EA Staff (Retired)Hi @Reldan71,
What level are your units at when you see the level 9 and 10 enemy units?
While they aren't active yet, we have some Rivals Fairplay features planned that should make the matches feel more competitive and fair. We're also constantly looking at how the game mechanics are working and will adjust them as needed, so if you have any suggestions please let me know!
I'll add one thing, and I think this is the crux of the issue with the unit leveling and the flattening since 1.0.
So when a unit levels it gains a boost to both its damage and its health. How much more powerful are we talking? In practice it seems like units get around a 10% buff with a level + gold boosts.
So what's this look like? Let's say we had a unit that did 10 damage and had 100 hp at level 1. At level 2 that unit maybe does 11 damage and has 110 hp. In a fight against a level 1, the level 1 unit has to hit 11 times to get a kill, while the level 2 unit needs 10 hits. A bit of an advantage, but not insurmountable.
The stated change of the linearization of leveling was to make it so each level was the same amount better than the prior level. So how's this look with our example? Well, to be 10% better than level 2, our unit now has to do 12.1 damage and have 121 health. In a fight against a level 1 unit, the level 1 unit now needs 13 shots to kill, while the level 3 needs just 9.
Huh.
That's... a lot more powerful. That's beyond what even a reasonable skill gap is going to be able to close. Since the game effectively has a unit cap, you generally get forced to have to make the most out of a small number of units, and the individual strength of those units matters a great deal. My army of dudes that kill your guys in 9 hits but can take 13 themselves will slaughter you. Heck, at that point I can just walk through your defensive advantage and beat you with the "same" unit you're fielding. And that's just a two level difference.
