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TL;DR – Nerf Luftwaffe and buff US Infantry.
Hi all,
After 100 hours and the final discussions regarding balance I had with King_Rhino420 on the stream between the 8h 15m 00s mark till the end, I’ve decided to bring forward my feedback so far on the completed doctrines. I don’t think it’s correct to criticise the incomplete ones because, well, they are just that. Incomplete. Changes are coming for those.
Rather than do this in video format, I have to do this one via this text form as I don’t think I can do two videos per week. I’ll try and do the next WW video on Wednesday this week for next Sunday instead of today. That stream yesterday wrecked me.
So here I am, providing my feedback mainly on the two “complete” doctrines: OKW Luftwaffe and US Infantry. I haven’t played any other doctrines that seemed terribly unbalanced so far overall but I will need more time with OKW Artillery and US Armor. US Airborne and OKW Panzer seem balanced enough so far. I’ll have more discussion points soon but for now, just these two…
US Infantry
TL;DR – Infantry do not have any tools at all to deal with heavy tanks. Once heavy tanks appear, an infantry player becomes useless and all you can do is give your allies ammo and hope they can win it for you. In a smaller game, Infantry will generate so much fuel and ammo, even with conversions and normal ability use, you will still sit on resource cap. The longer the game goes after late game is reached, the less useful you are until finally, you become useless. Explanations and suggestions to fix these issues are below.
Issues outlined:
1. Power curve problems:
This little graph represents my estimated power curve of the infantry doctrine, where the key movements in the power are exaggerated obviously for effect. Please note that the “power level” is represented as “in comparison to the average power of the other doctrines at the same point in the game time”.
Normal doctrines are much more linear in their power curve, where the line will basically be a slow increase up to the same level of strength. The sharp decline after the 107mm comes out represents the difference in strength of the abilities you will be unlocking after that point in the game – in comparison to the other doctrines.
Now all of that is very important. Let me explain. Infantry does not have any ability to fight tigers, or panthers or the king tiger. I am not talking about the first tiger that appears in a 3v3 or bigger game. I’m referring to the stage of the game that I would refer to as “late-superlate” in any size game. 40+ minutes.
As I pointed out on the graph, the power level of infantry in comparison to the other doctrines is so low once super late game arrives, you might as well not be in the game. You cannot influence the outcome of the game once that point arrives due to the lack of useful late game abilities. You will basically end up playing anti-tank-squad-simulator 2017.
We can discuss it further but the evidence of this is in the game, look at the tech tree and look at the tier 4 building. How do you beat a tiger 1? “Anti-Tank squad Lynus you fool!” Normal players support their tanks with infantry and indirect fire to screen anti tank squads away.
I understand that in a 3v3 or 4v4 game, an early game, infantry-oriented, supportive doctrine is viable. Viable is the term I’m using because they aren’t a good pick in a 3v3 or 4v4 game because you can just do so much more as Airborne. However, in 1v1 and 2v2 games, when the Axis get their first heavy tank, you will be unable to even damage it properly and you will lose to that single unit. You will essentially start playing a 1v2.
2. Xylophone Barrage: This is ability is just broken. The unlock path is good but once unlocked, 110 ammo for a barrage that is a bit to strong for it’s cost and it’s only balanced by having a massive cool down.
3. Resources: This doctrine cannot spend the resources you make with it efficiently. As an early game doctrine, if you manage to take more than your fair share of ground and set up trenches, caches and mortar pits, you will start a snowball of resources that you cannot spend efficiently. You can dump a lot into your infantry obviously, but the longer the game goes, the less of them you’ll use to influence large chunks of territory. Your allies may be able to use your resources, which is what makes them viable in large games. But you have no tanks worth buying if you spent your CP on the Rangers and once you have the 105mm sherman out, it still loses against real tanks. It is basically a one trick pony meaning: a howitzer. You can max out your infantry with med packs, LMG’s and everything, spam your mortars, spam the Xylophone barrage and you may spend it all, but because a lot of that becomes obsolete you won’t buy that stuff on every unit.
