Balancing Prismata Openings Through Unit Design – part 2: Tempo and Initiative
Hey guys!
A quick news update before we get on with the rest of today’s article: in celebration of our new balance patch, we’ve posted a Kickstarter update highlighting some of our recent accomplishments and previewing a few more new skins. If you haven’t yet claimed your supporter badge, instructions are provided there!
Did you know that blog articles containing pictures are 82% more likely to be read and shared, and that 63% of statistics are actually made up on the spot?
Today, we’re going to be continuing our discussion on how Prismata openings influence our decisions regarding unit balance. Last week, we discussed how our goal in designing each Prismata unit is to find the best, most balanced, and most interesting version of that unit, and showed how specific opening timings can create design challenges because certain unit designs can favour certain players or certain strategies too much.
Like last time, I’ll be sharing a few pages from our developer-exclusive secret opening book. To understand how to analyze some of the rushes and timings that exist in these openings, we first need to discuss two important strategy game concepts: Tempo and Initiative.