Nasarog wrote:
MANoob - nice analysis. I would add a fire effect to the Drakken as a AE attack instead of beam.

Thanks . Yeah, fire effect would work better, I picked beam as the most suitable out of the existing abilities.

Dermenore wrote:
I can't understant all what af your wraiting MANoob because my english is very bad but what i very like what i understand in your analysis. I was write the same, in French, for some's point in Broken Lord, in the population's cost and

the heal cost). All your post are very impressive. A great bravo

Thanks

badken wrote:
Having just finished a Drakken game, I agree with your assessment of Drakken units. I think maybe a better improvement for the Ancients would be for their aura to have a longer range, maybe even cover the whole battlefield. Whatever changes are done, *one* of the units needs to be made into a heavy hitter. As it is, none of them really are. Wyverns seem to do average damage and at the same time are kind of weak health/defensively. Their flying ability is powerful on the battlefield, but it doesn't make up for the Drakken army not having any strong offensive units. Of course, maybe the point there is that you are intended to use minor faction units as your heavy hitters. I ended up bringing Daemons along with my armies.



As far as the faction bonuses go, I think they are fine as-is. I had plenty of cities I was able to site near ruins, and more that I was able to expand toward ruins, so I was able to exploit them quite well. I do agree that their starting gold tech is kind of a mystery.



I would also like to see more diplomatic options. The Drakken are obviously a diplomatic powerhouse, and I came very close to getting a Diplomatic victory without even trying very hard, while aiming for a wonder victory. It just seems that once you are allied with everyone and have trade agreements with all of them, there's nothing left. It would be fun to manipulate them into attacking each other or something - anything other than just Compliment.

For me it's weird when a huge dragon spits fire and deals 0 damage (ancient). If it was some sort of drakkenling shaman then better aura would work (and would go well with the idea of using minor faction units as primary combat units).



As for endless excavation, imo its mostly helpful for your first city and first turns when you have very little influence. Later on the bonus isn't so good. So it's very dependent on your luck with ruin placement in the 1st region.

Having just finished a Drakken game, I agree with your assessment of Drakken units. I think maybe a better improvement for the Ancients would be for their aura to have a longer range, maybe even cover the whole battlefield. Whatever changes are done, *one* of the units needs to be made into a heavy hitter. As it is, none of them really are. Wyverns seem to do average damage and at the same time are kind of weak health/defensively. Their flying ability is powerful on the battlefield, but it doesn't make up for the Drakken army not having any strong offensive units. Of course, maybe the point there is that you are intended to use minor faction units as your heavy hitters. I ended up bringing Daemons along with my armies.



As far as the faction bonuses go, I think they are fine as-is. I had plenty of cities I was able to site near ruins, and more that I was able to expand toward ruins, so I was able to exploit them quite well. I do agree that their starting gold tech is kind of a mystery.



I would also like to see more diplomatic options. The Drakken are obviously a diplomatic powerhouse, and I came very close to getting a Diplomatic victory without even trying very hard, while aiming for a wonder victory. It just seems that once you are allied with everyone and have trade agreements with all of them, there's nothing left. It would be fun to manipulate them into attacking each other or something - anything other than just Compliment.

I can't understant all what af your wraiting MANoob because my english is very bad but what i very like what i understand in your analysis. I was write the same, in French, for some's point in Broken Lord, in the population's cost and the heal cost). All your post are very impressive. A great bravo

broken lords are dumb strong once you customize and optimize their gold production. They are also flawed in the original version with barely any points at all in their faction

The issue is the brute force raw stats being competitive with a more "optimized" faction. And that it's basically the only preset that manages it.



Like I said. I'm on board with every preset being an essentially optimized "main personality" for the affinities, with custom factions being about approaching the same problem from a different angle or retooling the affinity for a completely different purpose.

Not necessarily, a vanilla faction should always be able to compete competitively with custom factions, as all custom factions are, are base factions slightly or majorly modified to suit a certain playstyle. The only difference is that the Vanilla factions are going to play a different style in a different way. Besides, if custom factions were always much better than the stock factions, than what fun would they be in single player?

