Do Top Players Give Good Balance Feedback?

Not really jabbing at top players with regard to balance here, moreso wanting to know what you guys are thinking, what you guys find frustrating and all the other stuff around balance.

[BoitTV]

Not really jabbing at top players with regard to balance here though it is fun, moreso wanting to know what you guys are thinking, what you guys find frustrating and all the other stuff around balance.

[tavish]

With what a lot of people have been pointing fingers at, I think having an initial cooldown on your God power which you get upon aging up. These cooldowns can vary, but the idea would be to have greater cooldowns the higher up the age up is. Your first cast will still be free, but your opponent gets some time to prepare upon seeing you age up and which god you pick.

In essence, your earthquake will begin at a 30 to 60 seconds cooldown upon reaching the mythic age for example. First cast is still free.


I think everything else is pretty well designed and the only balance I think the game needs is number adjustments every now and then to shake up the meta.

[fiegt]

Bugs in the game are the thing they need to focus on:
-Sending vills back to work => They go to the resource (for example wood) and there they become idle
- Creating multiple farms with multiple vills => They become idle instead of building
- ..

These are all small bugs but add up to the gameplay. It's basic functions that don't work properly

Other than that, the game is fine. You'll always have good strats vs bad strats or good strats vs better strats. It's always been the case.
There is no perfect balance in the game since every god is different, but that's the design which we all love.

[georgfischer]

Hey Boit, thank you for your opinion!

To your questions/my comments:
- from my point of view, the game balance is in quite good shape. There are very strong mechanics but not really "broken" ones.
- judging at the win %, the game is in good shape for almost all skilllevels, there needs to be smth done at highest level though (looking at tournaments... e.g. Ra seems to be too strong)
- it is amazing, that a game with 13 races that are very different, is quite levelled
- the game is fun to play in all stages - potentially earlygame could be more interesting
- top players like iammagic are rather concerned about the fun of the game, than of the balance perspectiv. They note, that T3 and T4 godpowers and upgrades are too dominant which results in a gameplay that is not fun. They also mention earlygame and food sources/harass. Right now, one is quite safe compared to aoe4. I loved being rushed in aoe4 by mongols, it was quite refreshing, mostly being the most fun games (and sometimes it would make me rage aswell...). We need more early game shananigans!

[billybob-wxre]

speaking as an older player, i'm glad games are typically shorter with retold. i just can't be playing 30-40min games on the regular

[entropicentropic]

From what I've seen, rushing in Retold is in kinda weird state atm. Things which seem to be possible currently:

1. Exploit late age ups (for example vs Eggys or vs Thor) with an early-ish age up like Kronos rush, or Greek player aging up at 3:20-3:30, and try to get early damage done + gain tempo. But apparently the current consensus is that it's not really viable at the top level in most cases. I think for mid level and below it can be done, though;

2. If opponent's getting a 2nd TC - in certain cases you can deny/delay it. But it's kind of matchup-dependent.

3. Try to destroy opponent at a 2nd gold mine, but it seems to me that this timing comes late enough for an opponent to get Heroic + some important Heroic upgrades before that fight happens, so unless you have an insanely strong classical age, you kinda have to age up yourself, and then it becomes harder to find an edge to overwhelm him + his defender's advantage, which means it turns at the very least into a tech race game. Some matchups offer strong enough Heroic spikes to actually do that (e.g. Flaming Weapons), but not all of them. So I would argue this is already not exactly in a "rush" territory in a lot of cases.

If opponent's hard turtling and racing ages - I think vs Eggy it's very hard to do anything outside of gold starve timings, even if you try 1TC dedicated aggression. Their free stuff (tower upgrades, houses/armory/market as a semi-wall, also pharaoh is technically a free unit, too) gives them nice boost to enable defending against early aggro for free and racing into Heroic age if they want to. You basically have to spend resources on dismantling their *free* tower and *free* house walls before you can realistically get to what actually matters (their villagers). Vs other civs I think it's possible to get something done, at least at mid level of play. At least they have to actually invest resources into defenses. It'll probably come down to gold starving them in the end, too, but if you can pressure them well enough beforehand, at least it won't be a teching race by that point. I would also argue that vs 2TC eggy you can also get something done with dedicated 1TC aggression in some cases (depends on the map), at least on mid level. But 1TC eggy just forces you into a teching or booming race without any other options.

