[Suggestion] Balance the weapons, please

I disagree with the swordmen being Op.  Sword just seem weak.   The bows I agere with in that they are a bit UP.  Especially when targets can DODGE arrow shots.  

Suggestion to fix is remove maybe 2 to 3 points of the initiative penalty and see how that goes.  Slightly more useful and still not machine gunners.. 

I say that is a good AI going on in the tatical combat. I think frogboy did a great job there.

Axes are the one that counter the swarm. A unit swarming a axe unit is in a deep trouble when the cleave comes around. The AI does a great job countering the spears and utilizing the swarm tatic, but that means the axes come out on top in that situation.

I think blunt weapons are good to attack armored units or large stacks to widdle them down to begin with. The daze does provide a good balance.

I wouldn't agree that swords are OP. I think that the initiative bonus might need tweaking, but they are not heavy damage.

I agree and don't... if you change the initiative bonus the bows become too powerful. Initiative bonuses from spells make the bows a force to worry about... that said the generic bow without any buffs, seems to be slightly underpowered.

Overall, I think there is minor (very minor) tweaks that need to happen, but on the most part the weapons are pretty well balanced.

I should clarify that these balance ideas are only in the early game, not sure too much about the late game balance.

I think the weapons are pretty well balanced as is. 

Blunt is very powerful in early game to wipe out a stack before they can counter(I lose units to those little guys with clubs all the time) and later it is good against armor.

Bows are still almost overpowered. The archer is not getting hit back when he fires, and if you a want lower initiative penalty take the archer trait for your kingdom or empire.  Initiative is also really easy to stack to get bowman a shot before the enemy even moves. If you design them right and give them some of the +3 attack items they are pretty nasty.

I really like the changes to the axes.

A nice change would be to classify staffs with spell casting bonuses as ranged weapons so our squishy mages do not get set in the front line. Or make a change somewhere else to accomplish that.

I would say that staff mages get an autocast at the beginning of the battle that increases their defense slightly (mage bubble) and their resistance to the appropriate element (fire staff = fire resistance) and such. This is easily put into the game as a mod.

A close range spell also would be nice for the staves, a 5 mana flame burst (fire staff) that damages all enemies around the caster (or everybody around the caster) a swarm counter. Or a pushback spell to give the mage some breathing room.

Maybe crossbows should be the only bows with unlimited range, and normal longbows and shortbows should have less range (eg 5 and 4), but better initiative.

Really don't think Bows are all that underpowered.  It's all in how you create the units. 

Put a Mancer (+1 Acc/level) or Tarth (Double Strike) on a
Warg (+2 Init) with
Fury (+1 Damage)
Strength (+1 Damage)
Fast (+2 Init)
and Amulet of Haste (+2 Init) if you have the Crystal to spare.

Occasionally Leather Armor if it doesn't add too much time to production.  Athican is great if you have it just for the fire damage reduction.  No impact on initiative.

Trained in a Fortress (Initiative perks)
+3 Charge Bonus Damage (first turn) or First Strike (regardless of Initiative)
Throw in a few Auras

I can generally burn down half or most of the opposing units before they can even move

 my 2 cents on weapon balance:

axes (cleave) are the best weapons now. don't know if it's fair to call them overpowered, but i think they could use some limitation; very little reason to use other weapon types once you get to battle axes; maybe cleave shouldn't do full damage to all affected units

spears are similar to axes. impale is a bit harder to pull off with foot soldiers; mounted spear troops with charge are very strong though, since the high movement and extra damage on turn means you can often line them up for a devastating alpha strike that takes out 2 units at once.

