GRhin
commented
2 years ago Alot of ideas here. And many will one day be available for you to do yourself, so my response is purely personal feedback on the ideas, not judgement or indicators of whether it will be available. I like that you are thinking of balance and how to improve it, but as you will see I think the basis for your assumptions may be a little off.
Limits to unit/building types: while this might make AIs more difficult, and so may be worth looking into, it is treating a symptom of the problem of AIs just not being intelligent enough. That's not going to be fixed any time soon so working to the symptoms might be worth it, I just prefer to move to multiplayer (which with a zero gold start feels alot more like playing single player than the traditional peacetime games, there is a community playing that with a custom balance out there, check Krarilotus's YouTube streams for that) seeing as the ai will always be a weakpoint for this game.
Reduced castle range: shorter walls are easier to put units on, I personally don't think this would have much effect on the balance or enjoyment of the game.
No tower repair: again, I don't see this as having much effect if any, except to make the game less enjoyable. Tower repair is a huge quality of life feature that should not be so easily dismissed.
Moats costing gold: the problem with moats is that AIs will never be good at dealing with them. It is almost too strong to be available against AI. On the other hand having to pay for it you may as well just put walls up which will survive longer if it is brought under attack. This is like the first point, treating a symptom (ineffectively in this case in my opinion) of the ais lack of intelligence. So I prefer to move to multiplayer when this becomes a problem. In multiplayer the free moat is essential, and it's not really free, because of the time it takes to dig, and the units lost as the enemy tries to prevent you from digging (especially as they are usually dig by unamoured slaves). This is from the perspective of the no gold start mentioned earlier, even building walls is a risk as the stone is often better sold to buy units. In the high gold peacetime games, adding a cost to moat would make next to no difference.
Catapults slower and shorter range: okay unpopular opinion here, but catapults are not as overpowered as most people think. They appear that way because against ai by the time your considering building them you are so far ahead economically that you can afford an atrocious amount of them. Replacing them with trebs that have no speed they are still overpowered so the speed change suggestion is unlikely to make much difference. Shorter range is likely to have a huge effect, and I'd be willing to try it out (though i don't think we have found how to effect range yet), just not the the degree you are suggesting, as they are still countered pretty heavily by mangonels assuming you can get a decent amount of them (which ai can't, again symptom, resulting in a move to multiplayer) I would prefer to reduce the firerate instead of the two suggestions you made.
Sheilds: I think the custom multiplayer balance mentioned earlier reduces HP, but that's after i last checked in. I disagree with your counters suggestions, but that's because we have already found another way of nerfing them that fits their historical setting much better - make them slower, the aforementioned custom balance made them the same speed as pikemen, which means they are countered by melee units, particularly macemen and knights. Doing this also nerfed horse archers as used in multiplayer as before the ha and sheilds moved at almost the same speed allowing the ha to always be protected.
Ha and xbow: gotta hard disagree with the damage nerf. Xbow are already marginal for gold cost against most units compared to European units. As for ha, they are another unit that appears strong more due to the fact that you amass so many against AIs, you are nearly so scared of the ai using them however. That being said ranged units in general could do with a nerf or melee units a buff. The aforementioned custom balance I believe does both.
Spears and monks increased ranged resistance: hard disagree once again, particularly for the monks. That is their only downside, increase that resistance and they become a super unit that's almost free! Monks are in a really good position as an anti melee unit. They outperform every other melee unit in hand to hand combat, if you see your enemy with them, you have to fight with ranged units, fighting any other way is far too expensive.
Euro archers do more damage vs armoured units: that will basically result in xbow being pointless. As mentioned earlier euro archers are more cost effective against almost every unit, the only exceptions being the units you want to buff them against. Hard disagree.
Fire: don't let Kimberly hear you saying fire is OP you will be insta banned so hard your great great grandkids won't be able to comment In all seriousness, fire is strong, but not overpowered,because all implementations of fire are incredibly vulnerable. Firethrowers and boiling pots are shot by archers before they can be used, pitch can be prevented by destroying/clearing walls with catapults, or by letting a few cheap units trigger them. Fireballista has to burn buildings to get fire on units, which are usually behind walls, which should have ballista or mangos on them to destroy the fire ballista, extra walls can be built to block arrows from specific buildings, and in emergencies the building can be destroyed before being lit and rebuilt. Ai can't do these, so again maybe another symptom being treated.
In summary I like how you are thinking but many of these ideas are trying to force the player to play at the AIs low level rather than trying to improve the balance. Those that are specifically addressing the balance tend to ignore the actual details of the balance, probably due to your personal play style emphasizing specific units or being weak with others. If you can get in on Krarilotus's multiplayer games you will probably get a much more accurate feel for the balance (admittedly his custom balance) and may help you understand some of why I disagree with so much of your suggestions.
On Wed, 12 Jan 2022, 21:44 LordJaeger, @.***> wrote:
As most people know, Stronghold has some serious balance issues which stunts its potential in multiplayer competetive playing (and makes singleplayer less challenging as the ai does not use certain tacticts etc). Some units are overpowered, like siege units (shields, catapults), crossbowmen, horse archers etc; but also other aspects of the game is unbalanced, such as the ability to build a monster economy, build 50 towers etc, which makes sieging both unrealistic and at times impossible. So, a few easy changes can be made to make the game better and more fun. Here are some ideas to change:
Economy:
We all know there is a problem with the way the economy works in this game. Especially against the ai, it becomes easier the longer the game lasts.
