exact "value" of a primary skill point in comparison with another. You can omly try to adjust the system so that it is halfway smooth on one hand and halfway balanced on the other.
Which it's not: For the amount of complexity involved NOW compared with earlier versions, we should be able to get a much better balance than we actually have.
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seingeist
Promising
Adventuring Hero
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posted February 12, 2012 12:10 PM |
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Quote:
The right way to deal with Luck and Moral has been questionable all along. It is clear, that the most important thing is the gravity of the effect. Mathematically it makes no difference whether you have a 10% chance to do 100% more damage (or get a full turn) or a 50% damage to do 20% more damage, but since the absolute number of trigger chances in any given battle is limited, if the effect is too big and the trigger chance too low it becomes indeed a game of luck.
On the other hand, once chances are too big, things become too plannable. Once the chances are better than 50%, it's suddenly not Luck when you get it, but bad luck, when you don't.
So basically and realistically, Luck and Moral must be geared so that it would be difficult to have better than 50% chances (without spells).
Generally, the +50% regulation (and conversely a -33% regulation) seems pretty good, and the actual Luck values reached are good as well. It's just, that units/heroes in general "pay" too much to get there, and this becomes obvious when looking at Inferno whose racial depends on it. So for the Inferno there should wither be some way to boost Luck and/or get points for their racial with an additional mechanism, like Haven.
Let me close this with, saying again, that there is no way to mathematically pinpoint the effects exactly, which should be clear when looking at Moral. You cannot determine the exact "value" of a primary skill point in comparison with another. You can omly try to adjust the system so that it is halfway smooth on one hand and halfway balanced on the other.
Which it's not: For the amount of complexity involved NOW compared with earlier versions, we should be able to get a much better balance than we actually have.
I think you're right that the current frequency of luck triggering is not bad at all. Late-game Inferno triggers with good regularity (especially boosted by Mass Heroism on a Tears hero). Granted, still not quite frequently enough to make early-turn gating reliable, but there are better ways to solve that problem.
In any case, it would seem that what is far-and-away the best and simplest way to balance Luck is to increase the damage bonus. Keep the 1%/point and all creature and hero values the same, but increase the luck damage bonus to +75% or even +100% as it used to be. In that case, the average bonus to damage from Attack vs. Luck would be much closer and more balanced than it is now.
As for the Inferno racial, I agree with you that dual triggers is the best way to go. Dealing damage seems to me the most appropriate additional trigger for the racial.
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