tesb wrote:
depends how you play them. i never use any production with them and i only need a little science for my strategy (which differs a bit from the usual BL strategy).

I read your post tesb, and actually your strategy consist simply in exploiting the dust affinity of the BL to push an early military rush. As the AI do not know how to handle this at the moment, it is a free win. But actually it works with nearly all factions I think, the 'little' difference is you can push it earlier with the BL thanks to their dust affinities.



If you choose to not exploit this IA flaw, then you need to have some production in early game with the BL. Not that much, but just enough to 'start the dust engine'.



I have done lot of game with the BL recently (without abusing the AI flaw and using a military rush), and I think that one very good strategy with the BL is going very 'vertical' until mid game, by having only two cities for example (and having the second quite lately - when the faction quest ask for it). This way you save a lot of dust by lowering the dust cost of pop, and you save a lot of influence for empire plan.



Concerning the BL problem, I tend to agree with what is said here. Maybe a little tweak of the formula would be a good thing. Maybe something that make the dust cost of pop a little bit cheaper yeah, but I would like to keep the cost increase linked to number of cities, it give the BL a 'vertical flavour' I like quite well.

Maybe we should have an experiment with the fast or normal gamespeeds.

tesb wrote:
i never had to send that much replacement soldiers. usually it is enough for 3 heroes + full armies before the second winter (i usually play on slow gamespeed) to crush any other race.

Playing on slow help a lot rush strategies. In such conditions it is quite obvious that you can crush the map very quickly, espescially with the BL, no matter the difficulty settings.

So in summary, the best way to play the Broken Lords is to use their early game dust advantage to rush the enemy who either have to small a military or don't have a military at all

in numerous cases yes, Broken Lords are a very weak faction otherwise.

I mean, have you ever tried your strategy in a multiplayer game?

no, in multi this strategy is defeatable, because of meta gaming.

It sounds to me like any player could build a sizable defensive army to defend themselves from a continued assault, while they build up their own cities and you neglect yours

My estimate is that only Roving Clans could do that, because their mercenaries get double hip points. i never played with another race that could generate (either via production or market place) that many armies (units lead by hero) in such a short amount of time. also you cannot build units and build up your cities.

Plus, in winter it will be much more difficult to send your replacement soldiers to the front lines of any conflict.

i never had to send that much replacement soldiers. usually it is enough for 3 heroes + full armies before the second winter (i usually play on slow gamespeed) to crush any other race.



i am not arguing it is fun. i am not arguing the broken lords should play like this. i only say that it is a very powerful option for an otherwise very weak race and any buffs (that the broken lords otherwise desperately need) have to take that into account.

So in summary, the best way to play the Broken Lords is to use their early game dust advantage to rush the enemy who either have to small a military or don't have a military at all. Sounds like it needs to be fixed. I mean, have you ever tried your strategy in a multiplayer game? It sounds to me like any player could build a sizable defensive army to defend themselves from a continued assault, while they build up their own cities and you neglect yours. And once winter sets in, and your units are slowed down, any defender will have a defensive advantage over you as well as having more time to build up their cities and armies. Plus, in winter it will be much more difficult to send your replacement soldiers to the front lines of any conflict.

tesb wrote:
what do you mean by that? you don't need resources (strategic) because you buy mercenaries and dust income is very high (by definition) and unit upkeep is low anyway. i also don't know what you think needs to be done to fix the ai deal with this (unless you give it free armies)? can you actually name the ai flaw? this strategy gives you a unit/hero output that simply can not be matched by other races in that time frame (usually between first to third winter).

The AI builds no defensive force no matter how bad its military is. If it built more than token forces the cost of maintaining a constant dust-fueled assault would eventually slow you to a crawl, if at all. And assuming it can;t be matched is false, there are ways to match it. It's not as much of a head start as you think it is.

later on that is true, i.e. if we talk ages 4+ (maybe even 3), but in the early to mid game i have not played a single faction that can put out such strong armies that fast. maybe the roving clans could defend against it. for example in my games (again endless difficulty) with necrophages i get a unit output that overshadows that of the broken lords, but it comes much later because you have to invest into production, science and food as well.



i tried this 3 times on serious and 2 times on endless with the same results (all on large maps with 8 players).

Enemy AI is excessively weak in military. See above. Also see above, same strategy other factions not a significantly different timeframe.

