Design Spotlight: Combat Rebalance!

The simple cure to rebalance the game

Eliminate all EA’s from the game.

Comment from an alliance member who doesn't post here:
“after reading your post I am so happy to hear that you will finally be rebalancing the elephant archers so there is a more reasonable troop mix used in war”

100% agree with this. The only ones in favor of defenses being stronger are those who are pay to win - they want to be able to have their bases defend against the free players, and crush them in return with a multitude of elephant archers.

As long as you don't replace them with something equally OP, this.

One of our core leaders has decided to quit the game just on this news. He probably won't be the last.

He spent a lot of money on EAs. So if the goal is to increase TT purchases, then... nice going?

OMG thank you Nexon.

Wow! My driver was just parking the Bentley at the little private airfield I use in the Hamptons... while I was waiting for my pilot to bring over the Sikorsky, to pop into Manhattan for lunch with my financial adviser... when I read about your 'Combat Rebalance Introduction Design Spotlight'.

I understand that Brad and his team are 'very excited' to be 'strengthening defenses and defenders from the Classical to the Cold War Age so that 5-star victories always require strong army compositions, highly skilled troop deployments, and the latest advancements in army upgrades and research'.

You guys really are Santa. I confess, it was only yesterday, that I was telling my butler how easy it was to 5* other level 260 Cold War bases. It looks like one will have to pay for the latest troop tactics for every single attack to be made in the future.

And playing your game today...
...I observe that your 'special summer sale' offers a superb opportunity to spend upto $38.99, per tier, to buy some kind of pixelated chest...
...while your 'speed up fast' sale offers three additional opportunities to spend a further $38.99, per tier, to buy little green clocks that will make things happen faster...
...there's a 'don't miss this' sale offering three tiers to spend from 450 to 1,550 crowns to buy little eagle warriors...
...an 'event progress pack' for only $14.99 giving me some kind of 'elephant archers'
...and an announcement of some kind of 'crown ship' for less than the cost of two coffees...
...or I could spend 1,000 crowns to buy five, yes five, Sepoy armies...
...and 'for this week only' you are generously permitting me to trade for 'artefacts and museum currency' with Marco Polo. For seven of eight of Marco's sales, one may trade from 99 to 999 crowns to buy various other pixelated chests... Or for one of eight of Marco's sales, one could even exchange 200 rubies for 100 mysterious fragments. My level 6 museum only makes 50 of those fragments every hour, so for only 200 rubies, you're saving me a whole two hours of my actual life...

I just wanted to say thank you Nexon. I had begun to worry that I would never be able to reduce my Trust Fund quickly enough. But, as always, you seem to have cleverly read my mind. So many new opportunities to spend my money. Please accept my eternal gratitude.

As ever, your team has thought of everything...

PS. My butler recommends that I try something newfangled called Battlefield... apparently it's genuinely free to play... but, heck, what does he know...!!

I think sarcasm doesn't exist on planet Nexon. Sarcasm is like a bug they just don't understand.
But I'm also so disappointed and thinking to go to find me some cheating manual

And the kicker is, the only one of those deals that's even remotely interesting is the $14.99 for the EAs. And you get 4 EAs, plus some other stuff you can basically get in-game for free. So, they've even screwed up the EA economy to the point where they're not worth buying. Now THAT's a feat.

Lol, yup you're probably right... But when today's in game news & offers offered me so many 'don't miss this' opportunities to spend close on $200 and 8,000 crowns ($68.97 speed up fast + $68.97 special summer sale + $14.99 event progress pack + $3.99 crown ship + 2,800 crowns don't miss this + 1,000 crowns for 5 sepoys + 4,000 worth of crowns offers from Marco) my butler insisted it would be poor manners not to express my appreciation...

Blame Jeeves!!

