[CONCLUSION] Balancing Quiz #1, and Balancing Quiz: King to Queen
This is a conclusion piece on balancing quiz #1 and the King to Queen quiz. Both were made by me, but inspired by Ryan's post here:
Unfortunately I would have wanted Grand to review that one but he definitely read the responses lmao. Anyway, these all had a purpose of trying to get players to evaluate a certain bias. Obviously you can disagree with my analysis, but that was the main point.
Quiz 1
So this is 8 attack squares and 8 move squares. Okay look, forward is significantly better. Ryan's quiz had a "Militia vs. Surveillant" comparison involving the first two pieces, but they were both forward. So the second piece's power should be thought of as "the benefit of having the front 3 attacks more forward vs. the downside of the rest of the attacks being farther". This is because an attack being more forward is like having to do less work to develop the piece. However, of course, there's also the issue of the attacks being blockable, and I think that pushes it over the edge to be worse than A. (Note that they didn't rate C cause that came after.)
Me: "C>A>B"
F3: "B>A"
Ryan: "A>B"
Ryan: "if it was just the forwards squares it would be easy B>A but the horizontal/backwards squares of B are pretty potato"
F3: "B is super good trade fodder"
F3: "i think B has diminishing returns but the first one is a decent amount better than the first A"
Ryan: "running one of each is clearly better than 2 of one or the other" (me and F3 agreed with this)
Due to some people... not using decimal values, it kinda failed the whole point of the comparison because they went lazy and rated them the same. Also, DarthMohawk's comparison to Knight was pretty relevant, as it also has 8 attack squares and 8 move squares, so C's value and Knight should be quite close.
In gameplay, B/C work better in the early/midgame where they are 'trade fodder' or control farther squares in hopes to turn the control into defense (this is the same reason Angel and Valkyrie have a subtle strength you notice when fighting them - their ability to add +1 defender to a far position). In endgame, A is better due to higher relevance of close-range control (the Knight's attack spots becoming easier to ignore) and also being able to trap the King easier (although it's not definitive proof for a unit's strength, Knight and Bishop + King cannot mate a King, but A can). In my opinion their values are somewhere like [5.9, 5.6, 6]. A and C's rating should be very close, but C should be better.
There was also the commentary about piece meta changing the conclusion which is true. With CEO having cheap kingattack all over, I think C and Knight gain a bit of value by being able to dodge it.
King to Queen quiz
(on the range 3 unit)
"13"
Me: "adamzero rated the range 3 axiagonal melee unit 13 cost, when legionary+++ is 14 cost and worse, 10/10 experiment"
"13"
F3: "i don't know why i bothered when everyone is going to rate it 13"
"13"
F3: "literally all 3 responders rated it 13"
Grand: "~14"
EVERYONE IS FIRED
So this was mainly about the Range 3 unit necessarily corresponding to a big increase in cost because extra range hits the board edge. This is one of the reasons counting extra gained move/attack squares isn't always accurate. You will recognize this if you've ever played with Behemoth+++ - it is so easy to get it into the middle of the board uncontestable, and it plays practically like a Queen with bonuses at that point. Of course that first developing move isn't nothing, but it's pretty relevant if you can "turn a unit into a Queen with a move" and that unit is of cheaper cost.
I believe the actual way to consider those longer range units is basically in terms of pins and attacks. The Range 3 unit lets you threaten up to the minion line in a turn. The Range 4 unit lets you move up to 'become a Queen' in one turn with a pin (alternatively, a potential to threaten the enemy King in a turn). The Range 5 unit does the same thing but you are a little safer because you can move to row 3 instead of 4 (note that it controls just barely not enough to target the enemy minion line). The Range 6 unit actually does hit the minion line and thus shouldn't be moved for a while in optimal play (otherwise you should have used a lower-range Queen instead). Finally, Queen allows pins on turn 1. Queen pins don't mean much unless it's hitting a King (or undefended target, but it's much rarer). So I think the correct value is about 6/11/15/17/18/20/21, with the 18-20 jump being the Range 5-6 jump.
Conclusion to the Conclusion
You're all fired.
also stop copying other people's values
-main_gi
I stand by "~14" in relation to current balance and idea of decimal rounding granularity nonsense. This comes from the notion that legionary+++ could be some fractional amount below 14 atm, and the range 3 moves wouldn't be worth an extra 1pt in most matches (ex: warrior+++)
In your values the part I find strange is 17/18/20, because the justification seems mostly centered around starting positions and it seemingly values targeting minion line with a near-queen higher than targeting the champion line...? There is also the thing where the more expensive a unit is, the less likely it can be traded for anything but a King, and this implies additional melee moves have diminishing returns from trading perspective (outside of obvious last-hit scenarios) I think this is another reason a gradient decline makes sense, even beyond the overflows, so the sudden spike looks strange to me.
However, I don't see much way around there being weird ending numbers to this series with the limited granularity in CEO and justifications for the first 3 scaling up very quickly, so the perception that one increase has 'double' the value of another is probably derived from that, I guess.
Also, in the first image posted, (the ABCD minions), I think the number of swaps available drastically alters their possible values.. so in CEO the B/D units could gain a lot of power in a swap-heavy army, but even then they look insanely awkward to use, and D is probably the weakest among them regardless of swaps being available or not, while C is probably the strongest overall, as a minion.
