Rebalancing warcraft 2: orc edition

[Pandaprewmaster325]

Hello guys , whoever is browsing this site at 3 am in the morning well its good to see you , ok lets get few things straight first warcraft 2 balance....its old the game will be 30 years old by 2025 visually its looks fine the soundtrack is the best warcraft can offer but the balance man....its not great if any warcraft fan even slightly looks into wc2 he would realize that bloodlust is insane it has been discussed to death but yes this ability needs a nerf the whole game needs a revamp for balance to make every unit unique grunts are footmen and footmen are grunts despite the fact that grunts wear less armor... Today post will be about the orcish race as I currently picked up wc2 for the first time its the dark saga edition on the ps1 I have tried the many remakes of wc2 in wc3 some differ from the others but overall its wc2 copied into wc3 engine the improvements are things like pathfinding and unit selection maximum being 12 but lets not deviate a lot from the topic.



how would we rebalance the orcs to be up to today standards? Ok maybe not the today standards (they are terrible just look at wow lore) but first we have to ask what do orcs do best? What are the orcs famous for? Its brute strength in almost every depiction of warcraft orcs they always looked larger than humans and significantly more muscular in wc3 the real big difference was made with grunts having 700 base health compared to footmen with 420 and peons with 250 health compared to peasants with 220 the difference was set orcs have higher durability humans have better equipment so we gonna translate that into warcraft 2 with its rusty pathfinding and no way points so lets begin

Orcs: orcs would have good melee units reliable enough to base your army around them their range unit the trolls would be something available but not necessary to include in every match  orcs would rely on strong melee mediocre ranged and good spell casters with a slow to start but capable navy buildings are unchanged.

Peon: peons would get +5 health this would help them survive few things maybe 1 more hit from a footman

Grunts: grunts would get +5 health and +1 attack (note none of this is tested yet as such its prone to change its possible to buff the health by +10 instead of +5 in case it wasn't enough)

Troll axe thrower: +5 health  trolls are stronger physically than elves , attack speed would be increased as to make ranged units better honestly ranged units in this game suck a reason for it is the slow attack speed  I currently have no access to the game data so I don't know the exact details of the stats but a buff to attack speed is needed no numbers given currently.

Troll berserker: regenerates health without needing an upgrade , (basically regeneration for free)

Catapults: area of effect damage increased  , the idea is to have catapults damage targets around the central target way more  since it seems splash damage deals around the target 25% damage it would be increased to  35-45%

Ogres: +5 health for base ogre

Ogre magi:+5 health and +1 attack

Death knights: +1 attack

Dragons: +20 health

Goblin zepplin: +1 line of sight

Goblin sappers: +10 dmg 

With this the orc land army would be capable enough while still lacking any sort of healing the better and tanky grunts and ogres would do most of the work trolls would be somewhat viable  with fast regeneration allowing them prolonged survival under fire giving them a chance to escape very melee oriented but we aren't done yet lets head to the navy

The tanker doesn't need any changes

Troll destroyer: +10 health  +10 seconds of build time , the orcs and their allies aren't the most sea faring people but they do build solid ships while lacking the immense experience of the elves and humans to construct battle ships quickly

Transport ships: starts with 1 base armor or gets +6 armor for each upgrade instead of 5

Ogre juggernaut: +50 health +25 seconds of build time 

Sea turtle: +10 or +15 health +10 seconds of build time

The orcish navy would have durability but would be slow to construct  perhaps a worthy trade off.

With the navy done lets head to spells/upgrades

Blacksmith: attack upgrades would cost less for orcs
Lvl1: reduced gold cost from 500 to 300
Lvl2: reduced gold cost from 1500 to 1000

Lumber mill: regeneration upgrade doubles or triples the regeneration speed of berserkers health


Spells:
Bloodlust: bloodlust effect would be halved  , gone are the days of ogre magi spam it still costs 50 mana tho , a possible buff would be +10 duration

Raise dead: skeletons +15 health

This concludes it for this post of rebalancing this old relic forgotten by modern warcraft but we don't forget we don't forgive we are de amani ah I mean warcraft 2 community.

