When watching the tournament yesterday for the Japanese release it was pretty much the same story as most tournaments I watch. Spending favor to buy a myth unit was extremely rare and when it was done the person typically bought less than 2-3 for the whole game. When they were used 90% of the time it was to raid villagers as myth units are so hard countered in an actual fight that any unit without mobility will be avoided.
In the clip below Rapl talks about Susanoo. He says that he would be quite strong in the extreme late game because of god power recasts but has nothing else. Not because the myth unit buffs are weak, but simply because myth units as a concept are just so easily hard countered that they aren’t worth building after the enemy has a couple of heroes. And looking at all the games from the tournament I don’t see anything indicating that he is wrong about that.
I find it disappointing that all these extremely interesting well designed units are the least used units in the game if you want to do well, and their effectiveness boils down to if they are faster than the heroes that need to kill them or not. I am mostly trying to present the problem rather than the solution but just to get ideas going I think the multiplier reductions for myth unit damage into heroes and the high hp compared to human damage of myth units leads to the counters being too extreme.
In the counter triangle the only unit that can’t be mass produced is the myth unit due to extreme favor restrictions. Therefore with this extremely high counter numbers when a good number of myth units get created it is very easily countered by a much smaller number of heroes with no restriction on number. Then the myth units are killed off quickly, the enemy heroes are killed off, and there is no way to reproduce myth units to then counter the human units on the field as all the favor was already spent. If it was more viable for myth units to kill a smaller number of heroes similar to how infantry with a numbers advantage will beat archers, and also more viable for human units to be able to kill a myth unit the counters would be less extreme providing some time for counterplay.
Alternatively increases in favor gain and god power costs across the board, or reductions in favor costs across the board to allow enough quantity to provide more flexibility in bringing them back once the heroes are dealt with could be an option. Realistically I don’t know the best answer though and am just trying to present some ideas. I just know the current state of the game where they are used to constantly run away from engagements to try and fight undefended villagers, and not being good enough to be relied upon is quite sad. Shennong is not a myth unit god because there is no reason to pick nuba and zhurong in the current game state. He succeeds as a dao swordsmen god. Susanoo hasn’t found a viable human unit path yet so he just doesn’t succeed at all. I think the inability to make a myth unit focused god competitively viable is largely due to the state of the myth unit hero dynamic as a whole, and less to do with their individual balance.
I would like to add, all this from the lense of high level gameplay: its tricky the MU gameplay because theres 4 scenarios when they are usable:
If they a fast myth unit its raids a lot and if theres no fast heroes for the enemy civ they can quickly become a snowball as the game goes like anubites, yazi, valk, sphinx to name a few.
They are a very tank unit that basically walls your opponent off = stone giants or colossus in the old game.
They fly and can poke and retreat with ease (azure dragon).
They are massed so fast they become an issue to civs with limited hero pool or bad attack type (Automaton vs china or sometimes greek) .
The issue overall is MU are so strong that heroes have to become strong themselves to be able to adress them otherwise many of them simply outright win the fights with little to no contest. Any meta where a civ could deal with a certain MU became very oppresive very quickly, like sphinx Rush + axemen va norse.
Another way to deal with the issue IMO is to tone things down. MU deals less damage to normal units and in turn heroes dont have to be so strong to counter them as fast as posible before loosing the game. If a MU was worth 2-3 human units and not 8-10 in raw value it would be easier to balance without so many Hard countering needed.
I usually don’t speak on behalf of balance since I’m not that good of a player. But I just wanted to add I also feel like that heroes counter myth units way too hard.
Previously someone in this forum said something along that the game is named age of MYTHOLOGY yet the mythology gets killed in 2 hits.
I don’t know any solution to this. I might be even wrong. Maybe myth units are fine. The current design has a very competitive balance which balances myth units otherwise they would be destroying everything. But I think we can afford to sacrifice some competitiveness in order to make the game more fun to play.
Your absoluteley right, Although I would also add (as a norse main) ranged myth units can sometimes be super oppressive (toxote+manticore) especially if you don’t have accses to Godi. Taking that combo down with hersir and raiding cavalry is so painfully hard.
TLDR; I also think myth units get countered way too hard.
Thats not something that exist IMO. Since at the level people play Just for the fun of it you are actively ignoring what would be Best because you want to play in X o Y fashion and at that point balance doesnt matter at all. When competitive or winning becomes something people care about they arent going to sacrifice many games for a unit thats underperfoming.
I think what he means by sacrificing some competitiveness for fun is that their current method of making myth units mostly non viable is a perfectly valid form of balancing, its just not a very fun method of balancing. Whereas any rework to see more myth units is likely going to first cause more balance issues before it gets ironed out.
It’s like Halo 2 back in the day when people wanted to do perfectly symmetrical battle rifle only lobbies as the most fair test of skill. Technically it was the most balanced it could be as it was perfectly symmetrical, it was just super boring.
I have mixed feelings about this. While it can feel lame to have a unit you just built go down in a split second to a hero, I do prefer that myth units serve more of a supportive role if in the army or as raiders elsewise, which they kind of do at the moment. You do have to babby sit them otherwise they go down quick to heroes, but if you do, they can bring immense value. I see it the same as any other hard counter in the game, like let’s say ulfsark is your favourite unit, you just can’t build them into axemen or hypaspist.
It’s tricky, maybe an option would be to make (spammable) heroes soft-counters instead of hard counters, but then you’d need to get rid of the free myth unit at a minimum I think. As already mentioned, you could tone down myth units, but that also feels kind of lame, I DO want my hydra taking on 5+ hoplites.
The problem is that doesn’t work anymore in the modern day.
People do read social media, reddit, forums, etc. and if they see a lot of threads saying “X OP” then they will think that X is OP and that it will impact their gameplay, even if it has 0 impact on their skill level.
It’s human nature to find excuses for why you lost. Finding a post about how “X OP” becomes a good excuse for why you lost, even if it was a totally different reason.
So even if most people aren’t good at the game, they will likely watch content from people that are good and then form opinions based on that.
Yea the tonning it down hurs the flavor aspect of it. A dragon should buen an army. The hidra tanking and getting stronger its all Cool and fun. But that all stops when you are the one facing it and have no means to stop it.
But yea, even if bringing down the numbers solved the issue i doubt it would be a route they take because of this.
I also like the idea of myth units being more of a Support aspect, but that heavily restricts the variety in design and function.
