The "Mono Stacking" Problem

[Grakor Spiriteye]

I highly doubt that the person adding body type and voice options to faction creation (one of which was confirmed to be a mod they're simply merging into the game) is the same person who makes the balancing decisions.

 

[seperamos]

The unit tiers are fine, we just need MORE units available for each tier, and certainly more options for special units that start from t2 to elite t4 t5 status.

It makes sense for t1 units to have lower baselines stats than t2, than t3, all the way up to t5. There are, or should be, multiple ways to increase the power of t1s with conventional and unconventional strategies and tactics.

Swarming, swarming with counter weapons, enchantments that increase baseline stats for certain tiers, enchants that enable terrain advantage, minor transformations and major transformations to buff friendly units or debuff enemy units. There may be other ways i haven't mentioned here, feel free to bring up these strategies.

This game needs more depth in the war strategy and units available. I want to increase my immersion in this game and see this series and studio take on Creative Assembly's and Blizzard's recent abysmal products and offer strategy players better developed alternatives to total war and warcraft.

 

[Kitschy]

"High tier spam" is - more than anything else - a function of how fast/easy you can bring them to the table, because it should be clear that there must be "work" necessary to make lower tiers as viable than higher tiers, since a "higher tier" is by definition "better" - more powerful - than a "lower tier". Making a lower tier viable, on the other hand, must not be too easy either, for the same reason.
The situation we have is, that the same enchantment that will buff a low-tier unit will also buff a high-tier unit of comparable class. If you have a low-tier unit and you research an enchantment - fine. After that, if you get a higher-tier unit, it already comes with said enchantment.

"Strategy" is determined by which Tomes you picked, not by the tier of the unit you deploy, because the latter is a function of the former. That said, whether a unit loses viability or not depends on the amount of units you actually need, not on the units themselves. It is clear that when you need only a handful of units, let's say two dozens, most units will NOT be viable anymore once a certain point is reached. In fact, you WILL want to produce the latest gains (otherwise you wouldn't have to haave researched them) and if you only need a handful of units anyway, you can bang them out pretty fast, especially when they are produced and not summoned. This would look VERY different when you would need a lot more units, say, a hundred. Or, if only two or three dozen were needed, if units would take a lot more time and resources to produce/summon.
Combined arms as an effect is somewhat limited due to the stack size and the amount of units you can field per battle. It's aLso pretty implausible what any T1 could field to make its presence worth more for the 5 T3s and T4s in the stack than a 6th. It's basically the other way round: One T5 in a stack making 5 T1s and T2s a lot stronger makes a lot of sense - but that still needs that T5.

No it is not, it is a fundamental issue of vertical balancing where obsolescence is baked in. This always leads in to static predetermined roster of units in the end game that players is forced to pick not chooses based on strategic goals.

Which tome you pick is determined by what this tome provides to enchant your strategy of which units are a big aspect. Good example is Tome of Stormborne, when decisive factor of it being picked or not are T4 Strombringers (another is Naga transformation), if those are removed from the tome it becomes a lot less desirable.

Again no, when it comes to unit viability and amount of said units. Unit does not become more viable if you can field more of it when it fails to produce results in combat. Viability is directly connected with unit performance in combat, this includes survivability plus utility that any given unit brings to the table and how those two combine to achieve set objectives.
In other words it doesn't matter how many scouts you can produce or field in combat when they die in droves without achieving anything.

We need to be able to beat a unit of the same tier by countering it and a unit that is 1 tier higher should be matched in power.
This will ensure that with proper unit selection and army compositions you can run units that are 1 tier lower and thus cheaper.
By doing this you will eventually beat your opponent by a simple war of resources if they do not adapt and change up their units.
That's what proper gameplay looks like and that's how you keep lower tier units valid for a longer period of time than currently.

I don't know, wouldn't this depend on the counter itself. Like one type of counter is unit type - spears vs cav, but another is damage type - fire vs undead. So if the counter is unit + damage type like spears with fire enchant vs undead cav should it be even more than 1 tier?

 

[Codyksp]

The unit tiers are fine, we just need MORE units available for each tier, and certainly more options for special units that start from t2 to elite t4 t5 status.

Having more units will not help so long as enchantment stacking exists and unit counters are poorly designed.
If those two issues aren't addressed first, adding more units will not do enough to solve any issues we have.

Swarming, swarming with counter weapons, enchantments that increase baseline stats for certain tiers, enchants that enable terrain advantage, minor transformations and major transformations to buff friendly units or debuff enemy units. There may be other ways i haven't mentioned here, feel free to bring up these strategies.

Swarm tactics will never exist in this game because combat is capped out at 18v18 battles.
If you lose the battle 18v0 every time, you will not achieve anything. You'll just end up losing.

Unless you're going to lock your opponent into 5 back-to-back battles, hoping to whittle them down.
And even in that scenario, the units can be healed back to full HP before you are able to deal damage.
You'd have to kill 1 or 2 units every time just to make such a tactic work. But it's still a boring slog.

