So folks, let's have a discussion. Please, take a seat.

Today I want to talk about Halo Wars, most particularly. It's multiplayer aspect.

Yesterday, I was essatic to recieve a copy of halo Wars. Having played the demo to death, I decided it's now a good time to try my hand at a few skirmishes in the real game. I checked out a number of the maps, alot of them are fun, have alot of strategic moves readily available to you, Energy Barriers for those who claim them make a excellent defence. Forerunner Reactors or Healing Beacons are there for those who are more offensively oriented. However, something I found shocking when I entered the world of multiplayer Halo Wars.

The Covenant needs to experience a dramatic increase in power. Why do you ask me? It's not their units, Anti-Vehicle units such as Hunters can rip apart tanks. The Special Units, Kamakazi Grunts, Brutes, or Elite Honor gaurds are excellent and powerful for those who know how to utilize them. Plus their leader units are truly a force to be reckoned with. Prophet of Regret? Can rip apart a base within seconds.

So why do I complain? Well, Humans feel like they get a ton of additional support actions in the long run. For example, Sgt, Forge, Professor Anderson, and Capt. Cutter all have unique abilities for a small price. They can launch a carpet bomb, mac cannon, or cyro bomb to any where in the map. They also all share the ability to generate healing auras to anywhere on the map.

How does this help? Well, lets say your in a fight and suddenly you find yourself losing. You ping the map and request for a bit of assistance. If your ally's are covernant, they may be more than happy to assist you. As they truck along their hero unit and army accross the map to your battle, taking precious seconds, and minutes of combat time. Or worse, leaving their own bases defenceless. Where as a USNC commander can simply drop a cyro bomb, and place a healing aura on your units. Barely requiring any action at all.

I am a bit upset at this, espically when it comes to the ability to summon pelicans and the disruption bombs. Disruption bombs rob your enemy of their leader powers for a full minute. Devastating if used on a covernant leader, and pelicans which allow you to take a group of units and transport them to any place in the map. To be fair, covernant also has the ability to teleport any units anywhere on the map, en masse. But only to where their leader currently is, and providing they are near a grav lift. Clearly a one-way trip.

I'm hoping that they look into these balancing issues and rebalance the game. Multiplayer of course is always difficult to balance, but clearly this is something that needs to be looked into, espically during 3 v 3 fights.

Single player is still awesome.

i disagree. The covenant leaders are AMAZING. I have not lost a 1v1 game yet and i always use covenant. Everyone that uses humans seem especially easy to dominate. I think the Humans need a boost in attack power if anything but overall its very balanced

While the covenant seem very balanced in 1 v 1, when they start going into 2 v 2 or at the worst. 3 v 3, you start feeling the pressure. The maps become bigger, it becomes harder for the leaders to get from point A to point B with haste and at the absolute worst. 3 Human Leaders stacking their leader powers from any point in the map is absolutely insane.

yet i still disagree. Covenant Scarabs dominate everything especially coupled with engineers and a huge force of banshees and vampires. not to mention locusts. Ive played alot of 2v2 as well and i have only lost a few games and none since i figured out my current strategies covenant just take a little more micromanaging than UNSC forces do but they do the job fine. and as for getting leaders from point A to point B, thats what multible bases are for. You can recall your leader to any base and if u spread ur bases around you can get across the map quickly. But like i said you just need to think ahead more

Just reading this is actually really entertaining. Hearing this kind of discussion about a console RTS is great ^_^ plus, just reading about leader advantages, strategic use of units and map elements and all that makes me nostaligic for Civilization, Battle Realms and Rise of Nations :P

Please, continue...

^_^ exactly ,...my friend

From http://www.halowars.com/stats/globalstats.aspx:

UNSC Win Percentage - 49.33% (1,644,189 Wins / 3,332,804 Uses)

Covenant Win Percentage - 51.02% (861,074 Wins / 1,687,636 Uses)

Looks pretty balanced to me. Of course stats like that aren't useful for determining exact balance, particularly when it comes to skilled play. However, if one side was completely underpowered like you suggest, I'd expect the win percentages to reflect it.

The imbalance I'm noticing comes from big-scale fights, 3 v 3 or in a lesser extent. 2 v 2. It comes from the human leaders being able to stack their powers together to benefit each other to a greater ability than the covenant leaders. Most of these experiences comes from my own game experience where I've pinged for leader powers and pulled off some impressive feats.

Example - Base under attack, all 3 human leaders stack Healing on the base's main structure. Preventing destruction, and infact healing the base while it's being attacked. Reinforcements come by and attack the attacking army, saving the base.

How would 3 covenant save the base? Since they can only heal though engineers and engineers can be shot down from the sky like toy airplanes, it doesn't seem possible. The best they can do is reinforce, which at times is slower. Due to lack of pelican transport.

See where I'm getting at?