Races, Units, Buildings

[zitro1987]

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.

This. Alchemist allowing 1-to-1 gold to mana conversion is a quite strong pick on its own. Providing magic weapons makes it extremely overpowered for barbarians and gnolls. These two races will never be balanced for both players and AI as long as alchemist guild remains unavailable.


Lizardmen - I like them the way they are for the most part. I suggest adding 'poison immunity' as a racial trait and removing that -1 resistance penalty (too many races have this penalty, I agree with you on removing this penalty for lizardmen). Once you apply these modifications, the race should be on par with others
*Javelineers don't have fire immunity. Is that a typo?

Halflings - slightly below average race that strongly relies on 'heroism' spell to catch up. Poor race without heroism or flame blade.
City/Economy: above average
Early Military: below average (better with 'life' and heroism)
Late Military: below average (better with 'life' and heroism)

It seems like the best way to play this race is to take advantage of their high number of figures and their lucky bonus by casting heroism and enchanting them with additional spells like holy armor, iron skin, flame blade, etc. On the other hand without heroism, lack of experience buildings associated with 8-figure units with melee/ranged penalty translate to rather poor units.

Suggestions (all relating to military):
*spearmen to cost 10 instead of 15 and swordsmen to cost 30 instead of 40.
*bowmen only to cost 30. They only have 6 figures on latest version
*reduce slinger cost to 90.

[Seravy]

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

Yes, I did 80.

centaurs - very powerful arrows likely make these slightly lesser than a beastman halberdier - which would cost more and require fighter's guild anyways.

Centaurs also require a fighter's guild. "very power" arrows are only strength 5, which would be same as halberdier's melee attack, but these are 4 figures. Cost is nearly identical too (currently both 60).

manticores - somewhat comparable to beastman halberdier (3X4=12 poison max. is very good) but only requires an economy building.

Not worried about these, they do not compare to halberdiers as they have unique abilities : poison, flying and weapon immunity.

wolf riders - their speed make them still somewhat better than the excellent proposed 7 base melee halberdiers.

These are fine, they do not require the fighter's guild but halberdiers do.

javalineers - fine as is, maybe 1 more armor and 65-70 cost?

They actually are a copy of halberdiers, trading 1 health and defense for gaining a ranged attack of 3. They would need to get the same stats halberdiers do but that would not benefit them much as ranged is used most on them so they would also need to gain +1 ranged...and that would make them far too good. One of the problem units.

dwarven halberdier and hammerhands - too much of a gap, proposed +1 melee will help

Agreed, no problem here.

nomads - pikemen could maybe cost a tad less, though the proposed resistance boost might make them balanced.

Since they are effectively halberdiers with armor piercing and higher cost, they would need the +1 melee, but due to armor piercing that would make them far too good (they already are very effective). Even more so for high men pikemen (even if they do not have halberdier units, their pikemen fills the same role) who have extra figures as well.

Rangers seem ok when compared to an improved halberdier.

I think these would need +1 ranged and melee to compensate. They have only 4 figures. I guess we could get away without buffing them because they have good special abilities.

Trolls - decrease 1 hp (6 to 5) to accommodate for 1 more melee? Also, war trolls seem overpowered health-wise (discussed later)

I think they are fine, but the change would put them too close to War Trolls in stats who are effectively a buffed halberdier.

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.

Considered that, but I want to change or remove that spell, so can't do it at the moment.

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.

One of the two new buildings will have "and reduces unrest by 1" inherited from the Temple and it will be a building for races without Oracle mainly.

*City/Economy: settlers costing 50% less instead of 33% less - extreme expansion of small, less functional cities with sawmill/marketplace mass-producing cheap units.

Would not work too well, due to reasons you describe above (no late game potential) additional barbarian cities are not particularly useful, spreading other races is better.

*Alternate Weapons Solution: Alchemist wizard pick not automatically providing magic weapons

I think that would make the retort a bit weak. If I did that, I would also raise Alchemist's Guild costs (it's kept low to balance the retort), would need to take away the +1 hit on berserkers (they got it to compensate for no alchemist guild) and it would make early weapon immunity (Fire Elemental and Wraith Form) too powerful due to expensive alchemist guild.
I will need to play barbarians myself before I consider any changes of this depth to them.

