Fixes we would like to see the most in a bug/balance-fixing patch?

[Efyian]

Just thought I'd create a post here, hopefully the devs will take a look and implement at least some of the changes gathered in this thread!
This is not a request for new features thread, but one hoping for balancing/bug fixes

These are the things I found so far:

BUGS:
- Casting Raise land underneath water units has those water units now on land. If you use it on a transport cog, it doesn't turn the unit back to its normal state either. And having ships on land is just... odd.
- Memory leaks! Game slowdown is a really huge issue now.
- Creating a movement highway by building a building, moving a unit on top of it, then cancelling construction and building the next step ahead. Well it can be considered a strategy too, but its still odd.
- Similar to above, building and razing to remove forests. Could also be considered a featured strategy of course (its great for clearing maps that are heavily forested).
- Flying units should not take damage from lava.
- A level 5 town that drops below level 5 (e.g. 4 or 3 after getting captured and re-captured) can still produce settlers.

BALANCE:
a) Casting Lowering land into the sea / raiising land into mountains is OP when done on an enemy town areas as it gets rid of the special resources/buildings. These spells shouldn't have any effect on spots with buildings on them (whether yours or the enemy player's)

b) Increase mana cost of all summoning spells. Favour of Fervus and Grum-gog especially should be 30 to 40 mana. Spirit wolves should see an increase as well (although this change can be optional).

c) Undead are way OP because:
- Green bats combo with any unit makes grabbing lairs easy
- Flying galleus coming out of level 2 villages is way too good for clearing the map of lairs. Except for greater fire elementals, nothing can kill them (the only other unit that can damage them is hunters). The air dockyard must require a level 5 town. You can give the flying galleus better stats to compensate, but they are currently really overpowered (the only thing that is effective vs them is another player using fireballs to kill them easily, since they only have 20hp).
I'm playing impossible difficultly vs Dremers with Favor of Fervus and mana vault to start. Turn 33, I'm sitting on 1300gold, 700 mana, and 11 settlements with an army consisting of 7 bears, and 13 units. You can guess how many lairs I grabbed in early game by using this spell.
The army, incidentally, is: 2 skeleton archers, 1 skeleton warrior, 1 grand stubborn master, 1 high healer (from lair), 7 flying galleus, 1 stubborn knight.
Oh, I've also taken out 3 dremer forts already too. These flying galleus annihilate them with demolisher trait. Summon a bear to draw the dremer warrior off the fort, demolish lair with flying galleus, finish off dremer warrior with flying galleus.

d) All stuns need major rebalancing. The units that stun are Koatl warlocks and Iril bowmasters. The spell that stuns is ice prison.
All 3 are completely overpowered as it locks down a unit, and stops any friendly unit from moving into his spot to launch an attack too.
Anyways, the stun spell of Koatl warlocks, and Iril bowmasters single handedly make Koatl village / Arathi elves OP. They shouldn't even have a stun spell. Replace it with an attack that reduces death/ranged resist for 2 turns?

e) Magic towers, forts, and bat forts are quite game-breaking in their current state. There is nothing like having magic towers show up after 2 turns and start shooting troops, with more easily replacing them. They also prevent enemy troops from healing when beside a non-finished one, and they cannot be stepped on top of unless you can somehow end up on top of it with your last movement point (very buggy).
My suggested fix would be as follows:
- a constructing military building should be attackable (to reduce its ability to do damage once built). They should not stop units from healing, and enemy units should be able to step on these buildings to disable them. Finally, if this type of building is destroyed or razed, the settlement should lose something like 500 population (a major penalty?).

 

[Fenryder]

What should happen to boats under raised land? I've used greater raise land to kill off whole fleets..the roleplay aspect of a lake suddenly becoming a desert and all the boats being stuck is nifty..but mechanic wise its quite powerful.
People have been complaining about the summoning spells forever. I think folks forget they are x mana PLUS y mana per turn to maintain. Maybe it would be better to increase the mana per turn rather than the use cost.
I'd like to see the AI stop attacking with units in cog form.
I'd like to see the terraforming spells come later..I always seem to start the game with them in my random wheel..how about using the quest system to grand access in order to have them appear in spell research. I've fond the quest system to be simple and effective for what it does yet it has gotten very few upgrades as the DLC has come out.

Actually shouldnt these all go in suggestions?

 

[Dalwin]

Some of the stuff mentioned above is just ways the human can take advantage of the AI. I am not concerned about those. Doing that is not much different from playing the game on easy mode.

