Races, Units, Buildings

[Seravy]

I recall being unable to make 9-figure units in the past (with the exception of hydra). I approve the idea of making a many-figure melee unit for armorer's guild, but I'd like it to appear reasonably unique compared to other advanced multi-figure melee units like berserkers or hammerhands.

My attempt: a decent movement melee unit best suited against low resistance opposition (cause fear)
125 cost
8 figures
3 movement
5 or 6 melee
4 armor
2 hp
6 resistance
Cause Fear (increases durability of unit with your -3 to resist version)
Large shield
Negate First Strike

I wasn't able to make the game work with 9 figures (even though I rewrote the procedure that tells where each figure should be in the unit, it still did not work for some reason), so I'm stuck with 8.
Current version is
75 cost (15 more then halberdiers, a bargain for 2 figures, 1 melee and Large Shield)
8 figures
2 movement
6 melee
4 armor
2 hp
4 resistance
Large Shield
Negate First Strike

Effectively a swordsmen with much more health and damage output.
Fear is a nice idea but the primary design goal of Orcs is to be generic and cheap, not unique.
It's also far too good when paired with Large Shield, which already protects from ranged, so protection vs melee on top is a bit too good for a normal unit.

I think a fear multi-figure unit would be better for Gnolls, especially as they also have no unit requiring the Armorer's Guild.
The only problem is, to add a new unit, an existing one needs to be removed. None of the current units remaining have any serious flaws or reasons to remove them. I guess some are not very useful though. Do Nomads need Bowmen? They have Horsebowmen and Rangers too... Halfling Bowmen feels somewhat not-essential too (they have Slingers and Shaman).
I would rather have Halfling Magicians instead of Bowmen, and Gnoll Hunting Pack (8 wolves with fear) instead of Nomad bowmen.
Does anyone use Halfling or Nomad bowmen for anything? I mean aside from the obvious "I need a unit before the enemy arrives, and I only have that one available..." scenario.
I would also love to see Troll Magicians. Maybe we could also get rid of Gnoll Bowmen since it's not very useful to have bowmen with a race that specializes on having +2 melee.

[Seravy]

Finished the new units :
Horde (Orc, req. Armorer's Guild)
Cost : 75
Melee Attack : 6
Ranged Attack : none
Defense : 4
Health : 2
Movement : 2
Resistance : 4
Figures : 8
Abilities : Large Shield, Negate First Strike

Magicians (Halfling, req. Wizard's Guild)
Cost : 120
Melee Attack : 1
Ranged Attack : 5 (4 ammo)
Defense : 4
Health : 1
Movement : 3
Resistance : 8
Figures : 4
Abilities : Caster 20, Missile Immunity, Lucky

Jackal Riders (Gnoll, req. Armorer's Guild)
Cost : 150
Melee Attack : 6
Ranged Attack : none
Defense : 3
Health : 3
Movement : 3
Resistance : 4
Figures : 8
Abilities : Cause Fear

Magicians (Troll, req. Wizard's Guild)
Cost : 150
Melee Attack : 4
Ranged Attack : 5 (4 ammo)
Defense : 4
Health : 4
Movement : 2
Resistance : 8
Figures : 4
Abilities : Caster 20, Missile Immunity, Regeneration

Gone : Dracon engineers, Nomad, Halfling, Gnoll bowmen.

[zitro1987]

My thoughts:

Horde: I am confused by this unit having 1 lower resistance than orc halberdiers. It seems counter-intuitive for a superior version of unit. Keeping the 5 resistance and adding +5-10 to its cost would mean mass-recruiting a better halberdier with no added weaknesses at the cost of an expensive building.

Magicians: Not just halflings, I noticed that racial cost modifiers do not seem to take effect for these. For example, draconian magicians don't cost more because they fly (but their halberdiers cost more). Halflings are supposed not to excel in combat, but providing 'lucky' (+1 to hit/defend/resistance) magicians at same cost is a bargain.

Jackal Riders - interesting unit, resistance seems a bit harsh, but it makes sense for gnolls.

[Seravy]

My thoughts:

Horde: I am confused by this unit having 1 lower resistance than orc halberdiers. It seems counter-intuitive for a superior version of unit. Keeping the 5 resistance and adding +5-10 to its cost would mean mass-recruiting a better halberdier with no added weaknesses at the cost of an expensive building.

