[Balance] (Leafcutters) Revisit Hatching Costs and Perks

Rayalot72

Maximum difficulty
Beta Tester
Extremely Helpful Person
Both of the 3.X levels have trouble with enemies being too powerful, and not worth fighting due to leafcutters not being able to make use of corpses. While this does do well to encourage passive strategies, which is good for variety, both leafcutter levels do force the player to engage with strong enemies from time to time. Rather than weakening most of the opponents in the rainforest, it might be better to revisit some of the colony balance as a blanket solution. Any one of these suggestions might fit the bill, and I've organized them from best to worst (reading top to bottom), in my opinion.

Regeneration:

A lot of losses aren't realized in an initial engagement. Even if, say, 70% of your ants survive, almost all of them will be under half health, especially when going up against powerful AoE attacks. Leafcutters could be differentiated if they're rewarded for having survivors, as opposed to taking low damage, and I think a very high regeneration when out of combat long enough would do this. Leafcutters at low health, when left alone for several seconds, quickly start to regain their health, leaving them healthy for the very next encounter after a relatively short time. This would give new purpose to the majors' abilities, since they'd be used to prevent deaths rather than merely reduce damage.

Flat Hatching Cost Reduction:

The reduction from 8 to 6 on the media was definitely a necessary balance change, but it might not be enough. I still favor 5 as more reasonable, and I still believe Majors could due with some reduction if they're going to be the main combatants (and, therefore, the brunt of the player's losses). My original suggestion for 10, down from 15, is a bit much, but 12 I think I can argue would be enough to change the meta.

Upgrades Reduce Hatching Cost:

This would be an interesting unique change to leafcutters strategically. Not only would it make upgrades a valuable investment for ants other than majors (currently optimal to upgrade), it would reward slower play in exchange for the ability to use brute force against almost any opponent. This is interesting in 3.1 and 3.2, since both are very time-sensitive missions. You'd be giving the enemy leafcutters or army ants and the environment time to ramp up in their threat to you, but you can now face these greater dangers with a significant reduction in the cost that would otherwise make them impossible to deal with. This would require a fairly significant reduction in hatching costs, though. It could either be implemented as a gradual reduction per upgrade, or a lvl 3 bonus that lobs off a significant percentage.

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Please do something, though. With the way leafcutter food acquisition works, it's just not suited for EotU's combat as of now.
 
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Mr_Ced

Colony
All of these are great suggestions, but most of all the Regeneration. It would be interesting and awesome if the leaf cutters gained some advantages over other ants, since in my opinion they are quite weak.
 

pakitane16

Colony
Regeneration will mess with how they planned 3.X challenge mode. It will counter the phorid flies debuffs. Reducing respawn cost is planned for fire ants I think.

I think leafcutter are just overpriced. They are powerful, but considering how they only have one way to get food, they are not that great. Carnivorous ants can simply get 7 soldiers from underground food, while leafcutter have expose themselves overground, and wait a long time to have media. You just can never have a good headstart.

I suggest 50 for media, and 100 for major. I think it will also make 3.X level not that crazy anymore. And change underground food to leaves if you pick leafcutter in freeplay.
 
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Rayalot72

Maximum difficulty
Beta Tester
Extremely Helpful Person
Regeneration will really mess with how they planned 3.X challenge mode. It will counter the phorid flies debuffs. Reducing respawn cost is planned for fire ants I think.
What are the debuffs rn?

They could probably just give phorid flies the power to disable regeneration. The idea already is that you only regen out of combat.

Just noticed your PFP is Durant.
 

pakitane16

Colony
A bunch of stat drop and damage over time until the infected die, similar to waste poisoning. Disable regeneration may be the right idea.
 

Rayalot72

Maximum difficulty
Beta Tester
Extremely Helpful Person
A bunch of stat drop and damage over time until the infected die, similar to waste poisoning. Disable regeneration may be the right idea.
Yah, shouldn't be a problem. DoT is going to keep them in combat.
 

JohnSlugDisco

Administrator
Staff member
Developer of EotU
Regeneration will mess with how they planned 3.X challenge mode. It will counter the phorid flies debuffs.
The phorid flies actually do an instant kill two minutes after infection, the damage is not gradual so it would not effect them at all. All interesting ideas here. I think a balance pass is needed but it needs to be done carefully. I will start collating campaign difficulty feedback and look into it next week.
 
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