The "Mono Stacking" Problem

[Codyksp]

I wracked my brain a little bit more and found a build that obtains 7 out of 8 unit classess in either T3 or T4 form.
It also makes sure to have at least 3 compatible enchantments with each of these unit classes. For optimal performance.
But it's obviously a very restrictive build with specific tomes, which is why we need more units in cultures NOT IN TOMES.

The reason we do not need them in tomes is because we have a limit of 2 tomes per tier, so 2 units in most cases.
If we had, for example, another T3 and a T4 in the cultural rosters we'd be able to make amazingly flexible builds.

Adding more units to the cultures does not take away from the tomes, it makes them more flexible and fun.
It means you have new paths to explore, because you can find different synergies and interesting paths to take.

Now we all get pigeonholed into the same boring endgame with one T4 unit, 2 if you really try hard to make it happen.
This is due to enchantment stacking and lack of units combined. Throwing them randomly in SPIs will not solve it either.

 

[Kitschy]

...
You get access to T3 Shield and Skirmisher, and T4 Shock and Polearm. Fighter, Support and Battle Mage are T2.
This is where my gripe with small cultural unit rosters comes into play. We really need more units per culture.

I'm sure someone else could come up with a build that offers more varied high tier units, but there's still a limit.
At best you can have a T3 cultural unit, 2x T3 from tomes and 2x T4. T5 are not really relevant here as they are Mythic.
So you could be playing with 5 different unit classes in the later game stages without having them be T2 or T1.
...

More reason to make a mechanism for making low tiers more viable late game. I would suggest doing that by way of getting old passive hero skills like BST and Hero of the Meek back (with inclusion of T2s obviously), but there is probably other ways of doing it.

 

[Balthazar69]

The only thing I see, it is that enchantments stay the same, whatever the kind of units. In short ranged units will pick acursed projectile, and two other thing. Blessed armor etc etc.

Welcome to three tomes only playstyle. Not fan at all.

The game is not balanced around that. You buy a tome, you buy his enchantment, tome 4, tome 5, tome 6 etc. It will limit the gameplay and possibilities at best. In this game, a tome is investment of time (research and turn). This is the limiting factor. No need to another.

And if game have a long duration, yes, why not a violent metagame with a lot of enchantment. No problem with that to end quickly.

 

[aerothgow]

The simples way to beat monostacking is to give a t4 or even a t5 to cultures.
A high tier unit from culture + another High tier unit from tomes => you can get at least a basic melee/ranged high tier stack and actually do some tactics late game.

All can be fixed with a 1 or 2 units added to cultures.

 

[seperamos]

There's also a metagaming possibility. Affinities or cultures can use enchant stacking, or enchant replacement to add different gaming styles. Enchant stacking could empower cultural units, especially low tier units. Being able to stack low to high level enchants gives an incentive to keep t1s to the late game without requiring evolution, upgrading, or retraining to bolster their power. And outright enchant replacement removes previous enchant buffs or debuffs in favor of new enchants that can promote different strategies. Best for heavy t3-t5 unit useage.

Power improvement of units can differ from culture and/or tome path, using enchants, evolution/upgrading/retraining, transformations, wonder control, or resource extraction that grants buffs or debuffs against opponents in different ways. Mana accumulation can be an objective for mage heavy factions, and gold/food/production/imperium/research for others using mundane, golem, or steampunk based units.

There could be a limit to enchant stacking to 5, which could replicate the form trait process by selecting enchants geared for offense, defense, or support. This encourages more build diversity and counters.

 

[Codyksp]

The only thing I see, it is that enchantments stay the same, whatever the kind of units. In short ranged units will pick acursed projectile, and two other thing. Blessed armor etc etc.

Welcome to three tomes only playstyle. Not fan at all.

The game is no different right now. You always go for the same broken tomes with the same broken units and same broken enchantments.
Except now you go for 1 unit type and stack it infinitely. My proposal makes you play with at least 3 different units in the later game.
It would be more than 3 if Triumph would stop being so darn stubborn about adding cultural units. I've never seen anyone say they don't want that.

The game is not balanced around that. You buy a tome, you buy his enchantment, tome 4, tome 5, tome 6 etc. It will limit the gameplay and possibilities at best. In this game, a tome is investment of time (research and turn). This is the limiting factor. No need to another.

That is not a limiting factor. People can reach 7 tomes by turn 40 easily. I've seen it done multiple times.
The moment a unit has 4+ enchantments you will never build another unit type. It is pointless to do so.

