On Wolves, the Feral trait, and miscellaneous units

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Gyra_Solune
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On Wolves, the Feral trait, and miscellaneous units

Post by Gyra_Solune »

As of late I've been playing a lot with various seldom-used units and there are a few oddities I wish to point out, mostly at random.

-The basic, rider-less wolves are odd when comparing to the goblin-ridden variant...in that they're basically worse, in every way. The level 1 is pretty much the exact same thing? But by level 2, the Goblin Knight has far more offensive power and HP than the Great Wolf, and it is only by level 3 that the Direwolf matches that 7-4 power...at which point, the Direwolf Rider is a rather high-powered scout unit that gets poison to boot. It seems like there should be a bit more tradeoff, but I don't know what. Maybe the Great Wolf and Direwolf should be faster, to make up for having to carry less weight? And perhaps the basic Wolf should be cheaper, say, 14 or 15 gold, but also have their damage slightly lowered - I'm thinking the line should go from 7-2 to 7-3 to the Direwolf's existing 7-4, perhaps?

-On both wolves, I noted an oddity - they get standard human/orc traits, which is...very strange to me. Wild animals typically get Feral and one trait, goblins get one negative trait - so why is a goblin + wolf significantly different? And on that note, what...exactly is the point of the Feral trait again? On every unit that gets it, it always has the trait active, and all it does is lower its evasion on villages...which...is just a base movetype setting, so what's the difference between Feral lowering evasion on villages to 40% and just...having the unit only get 40% evasion on villages?

-On to other random units - for starters, the Dwarvish Scout. It...has a really really low XP cost, I think, and it should probably be higher? Considering the footpad's high-seeming 36 XP was noted as being due to how it can easily hit and run units all the time, I've found the Dwarvish Scout does this much easier given it's much more powerful at both melee and range and surprisingly mobile for a dwarf, yet it takes a very very low 30 XP to promote. That should probably be bumped up to that same 36 XP, really.

-What exactly is the point of having two ever so slightly different combat boat units? It seems like a unit only used in like a single scenario and the only difference between the pirate variant and the transport variant is that the pirate is more expensive and slower for a tiny bit more HP...not exactly useful. I'd say ditch the Pirate kind entirely. ...also it seems like they ought to be pretty weak to fire, being made out of wood and all!

-Speaking of fire, why is the Giant Scorpion so apocalyptically weak to fire? A -100% weakness is the most extreme in the game when I don't see why it'd apply to Scorpions. It seems like the same movetype has been given to them as the Mudcrawler has - for them, their weaknesses make sense, given they're magical creatures that'd be hardened and dried by fire attacks, while their heavy impact resist also makes sense as they don't have much internally to be damaged by blunt force. I'd say it would make far more sense for the Scorpion to have one of the Khalifate's movetypes - armored beings being weak to impact but resistant to pierce and blade makes a lot more sense, and it also adds in the Scorpion being potent on sand, which would work much better.

-The Fire Guardian is sooooooo bad, why is this unit so terrible. Its only good facets are Elemental and resisting fire (which, IMO, should be bumped up more, make that a +100% resist like the Fire Dragon, considering it's literally made of fire). Other than that it has the terrible Drake movetype, so while it can fly it can't defend ever, which is problematic considering it has 23 HP, the third-lowest of all level 1 units (behind the ultra-resistant Ghost and agile supporting Augur), no useful resistances (I'd say it'd make sense to resist the three basic attack types some - what good is repeatedly stabbing a ghost made out of fire...in fact, it probably should have similar resists to the Ghost, just retaining its logical weakness to cold and resistance to fire), it has incredibly low power on both its attacks, and it costs 19 gold to boot. It's really terrible - it's turned into more of a joke than anything among the people I play the game with.

