Totally un-balanced meta-gaming?

Hi all,

I'm new here, but from what I've seen, the meta-gaming of the game is so un-balanced it's not even funny.

It's all about having multiple bronze weaponsmiths and wine makers and bakeries and keep spamming them. Go up the lvls like a breeze. Keep spamming them to do one mission/quest/map sector/adventure after the other.

You need some militia or other units to kill a certain boss once in a blue moon? Who cares? Sell some of your gazillion bronze weapons and get those few you need.

I am a new player here and I wasted all these days building an iron production chain, to eventually get iron weapons. I thought (fool me), this is how we progress in the game (as in all games). Little did I know, my thousands of materials and effort and staying online all day to buff them to make them efficient are all for nothing. It's worthless. Nobody gives a sh*t about iron weapons, nobody buys them. I spent thousands of mats, 10+ more lisences, I lose my geologist for 4 hours when they deplete, I need 200hw/marble/tools (or so) to rebuild each of them mines every day or so, for what? For nothing.

An iron soldier (militia), costs 10-15x more (if we include the 2x the wine than the recruit needs to be made in barracks, not to mention double the time there), both in resources and time invested to "attend" your production and etc and it gives what? 50% more dmg and HP? Who cares? While recruit still kills a thug in "2 hits", (this contributes a major part in the un-balance because it's) THE SAME as militia, so no gain there, so you only end up losing 1/3rd of soldiers? So instead of losing 60 recruits you lose 40 militia? (who cost 10-15 times more?). And you need, what? 300 breads to get back those recruits from Mayor's? HA! It's to laugh about. The most un-balanced meta-gaming.

Everything in iron production costs so much more. Stick with bronze and even you can upgrade them to lvl 3, lvl 4 reasonably easy. Go to iron and you will go lvl 2 max. So, you essentially half your production and thus your building lisences value cuz of this.

And since you don't use militia on your daily "quests" (missions, adventures, map conquer, etc), they are not consumed. That means their price in the market drops even more. (same problem with bows, longbows, steal swords etc <-- that is, ALL high tier'd weapons LOL)

I don't know where to start and where to end.

It feels like the game ENDS IN LVL 17, when the tutorial ends!. When you just produce bronze swords, wine and bread.! That's all you need!

Either I am thinking about it wrong and there are benefits that I can't see (I spent 12 hours today trying to sell or exhange my freakin iron swords but who the h*ck wants them? nobody...) or this is so un-balanced, it's not even funny.

I am about to either delete my so hard to establish and attend iron production chain and go back to spam bronze weapons as everybody or just....quit the game?

Why play? What to look forward? Just to lvl up my............bronze, wine and bread? Is this how you "progress" in this game?



PS: I am really sorry to have to say all the above, but as a settlers (sp) (since settlers #1) junkie, I'm twice dissapointed.

You are correct that recruits are way easier to train and thus cost a lot less than militia. This will stay this way till you need large amounts of bread to be able to train more and more, after a while the militia (though by then it'll be soldiers, skipping militia is smart) can be more cost effective. Though it also does not help much that the server is very new, so the market prices will chance a lot over time.

Soldiers won't realy be very cost effective (if you assume 1 soldier is as expensive as 3 recruits) till you get to the top tier of adventures, wich you start getting at level 36.

Hey, herr Bauhaus! Give the game some time and I think it will be fun for you to. Then you are rise in levels it will be more difficulte to run your island and it will be more callange to move thrue the game all the way to level heaven (50). And later it maybee will be possible to combat against other players!?

Have it fun!

bauhaus, as far as the island you are on goes you are absolutely correct.. BUT (and this is a capsed but) when you become level 26 and above you start going on adventures.. and alot(if not all) demands a various bunch of troops.. ie: militia, bowmen, longbowmen, cavalry, soldiers and so fort and so fort.. to even get to the end of the adventure and kill the last boss to get the experience, the loot and the satisfaction of doing that perticular adventure..

so to summarise what i just said: you are absolutely right when it comes to the map you are in(conquering all 9 sectors).. but when you start doing the adventures you need ALL the troops that are available/you can make to conquer that adventure.