I am sick and tired of seeing the same gameplay over and over, pick a core unit class > pick tomes around it > GG.
There is no strategy, there is no counter play, there's just researching as fast as humanly possible and stacking a unit.

At least with limits (and the ability to swap) you have actual strategic choices to make instead of just MORE and MORE.
But most importantly, unit damage won't be so absolutely absurd anymore and battles will be a lot more fun overall.
We'll see many different units and battles that don't end because you're one shotting everything in a 7 hex radius.

There's also a metagaming possibility. Affinities or cultures can use enchant stacking, or enchant replacement to add different gaming styles. Enchant stacking could empower cultural units, especially low tier units. Being able to stack low to high level enchants gives an incentive to keep t1s to the late game without requiring evolution, upgrading, or retraining to bolster their power. And outright enchant replacement removes previous enchant buffs or debuffs in favor of new enchants that can promote different strategies. Best for heavy t3-t5 unit useage.

It does not. Lower tier units do not benefit from having more enchantments, because units of all tiers get this... You always want a higher tier.
There is literally no difference between having 3 or 5 or 10 enchantments with T1 vs T3. T3 will be better, every time, You want to bring them.
Limiting enchantments doesn't change this at all, neither does not limiting them. Lower tiers will always remain irrelevant in the late game.

 

[aerothgow]

The structure of how you make your faction is the biggest problem. Having so much meat on the tomes gives the illusion of so many options but in reality it's impossible to balance so many tomes combinations and you end up with only a few tome paths that are strong. Too little meat on the cultures is the real problem. They are far too similar and only matter early game. They need to bring the cultures into late game. Only tome content matter late game now. And it's not good.

It's ironic but the tomes instead of increasing replayability they curb it.

 

[Kitschy]

...
It does not. Lower tier units do not benefit from having more enchantments, because units of all tiers get this... You always want a higher tier.
There is literally no different between having 3 or 5 or 10 enchantments with T1 vs T3. T3 will be better, every time, You want to bring them.
Limiting enchantments doesn't change this at all, neither does not limiting them. Lower tiers will always remain irrelevant in the late game.

That's the thing, they don't have to be irrelevant if there would be mechanic for players to make low tiers viable. Ranks was one step forward, but removal of specific tome skills (without giving some sort of a substitute) was a step back.

 

[GloatingSwine]

The structure of how you make your faction is the biggest problem. Having so much meat on the tomes gives the illusion of so many options but in reality it's impossible to balance so many tomes combinations and you end up with only a few tome paths that are strong. Too little meat on the cultures is the real problem. They are far too similar and only matter early game. They need to bring the cultures into late game. Only tome content matter late game now. And it's not good.

It's ironic but the tomes instead of increasing replayability they curb it.

Cultural T4s plus narrowing the gap between T3 and T4 (the gap in base durability and damage between T3 and 4 is about the same as the gap between T1 and T3).7

I also still think just having one damage enchant per attack type and having them overwrite each other not stack would be the way.

 

[Codyksp]

More reason to make a mechanism for making low tiers more viable late game. I would suggest doing that by way of getting old passive hero skills like BST and Hero of the Meek back (with inclusion of T2s obviously), but there is probably other ways of doing it.

The main problem there is the same issue we had with the original Tome of the Horde + Mighty Meek (and Hero of the Meek if you rolled lucky).
It is incredibly difficult to balance them in such a way that they don't just become the better option due to the faster recruitment and lower costs.

It requires far less investment to obtain a unit of a lower tier, so their power should never be equal to those of a higher tier.
This is just an unfortunate reality that you will have to deal with. Even with tome investments I don't think it would be a fair thing.
You'd pay far less draft/gold, require 0 infrastructure and just play low tiers all game while picking specific tomes, that's not good.

 

[Jolly Joker]

Let me repeat:

The simplest thing to do is giving every enchantment a "working range". (Not to confuse "Tiers", for clarification, there are unit tiers (I - V) and spell tiers (I-X)). You wouldn't have this discussion, if the "enchantments" would simply work only on units up to a certain tier or even within a certain tier range , depending - obviously - on their own tier (you might make it dependent on the tome tier OR on the spell tier).
This might make some enchantment redistribution necessary.
But in the end it would mean that T3s, T4s and T5s wouldn't profit from the early tome enchantments (and it would be perfectly possible as well, to have enchantments working only on high tiers, but obviously equally possible they worked on lower tiers quite fine.)

