I played a lot of games since the recent patch and i am usually at the top or very near the top on serious difficulty; however, with the Broken Lords faction it is very hard to keep up. This is also noticeable with ai factions that play Broken Lords; they are the usually the first faction to be eliminated, especially because the ai always seems to gang upon the weakest players.



To make it short here are some points:



1) Terrible units:

Especially Stalwarts are one the worst units in the game: They deal no damage, they have little hp and they need dust to be healed (unless later in the faction quest when you get the Pentinent Chapel). The last point is especially bad because you need the dust in the early game to build up your economy.



2) Broken economy:

The basic economic concept only works up to age 2-3 afterwards it falls apart; totally. Let me make something clear: If you have to pay 1k+ dust to get just one population it is never worth buying it, e.g. if you get 10 gold per population (base is 4!) you still need 100 turns to break even. I usually set every population on dust (unless i build settlers, than i set to production) and buy out buildings (with the reductions from age 2 techs and empire plans). The population cost formula also scales very poorly on large maps (which i usually choose).



3) Terrain dependency:

I started 4 games in a row in lush biome (only production and a little bit of science), needless to say you can basically restart the game then. Broken lords need some ability to deal with that sort of situation.



4) Bad starting technology:

Nobody needs tier 1 armors, ever. It is a wasted tech because you reach age 2 quite fast and lack of production/dust and the extractors to do anything with that tech in age 1. Tier 2 armor is usually superior. (those techs need to be looked at imho it is quite reliable to get t3 armors from quests so any tech of armors and weapons is imho wasted, but this is another discussion).



5) Lacking faction identification:

Looking at their lore http://i.imgur.com/t8A1GZd.jpg the Broken Lords are a faction "... of knights and town builders[sic]", yet the cheapest way to get a large build up city is to conquer them. It is incredibly hard to stay on an even economic footing with other factions without conquest. This has to do with the earlier points: You simply cannot keep up with other factions in city size/development when each faction has multiple cities. On the other hand, if you don't waste dust on population/healing the only actual working strategy is to assimilate a good minor faction and use the dust to wage war (buyout units and heroes) and go on conquest. This is a major issue because their dust economy heavily overlaps with the roving clans.





Suggestions:

a) Rebalance their units, especially stalwarts.

b) Population cost should be on a per city basis (so it scales on bigger maps), i.e. it should not be affected by population in your other cities and should approach a cap of ~500 dust per population (depending on game speed). I would recommend a function that approaches such a value asymptotically.

c) Instead of the worthless armor tech, they should start with a unique tech that unlocks a building that converts food exploitation to dust and is a bit costly, i.e. they can deal with bad biomes for a bit of investment and it is never as good as desert and other Broken Lords biomes.

d) Personally i would change their population mechanic so 50% of dust generated is automatically converted for population growth, so cities grow naturally depending on their dust production and you don't have that much spare dust to mess around other game systems that are clearly not designed for broken lords excess dust, i.e. i get the impression that the devs wants the player to spend a lot of dust on population growth, but you can use that dust on other things much more effectively (mercenaries/heroes) and capture large enemy cities instead. With the suggested new mechanic this would not be possible.







Other notes:

-there are still a lot of bugs regarding dust bishops and ardent mage heroes (and possibly other caster units) regarding some caster weapons: they do not appear correctly, e.g. the hold it in the wrong way.

-vaulters are incredibly overpowered, but there is a thread for this already.

-i would like small changes to the new diplomatic screens, so it centers on the animated leaders and not display them somewhere at the side of the screen

-there needs to be a lot of balance regarding units, especially op ones like: haunts, demons and drakken drakes.

-i like the new combat formula although it can be very spikey, imho i would either reduce crit damage or get rid of the randomness and change additional/reduced damage to a percentage based on the relation of attack to defense, e.g. if you have 50% more attack than the enemy has defense you get 50% more damage (could be faction of the attack-defense ratio).

while i would have to disagree on the points of broken lords having terrible units, i most certainly have to agree that the dust cost per population scaling is incredibly broke when you start paying over 8k per unit its pretty bad, especially late game as founding a new city becomes a really bad idea. i really do think this should be on a per city basis at the very least, so when you found a new city it should be the same cost as creating your first city again.

while i would have to disagree on the points of broken lords having terrible units

well in terms of stats they certainly are, but this is a well known issue currently (how many stalwarts does it take to beat one haunt? XD)



i min-maxed them a bit:

1) research mercenary market immediately

2) sell starting units (they need dust to heal which is bad in the beginning, later this is actually very strong) and just maximize your dust income in your starting city

3) don't build new cities or do anything that does not increase you dust income (you don't need production or science)

4) wait until you get ~250 dust per turn

5) now you can recruit 1 mercenary unit per turn and crush any ai



i just did this in a test case on serious difficulty against a wild walker ai (which spammed dredges as it's main unit and was in first place) and went from last to first place in a matter of a few turns and am now pretty much unstoppable.

this is by far the strongest strategy because you focus solely on military through the mercenary market and let your prey (i.e. any nearby ai) build up it's cities for you.



i really want to play the broken lords according to their lore, but i have to play them as a warmongering mercenary band to be effective. i hope amplitude tweaks them a lot for release, currently they don't match their description at all (unless you want to play a very weak faction).





edit:

regarding the hero there are two options:

1) just assign to the city and maximize gold income (reliable, but less gold)

2) walk the map and search ruins, i.e. get indiana bones talents + research search party first (less reliable but possibly much more gold)



because options 2 is much less reliable i can not test it, but i would assume that option 2 is much stronger in the early game (mid to late game is much less important because you conquered a lot of good cities).