Magicians: Not just halflings, I noticed that racial cost modifiers do not seem to take effect for these. For example, draconian magicians don't cost more because they fly (but their halberdiers cost more). Halflings are supposed not to excel in combat, but providing 'lucky' (+1 to hit/defend/resistance) magicians at same cost is a bargain.

Jackal Riders - interesting unit, resistance seems a bit harsh, but it makes sense for gnolls.

Magicians : I forgot that because most racial extras do not benefit magicians much. Extra melee, or even health/defense is not very useful for them. I guess the +Hit on high elves, Flight on draconians and the Lucky on Halflings should be included in the cost.

Horde : They are quite a lot superior to halberdiers in attack power and have an extra ability, while their cost is pretty low. The tradeoff is the weaker resistance. Ultimately, these are a swordsmen-halberdier hybrid with more figures and power. Since most other stats come from halberdiers, the resistance comes from swordsmen. I want to at least represent that this unit is made from a larger number of more average soldiers in the resistance, unlike in case of other races where the top unit generally is fewer but better figures.

[Seravy]

I've decided to give Nomad spearmen and swordsmen the ability to use ranged attacks (strength 1 and 2 bow, limited to 4 ammo) in exchange for the removal of their bowmen, because I consider the race to be good bow users, and both horsebowmen and rangers come later than normal bowmen did.

[Seravy]

I'm not very satisfied with the magician unit's attacks in the game I'm playing now. While their caster 20 ability is awesome, they don't seem to do much damage with their shots. Not only are they limited to a mere 4 ammo, but at a strength of 5 with only 4 figures, it's not all that damaging either. Large Shield, Bless and Resist Elements can reduce their damage to the point it's near zero and they don't benefit from magical weapons and most buffs. Even if I don't consider these drawbacks, the attack power of 5 is merely as good as a halberdier, but with fewer figures and no alchemy bonus so overall damage is like half. While ranged can be considered superior, it suffers from its own downsides, it has limited ammo, and is countered by a vast array of spells or abilities (even swordsmen's shield!), pairing this with a vulnerable unit and high cost, I'm not so sure about it.

Long story short, should magicians have 1 higher attack power, or not? I'm not 100% sure because they're working well in the early game, and their casting ability is good enough on its own but...when my army of 9 magicians fails to kill and army of 5 normal units using their normal attacks, I have my doubts.

[zitro1987]

I admit modifying your files to boost magicians as I felt they needed a bit more.

So what did I do? give them +1 to hit, -1 range, a slight durability increase, and a slight cost increase. The to-hit now matches the to-hit of non-magical ranged units when they shoot at nearby enemies (which gain it from magical weapons).

Be careful with my suggestions with racial benefits. A more costly high elf magician with +2 to hit is not overpowered, but high men with 6 figures might be (i lowered to 5 figures to compensate for +1 to hit)

[Kenbutsu]

Seravy,

How does the housing formula work? I thought it might be something like this, excluding building effects.

(1+WorkerBonus)*[5*(Floor(MaxPop/1000) - Floor(CurrentPop/1000)) + RaceBaseRate], rounded to the nearest 10,

where WorkerBonus Ranges from 0 (all farmers) to 1 (max workers).

But I can't always correctly calculate the housing rate. Sometimes, it appears the worker bonus applies to the RaceBaseRate, sometimes it appears not to. I figured you would be familiar with the formula and could let me know where my misunderstanding is.

Thanks,

-Ken

[Seravy]

Seravy,

How does the housing formula work? I thought it might be something like this, excluding building effects.

(1+WorkerBonus)*[5*(Floor(MaxPop/1000) - Floor(CurrentPop/1000)) + RaceBaseRate], rounded to the nearest 10,

where WorkerBonus Ranges from 0 (all farmers) to 1 (max workers).

But I can't always correctly calculate the housing rate. Sometimes, it appears the worker bonus applies to the RaceBaseRate, sometimes it appears not to. I figured you would be familiar with the formula and could let me know where my misunderstanding is.

Thanks,

-Ken

Did you include the effect of buildings? Sawmill and Builder's Hall boosts housing.
This is a pretty accurate and detailed page : http://masterofmagic.wikia.com/wiki/Housing

[Anthony]

Note that the way housing works does make building housing really dumb. I wonder if a flat add of 10 per farmer and 40 per worker would be unbalanced. That's equivalent to a person costing 50 production on a city with no production bonuses.