Kanes Wrath

For those of you who don't know what the "Strategy Triangle" is, it is a rock-paper-scissors relationship between three strategies in Kane's Wrath--and to a lesser extent in Command and Conquer 3. These three strategies are attacking, defending, and expanding. According to the triangle, attacking will beat expanding (how do you fight with harvesters?), expanding will beat defending (eventually you'll have x2 money compared to the turtle), and defending will beat attacking. (war factory repair + instant reinforcements + base defenses) This is how the strategy triangle should--and usually does in KW, not so much CnC3--work to make a fair and balanced game.

My theory is this: can we measure the brokenness of a tactic/unit/faction by how they break this triangle? I think, in fact, that we can. For example, many people claim that Nod tier 4 is broken. According to this triangle, people should be able to expand while Nod turtles to get to tier 4 fast, right? But in practice, that very tier 4 annihilates all expansions! Therefore the triangle is broken, and so are Nod tier 4 powers. Or instead consider AP Ammo, a GDI upgrade commonly accused of being overpowered. Against Nod players, GDI will often launch an assault equal parts Predator Tank and APC after the AP Ammo upgrade is done researching. Again, according to the triangle, Nod should be able to defend in order to beat GDI's attack, right? But yet again, we see that Nod is incapable of doing so; their main saving grace in the past against GDI steamrolls has been excellent infantry, and that advantage is now gone. The triangle is broken, and so is AP Ammo.

It seems to me that we can fairly judge any accusations of brokenness by this standard. But the point of this thread is not to impose my views on the rest of you; I want to see if you agree or not. I had to include a "post intelligently" clause when I posted this on the EA forums, but I think the guys here already know to avoid +1 posts.

So, does anyone have any thoughts?

Not many triangles are ever completely true in every situation, for example this one.

I think that Tier 4 is overpowered at the moment, and in every Patch 1.03 balance discussion thread there is a vast amount of post saying Tier 4 is too powerful.

EA need to get this right, but that is a discussion for the patch 1.03 threads, not this one

I think the strategy triangle is a basic guideline to strategy and if an element of it is broken, well, that's something that could possibly be an area of concern. It's a necessary condition, but not a sufficient condition. It's a good first order approximation, but there are a lot of other dependencies that must be considered.

For example, if I gripe about being unable to beat an early Dev/Corr + Drone Platform push, but I don't scout, there's no substance to my argument because my opponent has a time advantage: his attack has begun before my defense.

Same thing with a strong Jugg push on Decision. If the Nod player doesn't scout the Juggs and build Spectres/Vertigos/Stealth Tanks/EMP Buggies, then I have no sympathy for him. The strategy triangle model doesn't work because the attacker already has the advantage of time on the would-be defender. Some strategies should simply have to be scouted (or anticipated, I suppose) in order to counter.

Three other key factors to consider here: Time (via scouting/counter-scouting), micro, and money. Having an advantage in any should tip the scales away from the expected strategy triangle balance.

That said, Nod's T4 is broken because it is difficult to scout before it is used and can be used without risk.

That's what differentiates it from say, Ceramic Hawks. A skilled player scouting his opponent's base will see that CeraArmor has been researched and that Hawks are being built, or will anticipate them coming, etc. There is a potential to see it coming. There's much less potential to see a Nod T4 (especially stealthed) building before the Catalyst Missile strikes. That's why it's broken.

Nod T4s annihilating all expansions... might wanna try to space out those refineries.
If GDI makes Predators and APCs, you can counter them by outnumbering them with Dozer Scorps. AP APCs are supposed to counter infantry. AP is OP vs vehicles, structures and air - but not vs infantry. It's a damn anti-infantry upgrade.

The more I read, the more I feel inclined to call it a "Vicious circle".

Quit focusing on my balance examples, the point is not to prove beyond a doubt that these two things are OP; I was simply trying to lay groundwork for determining the OP-ness of a tactic.

Good input Ephesians, I had assumed that scouting was assumed, but the rest I hadn't thought about. Well I had kind of; for example, expanding does not beat defending by itself. Rather, it allows the eventual attacking to overwhelm the defending. So in that case I did take money into account, if only subconsciously--or more likely by accident!

But really, that is the point of the triangle, isn't it? If you see the person expanding, you attack, with the hopes that he will not shift gears in time to defending. Sure he will change to defense once he's being attacked, but the idea is that you will have such a time advantage that it doesn't matter. And so it goes on and on in the circle.

The micro factor doesn't really fit into the circle in any specific point, however. It's more like a general buff always waiting to be applied.

I don't know where I'm going with this, I'm just jotting down my thought responses to your post, lol.

To look the triangle like this it's hard to incorporate 3 possibilities with 9 different teams it just doesn't work. You have to look at a more narrow system in order for something like this to make sense.

