Balancing Orcish Assassins

[Noy]

While this is certainly an interesting anecdote, such analysis is nothing like silene's.

The reason why the researcher's analysis is flawed is because it is based on empirical analysis using a limited sample. The statistic of 'a kill ratio of 1 to 355' is almost certainly incorrect, and that is what is wrong with the analysis.

Silene's analysis uses mathematics to prove the chance of poisoning occuring. His analysis is provably correct -- there can be no doubt that the statistics he presents are accurate.

I gather that you are implying that he is misapplying the statistics, however I don't see how reciting an anecdote about statistics gathered empircally from small sample sizes, which has nothing at all to do with actual application of statistics, has anything to do with this.

My anecdote was more aimed at illustrating how statistics can be misleading when it comes to actual combat. It might have been a bit off but it encapsulates what I meant to say. I don't deny that stastitics give you the performance of a unit, but it tells you nothing about its actual result when doctrine and strategy come together in practice. Balancing should not be done on the basis of stastitical outcomes, but on the actual experience of using a unit in a game.

If DK comes and tells you MPers are not happy with the lower chance of strike and this is adversely affecting balance, quoting stats is very little solace to those players and does not adress the problem that they have. 64% is a number, its relevance determined by its circumstance. Did you consider maybe that 64% is too low?

(please avoid speaking about race, Wesnoth is purposely unbalanced race-wise)

nitpicking are we?... It was a slip of the tongue and I apologize, I always intend to reffer to faction, not races.

If people don't use the faction at all just because of this single change, then the problem is not with the unit, it is with the faction. Having one unit go from 4-2 to 3-3 to compensate for the rest of the faction is just plain wrong.

Thats completely incorrect and shows naivety about MP. Certain units ARE critical to the defence of faction against others, and if players don't have effective means to respond to common strategies that factions use, they won't use them. Without dark adepts the undead would be completely outclassed by the drakes. And without effective assassins, northerners don't have an effective response to woses, HI and Guardsmen, a unit I might like to point out that developers thought to upgrade further.

I think soliton has basically hit the nail on the head. We have always viewed the Assassin as the northerner's mage. Certainly it does less damage than other mages through poision (8 damage through poision... 3-3 is not very significant). Furthermore people fail to realize posion is usless against a significant portion of units. Undead, and units with regeneration are effectively immune. Although the unit has high defence, its a poor unit to attack units directly, and has fairly weak resistances. Buying more than one or two on a small map is a waste of money when its effectiveness is limited to dealing 8 damage a turn spread across several units.

So having it damage certain units with increased regularity, is I think an effective trade off. It enables it to fill a special niche for the faction, and its change has altered the balance.

[Jetrel]

My anecdote was more aimed at illustrating how statistics can be misleading when it comes to actual combat. It might have been a bit off but it encapsulates what I meant to say. I don't deny that stastitics give you the performance of a unit, but it tells you nothing about its actual result when doctrine and strategy come together in practice. Balancing should not be done on the basis of stastitical outcomes, but on the actual experience of using a unit in a game.

Except when the basic foundation of the game IS those statistics.

Honestly, this little charade about fighter jets is a little too close to Shopenhauer's 19th strategem - "Generalize, then argue against."

If people don't use the faction at all just because of this single change, then the problem is not with the unit, it is with the faction. Having one unit go from 4-2 to 3-3 to compensate for the rest of the faction is just plain wrong.

Thats completely incorrect and shows naivety about MP.

No, actually, that's the whole point. Maybe, perchance, the REAL problem is that the grunts are too weak? I've always wondered why it is that you almost never see grunts in multi games.

Certain units ARE critical to the defence of faction against others, and if players don't have effective means to respond to common strategies that factions use, they won't use them. Without dark adepts the undead would be completely outclassed by the drakes. And without effective assassins, northerners don't have an effective response to woses, HI and Guardsmen, a unit I might like to point out that developers thought to upgrade further.

Assassins have a very easy time hitting woses, HI and even guardsmen, since all of those have terrible defensive ratings (even the guardsmen is fairly bad unless his is in the highlands or a castle). Two hits is more than enough when each has a >70% chance of hitting.

Keep in mind that poison is especially effective against these guys (except the wose, but he's another story) since they move so slow.

(Woses are actually best swarmed with grunts during the night - even if the grunt gets hurt badly, he is cheaper, he can survive being hit twice, and he can run faster - thus allowing him to engage at will, under favorable conditions).

