Training in 2.1 opinions

[okrane]

Tried the new training principles today... I found that Haven is pretty weak with the new twist...
The good thing is that once fully mastered training is much cheaper than it use to be, but it is rather useless in the begining. I tried the skill on Dead's man lake in a 1on1 vs a computer player.

The result was pretty dissapointing. I started with Dougal, as he has the quickest developement and I played rather ok I would say, with no big losses and good creeping. Found Ellaine in the tavern so I might say I was lucky. Furthermore I found the bow of the unicorn on a skeleton, which was a strike of gold...

The problem was that usually by week 4 I would have already upgrade some peasants into archers that way significantly increasing my army. And since a knight's only power is his army I was pretty weak. I trained some archers in the new training limit but 7 per week is hardly enough.

The other trouble I had was that in order to train a unit up the tier you need to have built the dwelling of the upper level unit. I mean for example if you want to train priests into cavaliers you need to have the cavalier building, and that is very expensive resource wize. In order to make this effective you need to build the training house, the Hall of heroes, get all the skills required(Exp Counterstrike, Expert Trainer) and build all the dwellings which can hardly be done early on due to the high costs.

The result... see for yourself:



Jezebeth... leading a large inferno army came attacking in week 4 day 1. She stopped just near my town so I could not go in and I had to attack. Her skills consisted in a mass slow, expert gating and a 110 damage eldrich arrow.
My army just stood there while the familiars and hell chargers were hacking away...
I tried the battle quite a few times, and the closest I came to beating her was one time when I sold all I had to buy creatures, but still she had 2 pitfiends left when I died.

Anyway... this first test prooved to me that right now haven is pretty weak early on, especially due to the high resource cost of dwellings(ore especially) and to the fact that their hero is not that strong at low levels.

[Elvin]

Seeing the wood and ore the training buildings require it seems more sensible to go for angels first and THEN utilize it for more powerful units than archers. I don't think the extra creatures from it are better than following the angel route. Unless you wish to build cavaliers and train exclusively priests which you'll be able to afford by then.

[Starbatron]

I haven't played the Haven faction since the change. I think the logical path is suggested by Elven, though I dare say the change isn't quite what seems logical. Perhaps Ubival will rework the principles more along the lines suggested elsewhere in this forum, where the higher level creatures can train fewer per week, though there should be a limit on the ability, or you end up with something similar to the previous unbalancing of the necromancy ability (though I certainly enjoyed having a legion of skellie archers )

[Amis]

I haven't played the Haven faction since the change. I think the logical path is suggested by Elven, though I dare say the change isn't quite what seems logical. Perhaps Ubival will rework the principles more along the lines suggested elsewhere in this forum, where the higher level creatures can train fewer per week, though there should be a limit on the ability, or you end up with something similar to the previous unbalancing of the necromancy ability (though I certainly enjoyed having a legion of skellie archers )

This sounds good, but rather than keeping the limitations, I would make some more logical. There would be a delay in training. E.g. when upgrading peasants into marksmen it would last one day, but upgrading peasants into cavaliers would last longer, maybe four or five days. Also, the delay would depend on how many creatures you are upgrading, maybe 1 extra day per (100 unit / tier level).

[asandir]

on a personal note I like it, cause I love inferno and Haven do nothing for me, on a less selfish side it may be a bit too much of a de-buff, time should tell

[Qurqirish Dragon]

Well, something needed to be done, as it was easy to get hundreds of archers early on- and once upgraded they basically only needed a couple guards to win most battles for you. With just the peasants and a castle, it was easy to get 60 per week, and if there are any external peasant dwellings you get 25 more each. The actual number of tained troops per day may need to be tweaked, but a limit definitely needed to be added.

[okrane]

of course... I just say it is a little too drastic. I mean a limit is good but I would make it something different.
The only problem was early on... after that having tons of marksmen was not that strong.
the limit is a good thing but I would suggest making the limit dependant on the week's number or the hero's level that does the training...

oh... I also like the fact that it is now cheaper to upgrade once you've mastered Counterstrike

[okrane]

Doesn't anyone believe training is too weak right now??? and haven also too weak in 2.1??

