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I was thinking about the fundamentals of balancing the other day. And there are fundamentals; but I couldn't figure out anything short of a broad explanation.

Then, I suddenly got it: A principle of three characteristics defines balancing! There are other things to remember, but, theoretically, you can balance virtually anything with this principle.

Essentially, any unit you invent will have one of three major advantages: 1. Fast Producing, 2. Cheap, 3, High quality.

There's a catch however: One unit can only possess at one time 2 of those qualities; not the whole shebang. All you have to do next is give it a purpose and at least one type of counter.

Here's an example:
Suppose we have a faction called "The Alliance" and it's a generic medieval-ish sort of kingdom, rather bland and uncreative as such.

Now, lets suppose we create a unit called the "swordsman" who is a bland and generic infantryman.

We give him the two qualities we think he should have, in this fast and high quality, meaning he will train slowly but will be powerful once on the field. His purpose is to counter pikemen/spearmen. His major counter comes in the form of cavalry/archers.

Note, however, that we are not done. Since there is likely to be somewhere on some other factions army list another unit who is fast producing, high quality, counters pikes and is weak against pikemen and spearmen, we will have to create what I call a ladder.

At the top of the ladder is the strongest of these units in terms of sheer statistics. It may or may not be the most efficient unit in it's class. However, because it is higher on the ladder, it will be stronger.

Tell me what you think. I haven't been following Open War perhaps as much as I should have been, but I still have some ideas which, lacking humility, I will say, are great. I have a hard time believing you have already figured out balance.

All you writen was right for me,good view.

This doesn't completely cover it, although in a raw sense it does appear to.  What you miss is the larger picture outside of a battle.  There are several advantages here that cannot be ignored.

The first is decisiveness.  There are two ways to look at this issue.  The simplest way is this: suppose I have a massive battleship and you have five small destroyers.  I shoot one volley and kill a destroyer.  You shoot one volley and damage me a little.  Your firepower has been reduced to 80%, but I'm still at full strength!  Because of this, an equal "value" of smaller units actually is inferior to one big unit.  Moreover, if the battleship wins it retreats (highly damaged...) to get repaired.  If the destroyers win, they've lost several units which will require full replacing.  This decisiveness advantage is huge, and cannot be overlooked. 

Another advantage is speed.  Never, EVER discount the advantages of a fast unit.  A faster unit can, first and foremost, pick its battles.  Unless you're in a very tight (urban, mountain, or forested) environment a group of fast units never has to engage an enemy if it doesn't want to.  Moreover, fast units have a keen response time.  A slow group of units has a hard time responding to changing conditions on the battlefield, and may need to spread itself thinner in order to properly defend many areas.  Faster units do not.  The final, perhaps most critical, function of speed is in retreating and pursuing.  If things are going badly, fast units can just run away and cut their losses.  However, slower units will be tailed for great distances by faster enemies, making retreat nearly impossible.  Speed won't help you (well, it will, but not much) in a direct confrontation, but it will help you ensure that when that battle happens, it's to your favour, and the outcome is a lot more devastating for your enemy.  Although it's quite a minor point in most games, stealth is another matter we should consider (and hopefully do better at getting a strong presence).  What you can't see most certainly can hurt you, and in many respects it works a lot like speed.  It won't help a whole heck of a lot once the battle has started, but it lets you pick and choose your battles for the right opportunity, and can help you get away afterwards.

You also have maximum army size to consider, synergies between units, liabilities (deliberately designed weaknesses) in a faction, and economic inequalities.  To break balance down into such a simple formula is missing the point.  We need to be able to take an imbalanced scenario, and figure out how to work with that and grant unique advantages to overcome weaknesses.  Caeluin may have "cheap" units, but its weak economy means most of the time that's actually very expensive, and their troops don't show tremendous combat strength for it.  To compensate, they have a massive decisiveness advantage in the form of speed and stealth.  Balkurn is very much the polar opposite in this regard; very strong economy to make its expensive troops look affordable, but very slow and lumbering.  This forces it to split up its forces, losing any decisiveness advantage it may have had.  The key to playing as either faction is to try to provoke a situation that allows you to use your advantages, while trying to prevent a situation that exploits your disadvantages.  It's these more complex interrelations that should make the game more interesting, and they don't necessarily follow a simple formula.


Keep in mind that the among most powerful special ability in Warcraft III is the "ensnare" ability, on the 'weak' raider unit.  Using ensnare, the raider can prevent an enemy unit from retreating with its army, allowing you a free kill.  Do this four or five times throughout the game, and you may have incurred a massive extra economic loss in unit replacements upon your enemy.  This ability has no inherent combat value; most units are either tough melee units that are designed to just stand in one place or ranged units that don't need to move into attack range anyways.  It's the ability's power in non-combat situations that really shines and makes it one of the game's most powerful.

Interesting read

From your own speed argument I'm not sure whether the equal "value" of smaller units actually is by default inferior to one big unit.
Besides that, small units provide small targets, and a highly damaged big unit in repair docks is little help against even one small unit.

What I basically mean to say is that I'm 100% agreed realistic approaches to combatmechanics create interestingly complex and dynamic playgrounds.

Solinx

From your own speed argument I'm not sure whether the equal "value" of smaller units actually is by default inferior to one big unit.

Depends on how it's implemented; admittedly in this case five destroyers may well have the speed advantage over one battlecruiser, but let's use BFME as an example and instead we have five groups of soldiers and one group of knights.  Now it's VERY much against the soldiers.  In fact, the knight (with discounts) costs about as much as three groups of soldiers if I recall correctly, but will easily crush them.

Notice how knights have all of the advantages I listed above?  There's the reason in a nutshell why all Gondor players chose knights.

I know

It's the combination of a wide range of factors that make up the fitness of a certain unit in a certain scenario.
You can't compare units on one specific aspect and say which unit is best.

Solinx

While balancing can be done predictably, it's probably mostly trying values and seeing if they work.