I look at Sid's adventure guide. It's all about recruits there too. (Not to mention that you do want to use recruits because you will build them faster in barracks even if more recruits die. You don't even save time by using higher tier units. You lose time instead!). Rarely any other units die. You buy them once, you use them almost forever. That leads to 0 market value. I don't know what to say. Still dissapointed very much :(

Only 3 or so, out of the so many adventures have actual casualties that are not recruits. And who's to prevent players to "adventure selectively"? - They can just chose the adventures they play and (if they want to) never even play an adventure that will cause them to lose higher tier'd units.... :-/

A simple solution to this issue (which is a big issue since it affects the market which is a major in all ways factor of the game), is the following:

Mark the camps (on main island and adventures etc) with a number. That nr would represent the nr of armies/waves you can use to attack the camp before the camp resets. Meaning, if a camp has nr 2 above it, means you can send 2 armies / waves. If you manage to kill all troops with those 2 armies you win, or else camp "resets" (goes back to its previous full army status). (A simple way to reset the camp if the player sees he has no chance to destroy it, example, to send an army with 1 recruit. There you go, last attempt, fail, camp resets. Now player starts over and this time he knows better than to send recruits. He needs better troops - Also, each time he attacks the camp, the nr above the camp is reduced by one, so graphically the player has the correct indication of how many more times he can attack the camp before it resets).

So, ofc, at first the camps would be easy, but as the player lvls and gets access to higher tier'd weapons, the camps would be more difficult. Eventually he would start facing camps that the recruits would not be enough to actually destroy the camp. If he had to face a camp that otherwise (as per what it is now), he would send 2 armies/waves of recruits but now the camp is maked "1" so that he can only send 1 army, then he would be forced to use one army of higher tier.

Here comes the high tier casualties. Militia and soldiers forced to be used. Guarranteed casualties. As the camps become harder,bowmen and longbowmen casualties become standard too.

Now you have all unit types become consumable.

Now you got balanced market (trade) as you should.

All you have to do, review your camps (and rebalance them as needed) and set a limited nr of times you can attack a camp to destroy it before the camp is reset.

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Originally Posted by Bauhaus

A simple solution to this issue (which is a big issue since it affects the market which is a major in all ways factor of the game), is the following:

Mark the camps (on main island and adventures etc) with a number. That nr would represent the nr of armies/waves you can use to attack the camp before the camp resets. Meaning, if a camp has nr 2 above it, means you can send 2 armies / waves. If you manage to kill all troops with those 2 armies you win, or else camp "resets" (goes back to its previous full army status). (A simple way to reset the camp if the player sees he has no chance to destroy it, example, to send an army with 1 recruit. There you go, last attempt, fail, camp resets. Now player starts over and this time he knows better than to send recruits. He needs better troops - Also, each time he attacks the camp, the nr above the camp is reduced by one, so graphically the player has the correct indication of how many more times he can attack the camp before it resets).

So, ofc, at first the camps would be easy, but as the player lvls and gets access to higher tier'd weapons, the camps would be more difficult. Eventually he would start facing camps that the recruits would not be enough to actually destroy the camp. If he had to face a camp that otherwise (as per what it is now), he would send 2 armies/waves of recruits but now the camp is maked "1" so that he can only send 1 army, then he would be forced to use one army of higher tier.

Here comes the high tier casualties. Militia and soldiers forced to be used. Guarranteed casualties. As the camps become harder,bowmen and longbowmen casualties become standard too.

Now you have all unit types become consumable.

Now you got balanced market (trade) as you should.

All you have to do, review your camps (and rebalance them as needed) and set a limited nr of times you can attack a camp to destroy it before the camp is reset.

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Yea and then implement it on german servers where each player has literally cleared a thousand of camps. Then what ? take the experience away and force people to play again, this time with new rules ?

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Originally Posted by MOD_Calen

so to summarise what i just said: you are absolutely right when it comes to the map you are in(conquering all 9 sectors).. but when you start doing the adventures you need ALL the troops that are available/you can make to conquer that adventure.

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out of 5 most cost effective adventures, on average 1-2 camps require you to use stronger melee units than recruits (out of 15-25 camps you clear in avg adventure).

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Originally Posted by Dilbe

You are correct that recruits are way easier to train and thus cost a lot less than militia. This will stay this way till you need large amounts of bread to be able to train more and more, after a while the militia (though by then it'll be soldiers, skipping militia is smart) can be more cost effective.