As a note: higher tier tome units may already come equipped with what would otherwise be an enchantment. Example: Inquisitor. That's a T3 and it comes with Zeal, so whether you picked Tome of Zeal or not, THAT units has it inherently, which makes this kind of thing even more appealing. (If Zeal would work only up to T2 units, for example, the Inquisitor still had it. The Exemplar has it as well, mind you, but not the Tyrant Knight, but this could also be reviewed, if necessary.)

 

[GloatingSwine]

Let me repeat:

The simplest thing to do is giving every enchantment a "working range". (Not to confuse "Tiers", for clarification, there are unit tiers (I - V) and spell tiers (I-X)). You wouldn't have this discussion, if the "enchantments" would simply work only on units up to a certain tier or even within a certain tier range , depending - obviously - on their own tier (you might make it dependent on the tome tier OR on the spell tier).
This might make some enchantment redistribution necessary.
But in the end it would mean that T3s, T4s and T5s wouldn't profit from the early tome enchantments (and it would be perfectly possible as well, to have enchantments working only on high tiers, but obviously equally possible they worked on lower tiers quite fine.)

As a note: higher tier tome units may already come equipped with what would otherwise be an enchantment. Example: Inquisitor. That's a T3 and it comes with Zeal, so whether you picked Tome of Zeal or not, THAT units has it inherently, which makes this kind of thing even more appealing. (If Zeal would work only up to T2 units, for example, the Inquisitor still had it. The Exemplar has it as well, mind you, but not the Tyrant Knight, but this could also be reviewed, if necessary.)

Given they don't hit Mythics (aka all tier 5 and most tier 4) and Mythics are generally bad because of it, this is already in the game and the consequence is that builds are degenerate around the best unit they do hit.

Narrow the base durability gap, remove damage enchant stacking in favour of replacement, and maybe put in more sources of armour and resistance strip to counter stacking those (in Planetfall armour melt/shield melt werent a mirror to bolstering, and they could be attacked to repeatable attacks so even tanky units could be brought down quite effectively by lower tier units).

 

[Jolly Joker]

No, that is a misconception, because the way things work means you simply cannot enchant a certain unit class at all (with the exception of a very few enchantments that work for example on certain transformations. With the above change Mythicals would be open for enchantments as well, but only for those that would work on T4s and/or T5s, depending on the tier of the mythical.

 

[Kitschy]

The main problem there is the same issue we had with the original Tome of the Horde + Mighty Meek (and Hero of the Meek if you rolled lucky).
It is incredibly difficult to balance them in such a way that they don't just because the better option due to the faster recruitment and lower costs.

It requires far less investment to obtain a unit of a lower tier, so their power should never be equal to those of a higher tier.
This is just an unfortunate reality that you will have to deal with. Even with tome investments I don't think it would be a fair thing.
You'd pay far less draft/gold, require 0 infrastructure and just play low tiers all game while picking specific tomes, that's not good.

They don't have to be equal to peek power T4s for example just viable enough to have relative T3 parity (mainly when it comes to survivability, so EHP) with investment (my suggestion hero skill investment). Imo good starting point for this is bringing back what we had in hero skills with slight adjustment like making BST also apply to T2s (like in your mod) and Hero of the Meek not depending on random (so probably a passive skill in hero tree). We sorta already had that and my suspicion this was an oversight when it got removed.
This is the crux of my suggestion when I am talking about low tier viability and the problem that I see is game slowly shifting in to high tiers even more (emphasis on even more not that it is "shifting") by buffing Mythics in the last big update and at the same time removal of old passive skills for low tiers with hero rework.

TLDR (not really a TLDR lol)
something like BST - 10 HP 1/1 Def/Res for T1/T2 and Hero of the Meek 10 HP 1/1 Def/Res only for T1s.
Passive skills only for Champ/Heroes in the passive part of the skill tree (one on the left) after Foraging Training and Endurance Training (so it is basically 2SP as prerequisite and 4 SP investment as a whole).
Imo it would be good enough as mechanical part and also has RP element of it being only available to Champ/Heroes thematically and at the same time 4 SP being substantial enough of investment (that only is there when heroes are army leaders).

Also there is always a way of tying specific support enchantments (enchants for support units) with active abilities that are exclusive for low tiers only. Good example of it being done is Indentured/Overseer + Cerebral Amplifier, something like that could be replicated but it is a more complex solution.