Refitting traits =/= nerf



Currently vaulters are so much better than almost all other factions it's pretty stupid. They even manage to be competitive with or straight up better than custom faction due to brute force trait total alone. That's an issue.

Based on what i saw ig :



Basic faction balance :

-Vaulters are op, got 115 points when max is supposed to be 80, tp should have a cd and it's way too easy to be perma boosted by holy resource. BUT their hero are pretty weak compared to other factions not rly good in cities and not op in combat + they have some hard time against roaming armies early game.

-Wild walker can be pretty op as well if they find good spot, high wombo combot with some tech + their hero give them an insane prod on each cities, they can build everything fast, including units and always have HUGE armies and HUGE income. As is said their hero bonus in cities are totally broken (+1 on forest then + 22 in prod and may also reach +45% prod on city ... DUH) and their basic archers are really powerfull from early to late game (but they are glasscanon if something reach them they are dead).

-Necro : don't play them too much, find their hero weak and they armies weak

-Broken lords : Every one say that they are weak, they are BUT they use only 55/80 points, that mean that you can create a custom broken lord faction with the +30% dust trait and then they become really strong, a bit weak early game but their dust income can be awesome (done a multiplayer game with +1500 dust each turn, had about 7 armies of 6 units with 7 heros fully upgraded, rolled on the map.), They also have the best fighting hero.

-Cultist : When you pick cultist in mp you are sure that everyone will try to kill you, reason is that cultist are pretty op with their free neutral units and their hero who is better than broken lord's one (but can't heal with dust ).

Didn't play other factions



ATM basic op faction seem to be vaulters and wildwalkers, cultist are behind and broken lords and necro seem to be the most weaks, custom broken lords still pretty strong.

Don't you dare nerf my Vaulters.

I'm not in favor of overcapping preset faction stats. I'd rather see them optimized to a degree roughly consistent with custom faction optimization (full point loadout, some "all upside" negative traits) rather than just pour enough points into them that they're competitive.



Each faction should do one thing really well. Then custom factions should be about retooling an affinity for something new (Warlike Roving Clans, peaceful Necrophage, diplomatic Ardent Mages) rather than "fixing" an affinity because its base loadout is "bad". To that end there should probably be a maximum number of negative points a faction can have, if only to prevent the trait point system from being as broken as Endless Space was (take every negative, get 200 points worth of positives since most negatives aren't an issue).

EcthelionHelm wrote:
Specific Suggestions :



Vaulters - increase hero governing skill power(possibly add in a % science or science/pop). Nerf their expansion disapproval from -50 to -25%. Nerf bonus from holy resource from 200 to 150%



Wild Walkers - Shaman special skill could be better, giants could use an ability. Either increase their bonus from forests (from 1 to 2 or 3), or replace it with the one that gives +1 industry on industry.



Cultists - how well they do seems dependent on whether or not they can capture and hold enough minor faction villages to start snowballing from free units. Any way to add defense / militia to converted minor faction villages would help here. Also increase the bonus that their priest gives in combat. Nerf their heroes - starting skill is too good, and way too powerful with both %dust and % industry. If you could make city upgrades (like +fids on river or terrain with fids) apply on villages outside of the home region, this would greatly help out their economy.



Roving clans - seem pretty well balanced. Maybe rebalance the costs of some of their faction stuff (some of the marketplace traits are a bit expensive) and give them an extra trait like +10% dust, or an extra trade route. The dust or science per anomaly (forget which) hero skill is useless, and could be swapped out.



Ardent Mages - give them several custom traits. I added in +% dust since it is what they use to power their spells, but they are also science focused so that would work too. The anomaly boosting ones seems to fit them well too. Increase pillar scaling (several times researching the +1 level on arcana actually gives no bonus!). Remove the stun one, and have a minus initiaive / slow enemy battle movement instead. Other battle spells need values and scaling increased. Pillar costs seem to scale with # of cities or something (noticed the base cost gets higher as game goes on) - this shouldn't be so, as pillars don't effect all cities like the other resources that scale on number of cities do. A hero economic ability that gives +50%/+50%/+100% effects of pillars on cities would be really cool if possible.