-The Giant Rat is...not as bad, per gold, but it's still a tiny bit odd. 2-4 on a chaotic unit translates to not actually being affected by time of day at all - due to .5 rounding to whatever the base was, it just does 2-4 at night anyway. Maybe change it to 4-2? Should probably also cost 4 gold instead of 6 given it's much weaker than the Ruffian on the whole.
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ForestDragon
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Re: On Wolves, the Feral trait, and miscellaneous units

Post by ForestDragon »

valid point, here are a few ideas related to it:
about Pirate Galleon, maybe just make it identical, ditching it entirely will do no good, since some UMC campaigns use them, like in cutscenes
Scorpion:yeah, maybe -40% res, like undead to arcane, that would be pretty balanced
Fire Guardian:totally agreed, plus, these guys cant even advance

A little tip, if you want those units changed in your era, use this little trick i use in mine:
units.cfg (tweaked Fire Guardian example):
in _main.cfg:
My active add-ons: The Great Steppe Era,XP Bank,Alliances Mod,Pestilence,GSE+EoMa,Ogre Crusaders,Battle Royale,EoMaifier,Steppeifier,Hardcoreifier
My inactive add-ons (1.12): Tale of Alan, The Golden Age
Co-creator of Era of Magic
kurt751
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Re: On Wolves, the Feral trait, and miscellaneous units

Post by kurt751 »

I agree with Gyra_Solune too - especially about the Fire Guardian. When I first saw it, I though "sweet, a fire demon, a tough beast to get rid of, given there are no fire extinguishers around", and incorporated a dozen of them in a short campaign of mine.
Meh. Only good to help level up weak and fragile units like healers... About as difficult to snuff out as a candle...
I'm definitely never using the default creature again, it's as dangerous as a frying pan fire.

The ships are desperately underpowered. A fight I staged between a ship and a level 1 land unit was quick and pointless - ship destroyed in three rounds.
I really wonder what they are good for, except as inert decor in some campaigns of course.
They would gain some meaning if they could easily carry land-based troops across deep water ("easily" meaning without having to code it yourself), in which case their apparent combat weakness wouldn't matter that much either (Thinking "Warcraft" (the original, before "World") and "Age of ..." ships here).

Rats and scorpions are both way underpowered. I'd expect the giant scorpion to be about as dangerous as the giant spider, which is okay, IMHO. Rats should carry diseases (poison) to get a somewhat dangerous. Else they are just minor nuisances which you ignore as they helplessly nibble at your feet.
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Gyra_Solune
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Re: On Wolves, the Feral trait, and miscellaneous units

Post by Gyra_Solune »

I think the ships and scorpions, having played around with them in a faction-ey context in the past, are actually okay. The boats are pretty powerful, with a hard-hitting 20-1 ranged that gets bumped up to 25-1 during the day, placing them as one of the strongest level 1 ranged units in the game, while costing less than most of them (they only lose out to the much more expensive Mage and Burner and for all purposes a dextrous Elvish Archer, and just slightly edge out the comparatively priced Adept, though without the obvious magic advantage). In fact I like to think of them as aquatic Adepts, budget heavy artillery that are tricky to use but can lay on the hurt, though they have a major disadvantage in not being allowed to leave water ever, for obvious reasons.

The Scorpion's actually kind of unique and in general a nice support unit. They are comparative to the Cavalryman in my view, fast but with tanky staying power, but with the added utility a Ghoul has in its use of poison as a deterrent. It's obviously much safer to attack the Scorpion given its stinger is a one-shot affair and as such much less likely to poison things than the Ghoul's exceedingly high odds to do so, but it can also weather an attack much longer and can hit and run a lot easier - they're the only level 1 unit that has more than 6 MP along with poison, and the only other one at any level would be the seldom-seen Direwolf Rider. Since they're also just about impervious to impact damage (which is a thing I think ought to be removed but with a much lessened or nonexistent weakness to fire as a tradeoff) there's also many things they very rapidly shut down, namely trolls, woses, and especially Heavy Infantry who can't so easily regen away the poison. Of course the problem is that they're exceedingly expensive, taking second place in the cost department to the Gryphon Rider who very much does the Scorpion's usefulness as a heavy assault scout much better, albeit without the useful poisoning.