The things I would like to see in a patch focused on fixes rather than content is as follows:

UI enhancements
specifically shortcut keys

AI enhancements
Have AI focus on building fewer but stronger units instead of flooding the map with fodder
Have AI stop declaring war with you when you share no border and have no easy way to reach each other. You just ignore it and several turns later he offers peace along with some concessions.

Crashes
Under 1.3 the only crashes I would see were in multiplayer. Maybe once every 40 turns or so. Since 1.4 I am also getting them in single player, again once every 40-50 turns. I am seeing no signs of the game bogging down or of memory leaks. The crashes are just as frequent at the beginning of the game on a small map as late game on a large map. There are no errors at all. Just a couple seconds of black screen followed by desktop. It always happens after hitting the End Turn button. This is Win7 64 bit.

 

[player1 fanatic]

Maybe it would be better to increase the mana per turn rather than the use cost.

That would make spells like spirit wolf even more like "fireball" replacement then they are.
I already use wolfs mostly for quick damage (25 is cheaper then most damage spells), hoping for them to die, so I don't need to maintain them with 6 mana per turn.

 

[Efyian]

Some of the stuff mentioned above is just ways the human can take advantage of the AI. I am not concerned about those. Doing that is not much different from playing the game on easy mode.

The issue, however, is that early-game of MP play is heavily based on beating the AI. Specifically, clearing out lairs on the map for minimum cost and maximum gain, so you can also settle where the lairs have been cleared. So balance fixes are important, especially if you want some tournament play
I've done a few test runs on SP.
With Fervus, you can clear out most of the map of lairs within 10-15 turns (and you don't have to troop from your capital, meaning more settlers/cities).
Without, it normally takes around 30-45 (and you have to troop a few units from your capital, meaning less settlers/cities).

When you a 20+ turn advantage in terms of speed of clearing, it allows you to do a lot more too... like clear out an other world portal too, or get ready to invade the enemy by throwing a temple unit at them with the gold you earned.

Also, favor of grum-gog rats cost... 1 food upkeep.
Favor of Fervus bears (which are also really powerful combat units with 30hp and 10 attack) cost... 3 food upkeep.
Neither use mana. So you can keep spamming it as long as you built a mana building or 2 (these spells currently cost 13mana, and 15 mana respectively to cast )

Finally...
demon portals give around 130-180 gold
treant fields give around 250-300.
dragon nests give 320-380 (I think, with ~300 gold too).
bear dens seem to give 30-50 mana occasionally too.

As long as you pay attention to the lairs around and use the summons wisely, mana is no issue whatsoever. Hence the 1300g, 700mana game by turn 33 I mentioned above. And I was spamming spells as much as I could (including 3 fireballs to get rid of a greater fire elemental).

 

[Efyian]

A few more things found...

Bug:
- Fist of Krom will instant-kill any stunned unit. It seemed like the Koatl warlock stun applied, rather than just frozen spells (or at least, it did on a dremer mage. Not sure if it was luck or what, but it definitely wasn't down to 16hp when I casted fist of krom on it and it died).
- The Shaman hero's ability (the one that gives +1 movement and +3 regen for 3 turns) doesn't seem to use any movement. You can cast it, move, and attack all in 1 turn.
- Alliance: allied units on your buildings will deactivate them?

Balance
- Cities should not raze instantly. It is especially powerful vs dremers in stopping them from expanding. My suggestion would be:
level 1: instant raze
level 2: instant raze with settler
level 3+: each turn will reduce the level of the city by 1, and when it hits level 2, it will be razed (with settler).

 

[Darkwing88]

Guys its not a competetive multiplayer game - give it a relax. if you exploit combo - good for you. Just dont use it if it spoils fun for you.

 

[Zythran]

it seems that the 2 hexes special attack of the phoenix (elven helia unit) dind't work anymore on the second hex

 

[bh213]

alt-tab slow typing problem. Do alt-tab and try to type something in gtalk (probably other apps too) - typing speed is a character per second or so

 

[johnmedgla]

The Elven Archer/Sharpshooter ability to give units extra movement instead heals the caster to full and ends the turn. Surprised and confused me earlier.