I think soliton has basically hit the nail on the head. We have always viewed the Assassin as the northerner's mage. Certainly it does less damage than other mages through poision (8 damage through poision... 3-3 is not very significant). Furthermore people fail to realize posion is usless against a significant portion of units. Undead, and units with regeneration are effectively immune. Although the unit has high defence, its a poor unit to attack units directly, and has fairly weak resistances.

The Assassin is not the orcish mage. He is only like a mage in that he is a fragile special unit, but there are rather deep subleties that he has which make him far different.

Mages deal damage only through direct damage, and have terrible defense. Hitpoints to resistances, mages are no more durable than assassins, but the mages have much worse defence, and a much worse melee attack.

The assassin does two things - he deals damage, yes, but more importantly he forces the enemy unit to alter its behaviour. Even if the enemy kills the assassin, if he gets hit even once he will likely lose almost a third of his hitpoints (16hp is at least a third for many units), if not more, before he is healed, and the unit has to wait an extra turn on top of everything else to cure the poison.

The assassin isn't designed primarily to drive units out of cover, though he is very good at that by extension of his main purpose - he is primarily designed to force units to retreat to healing, wherever that is available.

Assassins follow the main force, and by slipping in, striking once, and running (here is where his defence rating comes in handy), it can cripple an opponent's offensive. Assassins are supposed to be most useful on open ground, where they get such ridiculously good defense.

Assassins, unlike mages, are not meant to strike the killing blow.
Mages stay, and try to kill the unit themselves. Assassins strike, and then get the hell out of there.

Buying more than one or two on a small map is a waste of money when its effectiveness is limited to dealing 8 damage a turn spread across several units.

That is precisely how it is supposed to be! Exactly!

You are NOT supposed to be hiring an army of assassins, no matter what. The unit that the orcs should be hiring all the time is the grunt.

[Jetrel]

I think one major argument here was brought up by quartex.
The common multiplayer map is small and contains rather many villages so poison isn't that powerfull.

Even if a unit takes a mere two turns to reach a village, it will have lost more than a third of it's health, and will take nearly three or four turns to return to full health. Unless you want to just kamikaze the thing.

Also usually you attack to kill, so poison again isn't all that useful.

I invite you to try that strategy against me. Please.

We predicted the outcome of the 9.0 balancing during playtesting and you didn't listen, so we got the wonderful spectacle of rampaging ulfs blocked by invincible Guardsmen. Care to tell us once more that we are wrong because you know better?

Frankly, I disagree with that business about the ulfzerker as well - the ulfzerker and guardsmen are still a bit on the weak side even after the change. I've played at least twenty games on 0.9 against knalgans, and they put up a miserable showing.

And why is this such a terrible thing? You argue that DK hasn't given an argument why it should be changed back, well not one has given an argument why being poisoned is such a bad thing in the first place.

Losing five turns of use with the unit + losing a third of your hitpoints.
It's pretty bad.

On of the things my friends like about wesnoth is that its poison, unlike poison of some other games (warcraft, diablo), is very strong. There are few games I can think of where it has such a strong effect, short of perhaps Exile/Avernum.

Given that orc melee units mostly have 2 strikes which can be heavily influenced by chance, poison fills the gap by giving the faction a reliable way of dealing damage.

Congratulations, THIS IS THE REAL PROBLEM. The grunts are too weak, and people are trying to use other units to compensate.

[Soliton]

The Ghoul will poison more often, right. But you seem to forget the Ghoul attack is not a ranged attack. Except for the Dark Adept, every common unit of the game will be able to retaliate. Now if you look at the Assassin, a bit less than half of these units will be unable to retaliate. Contrarily to the Ghoul, the Assassin can poison a bunch of units for free.
Moreover, it has 70% defence in forests (as hard to hit as Elves), in hills (harder to hit than Dwarves), in mountains, in villages, and in castles. So not only they poison at distance, but they are one of the hardest unit to hit in the game. And if you go at it with a mage to benefit from the 70% "magic" attack, you are just asking for retaliatory poisoning. Now if you look at the Ghouls, they have bad/common defences, and they can't retaliate on ranged attacks.

The Ghoul ususally get's damage in return trying to poison, but can usually poison when attacked, the Assassin on the othe hand can often poison without retaliation but can also usually be attacked without getting poisoned in return. So it depends on the situation, with one attack type (melee) you can most of the times retaliate with poison, with the other (ranged) you can not but actively poisoning is easier/safer. I don't think it's so easy to say what's better here.

One thing i wanted to say in general about balancing issues:
i'm always a bit hesitant arguing about balancing changes, there are so many interconnected influences (many different factions/units/terrain...) making it basicly impossible to be really sure about what is balanced and what not. (besides things like the ulf changes :twisted: ) So statistics are of course a very important reference point but they are certainly not everything.