You can technically spend it as fast as you get resources, as long as you buy 2 81mm mortar half tracks, both 107mm mortars and spam rifle grenades. But how can that possibly be your mid to end game? Throw more grenades and mortar more. One decent flamethrower and your done.
Solution for 1 and 3: I believe you can kill two problems with one change here. Deep in the tech tree, place an ability that unlocks a purchasable “Stolen Panzerfausts” ability. It would have to be unlocked late enough so that it couldn’t come out before a Panther. But it needs to be around before the 30-35 minute mark.
Similar to the way the “Support Weapons” ability works on airborne, where certain abilities are locked until you unlock something the tech tree. Then, in the same way you unlock rifle grenades, for 20 or 25 ammo you unlock the ability to shoot a Panzerfaust for 35-45 ammo and give it a 15-25 second cooldown.
This does two things: First, it gives you somewhere to throw the munitions you are usually unable to spend. Second, while you are unable to get any useful tanks on your own, you can make all of your infantry, on the infantry doctrine, more useful in the later stages of the game by being a threat to tanks. Panzerfausts don’t one shot heavy tanks, but they are a threat and US Infantry needs some way to be relevant after the 40 minute mark.
Solution for 2: Pretty simple. Reduce the cooldown to 250-400 seconds and make it slightly weaker depending on what cooldown is chosen. This will also help you spend your munitions. Maybe just change it to 350 seconds and see how it plays.
OKW Luftwaffe
No weaknesses. Not even an average strength. Everything is good. They have Panthers, they have arguably 3 slots in the top 5 best infantry, access to planes and indirect fire that comes out super early with mortars and support guns. Sorry if I missed this doctrines glaring weaknesses, but you cannot have a doctrine that doesn’t give up anything. Every other doctrine has something that it misses out on:
- Indirect Firepower Strength;
- Armoured Strength;
- Infantry Strength
When you are making a doctrine from the ground up I assume the first question you ask is “What is this doctrine going to specialise in?” Visualise it like this as an example:
You have 3 points to spend on the above strengths and you must pick a different strength after the first pick. Then, you have to spend your last point on something you’ve already spent it on so that you specialise.
OKW Panzer and US Armour are good at all things armoured (2 points) but they give up all indirect fire. The other point is in infantry because US and OKW base infantry are good (1 point). With US Infantry you have 2 points in infantry and 1 in indirect firepower. OKW artillery get 2 points in indirect firepower, 1 in infantry, etc. You get the idea.
Now OKW Luftwaffe: 2 points in Armour. Double panther = better than average armoured strength, it’s a 2.
Firepower? 2 points due to support guns, mortar teams and the planes.
Infantry? 3 points because fuck logic they also get the best infantry in the game. Oh and their pioneer squad builds caches and defences because why would OKW artillery want to build early caches am I right? Why would a doctrine with no weakness need an inconvenient pioneer squad?Solution: Remove one of the strengths so that they are in line with the other doctrines. A nerf is correct because the other doctrines are in line with the US doctrines relative strengths. You can’t just start buffing all of the doctrines so that they are in line with Luftwaffe. You need to squish the outliers.
I suggest removing all the indirect firepower, all of it. Yes I’m serious.
If historical realism is more important to some people reading this than healthy gameplay: I have been advised that historically, Fallschirmjäger had very little aircraft support due to them being so expensive in the later stages of the war.
The leig 18 support guns and all direct damage aircraft abilities need to get gone. Keep the recon plane, the paradropped squads and the mortar team. Yes, leave the mortar team. You could consider taking them out as well later if it’s still to strong, but I don’t think that would be the case.
Conclusion:
I will continue to contemplate further changes that could be made to help bring certain abilities and doctrines in line with their intended purpose, if there are any that need to be made. For example, overall the Panzer doctrine is balanced. Overall.
Thank you so much if you managed to read the whole thing. I’ll be around to participate in the conversation below.
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Hi linus, I am agree with you in certain points. I am leaving my ippinion here and lets the others talk about it too and we could take a decission together.
1. Yes luftwaffe is good in all around. Maybe the reason of that are the Panthers. Historicaly talking luftwaffe use them and I personally prefer to leave them in game at least for now. Why, because we need to move on other doctrines rework. I was thinking in a limitation for them to prevent the abuse. Maybe limitate the numbers of call in for them like 1, 2 or 3 times, increase call in times or price adjustment also we colud link the call in with panther d unlock to delay them more.