And fixing AI guts the strategy altogether because you won't have the resources to sustain your armies.

what do you mean by that? you don't need resources (strategic) because you buy mercenaries and dust income is very high (by definition) and unit upkeep is low anyway. i also don't know what you think needs to be done to fix the ai deal with this (unless you give it free armies)? can you actually name the ai flaw? this strategy gives you a unit/hero output that simply can not be matched by other races in that time frame (usually between first to third winter).

Any traditional affinity with the same traits will perform better simply by virtue of the way population scaling works, and will be even better the longer the game goes on.

later on that is true, i.e. if we talk ages 4+ (maybe even 3), but in the early to mid game i have not played a single faction that can put out such strong armies that fast. maybe the roving clans could defend against it. for example in my games (again endless difficulty) with necrophages i get a unit output that overshadows that of the broken lords, but it comes much later because you have to invest into production, science and food as well.



i tried this 3 times on serious and 2 times on endless with the same results (all on large maps with 8 players).







edit:

overestimating the gains that the affinity is providing you

i don't think so:

1) winter does not hit nearly as hard. with other affinities and traditional gameplay i have to divert population to food and dust just to sustain myself meaning, production really suffers (= much less units produced in winter).

2) there are quite a lot of heroes that you either start with or you can buy that give extra dust income and dust per population (check your heroes it differs from hero to hero even if they are of the same race)

3) only a small amount of glass steel is necessary (which you usually find in ruins) to buy an amulet for your city hero that increases dust per population. i had 10 dust per population before the first winter in one game, combined with tons of dust from tiles

4) you need only very few buildings and those do not cost any upkeep

tesb wrote:
it is not just a rush, because you can sustain it. i don't think it works with all faction nearly as good because they are not as good in generating dust without any(!) investments into food, production and barely any science. in my current games on endless difficulty i get the impression that ai doesn't know how to handle military pressure at all. once you break it's few armies you just roll over whole empires.



i just want to point out that any change to broken lords that increases dust income or change the population formula necessarily makes this strategy stronger. personally i don't like to play Broken Lords that way, but it is just too effective to be ignored.

And fixing AI guts the strategy altogether because you won't have the resources to sustain your armies.



Kruos is absolutely right; you're exploiting a weakness in the AI and overestimating the gains that the affinity is providing you. Any traditional affinity with the same traits will perform better simply by virtue of the way population scaling works, and will be even better the longer the game goes on.

I read your post tesb, and actually your strategy consist simply in exploiting the dust affinity of the BL to push an early military rush. As the AI do not know how to handle this at the moment, it is a free win. But actually it works with nearly all factions I think, the 'little' difference is you can push it earlier with the BL thanks to their dust affinities.

it is not just a rush, because you can sustain it. i don't think it works with all faction nearly as good because they are not as good in generating dust without any(!) investments into food, production and barely any science. in my current games on endless difficulty i get the impression that ai doesn't know how to handle military pressure at all. once you break it's few armies you just roll over whole empires.



i just want to point out that any change to broken lords that increases dust income or change the population formula necessarily makes this strategy stronger. personally i don't like to play Broken Lords that way, but it is just too effective to be ignored.

So after seeing a lot of posts about how the Broken Lords seem weaker than other factions an unable to compete with them, i would love to hear everyone's explanations for how the Broken Lords are broken, and how to fix these problems



Some things I have noted so far include the Broken Lords being unable to keep up with the populations of other factions after they start conquering as the dust cost gets far too high.



To this problem I think a possible solution to this could be having a lesser increase in population price from conquered cities and additional sources of dust from conquered cities, such as a small tribute or the ability to convert population into dust.



Please post your feedback to this problem below.

Broken Lords do in the beginning at least need a little production to produce some of the earlier dust producing buildings. Plus the Broken Lords still require relatively large amounts of influence and science so that they can compete with the the other factions in technology and minor factions assimilated. And the best way to produce these resources is by assigning population to them, thereby lessening the amount of population on dust production.

depends how you play them. i never use any production with them and i only need a little science for my strategy (which differs a bit from the usual BL strategy).

tesb wrote:
it is excess because you can set population to dust and you don't need to production or food at all. other factions need some food buildings to generate similar amount of dust, which in turn means they need production, more techs and buildings. yes other affinities can generate similar dust incomes (even more so later on), but they take a lot longer to get there. My my main point remains that any buff to effective dust income be by buffing raw dust income or changing the population formula makes the Broken Lords mercenary rush even more powerful as is.

