Mounting

[olauwers]

Originally Posted by Darvin

I think that taking another race's mounts should be about opportunism are versitility, not about "tweaking" for the best unit. A knight should be best when mounted on a horse, because it's his native mount type. He might receive some unique bonus on a wolf that would make him play differently, and make it worthwhile to try something new, but it would come at a tradeoff. For the best overall balance, I think that the default racial mount should be the one to go with. It will keep strategies open, but won't lead to "oh, my team doesn't have an orc so our cavalry is going to be at a disadvantage" situations.

Well, if you're not going to give each race advantages and disadvantages, by giving them better types of cavalry and such, what is the point in making several races? And yes, you might come at a disadvantage if your team doesn't have orcs, but isn't that kinda the point of games? Overcome your disadvantages and destroy your foes, even if you're in a tight spot?

[kingtom256]

it would be risk types, for expample:
Pikemen strong against cavalry, but weak against swordsman
archers strong against swordsman but weak against archers etc

[jap88]

Well, i don't believe it would be unbalanced. I mean sure, if you've got men and orcs and the swordsmen mount the wolfbeasts well, what if the other team is Elves and Dragons? So they've got the strongest archers in the game mounting a giant flying beast? You can't do that, it doesn't mean it's unbalanced. It's about maximizing strengths and minimizing weaknesses.

[The Witch King of Angmar]

Originally Posted by jap88

Well, i don't believe it would be unbalanced. I mean sure, if you've got men and orcs and the swordsmen mount the wolfbeasts well, what if the other team is Elves and Dragons? So they've got the strongest archers in the game mounting a giant flying beast? You can't do that, it doesn't mean it's unbalanced. It's about maximizing strengths and minimizing weaknesses.

Yeah I mean you could still counter that with human archers on wolfbeasts or something. It just seems a little odd to me.

[Darvin]

Originally Posted by olauwers

Well, if you're not going to give each race advantages and disadvantages, by giving them better types of cavalry and such, what is the point in making several races? And yes, you might come at a disadvantage if your team doesn't have orcs, but isn't that kinda the point of games? Overcome your disadvantages and destroy your foes, even if you're in a tight spot?

You can still have advantages and disadvantages without making one unit stronger than the other. A crude example was in warcraft I that the human archer had more range, but the orcish spearthrower had more damage. It's not about "mine is better than your's", it's about "mine is different from your's". This should apply to mounts. No one will have the best mount, everyone will have a different set of advantages. Unicorn might be the fastest mount, wolf might have the best attack power, and so on. However, they will all have their own shortcomings. In this sense, we do have advantages and disadvantages, but not a hierarchy of races are concretely better or worse when it comes to mounts.

it would be risk types, for expample:
Pikemen strong against cavalry, but weak against swordsman
archers strong against swordsman but weak against archers etc

I've always found this system to be boring. Better to have the following: archers beat all at a range, archers get beaten by all in melee. The idea being, if you can keep your enemy from closing the distance, archers win. If you can't, archers lose. This makes countering less about having the right unit types as it is about using them well.

Well, i don't believe it would be unbalanced. I mean sure, if you've got men and orcs and the swordsmen mount the wolfbeasts well, what if the other team is Elves and Dragons? So they've got the strongest archers in the game mounting a giant flying beast?You can't do that, it doesn't mean it's unbalanced. It's about maximizing strengths and minimizing weaknesses.

If everyone has a "best" combo, and several weaknesses, the game *will* deteriorate into a boring cookie-cutter battle. I reject that races must have "better archers" or "weaker infantry" in order to be interesting. In fact, I'd argue the opposite; all unit types MUST be viable and strong for the race to be interesting. Each faction should be differentiated not by "strong cavalry, weak archers", but rather by "fast cavalry, long ranged archers, low hit points". It's a trade-off; they have advantages that no other race has in these fields, but also their unique disadvantages. This has a greater degree of depth and encourages more strategic variation.

Yeah I mean you could still counter that with human archers on wolfbeasts or something. It just seems a little odd to me.

Counterable doesn't mean balanced. Sure, warg rush was counterable in BFME2, but *everyone* who played Isengard did it. It's NOT balanced because Isengard's weaknesses have locked them into a single way of playing.

[jap88]

I have a feeling, without a doubt, that there is plenty of variation between units and not just a cookie-cutter type, this unit is better than this one. Keep in mind "best" is an opinion. Some people will say things are better for power, speed, range, production time, cost. It was said it would be the strongest cavalry. By that i am assuming it was meant HP/Armor and attack. This doesn't mean they have a high speed, and obviously, since they're swordsmen, the have no range. Also, considering that it would be the strongest melee unit or whatever mounting the strongest cavalry it would take a lot of resources and more time than cheaper, not as strong cavalry units.

[Konstantin Fomenko]

To address concerns about knights on wolfs being overpowered, and other team without such combo being in disadvantage.

First of all, this is quite a complex strategy, which would be mostly available to friends of clan-members who can co-operate in such manner.
Second, while there will be a significant bonus to make this strategy worth while, but this won`t be something which will make noobs cry OP,
But mainly - we`ll make sure that other racial mount combos would have some interesting effects as well.

[Darvin]

Generally when I hear "strongest", I think "best".

In any case, bottom line is that I feel that races shouldn't be about "better" this or that, but rather "different" this or that. Each race would have different advantages and disadvantages for each unit type. If that were done, there wouldn't be a problem with mount combos, since which ever you chose, you'd have to deal with that mount's weaknesses.