Notes and additional stuff: this will be turned into a mod eventually currently the mod only exists as this post stay tuned for the human edition

-another change would be to farms giving 5 food instead of 4 its literally a scam to pay 750 resources for 4 food

-costs of units would be altered specifically grunts and ogres buildings and spells would cost the same.

Thanks for reading.

[Szwagier]

First of all if you want touch balance, did you play multiplayer?

Second, orc are much stronger than human, you just buffed orcs

[Pandaprewmaster325]

No I haven't tried MP yet im playing on an emulator on a phone not on pc as such I can't try MP but I have watched couple MP matches.

Now I know I just buffed orcs but humans aren't left out LOL im trying to give both factions a unique theme by giving each unit minor differences the post about humans as I said is coming soon

Lastly the idea of the mod isn't very directed to MP as I need to turn this into an actual mod which I can't do at the time being so we gonna stick to hypothesis for now.

[dannyldd]

i already applied some sort of re-balance for some units in Road of heroes MOD:
https://gamebanana.com/mods/433454

basically I think that if archers are buffed a bit, they can stand a chance against bloodlust fest. Yes, the spell is very overpowered. And yes, there has been made a topic thread about re-balancing the game, but overall people are too conservative to get any applied change to evolve the game:

https://forum.war2.ru/index.php?topic=7111.msg101917#msg101917 >>  Topic: Maps with human rebalance stats

https://forum.war2.ru/index.php?topic=7143.msg101916#msg101916 >> Topic: Wall Balance mode (multiplayer)

https://forum.war2.ru/index.php?topic=6516.0 >> Topic: Give ur Ideas for future features in rebalance mode!

https://forum.war2.ru/index.php?topic=6796.msg101992#msg101992 >> Topic: Balance. One of my replies

https://forum.war2.ru/index.php?topic=6511.msg97941#msg97941 >> Topic: War2Rebalanced - We need your feedback!!!


Basically in my Road of heroes mod I applied:
Faster slight attack speed for archers/troll
Rangers/berserkers get a slight further attack speed boost with their researches.
60 HP, faster attack speed and a bit more of damage for skeletons.

Heal get down to 4mana/1HP instead of 6. Difference is big and its an ability that takes actual skill.

Still need to nerf Death&Decay/Blizzard casting range from like 9 to 5 or 6 and mana cost to like 75.
This spell is the ultimate one from death knights & mages. Its not possible that is used so much more than their basic spell, death coil & fireballs. You can get away from so many situations with this spell alone. If its nerfed and only used in certain situations, automatically you will get many other area of effect spells & attacks in their place. Like whirlwinds, death coils, fireballs, even fire shields.

Fire shield would be a fun spell to see playing against since you need actual skill to react in time and move your units appropriately.

----

Be that as it may, you still need usage of code + plugins in order to tweak the game and bring an actual game balance update. It's just not enough with map editor and tweaking some unit statistics.

Mana costs, attack speeds, movement speeds are simply not allowed for casual level people in map editor and requires some core game files that, unfortunately cannot be found in public tutorials.

It took me some time to accustom to the ways to tweak some core game files to achieve this. Maybe in the future will do tutorials if people are interested in.

[Pandaprewmaster325]

i already applied some sort of re-balance for some units in Road of heroes MOD:
https://gamebanana.com/mods/433454

basically I think that if archers are buffed a bit, they can stand a chance against bloodlust fest. Yes, the spell is very overpowered. And yes, there has been made a topic thread about re-balancing the game, but overall people are too conservative to get any applied change to evolve the game:

https://forum.war2.ru/index.php?topic=7111.msg101917#msg101917 >>  Topic: Maps with human rebalance stats

https://forum.war2.ru/index.php?topic=7143.msg101916#msg101916 >> Topic: Wall Balance mode (multiplayer)

https://forum.war2.ru/index.php?topic=6516.0 >> Topic: Give ur Ideas for future features in rebalance mode!

https://forum.war2.ru/index.php?topic=6796.msg101992#msg101992 >> Topic: Balance. One of my replies

https://forum.war2.ru/index.php?topic=6511.msg97941#msg97941 >> Topic: War2Rebalanced - We need your feedback!!!