I highly doubt that the person adding body type and voice options to faction creation (one of which was confirmed to be a mod they're simply merging into the game) is the same person who makes the balancing decisions.

Maybe not. But you're still pulling away resources from something else that could've been infinitely more useful imo.

I don't know, wouldn't this depend on the counter itself. Like one type of counter is unit type - spears vs cav, but another is damage type - fire vs undead. So if the counter is unit + damage type like spears with fire enchant vs undead cav should it be even more than 1 tier?

In that scenario, yes. Like 1,5 tiers or even 2 tiers. But this is an entirely different discussion tbh.
I feel that weaknesses of -4 are absolutely too high and make certain units unplayable garbage.
Every weakness (and strength) should be changed to -2 and +2. Ethereal can be +1 DEF as well.
Furthermore, debuffs like Wet should also be -2. There is no excuse for the current version of it.

As example, all of the Constructs are just bad. Pick Tome of Evocation and GG steamroll them.
If you want to be really nasty you can also pick Stormborne, with or without Stormbringers.

-4 Inherent + -3 Lightning Torrent + -4 Wet with literally 0 ways to compensate for this weakness.
At best there's Warding Metals, but this only works vs Magic. Not vs Physical Melee or Ranged.
Tome of Evocation by itself (the enchantments and world spell) are enough to stomp Constructs.
Heck, simply having 1 or 2 Mage heroes and Lightning Blades is probably plenty to win every battle.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Swarm tactics will never exist in this game because combat is capped out at 18v18 battles.

Swarm tactics in AoW means in-battle summoning from unit abilities rather than player spells and bonus units like the Houndmaster brings.

It's just not enough because neither Houndmasters or the things they generate are beefy enough and primal spirits are maybe a bit slow because of needign a 5 stack to come out, but something that worked like Echo Walkers that brought in a temporary copy of itself with its rank bonuses and enchantments on cooldown would have an easier time making value as a mass strategy (as Echo Walkers themselves often do in PF).

 

[Kitschy]

Swarm tactics in AoW means in-battle summoning from unit abilities rather than player spells and bonus units like the Houndmaster brings.

It's just not enough because neither Houndmasters or the things they generate are beefy enough and primal spirits are maybe a bit slow because of needign a 5 stack to come out, but something that worked like Echo Walkers that brought in a temporary copy of itself with its rank bonuses and enchantments on cooldown would have an easier time making value as a mass strategy (as Echo Walkers themselves often do in PF).

Also Spider Mommies and to some extent ES Umbral armies if you could get them going. With Spider Mommies + Ritualist you are running around with a stack that has a stack+ in it's pocked, all of it is more a gimmick tho. (also battle maps were not made for this, those are too small for so many units at once)

 

[seperamos]

There is also the multi-stack swarming scenarios where you bring 6 stacks against an opponent's 3 stacks, wear them down with chaff and disposable heroes, then hit them with the doomstack in the same turn.

 

[Jolly Joker]

No it is not, it is a fundamental issue of vertical balancing where obsolescence is baked in. This always leads in to static predetermined roster of units in the end game that players is forced to pick not chooses based on strategic goals.

Which tome you pick is determined by what this tome provides to enchant your strategy of which units are a big aspect. Good example is Tome of Stormborne, when decisive factor of it being picked or not are T4 Strombringers (another is Naga transformation), if those are removed from the tome it becomes a lot less desirable.

Again no, when it comes to unit viability and amount of said units. Unit does not become more viable if you can field more of it when it fails to produce results in combat. Viability is directly connected with unit performance in combat, this includes survivability plus utility that any given unit brings to the table and how those two combine to achieve set objectives.
In other words it doesn't matter how many scouts you can produce or field in combat when they die in droves without achieving anything.

It's actually pretty simple. Units will keep useful, if there is a place for them. If you need a certain number and you can replace them all in a reasonable time then all other units become obsolete. ALL other units, including the ones your army is actually consisting of.
If you cannot replace them (all), units will keep useful because you need the numbers. In other words, a Scout is better than no unit at all.

 

[Bootymcboots]

Since the system isn't suited to having massive battles where there a hundred units and one side can more easily field massive armies while another side can field its elites, and we've decided to wearing them down through multiple engagement isn't an options... what's the alternative exactly?

Maybe a system where every units can be recruited at a higher tier? So if you don't have a Tier V caster you want, you can just recruit your Tier II Pyromancer at Tier V and it gets the suitable numerical bonuses needed to compete? I imagine even then people would complain because it wouldn't have the depth of abilities that other units do but it could work, I guess.

 

[GloatingSwine]

There is also the multi-stack swarming scenarios where you bring 6 stacks against an opponent's 3 stacks, wear them down with chaff and disposable heroes, then hit them with the doomstack in the same turn.

Multi-stack swarming is less effective though because of the ability to buff out the damage at the start of the next battle. Unless the chaff stacks can hard concentrate on some units to actually score kills, which is hard when they're fighting uphill tier wise and the opponent can just interpose units to stop them ganging up effectively. (This is also a consequence of ranged mostly being bad, in Planetfall with low tier units almost all being versatile ranged units they can gang up a lot easier to take down a higher tier).

