Balancing HC cards on EP

[mGravitus]

Is there any reason (other than effort) that the balance of HC cards is not done on EP?

Dutch Bank cards were tweaked, so there is precedent.
I am talking about 2 things:

1. Cards that give immediate value e.g crates (700w, 700c, 700f). Resources don't gather at same base rate, so why not tweak cards to bring them more in line with the average value for that age e.g 650w,

2. Some cards are currently a joke to send: e.g almost all the explorer cards. Why aren't cards like that buffed to the point where they are legitimately viable?

As another example, there are cards that send some coyotes/bears or other crap in age 1. No one sends them, they are a joke. You could probably double the # and then someone MIGHT consider it for <1second.

In the ideal scenario, every card in an age would be perfectly balanced according to its immediate-> long term potential.

So why not strive for this across all ages and not just fortress?

More options = more people thinking outside the box, instead of herpa derp age 1 3v every game for past 10 years.

[Kaiserklein]

I'm lazy so I'm just going to copy/paste what I just wrote on another thread (because I like the taste of my own dick so why not) :

Tbh in sup there aren't many variations viable at all, on most maps with most civs. I use the same decks like 95% of the time, regardless of the civ. And it's fine this way, because we already don't manage to create a balanced patch with only those few variations, so it would be even worse (or rather, impossible) with even more options.

I mean, of course it would be nice if we could balance more cards, but honestly it's just utopia. We first need to make all civs viable, before we can even think about all cards lol.

Also you will never be able to balance most cards because they're just very situational. Hpw can you balance units shipments and crates ? Crates are usually worth more resources (even food ones sometimes) than units but they're for a different timing, and we all know how good a military pop can be sometimes. Same for upgrades and vils, etc. And then you have some niche cards too, let's say atp : how do you balance it ? Atp will always be shit on maps with max 2 tps, and it will always be good on maps with 4+ tps. It's not possible to balance that. And it's the same for an amount of other cards, such as schooners, silk road, town destroyer...

We also don't want to standardize too much. According to what you wrote, you'd like all shipment to be equal, so for example it would mean we would need to remove boyars, because it's the best colonial upgrade in the game. It would change russia's uniqueness. And same for many other upgrades, and other cards, generally speaking.

[mGravitus]

So its an effort issue. Got to start somewhere man.

Hpw can you balance units shipments and crates ? Crates are usually worth more resources (even food ones sometimes) than units but they're for a different timing, and we all know how good a military pop can be sometimes

The ones for an exact same timing are currently not even balanced. We can start there.
Take ports as an example. We currently have:

700 wood = 1400vs
700 food = 833vs
700 coin = 1166vs
these are already imba

6 musk shipment = 450f + 100g = 535vs + 166vs = 701vs
8xbow = 320f+ 320w= 380vs + 640vs = 1020vs
these are already imba

Note: ignore unit "balance" as that is irrelevant. We are talking about shipment balance.
Once these are balanced, we can discuss balancing cards according to pay off time.


I speculate that a formula exists and looks something like

Note: [(vs = villager seconds)]

UNIT SHIPMENT RESOURCE VALUE (vs) + (some % of production building cost) + (some % of train time) = RESOURCE SHIPMENT (vs)

According to the formula:
The unit shipments should account for the fact that you are not building a production building (barracks 400vs) + some VS to account for the fact that you are getting units immediately and not in the average minute(build time + train time) it takes to convert resources to units.

We also don't want to standardize too much. According to what you wrote, you'd like all shipment to be equal, so for example it would mean we would need to remove boyars, because it's the best colonial upgrade in the game. It would change russia's uniqueness. And same for many other upgrades, and other cards, generally speaking.

I am not talking about standardizing between civs. Not even within a civ.

I am talking about standardizing within an AGE within a civ, starting with shipments of the same pay off time.

i.e. Look at Russia age 1 cards in a vacuum and balance depending on when they "pay off"

Another possibility is just to do the eyeball approach to balance and then undercut by 50%.

i.e How much would the British age 1 food shipment have to be for pros to consider it viable? 400f? 500f? 600f? Surely you would ship 600f over 3 vil right? So lets make it 450 and see if is used.