I've had some great success with a mix of 2 axemen and 2 speamen (all mounted and with charge); on hard difficulty they had very little trouble wiping out most monsters or AI stacks on turn 1; the combination of charge and the force multiplier attacks (multiple targets) is very dangerous. 

swords are nothing special now; the lower tech version have a little bonus initiative; they have solid damage and a bit extra damage from the counterattack, but since counterattcks now only deal 50% damage, it's close to useless against armored targets; 

blunt weapons suffer from the low init; otherwise they are very good. stacking with impulsive trait from fortress makes them borderline overpowered though; they can oneshot almost anything with the double damage crushing blow, so if both armies are the same size (roughly) and your army goes first (impulsive) it's almost irrelevant that you lose the next turn after crushing blow - there's noone left after the first turn anyway.

ranged weapons are really weak now; between the swarm mechanic and the special moves,brining archer units seems kind of pointless; they are too slow and deal too little damage to compete with melee, IMO

another random comment: get rid of the impulsive trait at fortress level 3. that trait is way too powerful to get on very trained unit. replace it with a free "fast" promotion (+2 initiative) or maybe a free "graceful" (immune to prone and +2 initiative; stacks with the "fast" trait) 

Only weapons that need further balance, imo, is the Staff. Gotta see that other thread that Wizard1200 started for my comments though...

 https://forums.elementalgame.com/442679

The only thing wrong with ranged weapons is they start too late in the game. Their damage and speed are fine, you just have to design your units around them. Pretty easy to get archers/mages with like 30 init that always go first (without impulsive) and decimate the enemy without ever being hit.

Swords however, suck. A single counter attack at -50% damage is just garbage, and the small init bonus doesn't help. Cleave, Crushing Blow and Impale can all decide the battle on the first turn, severely weakening multiple units, or outright killing them, causing the enemy's turn to be significantly less dangerous. Swordsmen however walk right into the enemy on the first turn, do at best half the damage the other weapons do, then get hit with a retaliatory phase that can do two to three times as much damage to them. I think swords should have unlimited counters and a dodge bonus, their first turn lacks the power of the other weapons so they should have increased survivability and "long-term" damage.

I also think Impale needs to do 1.5x damage to each target, spears are a lower damage weapon than axes, and anti-counter doesn't really matter much when most of the battle is decided by uncounterable weapon abilities. At 1.5x it will still do less total damage than Cleave, and still be harder to use, but have more of an impact against "medium" strength units. Cleave will clear out swarm units, Crushing Blow will topple big single units, Impale will be more for standard troops in a line.

Counterstrike does seem very Up at 50%, especially since it only kicks in if the enemy isn't using an ability, spear or has uncounterable trait. Was there ever a problem with OP counterstrike? Why did it go down to 50%, should be brought up to 75% at least. The +25% counterstrike damage also seems like a wasted trait.

The small initiative bonus is good and useful, the problem is swords get heavier and slower. You can design some really high damage swordsmen with finesse and quick. Altair at least can use the fending blade and round shield to mess people up. Muscle, Finesse and Quick make for a murder machine.

They do seem a little slow, your right though that the main problem is that it take so long to get them and are off the main tech branch, we really should have crude bows.

Really hope staves get some love, not only for units but more interesting and useful staves for mage champions (Not like staff of banishing, really just wtf stardock)

This

I also agree that the impulsive trait needs to go away

Balance in most all games is subjective an opinionated at most. Everybody has their own ideas of what is balanced and what isn't. Personally I don't want to see balance as MOM didn't have balance and it is a GREAT game even today. Everybody finds a template that works for them and all of a sudden everything else is underpowered because they won with it. My philosophy is this: If you win a game with one type of play then do not use that plan in the next game. If you win with spears then the next you must pick something else and on an on an on until you get tired and bored with playing the game. Works for me and in fact makes later games much more challenging an even more fun because I can't use my winning template/strategy.

yeah playing with self imposed rules works fine for individual players, but on the other hand, there will be enough players who play the game once or twice, find an overpowering strategy, win easily and stop playing the game because it's too easy to win. imo, if the devs can improve the balance to avoid that problem, they should do so. 

