The "Mono Stacking" Problem

[Codyksp]

I have investigated this a bit further.
It could have been symptom of another problem. Here's my alternative hypothesis.
Enchantment stacking should not cause mono stacking because many of the tomes that provide enchantment enhance more than one unit class.

1. Cryomancy: Melee and Ranged
2. Pryomancy: Melee and Ranged
3. Roots: Melee and Ranged
4. Enchanting: Melee, Ranged, Shield
5. Mayhem: ranged and battle-mage
6. Scrying: ranged and battle-mage
7. Amplification: ranged and battle-mage
8. Cycles: ranged and battle-mage
9. Artificing: melee and battle-mage
10. Evocation: melee and battle-mage
11. Severing: melee and shield

In contrast, the tomes that only effect ranged units are:

1. Wind
2. Inquisition
3. Crucibles

If you stack enchantment for ranged unit, your melee or battle-mages will automatically get pretty powerful, with no additional effort.

So why are Stormbringers are busted ? not because of enchantment stacking, but because of Stormbringers.
Stormbringers are skirmishers, meaning they receive nearly all melee and ranged enchantment,
they are also racial, means they receive transformation on top of it.
They are also T4 and do AOE damage, of course they'd be broken.
The fix is simple: Stormbringers should be mythical while ironclad should be ranged.
Preventing enchantment stacking would also incidentally make tech pointless after 10 tomes or so.

Sadly this logic doesn't work in practice and I will explain why this is the case.

The overlapping enchantments between damage classes (so not Shield or Support) are minimal.
Scrying and Mayhem are both garbage enchantments, the only good one here being Cycles.

There was an attempt at Melee/Ranged and Melee/Battle Mage but it falls flat halfway through imo.
The game incentivizes you to bring only Ranged/Skirmisher or Battle Mage or Shock, never a combination.
Furthermore, Ranged units transition into Skirmisher with EXTREME ease. It's a super smooth path.

You need to understand Ranged units actually have (as the name implies) RANGE. They can have up to 7 range.
If we're talking Zephyr Archers, these insanely broken units can actually have 10 range on Zephyr Shot.
Skirmishers have the same thing, they move 5 hexes inherently and have up to 5 range on their secondary.
For the icing on the cake, Battle Mage units only get base attack enchantments, which is why they scale horribly.

As you can see by your own list, Ranged units (also Skirmisher secondary attacks) get 13 enchantments. You forgot Zeal and Revelry.
This is why the archer units are so powerful and why Skirmishers who get non-repeating bonus deal insanely high damage too.

By comparison Battle Mage units also get 13 enchantments but have the worst defensive stats AND have 4 base attack range.
What do you think that 6 range 22 damage Exposing Light is going to achieve vs a 10 range 49 damage Zephyr Shot?
Or let's even take the Inquisitor, he deals upwards of 50 damage, always hits, from 10-11 hexes and can stun 2 targets.
Melee units are dead before they even get close. And if by some miracle they gap close, there's a frontline to deal with first.

The point is that enchantment stacking is bad for the game on all classes, it's just that 2 of them currently abuse it the most.

 

[Narvait]

Maybe instead all enchantments should work for all classes.
Let’s say have some new enchantment Poison Mastery, if researched it gets added to all units (with different effects based on unit class, but basically blight related).
So, that no single class would get more enchantments than other.

However I don’t think it would solve issue of some classes being stronger or weaker. Even if we limited every enchantment in the world - why build battle Mage vs archer?
Also in general if there are different types of units, some are bound to be stronger than others. What can help is having cheap hard counters to any one unit builds.

 

[Jolly Joker]

Doesn't matter

Huh, you talk about game difficulty quite a bit, but game difficulty doesn't give any malus or bonus when it comes to player resource acquisition. So what exactly are you talking about when you say "depending on game difficulty it doesn't make a lot of sense when you can effortlessly cast everything you want"?

Are you really suggesting maluses for players based on difficulty?