I think i am actually happy with the news. If they make my over 3 years of playing useless, if all the time i spent to upgrade armies and university leaders becomes worthless, like it's already happening with the museum, if they make this game impossible to play without paying large amounts of money for troop cards in order to be able to 5 star a base of same age, i am sure i will be finally able to quit the game.
I kept thinking for some time, that Dominations is eating to much of my time, but somehow i wasn't ready to unistall it.

Put me down as cautiously pessimistic. We've been asking for rebalances for years. However, this company has given me little reason to believe that the rebalances will be done any sort of thoughtful player-friendly manner. I also have no illusions that feedback given during any of these phases will change the pre-determined outcomes.

Maybe, just maybe, some of the long-running atrocious AI issues will be addressed? Perhaps they will rework the multiplayer economy? Since they insist on making defense tougher due to the demands of this nebulous and otherwise silent group of whales they apparently have spent the last two years catering to? Haha, just kidding. I just had to provide reasons I'm ''cautiously'' pessimistic.

We are crying for years about the sandbagging. And now they noticed there are too many 5 stared bases in wars? Of course there are, if half of opponent's team are iron age bases. How to not 5 star them?
We keep reporting cheaters using god mode in wars, attacking with 10 planes or more, unlimited EA armies, and the responce we get is:"visual bug". And then they wonder why is it so easy to 5 star a maxed CW base?
Oh well, kill your own game, who cares?

Let us talk to the developers or the Space Age will never come!

Agree no troop card for WW, that will be easy to do, at the beginning of WW it was the case.

TinSoldier has said after each stage of the rebalance they'll review our feedback. Isn't that putting the cart before the horse?
What's wrong with letting us know beforehand what the changes are, like you used to do with the state of the nations, THEN take note of our feedback and maybe, just maybe, we can have some influence? Although, when they say things like ''wars are easy to 5star'' it makes you wonder if anything we say has any influence.
Maybe it's just me but shouldn't a business listen to what customers want and THEN deliver a product that's been asked for? You know, like a survey based on OUR experience?
I'm all for trying something new and then reviewing its performance but if history has shown anything with this game it's that Nexon knows best and anything implemented is nearly impossible to change, after the fact.
Time will tell if I'm wrong.

one of the replies in this thread said that in top 100 alliances wars often go to time tie breaker. i guess that is why they must buff the defense.

well then here’s an idea:

make it so the higher your glory is, the stronger your enemy’s defense is.

in a harcore war between 30k glory vs 30k, both sides’ defenses will get huge buffs
in a quiet rural skirmish between 17k vs 17k, no buffs to defense.
in a mismatched war between 22k vs 19k, the little guys get more buffs to defense, and give them a chance to win

also this doesn’t touch regular multiplay. yay

Sigh... and I thought the developers were busy with Space Age development
Why on the earth they thought that getting 5 stars in World Wars are easy? I played for 2 alliances and war matching sucked big time in both of them. In the first alliance (max level player is Atomic 200 level) we had 2-3 AA, 7-8 GA and the rest were lower levels. Once we reached 14K glory points, all we were getting were impossible to win matches. So, we lost almost all wars for 2 months (2 minor wins and 14 huge losses), which brought us down to 12K glory points level. That’s when I quit that alliance and joined a very advanced alliance (with 24K glory points). I am level 170 GA and I am one of the lowest level players in this alliance. Now we get much better matches, but still lose to almost all the Russian and Turkish alliances because their Strongholds are filled with Elephant Archers and they use Elephant Archers to take down our top level players (level 250+ CWA) easily. Needless to say that I still suck in most of the attacks and barely get 3 stars.

Now making defenses even stronger will not help us by any means as those CWA level Elephant Archers will annihilate us any way. The only players left will be cheaters. I refuse to accept that each and every Russian and Turkish alliances have so rich players that they can donate and use Elephant Archers in all bases and in all attacks!

You thought Missile Silo will be a game changer. It is a game changer for the first alliance that I mentioned. We lost all attacks due to the silo. Now you will kill the rest of the players with this ridiculous decision!

