[1.04] Balance, esp. early game for lower level players

Hi Guys,

First off, great job with this mod. Its very rare that something as complete as this comes along, to any game, that also  integrates extremely well with the existing standards.

That said, I have a few gripes. I don't have a replay handy right now(in work, will attach tomorrow).

First off:

I am a low level player (Lv.3 PE) and unfortunately I get a strong feeling off this mod that it has been unconsciously designed with higher level players in mind, namely because you guys, (splendid fellows to a man), play this game regularly and intensively.

(Im talking 1v1 games)

As such, I suspect that you might have been unaware of how tough you were making it, as you were judging against your own high standards.

But for us little peons at the bottom/middle of the ladder we can be  easily overwhelmed by the sheer volume of Sovvies much too early in the game.

Ive been playing this mod for over a week now, almost every night, and its driving me crazing how easy it is for the Sov player to jsut FLOOD the map with men, within 5-10 mins.

I understand the wish to make the Sovs strength their numbers - but theres no feeling of a progression from a heavy slow army, building up to a mobile, efficient juggernaut.

Just swarms and swarms and SWARMS of men, within 5 mins, with those mentally overpowered mortars blowing apart entire squads within buildings!. (I think I have a replay for that last event, will post this eve)

Basically:
Compared to you guys I'm crap at CoH.
But i LOVE the game, and i LOVE this mod.
But, your mod is so unbalanced towards me as a low level player that i simply cannot play it anymore! :( :( The sheer volume of infantry so fricking early on is just ridiculous.

Now, dont get me wrong - im not saying to Dumb it Down or any such nonsense. I liek CoH precisely because its hard and punishes slipups.

But I think you have serious balance issues regarding the Sovs early builds, in comparison to the other armies.

Btw, dont comment back with tactics suggestions, or micro practices, or build queues. Ive tried a ton over the last week, to my eternal frustration. This is a fundamental issue with the mod, towards me as a low level player.

Please, consider reviewing & balancing your early Sov build queues, with more of an eye to the little guy at the opposite end of your ability. I doubt I'm the only one who feels this.

Once I get to the mid-game, feel free to kick my ass. But give me a chance, at least!

Kind regards, and kudos again,

HDLK

Last edited March 10, 2010 at 9:07 PM by Headlock

Lower capping speed is my solition. Russians seem they can cap as fast as rifleman or grenadiers (1,5). PE can cap twice as slow (0,75) but they have a capping+detecting mines upgrade (than nobody uses :().
In my opinion ingenery should cap very slow (0,75).
constripts and strelky as fast as volks (1) till they get a commisar or red banner upgrade.
Ingenery should also be build slower. They can repair tanks and build. They shouldnt be as spammable as constripts.
These changes will give german players additional minute to set up their mgs and cap one more fuel point.

I do agree that russians cap a bit too fast especially since they can send out so many units early game to cap half the map but then again Americans and Wehrmacht can too.

I haven't played a ton of scenarios yet, but I will conditionally give my nod to the OP.

I'm an older guy who can't twitch as fast as you younger spasms...  :P  Which means I constantly play on easy. Normal difficulty is a severe challenge for me that I often lose.

That said, on easy level in 1.04, I get swarmed by troops faster than I can counter and then get wiped by mortar spam. I lose the skirmish in less than 10 minutes, usually.

A word about mortars. They seem highly inaccurate for the first 3 minutes. Then suddenly they hit and kill everything in 1 or 2 shots.

Same for the Zis AT gun. It can 2-shot an 88.

This is on EASY. Even tried it with a computer ally against a single easy soviet. Got my you know what toasted and so did the computer ally.

Love the mod, though.

well u cant balance based on lower lvl players, it just doesnt go. basicly ur saying that ur lazy and dont want to get better so the game should be made to ur lvl? what happens when u get better? it gets unbalanced and then u ask for balance again

so simply if it balanced at high lvl its very simple, get better

anyway to comment on earlygame, i just think there should be some build order variations, because right now its always the same. u make command squad, then u make couple conscripts and u wait for wsc, and then later tank depot

there is no other possiblity. id suggest to add fuel costs to armory, command squad and barracks, but give some starting fuel too. so then u make a choice.

This sort of elitist talk is why I generally avoid these ultra competitive games like the plague. Not all of us have the time nor desire to spend dozens upon dozens of matches honing skills which in many cases just kinda ruins the fun of the game.

