The "Mono Stacking" Problem

[Jolly Joker]

If auto combat isn't reliable and manual vs AI just a big old cheese fest.
Then the only remaining truth for unit power is PvP combat, in manual mode.

Yes, exactly.
As I said, I always trust balance consideration of the MP guys - it's the solutions (when simple value changes aren't enough) I may have a problem with. Like in the case of limiting enchantments to three. I have no clue how this is supposed to change things, with the exception that Mythics would fare a lot better (but it still wouldn't change anything about the food chain. And with only 18 units max per battle, you'd still field your favorite T4 - plus a Mythic per stack. I mean, the melee guys can use nearly all enchantments anyway. So this would be for the inclusion of - what? A lone BM or two? A support or two? A lone Zephyr Archer?

If you think about it - if enchantment upkeep would depend on the tier of the unit (price X multiplied with tier) you could basically enchant the hell out of low-tier units, while the higher tiers (and Mythicals as well in that case) would come every expensive, massively enchanted. This way you had a choice depending on your economic ability.

 

[seperamos]

If you think about it - if enchantment upkeep would depend on the tier of the unit (price X multiplied with tier) you could basically enchant the hell out of low-tier units, while the higher tiers (and Mythicals as well in that case) would come every expensive, massively enchanted. This way you had a choice depending on your economic ability.

Very interesting idea! We should be encouraging more use of t1-3 units, and giving more loreful/gameplay reasons not to doomstack t4s, t5s, and heroes. Powerful units and heroes should tend towards supplementing armies rather than being the optimal stack composition. Unless, of course, cult of Personality is involved and extremely challenging realm settings are enabled.

Any way of encouraging that through soft or hard restrictions, reasonably implemented, would be fantastic!

 

[Codyksp]

Yes, exactly.
As I said, I always trust balance consideration of the MP guys - it's the solutions (when simple value changes aren't enough) I may have a problem with. Like in the case of limiting enchantments to three. I have no clue how this is supposed to change things, with the exception that Mythics would fare a lot better (but it still wouldn't change anything about the food chain. And with only 18 units max per battle, you'd still field your favorite T4 - plus a Mythic per stack. I mean, the melee guys can use nearly all enchantments anyway. So this would be for the inclusion of - what? A lone BM or two? A support or two? A lone Zephyr Archer?

If you think about it - if enchantment upkeep would depend on the tier of the unit (price X multiplied with tier) you could basically enchant the hell out of low-tier units, while the higher tiers (and Mythicals as well in that case) would come every expensive, massively enchanted. This way you had a choice depending on your economic ability.

This is why the developers still screen everything and sometimes engage in discussion with us.
They have a wider range of feedback and metrics from all audiences to base their decisions on.

They might opt for an entirely different solution, but still solve the actual problem we brought up.

 

[GloatingSwine]

If you think about it - if enchantment upkeep would depend on the tier of the unit (price X multiplied with tier) you could basically enchant the hell out of low-tier units, while the higher tiers (and Mythicals as well in that case) would come every expensive, massively enchanted. This way you had a choice depending on your economic ability.

Keep 2-3 enchantments in the "ready to cast" pocket and slam them down on your high tier army just before the fight.

There are also other problems for the quantity vs. quality debate, the biggest of which is the ruler. If your ruler gets wounded you can no longer cast or research, and that means that if you try a mass based approach and lose your ruler the rest of your mass counts for much much less against an opponent who can still cast, but your ruler is your most powerful piece so if you keep them out of the first fight you also have less of a chance of making a serious impact in that fight.

Stacking for quality is an emergent feature of the game, mass does a hell of a worse job against quality than simple cost would imply.

 

[seperamos]

Keep 2-3 enchantments in the "ready to cast" pocket and slam them down on your high tier army just before the fight.

A problem with this strategy is that the player will be unable to use any world map spells before engaging with enemy stacks. It may strengthen units but weaken scouting ability, terraforming and damage spells, or resurrection/necromancy.

 

[Deus von Vult]

Keep 2-3 enchantments in the "ready to cast" pocket and slam them down on your high tier army just before the fight.

There are also other problems for the quantity vs. quality debate, the biggest of which is the ruler. If your ruler gets wounded you can no longer cast or research, and that means that if you try a mass based approach and lose your ruler the rest of your mass counts for much much less against an opponent who can still cast, but your ruler is your most powerful piece so if you keep them out of the first fight you also have less of a chance of making a serious impact in that fight.