5* in WW - fix matchmaking

5* in MP - take inactive bases out of circulation

We all know what Nexon BHG do with our feedback, hence we wouldn't be having this duscussion on this thread in the first place... haha

TinSoldier Nexon/BHG
Have you calculated the fact that in terms of World Wars, the majority of players tend to go for 3 Attack Coalitions, and do not have the money or refuse to use money for disposable troops and therefore use Stronghold Event Armies for attacks but not loading all the warbases with defensive Event Armies?

This will mean you see a lot more 5 Star Attacks than actually physically when a base is on Full Power Defensive setup with Coalitions and Stronghold Defenders would be the chances of 5 Starring them.....

Also from a pvp perspective day to day raiding, we scout for ages looking for a base with good loot, that we can take with minimal losses, so again 5 Star data will not account for the defensive strength of the bases that the majority of players are deliberately avoiding?

Would be very interesting to hear your thoughts on how you have already taken this into account!


Whilst I understand my own base will become stronger, it still doesnt fill me with joy owing to the fact that there are a lot of players out there which have infinate Stronghold Troops or big fat wallets.

Perhaps as a precurser to your overhaul of the game you should consider giving alliances a OSH, OTT check box when sesrching for a war, then people who genuinely love the game but cannot afford to pay big bucks or dont kniw how to cheat can at least be on an even playing field with other players who conduct their gaming time in a similar manner (I would also predict you will find less 5 Star attacks when reviewing this set of data)

We want to enjoy the game, but the constant grind for collectable items, the constant need for purchased items whilst in some players minds might be exciting and fun, many others find themselves feeling excluded, disadvantaged and let down, thus not even bothering with Wars at all, which is where I would imagine a lot of the Crowns come from....

Mus
British Lions!
British Lions!!

This. Get a handle on all the cheaters, particularly from these two countries that are well known for their cheating. Eliminate these stupid elephants from the game. Only after that's done you may have some credibility when saying 5 stars are too easy.

I've been playing in a pretty good alliance and so I feel I can speak to this.

I can explain why so many accounts focus only on offense until AA/CWA. Until you are at the top it doesn't make sense to put much effort into defense. Yes if you have full defenses you can hold off someone in your own age, however anyone in an age above you will, (And should), still be able to destroy your base with 5*. Because in war's there will always be players in an age over yours even if you go full defense you can be 5*. So, our alliance actively discourages much defensive building. This is because if an account has max offense it can still get 5* but if it has low defense it doesn't push us into harder wars because it's "war weight" is lower. All increasing defenses on lower age bases does is push us into higher ranked wars and get us harder opponents. And because those opponents will have bases that are an age older than our lower level members they can still easily get 5*.

1. Elephant Archers are too strong, so part of your balance needs to address overpowered troop tactics.
2. War Match Making is still not good and needs to be fixed to prevent serious mismatches in ages so we stop seeing 5-11 CWA bases vs 1.
3. Scailing a defense buff is a good idea, so that you get a % buff to all your defensive buildings and troops HP and DM based on the opposing Alliance level of Glory. IE, glorry/300 = defensive buff. So if you are fighting against an alliance with 30,000 glory then all of your defenses are 100% stronger.
4. Adjust war weight by age, multiply the war weight of each base, by it's age, ie 4 for Iron Age, and 12 for Cold War Age, then sum the total and divide by the total # of ages. In an example of 5 Cold War Age bases, and 5 Iron Age bases you would divide by 80, and 75% of the weight would go to the CWA bases, and only 25% to the IA bases, instead of 50/50. This means that trying to use "bags" or low age bases to reduce your war difficulty will have smaller results.
5. If you realy want to get people to focus on defense, then remove defense from the war weight calculations. I guarantee as soon as people know that building defenses will not make them face stronger alliances will cause a complete shift in priority. People will no longer rush bases but max defenses AND offenses before moving up.
6. The option to check a OTT (zero troop tactics) box when searching for wars (and then properly disabling their use), would allow a lot more even fights.