Feedback Accounting for Pike meta

Discussion in 'Suggestions' started by Midnight Tea, Feb 27, 2019.

  1. Midnight Tea

    Midnight Tea Phantasmal Quasar

    I'd like to quote something I posted on the steam forums on a large thread about the dominating strength of pikemen:

    I want to open this with a caveat: I don't have experience with game design and I want to clarify this is purely a layman's perspective and I honestly believe the Wargroove team knows way more about any of this than I ever will. If you had told me it was possible to make Advance Wars a balanced game, I would've sighed wearily and said no. A lot of Wargroove's changes to its formula is practically revolutionary, like the rebalanced unit costs and such. Just wanted to make it absolutely clear that I wouldn't dare tell the balance team I know better than they do. I respect the hell out of them. Sorry if this comes off as kissing up but that's legitimately my feelings.

    Okay, regarding pike spam.


    I think the main problems are thus - while pikemen are meant to be very very good for their cost, there's no counter to them that isn't expensive or risky. They can close the distance to archers quickly. Swordsmen are supposed to be more efficient in a straight up equal terms fight, but the crit the pike will do will nullify that. While air units can situationally help a lot, the cost savings from spamming pikes lets you recruit a solution to that quickly.

    Some of my thoughts for possibly addressing this:


    -- Swordsman could be more attractive a solution. That pikes are only 50 gold more but can reliably get crits whereas swords only crit when next to their commander is a discrepancy. I wouldn't change them because they're still really good for their price and Valder gets them for free anyway. Rather, they need to be more desirable by comparison. My other suggestions below tie into this.

    -- It might be a good idea to consider nerfing pike movement range to something closer to what it was in Advance Wars. They really should not have the ability to threaten an archer all on their own. In real world phalanxes, mobile archers (often on horseback) is what broke down the otherwise unassailable wall of shields and spears. I think a mix of archers and swordies should be a decisive counter, even, where working together they can quickly dissolve the wall. One where even if the sword dies next turn, the archer isn't endangered and can continue to dance and hose them. That'd encourage the pike spammer towards a switch to building swords or even knights and get the game rolling more naturally towards the big units.

    -- The price of pikes is a major selling point. There's very few situations you'll want a mage or dog over them. To a degree that's fine because mages and dogs are special units with other functions. But maybe mages ought to hit them a lot harder if they're trying to fight in a primarily mountainous or forested regions, perhaps even one-shotting them even if they're also on a forest tile.


    In conclusion, I think the pike spam strategy should indeed be a very powerful and present choice, just as phalanx formations are in reality. I'm even okay with it being a go-to strategy like it currently is. Something you do if you're not sure what strategy to use. Pikes make amazing guards and walls. But I think even a potent workhorse strategy needs a reliable counter, particularly if the opponent is able to predict it in advance. Might even make for fun fog of war play where one has to decide between making one's own pikes or making the counter to pikes first before having access to perfect information. Thanks for reading my thoughts.
     
      Last edited: Feb 27, 2019
      Beefster and Fadedsun like this.
    • Fadedsun

      Fadedsun Astral Cartographer

      I don't think you really need to preface your post by saying you're only a layman and not a game designer. As someone playing the game, you have more than enough experience to report about it. The pikeman spam is real and it's a problem. For their cost, there's no reason not to spam them. As you said, there's no cost effective counter for them and they easily set up for crit potential. An entire line of them is terrifying and hard to break without a proper setup. Harpies would be a good choice, but harpies aren't very good, are they? Mages shut them down completely. Witches also shut them down easily. The harpy crit is entirely dependent on good map design/terrain placement. There's no doubt that pikeman need a good, hard-counter. They do well against all ground units. Even knights, who you would think would be good against pikeman, get shutdown hard. If they get first strike (non-crit), it's a bad trade. It's only worth using a knight against a pikeman if it's a crit or to kill one off.

      However, there's on going discussion if good map design can be a solution to the current pikeman meta/making air better. A lot of the maps CF supplies aren't great, balance wise. We have a good community, myself included, that have been working hard to make good maps for the competitive WG community.

      I'm sure CF scouts the community to see what we're saying around Reddit/Discord and here, so they must aware of what we all think of pikeman and thinking about ways to shift the balance around. Here's to hoping a balance patch is being worked on.
       
        Alador and Midnight Tea like this.
      • Midnight Tea

        Midnight Tea Phantasmal Quasar

        Actually, I think pikes ARE meant to counter knights. With knights being a bread-and-butter offense unit once the initial property scramble is done. That's sorta how it was supposed to be in Advance Wars where, yes, the equivalent of pikes were the meta there too. But ironically it wasn't because of their crit ability, but because of the general money gap for what they were able to hit plus their ability to guard heavy ranged weaponry (the equivalent of archers and trebs). In theory, soldiers are supposed to counter pikes because they're more cost-efficient for their price but in practice soldiers get mulched by the counter-crit without having made up for it. To a degree this is OK because pike walls are supposed to be an asset, a reward for using pikes well. The problem is obviously that you're a bit TOO rewarded for it right now.

        Ideally it should be a very powerful strategy and defensive play, but one that you can punch a hole in with modest preparation. Then the opponent sees your preparation and begins to counter your preparation so they can keep pike walling. Then you prepare the counter to their counter. And they move to counter your counter to their counter. And so on and so on, with commanders making use of their grooves to opportunistically trip the cycle up and gain an advantage for their side in a clutch moment. That's the real fun part of this game I think. Each side responding to the other in bigger and bigger ways until the chaos opens the opportunity for a decisive or clever play.

        It could be that current maps encourage pike walling but in practice I rarely encounter a situation it isn't a good idea. It's actually part of why I suggested that mages perhaps be even more brutal to them in forests/mountains in much the way harpies are. The idea being that the pike's natural habitat ought to be in wide open spaces where you don't otherwise have natural barriers to take advantage of so bringing your own makes sense. They also should not be hyper-efficient in maps with centralized air units -- harpies should be a present threat in efficiently tearing open your wall without recourse. (but as FadedSun said, they're currently easily shut down)
        Right now, pikes are cheap and spamming them gives you a near unbreakable front line while letting you skip straight to monster units like trebs, dragons and warships. Building the big cost-inefficient units ought to be a reward for efficient play but right now the spam feels hyper-efficient with very little risk.
         

        Share This Page