I think the most relevant part for me is 17-18 being a minor difference, because what that changes is "I have to move to row 3 vs. row 4 to get this effect". I believe the minion line is more important because the near-queen would be in support of a potential weak square, not the one that's attacking.
It's true that it implies it has diminishing returns but I am not sure it's necessarily only something that happens for expensive pieces. I feel like undercutting is usually annoying for the player with the slightly-more expensive pieces (ex: Legionary+ player against some Legionary++s, the Legionary++ player has the worse deal). I almost suspect extra granularity makes this worse because an incredibly discrete system (like if you only had 6-cost, 10-cost, 14-cost, etc. champions) gives you more control over undercut situations in hopes to make it more balanced.
The history with the 4 minions was: F3 put in a piece in our game that was C in the picture, with 16 cost (so cheap-to-mid-cost minion) and two other upsides. Nobody put it in their army until one time I was just looking for a final minion to put in, and put in that one. Ryan instantly complained about whoever put that in and thought it was obviously overpowered, then made that balance test to try to prove it:
Naturally agreement was nowhere to be found.
Here's my case: A is Militia, obviously really strong. D is more like a defensive Militia. The moves are much more awkward to use but I believe its downside can be mitigated by having it on defense. The range 2 minions can be used on defense as well and potentially threaten a forwards-fork, but with some risk that the blockable attack could just let one of the forked pieces move away while blocking the other threat. I don't believe it is a remarkably good attacker, but it's a decent defender (while its blockable spaces are in ally territory). The worst piece is B as it can only hit 1/4 of the board's spaces and most of its moves create overlapping threat ranges (while even though D itself is ¼bound, its attacks can hit a bit below 1/2 the spaces even though it's rowbound).
There is an alternative strat with C/B though, and it is trying to use them almost strictly like a control piece, by 'blocking off' an entire row (imagine them on the d/e columns, which targets b/c/d/e/f/g). This does have value cause this row is one higher than you'd get by trying to do the same with A/D (putting them on c/f).
-main_gi
Minions B and D in the picture looks bad to me for one other reason: if all 4 of the pictured minions have promotes, minion D cannot exactly reach the back row after exactly 1 capture (or 3) without swap support. Minion B has similar problems if it ever gets pushed vertically (wind pushes 3 squares, splash pushes 1).
If the range 3 piece was ~14 then is it implied that literally tripling the movement of legionary++ is considered approximately +1?
well, "~14" could also be read as "14.4" or something, and the same is true of all other costs being rounded to nearest value, so there is that, but also I think the idea of 'triple' movement is skewed, because king range linear moves will almost always be more valuable than 2-range, which are then almost always more valuable than 3-range, and so on. see here:
my guess is the closer to the left you get, the more useful it looks
I mean its only more useful because the later pieces dont have the movement of the earlier pieces, clearly princess+ is significantly better than princess and princess++ is significantly better than princess+
I probably undercosted the Behemoth+++ without the behemoth passive. (I think I costed it as a +3 jump in value which is too small a jump, and ended up making it strictly better than legionary+++)
Though, because I provided unfitted values the comparisons in quiz #1 should be very clear (I listed king twice but both values are higher than mKaDA and lower than mKlDA)
Also my values are pre-nerf, 6 is how I'd cost a King after King-like units get bumped up by "1.5" cost (queen would also be 22 I think unless the nerf was limited to before the lifestone barrier)
Behemoth's passive is probably a multiplicative value-added rather than an additive one, because stronger pieces are increasingly vulnerable to random pokes from minions if you put them in the thick of battle. Right now it's being priced as a +50% cost increase, which "sounds" high but I honestly don't know if it is high.
(Coincidentally, if Behemoth+++ is priced correctly AND +50% is an accurate multiplier, this sets short-Queen-3 as a 14-value piece. I almost posted something about that in the K to Q thread, but I didn't, so I can't take any after-the-fact credit for it.)
Behemoth's really a very RNG matchup-dependent piece with its passive, it has no effect on Tiger/Dove/SoulFlare/Princess, less effect on weak minions like Pawns, 'average' effect on Militia/Salamnder, and maximum effect on RoyalGuard++/Fireball/Pikeman armies. I think the maximum-effect case makes it worth even higher amounts, and the current "about +6" is balanced around its average effect.
But yeah, it's totally accurate that Behemoth's passive also denies a weakness of expensive pieces and it's even better cause of it.
-main_gi
feels about right, I vastly prefer the old Behemoth+++ (KjAD with behemoth passive) but that can easily wreck an army without jumpers
If we're talking specifically about the CEO meta, I would think that the jump from range 4 to 5 is more relevant than the jump from range 5 to 6, for a couple of reasons:
BTW, I wasn't talking specifically about CEO meta (except for the values, since all the numbers are relative, which forces some adherence to CEO numbers). So I'm imagining a case where you may define Queen as 21 and think "what are the fairest values with this in mind".
The second is fair enough. Actually, I did miss another important point with the 'minion/champion line targeting' for range 6 vs. 7. It's that the move only is often the threat there, not the attack, so you can use it for a possible King check.
That last point I disagree with because a "queen-6" already has two attacks pointed at the minion row, meanwhile a "queen-5" has to move once to do that, so queen-6 is the first tier with strength in that use.
-main_gi
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