I like the suggestion about lowering the amount of woods around the base, or doing something else to give more attack angles. Not sure how much it would help, but it's a start. For eggy at least removing the free tower upgrade from them could also nerf their turtliness. I would argue that having 4 towers which can garrisson 10 villagers each, and also a TC with even more garrisoning capabilities, is good enough start vs early raids without that free upgrade.

I would say Magic is also thinking in the right direction with his "lower amount of starting food" suggestion, but it's a more controversial take I suppose, and for sure requires other changes on top of that. It's likely that all the changes required for this to be a thing aren't going to happen in foreseeable future. I do think you should be rewarded from gaining map control, though, and it should be beneficial to fight for it.

I still find it funny that there're some claims about how buffs to aggressive play would destroy casual playerbase etc. I think, outside of purely opening-based rushes (e.g. Kronos 3:00 thing) which you can just copy from a video, it takes skill to pressure effectively and not fumble your own macro behind it. Anyone who can do that, and do that fast enough to actually exploit things like lower food around starting TC, is already not in a "casual" territory.

Speaking of Kronos rush - I actually think it's a very toxic build for lower end of playerbase. It can kind of prevent you from playing the game at all if you have no practice defending it properly. And I don't think the initial part is that hard to replicate, you just copy the build from a youtube video, even if follow-up is going to be horrible, initial two myth units already will do quite a bit of damage against low rated player. While I myself would prefer it to be possible to play aggressively, I'm not sure this particular build should be a thing.

[kilianflotow]

I think the game is much more balanced than extended edition ever was. Way more playable strategies and units to use and almost everything seems to be quite good in some cases. I sometimes Catch myself raging about my opponents "abuse" strategies but in reality i didnt respond correctly

[georgetibbitts]

I think there should be a lag time between aging up and getting the new god power. 10/20/30 seconds per respective age

There’s no time to react to a player aging up at the moment. That’s a big part of the power spike of aging up where you can turn an otherwise poor engagement into a game ending fight. And it’s too common for the other player to just resign on the spot

Having a lag time allows the other player to react to the minor god choice. I think this would be a simple change that could really soften how oppressive it can be hit with a mythic age god power out of no where

[nottud]

As a more casual player I think build limits for towers and fortresses should be scrapped. They feel artificial and buildings are weak anyway with plenty of counters. The higher game pop also makes them less important. I also include mirror towers here.

I loved building massive defensive bases in the other age games and having AI and other players siege them and the build limits takes that away. Sure I can do with custom maps but I am the lucky skilled one capable of setting up such a map and it only works on those specific maps.

[jordanthejq]

People aren't wrong that pros often fall victim to Complacent Gaming Syndrome and optimize the fun away, but those critiques often come from people who think anything that beats them or they see too often is OP. Balance, not only of the game itself but of who is contributing to changes, is a tricky matter sometimes. Honestly a mix of input from players of all skill levels, with a weight given to higher levels but without disregarding casual opinion entirely, is probably the best.

[NamerGaming]

I think some minor gods being too weak really hurts the game. Hephaestus, Helios and Baldr never get picked because they are way worse than their alternatives.

One aspect about early pressure/rushes that I dont see anyone talking about is how Egyptians get free tower upgrades. Not only do they get free defense, but also free houses that you can use to fortify your base and secure all of your starting resources. Having both of these advantages makes them the less raidable civ in classical.

Some maps lack gold, Midgard being the most egregious example of the ranked rotation maps. You cannot reach a late game when there arent goldmines and your trade routes are so short.

