Necrophage wildly out of line balance wise. Possible solutions and AI decision-making implications

[foggy badge]

See title. I can provide a lengthy rationale as to why, if it will help developers, if requested.

Otherwise, I'm focusing on a constructive set of solutions, beginning with the following:

1. Necrophage larvae should have incubation timers after combat (2-3 turns). Why? Immediate, additional units with movement, is disproportionately powerful, and antithetical to balance.

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2. -100% upkeep for flying units = grossly abusable. Suggestion = cap at 75%

Edit: this isn’t good enough. Something else needs to occur.

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3. “The “worst economic faction” Necrophage, is immensely strong economically (because of item farming, free upkeep for flying units, resale value, best ability to farm curiosities). They may be the true strongest economy faction without bug interplay so long as the player is not passive.” I made this comment in another thread and it’s relevant here.

4. Units generated via battle should begin their immediate turn with 0 movement and exhaustion.

5. Burrows should have (increasingly scaling) upkeep costs, be dependent on overall player population/corpses and/or an increased influence cost per burrow, and/or adjacency requirement (borders).

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6. Another issue for game balance, which may be a latent/hidden issue affecting AI decision-making may relate to the ease to which Necrophages generate larvae. Why?

• If the AI is involved in battles significantly, and cannot financially sustain their armies, their economy will tank. This will be a failure cascade.

• If the Necrophage opponent AI factor in the military strength of this hypothetical Necrophage faction(s), it may induce their decision-making to prioritize military production in the hopes of countering this on-paper Necrophage Behemoth military.

• This, in turn, could and would result in another failure cascade of inability to push technology, manage economy and maintain a militarily sufficient set of armies.

• In other words, larvae production as battle reward may single-handedly have such a large impact on economy consequences that it alone may be breaking the AI economy and decision-making; which can account for the extremely poor AI scaling.

Necrophage wildly out of line balance wise. Possible solutions and AI decision-making implications

[crude salmon]

I've only played my first 50 turns as Necrophages, so I don't feel like I can have a solid opinion on the subject, but they felt very strong to me. I managed to eliminate the Necro AI on turn 29 (Endless difficulty) and it's gotten only easier from there. Their strongest point to me definitely seemed the free larvae you get and the ability to get every single military unit for a very low price. Their armies are never capped by industrial capacity, which seems way too strong. The only counterpoint I could bring to what you're saying is that their science seems really really poor.
Anyway, I'm definitely keeping an eye on this thread.

As for the Necro-induced eco crunch.. it doesn't fully convince me. I can think of several other reasons for which the AI is failing at building a good eco.

[oblique laurel]

You forgot to mention “free bloodseeker” perk from heroes, it stacks btw, so with 3 heroes in battle, you create entire Bloodseeker stack. And that’s unit from third research tier, and you can start creating those as early as during early second research tier (if you lucky with hero exp things)

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That’s once you have the points for it, and also just exacerbated the situation even worse (since they are innately flying units)

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I don’t consider this a counterpoint because they can invest in science, and most importantly, stop others from having any science, and buyout science buildings, and hire neutral heroes easily.

This was one of my implicit points; Necrophage cannot be defended against without massive military investment (even then I don’t see it happening), which won’t allow for massive science investment

[crude salmon]

I'm guessing you're talking with multiplayer in mind here, yes?
Because it's hard to tell in SP with the current state of the AI, but Necrophages snowballing was a thing in EL1 as well: I don't think it prevents everyone on the map from playing an eco focused game, it's just their unfortunate neighbor(s) that are gonna be wrecked. With the amount of time conquering a single territory takes in EL2, even wiping out a single player who's expanded a bit takes a long time, so what you're mentioning doesn't sound realistic, to me.
That being said, I'm not claiming they are balanced! They do seem pretty busted, I'm just saying their science output tends to be abysmal in comparison to what you could get with any other race, so, while you conquer everything, another faction far away from you could (if the AI were able to actually grow its eco) be snowballing hard in science.

[crude salmon]

Ok, I finished my first Necro game. Conquest victory in round 89, large map 6 players Endless difficulty. I do have to partially take back the "takes a long time to conquer/occupy cities" remark, they do have a decent amount of bonuses to speed that up and the sheer amount of armies they have is pretty crazy.

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Once you level up, you can get 1 turn breaches too

[crude salmon]

Yeah, that's true. It's gonna take usually 3-4 rounds and 3 armies per territory once you got the ball rolling, so you can usually conquer at least two at a time. Doesn't take that long compared to what I expected. Now, if the AI offered any resistance the numbers would go up, of course..

[prisma pewter]

Larvae producing is fine, but i agree they should have at least 1 turn incubation period, and also all upgrading should have some gold cost to slow down mass buyout options. burrows are ok, but traveling time can be increased for 1 additional turn.

[wintry ivy]

Interesting suggestion @foggy badge
It is hard to balance
You should read this doc, you seem to like to think about the balance https://community.amplitude-studios.com/amplitude-studios/endless-legend-2/forums/317-🌊-general-discussion/threads/59245-jojo-s-feedback-suggestions-on-endless-legend-2

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Thanks Jojo. Wish I'd been able to join Insiders, but I tried to register an account which was refused a few times and didn't get invited after the deadline. Good to know you've compiled a list in Insiders and have done so now.

I'm a former pro gamer and and enjoy balance, best testing etc, and will pour over this. Intended to write my own version down the line but now I won't worry about it as much.

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I'm actually laughing to see a lot of the identical concerns I've raised from just a Demo perspective, already accounted for, excellent work

[wintry ivy]

Thanks for the compliment. I hope the progress during this early release will be phenomenals 🙂

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Do you mod by chance? Interested in collaborating so I don’t reinvent the wheel since you’ve done an excellent job?

[wintry ivy]

No I don't mod. 🙂

[junior zephyr]

Item economy just breaks when playing Necrophage. Because they are fighting multiple times per turn, each turn, it's completely normal to have over 100 items that you can't use. Then, after you build trading post, you need to manually click on each one of them to sell and then press confirmation button multiple hundred times. Getting some absurd money in the process.

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