Stacking for quality is an emergent feature of the game, mass does a hell of a worse job against quality than simple cost would imply.

Yeah exactly this. Age of Wonders 4 always favours high quality armies over mass trash mobs armies. Simply because you have a limit how many units you can bring to a fight. Furthermore it is of outmost importance to level your own hero or lord. It is possible to whittle down enemy armies with a lot of low tier armies, but this only results in giving the enemy lord free xp, while your own lord won´t get any or not enough. Furthermore fighting a battle of attrition against ai simply doesn´t work in the long run, because the ai will just spawn new 3 stacks out of thin air. This is exactly the reason why you always have to go for a high quality army. And loosing only one battle with the ruler is basically game over most of the time.

 

[Jolly Joker]

What has all that to do with a demand that "quaslity" comes too cheap and should cost more when we talk about enchanting units? The better way SHOULD be more expensive to make other options viable and to increase the difficulty of following the strongest path.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Increasing the difficulty of following the strongest path doesn't make it not the strongest path. Scaling enchant upkeep cost by unit tier is not likely to produce variety in the game, in fact it's likely to reduce it because now the builds that are good at producing mana are even more better and outcompete those that produce other resources harder if they can't be rushed down before they hit T4+enchant stack.

Cosmite was a good balancing factor in Planetfall because every race and tech combo had roughly even access to it and it only scaled as hard as the map allowed.

 

[seperamos]

Increasing the difficulty of following the strongest path doesn't make it not the strongest path. Scaling enchant upkeep cost by unit tier is not likely to produce variety in the game, in fact it's likely to reduce it because now the builds that are good at producing mana are even more better and outcompete those that produce other resources harder if they can't be rushed down before they hit T4+enchant stack.

Cosmite was a good balancing factor in Planetfall because every race and tech combo had roughly even access to it and it only scaled as hard as the map allowed.

This game has a multitude of resources. There should be a system to allowing players to extract the resources they need for the factions they want. Gold is the most useful resource for mundane factions and units, that rely on archers or gunners to counter mages and supports. Mundane factions need gold, magical factions need mana, and hybrid factions should try to get the best of both.

Maybe a magical faction will need more gold for units, so it will invest more in those buildings while crippling their mana production?

Then you have additional and necessary resources like imperium, research and binding essence/fragments. These advance tome research, empire skills, and item crafting. Custom factions should be able to choose the resources they want to focus on to accomadate playstyles. It requires correct ruler selection, correct building choices and upgrades, correct spi placement and upgrades to significantly invest in a certain resource.

 

[Kitschy]

The last place ? Yeah arcane guard should have a good place, and few others that I don't remember the name : p

Dark warrior lack of movement and a special ability IMO. More, I would not shocked to put it at 2 defense / 2 resistance when an arbalest of industrious is for example at 2 defense (At range...).

Like you said, movement don't do anything. With a bad timing, he is exposed and dead. He is used to going to the front. It is a bit an aborted honor blade.

Yes, we basically agree that it needs a buff 'cause that unit has big survivability problems.

...
Notice how Honor Blade, Sworn Guard and Mercenary are almost T2 units, just so they can be decent.
...

Sworn Guard is a strange one 'cause the other two have High Maintenance tag (and first it was added to T1s with Merc and the reasoning from devs on one of the streams - this would be almost a T2 but with less damage and cost more in upkeep), but SG is just a regular unit with beefed up stats for some reason. (imo most T1s should get buffed to its level, at least when it comes to melee ones)

It depends on the faction i am playing or if i am playing on a mid sized map or a big map. I often play materium and they rely a lot on enchantments. But yesterday i started a game with a nature themed civ with electric blade enchantments but as barbarians+ some magic. I think a lot of people playing in single player are not that concerned with enchantment stacking. And a lot of people want fun games without thinking hours and hours how to use a specific tome or unit.

We are only a very tiny minority writing in the forum here and most people are casual players. Age of Wonders 4 is allready a hard game to learn. There are a lot of mechanics to understand in the game. If the devs force people to sit in front of tomes and units and numbercrunch for hours this simply sucks the life out of the game. It is allready tedious enough that auto resolve kills half of your units all the time and that the ai can spawn waves of doom stacks out of thin air. The game doesn´t need to be even more tedious.