Also I think Strategy & Tips was not the ideal place for this, I wonder if I should repost this in a more relevant section!
kurt751
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Re: On Wolves, the Feral trait, and miscellaneous units

Post by kurt751 »

Gyra_Solune wrote:a hard-hitting 20-1
This is actually not that good, and too much dependent on luck.
Let's compare it to another level 1 unit, the Orc Archer, who does 6-3. Doesn't sound like much, does it. But if you look closer, the Pirate Galleon does an average damage of 10, while the Orc does an average damage of 9 (3x3). Hardly less.
Now the Orcish archer fires 3 times, and if half of all the attacks are misses, over 3 rounds the Orcish Archer will have hit 4.5 times, for an average of about 40 points of damage, while the Pirate Galleon will have hit 1.5 time, for an average of about 15 points of damage. That's how an Orcish Archer sank a ship in three turns without breaking a sweat when I tried ships...

Gyra_Solune wrote:The Scorpion's actually kind of unique and in general a nice support unit.
Okay, we look at it from different angles... :mrgreen:
I'm strictly single player, so what counts for me is the challenge which a given unit will give my player if put on his path to victory. And for the scorpion, it's not much. A fight between a couple spearmen and a scorpion will be easy and, if there is a village to heal poisoning nearby, without any danger. The chance the scorpion might kill one of my units is weak.
Not so the giant spider, which does a big amount of damage, enough to kill level 1 units in one attack, or at least forces you to send the wounded away for long term healing.

Gyra_Solune wrote:can hit and run a lot easier - they're the only level 1 unit that has more than 6 MP along with poison
Might be, but since the AI opponent fights to the death and doesn't do hit-and-run tactics, it doesn't count for much in my use.

Gyra_Solune wrote:Since they're also just about impervious to impact damage
Well, level 1 humans, elves and orcs all use blades or bows, so they can handle scorpions pretty well.
It's once again a matter of SP vs MP: In a single player game, scorpions are more likely to be monsters you will meet and fight on your way to victory, rather than assets you might chose to use against a specific type of enemies. Our needs diverge. :mrgreen:
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zookeeper
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Re: On Wolves, the Feral trait, and miscellaneous units

Post by zookeeper »

Gyra_Solune wrote:And on that note, what...exactly is the point of the Feral trait again? On every unit that gets it, it always has the trait active, and all it does is lower its evasion on villages...which...is just a base movetype setting, so what's the difference between Feral lowering evasion on villages to 40% and just...having the unit only get 40% evasion on villages?
The point is that because villages are aliased to base,village, the fact that a bat actually only receives 40% 50% on a village is an exception to the normal defense rules. Without the trait, bats should get 60% on normal land-based villages because they get 60% on flat, hills, etc. So the point of the trait is basically to communicate the exception to the player. It looks like now there is a "Defense Cap" column in the movement/defense table in unit description, though, which might kind of fill that role. Maybe.
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Re: On Wolves, the Feral trait, and miscellaneous units

Post by beetlenaut »

zookeeper wrote:It looks like now there is a "Defense Cap" column in the movement/defense table in unit description, though, which might kind of fill that role.
Let's not change the bat though. Creating the "feral" trait was a really clever idea. I hope whoever thought of that got a cookie.
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Horus2
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Re: On Wolves, the Feral trait, and miscellaneous units

Post by Horus2 »

beetlenaut wrote:
zookeeper wrote:It looks like now there is a "Defense Cap" column in the movement/defense table in unit description, though, which might kind of fill that role.
Let's not change the bat though. Creating the "feral" trait was a really clever idea. I hope whoever thought of that got a cookie.
The feral trait, as a workaround solution for the new defense calculation system, was nice. But can we talk about it taking a slot from another, useful trait? Because i do not remember that was ever requested by anyone, that just happened to be implemented that way, and it cripples the potential of undead in 1v1 default multiplayer. I can go into details upon your wish why bat in its current state is underpowered, and i think the top players can support those claims. If i could make only one balance change to the game, it would be three traits for bats (and falcons).
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Re: On Wolves, the Feral trait, and miscellaneous units

Post by Velensk »

Actually, the change was made because bats were causing too much problems in multiplayer.

