AW map design $0.02 + DoR balance by Duster

After completing a match on a map called The Question Mark Is Part Of The Title ( http://awbw.bulletriddenlich.com/prevmaps.php?maps_id=66696 ), there's definitely quite a bit to talk about.

First I'm going to talk about map design. It has definitely made headway, from involving the FTA Counter to having contested properties for anti-stalemate measures to even imbalancing the fronts intentionally. TQMiPotT makes creative usage of that last one by giving the weak front an Airport to encourage building anti-air units from the strong front, and there's also some grudging respect to give to the Pipe Seams for Max to have incentive to build Artillery to let him enter the open center without a tech or air unit. I'm definitely acknowledging this, at the very least to make it clear that map design evolution is definitely a lasting journey, one still going even now. I fashion myself a prodigy in figuring game balance, not without reason via figuring out the concept of Affinity Play, but it took me the longest time to figure that concept out, so safe to say we all would have our blind spots.

I do of course have my own ideas. If TQMiPotT won't get redesigned to accomodate the ideas, at the very least future maps could surely consider them in addition to what's already available. Without further ado:

*Give Mechs love
This is something to avoid being overboard with to prevent abuses by somebody like Sami, but working early game Mech builds is a good way to check Max. Besides that Max doesn't boost Mechs, Max's Light Tank will have its ability to do an early game offense stopped by a well-supported Mech:
-Max's Light Tank deals 58% to a City Mech, only more if the CO is Grimm.
-The Mech, at 4 HPs and no attack changes, will deal 19% to the Light Tank assuming Plains, and likely follow up for 20% on the opponent's own phase due to low cost.
-A second Mech would deal 50% if the follow-up isn't done first, 51% for all intents and purposes. This would be minimum 90%.

It should be noted that Jess and Colin have attack reductions for the Mechs, and Flak, Jugger, and Sonja have luck issues as well, though Sonja has (or should have anyway) her 1.5x ATK modifier on counterattack. Sonja would deal minimum 26% + 17% + 42% = 85%, if you need the math.

It's not like Mechs will break things unless given too much of a chance, because they're slow and they have problems with dealing with Infantry as well. The most important thing is to make sure Max considers being technical and varied to prevent him from winning by anything too oversimplified.

Other checks against Max should also be considered. I personally can't think of others that I'd be certain would avoid being degenerate, but I'm sure something would come up because of how much problem Max has with chokepoints. I'll be more focused on the opposite end of the spectrum.

*Relevant Road Tiles along expected battle lines
In general, it's ideal to check Grit. Keeping him viable within this and simply as somebody who rewards technical gameplay with blockers for his range-fire stuff would be all the better, but with Grit's track record, that shouldn't be too hard.

Want to know what tends to kills a defensive formation that doesn't resort to the Black Bomb? A 1HKO, preferably luck-proof, happening where the defender absolutely would not want it to happen. If it does, key deterrence units will very likely be caught in a surgical strike, preventing any chance of a counterattack working well. There aren't a lot of matchups that exceed 105% base though, so many COs struggle to get this going if there's too many tiles with any cover. Relevant Road tiles will fix this by ensuring 1HKO from the following matchups if the attacking CO has no ATK penalties and the attacking unit is at full health:
-Anti-Air Tank VS any infantry
-MD Tank VS Infantry or any sub-16K vehicle other than the Light Tank
-Bomber VS any sub-16K land unit other than Anti-Air Tank (Bomber VS Infantry or Mech is 110% and thus needs only minor luck for 1HKO on Plains, but better safe than sorry)

The COs who don't benefit from those 3 are Sami, Grit, Colin, and AWBW Sturm (AW1 VS Sturm), with Flak, Jugger, and Sonja also needing to worry about being gimped by bad luck. Bomber also gets weakened for Drake and Jess. Of course, as for other ensured 1HKOs added by CO boosts:
-Max: Light Tank VS Recon or tech indirects; MD Tank VS Mech or Light Tank; Bomber VS MD Tank or Anti-Air Tank
-Sami: Mech VS Recon or tech indirects
-Jake: MD Tank on Plains VS Mech
-Grit: Artillery VS infantry; Rocket Launcher VS infantry, Recon, AA Tank, or tech indirects
-Eagle: Bomber VS MD Tank or Anti-Air Tank
-Jess: MD Tank VS Mech
-Kanbei: same as both Max and Grit (actually the same as Grimm instead, bloody disproportionate stats)
-Sensei: Mech VS Recon, APC, or tech indirects; Battle Helicopter VS infantry
-Grimm: Mech VS Recon or tech indirect, Light Tank VS Recon or tech indirect, MD Tank VS Mech or Light Tank; Artillery VS infantry, Recon, or tech indirects; Rocket Launcher VS infantry, Recon, AA Tank, or tech indirect; Bomber VS MD Tank or Anti-Air Tank

And this doesn't even cover the Battleship, the DS units, or the still fairly guaranteed 1HKOs. Lots of options added.