[winterfate]

Yeah, IMO, Haven is WAY too weak in 2.1.

That's why I'll be sticking with my favorite faction from now on!
(Sylvan)

[atma6]

This change only makes the Haven weaker comparatively to before; it by no means weakens the faction. It is the best way to vary the Haven strategy. Now if you are up against the Haven you aren't guaranteed to run into a swarm of Marksmen and a few other troops. Now you have to deal with Inquisitors and Paladins. It doesn't completely destroy the faction; yes, it will be harder creeping early on, but no harder than other factions such as Academy.

Training made Haven and especially the Haven hero Dougal, way overpowered. The limit might irritate hardcore Haven players, but all it does is remove an unfair advantage. Its not like they are saying that you can no longer train any Archers at all, but it is saying that you can't completely depend on Peasants and Archers to win the game, similarly they removed the overpowered mass Skeleton Archer strategy.

You can complain, but in the end all it does is balance out the Haven, and not being able to Archer rush every stack early on is not destroying the faction, it is normalizing it.

[Starbatron]

Yes, I agree. It is not that the change wasn't necessary, but that it needs to be tweaked. The limit is perhaps too low, or perhaps a different kind of limit would be good. Maybe something similar to DE; I like the idea of tying it to the hero's level and increasing it a little, very similar to the way DE can be increased. As much as I loved having swarms of skellie archers, I do think it is more balanced with the DE system (and more strategically interesting).

[okrane]

As I stated on Ubi forums:

Posted Fri February 23 2007 13:34 Hide Post
I find training a bit underpowered right now, to be honest.
I mean, you cannot have 20 extra paladins because you don't have 20 units to train to paladins.
Think about it. To train paladins you need to upgrade monks. You have only 6 of them per week. That means 6 extra paladins.
In order to train squires into paladins you need to spend 2 training points (first squire->priest, then priest->paladin) so that means from the 14 points left you can train another 7 paladins, summing up to 13 paladins(keep in mind that they are pretty expensive...)

Still I do agree that a limit depending on creature level shoud be imposed. Maybe have different counts for each creature type.
Another thing I would do is make the training limit week dependant, meaning that the number of trained creatures would depend on the week's number, that way ensuring that haven is not too strong early on but not too weak later on.

Because I think Haven is too weak right now. The main reason I say this is because the main hero must return each week to his town in order to put his racial to work. That reason is also the main reason why necro is too strong. Because tehy are one of the few races that don't need to come back to their town very often.

So I would fix this problem with returning to town for the races that need to do it.
(All options here are to be treated as stand-alones, i.e. not to be taken as a whole)

For Haven: a few suggestions:

a) Make the limit of training cumulative. This way the creatures you did not train in a week will add up to the limit of the next week, and so on.
b) Make the hero be able to train creatures from his army(everywhere on the map that is), and also upgrade them(like cavaliers into paladins, griffins into imperial griffins) once you have the upgrade building. The upgrade cost should be more expensive than doing it in town, but counterstrike and expert trainer should lower the cost until close to the normal price
c) Increase the gold bonus peasants give. So you would have more money for training and so even if you come back more rarely you can train more effectively
d) Increase the movement bonus stables offer, and its duration to 2 weeks - so the hero can return faster.

The same problem I see with Academy: they must return to build their miniarties, and to refresh their proporties once the hero has gained more knowledge.
I would change this like the following:

a) give the hero a special bag where he can keep the miniartifacts(so he can reasign them to different creatures w/o having to return)
b) the properties of the miniartifacts should update their power with the increase of hero's knowledge(it seem natural imo)
c) if a creature stack is dead the miniartifact returns in the bag of the hero. If the hero dies, and the enemy hero is also a wizard the enemy also gains his miniartifacts.