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This stays forever, as it is much easier and much more effective to add another bakery than to add more iron sword production, let alone steel OR coin production to afford buying those.
As I said few times already, normal developed player will have around 7-8 bakeries lv4 or higher by lev40, which is more than enough to keep production of recruits youll need, especially considering the fact you dont get most valuable adventures for free.


on topic of combat system being ridiculous:

It gets even funnier later on, elite swordsmen are too expensive to lose and too weak to be useful (I right now have around 5k damascen swords stocked after making 200ES, noone wants to buy them for as low as 1 gp/ sword LOL ), and cannons have barely any use outside of some specific fights (where they usually let you save 10-15 extra recruits). That of course assuming you got the necessary weapons from adventures, as producing them is easily one of the worst ideas you can come up with while playing this game.

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Originally Posted by sparkz

Yea and then implement it on german servers where each player has literally cleared a thousand of camps. Then what ? take the experience away and force people to play again, this time with new rules ?.

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It's supposed to be closed beta?. You can do those changes before open beta or even live? - and anyway, even in the well established servers, they don't have to take XP back. Just implement the new way from there on. It does not affect players in any major way. It's not that they will implement building rotation that will affect the pathfinding of settlers making existing cities totally worthless. The kinda change that needs server wipe first.

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Originally Posted by sparkz

out of 5 most cost effective adventures, on average 1-2 camps require you to use stronger melee units than recruits (out of 15-25 camps you clear in avg adventure)..

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Exactly what I said. And all the more so, you can even chose not to do those adventures.! (I called it "selective adventuring"). Which leads to 0 loses of high tier units, which leads to one scr*wed market, and 0 value of high tier production!

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Originally Posted by sparkz

This stays forever, as it is much easier and much more effective to add another bakery than to add more iron sword production, let alone steel OR coin production to afford buying those.
As I said few times already, normal developed player will have around 7-8 bakeries lv4 or higher by lev40, which is more than enough to keep production of recruits youll need, especially considering the fact you dont get most valuable adventures for free. .

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Exactly my point about the unbalanced metagaming. Where all you need is bronze, wine and bread!

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Originally Posted by sparkz

on topic of combat system being ridiculous:

It gets even funnier later on, elite swordsmen are too expensive to lose and too weak to be useful (I right now have around 5k damascen swords stocked after making 200ES, noone wants to buy them for as low as 1 gp/ sword LOL ), and cannons have barely any use outside of some specific fights (where they usually let you save 10-15 extra recruits). That of course assuming you got the necessary weapons from adventures, as producing them is easily one of the worst ideas you can come up with while playing this game.

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Exactly my point!

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Originally Posted by Bauhaus

It's supposed to be closed beta?. You can do those changes before open beta or even live? - and anyway, even in the well established servers, they don't have to take XP back. Just implement the new way from there on. It does not affect players in any major way. It's not that they will implement building rotation that will affect the pathfinding of settlers making existing cities totally worthless. The kinda change that needs server wipe first.

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The 'beta' thing applies to language variants and is more like an excuse for the cases of lag and/or server downtime. All the content you have here is the same as it has been on DE servers months after beta phase there, has been thouroughly tested and changed few times (with things like buff stacking included, some time ago each individual fruit basked was a separate entry in star menu).

If you want to have it implemented on old servers, the best case scenario is that some unplayable missions are even less playable than before, worst case scenario - some of the best missions cost much more to make and are therefore skipped (meaning that people that farmed them before the changes have the advantage of alot of exp obtained with less losses than those doing the same missions after the changes). It all breaks down to more people hunting for Nords and more people abusing Traitors, which is already ridiculous.

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Originally Posted by sparkz

The 'beta' thing applies to language variants and is more like an excuse for the cases of lag and/or server downtime. All the content you have here is the same as it has been on DE servers months after beta phase there, has been thouroughly tested and changed few times (with things like buff stacking included, some time ago each individual fruit basked was a separate entry in star menu).

If you want to have it implemented on old servers, the best case scenario is that some unplayable missions are even less playable than before, worst case scenario - some of the best missions cost much more to make and are therefore skipped (meaning that people that farmed them before the changes have the advantage of alot of exp obtained with less losses than those doing the same missions after the changes). It all breaks down to more people hunting for Nords and more people abusing Traitors, which is already ridiculous.

