Rebalancing Wargroove: Making a Groove of War Balance Mod
With the latest update hitting Wargroove, it has been heavily suggested that Wargroove won’t see any major balance changes for a long time, if at all. The game is overall in a good place, with a good variety of commanders and units being used in the current meta. Map design allows for a variety of different maps as well, leading to what will likely be years of healthy gameplay.
That said, the balance could be better. While the middle of the pack is more even, there is a clear separation in power levels between the strongest and weakest commanders. Naval is hard to make work without serious amounts of work and putting limitations on the maps that use it. Most maps with naval tend to hard ban the majority of naval units from being built just so merfolk can be used. Trebuchets continue to be trebuchets despite a number of both direct and indirect nerfs in the Double Trouble update.
So balance is significantly improved but there is still some room for more changes. With that in mind, we put together what we hope is a fun attempt at balancing Wargroove. This will feature as a single test event in Test Your Mettle - June 2020.
The Goals
So before we go into the details of what changed, here’s an outline of the goals of the mod:
- To make parts of the game more enjoyable and interesting, not just better balanced.
- To experiment between updates to the mod, as to learn more about what makes enjoyable aspects in a competitive game like Wargroove.
- To give the community an alternative way to play outside the main competitive format.
- For any changes made to be consistent with their thematic design.
- To gather information for a potential Wargroove update or sequel.
- To personally learn more about competitive game development.
What the mod isn’t:
- A replacement for the main competitive format.
- A monopoly on mod use in events. Other mods can be featured in events like Test Your Mettle.
- A rebalance based on simple numbers changes.
- Something for everyone. We realise that while the mod is intended to improve the game’s balance, not everyone will agree with certain changes.
If some of these goals aren’t met but people enjoy themselves, then that is also considered good enough.
The Initial Changes: Commanders
One of the easier things to change without messing with the overall balance of the game are commanders. If a unit is too strong it can break the game completely, if a commander is too strong they can be banned until a nerf comes into play. So let’s talk about the upcoming commander changes.
Caesar: Charge speed is going from medium -> slow.
This is one of the more obvious changes that could be made to a top tier commander sitting at medium groove. Tenri was in a roughly similar position in terms of power and going down to slow groove charge was widely accepted as a good change. It waits to be seen if this will also put Caesar in a good place.
Dark Mercia: Charge speed is going from slow ->medium, the damage is lowered from 30 -> 25.
Another fairly obvious way to buff a commander that is generally seen near the bottom of the tier list. Slow to medium is a huge boost in power, which should allow her to brawl more to use her groove as a heal. That said, grooves dealing raw damage can be difficult to balance around and as a way to counterbalance the new charge time, her damage is being reduced by a small amount with this version of the mod. If it needs to be increased again, it can be.
Elodie: Charge speed is going from slow -> medium.
Like Dark Mercia, this was a fairly obvious way to buff the commander without a massive charge to her groove. I’m a bit wary about her getting too big a power spike from this, but it can be adjusted in the future if needed. It will certainly pull her out of low tier if nothing else.
Errol & Orla: Both grooves are activated, starting with Scorching Fire followed by Cooling Water.
The twins have a really unique design and this buff was made with the intention of respecting that. Individually the grooves are on the weaker end of things, so the combination of getting both at a medium charge should make the commander more powerful while also retaining much of their original design.
Mercival: Medium charge groove that captures enemy structures at two range and restores them to full hp.
What to do with Mercival was incredibly open to interpretation. Capturing buildings with groove was originally another commander’s ability that was left in the game’s code, so we decided to give it to Mercival instead. The mod should also unlock Mercival for all players on the character select screen too.
Nuru: Groove can only summon “formation” units. Units no longer able to be summoned include Golems, Trebuchets, Ballista, Wagons, Dragons, Balloons, Warships, Harpoon Ships and Barges.
This originally started as a ‘how do we remove trebuchet summons from Nuru’ and was built out from there. Only allowing her to summon formation units limits her options greatly while also still leaving her with a number of powerful ones. It also has a thematic consistency to it, with casual fans of the game understanding how the groove works. There has been some feedback about this potentially being too big a nerf, but the aim here is to leave her at a point where she still gets picked.
Ryota: Groove damage ramp per jump is now -5% instead of +5%.
Ryota is currently the strongest commander in the game. Not because he is capable of breaking maps by putting units where the design is intended to keep them from, but just through sheer damage potential. His groove has more damage potential than Ragna or Koji despite being at fast charge. Swapping his ramp lowers his damage, allows for counterplay from opponents, allows for counterplay to that from the Ryota player and keeps the ramping mechanic in the game. Whether this is too much of a nerf will require more testing but he is currently looking strong from current testing.
We’re aware that Ryota’s damage currently goes into negative, thus healing enemy units. This was left in as an Easter Egg of sorts but will be removed in the next update if it’s too much of an issue.
Sigrid: Sigrid can now leap 1–2 squares before eating an enemy unit.
Going with Sigrid’s bat theme, she can now fly a short distance before munching on an enemy. This allows her more aggressive and defensive plays, while still offering the opponent their own counterplays. Outside of her groove, she can brawl safely with the knowledge of being able to escape while recovering health. It will be interesting to see if this is enough of a buff to make her viable.
Other Commanders: No Changes (yet)
We mostly focused on the top and bottom of the tier list with this. Some commanders like Vesper, Koji and Ragna might warrant changes in the future, but it’s important to see how the commanders play in the new meta before making further changes.