Just keep in mind not to rely on this alone, because there are COs who boost defense daily: Kanbei, Eagle for air units, Javier with Communication Towers or against indirects, Sturm, and Von Bolt.

*Consider extra Airports

There's a fear of wanting to avoid too many building points because they invite spam. However, the least expensive air unit is the Transport Helicopter, which requires only 84 Net Attack to 1HK with the Anti-Air Tank compared to the 96 for Infantry, can't hide behind terrain or cost to give it a defense factor, and can't even attack, making it require flow to use well anyway. The Battle Helicopter clocks in at 9K cost as well, and none of the other air units can be spammed at all. Air units can be built simultaneously with infantry, but if there are any Airports at all, this is guaranteed to be done regardless, and Battle Helicopters and infantry still have to worry about first strike by Battle Helicopters and Anti-Air Tanks.

The benefit of extra Airports is that it allows for more air units to pressure for budgeting by somebody who wants Artillery, by demanding more anti-air. This checks COs like Grit better, though COs such as Max are subtly checked too when they can't build tanks all the time and expect results, forcing them to be more technical. Max still would have his +20% boost for all vehicle directs, so added Airports would benefit him directly, making them something to be wary with, but the big picture suggests that an attack boost, effectively global it may be, would matter less with the existence of hard counters.

*HQ positioning should encourage offense

TQMiPotT has its share of good ideas, but has a critical design flaw that's particularly notable when going up against Grit: the HQ is easily guarded by the strong front being dug in. The whole point of the HQ is to make sure that the player has to pay attention to it to prevent somebody from capping it with a sneak attack. This doesn't matter if the HQ is easily guarded, so the other player would have to fight against the dug-in position head-on either way.

The HQ being too exposed can overreward Sami's Victory March, but given intended front imbalance, I think having the HQ slightly behind the expected battle lines around the weak front would still require punching through for Sami, but more importantly spike demand to spread the garrison thin. Having units need to spread out in the early game would certainly make it easier to work with Grit's Affinity Play: calculated burst strikes, which the opponent would want to do to devastate Grit's forces without charging up his COPs and their vicious total +50% ATK, oh and total +2/+3 Range.

I also need to point out that if units have to spread out, 2HKOs become way more important, which is good given that by all indications Advance Wars tries to balance around them, as evidenced by how base 65% is a guaranteed 2HKO on a City unit thanks to the terrain defense weakening over HP. (Makes me wonder why the defense change COs don't have the weakening over HP too.) Fortunately, plenty of sane matchups on the player's phase has the attacker's base damage at 55% or above, enough for 2HKO on Plains, and those that aren't tend to have something justifying going into them anyway.

This would also help to keep the tech unit that would likely be needed for a burst strike from being tagged by a kamikaze when law of diminishing would suddenly not be the kamikaze's friend.

*Check the number of actively contested Cities

I emphasize "check" to avoid slipping into bias for Max or offensive play, a reason I list this after the HQ positioning point, but it can get frustrating to take the center and feel like any progress made by doing that gets overly limited by the opponent having a dug-in position. Be sure to check the ratio of properties between both sides based on one player having center control, because Artillery still are only 6K, which has contributed to them being obnoxious.

Sami is an arguable concern because she can take Cities just by touching them, but units around the center when it's controlled are more likely to be vehicles, not infantry. Lash could be trouble with the +30% ATK, but she still has to rush the properties when Terrain Tactics and Prime Tactics are expensive for their effects, in addition to having the bonuses only on terrain to begin with. That leaves Kindle, who I find to be worth being the replacement for Grit in the Broken COs due to her having design issues anyway.

At the end of the day, I'm just providing my 2 cents, but that is certainly bound to be worth allowing to add up.

-

Meanwhile, I have to talk about something I couldn't help but notice: Days of Ruin seems to have its rebalancing result from overthinking. The obvious example is, of course, the 1500G Infantry, given how Infantry numbers were high before. My belief is that infantry should simply be reasonable to take out efficiently, to where any spam capabilities ultimately get outpaced by their destruction rate.

What I caught on to, though, is that there is a unit in DoR that seems to be responsible for DoR's general rebalances: the Duster.

See, the match I talked about had involved plenty of Battle Helicopters from both players. This was because Anti-Air Tanks deal mediocre damage against indirects when they have too much importance by getting rid of infantry to expose carelessly and simply don't have efficient evasion when there's the inevitable Light Tanks that would be around as blockers. Battle Helicopters would make for significant priority targets to stop them from doing potshots or efficient meatwalling. Part of me was left wishing I could have afforded a Fighter, but if that was happening because they kept me from advancing more efficiently, they're doing their jobs.