[js138]

Frankly, I disagree with that business about the ulfzerker as well - the ulfzerker and guardsmen are still a bit on the weak side even after the change. I've played at least twenty games on 0.9 against knalgans, and they put up a miserable showing.

Really? On small maps how do _you_ beat them? Guardsmen in villages are very hard to shift even once surrounded.

On your other points (and back on topic) - I'm not so sure that Grunts are woefully underpowered. They are a bit hit and miss with the two big attacks and suffer against ranged opponents (and unlike trolls they don't have the regenerative staying power to compensate). However I think this is an argument for maybe making them a mite cheaper (and possibly a few HP less if need be to compensate) rather than anything else. Then they would fit better with the disposable damage merchant strategy.

However they still have a heck of a job killing 70% defense units - because of the high variance. a 3-3 attack won't kill the unit, but the poison might cause it to retreat which is strategically interesting. If you want to weaken the assassin make that attack 2-3 or even 1-3 (darts don't do a lot of damage after all) but reducing the chance to poison basically takes away the assassin's main offensive feature.

[bpaultre]

However they still have a heck of a job killing 70% defense units - because of the high variance. a 3-3 attack won't kill the unit, but the poison might cause it to retreat which is strategically interesting. If you want to weaken the assassin make that attack 2-3 or even 1-3 (darts don't do a lot of damage after all) but reducing the chance to poison basically takes away the assassin's main offensive feature.

I agree whole-heartedly that if you want to weaken the assasin go to 2-3,
but don't give it only 2 attacks, that makes it too hard for in my opinion, the
one special unit for the northerners, to hit and be effective. Heavies,
guardsman, etc have enough hps to take the hits and stand their ground
or fighting withdrawal...

Anyhow I just wanted to weigh in that I think 3 attacks is neccessary for
the assasin.

-Ben (aka hudson)

[Dragonking]

At begining I just want to say, that it is hard to argue with people, who made this game. But after planty of games with many players I belive that my opinions (and opinions of others MP players) are correct.

I agree with EP on this one. I think the Assassin is a lot more interesting with only two ranged attacks. Dragonking, you are the only one who asked for a reversal of the change (IRC log from April the 22nd), and unfortunately you were heard. If you don't bring better arguments than what you used and if nobody else steps in with arguments, I will bring upon myself to put back the Assassin to 4-2 ranged attacks.

Yes - it is true that on #wesnoth-dev IRC only I have complained about assassins - but it wasn't only my opinion, but as you can see from previous posts - opinion of MP core players (many of them still doesn't want to argue here).

At 0.9.0 we often had problems with poisoning unit with 60% def even with 2 or 3 assassins.

This is plain FUD. Unless you are complaining that Wesnoth random generator is flawed, you shouldn't have any problem poisoning a unit with 60% defense. With one Assassin, the enemy unit will be poisoned 64% of time. With two, it goes up to 87%! And with three Assassins, only one out of 21 tries will fail in poisoning an enemy. So please don't say "often", this is just wrong.

I agree - often was wrong word. My bad. It looks like I got just those one-out-of-21 situation about 3 times in 0.9.0. But still I saw plenty (yes - plenty) of situations in 0.9.0 that assassin hasn't poisoned anything even on grassland, and plenty of situations in <8.11 and 0.9.1 that assassin was able to poison unit only with 3rd shoot.

Assassin would have great chances to poison each time, only if you play wesnoth with deterministic patch...
I just finished playing a game in which 2 assassins missed all their ranged attacks against an halbarder (spell?) with just 40% def.. And this happened twice in the same game..
Assassin with 4-2 ranged attacks is useful only if it costs 14 gold or less..

Except when the basic foundation of the game IS those statistics.

No. Basic foundation of this game is LUCK. 60% doesn't have to be 60% - that's my (and other people) point.

The Ghoul will poison more often, right. But you seem to forget the Ghoul attack is not a ranged attack. Except for the Dark Adept, every common unit of the game will be able to retaliate. Now if you look at the Assassin, a bit less than half of these units will be unable to retaliate. Contrarily to the Ghoul, the Assassin can poison a bunch of units for free.

Very good argument. But - it is double-edged sword. You consider only that ghoul/assassin attacks first. Now take look at defence: Except for the Dark Adept, every common unit of the game will be able to attack assassin and kill it without being poisoned. Now if you look at the Ghoul, a bit less than half of these units will be able to attack withou being poisoned.

Moreover, it has 70% defence in forests (as hard to hit as Elves), in hills (harder to hit than Dwarves), in mountains, in villages, and in castles. So not only they poison at distance, but they are one of the hardest unit to hit in the game. And if you go at it with a mage to benefit from the 70% "magic" attack, you are just asking for retaliatory poisoning.

