My thoughts on balance

[Elite KryPtik]

Ok, so I finally got Tunngle set up and working. It is inferior to gameranger in every way, and I don't understand why the team supports an inferior program, but I digress :/

I played about 10 matches against other people today, several 1v1s and 2v2s, as well as a 3v3 match, here are my observations.

Firstly, every single game I where I played as an evil faction against Rohan, without fail, I was rushed by heroes, from people building statues to discount the heroes. Both Isengard and Mordor are laughably vulnerable against this, Mordor moreso than Isengard. As Mordor I don't see a way of defending against it, seems like game over no matter what if Rohan hero rushes a mordor early game. The reason for this is most of Mordor's heroes cannot level up from kills, and so they are extremely weak early game against enemy heroes, who will have leveled up from creeps. For Isengard, their troops are a little stronger, so they can hold, but that's it. Being stuck in your base all game inevitably leads to defeat. The price of the statues needs to be raised to counter this, I suggest to 300. That way the statues would still be useful mid game,  to discount hero revival costs, and people wouldn't be able to buy every single hero within 10 minutes.

Next, Ered Luin dwarves are massively OP. If you focus on getting veterans and heroes, and giving the heroes Mithril Vests and runes from Balin, they can destroy entire armies with ease. I don't really know how to balance this, maybe make it so that instead of the ponies spawning they have to be bought for say, 300? I don't think the mithril should be nerfed, just made harder to get.

Next, Isengard late game is ridiculously OP. The only faction which stands a chance against them once they have all their upgrades are the dwarves, and even that is an incredibly tough fight. Since Isengard gets so many different income boosts, the easiest way to balance their late game would be to increase the cost of their more powerful upgrades. All the upgrades at the Steelworks should cost 2k to research, the cost of machinery of war should be increased to 1500 for the first one, and 2500 for the 2nd one. The cost of upgrades on units should be increased greatly as well, especially the captain, who as far as I can tell is the reason why uruks late game are so OP. It should cost at least 1000 to equip him to a unit. The research prices at the armory are ok, but to equip upgrades on a unit should be increased, so that if a player has a full discount from 6 level 3 furnaces it still costs 500 for Forged Blades and Heavy Armor. This is how its done in BFME1, and the balance is perfect in that game.

Finally, Rohan. This has already been heavily discussed, but right now they essentially have nothing for late game, especially against Isengard. Also, since the effectiveness of counter units has been increased, and they die easier to pikes, this essentially neuters them. They need some new infantry and archers, probably the easiest thing would be to make the Royal Guard and Royal Archers buildable from the archery range level 3, so that they could make a dent in the enemies pikes before your cavalry charge. Another idea would be to make Hama's royal guard summon permanent. If the only way to win as Rohan online is to hero rush then I won't be playing with them online anymore.

On the whole, I sadly cannot say I enjoyed myself, except the 2 times I played as the OP dwarves. I have a lot more fun fighting against brutals offline. But I'm not going to give up, I'll keep playing and hopefully discover some counter strategies to the stupid hero rush meta. Looking forward to new factions and balance patches

[ziqing]

Do you play 1000 open or 4000?

[Elite KryPtik]

1k is the standard for most edain players

[vados202]

If you play with 4000, then the situation will be even worse, with the characters just the trouble. You need to either raise the price of the statues, as suggested by TC, or strengthen the Nazgul.

[ziqing]

Or they could just limit the maximum of statues in one settlement, two would be appropriate, and the statue will have influence for all area inside the settlement

[Elite KryPtik]

Or they could increase the number of statues required to get a high discount on heroes, or to the opposite and reduce the maximum bonus you can get with 5 statues to like 30% off. There are lots of different ways to go about it.

[ziqing]

Or they could increase the number of statues required to get a high discount on heroes, or to the opposite and reduce the maximum bonus you can get with 5 statues to like 30% off. There are lots of different ways to go about it.

The problem is we should also consider the use of statue in late game, when there is not so many free slots to build statue, it is already kind of useless for late game.

That Rohan hero rush thing is an irregular tactic, I am pretty sure it is not the design intention of the team

[Elite KryPtik]

Well if its irregular, then I'm damn unlucky, cus it happened to me at least 5 times.

[Elendils Cousin 3. Grades]

Using statues to rush heroes is textbook laming. Unfortunately, it seems that once somebody discovers a new method of laming, everybody starts using it instead of just playing without it, which would be much more fun.

