Races, Units, Buildings

[zitro1987]

Back on Buildings:
4 maintenance is fine. you posted 1 maintenance on the original post and initially got worried you were proposing a change.

Sawmill
100 to build, 1 maintenance. Generate 8 production.

Marketplace with overall +7 income, while unusually cost-effective, makes sense on your mod with a 4 maintenance sawmill.

My take on shamans and priests - I'd consider them as a strong bonus to races that can recruit them, if you think the following:
*'healer' is an extremely useful effect when you aggressively try to take out nodes/lairs and neutral cities and also when battling against a wizard. Given the faster pace of your mod, it's even more effective to quickly heal your units after a few turns. It obsoletes 'nature's cures' in several circumstances.
*Even when taking 'healer' out of the discussion, shamans seem slightly superior to bowmen in combat early in the game thanks to higher long-range damage (bowmen do better with magic weapons) and also the support nature of an added healing spell.

Mechanician's Guild - I'd recommend the same cost and maintenance as miner's guild.

Animist Guild - 3 maintenance will make more sense as it provides about 5 food in a typical city with average worker:farmer ratio.

trade Goods - have you thought of allowing each unit of production to grant 1 gold? I'm not sure if it'd be overpowered in your mod.

[zitro1987]

Spearmen:
My thought is to bring the number of figures down to 6 (like swordsmen/halberdiers), lower their resistance by 1, but raise the melee to 2, making the unit somewhat better-rounded and more able to damage others. Having 16 health (24 for lizardsmen) for an experienced 10-cost unit always seemed strange to me. It must be the worst health to usefulness ratio of all units by a long stretch!

Swordsmen: I'm up for large shield being +3

Halberdiers: base melee 5 and base resistance 5 ... otherwise they generally pales in comparison against other mid-tier units in damage output and ability to resist curses. Not worth a 200-cost building at all, let inexperienced halberds at least stand a chance against nagas/war bears!

Shaman: I can't think of increasing cost or lowering stats ... this should be a unit that benefits the race you play and I may revisit them when analyzing races on whether they need a boost or not.

Bowmen: recommend requring only smithy and sawmill for the basic ones and requiring armory for more advanced ones like javelineers, longbowmen, etc. They seem to be too cheap and low-tier to require a 100 cost building and we should be able to quickly recruit these early against the masses of spearmen.

Cavalry: the basic cavalry units also seem a bit underwhelming for requiring a 100 cost building, but maybe the intention is swarming enemies with stacks of cheap cavalry.
* stronger cavalry alternative: either 1 more armor (good vs bowmen) or 1 more melee (complements first strike) and 45-50 base cost?

Magicians: good, really fun!

Machines and Boats: your setup seems good to me, but my thoughts on 1-2 figure units.

I think for balance purposes, 1-2 figure units don't benefit much from experience when compared to 4+ figure units. The damage output bonuses are small when applied to few figures and the health bonus is marginal. In the end, elite multi-figure end up relatively superior to 1-figure, while unexperienced 1-figure start out pretty good.

For my own enjoyment of your mod, I was toying with the idea of automatically giving every city military unit:
*+1 to hit to 2-figure military units and lowering their melee/range by ~25%
*+2 to hit to 1-figure military units and lowering their melee/range by ~40%

I do a more extreme version of this idea on my own mod.

[Seravy]

Back on Buildings:
4 maintenance is fine. you posted 1 maintenance on the original post and initially got worried you were proposing a change.

No, that was a mistake, it is 4 and stays 4.

Mechanician's Guild will be improved to 35% production and stay at the same cost.

Animist's Guild will be 3 maintenance.

trade Goods - have you thought of allowing each unit of production to grant 1 gold? I'm not sure if it'd be overpowered in your mod.

I tried that and it was overpowered.

Spearmen : I agree these should be 6 figures. Halfling Spearmen will stay 8 figures though. I think I'll go with +1 melee, -1 defense and resistance.

Bowmen: recommend requring only smithy and sawmill for the basic ones and requiring armory for more advanced ones like javelineers, longbowmen, etc. They seem to be too cheap and low-tier to require a 100 cost building and we should be able to quickly recruit these early against the masses of spearmen.

I agree but this would leave some races with no units requiring an armory : Beastmen, Draconian, Halflings.
Also the only other unit Armory unlocks is Cavalry, but you normally don't have a stables so it effectively only unlocks bowmen (you would have a sawmill anyway).
Honestly, at this point I'm tempted to just get rid of Armory altogether and make both Cavalry and Bowmen require only Smithy.
This would free up a slot for making a new building even.