In short "HURP A DURP LR2P" isn't the answer as high level and low level balance are not mutually exclusive things. All you're doing with that answer is alienating another sector of the player base.

The mod just has to be balanced towards the high end at first, seeing how that's who's putting the most time in on the game. If high level players found the mod to be massively imbalanced they'd just pass it over, especially if after a patch or three nothing had been done to change that. However the devs are by all evidence working hard to balance the soviets and low level balance is something that will come in time.

MaddPhish wrote:Not all of us have the time nor desire to spend dozens upon dozens of matches honing skills which in many cases just kinda ruins the fun of the game.

Nevermind that 90% of the skills to learn in RTS are economics, not tactics.

I don´t play tactical-sized games to later go into forums and read the goddamn build orders. This is why I play mods like OMG and EiR, because they skip the technology curve/build order bullshit and go straight to what the game is supposed to be about.



I can´t wait until EF is finished and OMG and EiR can get to work on implementing it into their persistence system.

Last edited March 14, 2010 at 11:36 AM by Saavedra

bavbav wrote:
well u cant balance based on lower lvl players, it just doesnt go. basicly ur saying that ur lazy and dont want to get better so the game should be made to ur lvl? what happens when u get better? it gets unbalanced and then u ask for balance again

Of course you can balance based on each particular difficulty. Values are set for each difficulty, the scale isn't locked.

As for the rest of your post, I don't respond to trolls.

bavbav wrote:
well u cant balance based on lower lvl players, it just doesnt go. .

And what is CoH if not finely balanced for players at all levels? And then you proceeded to agree with my OP!

Hilarity and knee slapping ensued.

I've some relays to post later tonight. I'm still deeply irritated at what can only be called infantry spam in the early game.

I mean, fine, if a player evolves a spam tactic - other players will always come up with a counter-tactic. but when the spam is built-in to the mod/game?!

I dunno 'bout that...

Plus tigers, as mentioned elsewhere, die wayyy to easy v. t-34s. A tiger appearing should make a RA player pretty much panic and focus like hell on the tigger,, cos that was literally their effect in real life, on RA and US and BA. Mine alsted al;l of 3 minutes agianst som 34/85s and 75s.

TO have a 900 tiger die so easily is just..well, cruel :(

Still loving the mod though.
HDLK

Did you micro the tiger? Vet the tiger? cause I had a tiger last at vet three the entire game killing 75 Inf 6 Light Vehicles 15 tanks and 0 Buildings. Micro and support are key with the Tigers and KTs, don't just send them in and say "kill everything" cause unlike in RL it doesn't happen that way

hgghg4 wrote:
Did you micro the tiger? Vet the tiger? cause I had a tiger last at vet three the entire game killing 75 Inf 6 Light Vehicles 15 tanks and 0 Buildings. Micro and support are key with the Tigers and KTs, don't just send them in and say "kill everything" cause unlike in RL it doesn't happen that way

+1
Maybe it's not EF related but yesterday i saw a replay where a player who deployed a tiger but didn't microed well, and kill 62 inf(most of them rangers) 2 light vehicles and 2 tanks. Of course it not last long due to the lack of micro.

The tiger just stayed near the middle of the map, maybe the player forgot it. Waves of rangers came and die or retreat; artillery shells dropped on it as if water drops, like 3 or 2 times, and finally when the player saw tiger, he/she ran to a base attack only with the tiger, without repairing it, and died. What a shame, well no matter :P.

I think it's funny that some Wehr players think they have an "I win button" when they have access to a Tiger or KT.  Listen closely: Heavy Tanks Do Not Pwn Everything.

Use micro.

bavbav wrote:
well u cant balance based on lower lvl players, it just doesnt go. basicly ur saying that ur lazy and dont want to get better so the game should be made to ur lvl? what happens when u get better? it gets unbalanced and then u ask for balance again

so simply if it balanced at high lvl its very simple, get better

anyway to comment on earlygame, i just think there should be some build order variations, because right now its always the same. u make command squad, then u make couple conscripts and u wait for wsc, and then later tank depot

there is no other possiblity. id suggest to add fuel costs to armory, command squad and barracks, but give some starting fuel too. so then u make a choice.

Haha your kidding, did you even try to get past your ego? we(yes we) try to get better BUT CAN"T simply because we have no material, to all others having difficulties I suggest Lyon with normal allies against Easy soviets, try beating AI first.Players spam Anti tank squads.

yup, i micro-ed the tiger, with inf support, naturally.