My games are SP RP stuff on brutal but I kinda get where Cody is coming from 'cause those issues are somewhat visible even if you aren't playing hyper-competitively. (it can be ignored for the most part in SP even tho those are visible) So that's why I am asking for your average experience to compare it to mine and understand your position better.

And yeah no argument there we are indeed a tiny minority who are discussing this things. (that's the norm in every game tho)
Imo things being discussed won't change the game that it will require hours and hours of tome/units prep/research from casual players just make the game more consistent when it comes to balance.

 

[Jolly Joker]

Increasing the difficulty of following the strongest path doesn't make it not the strongest path. Scaling enchant upkeep cost by unit tier is not likely to produce variety in the game, in fact it's likely to reduce it because now the builds that are good at producing mana are even more better and outcompete those that produce other resources harder if they can't be rushed down before they hit T4+enchant stack.

Cosmite was a good balancing factor in Planetfall because every race and tech combo had roughly even access to it and it only scaled as hard as the map allowed.

Enchantments don't have to cost exclusively mana. They might cost anything - including knowledge.

 

[seperamos]

Enchantments don't have to cost exclusively mana. They might cost anything - including knowledge.

Joker, now youre cooking with gas here! You're taking me to Amsterdam while I'm still in the usa with that out of the box thinking! These enchants could suck out more resources than just mana

 

[Arcantos_the_Storyteller]

My games are SP RP stuff on brutal but I kinda get where Cody is coming from 'cause those issues are somewhat visible even if you aren't playing hyper-competitively. (it can be ignored for the most part in SP even tho those are visible) So that's why I am asking for your average experience to compare it to mine and understand your position better.

Agreed, I'm in the same boat. I like playing synergy and testing stuff out, but I want to make it fit the character I'm playing, while also being Brutal. But just using my eyes lets me know that some Social Traits are better than others and that some Empire Trees are weaker than others.

Personally, I just wish that the Devs would listen about the Entwined Thrall...

 

[Kitschy]

Agreed, I'm in the same boat. I like playing synergy and testing stuff out, but I want to make it fit the character I'm playing, while also being Brutal. But just using my eyes lets me know that some Social Traits are better than others and that some Empire Trees are weaker than others.

Personally, I just wish that the Devs would listen about the Entwined Thrall...

You mean that it becomes a Shield unit? ('cause that will probably change when they will have a proper model for it)

 

[Codyksp]

So, back to this thread. Since at least it's more civil over here than that other dark place .

We have 7 people on this page alone who all agree there is a problem (well, multiple problems).
And throughout the insane 63 pages we've all given our opinions and possible solutions.
While we can't quite agree on what to do, we all agree that the game needs to be changed.

My question is. Why the developer silence on this topic? Do they agree? Do they not agree?
I'd like to a least know whether or not we're posting in vain. It's been a year since I posted this.
We've had 3 more DLCs/updates in the meantime, but none of them have addressed the issue.

I am curious if the community is wasting their breath here.

 

[seperamos]

So, back to this thread. Since at least it's more civil over here than that other dark place .

We have 7 people on this page alone who all agree there is a problem (well, multiple problems).
And throughout the insane 63 pages we've all given our opinions and possible solutions.
While we can't quite agree on what to do, we all agree that the game needs to be changed.

My question is. Why the developer silence on this topic? Do they agree? Do they not agree?
I'd like to a least know whether or not we're posting in vain. It's been a year since I posted this.
We've had 3 more DLCs/updates in the meantime, but none of them have addressed the issue.

I am curious if the community is wasting their breath here.

Hey man, you told me you had direct access and communications with the devs! Perhaps this thread might be good to bring up in the discord chat?

 

[Codyksp]

Hey man, you told me you had direct access and communications with the devs! Perhaps this thread might be good to bring up in the discord chat?

I'm sure they're aware. There could be all kinds of reasons to remain silent on the topic.
Jordi has posted in this thread somewhere, you can filter the thread for dev posts.

In short. He agreed on rebalancing the Empire Tree and the Tomes.
He said "maybe" for Form Traits and Society Traits (which they've done a bit).
And disagreed on Structures, SPIs, Magic Materials and Ancient Wonders.

He did not reply to the mono stacking / enchantment problem at the time.
As well as ignored my concern about unit class counters not being functional.

Since then we've also gained new issues with Rulers, Governance and the Hero rework.
Some cultures are also still problematic and need to be looked at (Mystic, Dark, Reaver).

 

[Nevars]

So, back to this thread. Since at least it's more civil over here than that other dark place .

