Alpha Build Testing: Balance Updates (Part 2)

For those of you who take an interest in how the balance updates in preparation for the CS:M beta are going, we’re going to take a look at another element of the game that we felt needed to be adjusted. Today we’re going to be talking about terrain on the battlefield.

For anyone who doesn’t know, different terrain grants bonuses when attacking and defending against enemy units. Hills tend to be the best to fight from, followed by forests and then the least desirable tile is the plains. This mechanic exists in order to add another layer of strategy to battles, as well as serving as a way to keep the game fresh due to how these tiles are randomized each time a match starts.

The Challenge:

Terrain bonuses are far too strong
Mountain spawns are far too frequent
All in all, terrain should help enable victory but not be the sole deciding factor

The Solution:

We adjusted terrain bonuses

Thankfully, we had Setra to crunch some numbers and come back with a solution. New multipliers were proposed that were lower than the previous ones but not low enough that terrain could be ignored and it feels much better now.

For example, previously it felt like if an enemy was on a hill tile and you marched up on a plains tile, you had doomed yourself. The big underlying issue with this is that it feels like there is no counter play and it leads to somewhat of a Mexican stand off where player A refuses to give up the higher ground and player B refuses to engage. In some of our early matchups we had situations where we both kept passing turns in the hopes the other would act, as you can imagine this is not fun and not how the game should be played.

In the current version, there are times where when this scenario is repeated, however, now if player B is forced to step into a plains tile, although not ideal, it isn’t a death sentence, and traversing a plains tile for a turn in order to get to somewhere more favourable in the next isn’t as punishing as it was before. It was really important to us that we got this right as we do want to reward good positioning but not make it the single win condition due to favourable RNG on map generation.

We reduced mountain spawns

Another issue we discovered was that mountain spawns were too frequent and had to be reduced. The problem this presented was that having too many of them greatly reduced the size of the map and could put a player in a situation where their only option was to place one unit (with a mountain either side) against two units on the other side. Again, this isn’t fun when it occurs for the negatively impacted player, the fortunate player in this scenario get’s a massive advantage purely due to RNG and that goes against the spirit of a game where strategy is king. We also had to be careful not to make mountains too rare as having the odd choke point here and there is a fun mechanic, when there are other ways to play around it that is. An experienced player will now be able to lure those who are too hasty into these traps, perhaps by closing off other entry to points to their side via unfavourable troop matchups. All in all, we are happy with how this has been balanced right now and it really helps make each battle feel unique.

We will continue to test and balance, but we are happy to report as of now, that units (with base stats) and terrain feel like they’re in a good place. We expect when we focus more on gear that some changes may need to be made there but thankfully these shouldn’t be too complicated to implement as it will most likely be buffs or nerfs to raw number with the possibility of adjusting weapon effects too.