I don't particularly want to go back to the time when bats got 60% defense on villages.
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pauxlo
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Re: On Wolves, the Feral trait, and miscellaneous units

Post by pauxlo »

kurt751 wrote:
Gyra_Solune wrote:a hard-hitting 20-1
This is actually not that good, and too much dependent on luck.
Let's compare it to another level 1 unit, the Orc Archer, who does 6-3. Doesn't sound like much, does it. But if you look closer, the Pirate Galleon does an average damage of 10, while the Orc does an average damage of 9 (3x3). Hardly less.
Now the Orcish archer fires 3 times, and if half of all the attacks are misses, over 3 rounds the Orcish Archer will have hit 4.5 times, for an average of about 40 points of damage, while the Pirate Galleon will have hit 1.5 time, for an average of about 15 points of damage. That's how an Orcish Archer sank a ship in three turns without breaking a sweat when I tried ships...
Your math is off. (I guess this is meant against 50% defense?)

The Orc Archer in three rounds has 9 attacks, each of 6 damage. This is 9·6/2 = 27 expected points of damage (maximum 54).
The ship has three attacks, each 20 damage. This is 3·20/2 = 30 expected points of damage (maximum 60).
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Re: On Wolves, the Feral trait, and miscellaneous units

Post by kurt751 »

pauxlo wrote:Your math is off. (I guess this is meant against 50% defense?)

The Orc Archer in three rounds has 9 attacks, each of 6 damage. This is 9·6/2 = 27 expected points of damage (maximum 54).
The ship has three attacks, each 20 damage. This is 3·20/2 = 30 expected points of damage (maximum 60).
True. The orc archer does less damage, but not much less. 13.5 instead of 15 if I make them arbitrarily miss half their attacks.
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Re: On Wolves, the Feral trait, and miscellaneous units

Post by pauxlo »

kurt751 wrote:
pauxlo wrote:Your math is off. (I guess this is meant against 50% defense?)

The Orc Archer in three rounds has 9 attacks, each of 6 damage. This is 9·6/2 = 27 expected points of damage (maximum 54).
The ship has three attacks, each 20 damage. This is 3·20/2 = 30 expected points of damage (maximum 60).
True. The orc archer does less damage, but not much less. 13.5 instead of 15 if I make them arbitrarily miss half their attacks.
My point is that the "expected damage" already includes just half of the attacks hitting. If all attacks hit, the archer does 54 damage (in three turns), the ship 60 damage. Taking half of that you get 27 for the archer and 30 for the ship. (Of course, this can't actually happen, you can't hit 1.5 times or 4.5 times.) 13.5 or 15 would be hitting just a quarter of all attacks.
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Re: On Wolves, the Feral trait, and miscellaneous units

Post by kurt751 »

pauxlo wrote:My point is that the "expected damage" already includes just half of the attacks hitting.
Do you mean that Wesnoth units always do full damage (if one ignores victim resistances)? :shock:

Guess I'm too influenced by RPGs and other games where a damage of 20 means the unit does an amount of damage from 0 to 20 (once again, if one ignores victim resistances). That's why I used an average.
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Re: On Wolves, the Feral trait, and miscellaneous units

Post by Velensk »

When estimating the overall offensive power of a wesnoth unit, it's actually a fairly decent idea to just go with (Strikes x Damage) regardless of how it's distributed. The distributions do affect things, particularly in any individual engagement but in the long run it evens out to being pretty much this. It's just important to note that the number that you're comparing it to is not really the targets HP but rather the targets hp divided by it's chance to be hit.
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pauxlo
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Re: On Wolves, the Feral trait, and miscellaneous units

Post by pauxlo »

kurt751 wrote:
pauxlo wrote:My point is that the "expected damage" already includes just half of the attacks hitting.
Do you mean that Wesnoth units always do full damage (if one ignores victim resistances)? :shock:

Guess I'm too influenced by RPGs and other games where a damage of 20 means the unit does an amount of damage from 0 to 20 (once again, if one ignores victim resistances). That's why I used an average.
Yes, in ("vanilla") Wesnoth an attack either hits (and does the full damage) or doesn't hit (and does no damage). (I guess there are some modifications which change this behavior. Look for RNG mods.)
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