There is a discussion thread elsewhere, wehr (geddit??:) ) the point is  made that 3 PAKs are a better economic & tactical choice than a single, eggs-in-one-basket tigger.

the stats above are normal for a tiger, absolutely - agiainst the western allies..

But on the true eastern front the tiger was even more effective, due to the long open distances and superb tank country allowing excellent hull-down and over-the-top fire solutions.

Here, the t-34s are jsut a bit over powered, but im slowly finding ways to nerf em. PE HTs with TB squads kcik their asses!

Re early game balance, the only solution i have found personally is to give "high resources" for every map - only then do i have a chance in the early game.

:)

Love the mod, hate the early unbalance :(

HDLK

Emmeric wrote:
Same for the Zis AT gun. It can 2-shot an 88.

I saw it on youtube long time ago and I couldnt find it now. US 57mm killed an 88. Both guns started to fire at the same time, there were no missed shots and 57 won.

In RL the 57 would be dead faster than the trigger was pulled.

Get more mp40 volks and flamers early game.

Also, don't fight coms. As fun as the game seems against them, it is infinitely better against an intelligent opponent. Even if you aren't a fan of the competitive automatch, try finding a basic match against someone of similar low level who you have fun against, add them to friends and play some rematches. Or get some friends to buy the game and play some casual games.

Several years ago I thought that versing coms was fun but it doesn't compare to humans. Playing with people is just so much better.

I get killed easily when I go against Humans...In ANY game I play.

I find the AI is more challenging then most human players.... that says a lot O_o

hgghg4 wrote:
I find the AI is more challenging then most human players.... that says a lot O_o

You probably mean a hard AI that gets extra resources and then spams, spams, caps and spams.

Akalonor wrote:
I get killed easily when I go against Humans...In ANY game I play.

Keep playing. That's why i suggest you play until you find someone of equal skill and add them to friends. I guarantee that a casual game between friends, even unskilled ones is more fun than against coms. This is especially true when playing over ts when you can laugh and joke about. Hell, even playing WITH friends against coms would be more fun than playing alone against that unfeeling cold bastard. 

Plus, playing against people you will actually get better eventually rather than play the same tired gameplay against an incredibly stupid enemy with perfect map awareness. It opens up a whole new level of strategies that can actually catch a person unawares, which can provide a massive high when you pull it off.

I respect that you probably don't have much time for all these strategies and you quite enjoy playing against coms but I still seriously recommend finding someone of comparable ability and playing against them.

Yeah,  I do badly  on every map but Lyon (That map is my defensive element)
I have played a few against players And they are relatively enjoyable, since you can ask someone to capture a point and they dont send their whole army like Computer player.

havent check here for couple of weeks, seen responses to my post....

i dont understand. why would you not want to get better?

its really confusing what u guys say

for me, the game is balanced the moment u can go and say, damn i lost because i played bad, i should play better

this can never happen if u balance around low lvl players. they will be happy, but those who can get better, will stop playing because its not fun if its imbalanced

so if it balanced around top lvl of play, nobody can blame the game for sucking, the game is then perfect. in that case the only fault is onto players who refuse to learn

theres is no other way to do it and yes i can understand it sucks to put lot of time into learning a game

the only other solution i think could be done is to basicly make 2 diffrent versions, and players could choose what the like to play. you know like beginner ladder and normal ladder in automatch for example. but i dont know is it worth it? promoting lazyness that is..... it just simply doesnt matter, if someone want to compstomp they can do it either way.

i mean this board is a testament to diffrent players all screaming for balance the way they want it. how can you make them all happy? impossible. there cant be 100 versions of the game, only one. so it should be the one which makes most sense, where players are to blame for losing themselves and not the game

I would agree that the Russian has an early game advantage. This is not only true for low level players. I think that they can get to many unit early on in the game.

The russians start with a 300 manpower advantage over WM to compensate for WMs 120 manpower starting unit, in addition Russias Tier 1 is 120 manpower cheaper. This means that Russia has a lot more unit early game so they can often outcap and push the Wm player.

I think that the game would be more balanced early game if Russias tier 1 had a cost of 200 manpower and they only startet with 700 manpower (50 less than now.)

like US russia are on the offensive... werhm is slow starting but  one bunker going medic with mg save a crucial point ... put volk near, and defensive doctrine if needed

bike are also really good

PE is harded to use, xp-pg is necessary to take the best with a red blob ... the scortched earth trap is good to prevent light caping (ia throws halved unit for caping every none defended blob)

my little pb is the end game with pe against tank spam