What is balance?

No, we don't want you to be a stupid.  Most of the time when people say they want balance in a game, they mean that they want things like; combat abilities, level talents, techs, etc to be fairly equal in use to another choice that cost the same amount of exp, time to research, etc.  Balance helps diversify choice in games.  If I want to play as a wizard Sov, then I would like that the spells I pick and the techs I can research would put me on fairly equal ground to win the game as if I designed a warrior character.  If though, I could design a warrior that could defeat any enemy easily, but struggled with a wizard than why ever play a wizard?  That would be bad balance that limits my choice.  If the only type of warrior that was any good was one that used blunt weapons, I would enjoy playing a swordsman less and this limits my choice.  

No... what they mean is that the game has a set of rules. These rules are designed around the ability to provide a fun and challenging game. The balance is between the fun and the challenge. A game that is too difficult is a lot of times not seen as fun (especially if it is impossible) and a game that is seen as easy is a lot of times seen as fun (especially if you get a sword of godly power and get to pound people into the ground all the time).

Of course there are impossible situations where the fun is to see how long you can survive, but if the game was not balanced that would mean I could make it last 2-3 days before you are overwhelmed or 1 - 2 seconds.

I could take every monster unit in the game and give them all the hitpoints of some mites and the initiative of a turtle to boot. Won't change any abilities or rewards. You would find the game fun for awhile, but is this a balanced level of play. The game is too easy, but hey I would have fun watching my militia kill a storm dragon and can have lots of fun doing it.

Seconding I could set every monster unit to have an initiative of a rabbit and the hitpoints of twice that of any of the titans. Give every unit damage in all aspects, be it fire, cold, poison, and so forth. But if I don't change your hitpoints to match or damage to compare, it would be an impossible game to play. In fact, why not just have it in the scripts that every player starts directly next to 8 storm dragons.

So the term balance does not refer to nerf things, sometimes it refers to that other things needs to be brought up to the awesomeness. Under particular reasonable conditions a simple dagger shouldn't be able to kill a dragon on the first turn. (Not talking about a dagger of dragon slaying, but a simple rusty level 1 dagger). That would probably mean that the simple dagger needs to be nerfed or the dragon needs to be buffed. In essence, there is a correct point where fun and challenging meet. This balance is impossible to acheive with everyone and this is why you will never please everyone.

Thus, the other part of balance is within the playing community. Give enough fun element to the majority while not completely shunning the minority. This is usually achieved by difficulty settings, if I put it on Insane I should expect a challenge, and if I set it to easy it should be closer to I WIN senario everytime. But you can't have a slider for everything because then you might as well make your own game to play.

I would get bored with playing warrior and play wizard for the challenge.  In FE I've mastered Beastlord to the point where I easily win, but it got boring so I started trying other things.

But that is just about choices.  To me balance is about features where we have no choice.  Leveling up in LH right now is out of balance.  I just quit a game since it would have taken forever to get where I could do the Master Quest.  I had weapons that I would never be able to use due to level restrictions.   Level up became nearly impossible since there were no more monsters that I could beat.  This was happening in spite of being on top of the Faction Power list.

Balance can mean all these things, but also:

Balance between all the factions.  Invariably all games have some factions who are more powerful than others due to "racial" abilities that play stronger or weaker in the greater framework of an entire playthrough.  Some games are better at balancing the different factions than others.

Balance is something that is obsessed about instead of fun, though often confused for it. I mean the tweaking in this game to the numbers on stats, reining in this and that, and making a competitive, fair AI is a wonder of labor that has resulted in an amazing strategy game. The problem is, and this could just be my imagination, probably 90% or more of customers will never play the game enough to realize how wonderful a pure strategic experience it is. Maybe it is just extending my theory of mind too far, but I think most potential and current customers just want a wild ego experience set in a fantasy atmosphere. This would match just about every other fantasy TBS that has a big reputation. 

The players want to win the game, and they want to be lavished with neat toys they don't have to toil too hard for. This is where the question of what exactly are the designers trying to do with this game comes in, and it is weighing out in favor of being the most comprehensive, balanced strategic experience set in the fantasy genre... Which could be disappointing if it fails to catch as wide a net and excite as intensely as the effort within deserves. Not that it is impossible to have your cake and eat it too, just there never seems to be enough development resources for it.

Just my 2 cents.

balancing is just tweaking so that "1 that beats the alll"

here some exemple

earth mage who can raise mountains cand "I-WIN" vs non earth master in defensive play, now that less "random" it is even easier make it easier and them krax(even more powerfull now)+earth leader+ defensive you can more or less give up if you not a earth mage , really "fun" but they finnaly heard the problem and made lower land rank 1 earth

balanced a issue to counter a I-WIN-button strategy

but on other hand of the coin

Doublestrike > berserk >rush is freaklishy OP right now with upgrades from fortress " your unit get first move" make riders able to run accross the battlefield and even mid tiar (still in leather, horse a blacksmith weapon can easy beat 100+ dam) to slay almost anything (even dragons) before they get their turn...get them up to lvl 5 + perks and serious gear and such and they are a unstoppable force where even golems,juggernauts can't save you and mages never saw it comming (most cases you already have a second turn before their slow ass mage get 1 ^^'')

and look up Bm and bears,mauling dragons with a cub ^^

Yeah, doublestrike+ first strike is OP.  Even with archer spam it's OP.   That said, Tarth does have a harder time getting to that fortress than other civs due to rebels.  I was wondering what DS+FS+ YIthril axes would do.

Raise/Lower land was a bad idea, should have been removed from the game back in WOM, but it isn't, so we gotta deal with it, becaue taking it out would cause cries.

That is what it suppose to be but in reality when someone whines about balance they are talking about nerfing parts of the game that they don't like in favor of enhancing something they like in a game.  In MP games you will find people who were defeated in the game crying about "Balance" because they think that they are so good that they can't possaibly be defeated/killed in the game.

just be a lord or wealthy,  rush or negate ect, fortresses on 3 food + 5 production and you'r golden to win

Balance, for me, means making sure all options have their uses.  We spend a lot of time designing and implementing the wide variety of options in the game, so its a shame if a portion of them shouldn't ever be touched simply because they are to weak, or other options are to strong.

That certainly doesn't mean all options should be the same.  They should have different pros and cons.  And I certainly don't mind that there is one better answer for a specific situation.  But each option should have cases where it is the best option.

As a designer my goal isn't to have players thinking that everything is balanced.  I want players to feel like every option is overpowered.

I'm so pleased you posted this.

Possibly my favourite ever game is Dominions 3, and I am the maintainer for the most commonly used balance mod for that game. In Dom3, lots of things feel completely overpowered. It makes them exciting to use! But then when you meet your opponent, he has equally overpowered, but extremely different things at his disposal. Somehow this works out to be very fun.

Yea, llamabeast has worked on the Conceptual Balance Mod for years now for Dominions 3 and a server for playing Dom 3 through email.  Good to see you here.

llamabeast, wow You are a sort of celebrity in the world of Dominions 3. 

But yes, it's a good characteristic of a well balanced game. Each option has something compelling going. 

Dom3 certainly achieved in this area, and Fall from Heaven 2 too, still an awesome game, even today.