Races, Units, Buildings

[Nelphine]

Like I said, I'd be fine with giving them Foresters Guild and Sages Guild.

Also, edited previous post to suggest removing a building from dark elf and high men. (I've given suggestions there, but I'm not too attached to the details.)

Could actually give Dragon Turtles Windwalking and speed 3? Literally carrying units on their back? (Instead of coming up with a new unit) (I'd rather give them a water only version of windwalking or even make them a ship, but they still need to be able to cross land, so... I don't think that works, and we don't have space for a new unit.)

[Seravy]

Speed 3 dragon turtles would be ok but they are too slow to produce (Armoer's Guild) to really work well for what they are meant to be (rush/naval control units). Also, a fast Turtle is not very intuitive. I rather not have them come with Wind Walking though.

Actually if they could build ships, we'd be good. Ships move quickly and allow your units to catch enemy ships and fight them. And while "hey we don't need ships we can swim" makes sense, at the same time it also makes about as much sense as "we don't need trains, we can walk!" so yeah.

So my suggestion is to allow Ship Wright's Guild, Maritime Guild, Forester's Guild, Animist's Guild and... Sage's Guild I really don't want to but it might be inevitable. They'd still be bad at making gold and production but at least they'd have food and research. (Low production and zerg tactics feel like an awful mix to be honest)

Note we do have space for new units, multiple, even. Last time we haven't used them all up.

I'm quite unsure exactly how much and what type of resource buildings they need to be honest.

[Nelphine]

I've already explained why naval control doesn't matter. Heck, you already said yourself that you don't need to bother, you can just watch the ship sink. And right now, aside from invincible defense from buffs, there's no reason to ever build a dragon turtle - their offense is virtually nonexistent. So I'm interested in improving dragon turtles (I've literally never built one in CoM, they're that useless) which is also why I'm not worrying about a new unit. Unkillable is simply too poor a niche to justify dragon turtle.

Oh, can we give dragon turtles whatever it is floating islands have? That would allow them to carry other units. But as that's an unique effect, I have no idea if it's doable or not.

[Seravy]

their offense is virtually nonexistent.

It's a defensive unit. A turtle.

No we can't make them into Floating Islands.

To figure out what buildings we need for Lizardmen, I'll try to compare them to Klackon the next closest thing in the game.

Growth/Spread : Klackon 40 higher, lizardmen faster water walking settlers and faster scouting. I'd say these two are about equal.
Gold : No gold buildings except marketplace but Klackons have -4 unrest vs -1 on lizardmen. In exchange Klackons have more unrest with other races. Roughly equal here, Klackons slightly better.
Power : Klackons don't get Shrine/Cathedral, but get Parthenon. Lizardmen are slightly better.
Research : Lizardmen don't get the University and Sage's Guild. Klackons are a lot better.
Military : Neither race gets a war collage and both has decent but not outstanding units. Equal.
Production : Klackons have 3 hammer from workers, Miner's Guild and Forester's Guild. So Klackons are a lot better.
Food : Klackons get all of these while Lizardmen don't get the Forester's Guild and Animist Guilds so Klackons are quite better.

Other : Lizardmen units move on water which provides advantage in sea combat. However lizardmen don't get ships making them slower on sea. We're going to change that so let's assume Lizardmen are slightly better here.
Klackons do not get ranged units, Lizardmen do, so Lizardmen are better in unit diversity. Not significantly though as Klackons have a fast unit that can attack flying enemies instead. Having shaman vs not having one is nice, too.


So there are three things Lizardmen do a little bit better and four Klackons are better at - three of which they are significantly better.

Assuming we want the races to be equal, we'll need Lizardmen to be equal at Research and Food. I'd say the gold and power categories cancel each other out, so does "other" vs production.

So yeah, Lizardmen will need ship buildings, Sage's and food buildings and they'll be about right.

[Seravy]

...having given it more thought, the scouting and faster settlers aren't such a big deal. Any race can be played like lizardmen if you build some triremes (which are even better scouts than lizard spearmen) and they can even carry your settlers at move 3. I guess the lizards are still better as spearmen cost less but not by a large margin.
Ironically, the faster water movement helps on land more than sea - crossing rivers, tundras, swamps which triremes can't do for you.
...I guess the main difference is Lizardmen can do it even if you don't start on a shore.

I think it might be better if the race had +80 growth not +70 to compensate partially for the horrible production.

[teelaurila]

Don't know whether it's possible, but would be a unique, fitting, resource bonus if lizardmen produced more food on shore tiles, allowing lizard cities on shores to grow larger and faster.

Perhaps they could serve as a unique rush role if their units had higher resistance (which is what kills barbs and gnolls)

[Seravy]

Sadly that sounds very much impossible to do.

[teelaurila]

Why would you play an early/mid game race, without using early game realms and retorts? That makes no sense. Don't split your strategies.  (This is also the basic fundamental reason why early strategies will ALWAYS be better than late game strategies.  Late game require some sort of early game in order to survive to get to the late game.  But if you are forced to use early game, then why not maximize your early game? And if you maximize your early game, then you become an early game strategy.)

Other games stop this type of thing by doing things like Starcraft ladder matches - every starting base can be easily defended. 

Agreed with this. Perhaps city defenses should be buffed so that rush isn't the only way to play harder difficulties?

[Nelphine]

I don't think it will work. The problem is that the AI HAS to be able to at least threaten your cities. Otherwise they can be ignored and you can just keep making more cities.

The problem, to continue my analogy, is that every city in CoM represents an expansion in StarCraft. Just like in StarCraft, you can't give every expansion tons of defense.

StarCraft solves this by having your initial base being worth 1/4-1/2 of your total resources in the game. But in CoM, your capital might only be 1/10-1/30 (or less).

[teelaurila]

I don't think it will work. The problem is that the AI HAS to be able to at least threaten your cities. Otherwise they can be ignored and you can just keep making more cities.

In my games I can't make many cities until the AI has all the spots settled (Playing on master). By "making" you mean taking?

I am finding myself exceedingly rarely defending cities. I am either meeting the enemy head-on in the field (where I can attack on my terms with the stronger stack), or attacking their cities. So city defenses would seem to mostly hinder my rushed advance. There is the other side, being able to do with even weaker garrisons, which does increase the advance rate. But since garrisons largely serve to deter the enemy, this might be handled separately with strategic value of defenses (is there such for walls?).

And it should be obvious that increasing fortress value would almost surely increase the value of rush strategy for the human - as the human is pretty much the only one capable of decapitation by fortress strike.