Balancing Units

[AIgnatiousS]

I've been in the process of making a map for a couple months now. During this process I've created tons of units, and through the laziness of copy pasting over and over I've managed to destroy the balance of the units I had near the beginning.

What would be the best way to re-balance them? I was thinking of creating a table for units with no abilities, both melee and ranged, from level 1 - 10+. Would that be useful or just a waste of time?

 

[blancfaye7]

The true way of balancing is through the experience of players. If there was a better way, then please help him. This is what I did for my map... lol.

 

[MasterBlaster]

Well, there are some Tools that could help you with balancing your units (check Hive's resources). You can also try to do math/balancing yourself, but there aren't any "best solutions" - just do whatever works the best for you.

And, as blancfaye7 said - you might try to balance stuff, but ultimately it all boils down to how people playing your map will feel about it. Unless you're making a highly competitive map, you don't really need to have perfect balance - as long as things are in the same ballpark and feel decently balanced when played by other folks, you should be fine.

Also, once you release the map, you can always listed to what people have to say and update it should any balance issues arise.

 

[AIgnatiousS]

Oh absolutely, it's almost ready to be uploaded as a late beta. Thank you both for your replies, + rep to you both!

 

[Dr Super Good]

Start by assigning every unit a purpose. Ultimately everything needs to have a use case, a time where a player should use them over using any of the other units. If you find 2 units overlap in purpose then one of them needs a new purpose, or it needs to be removed. This stage not only serves to cut down pointless choices for a player making the map feel more professional, but it also gives you the foundation of where to begin balancing the units statistically.

Once you have your final unit selection and their purposes you can start thinking of balance. You will want to give them the stats they need to perform the purpose you assigned them. They will also need an appropriate cost for their purpose so that others do not drown them from being selected. This is mostly down to field testing, but one can use mathematics to rule out obvious choices (eg if unit is cheap, best HP, best damage, ranged, good abilities then it is likely OP).

As a rule of thumb range units should cost slightly more for the same power as melee units as they usually land more damage thanks to the range and not being body blocked. Casters are mostly valued for their abilities rather than physical stats so the more powerful the spells they cast the more they should cost. Structures usually provide the best hp/damage to cost because they are stationary but are countered by siege units. Units with high mobility and strong abilities that can disrupt or rush economies should be valued slightly more for their stats than combat units. In all cases avoid allowing a unit to be built that is statistically better than another unit the player can build in every way.

 

[redbaron4850]

The info above is great and should be adhered to. If you are interested in the statistics of it all, I've found that an excel or google docs sheet is great for keeping track of all the units in your map. You can easily list all of them and their stats, calculate true dps, and graph them out to find any outliers. It might take some time to set up depending on the size of your map but it allows you to keep track of changes and look at everything objectively.

Even asymmetrical balancing (like starcraft) can be graphed and taken into account when you are comparing things like dps, endurance/gold ratio, and dps/gold ratio.

This is my own personal balance sheet with unit statics and graphs on multiple pages.
tinyurl.com/tafguide