Broken Lords do in the beginning at least need a little production to produce some of the earlier dust producing buildings. Plus the Broken Lords still require relatively large amounts of influence and science so that they can compete with the the other factions in technology and minor factions assimilated. And the best way to produce these resources is by assigning population to them, thereby lessening the amount of population on dust production.

tesb wrote:
it is excess because you can set population to dust and you don't need to production or food at all. other factions need some food buildings to generate similar amount of dust, which in turn means they need production, more techs and buildings. yes other affinities can generate similar dust incomes (even more so later on), but they take a lot longer to get there. My my main point remains that any buff to effective dust income be by buffing raw dust income or changing the population formula makes the Broken Lords mercenary rush even more powerful as is.

Doing a pop rush has similar results o nmost races. It's not a particularly big difference. I could sit down and do some rigorous testing if I had the time. They might be a bit faster, but they also get essentially no pop increase while they're building, other empires do.



But the problem here isn't really the affinity. It's the 55 point preset faction being miles behind just about every other faction.



Yes we want soem tweaking to pop-costs but taht's because they brickwall really rapidly essentially gutting expansion.

it is excess because you can set population to dust and you don't need to production or food at all. other factions need some food buildings to generate similar amount of dust, which in turn means they need production, more techs and buildings. yes other affinities can generate similar dust incomes (even more so later on), but they take a lot longer to get there. My my main point remains that any buff to effective dust income be by buffing raw dust income or changing the population formula makes the Broken Lords mercenary rush even more powerful as is.

Base*(2^[1.5*N])*(1+C/10) where N is current population of the city and C is number of cities



Maintains a small amount of global scaling to reward keeping a close empire but global population isn't an issue at all. I'd personally encourage some exceptionally slow passive growth where a city gets points to next population based on some factor of on-city dust production. 3-5% for instance. That lets BL scale in excessively drawn out games where they otherwise won't be able to due to cost constraints.



Edit

tesb wrote:
as i have written in this thread:

/#/endless-legend/forum/6-game-design/thread/3166-feedback-broken-lords



broken lords are currently quite strong, with a certain strategy; otherwise, they are a weak faction.



i don't think adding gold income or changing the population formula are good ways to balance them, because their excess gold mess around in other game systems, e.g. any buff to their economy will make them even stronger.

as written in the linked thread my suggestion is to subtract 50% of gold income into local population growth and remove the ability to buy population. this will make them behave a bit more similar to regular factions and remove a lot of excess gold (which is supposed to be used on population) that can be used to mess around other game systems.

The gold isn't actually excess. They have to pay traits for it. The core faction bonus in fact does not provide them with any meaningful gold advantage and only serves as a sink.



The affinity itself is strong in an ultra-specific build, but any other affinity would be very nearly as strong or even stronger.

as i have written in this thread:

/#/endless-legend/forum/6-game-design/thread/3166-feedback-broken-lords



broken lords are currently quite strong, with a certain strategy; otherwise, they are a weak faction.



i don't think adding gold income or changing the population formula are good ways to balance them, because their excess gold mess around in other game systems, e.g. any buff to their economy will make them even stronger.

as written in the linked thread my suggestion is to subtract 50% of gold income into local population growth and remove the ability to buy population. this will make them behave a bit more similar to regular factions and remove a lot of excess gold (which is supposed to be used on population) that can be used to mess around other game systems.

The global dependence is certainly the problem. I don't think making it completely independent of total number of cities would be a good idea though - broken lords dust can scale enough that by late game, you would have every city be size 30.



Just reduce the particular scaling constant (instead of squaring, to 1.5th power perhaps). Balance it so that growth is less efficient than food using races (to encourage conquest), but still viable enough.

Preset broken lords is without a doubt the worst faction in game. Custom broken lords however have some scary potential stats because you can actually have enough traits to get a functional basic economy.



With that said,



Broken lords should probably have the dust increase per population made per city rather than global.

They should probably have some additional affinity benefits, to offset the lower population potential.



It's important to keep in mind that the preset faction for Broken Lords is about as gimp as it could possibly be, custom factions are nowhere near as weak. Sowers had the same problem in Endless Space, and it's kind of annoying to see it happen again.