Loladins of Legend - The Making Of Part 1

Design Thought Process

Back in ~2008 when I was still working on this mod I started running into some major balancing difficulties with the engine's shortcomings. Since I can't set a minimum damage value, it's always 1 baseline. So, a Deep Destroyer that can potentially do 30 unmitigated damage might still hit for as low as 2-3. This random, unpredictable crippling of damage output makes balancing top level units very, very hard. In some cases, units like the Deep Destroyer could utterly massacre Legendary heroes and lesser units. In other cases they would die without much of a fight.

Also amongst my concerns is that, despite significant buffs, Archery and other ranged attacks were falling behind in value as the game progressed. Although Archery could still often reliably hit, it just didn't do the kind of damage to hurt high-end units without significant numbers of archers, and worse yet you generally needed to enchant them.

Additionally, Legendary heroes were dying too fast in general. I can't give them any more than 50 hp (I can go as high as 120 or something for a standard unit before the engine breaks).

To address these problems I started dramatically removing or toning down the amount of elemental damage types that units got (these bypass "physical protection", the only thing that actually mitigates physical damage and most upper-end units and heroes had). Most Deep Hive lost poison strike entirely, units like the Deep Destroyer got their once baseline bonus damage pushed to silver or gold. This also makes their veterancy more significant; a Gold Deep Destroyer is far more dangerous than a young one.

Units I intended to be baseline top-tier melee, like the Arch Fiend, had their major DPS abilities like double strike pushed to Gold to encourage using them carefully and devoting some time to feeding them a bit before devoting them to major battles. This also gives Legendary heroes an edge against them until they start getting really strong.

Without so many elemental damage types bypassing the defenses of heroes, I began sprinkling physical protection onto every shield item in the game and every Heroic and Legendary hero. Additionally, most Heroic heroes received protection from most elements, and Legendaries often sport several immunities. Gygias is vulnerable only to magic and death I believe, also having physical immunity, same with Sir Magicpants. Now you don't get totally fucked if you're facing down a Deep Destroyer with Captain Planet. In fact, once decked out, HKS was able to kill Destroyers fairly easily with this hero without double strike. Jaheira is the stronger DPS'er of the two and would probably be able to more readily attack high level shit. I'm not finished with Leonidas yet.

I also began reducing damage values across the board to help control the flow of DPS a bit. This meant battles would be slower and less bursty. I generally kept top-tier the same or close to the same but reduced their abilities and defenses, pushing major stuff like double strike to silver or gold. For units like the Dread Concubine, which I wanted to be strong from the start, I pushed things like Cold Strike to Gold but kept Double Strike at baseline so they could fill the void left behind by Arch Fiends being nerfed in the opposite direction. While this is an overall nerf to Dread Legion as a whole, it was a necessary change and one that I feel widens their choices in units a bit more (You can spam Concubines for immediate DPS if you want, or invest in the much more expensive Arch Fiends if you have time to spare to level them up and bring out their strengths).

Ranged units, however, are much greater of a challenge - especially my concept of adding ranged heroes. The only true ranged hero in the game right now is Iris, and she was largely my test bed for seeing how Archery-based heroes performed. Predictably; not so well. Her damage output was decent in early game but easily outshined by other standard heroes as the game progressed due to the simple fact that Archery is not based on base damage (thus it doesn't improve over time with levels, only with Marksmanship levels that only provide very minor bonuses). This problem is echoed by other ranged units in the game as well.

So I had to make a compromise. Balancing these units was never going to be perfect. If I buffed them a lot, they'd dominate early game and only even out in end-game when their abilities were matched by top melee and disablers like Destroyers and Fiends.

I've opted to give all magical-based ranged abilities a significant damage bonus while leaving their attack rating as it was. This has resulted in fairly significant damage output at fairly unpredictable periods (HKS lost a significant battle with two reasonably leveled Legendaries when the ranged guys turned holy bolts on him, although these units also had maxed marksmanship as well), but makes these units actually dangerous and warranting respect.

I've opted to go the Glass Cannon route with these units. In addition to reducing mana costs on offensive spells, I've introduced two additional types of Archery - Advanced and Legendary. Heroes like Iris are receiving the tier2 archery - Advanced - instead of base Archery. This will make them very strong early game, but no stronger than Legendaries or Heroics of the DPS type. I suspect situations will arise where they will be even more powerful, but this is a price worth being paid for their extended usefulness throughout the game.

Legendary archery is being reserved for specific heroes and races. Loladins and Minotaurs will have Legendary archers for example, but Humans and Bloodstone will not (Bloodstone will have the most powerful air units in the game next to Devilwing instead). Minotaurs will have a tier 7 unit with a massive mechanically-assisted bow and will be fairly durable. Loladins will have a tier 8 ranged unit that is less durable but has baseline buffs instead (Holy Strike).

However, these units will probably be waiting for new graphics before they arrive.

Another major concern right now is the serious lack of ranged or air available to the Baelificus. They have three units capable of hitting air - all of them low level and very weak. Gargoyles, their only flying unit, Thunderers, which only have Hurl Lightning, and White Hunters, which are extremely frail (though have other uses). They need at least one mid-range ranged and a high-end flyer, otherwise they are way too easy to dismantle with certain other races.

I like the balance I have with Confederates. I was worried about having a range-dominated race but right now they're playing out pretty nicely. I haven't seen any top-tier battles between their gundams and airships vs high-end units or heroes from other races yet, but their mid-range is working exactly as intended. Super Marines are also extremely hilarious and add a little risk with the potential of enormous burst damage. Combustable Scorpies and Atomic Penguins remain useful throughout the game due to their high damage potential, becoming more dangerous as more units enter the battle.

Confederates need a few melee mecha, though. I'll probably have to model them myself. I think Kirky has one or two gnomer bots converted, I'll have to check again, which I could use. Right now they have the Penetrator but I haven't properly rigged him yet.