2. Infantry doc buff: I think the main problem with infantry doc is the lack of a good tank or at weapon. Personally I dislike the panzerfauf or panzershreck captured idea. I always like to see in this doctrine the Jumbo tank. But we dont have the model yet then we need to find another solution for now. Maybe the way shoud be the buff of the bazooka. A few patchs ago we increase the penetration of bazooka vs panther. Maybe a solution could be to increase the penetration of elite bazookas vs heavy tanks but ony for those who has weak points in side armor. Meaning less than 100 mm. In this way the americans could have a useful at inf weapon
These are my personal ideas, lets read the other ones.
Regards, Olhausen
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I don’t have enough experience with infantry to accurately respond beyond “when you float that much muni you can give every squad a bazooka and remember that smoke and WP do a bit of work, smoke especially is underrated in its effectiveness at forcing a heavy tank to either do nothing or move forward towards your bazookas”
One line that really stuck out to me however was “OKW Panzer and US Armour are good at all things armoured (2 points) but they give up all indirect fire. ” which isn’t entirely true.
OKW Panzer has the V1 and the Arado bomber, two of the strongest(and costliest) indirect fire abilities in the game and US armour has the command vehicle which can drop in barrages(phosphorous, iirc?) and the calliope
And I should mention that the mortar halftracks are some of the best indirect fire units in the game, their ability to drive away after a barrage are great for survival and the smoke has great utility. The US has an especially good mortar halftrack considering it takes only two delayed fuse barrages to destroy an OKW base halftrack(which may be a bit overpowered, but nobody ever uses this, it is however the reason why I scarcely put my medic HQ very far forward)
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Hi Olhausen,
Thank you for the replies.
Not having enough time to make these changes right now is perfectly fine, of course. The other unfinished doctrines take priority, of course.
However, it is still nice to note and discuss these imperfections in the current finished doctrines. Maybe moving forward, we could avoid making doctrines that have access to extremely strong abilities and units in every aspect of the mechanics.
That sort of environment ruins the dynamic game-to-game system you have created where you could pick your doctrine based on what your team and the enemy is doing. At the moment if you only care about winning, there’s no reason to pick infantry unless the map is really small. On the opposite end of that spectrum, there’s no reason not to pick luftwaffe because you will be extremely powerful at every phase of the game (early-mid-late-superlate). You will only be less advantaged as Luftwaffe in comparison to Wunderwaffe at the point where you would be able to call in a king tiger, but only if sacrificing all that time and map influence it takes to save up that 2100 mp doesn’t cause you to lose anyway.
Regarding the examples you gave Olhausen, I don’t think I mentioned removing Panthers. I understand historically they used them and the Panthers, by themselves are not an issue. The indirect fire, by itself, is not an issue. The infinite variety of elite infantry is not an issue. The issue appears when you put all of them into the same doctrine. I did say maybe remove the JU-87 abilities. Maybe you could argue to leave the support guns, there is a debate left there. But not the planes.
I note that OKW Wunderwaffe also has access to all of these things. I haven’t had a deep enough look at that doctrine yet, I’ll hold my opinion on that. But if it turns out that they have blatant access to elite infantry, awesome indirect firepower and the whole heavy tank line up, we’re going to have a problem. Why a problem?
Because the US Armor don’t get elite infantry. The US Airborne doesn’t get a Pershing. The US Infantry doesn’t get any armor or indirect firepower to deal with anything efficiently that comes from the panzer truck (please note that soft counters such as smoke grenades or attempting to white phosphorous doesn’t count). Which are all good things. They make sacrifices to gain strengths and specialise.
But then if you look at the line up for OKW.
You should notice that Luftwaffe get access to an anti tank cluster bomb, other JU-87 strafes and panthers and the best infantry. Then look at Wunderwaffe, access to elite infantry, amazing call in abilities, an MG42 ability that would make more sense gameplay wise on artillery, and then heavy tanks as well.