Basically in my Road of heroes mod I applied:
Faster slight attack speed for archers/troll
Rangers/berserkers get a slight further attack speed boost with their researches.
60 HP, faster attack speed and a bit more of damage for skeletons.

Heal get down to 4mana/1HP instead of 6. Difference is big and its an ability that takes actual skill.

Still need to nerf Death&Decay/Blizzard casting range from like 9 to 5 or 6 and mana cost to like 75.
This spell is the ultimate one from death knights & mages. Its not possible that is used so much more than their basic spell, death coil & fireballs. You can get away from so many situations with this spell alone. If its nerfed and only used in certain situations, automatically you will get many other area of effect spells & attacks in their place. Like whirlwinds, death coils, fireballs, even fire shields.

Fire shield would be a fun spell to see playing against since you need actual skill to react in time and move your units appropriately.

----

Be that as it may, you still need usage of code + plugins in order to tweak the game and bring an actual game balance update. It's just not enough with map editor and tweaking some unit statistics.

Mana costs, attack speeds, movement speeds are simply not allowed for casual level people in map editor and requires some core game files that, unfortunately cannot be found in public tutorials.

It took me some time to accustom to the ways to tweak some core game files to achieve this. Maybe in the future will do tutorials if people are interested in.

Yes I have seen your work  , trolls and archers definitely need an urgent buff for skeletons I think more durability makes more sense than damage , I don't know how the game community has been ok with such balance for 29, years and notice the most discussed topic is the difference between bloodlust and heal before spells casters come out you are literally playing a mirror match expect its different skins , about accessing game data I think the data is mpq stored? Wouldn't it simply be extract it get the statistics file edit it and boom a new mod? You see I think we could use a unofficial patch to fix some AI issues update pathfinding etc and rebalance the game a bit something akin to unofficial crusader patch for stronghold crusader

[dannyldd]

The most realistic way to experience re-balance is checking out this "Rebalanced" mode in multiplayer. In game lobby on multiplayer, you can set up this mode.

Either that or you can check my mods or the ones from Ed gorod that has some special tweaks to abilities or new ones to bring a whole new balance.


I used to play StarCraft 1 as amateur against some pros and the issue is more likely the Fans that settle down for the current balance. As much as people like the game, there's not such a thing as perfect balance, besides many speech these words. Neither Starcraft 1, war2 or any other game.

But its up to community to change that out.


I also thought that Trolls sight nor Berserk regeneration upgrades can be tweaked as well. Regeneration is not even close to how useful marksmanship upgrade is for Rangers.

If you're aware from MPQ file, then you can try that out. Except that this file alone pretty much replaces the base game files. In order to change mana costs or attack speeds for certain maps, then it still needs usage from extra tools or even code.

But there's no tutorial available for such a thing.

The game still can be tweaked way more now, thanks to Ed since like 2-3 years already but there's no tutorials to do such a thing. But I'm aware very few people may know already the existence of new generation modding capabilities being brought by Ed gorod.

[Pandaprewmaster325]

The most realistic way to experience re-balance is checking out this "Rebalanced" mode in multiplayer. In game lobby on multiplayer, you can set up this mode.

Either that or you can check my mods or the ones from Ed gorod that has some special tweaks to abilities or new ones to bring a whole new balance.


I used to play StarCraft 1 as amateur against some pros and the issue is more likely the Fans that settle down for the current balance. As much as people like the game, there's not such a thing as perfect balance, besides many speech these words. Neither Starcraft 1, war2 or any other game.

But its up to community to change that out.


I also thought that Trolls sight nor Berserk regeneration upgrades can be tweaked as well. Regeneration is not even close to how useful marksmanship upgrade is for Rangers.

If you're aware from MPQ file, then you can try that out. Except that this file alone pretty much replaces the base game files. In order to change mana costs or attack speeds for certain maps, then it still needs usage from extra tools or even code.

But there's no tutorial available for such a thing.