There is too many units, factions have different strengths and weaknesses and everything is asymmetrical... you cannot expect something like "strategy triangle" working.

This post has been edited by KaneASD: Nov 4 2009, 18:47 PM

Regardless of its flaws in this game his triangle makes up what almost every good rts already does. Of course, to make the game deeper there are things like scouting to take into effect. But you can rule scout problems out over the long term, assuming there isnt a broken scouting. By that i mean a a good player will in the long run scout out these strategys before hand and try to counter properly. Over time with varying scout times you will find out that certain things are just to effective even if you do try to counter in time.
Therefore i would argue that his triangle provides a very basic and easy way to look at the game. This is how most games start out being balanced(unless EA). Later you start messing around with the smaller but just as important parts of the game. In this way you help keep game breacking bugs from showing up.
Argueing that the factions are different in this game is nonsense. I can play blackhand or MOK and switch to nod nearly just as effectively. The factions in this game are nearly the same with few differences. Even going from NOD to GDI isnt hard to do if you know what your doing and use things that you found effective being used against you. This triangle is the best way to look at if there is a problem or not. Trying to find the best way to fix that problem is still a matter of debate.

This post has been edited by toxicpuke: Nov 5 2009, 02:49 AM

Triange will work only if two factions using same strategy have plus-minus equal chances. Nod attack will loose to GDI attack, Nod expansion will always win/loose vs GDI expansion on open/closed map. Nod turtle will win vs GDI turtle. They don't have equal chances, so there is no way to balance this triangle. Finally - player can switch his strategy any moment, which mean he will always choose the most versatile strategy his faction have (GDI-attack, Nod-turtle) and adapt if needed.

In simple words:
Turtle win vs attack
Attack win vs expand
Expand win vs turtle

BUT we have faction diversity:
GDI turtle loose to Nod Turtle
GDI expand loose to Nod expand on open maps (dustblow)
Nod expand loose to GDI expand on closed maps (decision)
Nod attack loose to GDI attack


Then, if we let triangle work:


If you play Nod vs GDI on closed map:
- If you expand and enemy expand you will loose
- If you attack and enemy attack you will loose
- If you attack and enemy turtle you will loose
- If you turtle and enemy expand you loose

You can win in only three situations:
- enemy turtle and you turtle (rarely happen)
- enemy expand and you attack (but if enemy switch strategy to anything, you will loose)
-enemy attack, you turtle (he retreat, expand, roll over you)

Which mean:
If your GDI opponent scout (which mean spending 300$ time to time) and is mixing attack and expand strategy you cannot beat him...

Thats why Nod one clicks are allowing Nod Turtle to cripple enemy expander - without this toy average Nod has no chance vs average GDI (Orca harassement => force enemy to turtle => expand => roll over him)




If you play GDI vs Nod on open map:
- If enemy expand and you expand, you loose
- If you Turtle and enemy turtle, you loose
- If enemy expand and you turtle you loose
- If enemy attack and you turtle, you loose


You can win in only two situations:
- You attack, enemy attack (but he have better expand/harassment capabilities)
- You attack, enemy expand
- Enemy attack, you turtle

Which mean:

If enemy is using combination of expanding/turtling/harassment, you loose, your attack cannot break the turtle while at tier 3 bikes/one clicks will annihilate your economy. You cannot turtle, because enemy will gain map control. You cannot expand, because bikes are everywhere...

Thats why GDI attack is able to roll over Nod pre-tier 3 turtle. If not, Nod fast tech to tier 3 and massing tibcore bikes will be near impossible to stop (turtle => tech to tier 3 => mas tibcore bikes => kill enemy eco => expand)

KaneASD GDI beats NOD on all maps by the Attack tactic as on bigger maps you attack then expand...

I would argue that everything you listed was due to bad balance decisions. When attacking, defending, or expanding you should have a equal chance if balanced even with different factions. Currently the gameplay is very predictable(as you mentioned) when watching a match of good players. I would blame this on bad balance and EA's inability to give each faction a equally usefull strength to go along with their weakness. This is why in a GDI vs NOD match its so common to see a very agressive mid game GDI and a fast tech/turtle NOD. Its not because these are a very easy noob strats FTW but because there are very few routs other than that to win a match beacause GDI/NOD stand very little chance of pulling them off. (a coin flip in this game TBH)

If the triangle worked it would be possable for Scrin to not have to fast tech to T3 and stand a chance of beating a NOD/GDI player at T2. However other than a Dev/cor combo or early harrasment there is little offence with the goal of early defeat from the scrin side. Instead all of those efforts are used to get to that nearly unbeatable scrin T3. GDI and NOD also abuse what they have in order to hold off long enough to reach T3 before the other guy to wipe them out. Its this nature of Kanes wrath that makes it dull after the shine wears off.