Well, obviously.

Once again.... I am playing Primal Crow and I have 5 cities. I can still get another 95 income and build 3 more Storm Megaliths for ~30 each.
What do you want me to do? Summon 18 units for no reason whatsoever and drain my mana? I am playing a Draft unit based build.

I'm already casting Fanatical Workforce and Revels of Carnage every turn. I am limited by Casting Points, not Mana.

View attachment 1104638

Look, it's pretty simple. In my current game in which I'm currently researching my fourth tome, I have FOUR active enchantments already (and since I'm on brutal diff I absolutely need them). The enchantments tell me that I pay the followwing UPKEEP costs for them each turn: Blight Blades, Poison Arrows, Legion of Zeal and Inquistor's mark. For this I pay 113 Mana upkeep (plus 112 Gold). This is upkeep paid for only SEVENTEEN units; the additional Supports and Battle Mages I have do not profit from those tomes at all, while the Inqisitors don't pay for Zeal since it's inherent on them. The two Entwined Thralls I have profit from all 4 enchantments (I might add that I voluntarily didn't pick the Tome of Evolution and the Slithers since I consider that somewhat cheesy) and pay 12 Mana and 2 Gold each in upkeep. If they had to pay additional mana (remember, brutal diff) the way I sketched it, the cost would be 3 plus 6 plus 9 plus 12 Mana plus 2 gold for each of them, which would be THIRTY Mana and 2 gold in the best case, 18 Mana MORE per unit.

Now, if you picked a LOT of skirmishers, having, say a Dozen of them, only with these 4 enchantments, you'd have to pay 360 upkeep of Mana for them alone. And since you would play on a higher difficulty, everything would be, well, more difficult, so yyou couldn't actually build and battle everything as easy, developing slower...

 

[Codyksp]

Maybe instead all enchantments should work for all classes.
Let’s say have some new enchantment Poison Mastery, if researched it gets added to all units (with different effects based on unit class, but basically blight related).
So, that no single class would get more enchantments than other.

However I don’t think it would solve issue of some classes being stronger or weaker. Even if we limited every enchantment in the world - why build battle Mage vs archer?
Also in general if there are different types of units, some are bound to be stronger than others. What can help is having cheap hard counters to any one unit builds.

With less enchantments to empower certain units into the high heavens, their base stats and unique abilities get more chance to shine.
When enchantments themselves then also become more unique (and limited), you can have a lot more counter play and strategic choices.

My goal here is to make every unit only buffed by 3 enchantments, which would be uniquely different each other.
Then the units themselves should be straight up balanced based on their role and strengths/weaknesses.

Currently you can stack so many enchantments that unit roles become entirely irrelevant.

 

[Codyksp]

Now, if you picked a LOT of skirmishers, having, say a Dozen of them, only with these 4 enchantments, you'd have to pay 360 upkeep of Mana for them alone. And since you would play on a higher difficulty, everything would be, well, more difficult, so yyou couldn't actually build and battle everything as easy, developing slower...

You could triple the enchantment upkeep from 120 to 360 and I'd still have 367 Mana income left.
So now what? Only Wizard King and Primal Crow/Runesmiths can have good units?

You need to think of the implications of your suggestion and how it will impact all the various builds in the game.

 

[Blanch Warren]

Once again.... I am playing Primal Crow and I have 5 cities. I can still get another 95 income and build 3 more Storm Megaliths for ~30 each.
What do you want me to do? Summon 18 units for no reason whatsoever and drain my mana? I am playing a Draft unit based build.

Have you considered using summons to win the game. btw damn... I think I'll do just that. Me and you can play a game, I'll jump right in and summon things, you can mess around.

 

[Jolly Joker]

You could triple the enchantment upkeep from 120 to 360 and I'd still have 367 Mana income left.
So now what? Only Wizard King and Primal Crow/Runesmiths can have good units?

You need to think of the implications of your suggestion and how it will impact all the various builds in the game.

