What Makes A Fire Emblem Game Balanced?

        

                        Believe it or not this was the part of unit balancing that I was most excited for. I want to know what makes a Fire Emblem game balanced and what makes a Fire Emblem game unbalanced. There is no magic “one size fits all” cure for unit balance but there things that one can do in order to make a Fire Emblem game at least more balanced. The crazy thing is that the more I thought about it the more I realized just how intertwined unit balance is with other aspects and mechanics of the game. For example….

• Weapon Balance: Generally speaking there are going to be weapon types that are considered better than others. It tends to vary based on the game, but the principle is the same. Bows have traditionally gotten the shaft which has often been a reason why archers aren’t considered as good as other classes. Axes are considered to be very good in the Tellius games so characters who use them in those games have an advantage. One way to make a Fire Emblem game more balanced is to try and balance the weapons so that being locked to a single weapon type doesn’t screw over certain members of your army. 
  
  

• Class Balance: Another way to balance out a Fire Emblem game is to try and balance out all the classes in that game. Usually high movement classes have an advantage because moving long distances in a short amount of time is immensely valuable. Other classes are inherently screwed like Armor Knights who usually can’t double attack and have low movement. Class imbalances often lead to a major gap in unit performance as some units will have natural advantages just for being a certain class while other units have to overcome certain disadvantages just for being a certain class.
  
  
  

                                    If these two points sound familiar to you it’s because I’ve made posts about this topic before: 

http://thecrusadergrant.blogspot.com/2015/11/ten-tips-to-improve-fire-emblem-2.html

http://thecrusadergrant.blogspot.com/2015/11/ten-tips-to-improve-fire-emblem-2_16.html

                               ^ If you haven’t read them before I highly recommend doing so since I went into a lot more depth there.

• Enemy Unit Composition: This is another major factor that should be taken into account when it comes to unit balance. If the majority of the enemies are magic users then having high resistance is going to become a priority. If lots of enemies have a certain weapon type in a game where the weapon triangle exists one unit will have a lot of weapon triangle advantage while the unit with weapon triangle disadvantage isn’t going to fare as well.

                                      

                               Playable characters with weapons that deal effective damage against hordes of enemies are going to be considered really good. Marth in Fire Emblem 1 and Caeda in Shadow Dragon are premier examples. Palla and Catria being able to deal effective damage against monsters in Gaiden is another really good example of this. The bottom line is that one way to affect unit balance is through what kinds of enemies the player has to face. If there are too many of a certain kind of enemy that might affect unit balance negatively because some units will be able to easily destroy certain types of enemies while others will not. Perhaps being able to provide a mixed variety of enemies could solve this?                                                      

                               I also tried looking for patterns between games that were towards the top of my list in terms of unit balance and games that were on the bottom end of my unit balance list. I came up with a few observations.

• Give the player lots of resources. Thracia 776, Mystery of the Emblem and Birthright are pretty generous with the kinds of resources available to the player. Thracia and Mystery both have growth altering items. This makes it easier to get weaker units up to speed. Birthright has Pair-Up bonuses, dirt cheap tonics and forges along with giving the player tons of money. Giving lots of resources to the player means that there’s less competition for resources so the player can spread them out to whoever they want. 
  
  

                         Gaiden does something interesting where they only let each individual unit have only one item which means that you pretty much have to give other units valuable items. This is a really interesting way to approach resource management but it works. One word of caution though is giving out more resources can lead to Holy War Syndrome where you can stuff one unit to the gills with powerful items and watch them wreck the game. So if you’re going to give resources there needs to be a way to prevent the player from giving tons of resources to their best units and watching them go ham on the rest of the game. 

• Cast Size: One similarity that all the games towards the bottom of the unit balance list have is that they have huge rosters. The more characters a Fire Emblem game has the harder it is to give them a niche. The harder it is to give them a niche the more difficult it becomes to give that character a way to make a meaningful contribution. There are only so many roles to go around and you only need so many characters to achieve a certain task. Having a higher character roster makes it likely for 3 or 4 units to able to do the same job as you but better.

                                          

                 Likewise, the reverse can also be true. Conquest, Birthright, Gaiden and Holy War have a small roster of characters which makes it easier to make them all unique. Having a small roster doesn’t automatically mean that your game will be balanced but it certainly helps.

• Base Stats: If you want to make your game balanced you need to make sure that every character has at least decent base stats for their join time. This is what often makes the bottom tier games bad: They give you tons of weak and unviable units. Granted, not every character needs to have super amazing base stats upon join time but they should be good enough to be usable without tons of effort or investment. 
  
  
  

                                   Since I know a lot of people like that element of raising a unit to greater heights I will add that Est type characters need something to balance out their weak starts. This can be done in a variety of different ways like giving them an amazing class to promote to (Narron in Tearring Saga and Lachesis say hi), giving them Paragon so they level up quick, or give them a powerful prf rank weapon that boosts their stats. Ronaldo recommended giving them growths similar to Karel’s in Fire Emblem 6 and I’d like to see that. However you want to go about doing it you should make sure that there’s a powerful plus to balance out a powerful minus.

                                  Before I end this post series I’d like to say this. There are two principles a Fire Emblem game should adhere to if they want to at least have a semblance of balance:

1. Make sure that your best units cannot solo the game.

2. Make sure that your worst units are not garbage.

                            If you do at least those two things your game will be more balanced and strategic.