[kjara]

Nomads:

Two possible ideas:

1. What if nomads started with halfings's 3 food per farmer buff (free animist guild). This would basically make them the lateish game unit race that has the best start, but the worst finish (as all of their towns max out at 5 smaller than other races). Then halflings probably need something to compensate(plus probably animist guild access). You said you wanted another high resistance race on Arcanus. Could make them a poor a physical combat (-def, possibly -att), but highish res (++res?) race. Situationally worth fielding against death wizards, but a subpar choice in general.

2. Another idea is to just give nomads a bit of a growth rate boost. As is, their eventual growth rate is on par with high elves once that race has built the grainery/farmers market. As their end units are a bit worse and their final size is smaller (+no free power), they probably need another 20-30 growth rate?

On halberders. Another issue with halberder's is that for most races, in the late early game the choice is between non-alch guild halberder's and alch guild boosted swordsman (as you probably don't want to put off pumping out reasonable garrisons until you have built both of those). Haven't run the math, but suspect that swordsmen compare favorably cost/power wise in this case (plus you get the +1 hit on your bowmen as well). Might make an arguement for moving them to the armory and moving the bowmen down to the smithy?

[Seravy]

1. What if nomads started with halfings's 3 food per farmer buff (free animist guild). This would basically make them the lateish game unit race that has the best start, but the worst finish (as all of their towns max out at 5 smaller than other races). Then halflings probably need something to compensate(plus probably animist guild access). You said you wanted another high resistance race on Arcanus. Could make them a poor a physical combat (-def, possibly -att), but highish res (++res?) race. Situationally worth fielding against death wizards, but a subpar choice in general.

I already decided on giving them the +3 resistance boost. No reduction on other stats though, as their units, although good and versatile, still can't compete with High Men of High Elf units. High resistance, being unique on Arcanus, is a significant enough different to make them a worthy choice of a starting race.
Along with this, Elves will be down to +1 resistance from +2, Draconians too, and Trolls and Beastmen will be +0, Dark Elves +2 instead of +3.

Haven't run the math, but suspect that swordsmen compare favorably cost/power wise in this case (plus you get the +1 hit on your bowmen as well). Might make an arguement for moving them to the armory and moving the bowmen down to the smithy?

No, swordsmen don't compare favorably because halberdiers have twice the health. Swordsmen might be more beneficial due to their low cost if you can't fill up an army of 9 units, but otherwise halberdiers win this comparison by a lot.
Bowmen and Cavalry will go down to Smithy.
Armory will cease to exist, it'll be Smithy->Fighter's Guild->Armorer's Guild.
Racial units requiring an armory will either require a Smithy or a Fighter's Guild.

Similary, Temple will cease to exist.
I'll add 2 new buildings with completely new functions instead of these (already coded both, they work fine, will add them to the post later after I tested them in an actual game).
Shrines will produce 2 power, Cathedrals 6 meaning total power will be the same. Both will be a bit more expensive.

Priests will either require a Cathedral (in this case they need a buff) or a Parthenon (in this case they are fine the way they are).

I'm considering to give Priests a new Spell ability (Fireball Spell is currently not used so it can be modded into something else) but all options feel too overpowered and/or hard to implement, and it would also be inconvenient to have two spells on one unit (you couldn't use the second one unless you used up the first). I want to keep Resistance to All High Men only so that option is out too.
I'm kinda stuck on what to give Priests, if anything. They are almost identical to shaman but their abilities are so essential it doesn't really matter if they require a cheap shrine or an expensive cathedral, they are worth it either way.
I guess the best bet is to make them require the Parthenon, getting them earlier is far more valuable as whichever stats they have above Shaman's.

[kjara]

1. What if nomads started with halfings's 3 food per farmer buff (free animist guild). This would basically make them the lateish game unit race that has the best start, but the worst finish (as all of their towns max out at 5 smaller than other races). Then halflings probably need something to compensate(plus probably animist guild access). You said you wanted another high resistance race on Arcanus. Could make them a poor a physical combat (-def, possibly -att), but highish res (++res?) race. Situationally worth fielding against death wizards, but a subpar choice in general.

I already decided on giving them the +3 resistance boost. No reduction on other stats though, as their units, although good and versatile, still can't compete with High Men of High Elf units. High resistance, being unique on Arcanus, is a significant enough different to make them a worthy choice of a starting race.
Along with this, Elves will be down to +1 resistance from +2, Draconians too, and Trolls and Beastmen will be +0, Dark Elves +2 instead of +3.

Think that makes sense. Still think nomads need a bit though, possibly see how they are with 20/30 more growth rate?