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I agree with you, hence I said "it's **supposed** to be..". I know how these things work (pro-longed beta's for "various reasons").
However, what can you do? You got a dilema. Keep a totally scr*wed up unbalanced system, or change it with the consqequencies you mentioned. Personally, as I said, it's not a game breaking change (example: implement building rotation that needs server wipe or else existing cities are scr*wed), it will be "costly" for the players till they adapt, but the new system will make the game "healthy". Healthy balance, healthy market. Weighting prons and cons, I'd say prons weight more.

However, I don't agree about the skipping missions. There will be no mission to skip. ALl missions as the lvls progress will FORCE you to use high tier armies. This is THE WHOLE POINT (as per my above posts). The only impact (to which I agree with you) is that maybe the players will lvl up a little slower now due to the increased difficulty. That's all.


Anyway, I just ask you now, out of curiosity. Are you happy with the state of the game? Where all you need is bronze, wine and bread? Nothing to look forward to, nothing to progress to higher tiers but just to lvl up your existing basic buildings and just build more basic buildings?


edit: I just deleted my whole iron production chain. Thousands of materials and 1 week (of constant effort) wasted. I am jumping on the scr*wed balanced use bronze, wine, bread bandwagon........... till I get bored (which won't be long cuz there is **nothing** to look forward to. All these "shiny high tier buildings" are.....worthless - The fundamental principle of all games (that the player wants to "progress") is meaningless here, cuz progress has no value here. If you look at the game from above, it's just a grind with basic tier buildings and troops and nothng else).

My whole thread is a "wake up call", that's all.

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Originally Posted by sparkz

Yea and then implement it on german servers where each player has literally cleared a thousand of camps. Then what ? take the experience away and force people to play again, this time with new rules ?



out of 5 most cost effective adventures, on average 1-2 camps require you to use stronger melee units than recruits (out of 15-25 camps you clear in avg adventure).



This stays forever, as it is much easier and much more effective to add another bakery than to add more iron sword production, let alone steel OR coin production to afford buying those.
As I said few times already, normal developed player will have around 7-8 bakeries lv4 or higher by lev40, which is more than enough to keep production of recruits youll need, especially considering the fact you dont get most valuable adventures for free.


on topic of combat system being ridiculous:

It gets even funnier later on, elite swordsmen are too expensive to lose and too weak to be useful (I right now have around 5k damascen swords stocked after making 200ES, noone wants to buy them for as low as 1 gp/ sword LOL ), and cannons have barely any use outside of some specific fights (where they usually let you save 10-15 extra recruits). That of course assuming you got the necessary weapons from adventures, as producing them is easily one of the worst ideas you can come up with while playing this game.

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7-8 bakery? T_T that means even... more well? T_T

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Originally Posted by Bauhaus

Either I am thinking about it wrong and there are benefits that I can't see (I spent 12 hours today trying to sell or exhange my freakin iron swords but who the h*ck wants them? nobody...) or this is so un-balanced, it's not even funny.

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So, your point is that we should make the changes you suggest so that you can sell your iron swords. :cool:

I want to point out that in many other games you can progress by building mass tier 1 units.
By forcing players to send no more than N-waves, would limit the range of available strategies. There would be ONE guide, that everyone would follow, with the same army/loss. And all that because you could win only in one specific way.(army composition would be limited, recruits would be almost ruled out at harder camps/adventures). The pace of the game would drop as well.

My thoughts are that when (and if) PvP is introduced, things would need to change. People would find ways to counter mass recruits(hopefully not with more mass recruits :p). This would adjust the balance you talk about...

If this is just the english translation of a German game then it's highly likely that it won't diverge from the parent game in any way except for localisation/translation.

There are other examples of completely illogical design - just look at the cost/benefit of upgrading storehouses compared to the mayor.

When towers, PVP, and the level cap increases, i would assume more advanced troops will become more important in the game. Remember this game is still in beta and fairly 'young'.

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Originally Posted by Rabbie

When towers, PVP, and the level cap increases, i would assume more advanced troops will become more important in the game. Remember this game is still in beta and fairly 'young'.

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This game is one year old. The beta part is about the servers not the gameplay.

Well for reading the development diary it would seem that the game still has a lot of improvements and features to be added in the coming year, so i would say that gameplay is still in beta.

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Originally Posted by javavall

This game is one year old. The beta part is about the servers not the gameplay.

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If the gameplays not in beta then why are there still some features missing, such as the market, that says coming soon?

