[General] Question about Unit's balance

[MatiS]

Hello,
I'm not sure if it fits this question, but I wanted to ask what do you think about this two units balance (if they are OP/too weak). They are both meant to serve as Tier 2 melee fighter, which one player choose depends on enemy's army composition.

Hawkstrider Rider: deals medium damage, has heavy armour. Unit is fast and has ~650 hp. Amount of damage dealt is something about 30.

Battle Mage: melee caster unit. ~700hp, medium armour (upgradable). Deals 25 magic damage (not upgradable). Has following abilities: Frost Shield (armour buff that makes his armour work as heavy and slow attacking units); Dispel (Dispel, but works around the caster instead of targeted area); Weakening Strikes (Auto-Cast, lowers damage of affected units).

Race (High Elves) has another unit (Tier 1 archer) that has ability called 'Arcane Arrows', which makes affected units take 10 more magic damage (that's why Battle Mage has magic instead of normal attacks, and also I wanted to show how much dependant on magic they are, BM is highly effective against armoured units, but can be easily countered by magic-immune things). I wanted BM to be core unit and HR to be more situational/hit & run unit. There are no Tier 3 melee units.

 

[Death Adder]

Do those abilities require caster upgrades?

Otherwise I'd say that BM is probably always better. I'm no pro at melee (I suck actually) but isn't the Hawkstrider basically a Wolf Rider without ensnare?

 

[MatiS]

yeah, they require caster upgrades. Rider is based on knight, but he is similar to Wolf Rider

 

[teozamait]

Impossible to tell without prolongued testing in melee maps. Units do not exist in a void: the Hawkstrider may be too weak without a friendly Caster to buff it but then becomes overpowered with the buff.

The cost and training/building times of ALL other buildings/upgrades/units has to be considered as well. The Battle Mage may be overpowered if available at T2 but if you make it a T3 unit and keep the stats identical then the enemy is more likely to have anti-caster units and suddenly your Battle Mage is no longer overpowered.

Balancing is an art - you have to see those units in action on the battlefield in relation to other units multiple times to know if they are overpowered or not.

 

[Dr Super Good]

A good way to test balance in this case would be a hands on approach. Give 2 players, possibly humans, armies of various compositions and then let them fight it out.

In a balanced situation you are looking for near like-for-like cost performance when faced with an army composition of similar purpose with no real advantage or disadvantage.

When faces with an army intended to be effective against the composition, that army should have a significant cost to effectiveness advantage. Like wise when faced with an army intended to be ineffective against the composition then the composition should be considerably more cost effective.

This may not result in perfect balance, but it can pickup extremely bad balance. For example if you found that simply massing Battle Mage units beats every army composition cost for cost then the Battle Mage is clearly over powered and needs a nerf. Like wise if you find that massing the Battle Mage fails to beat any reasonable army composition of similar cost then that is a sign that it may be too weak and need a buff.

When designing RTS units you need to give them specific purposes, and make sure that they have both strengths (reasons to use them) and weaknesses (reasons not to use them).