On OKW you always have access to elite infantry, amazing call in abilities that have immediate, hard, map changing influence and heavy tanks. Unless you’re silly enough to pick artillery which is the only balanced doctrine. You lose access to heavy tanks. Perfect!
Nyvre,
That example I used was just an example of the “assign 3 points system” I was putting forward. Obviously there almost always units that go outside that system, but those cases are usually not the greatest in that mechanic. US Armor would definitely be 2 point armor, 1 point indirect firepower and 0 infantry. The issue comes up when you do the same thing for OKW Wunderwaffe, which I’ve recently discovered is more like 2 point armor 2 point indirect and 1 point infantry. Please note this is only a way to visualise my point. I’m not saying it is or should be how to balance doctrines as versatility is also good, if done correctly.
US having access to the calliope does not make up for anything when comparing it to Wunderwaffe. Calliope does nothing to heavy tanks usually and the wunderwaffe get access to the V1 Rocket and Ardo. Then there’s the elite infantry to remember and then there’s the king tiger that crushes Pershings and Jacksons, demolishing any hope that a US Armor player would have.
Can no one see this imbalance?
Quick note to anyone that hasn’t replied yet and is thinking about replying should be aware that the topic is very specifically:
Overall strengths of doctrines vs overall strengths of other doctrines, at each phase of the game early mid late and superlate.
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Hello everyone,
I agree with Luftwaffe being strong in the current state of Wikinger. Aldo this problem might be solved on its own after all factions are complete. Also, it will always be hard to balance all factions like the USF Infantry division because of the aspect of 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 and 4v4. USF infantry division shines in 1v1 matches due to the early game power. But it definitely needs some tech tree reorganization + removing/adding new abilities.Changes that I would like to see in Luftwaffe would be: remove the buildable Panthers from the tree (to remove option that “infantry” doctrine would have powerful tanks), on the other hand, I would keep the call in once since I think they fit pretty well to the Luftwaffe and the tech tree.
Nother change that I would like to see is removing the “Ju-87 Cluster Bombs” and adding some think else because I think it’s not really worth investing that many munitions to some think that does “nothing”(or lowering the cost).That’s all for now that I wanted to say.
Regards,
RagnarTheGamer -
The only thing I would suggest is that you don’t try to unlock things for infantry and rangers at the same time. They will delay your tanks and prevent you from developing either one. rangers play like stronger airborne that can cancel suppression with tanks and weaker support, while the rifle part plays like spammy luft.
You do bring up some good point OP that I would like to address in a different thread.
BTW the panther luft gets in the A version that has the manual turret, so they are the easiest to flank, and luft is low on munition 99% of the game so faust is low risk.
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Just to throw in my two cents: I agree that Infantry doc is lacking late game vs big cats, especially, when supported by Ostwind and elite troops. Even if you equip your rifle squads with Bazookas, they struggle. The best case is to not go into late game, obviously, but a lot of people are playing VP mode, so the games can last a long time. I have believed, since the early beta tests with this doc, that they needed something else for late game as they lack in support abilities.
- Since they cannot get a Jumbo, can they get a 76mm AT gun? I have always felt they needed this. This would help vs big cats.
- Mines are not effective at the moment, but mines should be able to disable and even destroy tanks. An immobilized big cat is a dead big cat. Mines just do not work well right now. Once the damage model is fixed for these people will start using them. Perhaps a mine laying ability which puts down several mines, like the anti-personnel mines laid by Wehrmacht, as they lay 4 at a time.
- Sticky bombs would help up close, but not much help at a distance. With replacement depot ability, you can stand to lose a few troops.
- What about making the bulldozer add on/upgrade increase frontal armor of 105 and M4, that will help too.
I have suggested these changes since beta testing the doc, but hopefully, all of us filling out the Relic survey will finally get them to release the modding tools and we can get a Jumbo Sherman.
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Probably worth noting that the US Infantry can call in a captured, StuG/Panzer IV/Panther…
Sure there’s a bit of luck involved with getting the Panther but it certainly gives the doctrine a mighty wallop when it comes in (the cost is based on the StuG/PZIV – if you get the Panther it is a significant amount of “free” MP).
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