[forgrin]

There are alot of cards that, even if buffed, wouldn't serve a place in the game simply because they're poorly designed. Pet cards, for example, are shit because pets themselves aren't good past 1-2 in an early explorer fight (or maybe getting a big treasure early, but that's very luck+map dependent). They can't siege, don't have multipliers, and generally don't do anything except tank a bit, so therefore they're pretty much useless. There are a few cards that could be modified to make that specific card useful for a niche build, but those are generally far and few between.

[pecelot]

lol Navigator card is a no-brainer on Yukon
and @mGravitus

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, please bear in mind all game types. Explorer cards, for instance, are viable in treaty and in lost for instance. Spanish dogs can be nicely buffed, too.

[Mr_Bramboy]

It's not an effort issue it's a we don't have hundreds of koreans playtesting 12-hours a day issue.

[Dsy]

In this forum plenty of time was mentioned "make useless cards more usefull".
Not perfectly balanced cause that would totally change the meta, but some are just totally useless and could be buffed somewhat.

It wont happen i guess,

[pecelot]

With some experimenting and not so static gameplay actually a lot of cards see a usage, see Aizamk for instance. Of course they are not the best in terms of competitive gameplay, but in most cases the 3v shipment is not going to be beaten in terms of efficiency by any other card (apart from VC, ofc ).

[n0el]

The biggest thing is that the goal of the EP isn't to make everything viable. The goal is to make all civs usable by making the fewest change as possible. so while in a perfect world everything would be useable but that's not the current team's goal.

[momuuu]

Id kinda be upset if everything was different on EP. I just wanna play the game I love but balanced.

[zoom]

I'm glad you ask. While I personally would like it if the EP increased the viability of options, at least in some of the more meaningful cases, there are indeed good reasons against increasing viability in general. It would mean an essentially infinite number of changes, resulting in several problems:

1. A drastic increase in the workload of the team, which is already struggling for resources.
2. A lot of inefficient (less meaningful, if you will) changes.
3. Intelligible patch-notes.
4. Standardization.
5. Significant negative impact on inter-civilization balance; not only would changes inevitably worsen balance, but even make balancing virtually impossible since there would be no point of reference and accordingly no grasp on balance. In short, the EP at this moment is prioritizing maximum net benefit with minimum changes, and largely focusing on making inter-civilization balance competitive.

@mGravitus

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[edeholland]

So its an effort issue. Got to start somewhere man.
The ones for an exact same timing are currently not even balanced. We can start there.
Take ports as an example. We currently have:

700 wood = 1400vs
700 food = 833vs
700 coin = 1166vs
these are already imba

6 musk shipment = 450f + 100g = 535vs + 166vs = 701vs
8xbow = 320f+ 320w= 380vs + 640vs = 1020vs
these are already imba

Those 5 shipments are all used regularly (700 food less on EP though), so it's not really the best example to show imbalance lol.

[deleted_user]

"Oh so it's a matter of effort." You gots to be shittin me OP. EP team works their ass off to provide the community something free of charge on their own time

[_H2O]

My view on this is that your heart is in the right place but I think this approach is based on the assumption that there is one set way to balance cards. It also ignores intangibles that matter a lot.

Effort for what reward:
If you want to nerf 700 wood and then figure out how that impacts every civ in the game. Then figure out how to appropriately rebalance the game in a world where all cards are "balanced" that's just making a different game.

Intangibles:
Right now there are intangible differences to each card even in the crates. 700 gold let's you age, 700 wood sometimes has a slower payout than 700 food or gold would. Why is villager seconds the defining metric of balance in home city shipments. Each shipment also has different values both in villager seconds and in effectiveness at different times. For example 700 wood is hard t spend early as Russia still making it less valuable.

700 wood:
On 700 wood specifically, the card is great for the health of the game. It makes things move way faster than without it. Economies grow faster and how the wood is spent drives the build. This game already is a bit slow to get going.