That's the upkeep for a mere dozen units. I doubt that will suffice.

The implications are pretty obvious: Skirmishers will become pretty expensive, which means an all-out Slither army will be ... costly. If you want to have a lot of units (for whatever reason) you will be well advised to make sure you have a mixed army as opposed to only one or two troop types. This is clearly preferrable to mono troop type armies, because those are obviously quite boring.

 

[Codyksp]

Have you considered using summons to win the game. btw damn... I think I'll do just that. Me and you can play a game, I'll jump right in and summon things, you can mess around.

I summoned a bunch of Zealots in the early game and spammed Fanatical Workforce.
Later, in the mid-game I spammed Fanatical Workforce and Revels of Carnage.

My build was (as stated) Zeal > Alchemy > Winds > Revelry > Amplification > Cycles > Stormborne > Crucible > Gaia > Goddess.

What exactly do you want me to summon? I spent my mana on city spells and casting transformations/enchantments.
I also have Cycle of Seasons and Amplify Minds active on every city on top of still spamming spells every single turn.
I casted every single enchantment/transformation available in those tomes with the exception of Gaia's Chosen.

Once you get to the late game and your build is focused around Draft there is literally no way to lose Mana.
It would be a different story if my main T3/T4/T5 force revolved around being summoned units.

Also, I am winning the game. It has currently become a 4v1 alliance to try and beat my armies.

 

[Codyksp]

That's the upkeep for a mere dozen units. I doubt that will suffice.

The implications are pretty obvious: Skirmishers will become pretty expensive, which means an all-out Slither army will be ... costly. If you want to have a lot of units (for whatever reason) you will be well advised to make sure you have a mixed army as opposed to only one or two troop types. This is clearly preferrable to mono troop type armies, because those are obviously quite boring.

But what stops me from just playing Wizard King + Primal Crow + Runesmiths + Terraformers/Artifact Hoarders/Mana Channelers?

I will have more enchantments than my opponents without sacrificing units, and even if they have more units, a battle is 18v18 max.
This game doesn't support winning by sheer numbers, nor does it support overwhelming your opponent on multiple fronts.
These tactics may work against the AI, but against human players you will just be beaten down by overwhelming power.

So your proposal just means that the "meta" will shift purely towards gathering as much Mana as possible to support enchantments.
Why? Because enchantments are powerful and the more of them you have the stronger your 18 unit army will be when they enter combat.
Nobody is going to recover from being beaten 18v0 as in my battle. That player is entirely ready to surrender the game after that fight.

Placing a limit on the total amount of enchantments is the only way to reduce power equally for all players without shifting the meta.
At worst some units will become weaker and require a few tweaks to be brought back up to par with their peers. That's about it.

 

[Blanch Warren]

I summoned a bunch of Zealots in the early game and spammed Fanatical Workforce.
Later, in the mid-game I spammed Fanatical Workforce and Revels of Carnage.

I have a hard time believing it's more effective to not also use mana. You present a convincing argument to pick wizard king and tome of enchantment instead. Honestly, thank you.

 

[Narvait]

I have a hard time believing it's more effective to not also use mana. You present a convincing argument to pick wizard king and tome of enchantment instead. Honestly, thank you.

*Tome of Evocation…

 

[Jolly Joker]

But what stops me from just playing Wizard King + Primal Crow + Runesmiths + Terraformers/Artifact Hoarders/Mana Channelers?

I will have more enchantments than my opponents without sacrificing units, and even if they have more units, a battle is 18v18 max.
This game doesn't support winning by sheer numbers, nor does it support overwhelming your opponent on multiple fronts.
These tactics may work against the AI, but against human players you will just be beaten down by overwhelming power.

So your proposal just means that the "meta" will shift purely towards gathering as much Mana as possible to support enchantments.
Why? Because enchantments are powerful and the more of them you have the stronger your 18 unit army will be when they enter combat.
Nobody is going to recover from being beaten 18v0 as in my battle. That player is entirely ready to surrender the game after that fight.