Haven't run the math, but suspect that swordsmen compare favorably cost/power wise in this case (plus you get the +1 hit on your bowmen as well). Might make an arguement for moving them to the armory and moving the bowmen down to the smithy?

No, swordsmen don't compare favorably because halberdiers have twice the health. Swordsmen might be more beneficial due to their low cost if you can't fill up an army of 9 units, but otherwise halberdiers win this comparison by a lot.
[/quote]

Merely meant that they compare favorably for the cost (which is more of a deal when you are scrambling to get garrison units up). Later once stack limits are an issue, halberdiers make more sense, but most races again have a higher tier unit that outclasses halberdiers again. Halberdiers filling this middle slot in the cost/power curve limits the phase of the game where they are useful. Still think that cutting the production cost of the fighters guild by a bit (increasing the armorers guild by the same amount?), might help give them a wider window to be used.

[Seravy]

Still think that cutting the production cost of the fighters guild by a bit (increasing the armorers guild by the same amount?), might help give them a wider window to be used.

Taking out the Armory effectively does that because you don't need to build one for the Fighter's Guild, so you spend 200 instead of 300 total.
I'm also considering to increase their resistance, or melee, but not sure about those. Far too many racial units have been balanced by using halberdiers as the default they should be equal to in total power. Powering up halberdiers would make these units less valuable.

[zitro1987]

If removing armory, I'd probably increase the cost of smithy to around 75, if not more.

if we apply a stronger halberdier with 5 melee, 5 resistance, 75 cost base and compare against other racial units:
centaurs - very powerful arrows likely make these slightly lesser than a beastman halberdier - which would cost more and require fighter's guild anyways.
manticores - somewhat comparable to beastman halberdier (3X4=12 poison max. is very good) but only requires an economy building.
wolf riders - their speed make them still somewhat better than the excellent proposed 7 base melee halberdiers.
javalineers - fine as is, maybe 1 more armor and 65-70 cost? dragon turtle will still be superior than a halberdier
dwarven halberdier and hammerhands - too much of a gap, proposed +1 melee will help
nomads - pikemen could maybe cost a tad less, though the proposed resistance boost might make them balanced. Rangers seem ok when compared to an improved halberdier.
trolls - decrease 1 hp (6 to 5) to accommodate for 1 more melee? Also, war trolls seem overpowered health-wise (discussed later)


Priests: dispel evil? situational but effective if you don't play with life magic. I can't think of almost any other spell that fits the idea of a priest. I'll discuss races within a day or so, but I'm happy on where things are going.

What if temple remains but is a straight-up 2 unrest reducing building that doesn't unlock cathedral. Non-oracle races may struggle with unrest.

[zitro1987]

My opinion on Barbarians: slightly below average race unless playing an alchemist. I dislike the idea that you have to play alchemist to fully take advantage of Barbarians and Gnolls, the impact is huge and the choice too obvious!
City/Economy: below average (despite fast growth and cheaper settlers which benefit the early game, cities lack too many economy buildings to fully flourish, including the beginning of the game where library is needed)
Early Military: above average (probably the intention and a 3 mv shaman is a strong advantage, but could go further)
Late Military: below average unless alchemist (probably the intention, but this much?)

Suggestions that fit your theme (if all 3 taken, may make barbarians overpowered):
*City/Economy: settlers costing 50% less instead of 33% less - extreme expansion of small, less functional cities with sawmill/marketplace mass-producing cheap units.
*Early Military: swordsmen, bowmen, cavalry costing 5 less, cavalry having 2 thrown or costing even 5 less (40 -> 30) - mass-recruitment of so-so units
*Late Military: berserkers costing 20 more (100 -> 120) and having 6 resistance.
OR
*Magic Weapons Solution: allow library + alchemist guild
*Alternate Weapons Solution: Alchemist wizard pick not automatically providing magic weapons

My opinion on Gnolls: average without alchemist, above average with alchemist. I dislike the idea that you have to play alchemist to fully take advantage of Barbarians and Gnolls, the impact is huge and the choice too obvious!
*City/Economy: average (decent growth, some limitations)
*Early Military: well above average
*Late Military: well below average

Suggestions:
*allow alchemist guild but require fighter's guild + stables for wolf raiders which will be more formidable with magic weapons (if you don't play alchemist)
OR
*Alchemist wizard pick not automatically providing magic weapons

[Anthony]

It would actually be a lot easier to balance races that lack the alchemists' guild if Alchemist just didn't give magic weapons -- it just gives the mana<->gold conversion.