[_venox_]

I think making every card viable and balancing each civ is impossible to achieve because these two things contradict one another. If every card were generally seen as being viable, then games get imbalanced because in a certain matchup one civ will benefit from this general viability more than the other. For example: If 300f 300w and 300g were made viable, there will be new possibilities for a fast rush with the new 300f shipment that is for instance way better against Japan than a regular rush now is.
What I try to get at is that since not only units but also strategies employ the concept of rock paper scissors, making every civ have equally good tools means that the balance between civs will suffer because civs themselves have strongpoints and weakpoints, things that are generally good and generally bad against them.

To also add to the intangible argument that _H2o made, I think different nations punish laziness differently and also award high skill differently, things that have to be taken into consideration when balancing cards. For example: If at the lower level a certain civ barely gets punished for sloppy play then automatically the most used cards used for the civ's main build are imbalanced.

[lemmings121]

Your goal is interesting, but putting aside all the impratical efort of making it happen, most people would still not like it. I wouldnt. The game with 10 diferent age1 viable cards would just be another game, not the aoe we played for 10 years. thats not a balance patch, thats a mod.

The biggest thing is that the goal of the EP isn't to make everything viable. The goal is to make all civs usable by making the fewest change as possible. so while in a perfect world everything would be useable but that's not the current team's goal.

I agree.
The EP should be similar to RE, just with the some tweeks improve balance. Still the same game, just a bit better.

(Also, it is good to make players transition between patches easier. we dont want people reading the patch notes and saying "wft, I'm suposed to use missionaries in sup now? (yea, i dont like that change ))

[sdsanft]

Just balancing something simple like 700w and 700c would be hard. For example, if you nerf 700w, you slow down the pace of the game, if you buff 700c you make ffs even stronger, and all that's just assuming you use the wood for buildings and the coin for ageup. If you want to use those cards for units then you also have to balance those respective units (xbow/pike vs musk/huss). Plus there's the fact that a change to 700w would greatly brits boom, for example, while it would probably barely affect another civ like Russia, even though they both send it nearly every game.

[BeanYak]

... This game already is a bit slow to get going.

I don't think I've ever played an RTS where this isn't an issue. It's one of the reasons I can't stand queuing up a game in SC2. I don't think it's as bad in this game, though, because the beginning stages take a bit of effort, with scouting and looking for treasures, herding, and microing the villagers for that extra gram of efficiency for your economy. I think it's cool that cards in this game help that as well.

Just balancing something simple like 700w and 700c would be hard. For example, if you nerf 700w, you slow down the pace of the game, if you buff 700c you make ffs even stronger, and all that's just assuming you use the wood for buildings and the coin for ageup. If you want to use those cards for units then you also have to balance those respective units (xbow/pike vs musk/huss). Plus there's the fact that a change to 700w would greatly brits boom, for example, while it would probably barely affect another civ like Russia, even though they both send it nearly every game.

I might be misunderstanding something, but when you guys are talking about balancing resource cards, you make it sound as if a change in, say, 700W for one civ must affect all civs. Is there anything against changing the same shipments differently for each civ? It already sort of exists in the game, i.e. Aztecs have lesser but unlimited gold shipments. I hope there's no technical limitation to modifying the cards by civ.

[sdsanft]

Just balancing something simple like 700w and 700c would be hard. For example, if you nerf 700w, you slow down the pace of the game, if you buff 700c you make ffs even stronger, and all that's just assuming you use the wood for buildings and the coin for ageup. If you want to use those cards for units then you also have to balance those respective units (xbow/pike vs musk/huss). Plus there's the fact that a change to 700w would greatly brits boom, for example, while it would probably barely affect another civ like Russia, even though they both send it nearly every game.

I might be misunderstanding something, but when you guys are talking about balancing resource cards, you make it sound as if a change in, say, 700W for one civ must affect all civs. Is there anything against changing the same shipments differently for each civ? It already sort of exists in the game, i.e. Aztecs have lesser but unlimited gold shipments. I hope there's no technical limitation to modifying the cards by civ.

I think it is possible its just that if you adjusted res cards seperately (even if you only changed it for a few civs) it would greatly increase the complexity from a balancing point of view. Plus at that point its more like balancing the civ rather than balancing the card itself. I wouldn't however be opposed to say just upgrading the food crates to 800f and 1200f respectively, atleast for all euro civs.