I could go on and on, but the only truly broken thing right now is going Athena, specially as Zeus. Best Classical GP, military upgrade and amazing myth unit; it is the full package, I would argue Athena is stronger than most Heroic age gods, which should not be the case.

I think there is an issue with pierce damage being super difficult to tank, but I have to double check some numbers to see if its mathematically true.

I'm 1300, for reference. Love the game, love the content and the discussion

[skiboydoggy]

I'd say Chariot Archers, especially with Bone Bow are borderline broken right now. They bully the traditional counter-archers (Peltasts, Slingers, and Turma) way too hard, and not every major god has a good time teching into cavalry (I'm thinking Hades and Set).

Turma are also frustrating, but if I see a lot of Turma I think the Atlantean player is giving up late game by building way too many of a counter unit/raider. If I spam melee units they're probably dead if I didn't lose too many guys early on.

[I_a_m_J_o_j_o]

I believe the recent meta tends to a very defensive/boomy gameplay. At WotG, we had a lot of Egy mirrors without any fights for the first 15 minutes, which is really boring to watch.
Another point (a bit off-topic) also related to the major tournaments, is that we always see the same matchups (and I'm not only speaking about the Zeus/Hades Kerlaugar). Maybe it could be nice to come up with another drafting system, adding a bit more randomness.
But in general, the game is pretty well balanced, as we see a lot of different strategies and all gods are playable.

[mirankambic]

For me, everything is frustrating :) Reason is that I played to few games to see enough tactics/approches from other players. But still I really enjoy this game...

[Mathilde_Moksha_]

Hi! 🤗

TLDR of My paragraph: resource scarcity is what keeps the game balanced quite well. But as soon as there is an abundance of resources, balance goes out the window

I play a fair bunch of custom games with casual friends on top of ranked. My biggest frustration points are anytime the games goes into an abubdance of resources, either hyper late game, or before in team games or FFAs. Some stuff is very balanced by virtue of having limited resources (like mass hetairoi, or additional implodes), but as soon as players start floating 1000+ resources all the time, tons of stuff that isn't broken becomed broken, hetairoi, mass atlantean heroes vs titans, mass prodromos vs egypt...

Mummies have always been frustrating to Me even before the late game since they've started to be used a lot.

And wonder age is the biggest pain point for Me: a god power like implode or fimbulwinter is unbeatable in wonder age, whereas a god power like nidhogg isn't OP, and a god power like ragnarok is straight up unusable in wonder age (because it's designed to be used only once). Teleportation in wonder age becomes very broken too, whether it's vortex or underworld or shifting sands.

So for Me, My biggest gripes in the game are situations where skill gap or god choice are magnified by extra resources.

[elinosnicolaidis]

Whats the cronos rush vs themista match??

[largemargeog]

I can’t imagine doing a better job balancing the game. I’ve never lost a game because the game was unbalanced. Meaning it’s not like I could switch to another god and win or something. This game is slept on by the RTS community.

[vasilisaspiotiscorfu]

my opinion is that the game is balanced. the only problems i see is that if you have 2tc and other player stays 1tc and doesn't kill you in the next 5 minutes you win. And 2nd problem is that you can easy win with a god power just because you age up quicker. my solution for them problems is if you have 2 tcs the 2nd one should be about 20% slower. if you have 3 tc the 3rd should be 40% slower . if you have 4 tc then the 4th should be 60% slower(village center should be treated the same). and for the 2nd problem it would be better if god powers were weaker and cheaper.

[henriquefaria]

One suggestion i would give is adding a 1sec or so delay to ranged unit's movement after firing, so cavalry/counter-cav units can efectively trade against a big bowl of archers kiting. It would make it very less frustrating to deal with horse archers if your counter-cav could actually engage them.

[joelroamsaround]

I think the game is in a really good spot. I think towers need to be a bit stronger, but that's probably it. We've had a lot of big patches in a short period of time, so I'd say just leave it for a while. Wait and see how the Chinese civs change the game.