As I was talking with one of the people doing an attempt at a remake of the MegaGlest MegaPack there was some discussion over the balance of factions with him and me wanting some asymmetric factions and the others obsessed with Starcraft style balance.

I was thinking about how to change things up and I was wondering a few things:

How would people feel about factions that were extra strong, something like LA Ermor in Dominions 3, and/or operated under a separate control scheme?

For instance suppose you had a faction based on the roman legion and then several barbarian factions. The Barbarians would fight somewhat like a traditional RTS faction and they would be ganging up on the Roman like faction.

The Roman faction would need to have a larger production capacity both to compete economically and to compete with the utility provided by 7 sets of unique units. But you might also wish to give them a more Roman and more realistic command structure. You might allow the player to set up hierarchies that can organize and fight as themselves, sort of like garrisons that can handle their business if you deploy appropriate unit combinations and supply lines. You could set up squads and leaders and move up the line to legions.

This is only one example of something that isn't possible in normal RTS games, most only have one control system and they rarely if ever would do something like change the faction balance to be asymmetrical.

I was just wondering how many people care to try out deviations from conventions like this, or one of the many other possibilities.

Offering different control schemes can help freshen up the game and increase replay value while providing new gameplay experience, both for the player himself and his opponents. It's good when you can play Elves after feeling a little bored from playing Humans. Having factions this different hasn't been tried a lot from my understanding due to how much more work it would be, but experimenting like this will help provide more play styles which more people will be able to enjoy.

I think the difficulty is more a product of commercial RTS obsessing about faction balance for online multiplayer purposes. A problem pushed hard by the Craft RTS games. For instance although the control scheme was pretty much the same, in WBC3 factions played quite differently and many were intensely unbalanced, there were like 25 too which didn't help balance. And heroes with no level cap made multiplayer quite unbalanced. But big companies only care about maximizing profit and not making interesting games.

I would like races to be totally different from each other in terms of style, strategies and so on since it gives the race their own unique identity and to casuals, the opportunity to play another race when they feel bored of the current and thus motivating them to continue playing the game. Moreover, it also allows the game to appeal to a larger crowd. Some gamer prefer micro-management while others may prefer playing with tactics. Some love to play an aggressive play style and others, defensive.

However, it is imperative that the different races have to be balanced, not just creating races just to provide a variety of game play. It would mess up the game in the long run instead of helping.

How balanced though? Balance on the level of Starcraft is not gonna fly, especially with more than 3. Each faction has a relationship with each other faction so each new faction adds an increasing number of relationships. It might be better in some cases for some factions to counter each other, because its simply impossible to balance more than 3 factions with diverse play styles, especially given alternate control schemes.

I think it works in Dom 3 because the powerful races like LA Ermor & R'lyeh tend to draw people into the diplomatic/strategic metagame a bit more.

Everyone wants to see these guys crushed ASAP, as left unchecked they'll build momentum and become incredibly difficult to stop. No one really wants to be the one who does the heavy lifting though - all you get is a bunch of worthless provinces for your trouble, the only thanks you can expect is for one of the other players to come in a wipe you out while you're still recovering from the fight. Cue lots of sneaky manouevering to try and goad players into getting into fights, tenuous backstabbing alliances etc.

Another game that uses asymmetry well is the Phantom mod for SupCom. One player is randomly and secretly assigned the role of 'Phantom'. The objective of the game for the Phantom is to wipe out the other players. The objective of the game for the other players is to kill the Phantom. The Phantom is badly outnumbered, but has a resource bonus and the advantage that no-one knows who he is - the other players have to try and guess who the Phantom is before they can wipe him out. If they guess wrongly, and destroy a non-phantom player, they reduce their odds against the real Phantom. Meanwhile, the Phantom has to be careful with his resource bonus - if he can be seen to be growing too fast, too quickly, he might give himself away. Once again you have a diplomatic and strategic metagame which can add an exciting new dimension to the gameplay.

These all assume a reasonable number of players in a FFA scenario, with the freedom to make and break alliances at will. In a 1v1, or a fixed team style game - probably the most common RTS game modes - you don't have so much potential for the players gang up on the big guy, and I don't think it would work so well.

Ah I have seen some mod that had Phantom in SC. It was pretty amusing. I think all the backstabbing is great. Although I'd have to teach the AI to do it which should be hilarious.

I think so long as the game offers unit growth (so each soldier can be as strong as the strongest factions unit) then this works fine. Balance is something that strategy games should be fighting against in my opinion. The whole idea of strategy is to use it to beat the odds. To outsmart your enemy and use all strategies to win against them. Balancing became an issue with "races" because players would get attached to a race and hated to lose with that race. I think there should be weak and strong factions to represent the real strife that any organism has to face. Adapt and evolve or be wiped out.

I agree with that. It is one of many reasons to have variable strength factions. Another example is a faction like LA Ermor that is specifically designed to be ganged up upon. Its incredibly strong because it causes disparate factions to need to work together to take it down. It changes so much of the game and adds that spicey variant to the game to keep it fresh.

Having a faction designed to be very powerful isn't necessarily a good idea. Everyone will want to be the powerful person, and people will be discouraged from experimenting with different factions.