Nod T3 powers as cool as they are only break the triangle and should have never been put in the game. (vapor cloud thingy is ok)

This post has been edited by toxicpuke: Nov 6 2009, 00:30 AM

I once lost a match entirely because my opponent fired off a Vein Det. on my army in the middle of Tower.

On a different note, I think we all agree that there's a very serious problem between vNod and BH vs. GDI on closed maps. GDI can counter everything but a Nod turtle without any difficulty because they shut down Scorps + Rockets with Pred/Shatterers/AP APCs and don't need to worry as much about being flanked by bikes/STanks, as closed maps are almost always matches of brute force.

This post has been edited by ShockUnitBlack: Nov 6 2009, 05:42 AM

i think preds/apc/whatever will be more alot counterable with the ap nerf...
but theres the issue of whether it should be nerfed vs inf, because imo although it makes fking perfect sense to, it warrants a couple of further changes like fixing upgraded gdi/nod rocketmens' gun penalty issue, nerfing bh disciples, nerfing t59 inf.

ontopic- the triangle isnt a perfect indicator because of faction diversity.
some factions are just meant to be better or worse than the others at certain things.

This post has been edited by cnc315d34d: Nov 6 2009, 05:59 AM

Wow what a closer to a tread! I dont think anyone would disagree with that statement ---
"the triangle isnt a perfect indicator because of faction diversity.
some factions are just meant to be better or worse than the others at certain things"

I guess the only thing we really disagree on is how useful it really is. Its kinda like asking what the best color is.(red)

The 'strategy triangle', in some form or another, seems like a good general concept for any kind of "fair" strategy game, i.e. a game in which every party is expected to have the same chances to win (though it is by no means clear what "chance" means in this context); and this much has been said before.

What I'd like to take up is the question you then ask about "the brokenness of a unit/faction". This is the same kind of question that resonates throughout this website (and its one million "balance" threads). But consider this: Being balanced, or not broken, is not a property of any particular unit or faction. Instead, it is a global property of the entire game.

Statements like "Unit X is overpowered", "Power Y needs a nerf", "Strategy Z is lame" are not meaningful by themselves. A unit by itself cannot be overpowered. It is only when you put everything together and it turns out that Faction A has a winning strategy that will work no matter what Faction B does that you can say "the game is imbalanced". Then you might notice that the winning strategy always involves unit X and say "Unit X is OP", but what you really mean is that you believe that making unit X less powerful would make the game balanced. What you really achieved, though, is perhaps to rid Faction A of its winning strategy, but now it has lost its ability to counter a certain strategy by Faction C effectively. Worse, you may just have overlooked the fact that unit X might be easily defeated with a strategy you had just not been aware of.

Being balanced does not just mean that if two parties spend the same amount of money on a vaguely suitable composition of forces, they should be able to hold out against each other. Instead, it is a much larger concept that might require Faction A to do something entirely different from what Faction B is doing in order to use the same amount of resources equally effectively. So, while the triangle is a quite common-sense guide to your basic game strategies, I think asking it whether a particular "unit is broken" is just too narrow and constraining. Similarly, anyone who shouts "Unit X is OP" is making a dangerously large amount of assumptions and shortcuts, which would better be explained in more graspable detail.

This post has been edited by R Schneider: Nov 7 2009, 12:34 PM

Don't forget:
Perfectly balanced game still can suck in terms of tactical diversity and number of available tactics.

Lest sey each faction has 20 units available, but only 2 of them is worth building - rest of them suck. You can spam your 2 uber units vs opponent 2 uber units, each of you both have equal chances, game is perfect in terms of balance... but suck in terms of everything else (fun, diversity etc.).

Conclusion? Balanced game =/= good game. Of course being balanced is very important thing, but it is not enough to make good game.

Of course, very true.

As a trivial example, you could have a game with just one faction and one unit. Very balanced, less interesting. On the other extreme, you could try to come up with a game in which one faction can only win by extremely aggressive pushing and the other only through strong defence and attrition. I suppose a game would roughly be the more interesting the more it is strategically diverse in this sense. Then balance can only be judged from a completely global perspective. A kind of triangle (or whatever complete graph you like) would still apply, but it should be allowed to differ between factions. C&C is a rather simple game in the sense that all three (nine?) factions are actually pretty similar, so the original poster's faction-independent triangle is pretty accurate.

Does anyone remember the old game "Z"? I wonder what the appropriate "triangle" was for that game. If you can come up with one, then I'll believe that this is a useful concept :-)

Oh man I loved Z, but the only balance present was the map configurations. Each side had exactly the same units.

I think I'm going to download it again, which by the way is legal as it's abandon ware.

This post has been edited by Oroibahazopi: Nov 7 2009, 14:18 PM

Aha, but because of that we should be able to get a strategy triangle at its finest! With no unit balance to worry about, all that matters is strategy. But to be honest, I don't really know what that would look like, since as you say the maps are rather restrictive. Oh well, just a thought.