 

[aerothgow]

3.5e D&D had a simple way of dealing with buffs: Same type don't stack. That's an easy solve for the entire enchanting problem. Same type of enchantments don't stack. 10 types of elemental buffs on weapons is already kinda stupid.
But without enchant t5 would rule even harder and then you really are monostacking t5.

I really believe the only way to break monostacking is to bring cultures in the late game with them having units above t3.
Then you can get a t4 pike from culture(or dare say even a t5 for cultures) and research some ranged t5 from tomes and voila you have a frontline-backline late game army. Now you can do a modicum of tactics.

Right now late game looks like this: Research a t5 -> Spam it -> Wipe map.

 

[Codyksp]

Reading all the above comments, the thing is... We had a perfectly configured system with Planetfall. And it was thrown out.

• We had a 3 mod limit (per unit, per class might work too)
• We had Cosmite (Imperium) costs on high tier units and mods
• We had low tier unit viability
• We had a diverse unit roster per race (8 units + secret tech)
• Melee ignores Shields, Psionic ignores Armor
• The Overwatch mechanic (would be great for Ranged units)

And there are many more small things that were simply an improvement over the current game. But here's my point.
We could have easily formed a hybrid of the two games and their ideas without sacrificing any of the "core pillars" of AoW 4.

Faction evolution is not compromised by having more cultural units, this reasoning makes no sense.
Faction evolution having a limit is also not inherently a removal of the idea, merely a restriction.
Tomes still remain the core of the game, granting spells, enchantments, structures and additional units.
No other core pillars of AoW 4 are changed or reduced by having the above mechanics present. Not one.

 

[Kitschy]

Awwww

Overwatch mechanic would be baller for Archers, like why don't we have it in 4. (wtf indeed)

 

[seperamos]

Every affinity/culture can have a similiar upkeep reduction, buff/debuff to mighty meek, faithful, and hero of the meek. Players in every affinity/culture can select the tomes that enable swarm strategies instead of picking tomes and skills encouraging elite units picks.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Reading all the above comments, the thing is... We had a perfectly configured system with Planetfall. And it was thrown out.

• We had low tier unit viability

Planetfall's low tier unit viability was, I think, helped greatly by it being a ranged-first game (and even by being sci-fi).

One of the things that Planetfall mostly does is have low tier units that are versatile. For most factions the low tier stuff has broad application, mobility, can use cover, good range, not limited in what it can attack (even the Kir'ko Frenzied can use their vomit attack to hit air), and as the tiers go up the units get more specialised (like the Ravenous and Wrecker can't attack air), and usually start to get the Large Target rule and become less capable of using cover, without having gained large amounts of durability along the way. It's kinda only the Vanguard that have a close to like-for-like replacement between the Trooper and the Walker.

They also always have at least one special trick. A grenade, a knockback, flash arrow, etc.

In a melee-first fantasy context where the culture units are the low fantasy dudes and tome units are high fantasy magicky stuff, it's way harder for units to not overlap because "guy who hits things with a sword" has a lot less variation in ways he can do that, and there are a lot less appropriate things that can be special abilities without going high fantasy for the culture units. (Peasant pikemen probably shouldn't have fireball "grenades").

(I do think every unit should have at least one active ability though)

 

[Kitschy]

Planetfall's low tier unit viability was, I think, helped greatly by it being a ranged-first game (and even by being sci-fi).

One of the things that Planetfall mostly does is have low tier units that are versatile. For most factions the low tier stuff has broad application, mobility, can use cover, good range, not limited in what it can attack (even the Kir'ko Frenzied can use their vomit attack to hit air), and as the tiers go up the units get more specialised (like the Ravenous and Wrecker can't attack air), and usually start to get the Large Target rule and become less capable of using cover, without having gained large amounts of durability along the way. It's kinda only the Vanguard that have a close to like-for-like replacement between the Trooper and the Walker.

They also always have at least one special trick. A grenade, a knockback, flash arrow, etc.

In a melee-first fantasy context where the culture units are the low fantasy dudes and tome units are high fantasy magicky stuff, it's way harder for units to not overlap because "guy who hits things with a sword" has a lot less variation in ways he can do that, and there are a lot less appropriate things that can be special abilities without going high fantasy for the culture units. (Peasant pikemen probably shouldn't have fireball "grenades").

(I do think every unit should have at least one active ability though)

From my observation biggest problem for low tiers is that they start to fold too fast in mid/late game when more and more enchantments get online. So survivability is their biggest issue, adding more active skills won't remedy that (altho would be cool).