For the ranger:

a)I would introduce a new ability, that cost 1 day of movement and it would allow the hero to choose his new favored enemies from the list of creatures he has killed
b)In town the selection of favored enemies is made just like before, only that a hero can choose any creature he wants(he doesn't have to kill any creature in order to choose it as a favored enemy)

To make a few points:

* returning to town on a weekly basis weakens the faction
* limiting training so drastically in the begining makes them very vulnerable against rush especially because knigths are really weak early on
* I still do not like the fact that training upgraded units costs the same as training un-upgraded ones
* the cost reduction is good, but the limits and the high cost of buildings make haven able to use training effectively somewhere in week 3-4 (effectively = training inquisitors/paladins)

still I agree that it brings a nice twist and that they are more interesting to play. However if you look at my suggestions in the quote above, those would improve the faction and the gameplay imo.

[Qurqirish Dragon]

As I stated on Ubi forums:
To make a few points:

* returning to town on a weekly basis weakens the faction

But for certain factions is makes sense. For example, the academy. The physical devices needed to craft mini-artifacts may not be portable. However, I do think than whenever a wizard visits an academy town with the building, then all artifacts equipped should be improved automatically, if the current knowledge is greater than when the artifacts were created. (knowledge could be lower due to events, or even having different hero artifacts equipped, so you need the check). Rangers, on the other hand, should be able to change their favored enemies away from home - but not more than once every few days or some other time frame. In town, they can change the enemy as much as they want.

* I still do not like the fact that training upgraded units costs the same as training un-upgraded ones

This actually makes sense - just becuse you can use a more powerful bow doesn't mean you are any better at spellcasting. Having more magical abilitiy doesn't make you suddenly know how to fight from horseback. This makes upgrading troops a a more interesting decision: if you plan on training the unit, do you want to spend the extra cash for the upgrade?

[Alamar]

@Okrane: Just because you lost to the AI in this one example doesn't mean that training was weakened too much.

[At least on heroic difficulty] it is common that if you are caught outside your castle in week 4 by the AI you'll lose with almost any faction out there. You just got unlucky that the enemy hero had decent spells and skills along with the fact that you didn't have castle walls / shooters to protect you.

In this case [based only on 1.4 experience] it looks like Haven can actually lose sometimes

=======================================

In MP is Haven losing more than its fair share of games???

[okrane]

@QD

I do not buy this it makes sense because *insert a real life reason here*
I mean, I find it to be better if the game were nicely balanced, even though some things do not make sense in our logic.
I had this conversation one time with another member of this forum and as I stated back then, it should make sense, game wize and balance wize.

And it is the case with Wizards too... One could argue that the miniarties are magically linked to the magical power of the wizard and so only the type of improvement needs to be crafted but not its effect(I mean, a wizard crafts something that improves the init of the stack, but the amount improved depends always on his magical power, because he is constantly using his powers to keep the microartifact working). So you see, in a world where we introduced magic, we can justify almost anything. But this is not the point.

My problem is that some races (Necro, Dungeon, Inferno, and Dwarves to some extent) can leave their town in week 1 day 1 and never have to return, and their racial is used at its maximum power, whereas some other races, need to constantly return in order to put it to use.
And Haven suffers the most from this right now because the knight must return WEEKLY. You might say that you can use another hero to do the training but it is not too effective and you need to level him up quite a bit.

This problem imo hurts the game balance because it directly affects the speed at which your territory can expand.

About Training upgraded units. Of course if makes more sense as you put it. But, following the reasons provided above, game balance wize, this is just an annoying complication. I mean most of the time you have all 7 stack in one town occupied with some other upgraded troops, or you buy the upgraded ones out of habit, or you use the buy all button, or you go out of your town to another haven town where you do the training and so on. I can give many examples where this just proves to be an annoying feat.

@Alamar

You are right.
Although I never lost in Hard difficulty before, with any race.
In heroic... that's another story.
Still I would say that the nerf was a little too much. See sugestions and opinions above. It would be interesting to see how the multiplayer is going. I suspect necro is imba in 2.1, whereas the dwarven runes don't even work...

[Alamar]

I didn't realize that this was hard difficulty. You may have a point then ... Sorry dude.

I would like to hear from the MP community before we go nerfing too much though out of principle ...