 

[Jolly Joker]

Why would you research units (or actually ANYTHING) that isn't an improvement? That's the whole point of researching. And in the course of that stuff becomes obsolete. It wouldn't become obsolete (as fast), if the enchantments you have for a low-tier unit wouldn't work on a sufficiently higher-tier of the same class.

 

[Thiend]

The only way I've ever swarmed a superior enemy is with Death Magic + Totem of the Wild.

But that's not a "superior numbers, worse quality" tradeoff, it's an "infinite numbers, on top of whatever else" one, and just wins.

 

[Arcantos_the_Storyteller]

... So what's even being discussed anymore exactly? Nearly 60 pages in and so many conflicting statements, its impossible to keep track of what people consider to be an issue and why anymore.

 

[Thiend]

... So what's even being discussed anymore exactly? Nearly 60 pages in and so many conflicting statements, its impossible to keep track of what people consider to be an issue and why anymore.

Somehow it's not quite actually repetitive enough nor argumentative enough to be shut down.

Perhaps the devs will eventually extract something useful here to rework the system a bit. Perhaps not.

I think it's broadly agreed that monostacking is boring and nonstrategic. But that's basically it, there's very little agreement on what to do about it and if I was a dev, I probably wouldn't want to touch an issue people are passionate yet inconclusive enough to go on for 60 pages about. This entire thread is probably pointless because if they try to tackle the problem, they'll surely do it with their own plan not found here... but then again, this thread highlights the problem to increase the chances of such a solution being developed.

 

[GloatingSwine]

... So what's even being discussed anymore exactly? Nearly 60 pages in and so many conflicting statements, its impossible to keep track of what people consider to be an issue and why anymore.

The thread is about as closely on topic as any long running thread on a web forum can be hoped to be.

Late game is typified by mono-unit stacks, mostly a racial tome tier 4, people are gnawing on the causes of that because there are several.

 

[seperamos]

Somehow it's not quite actually repetitive enough nor argumentative enough to be shut down.

Perhaps the devs will eventually extract something useful here to rework the system a bit. Perhaps not.

I think it's broadly agreed that monostacking is boring and nonstrategic. But that's basically it, there's very little agreement on what to do about it and if I was a dev, I probably wouldn't want to touch an issue people are passionate yet inconclusive enough to go on for 60 pages about. This entire thread is probably pointless because if they try to tackle the problem, they'll surely do it with their own plan not found here... but then again, this thread highlights the problem to increase the chances of such a solution being developed.

We all agreed each culture needs more units with viable counters and weapons.

 

[Thiend]

We all agreed each culture needs more units with viable counters and weapons.

I could have sworn people disagreed with that, but if not...

Ladies and gentlemen, we got him*


*"him" being a solution.

 

[Arcantos_the_Storyteller]

The thread is about as closely on topic as any long running thread on a web forum can be hoped to be.

Late game is typified by mono-unit stacks, mostly a racial tome tier 4, people are gnawing on the causes of that because there are several.

Hmmm... that really hasn't been the case for me in my experience? But I do tend to make sure I have a melee/ranged split in my army composition, and I don't know if that is correct or not?

But even then, having a duo-unit stack isn't exactly the biggest change as its still the same units used over and over again over anything else.

 

[Kitschy]

It's actually pretty simple. Units will keep useful, if there is a place for them. If you need a certain number and you can replace them all in a reasonable time then all other units become obsolete. ALL other units, including the ones your army is actually consisting of.
If you cannot replace them (all), units will keep useful because you need the numbers. In other words, a Scout is better than no unit at all.

They don't have to become obsolete when different units provide different possibility for more varied strategies. With scouts example it is actually better to not have them at all in combat scenario in any significant numbers 'cause as soon as they will start dying in droves (and they will) it will trigger a mass rout. They are essentially a negative morale time bomb vs your own units that you brought and paid for.

Since the system isn't suited to having massive battles where there a hundred units and one side can more easily field massive armies while another side can field its elites, and we've decided to wearing them down through multiple engagement isn't an options... what's the alternative exactly?

Maybe a system where every units can be recruited at a higher tier? So if you don't have a Tier V caster you want, you can just recruit your Tier II Pyromancer at Tier V and it gets the suitable numerical bonuses needed to compete? I imagine even then people would complain because it wouldn't have the depth of abilities that other units do but it could work, I guess.

Give or take something like that, but imo it should stop at T3 max stats. We kinda have this with medals to some extent, it just need some extra oomph in a way of BST and Hero of the Meek.(or at least that is my take)

 

[aerothgow]

There is also the multi-stack swarming scenarios where you bring 6 stacks against an opponent's 3 stacks, wear them down with chaff and disposable heroes, then hit them with the doomstack in the same turn.

You cannot swarm too much because of upkeep. I've tried this many times. 3 cities cannot support a huge number of stacks.