 

[1475674553]

Healer's shield ability, which can be gained by High Healer Lord, has wrong description - it says it increases melee and ranged resistance, while in reality it gives resistance to elemental and death(?) damage. Dremer Mages' ability has a piece of code instead of description. Harbors keep functioning after they have been closed by rise land spells.
Minor changes that would perhaps help SP balance:
Clerics and healers should be made more useful.
Rangers' Guild should give a small food income in order to make it less useless.
Krolm's Housecarls should be made less useless too - perhaps death immunity and 50% death damage would help?
Make summoned units cost mana to maintain and have them disappear when mana runs out - and perhaps do the same with regular units and money.
Give avatars small retinue of appropriate monsters and temple units - they don't pose much of a challenge right now.
Move Mind Leash from Ithil(?) Bowmasters to Warlocks and replace it with poisoned arrows or some such.
Spirit damage-dealing spells should be spread out more - right now only Lunord and Fervus have them, and they are right next to each other on the circle. Perhaps Dauros could get some?

 

[Efyian]

The Elven Archer/Sharpshooter ability to give units extra movement instead heals the caster to full and ends the turn. Surprised and confused me earlier.

It heals, and increases their movement to 7 for the following 2 turns. You want to cast it when your elvish archer has 0.5 or 1 movement left

 

[Efyian]

And 2 more...

BUG:
- anytime you cast a global enchantment, you will also get that 'A rival has cast a global enchantment' popup (minor bug, but it really shouldn't occur).

BALANCE:
- Lands of life. Too good. Low mana cost, 100% food bonus and troop healing. It needs to be nerfed. At most, it should be 40% food production boost, and even that is OP, really.

 

[unmerged(492719)]

Pretty much all of Efyian's points are valid, sadly. I am fine with them focusing on the SP experience for now, since the beta for multiplayer is just that. But they should still be considered. Flying units are annoyingly abusive in how they work, since they are immune to 90% of the enemies you will find in the first 40 turns of the game. Bats even worse, since they have enough vision/speed to both move and keep safe from threats.

Summoned units just FEEL wrong in how they are used. A Strong Rat is only a little weaker than most other melee units, but is incredibly cheap and easy to produce, allowing you to scout and capture early game resources with ease.

I would suggest that summoning spells should cost about double what they do now, or have substantially greater cost when not cast within your empire. The idea of using mana as a surrogate for money doesn't really work, since these troops are cast wherever you want, and generally in a much shorter amount of time. 13 Mana per rat, one per turn is much more efficient than 25 gold taking two turns, even if the latter unit is a bit stronger. Especially since the summoned unit appears right where it is relevant.

Let's see. Buildings should not count as roads until they complete, or they need to have the normal 'cost' to removal of population. Similarly, I think making 1000 the minimum population might be a mistake. Either that, or cities should just not start with an initial building made, since 75% of the time you destroy it and build something more useful than a farm.

Some of the different Gods seem to need a bit more help. Krypa and Krolm both appear to be rather lackluster in their capability (Dauros too, but at least he's smack dab between two very synergistic gods in Helia and Agrela). Some of the Elite units seem incredibly weak compared to others (Housecarl, Sisters of Krypta, Elite Troll, etc). It also seems like the 'neutral' elites, like Halberdiers and Minotaurs, aren't really balanced right. Very few are as strong as temple level units (Elven sharpshooters being a notable exception) yet they will require MORE work to get, since they require a level 10 city! It's not at all unreasonable to get a Holy ground in the first 20 turns, whereas a level 10 non-capital could take on the upwards of 80!

Lastly, with Lands of Life in the game, I have a hard time rationalizing playing any other religion. If it was a 50 favor spell, I think it would probably be fine, since that would require more dedication to the religion. But as something you could potentially research in the first 30 turns with Favor of Agrela... yeah, it's pretty dang strong.

 

[unmerged(532595)]

Hmm, it seems, I am only one who plays peaceful mage...

In short: diplomacy is totally broken for me. Virtually any enemy want to be my friend. They wants it so hard that they agree to pay me for that! And repay every time when alliance is broken!

I don't mind to have some peaceful opponents - but not all of them, definitely.

 

[cryptc]

c) Undead are way OP because:
- Green bats combo with any unit makes grabbing lairs easy
- Flying galleus coming out of level 2 villages is way too good for clearing the map of lairs. Except for greater fire elementals, nothing can kill them (the only other unit that can damage them is hunters). The air dockyard must require a level 5 town. You can give the flying galleus better stats to compensate, but they are currently really overpowered (the only thing that is effective vs them is another player using fireballs to kill them easily, since they only have 20hp).

