Unit balancing problem

[DrarenThiralas]

So i made an altered melee map, and balanced it as i knew, but it got rejected because of bad balance. Is there a way to properly balance units? I looked at tutorials section, but found nothing. The unit balancer tool won't work for me, because important part of my units is their abilities.

 

[Vinz]

Think of how the abilities function. For example; two units have the specific abilities; Bash and Cleaving Attack. Just because you gave the Cleaving Attack 100% damage splash doesn't mean you will add 100% chance to bash too. Think of how many attacks the unit can make on a certain target.

Here are also the things to have in mind:
- Target Movement Speed
- Unit Attack Speed
- Unit Movement Speed
- Unit Armor
-Target Armor

The armor phase works when you go with armor reducing abilities. Think where it best will suit, if you add Corruption to a spellcaster and low armor to the other race's counterpart, be sure to have some counter in return, like an armor boosting ability and such.

 

[DrarenThiralas]

And how do i know when it is balanced? Is there any kind of test?

 

[Binsu]

An altered melee is like a melee too though with customized things that makes it completely different with a melee. It can either be a complete change in the units, items, abilities, and such....

Mostly in Altered Melee maps, there are always some new races created to make it one so to answer your question that you can understand. Try testing if your new races is balanced enough. Does your new custom races have both disadvantages and advantages, if yes, you are good here because this two should not be missed or it might cause some imbalance things in it.

Though, if its not races you made in an Altered Melee. Same as what I've sai,d try testing it out and see if it has its pros and cons and if it has, youre good.

Mostly there is no balanced maps for there is nothing equal, it just depends on your judgement if its balance. The key is always testing your map. It might take a lot of time, work and effort to you but is worth it.

Good luck!

 

[NightSkyAurora]

Make a standard unit without any spells for each level and slowly make each unit stronger as you make the level higher. After that you can put all normal units in a 1v1 duel against the 'standard' unit with the same level. The closer it is to draw, the better the balance. you should also check that gold/lumber/food cost is in a relationship with the unit level. The supporters may be a little more dufficult. I suggest you put 2 of the same units in a duel and each with 1 supporter on each side. The supporters may not attack or be attacked but only help their partner.

Keep in mind that diffirent attack types deals diffirent damage against diffirent amor types.

 

[Nichilus]

Balancing units/new race is really hard, as you have to consider practically everything.

What others didn't mention are for example the following:
- attack range
- attack speed
- attacks enabled
- build time
- food cost
- gold & lumber cost
- level
- role
- availability

Compare Footman and Knight for example. You can see that Knight is quite a lot better than Footman - he has greater health pool, more armor, higher damage, a lot faster. However he can be build only in late midgame/endgame, because he requires Castle. Training one Knights is both resource and time consuming.

However Footman, while weaker than Knight, is still a good choice when facing a lot of ranged units with Piercing type of attack, since he can "Defend" against them, making him still useful.

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You can also compare orc Demolisher and Troll Batrider - both have Siege type of attack. Demolisher has greater range and higher damage, but has very low attack and movement speed and also has minimum range for attacks, making it very fragile against melee enemies... on the other hand Batrider has higher attack speed, is flying unit so only certain units can attack him and is quite fast, so he can get away from trouble - but he has less health and a lot lower damage.