-So each production unit should have a cap on production. Stone quarries as an example, could have a 100 % efficiency rate at 2 units, meaning, at 3, all 3 stone quarries produce at 75 % efficiency, and at 50 % efficiency if having 4 stone quarries. So having 4 stone quarries would be no better than 2. Iron mines have the same efficiency rating. A similar system should be applied to all forms of production or at least on some of them. Altnernatively, the price should be reduced, so as to make it more difficult to build the economy in mid-late game. This would prevent the economy becoming unrealistically huge. Moreover, some buildings, if not all, could also scale in cost: first iron mine= 20 wood, second = 40, third = 80 etc. This would make “economic victories” more important in the game, when destroying an iron mine etc. In general, this would make it useless to have 100 bakeries etc, and the player would be forced to play more like the ai does, as the ai never expands after a certain limit.
Castle building:
-The distance for castle building and keep needs to be reduced. This would prevent these chinese wall type strategies making it impossible to siege.
-Moreover, the same scale system as earlier described, should also be used for towers and gate houses. If a tower cost 40 stone, the second tower should cost 80, the third: 160, the fourth: 320, the fifth: 640, the sixth: 1280 etc.
-Also towers should not be able to be repaired, or if they can, then it should take time for this repair to occur. All in all, this would make taking a tower down in it self a victory and it would prevent the building of many towers.
-Moats should cost money to dig, soldiers should, if the moat is to wide, be able to walk through it, or a limit should be placed on how wide a moat can be. (just an idea)
Army:
-Siege engines should scale in cost in the same system as earlier described. This would make it difficult or insanely expensive to build many siege engines or shields. We all know how stupid and overpowered shields and catapults are...This would not apply to the price of engineers themselves.
-Moreover, catapults should have 20-30 % shorter range and should move at half the speed, while also taking more time to prepare for every focused move. The same idea should apply to ballistas.
-Shields should have 50 % less health, and should be countered by slingers, ballistas and tower ballista. Alternatively, fire arrows could do more damage against them.
-Both horse archers and crossbowmen should deal at least 50 % less damage; and they should both also have a reduced range to at least 10-30 % less than other archer units. Moreover they should also cost more. This would make them easier to counter. The game should be less archery and range based.
-Spearmen and monks should have 100 % more health against ranged units.
-European archers should deal 20-30 % more damage against armoured units.
-All fire should do half the amount of damage to all units. Fire is to overpowered.
Some ideas that could be implemented in the long run.
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LordJaeger
As most people know, Stronghold has some serious balance issues which stunts its potential in multiplayer competetive playing (and makes singleplayer less challenging as the ai does not use certain tacticts etc). Some units are overpowered, like siege units (shields, catapults), crossbowmen, horse archers etc; but also other aspects of the game is unbalanced, such as the ability to build a monster economy, build 50 towers etc, which makes sieging both unrealistic and at times impossible. So, a few easy changes can be made to make the game better and more fun. Here are some ideas to change:
Economy:
We all know there is a problem with the way the economy works in this game. Especially against the ai, it becomes easier the longer the game lasts.
-So each production unit should have a cap on production. Stone quarries as an example, could have a 100 % efficiency rate at 2 units, meaning, at 3, all 3 stone quarries produce at 75 % efficiency, and at 50 % efficiency if having 4 stone quarries. So having 4 stone quarries would be no better than 2. Iron mines have the same efficiency rating. A similar system should be applied to all forms of production or at least on some of them. Altnernatively, the selling price of goods could be reduced, so as to make it more difficult to build the economy in mid-late game. This would prevent the economy becoming unrealistically huge. Moreover, some buildings, if not all, could also scale in cost: first iron mine= 20 wood, second = 40, third = 80 etc. This would make “economic victories” more important in the game, when destroying an iron mine etc. In general, this would make it useless to have 100 bakeries etc, and the player would be forced to play more like the ai does, as the ai never expands after a certain limit. Or, have a limit on how many buildings can be built for the different types of buildings. As an example there already is a limit on the barracks and the mercenary camp.
Castle building:
-The distance for castle building and keep needs to be reduced. This would prevent these chinese wall type strategies making it impossible to siege, and it would force people to build actual castles.
-Moreover, the same scale system as earlier described, should also be used for towers and gate houses. If a tower cost 40 stone, the second tower should cost 80, the third: 160, the fourth: 320, the fifth: 640, the sixth: 1280 etc.
-Also towers should not be able to be repaired, or if they can, then it should take time for this repair to occur and should cost two or three times the amount. All in all, this would make taking a tower down in it self a victory and it would prevent the building of many towers.
-Moats should cost money to dig, soldiers should, if the moat is to wide, be able to walk through it, or a limit should be placed on how wide a moat can be. (just an idea)
Army:
-Siege engines should scale in cost in the same system as earlier described. This would make it difficult or insanely expensive to build many siege engines or shields. We all know how stupid and overpowered shields and catapults are... So: first catapult: 150, second catapult: 300, third catapult: 600, fourth catapult: 1200, fifth catapult: 2400. This would not apply to the price of engineers themselves.
-Moreover, catapults should have 20-30 % shorter range and should move at half the speed, while also taking more time to prepare for every focused move.
-Shields should have 50 % less health, and should be countered by slingers, ballistas and tower ballista. Alternatively, fire arrows could do more damage against them.
-Both horse archers and crossbowmen should deal at least 30-50 % less damage; and they should both also have a reduced range to at least 10-30 % less than other archer units. Moreover they should also cost more. This would make them easier to counter. The game should be less archery and range based.
-Spearmen and monks should have 100 % more health against ranged units, but should also cost more.
-European archers should deal 10-30 % more damage against armoured units, also maybe increase their cost a little.
-All fire should do less damage to all units. Fire is to overpowered.
Some ideas that could be implemented in the long run.