Therein lies the rub. Days of Ruin threw in the Duster as a less expensive version of the Fighter, which isn't even new in the Nintendo Wars series. The intent, a way to efficiently pressure Battle Helicopters earlier, isn't all bad at all, but it ends up proving that if the balance is already able to work well, these new options should be kept as just that: new options. They're quite capable of being welcome additions, as proven by the likes of Pac-Man in Super Smash Bros. 4, but they should avoid forcing the developers to fix what ain't broke.

In AW1/2/DS, the Battle Helicopter could easily evade anything below 20K that could deal decent damage to it, via terrain against Anti-Air Tanks and distance against Anti-Air Missile Launchers. Those units couldn't go on the offensive well either because Light Tanks are natural frontliners. Days of Ruin changes this, as Dusters cost 13K, can't be escaped by simple distance or terrain, and exploit the fact that AA land units can't play offense well in general to be safely on the frontlines. They can't efficiently attack important armors well, but Fighters can't at all, so in retrospect, perhaps Dusters are too effective against air units.

One might say that I'm overthinking the Duster being responsible for about everything going on in DoR; after all, the AA Tank was made less expensive and the AA Missile Launcher got 1 extra Max Range, and in turn the Battle Helicopter, with its shortened lifespan, would have its base against Light Tanks increased from 55% to 70% (and for some reason, its base against Artillery wasn't raised from 65% at all, what is that nonsense). The thing is, there is another unit that the Duster, and only the Duster, would have efficiently threatened: the Bomber.

The Bomber had been balanced before as being so expensive, but still something efficient at doing things as a singleton unit, as it has 1HKOs across the board, strong damage against the MD Tank and Anti-Air Tank, and forces an anti-air response while being even more mobile than Battle Helicopters, which as we already know were enough to make a Fighter tempting, though at least a Bomber would justify a Fighter a lot more. One can tell that it's ultimately meant to be an endgame unit. The threat of the Duster would have justified reducing the price tag. Honestly, in hindsight, I think the Duster should have had the borderline weak stats that one Days of Ruin LP complained about:
http://lparchive.org/Advance-Wars-Days-of-Ruin/Update%2008/

I can't say the Duster is an innately imbalanced unit, because it does worse damage against armor than the Battle Helicopter while costing more. Where my complaints come up is that it is still an extreme enough air-to-air unit, which is supposed to be the Fighter's niche. Battle Helicopter already self-counters and gets busted by Anti-Air Tanks, so the Fighter was already merely a convenience if it could be available. The Duster provides convenience, so the Battle Helicopter has to do more in sane matchups. (Again, don't ask me why it doesn't have a better BD value against Artillery.)

There is, of course, the strengthened emphasis on unit RPS between the Light Tank, the Anti-Air Tank, and the Battle Helicopter, but I think it's between strong enough. I can see a case for the Battle Helicopter VS Light Tank matchup, but I think increasing it to 60% or even 65% would have sufficed, because the Light Tank is supposed to survive stuff up to and including being countered outside a bad position. Nerfing Battle Helicopter VS Anti-Air Tank was needless, because as displayed in whoisthisgit's video of Kanbei's Error AC (Worst Levels Ever #7), base 25% is particularly awful enough when the retaliation results in being 1HKOed, and with the more expensive unit in the matchup no less. The chip damage was fine because just taking equal HP damage in the counterattack wouldn't even be welcome. Finally, Anti-Air Tanks were nerfed both ways against Light Tanks, but those guys already would likely have too much to do to care about chip damage against Light Tanks and never want to get blasted at all. I can see more aesthetic tweaks, but definitely not outright completely forcing RPS, which would have to be done simply to limit the Duster's effectiveness rather than checking the Duster itself.

I particularly need to highlight the Duster changing everything when the Fighter already has usability problems in the earlier AWs, perhaps ironically what the Duster was meant to address. There is not one sub-20K unit in AW1/2/DS that the Fighter can even attack that the Battle Helicopter can't combat efficiently enough, busting the Fighter's flow despite how tempting it is to want to build one. It's not a bad thing to want to do micromanagement with units that would require more effort for taking out enemy air units, but the Fighter becomes too likely to run afoul of a wall full of armor and anti-air, when repair opportunities for a singleton air unit are already highly limited (another reason I think maps would benefit from more Airports) and the Fighter, unlike the Battle Helicopter, can't even attack important armors. The Fighter countering the Bomber has the issue that the Bomber is bad until endgame anyway, so I don't get why Days of Ruin nuked the matchup's base damage, given that it becomes hard enough to build a Fighter efficiently.

To be sure, I wouldn't be surprised if the Fighter is a macromanagement compliment, so that would definitely be throwing me off. Even so, imbalances can happen easily when the game thinks to try to balance around something that is itself imbalanced in its own design, and the mainstream series has been showing signs of map design issues:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39HgbFVtOqI&t=1m26s
Hmm, the HQ is covered by the Factories there. Interesting. Doubly interesting is that that happens so often in the VS maps.