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)

This I can see happeneing, as gnoll halberiers already lost their racial special of "not requiring fighter's guild" due to removal of armory, so this race needs major changes.

*Javelineers don't have fire immunity. Is that a typo?

Yes, that was meant for Dragon Turtle.

- I like them the way they are for the most part. I suggest adding 'poison immunity' as a racial trait and removing that -1 resistance penalty (too many races have this penalty, I agree with you on removing this penalty for lizardmen).

I will add the resistance. Poison Immunity on an entire race would be make poison damage far less valuable especially as it's negated by any units that had 10 resistance too, and quite a lot of units are immune to it (many summons, and Rangers, Elven lords)

Suggestions (all relating to military):

Poor halfling military is intentional, I prefer to keep that. Their racial advantage is planned to be : "Produces double research". This means all buildings, or spell effects that would cause the city to produce research (Nature's Eye, Tranquility).
It makes the race viable for all realms that rely on spells heavily. Life, not relying on it so much, is already good with halflings due to figures and lucky amplifying buffs.

[Anthony]

*Alternate Weapons Solution: Alchemist wizard pick not automatically providing magic weapons

I think that would make the retort a bit weak.

The retort is normally grossly overpowered; it would mean that it would justify a cost of only 1 pick.

[Seravy]

*Alternate Weapons Solution: Alchemist wizard pick not automatically providing magic weapons

I think that would make the retort a bit weak.

The retort is normally grossly overpowered; it would mean that it would justify a cost of only 1 pick.

I'm not that sure about it. In the original game, absolutely, one of the 3 overpowered retorts. (warlord and node mastery being the other two)
In the mod however :
-Alchemist guild is cheap, and has less prerequisites. You can do Library->Alchemist as soon as you start playing. Yes, this does mean you can start building troops about 5-10 turns earlier but that's all it does (aside from those two races mentioned)
-Conversion is not vital. You can produce power more easily, and gold is slightly less easy to get while more valuable (better BUY value of production, better heroes and artifacts, higher demand of gold for units as you tend to have more of them, lower max taxes), overall healthier to maintain a stable reserve of both. Conversion does happen sometimes (especially during war if many battles are done in one turn, depleting mana), but I don't think it's frequent enough to be really worth 1 pick. Of course if you intentionally play a strategy that relies on conversion (low power race with high gold output, like dwarves) then it is useful, but not gamebreaking.

Overall, I do not know.
Alchemy is awesome for Gnolls, Barbarians and Dwarves (due to their crazy gold income and low power...unless, crystals. Nevermind, dwarves are one of the best power generators in the game, they do not need Alchemy (they love transmute though)).
For the remaining races, Alchemy is balanced and would be poor if it was changed.
Actually, ignore Gnolls too, they will be changed and will probably have an Alchemist Guild.

so it's only barbarians...and there is a catch there as well. Berserkers already have +1 to hit. An additional +1 is not as much of a boost as it would be on other units. Yes, it's 25% extra damage but berserkers don't need more damage. They have enough of that. And Alchemist helps nothing at all on the stats they are weak at.
I'm not saying it's bad, it's obviously good for them, but I'm not sure if it's overpowered.

Oh and one final though. Ignoring Weapon Immunity is awesome...but 3 out of 5 realms have a common spell that does so. And honestly, those are the 3 realms this work well with the race anyway.

[zitro1987]

Miscellaneous thoughts of other races:

Your klackons have a different style of playing given their unrest bonuses and penalties, swarming your enemies with high-armored multi-figure units early on, then the extremely versatile stag beetles. They seem to be relatively balanced if you know how to make the best out of it.
City/Economy: highly variable and interesting with plenty of tactics around the unrest penalties (such as 'move fortress')
Early Military: slightly above average
Late Military: average

Suggestions: none in mind, though lowering stag beetle melee to around 9 and giving it +2 to hit would provide incentive for experience.

High Men - another race that could benefit from an early 'move fortress'.