The Initial Changes: Land Units
Giant: Movement type changed from walking -> riding (what knights use)
If the recent meta has shown anything, it’s that giants are a bit too dominant once they’re able to be produced. Counters such as trebuchets and dragons aren’t always available, so they need to be toned down a bit. There are a number of possible changes that could happen, so we’re going to start with a more thematic one.
Climbing mountains, moving through dense forest and crossing rivers would be difficult or even impossible for something massive made out of rock, so the giant’s movement is being limited to match that. This limits attack range and some of the better defensive tiles from a unit that is already highly durable. When in open fields or inside flagstone structures, the golem can really go to town.
In theory, this buffs Wulfar heavily against giants, but other changes will result in minimal flagstone on maps. With less flagstone, that leaves less opportunity for Wulfar to kill air and wheeled units. Hopefully, the combination of those leaves Wulfar in a good spot in terms of balance.
Mage: Damage dealt to harpies reduced from 1.4 -> 1.3. Damage dealt to witches reduced from 1.3 -> 1.2.
While not as big a focal point as units like trebuchets, mages have received a lot of feedback since release about being a bit too strong against air. A single mage trades effectively against numerous aerial opponents while having a lower cost than all of them. Mages are also strong in situations without enemy air units as well. This is a small change to see if a small nerf opens up the door to seeing harpies get more use and offer more counterplay against mages in general outside straight-up killing them.
Trebuchet: Minimum range increased from 2 -> 4. Structure base damage reduced from 0.85 -> 0.65 (full hp crits still 1-shot regular structures).
So the most suggested change I’ve seen to trebuchets is simply to increase their cost to something like 1500–1800. The issue with this is it basically admits the unit design is a problem and that you should mostly get it in conditions where you’re about to due to an economic lead.
I personally have an issue with this approach to balance for a few reasons and after showing it to some veteran map makers, they agreed with this approach. If you try to balance a powerful unit purely around cost, it limits the way maps can be designed in terms of economy. It suggests that the unit might not even get used if the map’s economy is low enough. It can leave holes in the balance between army compositions, such as golems being weak to trebuchet damage more than anything else. If the trebuchet can serve a healthy role in the game without also being dominant at other parts of the game, then that makes more sense than being way too good and way too strong.
So what should that role be? Well, we have 2 land siege units in the game. Trebuchet gets a bonus to damage at max range and ballista deals bonus damage to units that are close. It’s clear from the theme of the trebuchet and the current damage bonus that they’re intended to be an aggressive option. They are capable of tearing down defensive lines and smashing structures. The problem comes that they’re also an amazing defensive option that can shut down advances while sitting safely behind a wall of units. Meanwhile, the Ballista deals better damage to units that are closer, covers larger areas with generally lower damage and can attack more kinds of units.
With this in mind, the simplest way to keep the trebuchet in the aggressive role is to remove its ability to cover units nearby. Rockets in Advance Wars had a range from 3–5 but with just how powerful trebuchets are, limiting their range to 4–5 seems like a better starting point. They retain their ability to be used aggressively while having the large drawback that enemy units can get underneath their effective range.
The structure damage change is to weaken game-winning cheese and generally offer more counter-play. A single witch hex is enough to prevent a trebuchet killing a village with 1 critical hit. With an average of 52 crit damage to strongholds, a trebuchet can’t guarantee to be able to kill a stronghold in 2 consecutive turns, allowing more time to mount a defence.
The added benefit of trebuchets being this much weaker is that maps can be more open to wheeled units in general. This lowers the amount of flagstone placed around maps to shut down reinforce paths for wheels. This completely changes how map design functions and allows for more variety in general. Further changes may be required for ballista and wagons due to this, but those can come later.
The Initial Changes: Naval Units
Naval is in a weird place in the current patch and could also use the biggest set of changes overall. The difference between movement distances on across terrain types at sea is huge. Turtles are anywhere between wagons that can attack or a knight moving over regular terrain. With limited terrain options available, finding a good middle-ground for this was an interesting experience.
So we made changes to how the terrain movement values work in regards to naval units. Ocean is now only a 50% movement increase instead of a 100% movement increase. Due to engine limitations, the movement value of any unit cannot go above 12. Because we changed regular sea tiles to a movement value of 3, this caps movement across regular sea tiles at 4.
Since naval isn’t featuring in the upcoming Test Your Mettle June we decided to play around with some bigger changes. “I can make units move twice” was mentioned, so we decided to give it a shot. All ships and turtles now have the option after their initial move to either move again or perform specific actions, such as attacking.
On top of this, the maximum attack range for both harpoon ships and warships have been reduced. They were both able to fight a bit too effectively at a large range, while also moving. On many maps, both ships would make it difficult to use land and air units around sea tiles. With this scaled back attack range, they should hopefully be more balanced and open up map design to more naval. With their ability to move twice when not attacking, they should also be more mobile as well.
I’d like to go more in-depth with the theory behind the naval changes, but this is very much the stage where we’re throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. Unlike changing trebuchets, changing a naval unit changes the entirety of how naval units interact. While naval isn’t featured in any upcoming events, it would be interesting to see people give this a try on naval maps so we can make further changes.
Looking Forward
The current mod version is listed as 0.5 on Nexusmods. The intention is to release updates on a regular basis, with testing each month. I’ll also be writing an something like this to accompany each update, so I hope that will give insight into why decisions are being made. Until then, I hope people enjoy the first public test of the Groove of War Competitive Mod!
