Balance opinions

[Meglobob]

Edi said:
DrPraetorious, I have a really hard time understanding your position on nerfing. You seem to rule it out as an option almost entirely, but if such an approach is taken, it results in an out of control, neverending boosting cycle for everything where a single nerf would fix the issue. I've seen compelling arguments for this and no valid arguments at all for NOT nerfing.

DrPraetorious position on nerfing is EXACTLY my position on nerfing as well.

Well I don't rule out nerfing entirely, its far too easy a route that all game developers go down. Problem? Remove it or lower the stats. Its also done over and over again, so you don't end up with just one or a couple of nerfs to the game you end up with dozens over a period of time. Seemly in response to when someone who has only played the game for a short time, says isn't such an such overpowered.

Sombre said:My only problem with CBM is that sometimes it doesn't take things far enough, such as with summoning spells. There are so many summons in basegame that just aren't worth the gems most of the time, while a handful of summons are simply amazing. It's annoying because in MP you're effectively punished for straying from the beaten path, while in SP the AI is getting the ****ty end of th stick because it will insist on casting stuff more or less at random, thereby often picking overpriced options - another handicap it doesn't need. So instead of just making a general complaint, I've posted up a big list of suggested changes to summons. I don't expect QM to follow them or anything (unless he agrees on all of them), but hopefully it will help highlight some tweaks that can be made to improve balance.

Sombres suggestions to changing alot of the summon spells are excellent. It would be great to see them implemented. In MP alot of the lower level summon spells never get cast because its better to research and save gems/slaves for higher level, more cost effective summons. The key change is numbers you get of the summon, any summon spell that gives you 1 summon (excluding a thug, SC) is essentially a waste of a mages time unless that creature is exceptionally powerful.

[Beorne]

I fully agree with Sombre.

[Edi]

Meglobob said:
DrPraetorious position on nerfing is EXACTLY my position on nerfing as well.

Well I don't rule out nerfing entirely, its far too easy a route that all game developers go down. Problem? Remove it or lower the stats. Its also done over and over again, so you don't end up with just one or a couple of nerfs to the game you end up with dozens over a period of time. Seemly in response to when someone who has only played the game for a short time, says isn't such an such overpowered.

That sort of a problem manifests only if game developers are too spineless to say no the most vocal (and generally also most *****y and whiny) users. The "No nerfs ever" principle is really going to screw things up if implemented, because if something being underpowered is fixed by boosting, then becomes a problem and there's an ironclad no-nerfs-ever rule, everything else must be boosted. At which point there's further imbalance and it goes downward (upward actually, but the end result doesn't) from there until you have nothing but a broken piece of crap on your hands. This actually happened to one MMO game, Shadowlands or something like that, because the developers of that game were complete morons.

In my opinion, the way to fix things is do whatever requires the least amount of tinkering, that runs the least risk of breaking something else on the way. Thus if something is overpowered, maybe take it down a notch or a half, or maybe make it more expensive or something that slightly reduces the gap between it and everything else. If the change was not good, you can always reverse it and then tweak it further.

It is for these reasons that nerfing is actually the most common and usually the correct way to fix things, but in doing so, judgment must always be used.

[sector24]

I think there's a world of difference between increasing the cost of something and increasing the path. A path increase to an item or mage changes the fundamental nature of what they can do. A mage with an additional path could open up the use of 10 additional spells, that synergize with the existing 20. Changing the requirement on an item can ruin your whole game if you didn't know about that requirement ahead of time. It makes you re-memorize what a potential enemy can and cannot do to you.

Changing the cost is different. For instance, increasing the cost of Tartarians seems to me like a reasonable change to consider because they are ridiculously powerful and cheap. When you try to compare the cost of something like a Tarrasque to a Tartarian, you can see just how good a Tartarian is. It's also a pretty safe bet that the player trying to summon the Tartarian isn't down to his last 10 gems.

On the other hand, early in the game sometimes you really are strapped for gems. Changing the cost of a Dwarven Hammer could totally wreck your well laid plans. I've had plenty of games where I've only found a single earth site by the time I wanted a hammer, so even an increase of 5 gems would equate to an unexpected 5 turn delay in my plans.

I can see both sides of it. There are situations where you definitely want to make some nerfs because it's easier and more prudent than boosting everything else in the game up to that level. Generally though, nerfs should be reserved for situations that occur later in the game, where they have a smaller effect on the fundamental identity of a nation.