I fully agree with Points 2, 3 and 4... and suggestions b, c and d.

It's almost like you read my mind!



A simple solution to point 3 is to make the BL faction ALWAYS start on Dry terrain i.e Rocky/Dirt or Desert biome (the best), or to a lesser extent >> Snow biome with a coast nearby. Your suggestion 2 is pretty good though...

Whenever I start in Plains/Grasslands, I don't get very far in the game even if I have 2 Escaped Experiments anomalies nearby. It's just a poor city in the long-term.

I actually logged onto the forums just to see if there was anybody saying how the "Broken Lords" are living up to their name. I just finished (well I actually couldn't bear to finish, as it stopped being fun) a game on serious difficulty, and had the EXACT same thoughts regarding this faction.

I'm just hoping if the devs see enough feedback, that they can change some of the more obvious balance issues. It seems odd to me that one of the oldest factions is lacking polish. I've been impressed overall with how well balanced the game seems to feel, but issues with this faction seem so easy to uncover, it makes me wonder how it's gone this far without being addressed. The good news is that it's really just a few small adjustments away from being resolved. Even if they only adjusted the cost of adding population, it would be a huge step forward. As it is though, this is the only faction I can say isn't fun on higher difficulties, as they are just constantly starved of dust

in hope that the devs read this:



i watched the third q&a with space troll and he answered a question regarding the Broken Lords (basically they changed the dust income globally, thus affecting the Broken Lords especially hard).

I want to draw attention to the issue that upping gold income to the broken lords will have major balance implications with other game systems. i covered this issue in my last post in this thread, basically

Broken Lords are currently incredible op if instead of building up like any other faction you just focus on gold income and mass buy mercenaries and conquer enemy cities. Upping the gold income to the Broken Lords will make this even worse.

I have not tried this strategy against an endless Ai, but a serious ai has zero chance of defending against that strategy:



-you can buy one mercenary per turn (even with multiple cities the ai needs ~2-4 turns to produce a unit)

-you can buy the most powerful units (haunts XD)

-units are already promoted and equipped usually with items above your current tech level

-this type of gameplay feels very gimmiky and against Broken Lords lore



again read my last post above for details. just try it out and see how op it is

When I first played the game as Broken Lords it was in the Alpha, before the Mages were added the Broken Lords were the best in the game (my oppinion). I had over 5 cities with all over 10 pop and I conquered the entire large map as fast as I could travel from one side of the map to the other. After the Mages were added they also felt the need to balance the Broken Lords to the point that they became unplayable and I stopped playing as them ever since (my new favorite became the Mages, but haven't played since the other factions were released, I'm waiting until the game is officially released [tomorrow]).

I trust the scaling will be fixed. It should just scale locally. Like the first worker will cost 50 for every city..75 for the second, 112.5 for third... so on and so forth. Numbers pulled from buttocks.



Most new cities get a new worker (via food) by the 2nd or 3rd turn anyway.

Phalnax811 wrote:
I trust the scaling will be fixed. It should just scale locally. Like the first worker will cost 50 for every city..75 for the second, 112.5 for third... so on and so forth. Numbers pulled from buttocks.



Most new cities get a new worker (via food) by the 2nd or 3rd turn anyway.

When I first played that's how it was. The poplution of one city didn't increase the pop cost in another city (local not global) and that would make them playable for me again.

Griffon wrote:
When I first played that's how it was. The poplution of one city didn't increase the pop cost in another city (local not global) and that would make them playable for me again.

Yeah I read on the dev blog that they want Broken Lords to gain cities by expansion mainly...which is pointless depending on maps. I'd rather balance...

ok i played a game with the release version:



(+) stalwarts and other Broken Lords units are good now, although i still would not recommend them in the early game due to dust healing (in the later stages of the game this ability is very powerful)

(+) heroes got cheaper so you can make the mercenary rush even more powerful

(-) no noticeable changes regarding the population formula



regarding the mercenary rush i don't think that indiana bones + search party are worth it: yes you get less empty ruins, but you do not get the much more dust, imho assigning the hero to the city is better for your dust income.

i wonder if this strategy is as overpowered as in single player.



in the release version game i went from ~160 points to over 700 by crushing two serious ais (Wild Walkers + Roving Clans) with two armies of mercenaries each led by a hero. suddenly all other ais were terrified of me XD (the second best player was at ~380 points).

tesb wrote:
no noticeable changes regarding the population formula

Based on the focus videos, I'm pretty sure this is purposeful design. They want Broken Lords to be a "conquering" faction rather than one that grows on it's own.

Propbuddha wrote:
Based on the focus videos, I'm pretty sure this is purposeful design. They want Broken Lords to be a "conquering" faction rather than one that grows on it's own.

So they want us to build up one or two cities and get the pop as high as we want it to be for the rest of the game then conquer all the other cities we get? I mean after Broken Lords get so many cities the cost to buy pop become so outrageous that the cities become stuck at that pop. That also limits the cities they take over too. If they have 5 or more 10 pop cities from conquest then your not going to want to capture a 1 pop city the AI just made unless you raze it.