There are pros and cons with all the races, undead having bats just makes up for not having _any_ land units with decent movement rate... getting lairs isn't hard with a rogue tagging along with a unit either since they move fast, or even hunter which also has a safe ranged attack (while bats are practicly useless in combat)

Elves also have a flying ship, I've not tested either enough to make a call on their nerfing though (how fast can you get troll or catapult in comparison?)

As for your example, I think the major thing that needs fixing for undead was one you didn't mention directly... summoning bears is a cheap spell and for undead have basicly no maintenance, which makes for easy exploration, lair getting and early armies. Other than summon bear I don't find anything unbalanced with undead currently.

 

[unmerged(469337)]

Idea how to make healers more useable is to give them spell to clear land.
Hunter building could shoot arrows like a tower.

 

[unmerged(492719)]

The problem with the flying siege units isn't that they are siege, but that they fly AND are ranged. This means they can float around with impunity to most creatures, especially when escorted by a scout bat. There are few units that can both shoot back at them, and don't get easily killed by them (Serpents are a single shot, skelle archers are just weak and easy to kite, even Sea Serpents will go down to a pair of Airships).

So here's my thoughts on how to make the early exploration stage a bit more reasonable. I think more advanced lairs should actually be like Dremer towers. Actual structures with some defense and a ranged attack, potentially death or elemental based. What this does:

1) Makes lairs less 'kite'able to pillage them. It's sorta silly in pocket dimensions how easy it is to pillage even the 'epic' tier lairs without killing the epic monster. Strategies that work there would work just as well with a pair of rats as anything else.
2) It makes flying units a little less incredibly powerful in the early game. You can't just fly them wherever you want and have them live forever. Demolishers will still do well, but they will have to put themselves at risk.
3) It also makes ranged units work a little less weird in lair clearing (since they take an extra turn to clear lairs).

 

[Efyian]

There are pros and cons with all the races, undead having bats just makes up for not having _any_ land units with decent movement rate... getting lairs isn't hard with a rogue tagging along with a unit either since they move fast, or even hunter which also has a safe ranged attack (while bats are practicly useless in combat)

Elves also have a flying ship, I've not tested either enough to make a call on their nerfing though (how fast can you get troll or catapult in comparison?)

As for your example, I think the major thing that needs fixing for undead was one you didn't mention directly... summoning bears is a cheap spell and for undead have basicly no maintenance, which makes for easy exploration, lair getting and early armies. Other than summon bear I don't find anything unbalanced with undead currently.

Troll comes out roughly the same time. Barring a mass of Arathi bowmasters (hello perma-stunning!), a troll rush by turn 16-18 is actually one of the best strategies in the game at this time, because you can quickly seize a 2nd level 5 neutral by turn 24-28.
Catapult, however, is crap. At 25hp and a pathetic 2 movement, its bait for spells and archer attacks. And trying to move forward over hills and forest... good luck!

The elvish flying ship requires a level 3 city (i.e. takes a lot more turns to get), and is 250g vs 180g. It's actually a bit too expensive to use, and in any case, you could basically train 2 bowmasters for a single flying ship, making them useless.

Huge difference cryptc with the bat. I'd be happy to show you if you play MP. The key point is that the bat is all but unkillable, and terrain doesn't affect his 4 movement at all, whereas all the other units can be attacked easily.
It really kicks in on larger maps where there are lairs far from your capital. Smaller maps, yea its a necessary unit, but its not a huge advantage at all.

As for summoning bears (or rats). Honestly, those 2 spells are OP regardless of what faction you are due to low mana cast and quick casting (1.3 turns for fervus, or 1 turn for grum-gog).
If they were 30-40 mana they'd be fine, but at 13/15 its ridiculous.

Well right now, I've noticed that there's basically a ban on starting with mana vault, favour of fervus, or favour of grum-gog in MP games, since it just completely ruins the game.

Zechnophobe:
Agreed. Far too often, I find the game is about kiting lairs rather than trying to kill the monster defending them. Especially if you have a summon spell.

 

[unmerged(492719)]

Troll comes out roughly the same time. Barring the Arathi OP bowmasters, a troll rush by turn 16-18 is actually one of the best strategies in the game at this time, because you can quickly seize a 2nd level 5 neutral by turn 24-28.

A level 5 on 24 isn't that impressive or super OP. Bear or rat storm will do the same in my experience, or honestly a few other tactics. Obviously it depends on the race of the level 5. An Arethi covered by a Tashir Knight is much harder to take out than the noble werewolf. Also fun is using lightning on Veterans, due to the additional damage and AoE their armor causes.