[Sombre]

If by 'nerf' we mean a tweak to reduce the power of something, I believe they are just as important and desirable as 'boosts', or tweaks to increase power. As Edi and many others have pointed out, if you have 100 units all costing 10 gold and 4 of them are hugely better than the other 96, it probably makes more sense to nerf the 4 than boost the 96. Obviously it's more complicated than that, but I think the sacred cavalry of the glamour nations was a good example - they were far and away the best units in the game and were so good at what they did that they took away a lot of the rock/paper/scissors/chainsaw/apple/ladybug/fhtagn strategy of countering and using 'combined arms', with different units playing different roles.

Not that I want to start that argument again ;P

CBM is more about boosts than nerfs for 2 major reasons.

1. People instinctively prefer boosts to nerfs.
2. Boosts allow for more modding creativity than nerfs, because boosts can come from a plethora of abilities and mod commands, whereas nerfs have a smaller pool of drawbacks available.

1 is clearly more important than 2. Personally I wouldn't mind more nerfs - almost an equal nerf to boost ratio is fine by me, as long as the nerfs are sensible (ie increase variety and use of strategy rather than just being something like copystatting some random averagey medium cavalry to overwrite Vans).

[quantum_mechani]

The key thing with nerfs is to not actually disrupt strategies, just bring them into a better cost/benefit ratio. Making a pretender chassis or recruitable unit cost a little more does not break any strategies as long as it is not overdone. Nerfs that change a option's functionality or accessibility are the ones that have to be really carefully examined. So those are what I've tried hardest to avoid, but sometimes the constraints of thematicness and modding tools make it difficult.

[llamabeast]

I would like to give CBM another go. To me the massive turnoff last time were the changes to dwarven hammers and boosters. Unlike with spells, you can't see the requirements for items until you can actually make them, so you can spend ages trying to empower e.g. an E3 mage so you can make a hammer, only to find you can't! Quite upsetting. To my mind there should be no nerfs to items at all, since there's simply no way at all of seeing the problems coming.

The other thing I didn't like was the lack of 'overview' documentation. I don't desperately need a load of documentation, but it didn't say anywhere what the overall thrust of the changes were - that would be really appreciated.

With a bit of explanatory documentation and no item nerfs though, I'd be really keen to give CBM another go (I have actually been intending for some time to try it, with the item changes off). I very much agree with Sombre that there's no end of interesting stuff in Dominions which is not feasible to use, and it would be amazing if it was.

[KissBlade]

I think that most issues brought up against CBM was one of the first versions made for Dom III where it was somewhat still untuned and untested. If anyone played the dom II final cbm draft, I really have a hard time picturing how anyone can not support cbm over base. I think the best idea is just to think of cbm as a "patch" of sorts since it generally requires a few drafts before it comes into it's own.

[Edi]

KissBlade's totally right on that. The Dom2 CBM is the one that should be looked at as the template here. Look at how that developed (starting with just the pretenders and then expanding from there). Dom3 is an order of magnitude bigger due to all the new nations, so it will take a while to settle. The Dom3 CBM is also cycling through drafts much slower than the Dom2 one. Give it time, people.

The DB wasn't built in a day and this is a far more ambitious project because instead of just listing stuff, it requires detailed knowledge of every aspect of the game and analysis of what each change entails as well as testing.

[DrPraetorious]

If something is drastically broken, it is better to nerf it than to upgrade absolutely everything else.

But the example I keep coming back to is Shadowfist (which is an excellet game, by the by.) They hardly ever nerfed anything - any underpowered card would get minor flavor advantages until it was competitive.

In dominions, there are a huge number of relatively minor advantages you can give that would actually enhance the flavor of units, and you can balance them to the most robust, useful members of their type, rather than taking that unit and nerfing it. I think this is preferable even if it introduces more changes, especially if it only introduces changes in stuff people seldom use.

For example - pretenders. The Prince of Death, the Wyrm, the Dragons, the Cyclops and a a bunch of bless chassis (esp the Oracle), there is a general consensus, are better than the other base pretenders.

It is easier on the learning curve to boost all the other pretenders than it is to nerf those dozen which people with carefully refined strategies actually use, even though this is more changes. That way, I don't even have to look at the mod, I can show up with my unmodified prince of death strategy and keep using it without even learning the new and improved abilities of the Titan (who can hurl lightning at 5% of enemy units at the start of combat, or something.)

You can do the same thing with nations - give them national spells (or, if absolutely needed, boost their troops) until they are competitive.

Personally, I don't think that units within a nation need to be particularly balanced against eachother. If a unit is actually useless, this is a problem, but I think it's actually *important* that some units (likewise spells, but obviously not whole nations) be niche, useful only in specific circumstances, while other nations and spells are more robust and broadly useful.

All of this is also a lot more work, of course.