A dev could try to balance to the moon and back and you'd still have players who were disappointed in the changes and quit playing. You are never going to please everybody so one developer told me he just wants to please those who understand that concept. Basically it's like what you play or don't play it the world/universe isn't centered around one individual or even a group of them.

How are you designing your archer units?  There is a heafty init penalty on the bow itself, but that gets countered a decent amount just by not loading the figures up with armor causing encumbrance.  You can do the same thing with a melee unit, but it is dangerous.  If you don't do enough damage to wipe out the target unit,  you can expect to get clobbered when they get their turn.

If the init penalty on bows were dropped down, then a maxed out for init archer could kite your armored up melee units forever.  Not fun. 

Sanati-

how do you get a 30 init archer without spells?

short bow makes a unit 12 initiative. add quick, warg,  amulet of haste and belt of speed, and init is 19.

are you assuming any faction traitsk?

i think swords got nerfed too hard, otherwise weapons are very balanced.

Maybe swords now need a base of 2 counterattacks, with the Wanderlust swords getting 3 counterattacks. After all, even though axes and spears don't get extra attacks every round, they can do early 2 or 3 enemy attacks when they close with the enemy.  And they don't require the enemy to hit them first (and swords don't get any counterattacks against spears, so it is even more important they get extra counterattacks against other types of units).

If Swords Counterattack had a "First Strike" ability that applied potential damage to the attacking unit before damage is received, I think this would balance out how swords work now without making them OP again like in FE

I think axes would be fine if the backswing ability is removed and swords should inflict 75 % damage with a counterattack.

Your suggestion of replacing the impulsive ability with the graceful ability is very good, because units do not have always a mount and impulsive is overpowered.

Swords are generally UP - EXCEPT - some of the 2H rare champ weapons are ok.   Longsword with a jugg is ok - just since you'll rarely use cleave with a jug.  Otherwise, I'd rather use a spear in general with a few Axe troops.

Axes were OP I think, making them 2H seems to be a good move.

Spears are good above average, multi-target anti-counter attack.   Defensive (1H spears) + shield works well too.

Bows could use a bit more love, but really I'd just want them earlier in the tech tree - I'd take shortbow at blacksmithing, longbow at weaponsmithing, and some badass bow at siege or something.   Having separate technologies is kind of a pain and they're at odd points in the tree.

Staves could use some all around love as well.

I just don't like blunt weapons, slow and I hate daze.   I'll use a champ weapon if I need to but don't think I've ever intentionally built a blunt unit.

You can get +3-6 with the init city training buff. The better bows are only -6 init IIRC. And another +3 passive with a Commander. That's 27-30 init without racials or faction traits. More than enough to go first against most AI troops.

Then you can get another +3-4 from the Quick trait, +3 or +2 from Tarth/Trog blood (situational), and a further init reduction with the Archer bows.  So you can get close to 40 init on an archer troop (without haste) if you build around them.

Edit: And I just figured out the strategy for my next game.

@OP Bows are not underpowered at all.  Ever notice they can be used at any range?  That is a huge mechanic you are completely ignoring.

(Sorry if this was addressed in previous posts, tldr right now)

But normal bows do pathetic damage against anyone with decent defense.  Range isn't that good in this game since units can quickly close the gap and using them over melee in most battles sacrifices swarm bonus & makes your front-liners more open to enemy swarms.  I'm sure players can make great armies with them but any weapon type can work when you make godlike units.

Godlike? Not really. I just started a new game, not very far in, made a beeline for bows and wargs. Picked Amarians (no fire shards yet >.<), archers, quick, lucky, enchanters and rebels. Very early fort is now creating warg riding archers with 26 init and 17 (19?) attack x3, no metal cost, no crystal cost, just the weak bow, a couple pieces of leather so as not to encumber, and the +15 weight +1 atk, +2 init, and +3 attack vs lower init traits. Groups of 3 are hitting for close to 50 damage, even against targets with some armor. It's extremely effective. Nothing closes the gap, it takes most units 2-3 turns to reach your ranged units, nothing survives that long.