[CONCLUSION] Balancing Quiz #1, and Balancing Quiz: King to Queen

thegrandestine (56) · 4 years ago (edited)

I stand by "~14" in relation to current balance and idea of decimal rounding granularity nonsense. This comes from the notion that legionary+++ could be some fractional amount below 14 atm, and the range 3 moves wouldn't be worth an extra 1pt in most matches (ex: warrior+++)

In your values the part I find strange is 17/18/20, because the justification seems mostly centered around starting positions and it seemingly values targeting minion line with a near-queen higher than targeting the champion line...? There is also the thing where the more expensive a unit is, the less likely it can be traded for anything but a King, and this implies additional melee moves have diminishing returns from trading perspective (outside of obvious last-hit scenarios) I think this is another reason a gradient decline makes sense, even beyond the overflows, so the sudden spike looks strange to me.

However, I don't see much way around there being weird ending numbers to this series with the limited granularity in CEO and justifications for the first 3 scaling up very quickly, so the perception that one increase has 'double' the value of another is probably derived from that, I guess.

Also, in the first image posted, (the ABCD minions), I think the number of swaps available drastically alters their possible values.. so in CEO the B/D units could gain a lot of power in a swap-heavy army, but even then they look insanely awkward to use, and D is probably the weakest among them regardless of swaps being available or not, while C is probably the strongest overall, as a minion.

vro29-34k (52) · 4 years ago

it seemingly values targeting minion line with a near-queen higher than targeting the champion line...?

I think the most relevant part for me is 17-18 being a minor difference, because what that changes is "I have to move to row 3 vs. row 4 to get this effect". I believe the minion line is more important because the near-queen would be in support of a potential weak square, not the one that's attacking.

There is also the thing where the more expensive a unit is, the less likely it can be traded for anything but a King, and this implies additional melee moves have diminishing returns from trading perspective [...]

It's true that it implies it has diminishing returns but I am not sure it's necessarily only something that happens for expensive pieces. I feel like undercutting is usually annoying for the player with the slightly-more expensive pieces (ex: Legionary+ player against some Legionary++s, the Legionary++ player has the worse deal). I almost suspect extra granularity makes this worse because an incredibly discrete system (like if you only had 6-cost, 10-cost, 14-cost, etc. champions) gives you more control over undercut situations in hopes to make it more balanced.

The history with the 4 minions was: F3 put in a piece in our game that was C in the picture, with 16 cost (so cheap-to-mid-cost minion) and two other upsides. Nobody put it in their army until one time I was just looking for a final minion to put in, and put in that one. Ryan instantly complained about whoever put that in and thought it was obviously overpowered, then made that balance test to try to prove it:

Me: A>D>C>B
Ryan: C>A>B>D
F3: A>C>B>D

Naturally agreement was nowhere to be found.

Here's my case: A is Militia, obviously really strong. D is more like a defensive Militia. The moves are much more awkward to use but I believe its downside can be mitigated by having it on defense. The range 2 minions can be used on defense as well and potentially threaten a forwards-fork, but with some risk that the blockable attack could just let one of the forked pieces move away while blocking the other threat. I don't believe it is a remarkably good attacker, but it's a decent defender (while its blockable spaces are in ally territory). The worst piece is B as it can only hit 1/4 of the board's spaces and most of its moves create overlapping threat ranges (while even though D itself is ¼bound, its attacks can hit a bit below 1/2 the spaces even though it's rowbound).

There is an alternative strat with C/B though, and it is trying to use them almost strictly like a control piece, by 'blocking off' an entire row (imagine them on the d/e columns, which targets b/c/d/e/f/g). This does have value cause this row is one higher than you'd get by trying to do the same with A/D (putting them on c/f).

-main_gi

darthmohawk (42) · 4 years ago (edited)

Minions B and D in the picture looks bad to me for one other reason: if all 4 of the pictured minions have promotes, minion D cannot exactly reach the back row after exactly 1 capture (or 3) without swap support. Minion B has similar problems if it ever gets pushed vertically (wind pushes 3 squares, splash pushes 1).

henclucky (45) · 4 years ago

If the range 3 piece was ~14 then is it implied that literally tripling the movement of legionary++ is considered approximately +1?