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Originally Posted by javavall

This game is one year old. The beta part is about the servers not the gameplay.

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Wrong.

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Originally Posted by MOD_Nogbad2

Wrong.

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ok, i guess german version is on beta too... silly me

I totally agree with you on all your points, but you've not even mentioned the gold production process. What a joke that is!!! astronomical costs (in terms of resources) to build, AND a ridiculous conversion rate from ore to coin even with buffs.

I'm only on lvl 24, probably because I've been using ALL the military units available to me (thinking that "better" units mean better results in battle) and I think that the hitpoints of the bandit units are very unfair.

It seems to me that the whole game is designed to get people to buy gems at exorbitant prices so they can get the necessary buffs etc to progress through the game, (which, so far I've managed to stop myself from doing.)

A game of this type, purchased as a full game with documentation and cd/dvd, would cost no more than about 20 uk pounds, yet the, supposedly, most popular package of gems is priced at 24.99 uk pounds, and from what I can see of it, it wouldn't last long, so would need to be purchased again and again, making TSO, Probably, the most expensive game ever produced!!!

I, also, have been a Settlers junkie since the original was released, but this version should not even carry the same name as it is so different!

I think I have finally had enough of it, especially as I can see from the posts in this forum that it's not likely to get any better.

Yes, I agree on all the points too. Recruits are so cheap it doesn't make much sense building anything else. I would suggest making the more expensive units much stronger.

or lower cost for the more expensive units some- so it makes sense to use em more often. right now u use em when recruits alone do not cut it- which is kinda meh..

an army of 200 soldiers is not hugely more powerfull to an army of recruits but if you boost the power u get all kinds of other issues. probably a mix of solutions needs to be looked at and probably have the non green adventures boosted in rewards and xp but tweak the camps to force u to cream some of the more expensive units :P

I've liked all settlers version up to and 10th generation anniversary and also I like this too. I think most of the players in this thread had chosen wrong game type to play. :D Its more sim city than war game. In some point i agree with you but soldiers and elite soldier bug fix will make more usage for soldiers and eslodiers also with cavalry. Its won't be much good if leveling goes more harder cus 40-50 would be unreachable for a lot of players then. PVP choice could make things better too, to use maximum health and attack power soldiers and so on. Its strategy game and its not always good choice to produce higher things what you think that can make you rich and invincible. Spamming massive weaker units doing good work, cus if prices will go down for iron swords to its normal price, then soon you can use them more too, so I don't see the trouble doing recruits and earn things another way, not doing iron swords. Still bows, longbows, militias, soldiers, cavalry is used many times, just don't make it too early, wait for adventures. Recruits is easiest and fastest way, but later you need quite much soldiers,longbows, cavalry too to balance losses and use militia and soldiers as shield too. So just won't make em under level 30 so fast cus running to next higher buildings isn't good choice, in some cases.

Maybe you have too few activities here to do on day? I enjoy this game a lot and you can play it while working whole day too, use morning and evening to do things and so on. And if you think its always should be step by step growing in only 1 way then you are wrong, you don't have to use iron swords after bronze and then steel and then damascene, you don't need this kind of progress like 1 2 3 4, its just use needed thing in right time.. When there's only 1 type of soldiers then you don't have a choice what , how and when to use. But when you have several, then you have to make choice, mostly they aren't in same level, you can choose the good and no so goo way. But yeah, there's always some people who aren't satisfied. Just not everybody aren't this type to like this type of game, so there's hundreds of other games what are maybe more suitable type. You can't have everything in same balance cus they have different role, its like why people won't buy fir wood planks anymore so much and they give only so few coins for them, I made 20 fir wood sawmills and producing em a lot to make coins but noone seems to be interested... Can you make it more useful? Or lets take stone hatchet and lets go woodcutting to build a house?

I am just trying to show little different way and thinking loud :D So don't take my post too seriously :D

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Originally Posted by MOD_Nogbad2

Wrong.

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The german site does not carry the beta label.

Not that a label means anything. What counts is the terms and conditions/eula you accept as a customer vs the legal obligations the company automatically incurs when it starts charging money for its services. Many online games never officially come out of beta at all these days, just look at Zynga for one example of a company who prefers that approach. Others like MMOs ship "live" with many missing features and often spend years making improvements before they finally include all the content they promised for launch.