Broken Lords - their units could stand to be slightly tougher. The big thing imo would be to change the scaling cost of new population - I believe it currently has a dependence on number of cities^2. Reducing this to ^1.5 and balancing some of the other terms could make them much more competitive. Alternatively, making population benefit from buyout reduction would work.



Drakken - drakkenling is very weak. Adjusting some of their custom traits / trait costs could help them a bit.



Necrophages - haven't played with/against enough to say. However, if their stockpiles are like the ones the cultists get from razing cities (25 food / stockpile), then somehow making stockpiles more valuable could help.

Atleast one who understood what I meant by "precise suggestions"



I will work on this !

EcthelionHelm wrote:
Specific Suggestions :







Wild Walkers - Shaman special skill could be better, giants could use an ability. Either increase their bonus from forests (from 1 to 2 or 3), or replace it with the one that gives +1 industry on industry.

The giants need to be a bit more tanky....

Specific Suggestions :



Vaulters - increase hero governing skill power(possibly add in a % science or science/pop). Nerf their expansion disapproval from -50 to -25%. Nerf bonus from holy resource from 200 to 150%



Wild Walkers - Shaman special skill could be better, giants could use an ability. Either increase their bonus from forests (from 1 to 2 or 3), or replace it with the one that gives +1 industry on industry.



Cultists - how well they do seems dependent on whether or not they can capture and hold enough minor faction villages to start snowballing from free units. Any way to add defense / militia to converted minor faction villages would help here. Also increase the bonus that their priest gives in combat. Nerf their heroes - starting skill is too good, and way too powerful with both %dust and % industry. If you could make city upgrades (like +fids on river or terrain with fids) apply on villages outside of the home region, this would greatly help out their economy.



Roving clans - seem pretty well balanced. Maybe rebalance the costs of some of their faction stuff (some of the marketplace traits are a bit expensive) and give them an extra trait like +10% dust, or an extra trade route. The dust or science per anomaly (forget which) hero skill is useless, and could be swapped out.



Ardent Mages - give them several custom traits. I added in +% dust since it is what they use to power their spells, but they are also science focused so that would work too. The anomaly boosting ones seems to fit them well too. Increase pillar scaling (several times researching the +1 level on arcana actually gives no bonus!). Remove the stun one, and have a minus initiaive / slow enemy battle movement instead. Other battle spells need values and scaling increased. Pillar costs seem to scale with # of cities or something (noticed the base cost gets higher as game goes on) - this shouldn't be so, as pillars don't effect all cities like the other resources that scale on number of cities do. A hero economic ability that gives +50%/+50%/+100% effects of pillars on cities would be really cool if possible.



Broken Lords - their units could stand to be slightly tougher. The big thing imo would be to change the scaling cost of new population - I believe it currently has a dependence on number of cities^2. Reducing this to ^1.5 and balancing some of the other terms could make them much more competitive. Alternatively, making population benefit from buyout reduction would work.



Drakken - drakkenling is very weak. Adjusting some of their custom traits / trait costs could help them a bit.



Necrophages - haven't played with/against enough to say. However, if their stockpiles are like the ones the cultists get from razing cities (25 food / stockpile), then somehow making stockpiles more valuable could help.

Agreed, custom Broken Lords with all positive dust related traits and that Necrophage trait where it's cheaper to build boroughs are ridiculously OP. You don't even need industry nor units with any kind of survivability (you can just buy out most production) once you get rolling. I had 8 cities with 10+pop and heroes on all of them, and three armies of 6 units also with heroes faster than I ever got with any other race (even if they had food or industry focus).

Autocthon wrote:
Refitting traits =/= nerf



Currently vaulters are so much better than almost all other factions it's pretty stupid. They even manage to be competitive with or straight up better than custom faction due to brute force trait total alone. That's an issue.

EcthelionHelm specifically used the word "nerf".



I'm not overly concerned with balance changes, but to keep the single player game interesting, some factions should be more powerful than other factions. I am not interested in making custom factions, that is way more complexity than I want to deal with. My main concern is that the main factions not get "over-rebalanced" to suit multiplayer without regard to keeping the single player game interesting. While multiplayer can be fun, my guess is that like most computer strategy games, people playing multiplayer are a small minority of players (see this article at Rock Paper Shotgun for an interesting case study). Also, I prefer the single player game, so I selfishly want it to get the most developer attention.

