Rebalancing Wargroove: Introducing Project Groove

After a successful trial period in this month’s Test Your Mettle, we have been taking feedback from the community and those working on the mod. What we’ve seen so far has been:

• Generally positive response with some worries about influencing how people perceive what’s too strong in the main game.
• The mod going beyond just a rebalance and some name confusion.
• The desire to make further changes, both in balance and core game design.
• Other people showing interest in creating their own mods.

So with that said, we are rebranding the mod to “Project Groove” and will refer to the mod as that going forward. The original article about this mod still stands, so I’ll only be talking about the new changes and goals going forward.

Core Gameplay: Limited RNG

This is one of the bigger core gameplay changes we’ll be trying out. Going forward RNG will be capped at a 10% variance, up to a maximum range of +/-5 damage. This means that instead of an average roll of 20 being 15–25 damage, it will be 18–22 damage instead. The idea being that this should make units that are on the lower damage end of things more reliable against more durable targets such as commanders and golems.

We’ve seen some requests for things like buffs to archers, so hopefully, this indirectly benefits archers and other units in positions where they rely heavily on dice rolls that can triple their damage output.

We wanted to make this change now because this is the kind of core gameplay function that impacts every other future change. Unlike other changes we’re considering in the future, it is harder to walk back a change like this. I hope people see this as a positive step forward for the mod.

Further Commander Changes

In our first update, we rolled out a number of commander changes. The general direction for these was mostly well-received, but we needed to make some more changes to balance some of them further. Caesar, The Twins, Nuru, Elodie and Sigrid need some more time at their current form before we consider playing with them further.

Ryota: Damage ramping changed from -5% per jump to -3% per jump. Damage caps at 0%.

The damage cap was meant to be an easter egg originally, but it turned out to be something achievable in regular matches. We’ve also made the ramping less impactful, so it now takes 17 jumps to do 0 jump damage rather than 11 jumps. This still allows for setups and counterplay on both sides but makes Ryota a bit stronger.

Mercival: Charge speed is going from medium -> fast. Steals 100 gold from the opponent when used.

When looking at Mercival going up against other fast and medium grooves, it became obvious that his level of power is closer to a fast charge commander. The 100 gold steal is also to boost the power level a bit higher, as he’ll almost exclusively be flipping low impact targets. The extra gold should give him a bit more reward and more variety in strategy.

Dark Mercia: Groove now allows Dark Mercia to go above 100% hp when used. Resets to 100% at the start of her next turn.

This is a fairly experimental change, but we hope this allows Dark Mercia to have a far more offensive based playstyle. Unlike Ragna who has to worry about surviving after using her groove, Dark Mercia can slam directly into an enemy army. She can still be killed of course, as an opponent can melt her with dragons or suicide 10 units into her to drag her health down.

This also creates a unique feel to all the direct damage commanders. Ryota is fast with low damage and needs a good setup. Dark Mercia can slam directly into an army, leading the charge in a full-frontal assault with medium damage. Ragna is the slow charge that turns into a high damage missile you throw at an opponent to win the game, but at high personal risk if she doesn’t close out the fight.

Mercia: Healing can push units up to 110% health. Mercia resets down to 100% hp at the start of her next turn if above 100% hp.

Mercia has gone from the top 5 in 1.3 to be one of the weaker commanders in Double Trouble. Her biggest weakness has always been that her groove is responsive to situations where she has injured units. A shift in the game’s meta and player skill levels has meant she can spend an entire match holding groove due to the lack of opportunity.

With overheal, she can now use her groove proactively. The extra damage and health from being above 100% hp mean she has strong capabilities to shove an army into an enemy with a better outcome. It remains to be seen if the extra 10% is a bit much, but this can be toned down to something like 5% if needed.

Other Commanders: No Changes

We’re still keeping an eye on other commanders right now, but these were the more obvious changes to make first. There are some universal commander changes being considered too, but I think we’ll see how the meta shakes out first.

Further Changes: Units

Since the unit changes are fairly limited this time around, I’ll be writing them in a single section. Generally, we’re happy with the changes in the first version of the mod. Wheeled units didn’t dominate, mages were better targets for injuring to keep air alive and giants were a little harder to move around.

Spears: The damage taken by swords, archers and harpies is increased by 5%.

This was a change made for a few reasons. Harpies struggled to do serious damage to spears, so this will allow 2 harpies to kill spears on roads and have a solid chance kill on plains. An archer and a dog will now reliably kill spears on plains when attacking together. 2 sword crits will reliably kill a spear and the matchup will overall be a bit better for them.

Barges: Barge movement increased from 10 -> 12. Barge gets the ability to move again if empty at the end of its first move.

Since barges have an annoying habit of deleting units inside them if their movement range changes, we’ve decided to give them 12 movement twice on the condition they’re empty at the end of their first move. This gives them movement equivalent to wagons in certain circumstances and allows them to move->load->move->unload in a single turn. With the greater allowance for wheeled units to be used, we hope this will give the barge a unique edge compared to wagons and balloons.

Tile Change: Reefs

Lastly, we’re boosting the defence of reefs from 2 -> 3. This makes them more equivalent to forests and should allow for more strategic use of terrain at sea. We figured this change should happen at the same time as the first attempt at a naval rework, so we’ll see how this plays out.

Looking Forward Again

We’re overall pretty happy with how the mod is playing out and the reception so far. There are some more changes planned for the future, but we’ll need some more time to develop them. We’re reaching the point where the mod requires fresh maps to play out on, so development time will be split between those two things going forward as well.

The future is looking good though and I’m curious to see how this release plays out.