The game still can be tweaked way more now, thanks to Ed since like 2-3 years already but there's no tutorials to do such a thing. But I'm aware very few people may know already the existence of new generation modding capabilities being brought by Ed gorod.

Yes true MP is a good way to know what works and what doesn't work , you see when I say "mod" I mean changing the game data universally , I don't think custom balance for maps is counted as a mod as it only applies to that one map , now here is the thing im not interested in trying out new additions as I think the game needs no new units or more spells it needs updating that is having unique models for each unit and by this I mean ogres and ogre magi etc should have distinct looks there is a mod about this on moddb that adds this  its confusing when ogre magi has runes all over his body in the icon but looks same as ogre , the game also needs notifications for when an upgrade is finished a lot of things this game needs to modernize not only balance.

[dannyldd]

I'm not sure about your last sentences. Do you want units like Ogre-magi or paladins or Rangers to have a different sprite ? Because this is also achieved in the recent mods I've made like Road of heroes.

Rangers get their hood. Paladins get yellow eyes sprites. Ogre magi turn blue. This can be done with code + plugins, but actually this feature alone already existed since like 1995.

Blizzard just did not give proper usage to this feature. There's a mod called Weapons of our Warfare that I also imported to war2 windows version where knights change sprites when turning paladin. If this is what you referred to.

[Pandaprewmaster325]

I'm not sure about your last sentences. Do you want units like Ogre-magi or paladins or Rangers to have a different sprite ? Because this is also achieved in the recent mods I've made like Road of heroes.

Rangers get their hood. Paladins get yellow eyes sprites. Ogre magi turn blue. This can be done with code + plugins, but actually this feature alone already existed since like 1995.

Blizzard just did not give proper usage to this feature. There's a mod called Weapons of our Warfare that I also imported to war2 windows version where knights change sprites when turning paladin. If this is what you referred to.

Yes I meant new models for these units it would help to easily identify them without having to click on them

[Pandaprewmaster325]

Ok so I have played around with whirlwind a bit and oh allah its awful the range of the whirlwind is abysmal terrible range felt scammed when paying for that upgrade its only appealing cuz it costs 100 mana I think its possible to extend the range of effect of whirlwind a bit bigger would help the spell while keeping it this unpredictable piece of garbage.

[Pandaprewmaster325]

Hating on whirlwind part 2: so I realized that since whirlwind costs a 100 mana it could be spammed easily and with couple death knights you could make 4-8 whirlwinds and block certain places now that might be why blizzard made the reach of this spell bad since u could spam it and it can wander to everywhere so it might have been considered too OP by blizzard now the problem is all units can outrun whirlwind so you don't get any value of that mana used look I don't think this spell needs damage increase or lower mana cost all it needs is some more reach and it will be a fantastic spell it doesn't even have to kill units it can just soften them up or force enemies to change positions the current whirlwind range makes it so easy to dodge and it won't force relocating player units that often due to its range taking out a good portion of the threat or fear of getting clapped hard by whirlwind  but damn blizzard the spell is so cool u didn't have to do it this dirty ):

[Pandaprewmaster325]

Ok so another buff to the skeletons would be a slightly faster attack  it won't be huge just a little boost the sooner they attack the better without necessarily changing their damage

[Pandaprewmaster325]

I just realized catapults do actually deal splash damage lol but its little damage compared to the targeted unit as such the only thing to do would be to increase the damage done to units effected by splash damage its said that catapults deal 25% of their damage to units caught ub in the area of effect so an increase by 10%-20% would be enough to make the catapult have a unique function compared to the ballista I do hope this isn't also hardcoded.

[Mistral]

well 
it is hardcoded 
and catapult do not need to be stronger lol, its already have huge advantage against ballistae

[Pandaprewmaster325]

well 
it is hardcoded 
and catapult do not need to be stronger lol, its already have huge advantage against ballistae

If that's the case then amendments must be made well since ballista gets increased damage catapults would need to get something not necessarily a damage increase simply having them start with  someI base armor  Like 1 or 2 armor would suffice.

You see my aim is to make a mod that gives each unit in the game a unique perk or quirk its counterpart doesn't have these come in the form of small changes to actually have a good amount of difference between counterparts.