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Original post by Nich The issue I'm having is that I can't come up with a reason to not only use characters with high "fly". The reason for this is that in any terrain with a kind of cliff, the flying character can simply go to the top of the cliff and attack with range, while the ground character will have to walk around. The ground character can attack at range, but it would be trivial for the flying character to stay out of that range, due to higher mobility. At worst, it's a stale-mate with the flying character simply running away, and at worst the flying character has longer range, and can attack the helpless ground character.

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Original post by Nich Wind is an interesting idea. I could apply a random adjustment to where the player actually lands, vs where they wanted to land. This could offset the benefits of flying. It would be no good if it accidentally put you below the cliff instead of on it when trying to flee.

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Original post by Nich I thought of giving flying units lower HP, but it doesn't help if they can never get hit. I think that in addition, ground units should have fairly powerful melee/ranged attacks, so if they can eventually manage to catch up to a flier, then the flier it basically toast. A random offset might help the ground unit catch a flier.

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Original post by Nich I was thinking of a fatigue type system as well, where flying takes more energy then walking. If a unit runs out of movement energy, they can't move for a round (to rest). Again, the flier might take a shortcut up the cliff, but they would use up their energy doing it, while the ground unit takes the long way around, but catches up because they didn't use as much energy. This might still result in situations where flying > ground, but it becomes more of a specific map case then a general map case.

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Original post by Tangireon That's a pretty cool idea. Additionally, I was also thinking about how it could shorten or extend your avians' flight movement range, depending on which way the wind was pointing (much similar how ancient armies would use the sun to their advantage - the advantage being it is harder to see an army that has its back against the sun). This which would affect your archers as well, if you dare extend it down here.

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Original post by Tangireon In addition to more fragile physiques and having their armor meet the weight requirements for flight, you could extend this to their weaponry, so they won't be able to hold heavy weapons in flight such as halberds. Again I use the horse troops comparison - gunpowder-age horseback weapons were much lighter (carabineers and pistoliers) than those of the foot troops due to their requirements for fast mobility. I could imagine spears, lances, dropping stones, and bows (foot bows) be your fliers' mainstay types of anti-ground weapons, while some sort of bludgeoning or slashing used for air-to-air (to shatter those bones or clip those wings), as well spell casting. Heck, you could even limit your spell casting abilities depending on the weather (if your magic is vocal-based).

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Original post by Tangireon Yeah, I was thinking the same. I'd imagine your fliers would mainly be on the ground, but use their wings or such to transport them from one place to another in each of their movement rounds. Staying in air would be pretty taxing to them. You could have multiple types of fliers, those who are extremely weak but can stay in the air longer, and those who are a bit sturdier but can't stay in the air too long.

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Original post by Derakon This is off on a bit of a tangent, but your discussion reminded me of Heroscape, which is a turn-based tactical game with flying units and varying terrain. It's a board game, not a computer game, but it's applicable nonetheless. The major thing that Heroscape does to balance out flying units is that they tend to be comparatively large. This is important for two reasons: line of sight to a vulnerable section of the target is required to be able to hit it with a ranged target (so a flying unit up on a mountaintop is in a very vulnerable position, even if it can hit many other units), and your units are not allowed to stop in a place that they physically do not fit into. So for example, if you have a ledge with trees on either side, the flying unit's wings might prevent it from finding a balanced position on the ledge, preventing it from landing. Applying this to a videogame, I'd say the following: 1) Ranged attacks should be sufficiently prevalent that any unit that tries to go for a physically-inaccessible place to snipe enemies is in serious danger of itself being sniped. To keep melee attacks viable, they should be more powerful; you'd rather use melee if possible (for most units), but ranged is an option if you can't reach your target otherwise. 2) Flying units need a flat, clear area to land on, larger than the area occupied by their unit at rest. A falcon might be able to perch on the narrow peak of that mountain, but you can't fit a dragon on the same spot.

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The issue I'm having is that I can't come up with a reason to not only use characters with high "fly". The reason for this is that in any terrain with a kind of cliff, the flying character can simply go to the top of the cliff and attack with range, while the ground character will have to walk around. The ground character can attack at range, but it would be trivial for the flying character to stay out of that range, due to higher mobility. At worst, it's a stale-mate with the flying character simply running away, and at worst the flying character has longer range, and can attack the helpless ground character.

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Original post by sirkibble2 Forgive me if I have misunderstood something but since all characters have ranged attacks, can they not have anti-air or "anti-height" attacks. This would quickly balance your issue of flying units being too overpowered. Balancing from there would be up to you and trial and error. There is the option of everyone having their own terrain "safe zones" (water based characters safe in the water, etc) but that could imbalance the game unless all maps have terrain safe zones. As far as maps, it's nearly impossible to balance all maps but if you're trying to get to as much balance as possible while keeping it realistic, anti-air or other "anti" things would be my thoughts towards balance.