Discussion of making easy difficulty easier.

[orzelek]

I'm currently finding it hard to not unbalance things to much without gods/mythicals participating.
I don't think it can be made much easier. I'm treating this as a random factor - it will either work or not.
Having many towns that can act as replacements helps with this I think. And thats closer to you plans from what I understand.

[x4000]

Yep, definitely.

The game is meant to be reasonably hard on even the easy difficulty.  AI War's first four difficulties are so sandboxy as to make it super super easy.  And then the real game is from 5 to 9, with ten being the crazy impossible one.  I'm kind of balancing this with the 5-9 range in mind if you think of AI War equivalence.  It may be that easy difficulty is still too hard, and I welcome ideas on how to solve that.  To some extent it is just simply complicated, but potentially we could remove some mechanics and costs to help with that.  Less economy management, etc, for instance.  Lower health on units so that the bonuses and differences between them matter less in combat since they'll likely kill each other more of the time anyhow.  Etc.

[Mick]

I'm sorry, but I am having a lot of trouble parsing what the OP is saying.  Is he saying it's too easy, or it's too hard, or something else completely?

[x4000]

He's saying that the easy difficulty is still too hard.  Not too hard for HIM I don't think, but he's a solid-or-better wargamer and thus I think his point is that the more midcore gamer is going to be getting creamed.  We need a difficulty level appropriate for the midcore.

[orzelek]

Ok thats strange. I think that post was meant as reply somewhere not as separate thread.

I didn't have any difficulty level in mind.
I simply find current statistical imbalance on military quite severe.
Similarly functioning Norse units can be even twice weaker than their Greek counterparts. Take the Oxybele vs Ballista. Oxybele has less hp but is otherwise very capable combatant. Quite fast and with decent damage per shot. While Ballista has half the firepower (much better against buildings tho) and half the movement. To stop large offensive of Oxybeles I needed to employ giant.. and that was strange.
And I'm not touching siege towers. And that silly pyromaniacs that Norse get instead of them. I'm simply not allowing my Greeks to produce siege towers.

In barracks area Greeks get their pikemen, heavy infantry and cavalry from start. Norse can only build pikemen and light infantry. Both of their heavy units are blocked by unlocks.
Archery seems quite balanced - units are a bit different but quite useful.

[x4000]

Yep, I split the thread because I thought it was an interesting topic.

And in terms of it being hard to balance the guys from one side to the other... sure, that's definitely the idea.  The stats for the norse military were intentionally made weaker over the last couple of releases, if you look at the notes.  We're going for exactly the sort of effect you're talking about.

[Cinth]

Speaking of Norse Pikemen (Huscarl) ... Why do they arm themselves with battle axes instead of pikes?  Hmmm... Pike+Axe... Halberds!!

[orzelek]

A bit skewed military is not so bad. Worst part is the economy that goes along with this.
After limiting the resource space it will be regular (at least for me) that Greeks have city space to spare and are happily trading while Norse can barely hold them off and have cities filled to last tile with farms.
There is no thinking about mythical stuff for Norse then... simply there is no place to build the buildings. And if any of resources ends result is quite clear.
And Norse wheat consumption seems to be off scale currently. With mixed army I seem to need 2x wheat farms than Greeks.

Before the resources change this wasn't a problem since it was easily compensated by more farms for Norse.

I'm waiting to see the cataclysms and some incentive to play further up the profile level. After the score removal game became a bit less fun for me. It's still fun to make your sides not kill each other to fast - but without VP or something similar tokens are for emergencies and you don't touch them normally. They are simply not worth the risk (but archers with 10 attack range are neat).

[Mick]

I guess by the very nature of the game, you can have an easy difficulty with no cataclysm or bandits at all, and a player could make life super difficult for themselves anyway.

So, I guess the question is, what is easy enough? Some developers seem to think that easy means the player should not be capable of losing, but I think it's better to foster the notion that losing can be fun.

Someone suggested in another thread that profile leveling should not be based on games won, but on 'rounds' completed. Maybe this is a way to take the sting out of losing for a player on easy who is trying to learn the mechanics. "Hey, I lost the game, but I think I figured out where I messed up, and I advanced my profile a little bit!"

But honestly, I find it very hard to put myself in the things on your feet of an "easy" player. I've been trained by modern gaming to think of easy as effectively "cheat mode", that you play if you only want to "see the story".

There really isn't a story or ending to get to in this game, so I guess the best equivalent is "I want to place stuff down and just see what happens" Effectively a sandbox.

So maybe that's the answer. You have a game mode called "sandbox" in which they can plop down any building or unit they want for free, resources are used for unit creation by military buildings and myth tokens, and you can build a new town center for a faction even if their last one is destroyed. So if a player feels overwhelemed by having a win/lose condition, they have an option just for playing around with the game and creating fun stories out of the stuff that happens. There certainly is a class of players who like to play this way (and I'm not making any kinda judgement on who is more of a "real gamer" or any nonsense like that), so why not have the game appeal to them as well?

EDIT: Also, like in Sim City games, cataclysms could just be disasters you bring in on a button click.

[Cinth]

But honestly, I find it very hard to put myself in the things on your feet of an "easy" player.

It isn't hard.  Don't look beyond "right now" for what you need.  Someone who is restricted to easy (skill wise) isn't looking forward.

I've been trained by modern gaming to think of easy as effectively "cheat mode", that you play if you only want to "see the story".

THIS IS ARRRRCEEENNNN !!!!  Where easy mode still eats your face off while trampling you mom's flower garden.   >D

This is more of an issue with "modern gaming" trying to appeal to a wide variety of players.  I'd have never picked up Halo if the only difficulty was the highest (I hate FPS games).

There really isn't a story or ending to get to in this game, so I guess the best equivalent is "I want to place stuff down and just see what happens" Effectively a sandbox.

You can do that now, on any difficulty   Just be ready for it to eat your face off and trample your mother's flower garden in the process

[Mick]

Haha, well as I wrote my post I did kinda convince myself that a sandbox mode would be of great value marketing-wise. I mean, it's not like it's a mode that requires an extra effort to balance. Balance doesn't exist. And I believe "builder" style gamers would really enjoy it.

Appealing to a wider variety of players is not necessarily a bad thing. It's not like it affects the fun of the players who enjoy playing the "face-eating" mode.

[SRombauts]

A sandbox would be great!

It could be even more fun if you could use it to build free (is)land...

[x4000]

What you guys are talking about is basically the scenario editor, which I am planning on adding.

[Cinth]

The easy and tutorial difficulty levels now has about a third lower resource costs and unit health, making it so that the battles tend to have more one-shotting (and thus unit bonuses matter less), and making economies easier to manage.

I think this will be sufficient to take the edge off of the easy difficulties.

[x4000]

Yeah, Josh's idea -- I thought that was quite smart.