I agree that defence is very good. But "-" resistances hurt a lot if hitted - for example strong elvish fighter will do 8 dmg with one hit if attackin - same amount of damage will do dextrous archer while defending. So it is true that he is hard to hit, but with this kind of resistances he is easy to kill with just few hits.

I think that a 3-3 ranged attack is good, an assassin attacking with a rangedt attack has a reasonable chance of poisoning his opponent. And the assassin is weak enough that poison is his one good attack. How deadly is poison in multiplayer games? I suppose it depends on how many villages are on a map.

I is important: on MP maps, defence lines usually contains villages, cause they provide good defence, healing and income. So it is no problem to reach village with poisoned unit in the first turn after poisoning.

Btw: about power of poison. We, MP core players think about assassins like about Northerner's mage. Why? If you have Dwarw on mountin, easiest way to kill it is to use mage - 70% cth gives you what you need. Drakes got tribalists at that kid of situation, dwarwes their "mage" - ulf, undeads adepts. Northerners got ONLY poison - that's why it is so important for them - to have units, which is effective as poisoner - cause it is ONLY his purpose in this game.

If people don't use the faction at all just because of this single change, then the problem is not with the unit, it is with the faction. Having one unit go from 4-2 to 3-3 to compensate for the rest of the faction is just plain wrong.

No, actually, that's the whole point. Maybe, perchance, the REAL problem is that the grunts are too weak? I've always wondered why it is that you almost never see grunts in multi games.

Given that orc melee units mostly have 2 strikes which can be heavily influenced by chance, poison fills the gap by giving the faction a reliable way of dealing damage.

Congratulations, THIS IS THE REAL PROBLEM. The grunts are too weak, and people are trying to use other units to compensate

and nice answer:

On your other points (and back on topic) - I'm not so sure that Grunts are woefully underpowered. They are a bit hit and miss with the two big attacks and suffer against ranged opponents (and unlike trolls they don't have the regenerative staying power to compensate). However I think this is an argument for maybe making them a mite cheaper (and possibly a few HP less if need be to compensate) rather than anything else. Then they would fit better with the disposable damage merchant strategy.

I think grunts and other Norteners units are good now. It isn't true that grunt is weak: many hp, good defence in villages and on other terrian. MAIN unit that can deal some damage at day. I don't think it need any rebalancing.
Somebody said somewhere on forum board that Northerers = quantity not quality. I tottaly concur with that. You can have many units, which can't do so much damage, cause they can easy miss target. That's why assassin is needed for balancing whole Northeners - his 3 attack allow you to have high possibility of poisoning enemy. 2 attacks doesn't give you so much.

However they still have a heck of a job killing 70% defense units - because of the high variance. a 3-3 attack won't kill the unit, but the poison might cause it to retreat which is strategically interesting. If you want to weaken the assassin make that attack 2-3 or even 1-3 (darts don't do a lot of damage after all) but reducing the chance to poison basically takes away the assassin's main offensive feature.

I agree whole-heartedly that if you want to weaken the assasin go to 2-3,
but don't give it only 2 attacks, that makes it too hard for in my opinion, the
one special unit for the northerners, to hit and be effective. Heavies,
guardsman, etc have enough hps to take the hits and stand their ground
or fighting withdrawal...

Anyhow I just wanted to weigh in that I think 3 attacks is neccessary for
the assasin.

-Ben (aka hudson)

Tottaly agree.

[Elvish_Pillager]

On the Grunt: For a long time, I've supported its reduction to 11 gold cost... It's the most generic fighter in the game, with weaker attacks than almost any other, and no specialties whatsoever... It does certainly seem slightly weak.

And like Jetryl said: You shouldn't have an army of Assassins. Before the recent changes to the Assaassin, I did quite well with armies of assassins. From then to now, the only net change is an increase in cost by 1 gold, which wouldn't even keep me from recruiting as many.

And on the subject of Ghouls, don't compare things with them. They're not balanced. I used to kill high-level Elves in Forest with them, and the Elves have been downgraded more than the Ghouls have since then.

[Noy]

On the Grunt: For a long time, I've supported its reduction to 11 gold cost... It's the most generic fighter in the game, with weaker attacks than almost any other, and no specialties whatsoever... It does certainly seem slightly weak.

And like Jetryl said: You shouldn't have an army of Assassins. Before the recent changes to the Assaassin, I did quite well with armies of assassins. From then to now, the only net change is an increase in cost by 1 gold, which wouldn't even keep me from recruiting as many.