Placing a limit on the total amount of enchantments is the only way to reduce power equally for all players without shifting the meta.
At worst some units will become weaker and require a few tweaks to be brought back up to par with their peers. That's about it.

You are just looking at your PERSONAL setup here. The logical thing to do after that game of yours in which you invested most everything into infrastructure to be monstrous in the endgame is rush tactics - rushing you with many cheap units soon. This is the main problem of your setup anyway: with 5 players you have to have an eye on 4 players and attacking another one will make you vulnerable, so it devolves into a race to invincibility. So what you did in that scenario is the logical thing to do: build a force that can beat a weaker one without suffering losses, supported by house rules that NEED you to play in a specific way.

Mind you, there is no other way to decide this - you should actually be happy that this is possible: Consider what would happen if you had your will and everyone was limited to 3 enchantments; you might have won the encounter, but survived barely and might have been beaten by the next player.

What you need to do is setting up a game with harshest conditions so that the play against the world is most demanding. Then you cannot play sandbox, can't put everything into infrastructure and build up to the point of invincibility undisturbed. You won't complain about enchantment stacking then.

Not demanding a complete game overhaul just because you are not satisfied with the way your specific MP setup with house rules turns out to play out.

 

[Wildwiredweasel]

honestly, conflicted here.

I think the intent behind the design of the game is that mixed-unit troops are more effective than mono-unit troops. But I don't think that's what has happened, assuming certain builds. Which wouldn't be a problem, except apparently there's not a great number of ways to counter these builds through diverse troops.

It's also true that certain builds are just going to be better than others, but the primary contention here is that what appears to be the best builds are simple to make.

I saw someone above recommend that all enchantments affect all unit types. Kind of drastic, and I don't think it'll work perfectly per se, but it might level the playing field.

There's other ideas out there that would require changing base game mechanics. For example, you enchant all armies with support units, but the enchantment gets weaker per support unit. So you either have 1 support unit with +6 resistance that provides +6 resistance, or 6 that each give +1, or something like that. Would it balance? Maybe, but the changes would be so significant that you'd have to rework the base game to make it work. Solutions like that probably just aren't good.

We could make it cost more per unit of same type in that army, but i think making it cost more ultimately just isn't going to cut it. We could make it require a recast after a period of time where that period of time decreases as more units are enchanted (So for example, enchants only up to 12 units at a time), but then you gotta figure out which individuals you enchant.

I would like it if complex armies typically were more reliable than mono-unit, but I don't really see a way to achieve that without changing something significant.

 

[Lebkuchenhausmeister]

Enchantment stacking with a focus on a single unit type would be less attractive if there were more hard counters. Right now the only "hard" counter is Polearm vs Cavalry and Large units. I would like to see more of that, which would make mixed armies more viable. Something like a damage bonus to cavalry against ranged. Shield and fighter vs skirmisher, Shock units without mount vs Shield, etc. I think there is also much room for support spells and abilities in that direction. This could also give units a better defined identity. Right now all you have to do is raise the stats which is achieved by enchantments/transformations, while the composition of your army matters little.

 

[Codyksp]

supported by house rules that NEED you to play in a specific way.

Not demanding a complete game overhaul just because you are not satisfied with the way your specific MP setup with house rules turns out to play out.

Which house rules are forcing us to play in a certain way? We have players who rush others on turn 20 in FFA as well.

Mind you, there is no other way to decide this - you should actually be happy that this is possible: Consider what would happen if you had your will and everyone was limited to 3 enchantments; you might have won the encounter, but survived barely and might have been beaten by the next player.

Disagree. Yes my units would be weaker and take more losses, but the fight is still decided primarily by unit composition and player skill.
Either way, I would welcome the fact that waging war actually causes some losses and I need more than 3 armies to win a game consistently.

What you need to do is setting up a game with harshest conditions so that the play against the world is most demanding. Then you cannot play sandbox, can't put everything into infrastructure and build up to the point of invincibility undisturbed. You won't complain about enchantment stacking then.

