Static Defence Discussion

This post is quoting a look at Tower balance in a private room, including introductory discussion held on September 9, 2011. I've made other people in the room anon to protect their identity. I'm posting this as per request for those interested that are in the ASW. Sorry, it's long:

Corinthian: 23 T2 Lookouts, 23 T2 Towers, 1 SoS, 1 CoE, 1 Dragon

Corinthian: the stats are depressing QQ

Poster1: lol

Corinthian: defensive structures need a buff. they def arn't even good enough to be bought as allies vs conventional builds

Corinthian: but it's static, so it's a pro/con thing. Static defense balance always changes

Poster1: it's a nice build

Poster1: with evil gualities

Poster2: I remember when stats for tower>combined stats of WA

Corinthian: WA? isn't that world announcement?

Poster2: War aviary

Corinthian: ah

Corinthian: but the defensive T3 was slightly higher at 3

Poster2: I know

Poster2: That's what I mean

Corinthian: I want it back to the T2 balance though

Poster2: Towers had higher combined stats than building

Poster1: i agree cor

Poster2: Sorry cor, I'm newb. What was that?

Corinthian: let me pull up the accurate stats if I can find them..
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Corinthian: T2 L3 - 12,000 combined. Guild L3 - 10,800. Lightning Tower L3 - 34,000 defense...I think. let me look up that last number

Corinthian: then I'll convert it into ratios for you and compare to now lol

Poster1: ok

Poster2: Haha

Poster2: Awesome

Corinthian: Oh. Lookouts gave 5400 combined and were matched with guild defense

Corinthian: people really wondered at that bit.

Poster1: i still use guilds in when building now

Corinthian: Defensive Tower Level 3: 32400

Corinthian: thank goodness for my outdated beginner FAQ

Poster1: lol
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Corinthian: Ok. Lightning Towers had 2.7 times the combined stats over any T2 building, although we could use current post building changes ratio for T2 and Lightning Towers would have....
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Corinthian: T1L3 Tower has 3.375 times the combined stats of a T2L3 Attack, 3.1640625 times the combined stats of T2L3 Defense, and 3.013392857142857 times the stats of a T2L3 mixed.

Corinthian: overall a much better ratio since towers were also buffed in the building changes. however, design appears to more closely follow the T3 vs T1 tower balance, and I'll do that after I do current

Corinthian: T2L3 Tower: 124,272 combined, T2L3 Lookout 97,440 combined, T4L3 Defense 182,352 combined, T4L3 Attack 172,200 combined, T4L3 mixed 189,488 combined

Corinthian: leading to a ratio of...

Corinthian: T2L3 Tower has 0.7216724738675958 times the combined stats of a T4L3 Attack, 0.6814951302974467 times the combined stats of a T4L3 Defense, and 0.6558304483661234 times the combined stats of a T4L3 Mixed.

Corinthian: extremely large difference in ratios. one last bit of numbers to compare to the post changes T1Towers vs T3 troops, then ill do a quick comparision of L4 lookout vs Guild 4 and compare to SoS. If you guys want me to do this privately, feel free to say so.

Poster1: i like it and it's helping a lot

Poster3: I'm reading

Poster4: Its very interesting Cor

Corinthian: I find it interesting that T1 towers got even more silly in the T2 side, but then completely wrecked at you move up in stats after they did the building changes..hence the T3 bit...

Poster2: Cor, ily

Corinthian: T1L3 Tower: 40,500 combined, T3L3 Attack: 36,000 combined, T3L3 Defense: 38,000 combined, T3L3 Mixed 39,480 combined

Corinthian: already you can see this is the middle ground and can't be argued for T2's balance vs T4, but I'll continue

Corinthian: T1L3 Tower has 1.125 times the combined stats of T3L3 attack, 1.065789473684211 times the combined stats of T3L3 Defense, 1.025866261398 times the combined stats of T3L3 Mixed
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Corinthian: something that's worth meantioning is the original building changes for Lightning Towers only raised them to 37500 and not 40500, but was increased in the end, possibly to compensate for the lack of a L4 Tower that many wondered about

Corinthian:However, it would still be a larger increase in ratio for T1L3 towers vs T2, just would have put them at LESS combined compared to 2 out of the 3 T3 buildings, or the buildings that got combined stat buffs(defense/mixed)
--ignore above. Withdrawn later--
Corinthian: This implies that the tower balance at this point in time was to give about the same if not more combined..so why the big slice when T4 came out? Doing spy comparisons now

Poster2: You know what's sad?