And on the subject of Ghouls, don't compare things with them. They're not balanced. I used to kill high-level Elves in Forest with them, and the Elves have been downgraded more than the Ghouls have since then.

Nobody has an "army" of Assassins. Its utterly pointless, because the Assassin can't kill anything on its own. One maybe two max. Its role is to weaken strong units so you never would buy more than one anyway. Thats why the 2 to 3 attack change is so apparent with this unit. As a key aspect of the Northerner strategy, missing one or two poision attacks early on can have a decisive effect two turns down the line.

And no Jethryl there isn't a problem with the grunt. There wasn't a problem with the Northerners or the Knalgans before all this "balancing" started. Nobody complained about the assassin in MP. If you want to show me how they are "unbalanced" come play and prove us wrong. Both of these factions were well balanced against all factions, and on the flip side were balanced opponents for other factions as well. One of the few unbalanced aspects may have been the difficulity Knalgans and Northerners encountered with the undead (in particular the ghost, and the wraith)... but not one of the changes had anything to do with that anyways.

[Elvish_Pillager]

Nobody has an "army" of Assassins.

I used to. I don't anymore, simply because I like to try new strategies, but back when I played Assassin armies, they were very effective.

And no Jethryl there isn't a problem with the grunt. There wasn't a problem with the Northerners or the Knalgans before all this "balancing" started.

The Northerners have long been considered a 'powerful faction', and in Wesnoth, 'powerful' means 'more powerful than the others' which means 'too powerful'.

Nobody complained about the assassin in MP.

Except me? I've complained about it several times, but I stopped after nothing happened for a while. There were quite a few others who agreed that a change was necessary.

If you want to show me how they are "unbalanced" come play and prove us wrong.

How about I play an army of only Orcish Assassins, and you play an army of only Orcish Grunts? After all, you think Grunts and Assassins are fine, but I think Assassins are powerful and Grunts are weak (not to mention that Assassins are particularly weak against Grunts' attacks.)

Of course, that's only in the 1% chance that we actually meet each other on MP...

[Noy]

Nobody has an "army" of Assassins.

I used to. I don't anymore, simply because I like to try new strategies, but back when I played Assassin armies, they were very effective.

I really would like to see you try that strategy on MP these days.

The Northerners have long been considered a 'powerful faction', and in Wesnoth, 'powerful' means 'more powerful than the others' which means 'too powerful'.

No thats completely not true. I think Northerner's reputation has everything to do with SP where it gets 2X times the gold everybody else gets, and then is considered powerful. In MP Northerners are a decent race, but they are nothing special. They have some interesting units, a good balance of strategy for everything but the undead, yet nobody considers them unbeatable or underpowered.

Except me? I've complained about it several times, but I stopped after nothing happened for a while. There were quite a few others who agreed that a change was necessary.

No offense pillager this board is littered with your complaints... by now you've probably complained about every aspect of the game.

How about I play an army of only Orcish Assassins, and you play an army of only Orcish Grunts? After all, you think Grunts and Assassins are fine, but I think Assassins are powerful and Grunts are weak (not to mention that Assassins are particularly weak against Grunts' attacks.)

Actually sure, because Grunts would probably win in the end, with that -30 resistance to blade being pretty decisive for the Grunt.

But really what does that prove? What if I played as trolls and you as assassins? Who would win there? Is it because the troll is better than the assassin? Maybe a bit, but regeneration negates poision. Certain units are better against other, and that isn't a suprise. If you put a mage up against a ghost, is the mage "overpowered'? Of course not, its just good against that unit.

Assassins are good as supporting units, with other units defending it and attacking units weaken by poision. It however is not the be all and end all unit... or even close to one.

Of course, that's only in the 1% chance that we actually meet each other on MP...

I'm there almost all the time. Almost everybody else notices me, talks to me, plays with me. And you don;t have to play me, one of the others like soliton, DK or Hudson would be thrilled to play against an all assassin army.

[Elvish_Pillager]

Now logging onto MP. It was a while ago, and probably both I and my opponents will be more skilled than they were last time I played this weird strategy. So, we'll see what happens.

[Elvish_Pillager]

I'm sorry I couldn't stay in that game... I hadn't anticipated it would take more than an hour (which is all I had left at that point.) Oh well, not that it would have been very useful anyway *sigh*

For all your information, I played against Noy, and I took 50% of the EV in damage, so it really was a completely bogus game.

[Doc Paterson]

For all your information, I played against Noy, and I took 50% of the EV in damage, so it really was a completely bogus game.

It's a shame too, because the bleachers were filled with fans.