We have 7 people on this page alone who all agree there is a problem (well, multiple problems).
And throughout the insane 63 pages we've all given our opinions and possible solutions.
While we can't quite agree on what to do, we all agree that the game needs to be changed.

My question is. Why the developer silence on this topic? Do they agree? Do they not agree?
I'd like to a least know whether or not we're posting in vain. It's been a year since I posted this.
We've had 3 more DLCs/updates in the meantime, but none of them have addressed the issue.

I am curious if the community is wasting their breath here.

Because there is no easy solution?

Because the most optimal solution (hard limit on enchantment and transformation) is almost universally unpopular outside of maybe some very small min-maxers.

Going that route might be as good as 'finished' this game.

And other solutions are not really that satisfying for either side too.

 

[Codyksp]

Going that route might be as good as 'finished' this game.

That's a massively overblown reaction imo. The people who don't "min/max' would probably rarely even hit the limit.

And other solutions are not really that satisfying for either side too.

A hard limit by default that can be removed with a Realm Trait / Checkbox. Any problems with that?
You can call the realm trait "Overflowing Magic" or whatever. Make up a fancy name and slap it in there.

Yes, exactly.
As I said, I always trust balance consideration of the MP guys - it's the solutions (when simple value changes aren't enough) I may have a problem with. Like in the case of limiting enchantments to three. I have no clue how this is supposed to change things, with the exception that Mythics would fare a lot better (but it still wouldn't change anything about the food chain. And with only 18 units max per battle, you'd still field your favorite T4 - plus a Mythic per stack. I mean, the melee guys can use nearly all enchantments anyway. So this would be for the inclusion of - what? A lone BM or two? A support or two? A lone Zephyr Archer?

Don't forget that I outlined a multi-step approach to the issue, the limits just by themselves will cause new problems.

Mythic units need to be design in a way that they are undesirable to be stacked higher than 1-2 per army.
You can see a design like this with the Prosperity Dragon and Shrine of Smiting. Calamity Dragon is 1 total even.

The other part of it is that unit counters need to be redesigned, entirely. As they do not function.
None of the counters in Triumph's image work outside of Polearm vs Shock in certain situations.

And the final step is to simply fill in the unit gaps via tomes and preferably cultural T4 units.
As well as balancing the existing units. As some of them feel just really poor to play with.

• Skirmisher > 6x T3 from tomes, 1x T3 from a culture, and 1x T4 from a tome.
• Fighter > 5x T3 from tomes and 1x T4 from a tome.
• Ranged > 3x T3 from tomes and 3x T3 from cultures.
• Polearm 1x T3 from tomes, 1x T3 from a culture, and 1x T4 from a tome.
• Shock > 4x T3 from tomes, 4x T3 from cultures, 4x T4 from tomes, and 1x T4 cultural.
• Shield > 3x T3 from tomes, 2x T3 from cultures, and 1x T4 from a tome.
• Battle Mage > 4x T3 from tomes, 3x T3 from cultures, and 4x T4 from tomes.
• Support > 2x T3 from tomes, 1x T3 from a culture, and 1x T4 from a tome.

I grouped similar units like the Wyverns, Young Dragons and Animals for this list.
I also excluded unreliable units or units that come too late to matter like Accursed Blade.

I also proposed an alternative to the flat 3 limit in the form of 1 enchantment per group.
The groups being Melee/Ranged/Magic/Defense/Support/Utility in the example I posted.

 

[Jolly Joker]

The other part of it is that unit counters need to be redesigned, entirely. As they do not function.
None of the counters in Triumph's image work outside of Polearm vs Shock in certain situations.

That won't work. Why? Because you have only 18 army slots, but too many troop types.
Polearm, Shield, Shock, Ranged/BM, Support, Mythic, Fighter, Skirmisher. Hero/Leader. The purpose of hard unit counters is to avoid a mono-stacking approach: You have infantry as the basic troop type, but the Cav, that is riders, with or without archers, are wiping the floor with them, so you include Pikemen, and so on. So to not make it a stone scissors paper thing where you have to outguess opponent - and because this is the most difficult approach in terms of getting it together - IDEALLY you have a well-composed army consisting of all troop types. You have ranged troops for softening, you have shocks for attacking ranged, you have Shield, you have Polearm, you have Skirmishers, you have airplanes ... sorry, flying fighters, you have a Mythical, you have leaders.
Which means, the number of units you have for each troop are not big enough.

So that won't work.