[Adrigabbro]

You're right, it's not very funny for the player, neither is it for the opponents.
However, I believe a simple balance change won't be enough: either it will remain overpowered, or either statues won't be used at all anymore because right now it's their only use. Indeed, why would you want to sacrifice one build plot for a leadership you'll barely make any use of it?
Some times ago, someone came up with the idea of new build plots for statues/wells inside the main base. I think it is an idea that is worth considering.

[Elite KryPtik]

I think ziging's idea is the best, have the statue give leadership to everybody inside the base, same for the well, and increase the cost to like 300 per statue. That way, the statues could still be used late game to get discounts on the revival cost of heroes, and it would be worth building for the leadership on the off chance all of your leadership heroes are dead.

As for having separate build plots for statues and wells, the Dwarves have this as a unique feature, so to give it to all good factions would mean the Dwarves need a new unique feature. I think having it on main build plots makes the most sense.

I agree that hero rushing is lame, and I wish it wouldn't have happened on my first time playing against other humans. I suppose it could perhaps be countered by Cirith Ungol units for Mordor, and Lurtz/Ugluk with crossbowmen for Isengard, but its still a pretty lame strategy.

[ziqing]

As for having separate build plots for statues and wells, the Dwarves have this as a unique feature, so to give it to all good factions would mean the Dwarves need a new unique feature. I think having it on main build plots makes the most sense.

I think Mordor also have extra slots for building near the Citadel?

We'll lower the cost decrease to -30% at most with four statues and increase their cost to 150. We don't want to nerf them too much though - the hero rush strategy sucks, but the fact remains that nobody used statues at all before. So we'll try to find a middle ground. The statue buff for units will also remain for 30 seconds after the unit has left the radius of the statue so it will be a bit easier to make use of.

Message from another thread, however I think we are just swaying between "lame strategy" and "totally useless building". There is actually other way to limit Rohan hero rush, make heroes only recruitable from other buildings

[Elite KryPtik]

Glad to see the team has taken notice, and their plan seems reasonable, making it at most a 30% discount means that u cant get all the heroes straight away. As for Mordor having the build plots, those are a unique defence of Mordor, just like Isengard has the Wizard's Tower.

Also, I think that having the units from Cirith Ungol cost 0 command points is overpowered, this allows Mordor Armies to be biiger than anybody else's, especially considering Khamuls level 10 perasummon of Black Easterlings. I think that the units should cost 60 CP, and the archers 90, like for most other units.

[Draco100000]

Glad to see the team has taken notice, and their plan seems reasonable, making it at most a 30% discount means that u cant get all the heroes straight away. As for Mordor having the build plots, those are a unique defence of Mordor, just like Isengard has the Wizard's Tower.

Also, I think that having the units from Cirith Ungol cost 0 command points is overpowered, this allows Mordor Armies to be biiger than anybody else's, especially considering Khamuls level 10 perasummon of Black Easterlings. I think that the units should cost 60 CP, and the archers 90, like for most other units.

The armies of mordor are really weak that the main reason for your problems with rohan hero spam, so using only orcs is imposible to get enemie heros and troops, even outnumbering their rivals free barrack orcs are feed the enemie. The solution is Ungol. Ungol able the player to get heavy infantry (without cp cost) So this will allow to the player to get many orcs battallions and support them with ungol units. If you give cp to Ungol units, edain team will have to buff free orcs, because the armies of mordor would cant outnumber enemy armies with the result of the loose. I have played many matches, and Ungol seems the unique way to make a good armie and get some early superiority, giving them cp you only will make Mordor weaker, and it isnt needed i think.

[Elite KryPtik]

Having troops as strong as the ones from Cirith Ungol only cost the same as basic troops is fine for balance, just because they would cost CP doesn't mean they couldn't still counter the hero rush etc. What I'm talking about is really late game, its not fair that Mordor can literally get a bigger army then anybody else thanks to perma-summons and units that don't cost any CP. Being able to get an additional 9 battalions of units for no CP is ridiculous, especially when you take into account that late game a good Mordor player probably has the castellans, the Morgul Riders, and a number of summoned Haradrim and Easterlings, which are strong troops in their own right. If the ONLY troops Mordor could build was shitty free orcs then I would agree with you, but even the free orcs from Minas Morgul and Dol Guldur are fairly strong when combined with overseers. No units should cost 0 CP, its just not fair.