Poster2: I understand every single word your saying

Corinthian: it's basic math. I'd hope so

Corinthian:

Corinthian: At release, T1L3 Lookout gave 0.5 times the combined stats of a GuildL3

Poster1: it's not sad Poster2, you are getting an education lol

Corinthian: this was largely complained about, and until the building changes was answered with the argument you hear nowadays about static defense thus requiring less combined as well as the expectation that guilds would almost always be the minority in a build and so things were fine. Plus, there was a slight hesitation to hit spies with the nerf bat again when SDP give them enough trouble and their steal rates at L3 were hit

Corinthian: moving on to the Guild 4 vs Lookout 4, as that's what was out at the time of changes
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Corinthian: woops. defensive towers weren't 37500 initially post buff. just double checked, unless I missed an undocumented edit. ignore that

Poster1: Will do
--explains the above ignore above--
Corinthian: something to note is spies did not get a matching buff to combined stats during the building changes, so this was a slight buff to lookouts/hit to spies even without posting numbers. T1L4 Lookout has 20250 combined, GuildL4 has 27000 combined.

Corinthian: T1L4 Lookout has 0.75 times the combined stats of a Guild L4

Corinthian: that's a .25 increase, but still below 1.0, and mainly based on the availibility for spies to purchase spy attack pots vs spy defense pots.
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Corinthian: (that said, there was a lot of complaining from the spy community )

Corinthian: Alright. SoS comes out and so do T2 Lookouts. SoS L3 has 129920 combined, T2L3 has 97440 combined

Corinthian: This maintains the 0.75 ratio

Corinthian: Here, when compared to the T2 Tower vs T4 ratios, it appears that ratios were nerfed to bring them to the lookout ratios, but even vs the T4 attack building, the ratio is only 0.72 and some change

Corinthian: Also, the reasons for the split ratios are different for a reason, and yet this went unnoticed going into T4 for some reason. Briefly, I'm going to go over potion balance

Corinthian: the above might be poorly worded, apologies^

Corinthian: * on a side note, no comprehensive potion guide exists at the moment for any of you guide writers. something to consider *

Corinthian: For basic knowledge, stat wise, attack/defense, spy attack/defense cancel out. Gold wise, however, potions are cheaper defensively so the defender has the advantage

Corinthian: for troops, this is fine since they have ally plunder mechanics in their favor. for spies, not so much, even in ideal conditions and ignoring pvp conditions

Corinthian: This was realized by ATA at the release of the game going into T3, and spy attack and defense potions only went up to 6.

Corinthian: If you do the math, this means even with SDP constantly stocked, you only had 66800 spy defense ...in a world where a LC Guild L3 spy has 129,600 spy attack

Corinthian: Spies were able to consistantly break players that didn't get lookouts or some guild of their own, especially before BFA became widely known

Corinthian: (in other words, this meant the LB was constantly tested in their spy defenses)

Corinthian: come T3 release...and another spy defense/attack potion arrives with it. Pure Spies with GuildL4 now have 324000 spy attack, and defenders were able to have 206800 from SDP...and here's where my faulty memory comes in. I don't know when the 8th potion was added, if it was added immediately or later on with T4. By the 8th potion, Guild L4 were killed even if LC just from SDP, and the 9th I'll need to do a comparison on to SoS and highlands

Corinthian: alright..it looks like the 8th potion WAS released with the 7th, making SAP required for PvP / farming unless they were hitting the infamous Tower Farms or modern-day OAFs

Corinthian: the current comparison of HLBC SoS to full SDP is currently 1,106,800 Spy Defense vs 3,183,040 Spy Attack, putting the potion balance back in favor of spies. For the sake of time and difficulty explaining/fully stating, I'm going to skip the effects of potion costs and spy equivalent stats for the various brackets, as that's an entirely different can.

Corinthian: anywho, with that stated, I do believe T2 Towers need a buff in combined stats, even if lookouts are fine. It's nice to be able to fully explain my opinion for once. Sorry for being longwinded. Also, no, I don't really expect it to happen this update, this is more an informative.

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With the above stated, what do you outside readers think about the entire thing? Also, sorry the information is a bit spread out. If I have time later perhaps I'll put the majority of the numbers down here.

 

:?:

 

You really got lookouts should be buffed out of that? I was thinking that lookouts are in a good spot at the moment and are at least consistant, while towers on the other hand are at variable strengths at different levels from better-than-release at T2, to decent a-good-pick at T3, to I'm-only-getting-this-for-the-principal-of-the-thing at T4.

@Gen, no worries, Towers have played a large role in the past even without income and it would be interesting to see that re-emerge. Sure, you could argue making it not reduce plunder from attacks/steals would make it more popular, but that would be counter-intuitive for new players and would still leave towers at varying levels of balance throughout the tiers of play.

 

Not quite. I've seen emoji spam etc that purposely go the extremely large character limit.

 

It depends on the situation you are in, which I believe requires an entire guide to go over, or at least a somewhat long post. If you can, try to always have at least 1 tower and 1 lookout just for defence, although at T4 the T2 versions arn't as good, as shown here.