Ok MANoob, nice analyse but this is not enough precise, I still dont know what I can change with it Give ideas

Forest walk for the Wild Walker units and heroes is a start.

This is obvious ^^

Kingsguard wrote:
Lucky Nasarog I had to abandon my cultists cause of a Fatal Error caused by Conversion



Well, I have no clue of what I could change now (im really bad at balancing ^^) but tell me, Balance mod is something I can do, without much work (a little bit... But I love modding..)



Be precise in your suggestion please

Forest walk for the Wild Walker units and heroes is a start.

Tbh I do not care much about the "preset" races with the addition of custom ones, but base affinities are kinda unbalanced as well. In terms of presets - I think all of them should be in 90-100 points range, since they all have some flavor traits and would otherwise be outperformed by more optimized custom factions. The only non custom race currently that is competitive with custom ones are vaulters at their ridiculously high 110 points and actually fairly decent trait selection.



Ardent mages currently are a good warmongering faction due to reasons mentioned above. Pillars help to get a quick start, although I agree that they could use better scaling and combat spells should be rebalanced (stun is OP, others UP - they seem to have the same values as with original combat system, when things were much different). I would also like to see more tactical spells as mages, like teleport for instance, but I don't see it happening now. Their low point setup is a bit ridiculous though and custom mages end up being very strong. Unit lineup is one of the better ones imo.



Cultists are quite weak in my opinion - their heroes are indeed the best governors (and should be toned down imo), but aside from the 1st one everyone can buy them. Their affinity is simply terrible, the only redeeming feature is that it costs 0 points. They look like they can pull off a military rush, but I doubt they are competitive in other victory types. Their starting units are very weak, and they need some tech to build decent ones. Their t2 archer is very good statwise though.



Broken lords affinity is even worse then cultists - worst faction atm imo. Unit lineup is bad as well.



Valuters kick ass - and default ones can actually give run for their money to any custom setup. Have the best affinity on top of it and a decent unit lineup.



Haven't played much with the clans, but they seem solid, and the mercs perk looks a bit over the top. The affinity itself is of questionable use, but they make up for it with speedy units and other good traits.



Drakken affinity looks like one of the more interesting ones, their default setup has a lot of bad traits though. Units are below average I would say, but since drakken get more assimilation slots early on they can easily go with minor faction units.



Wild walkers are decent, but a pale shadow of what they were in early versions. The affinity doesn't do much by itself, but at least it costs only 10 points and doesn't do anything bad. They also get quite useful stuff from early quests like visions of glory. Units are nowhere near OP as they were, but decent (shaman is still bad and the walker could use some special ability).



Necrophages have one of the better default setups, thanks to cellulose mutation, it doesn't play to strength of their affinity as much as it could though. Affinity actually does something useful (yay!) and their units are quite good outside of forager.



Overall it's kinda hard for me to give an exact rating to each race, so I would just put them into tiers:



Default ones:

Top tier: Vaulters

Good tier: Clans, Necrophages

Mid tier: Mages, Wild walkers. Cultists, Drakken

Bad tier: Broken lords



Custom ones (based on affinity, quest and units):

Top tier: Vaulters

Good tier: Mages. Drakken

Mid tier: Wild walkers, Necrophages, Clans

Bad tier: Broken lords, Cultists



Situationally mid tier may actually be very good as well, but it's rated below top/good because of lack of flexibility. Bad tier is just bad.

well if anyone has any disagreements with me feel free to say them. Otherwise I feel I have a pretty good hold on the balance other than Ardent mages and cultists. AM though are probably just weak based on their hilariously low 45 point use.

Well, if you agree with hashinshin, I can do that, easy. (I mostly agree with him atm)



Im not sure about Mercenaries, they cost alot, if they are nerfed it would no longer worth the price.

And yea, Drakkens units are really too weak, I will buff them.



About Broken Lords, I already buffed them a little : /#/endless-legend/forum/15-modding/thread/5463-a-few-things-i-modded-for-pleasure

And Im making a new traits for them which refer to the "chivalrous" aspect of the faction which isnt enough representated at the moment sadly