Arbalests were the centerpiece of many Player compositions prior to their change. One of the main metas for the game, on any difficulty, was doing an Arbalest build to make it through more difficult Death Nights and the Last Stand. So when we nerfed Arbalests, we buffed other units as well (Soldier, Pikeman, Sentinel etc.) to compensate and help create different compositions Players felt like they could use to win. There should be multiple paths to winning rather than one dominant one that undermines a lot of what the other content has to offer.
The other reason for their change was that they were the best for defense and exploration. They were used to take down special units and clear the map when exploring making them far too flexible over other units. Economically, the Arbalests were cheaper than the siege units with higher range and base single-target damage making them far more viable than late-game units. This meant that you could easily kill enemies cheaply while mostly being safely out of range. This was a balance problem we felt we really needed to address as we wanted to make sure no single unit made you feel like victory was assured. As a result, we wanted to dial back a bit on their mobility during exploration and keep them as a special unit killer, making them highly effective against the higher tier enemies when defending.
To help reinforce their nature as special unit killers, we gave them a damage buff against certain special nightmare units (Spitters, Wraiths and Crushers fall into this category currently). Previously we had the Arbalests base damage at 50 and after the nerf, this was cut down to 25. However, they deal double damage against special nightmare units, bringing them back up to 50 again. This makes them extra effective when defending against these types of units but not so great when fighting hordes of other smaller nightmares as that is a purpose saved for other units like the Flamer or Impaler. This helped curtail the exploration abilities of the Arbalest and create more risk if you do choose to go down that path.
What does nerfing their movement speed allow us to do with our units and nightmares going forward?
By nerfing the movement speed, it puts the Arbalest in more of a defensive position and gives them a stronger purpose as a special unit killer. This opens up room for other units to shine as exploration units rather than the Arbalest who excels more in defending against deadly death nights. It also ensures the Arbalest has a clearer role going forward.
It also helps give a bit more purpose to our nightmares by deciding what certain nightmares are weak to. We explored this first with our Bursters, where fire was their kryptonite, and would slow them down to a crawl while also taking additional damage. Now Arbalests, with the damage, buff deal higher damage to special nightmare units too. As we bring in new nightmare units, it will be a lot easier to define what it is strong against and what it is weak against.
What do we want for unit compositions going forward?
We want unit compositions to have proper intent and when you build one, it serves a purpose. So there will be units that have a high movement speed, regen Hp quickly and when put together, help to form a bio-ball that’s great for exploration but weak when overwhelmed by many nightmares at once. The same is true for defensive bio-balls where the Player can create compositions of units that have high damage and health but move slowly, keeping them more effective at defending against Death Nights and pester waves.
With these exploration and defensive compositions, there are many units that will fit into them and we have other units planned to fit within those paradigms as well, opening up many flexible options for how a Player would like to create their armies for different situations.
We hope that provides some more clarity on why changes were made. We're definitely going to keep an eye on the balance of the game to make sure AoD continues to be difficult but fair.
Let us know what you think and what else you'd like to hear us talk about.
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