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thegrandestine (56) · 4 years ago

well, "~14" could also be read as "14.4" or something, and the same is true of all other costs being rounded to nearest value, so there is that, but also I think the idea of 'triple' movement is skewed, because king range linear moves will almost always be more valuable than 2-range, which are then almost always more valuable than 3-range, and so on. see here:

my guess is the closer to the left you get, the more useful it looks

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henclucky (45) · 4 years ago

I mean its only more useful because the later pieces dont have the movement of the earlier pieces, clearly princess+ is significantly better than princess and princess++ is significantly better than princess+

temporalbeast (52) · 4 years ago (edited)

I probably undercosted the Behemoth+++ without the behemoth passive. (I think I costed it as a +3 jump in value which is too small a jump, and ended up making it strictly better than legionary+++)

Though, because I provided unfitted values the comparisons in quiz #1 should be very clear (I listed king twice but both values are higher than mKaDA and lower than mKlDA)

Also my values are pre-nerf, 6 is how I'd cost a King after King-like units get bumped up by "1.5" cost (queen would also be 22 I think unless the nerf was limited to before the lifestone barrier)

darthmohawk (42) · 4 years ago

Behemoth's passive is probably a multiplicative value-added rather than an additive one, because stronger pieces are increasingly vulnerable to random pokes from minions if you put them in the thick of battle. Right now it's being priced as a +50% cost increase, which "sounds" high but I honestly don't know if it is high.

(Coincidentally, if Behemoth+++ is priced correctly AND +50% is an accurate multiplier, this sets short-Queen-3 as a 14-value piece. I almost posted something about that in the K to Q thread, but I didn't, so I can't take any after-the-fact credit for it.)

vro29-34k (52) · 4 years ago

Behemoth's really a very RNG matchup-dependent piece with its passive, it has no effect on Tiger/Dove/SoulFlare/Princess, less effect on weak minions like Pawns, 'average' effect on Militia/Salamnder, and maximum effect on RoyalGuard++/Fireball/Pikeman armies. I think the maximum-effect case makes it worth even higher amounts, and the current "about +6" is balanced around its average effect.

But yeah, it's totally accurate that Behemoth's passive also denies a weakness of expensive pieces and it's even better cause of it.

-main_gi

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temporalbeast (52) · 4 years ago (edited)

feels about right, I vastly prefer the old Behemoth+++ (KjAD with behemoth passive) but that can easily wreck an army without jumpers

darthmohawk (42) · 4 years ago (edited)

If we're talking specifically about the CEO meta, I would think that the jump from range 4 to 5 is more relevant than the jump from range 5 to 6, for a couple of reasons:

There are a lot of short rooks in CEO with 4 range, but not nearly as many with 5 range. MageTower, Crusader+++, Berserker+++, AirElemental++ and Greed+++ are the ones that come to mind most readily. Greed+++ is probably the one that sees the most play, but for obvious reasons other than having 5 range. These pieces effectively "beat" all the 4-range pieces by dint of being able to attack them safely.
Row 3 is considerably easier to defend than Row 4. A Range 5 piece can sit on this row in comparative safety and threaten the enemy's back row, while a range 4 piece can only hit the minion line from there. This is relevant more often than you might think.
"Stacking" rook-like attacks are easier if you can load a rook-5 behind a rook-4 and blast through the minion line with a protected attacker

3 votes

vro29-34k (52) · 4 years ago

BTW, I wasn't talking specifically about CEO meta (except for the values, since all the numbers are relative, which forces some adherence to CEO numbers). So I'm imagining a case where you may define Queen as 21 and think "what are the fairest values with this in mind".

The second is fair enough. Actually, I did miss another important point with the 'minion/champion line targeting' for range 6 vs. 7. It's that the move only is often the threat there, not the attack, so you can use it for a possible King check.

That last point I disagree with because a "queen-6" already has two attacks pointed at the minion row, meanwhile a "queen-5" has to move once to do that, so queen-6 is the first tier with strength in that use.

-main_gi

drotto (48) · 4 years ago

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