Proposed Changes To Tower Defenses By Salted- A Discussion

Yesterday, Salted posted possible changes to tower defenses to test out in 1.20.3 beta.



Let's break this down into a legit spreadsheet to analyze the changes. For the full spreadsheet with all the values, I have attached it below. It is zipped because forums does not accept .xlsx files :(. You could open this in Google Sheets but the graphs may get messed up (because Google Sheets hates having multiple X value sets on graphs for some reason). Green represents a buff compared to original values, red represents a nerf compared to original values.



Original Values



Def EHP is determined by the HP multiplier def gives through a formula:

Code:

1 / (1-def)

The value of def given is actually 10 times higher because the tower starts with 10% def. So the actual formula will be:

Code:

1 / (1-0.1*def)

Total EHP multiplier is determined by multiplying def EHP with HP value. The half cost on the Y-axis is due to it only taking one type of resource, when it should technically be both types of resources when added.

With regards to the rest of the figure, the figure may look useful, but with regards to actual breakdown of values, it is not that useful. When comparing this figure with the same type of figure but with new values, the graphs do not change much. For this reason, we need to analyze the changes in values in a form of a slope. Remember calculus? dy/dx will become handy here.



The lower the slope, the better. Why? It means the cost of upgrading compared to the previous level is lower for obtaining the same amount of value.

Looking at the slope values here, we notice that increasing each level will increase its slope (cost per value). Once the level gets to around lvs 7-8, the slope maxes out and stars decreasing for lvs 9-11. Total EHP is a bit more volatile due to the lower slope for HP at lv 8 but much higher slope for the same level for def EHP.

I would assume that the reason why the slopes plateau and dip is because spending 14k+ on resources is already a pain to maintain, and as such, the cost for any further upgrades gives slightly better costs per value. This is illustrated through the fact that lvs 7 and 8 have a much higher cost to upgrade at +3600 compared to lvs 9-11 at +2600.

These graphs, however, fail to illustrate that even despite the lower cost beyond lv 8, some guilds are still able to snipe HQs with maxed out upgrades. The stats on these tower HQs are impressive at first glance, but with a very well built war team, any HQ barring a maxed HQ with 6 connections are able to be taken down. As a result, there needs to be some changes to these towers particularly at higher lvs.



Salted's Proposal

With some outcry from guild leaders including myself partially, Salted proposed some buffs to guild towers mainly at lvs beyond lv 5, and there has been an overwhelming agreement on these changes. However, are these changes what guild towers should be? Again, let's analyze these changes. I will skip the cost per value graphs due to like I said, those graphs don't illustrate much.

Overall, the major changes stem from dam being massively buffed, up to almost +50% of its original value at lv 11. All upgrades beyond lv 8 have been buffed. The max total EHP multiplier is 62.5, compared to 52.2 in the original values.

Major assumption: Costs per level have not changed.



The slopes of each upgrade have been smoothed out and lowered than the original values. Barring the spike at lv 8 def, overall, these changes give the plateaus a better meaning. Note that the slope HP and attack rate are both the same line.



Crokee's Proposal

I took one step further and modified Salted's values but only on HP and def. The reason is that def, and slightly, fish with regards to using it on defense as a whole, isn't as valuable as it should be for defense purposes. As a result, I nerfed HP to values lower than the original values while buffing def values past Salted's proposed values.



I refined the plateau of slope def to be lower and in line with slope dam. This inevitably increases EHP a lot without nerfing HP, so I nerfed HP values which resulted in higher slope HP.

The peak for the slope total EHP is a lot more defined than Salted's proposal. In comparison with Salted's, lvs 6-9 have very slight nerfs, but the rest are slight buffs. I tried my best to make the total EHP mirror that of Salted's while still proposing the HP nerf and def buff.



Discussion Points

Here are some discussion points to talk about:

• Do you agree with Salted's values? What about mine? Any changes you would do?
• Is the plateau in the slope graphs needed? Or should the slope be exponential like in most other games?
• Should the costs be changed (not the values)? Notice that lvs 7 and 8 have a much higher cost than lvs 9-11.

And here are some discussion points related to tower defenses but more indirectly:

• Should there be more fish territories? Currently fish has the least amount of territories and double territories at 57 and 2 respectively vs wood at 114 and 4 respectively (exactly double lol). The spread of wood in the entire map is much more balanced than the spread of fish.
• In light with regards to "treasury", are the buffs to tower defenses necessary? For those who don't know, a new feature called "treasury" is being added in 1.20.3. The short explanation is that the longer a guild holds a certain territory, the higher resource and emerald production it gets passively, up to +30% multiplicative, including on double territories. This treasury gets converted into X resources if a different guild captures said territory, where X gets bigger the longer the previous guild held it for.
• There may be a change in maximum war size team from 6 to 5 for 1.20.3. Tower Multi-attacks will be nerfed from max 3 to 2 if this were to be implemented. If both were to be implemented, are the tower changes necessary?

Spoiler: tagging salted oh shit

 

My one issue with the damage changes (although they are better than nothing) is that buffing the damage more just forces wars more and more into their tank meta. If you increase the ehp a lot and don't touch the damage then it allows more damage oriented builds to find a place (because if you just go full tank tower will evolve too much and oneshot you). I do like your changes to the ehp values but I would almost consider not changing the damage at all (or very slightly just to round it out) and instead making towers have much more health so it requires you to bring damage builds.