Balance Pass 1
Background
We have measured the win rate of the different tribes in online games completed in the last few months. We see that some tribes are a lot more prone to win than others.
Today we are releasing a first balance pass that aim to make the tribes more equal!
By looking at this chart it is obvious to see that Bardur, Luxidoor and Kickoo are overpowered. That is also a known fact in the competitive scene and those three tribes are banned in many competitions.
A few other tribes are also falling behind and will receive some improvements later on to help them reach a competitive level.
Cymanti is not present on this list because we do not have enough data on them yet. We will study them more closely in the next balance pass.
Process
To accomplish this we will do several balance passes and analyze the effect of them before we move on with the next pass. That way we can better understand the impact of the changes we make and correct them if necessary.
Adjustments
In this first pass we focus on balancing the overpowered tribes: Bardur, Luxidoor and Kickoo. We have experimented with a lot of different things and finally settled on four changes that we think will bring more balance to the world of Polytopia:
Less Whales
We made sure whales never hang out directly next to a city or next to other whales. This will remove situations where Kickoo start with one or more whales in the vicinity of their capital, giving them a jump start that is hard to beat.
Split up Forestry
Forests are a very powerful type of nature since they can provide population from both animals and lumber huts and also provide direct income by clearing it. Since the Forestry tech contains both the Clear Forest and Lumber Hut improvements it becomes much stronger than other level 2 techs. This benefits Bardur much more since they are closest to Forestry in the Tech Tree.
Therefore we decided to split it up by moving Clear Forest to the Free Spirit tech. This change also opens up for new strategies in the Riding branch.
Thematically it fits well with the destructive aspects of the Riding branch (Disband ability, Clear Forest, Burn Forest), while the Hunting branch now leans more towards Forest Management (Forest Defence, Grow Forest, Lumber Huts and Sawmills).
Reduced income from Clear Forest
Getting 2 stars from each forest is very powerful and overshadows most other strategies. When we moved it to Free Spirit it opened up a hyper express route to Knights and also invalidated the Forestry tech for most tribes. Therefore we decided to bring the reward down to 1 star.
Luxidoor Capital
The special force of the Luxidoor tribe is that they start with a huge city, but it seems that it might have been just a bit too huge, so we changed it from a level 3 to a level 2 city. This will make them more balanced while still keeping their unique play style in place.
Conclusion
All of these changes have been thoroughly tested by the alpha team and debated for eons. We are confident and hopeful that they will make Polytopia more balanced and fun to play, but we won't know for sure until we try it out. That’s why this release is so exciting!
Hugs & Kisses,
-Midjiwan