Early Military: simply bad (in the spirit of the original)
Late Military: best in arcanus

Suggestions: well thought out race, though I could propose slightly balancing early and late military.
Early Military: Minimize resistance penalty to -1
Late Military: Paladin's may be slightly overpowered and require a 1 armor or hp reduction. Given holy bonus, the proposed 6+1 melee and 6+1 armor at 0 experience is very significant.

High Elves - pegasi could have a higher cost or fewer arrows simply because having the capability of shooting 8 moderately strong arrows from the skies is a little too amazing. Hard to think of suggestions in this one, it plays well.

Nomads - work better with the 3 resistance bonus. Griffins are decent but not exceptional - reasonable for a race with good economic potential.

Orcs - I think this race is fine as it is with strong economy potential and relatively weak (but cheap) military throughout all stages.

[Seravy]

Suggestions: none in mind, though lowering stag beetle melee to around 9 and giving it +2 to hit would provide incentive for experience.

Changes like these would make the units be a poor target for buffs that add + To Hit, which is at least as much of a problem as lack of level up bonus.
I considered adding a hardcoded "add X% health if leveling up single figure units" but decided against it.
Why?
Because it's part of the game. These units are inherently more effective against armor (larger attack/figure), and can fight high end fantastic creatures other units can't even damage. They also don't lose any damage output until they completely die, a huge advantage over multi figure units who lose attack power every time a figure is lost. In exchange for these, they do not gain as much from leveling and buffs (although the armor they gain is perhaps even more valuable, because they tend to have higher armor to being with, same for resistance.)
This grants a value for multi-figure units, which are inferior, but gain larger benefits from levels and buffs to balance it out.
I think this part of the game works far better than it looks like and is one of the things that make this game fun.

Early Military: Minimize resistance penalty to -1

Putting a Priest unit into the army can achieve that, and (at least currently) they are easy to produce, only requiring the Parthenon.

Paladin's may be slightly overpowered and require a 1 armor

I was considering that but when I saw I just increased it like 2 weeks ago, I decided not to undo it. I must have had a reason to increase it.

[Seravy]

I decided to go with the following changes :
-Halberdiers have +1 melee and resistance.
-Javelineers have +1 melee, ranged and resistance but cost 15 more.
-Pikemen cost 75 instead of 90/100

Centaurs will stay the same, higher movement does make them sufficiently different from halberdiers, and due to them being available from spells, changing the unit is not a good idea anyway.

However, this way, Gnoll Halberdiers are nearly as good as Berserkers, and the race can build more economic buildings than barbarians. I feel that this change will make Barbarians inferior. Wolf Riders even have Pathfinding, so as soon as they are available this advantage of barbarians is also gone.

[zitro1987]

I decided to go with the following changes :
-Halberdiers have +1 melee and resistance.
-Javelineers have +1 melee, ranged and resistance but cost 15 more.
-Pikemen cost 75 instead of 90/100

Centaurs will stay the same, higher movement does make them sufficiently different from halberdiers, and due to them being available from spells, changing the unit is not a good idea anyway.

However, this way, Gnoll Halberdiers are nearly as good as Berserkers, and the race can build more economic buildings than barbarians. I feel that this change will make Barbarians inferior. Wolf Riders even have Pathfinding, so as soon as they are available this advantage of barbarians is also gone.

Then barbarians could recruit berserkers with just fighter's guild. Maybe a slightly weakened version of them with 6 melee instead of 7.

[Anthony]

-Conversion is not vital. You can produce power more easily, and gold is slightly less easy to get while more valuable

Remember, conversion actually goes both ways, even in vanilla it can be worth converting for gold in the very early game. It shouldn't come up that often, but certain effects (mana short, being banished) completely eliminate power income.

In any case, the main thing is that it's very hard to balance racial units for races without alchemists guilds if there's a cheap retort that gives them +1 to hit that they cannot get in any other way.

[Seravy]

Updated the first 3 posts with the new buildings, changes to races and units and my current thoughts about them.
I want to finish balancing everything, including magic and game mechanics before releasing this update.