Don't you understand that the players in our games are of varying skill levels? I've seen players die to infestations with our current settings.
Raising the threat level and forcing everyone to battle the world for 70 turns just alienates new players and makes the game a PvE farm fest.

Our current settings allow players of all skill levels to join and also support both rushing and turtle tactics, we have diplomacy too mind you.

 

[Codyksp]

Enchantment stacking with a focus on a single unit type would be less attractive if there were more hard counters. Right now the only "hard" counter is Polearm vs Cavalry and Large units. I would like to see more of that, which would make mixed armies more viable. Something like a damage bonus to cavalry against ranged. Shield and fighter vs skirmisher, Shock units without mount vs Shield, etc. I think there is also much room for support spells and abilities in that direction. This could also give units a better defined identity. Right now all you have to do is raise the stats which is achieved by enchantments/transformations, while the composition of your army matters little.

I did recently watch my Night Guard only take ~30 damage from a Berserker and then hit him back for 20 per attack lol.
When I sent him to go poke a Knight he was dealing almost 40 damage per hit. The bonus damage scales up enchantments too...

I personally prefer to see soft counters, not hard ones. You should be able to overcome a counter if you simply made better choices in combat.

 

[Lebkuchenhausmeister]

I did recently watch my Night Guard only take ~30 damage from a Berserker and then hit him back for 20 per attack lol.
When I sent him to go poke a Knight he was dealing almost 40 damage per hit. The bonus damage scales up enchantments too...

I personally prefer to see soft counters, not hard ones. You should be able to overcome a counter if you simply made better choices in combat.

I think it should be on a comparable level to the Polearm vs Cavalry/Large bonus, as orientation.
But there is also still a lot of room for unit balancing overall. Stormbringers are way too powerful, and some units like Berserkers are pretty weak, all things considered.

 

[Jolly Joker]

Don't you understand that the players in our games are of varying skill levels? I've seen players die to infestations with our current settings.
Raising the threat level and forcing everyone to battle the world for 70 turns just alienates new players and makes the game a PvE farm fest.

Our current settings allow players of all skill levels to join and also support both rushing and turtle tactics, we have diplomacy too mind you.

Lol, no I didn't understand that and it makes no sense. What strange thing has to happen that the beginners win?
So why don't you and the good players simply take a handicap instead of complaining that the good players always beat the beginners?

 

[Lord Sheogorath]

I think it should be on a comparable level to the Polearm vs Cavalry/Large bonus, as orientation.
But there is also still a lot of room for unit balancing overall. Stormbringers are way too powerful, and some units like Berserkers are pretty weak, all things considered.

The lack of heavy charge have significantly buffed polearms now. Before berserkers were able to defeat or at least go toe-to-toe with t3 polearms.

Another thing I have noticed is that now charge bonus only calculates the shortest viable distance between two hexes, before a unit could walk back and forth and get the full charge bonus. But in the last few games I noticed that a unit that is one hex away from a charging unit will only get +20% bonus to charge damage (as per the UI), no matter how many hexes I passed. Shock units a new balance.

And fighter units are as bland and useless as always.

 

[Codyksp]

Lol, no I didn't understand that and it makes no sense. What strange thing has to happen that the beginners win?
So why don't you and the good players simply take a handicap instead of complaining that the good players always beat the beginners?

I'm not complaining at all. I'm saying that we shouldn't increase the world threat because of player skill levels.
Additionally because of time constraints and because it doesn't solve anything. I disagree with your "solution".

Another thing I have noticed is that now charge bonus only calculates the shortest viable distance between two hexes, before a unit could walk back and forth and get the full charge bonus. But in the last few games I noticed that a unit that is one hex away from a charging unit will only get +20% bonus to charge damage (as per the UI), no matter how many hexes I passed. Shock units a new balance.

From my understanding it always worked this way. It simply calculates distance from the starting hex.