How To Balance The Advance Wars 1 CO's?

Alright. So after reading all your comments, I do agree that my changes to Drake wasn't very good. I'll try to revise this for the Aw2 video!

I’d say we can make Sturm more balanced by making his meteor strike actually hit mech balls for once.

Mangs: "I am not a fan of global damage powers" :)

Mangs "It's important you change as little as possible otherwise it's not a rebalance" Also Mangs "I hate Drake's power so I'm completely changing it to something in no way similar."

Should've nerfed Max's artillery a bit more. At the current moment, they can be viable to take on Sturm in the Advanced campaign

...Watching this, I did realise something a bit odd. Why are the strongest units in Advance Wars 1 'Medium Tanks'? Were they planning on adding a unit called 'Heavy Tanks' or something, but didn't have enough time to put them in or something? And then maybe the Heavy Tanks became the Neotanks or Megatanks in later games. As for the video, you are entirely right with Sonja. Having no luck modifiers would suit her a lot better since she is someone who prefers to plan things out and not leave them to chance. So making it so her damage is set and doesn't deviate from the forecast would really suit her.

I've had 1 major philosophy on balance; Buffs over nerfs. Bringing lower powered characters in games to be able to compete with the broken ones seems much more fun, and only should you rarely nerf. Also another buff for Andy without making him too different: Give him a d2d where he gets reduced cost for repairs. I don't know an exact percentage but a small price reduction on repairs would fit his whole mechanic personality since he would personally fix things himself. Just a thought

Why you gotta do Drake so dirty like that. Man is a worse Greyfield now. Having specific D2D COs with general powers (Eagle, arguably Sensei) gives them versatility outside their specialism and makes Drake on a non-naval map, uh, relevant.

The Drake rebalance goes against the spirit of what your re-balance set out to do: you removed his trademark and made him have the Max/Kanbei attack buff to Naval units, making him actually the worst CO of your new list in practical terms.

You'd think that after Mangs getting pounded by Eagle for 3 hours would make him nerf pretty hard but yet there he is, no changes... How much did Eagle pay you, Mangs?

I feel like Tsunami is really the battleground for this rework's discussion, as it's justification boils down to just "I don't like it" creating a rift between players feeling the same way and players liking it/thinking it's fine. I personally disagree with this change as I feel it's just sidestepping trying to balance global damage powers and changing Tsunami here has a lot of implications for changing other global damage powers in the upcoming games. The change just makes the power less interesting as it is one of a kind in AW1 if we're not counting meteor strike and the new power would just exchange it with something we have seen a lot already. It's also a nerf to an actually very favorable matchup for Andy, who being a jack of all traits CO doesn't have much interesting stuff going for him. But I do agree with not taking situational factors into account. Sonja being weaker in non-fow maps makes sense as well Sami being stronger on maps that favor infantry or mechs. The map and ruleset should always impact CO selection, so I'm glad this video didn't try to overbalance and give every CO something outside of their specialty.

Great changes overall. I have mixed feelings about the removal of Tsunami: I agree that global damage is not the best mechanic for advance wars, but I also think it fits Drake well thematically. He is basically designed to wear down his opponent (weather the storm so to speak.) I can't deny I hate being on the receiving end of it though...

"if you want balance, take all the difference of the COs out and see what you get." You get Wargroove. I know you liked that game, but lack of difference among the COs, as the blatant inutility of the CO Powers (with a few exceptions) is exactly what you described.

I agree with pretty much every buffs and nerfs you did, aside from Sturm, now he feels like a Grimm copycat, so he's just bad. I agree with the +30% firepower and -20% defense, since I always had the headcanon that he treats his own units poorly, and forces them to fight like there's no tomorrow. However, I feel like he should keep that one cost movement, which yes, is very strong, but as you said countless times, defense matters A LOT, even more than firepower, and I feel like without giving him the edge to being able to at least go through terrain swiftly, he would get his ass handed to him by multiple COs. With the 1 cost movement, Sturm certanly seems scary, but it's not like he can abuse that and just storm you without a care in the world since his units are made of foil paper and so any not planned, mindless push from him can easily be shut down as long as you don't panic, much like Grimm. just my two cents through, I pretty much agree with everything else.

Getting in those early cries of "DO THE SAME FOR DUAL STRIKE, DAYS OF RUIN, AND EVEN AWBW!" early on

Interesting thought exercise. With Drake in particular I think a scope error can be argued. Basically, you can balance the CO's in a local to themselves scope or globally on a player options scope. The thing about the base balance of AW is that it might be totally fine for some S rank and D rank COs to exist. As the player has the option to choose who they are playing. Instead what may be important is how many options the player has and how meaningful those options are. Grit is a key example as he pairs with a player approach of using indirects. Even if Grit was weak he may be the best fit for a specific player's playstyle. Mang's approach to Drake may be adjusting the local Drake scope at the cost of removing a global player option. Base Drake is the only way a player gets a CO power like that. Drake's day to day is so specific to naval and air that he's almost an average no day 2 day CO. No day 2 day is a player option that some players would appreciate. They can choose heal, enemy dmg, or snow. By removing Tsunami you totally remove an option on the player scope. This could still easily work out locally for Drake as a CO. I'm not going to bother making my own hard judgement on a thought exercise. I will say that Drake's CO power has one particular interaction that I have not seen Mangs highlight. Going back to watch his Wargroove campaign, I've seen Mangs miss this point there too. (where early campaign he undervalues "sacrificing" a swordsman to do 10% to a CO) Attacking a unit that has some damage on it is much safer then one at 100%. It can sometimes mean significantly reduced counter attack damage and domino into better outcomes over several turns. Two infantry attacking each other over the course of several turns is a good example.

>Eagle : A tier >no changes >Sami : B tier >nerf goddamnit Mangs

I feel like Drake's whole shtick is to go for the long con and holding on long enough to whittle down your opponent with tsumanis until you can go for that final push. I like to see him be a defensive CO with the old tsunami

I'd give Andy +1 HP when repairing on properties, but with half the cost to help emphasize his repairing genius. Hyper Repair would also heal 3 HP instead of 2, because 2 HP doesn't feel like it has such a huge impact on the game as it should. Edit: Repairing on properties would still be a hard choice, but with my new Andy, it might be worth getting your unit to a nearby property because he would heal 3 HP at the cost of 1.5HP, and 3 HP can be just the oomph you need to finish off an enemy. In addition, if would make his infantry able to do more efficient capturing after they took a city in case they were damaged

Beating the dead horse, but im all for seeing more of this stuff 🤣