Races, Units, Buildings

[zitro1987]

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.

Nice, let's see (have to think from experience plus the given adjustments) - I'm assuming everything that is blue is still where you are looking for outside opinions, so I won't talk much about what's green

Buildings:
Sage's Guild - I don't think any numerical tweaking is needed

Alchemist Guild, magic weapons, and alchemist - I don't think any numerical tweaking is needed.
** I strongly suggest dedicating some effort having mercenaries come with regular magic weapons, at least when having a minimum amount of fame. They simply stick out like a sore thumb otherwise

Wizard's Guild - if you feel this is overpowered, I do not think so. The 6 maintenance moderates the benefits somewhat

Amplifying Tower - this building terrifies me a bit in the hand of the AI, which has production bonuses and lots of towns. Cool idea but proceed with caution.

Coliseum - Maintenance cost seems low given that fame removes military gold maintenance. Cool idea.

[Seravy]

Alchemist Guild, magic weapons, and alchemist - I don't think any numerical tweaking is needed.
** I strongly suggest dedicating some effort having mercenaries come with regular magic weapons, at least when having a minimum amount of fame. They simply stick out like a sore thumb otherwise

Good idea! Added to "to do" list.

Wizard's Guild - if you feel this is overpowered, I do not think so. The 6 maintenance moderates the benefits somewhat

The building itself is fine, the overall power of 24 from a city was what I was worried about, but I realized the problem is not losing buildings at all on conquest. If you have to build them all yourself, they're ok, but if you get them pre-built by the AI, that's a bit too good. I restored the base chance of losing buildings when taking a city, and increased it to 20%.

Amplifying Tower - this building terrifies me in the hand of the AI, which has production bonuses and lots of towns.

That's the intention. The AI lacks the ability to select one plan and see it through (be it a stack of 9 rare creatures or cursing every enemy town) and divides up the overland casting opportunity between unrelated spells, so needs a significant casting skill advantage to make up for wasting it on meaningless spells. They had the resource advantage to afford this behavior, but lacked the casting skill to actually do so. Due to how casting skill works (twice the power spent does not give you twice as much skill), the AI advantages in this area were out-of-sync with the rest.
Additionally, while everything in the game comes faster, one thing, casting skill, does not, even for the human player. I often find it hard to cast all the overland spells I researched (even on minimal research) in a relevant quantity. For example, by the time I summon a stack of Shadow Demons, I'll probably have access to a rare summoning spell, so at best I get one shot at using Shadow Demons per game. This is the case even if I take advantage of all extra casting skill boosting options in the game. (Sorcery conjunctions, AEther Binding, Drain Power.)
I want to see the AI summon enough high rarity creatures to start sending them out in dangerous amounts in offensive stacks.
Amount of skill needs to be tested, 7 is quite a lot, in the one game I played, I had about 200 extra skill from these buildings by the time I was sure to win the game. The presence of them sped up the endgame because it allowed me to summon the monsters to clear out remaining AI towns twice as fast as usual. However, this was on Large land size, after defeating 2 other wizards, so I had lots of cities, and I already had a power base of 1000. The new thing was, I could actually afford to spend my power base on producing mana (sometimes even research) in addition to skill. In previous games, I almost always converted most of my gold into mana, and produced skill from the entire power base, and still struggled to summon enough fantastic creatures.

Coliseum - Maintenance cost seems low given that fame removes military gold maintenance. Cool idea.

Yes, the idea is to generate roughly as much extra gold as a marketplace. High building cost though because fame offers a lot more than just extra gold.

[Anthony]

As long as the casting skill is overland-only (like heroes in your capital), it seems reasonable enough.

[Seravy]

As long as the casting skill is overland-only (like heroes in your capital), it seems reasonable enough.

At the moment it is global like Archmage. Additional combat spellcasting, while influential, didn't feel disturbing, as combats with uneven forces usually end quickly, the additional skill is not used up unless very expensive, high rarity spells are cast, in which case the inability to use them previously was the problem in my opinion. When one can research Flame Strike before having 60 skill to cast it even once in a battle, that shows something is not working too well.
In battles where neither side has a decisive advantage, and both armies struggle to win, this can help actually decide a winner instead of dragging it out to "all units retreat exhausted" every turn until you get sick of the stalemate and just flee (or reinforce if able).
If I feel there are problems with excessive combat spellcasting, I'll consider changing this, but so far it seems the one spell per turn limitation is enough to keep it in check (as well as the prohibitively large selection of buildings in cities, even with the production bonus the AI has, it takes like 100 turns to build them all)

[zitro1987]

*I think it's a good idea that a city conquest results in 20% buildings destroyed, to lessen the impact of conquering a city (and the aforementioned massive economic bonuses)

*Halberdiers - I recommend giving all of them 'negate first strike' as an additional counter to cavalry.

*Barbarians: the race you can take advantage if 'alchemist'. To lessen the heavy advantage of 'alchemist' for a starting player barbarian, what if we remove 'marketplace' to make gold scarcer early in the game, thus more difficult to convert to mana?
-If so, I suggest balancing somewhat by giving units a price advantage and/or remove the -1 resistance penalty, at least to berserkers who scould at least parallel halberdiers in resistance (5 - 1 = 4)

*Gnolls: if halberdiers only require smithy, and wolf riders smithy and stables, shouldn't fighter's guild be forbidden? Resistance of wolf riders seem harsh for a 100 cost unit.

*Lizardmen: seems fine to me

*Halflings seem more worthwhile if research city bonuses are doubled. Slingers seem weak unenchanted but could be overpowered if playing 'life + chaos' (heroism + flame blade/metal fires). Will have to test that.

*Paladins with 6+1 (holy bonus) starting armor seems high for a military unit, especially given 20 starting health

*Pegasi unit cost at 120 too low for the melee/ranged combo. Suggest 140-150 to balance against elven lords

*I don't personally have an issue with nightblades the way they are.

[Seravy]

*Gnolls: if halberdiers only require smithy, and wolf riders smithy and stables, shouldn't fighter's guild be forbidden? Resistance of wolf riders seem harsh for a 100 cost unit.

The halberdiers require the Fighter's Guild now, with the improved stats and the racial bonus, they would have been far too powerful for only a Smithy.
Wolf Riders on the other hand come faster, but are somewhat weaker (less figures). They are essentially a better Cavalry unit for a higher cost.

*Pegasi unit cost at 120 too low for the melee/ranged combo. Suggest 140-150 to balance against elven lords

I would prefer to keep the cost and reduce melee attack. Their ranged is reasonably low.

*I don't personally have an issue with nightblades the way they are.

The hit penalty from Invisibility makes them far harder to kill than other 3 health units, I think reducing their health to 2 is reasonable (and would still mean they would be as good as another unit with 3, as enemies will have 2 hit instead of 3 against them!).

Halberdiers - I recommend giving all of them 'negate first strike' as an additional counter to cavalry.
Paladins with 6+1 (holy bonus) starting armor seems high for a military unit, especially given 20 starting health

Will be doing these.

[zitro1987]

Orcs: lack of racial bonus, but for balancing purposes it should be marginal and situational. How about 'wall crusher'?

Myrror Races General Thoughts - these races are expected to be better than Arcanus but Trolls is over the top making myrran a possibly overpowered retort.

Trolls Overall - Their economic potential is not bad for a military race tied with beastmen with the best growth in myrror (though with building limitations) while the military potential starts excellent and gets better as it goes on.
*War Trolls are too much of an improvement on the mobility/durability side over halberdiers for their cost (according to pg 1, +1 melee, +2 resistance, +1 movement!, +2*4=8hp!). I know we should reward armorer's guild, but it's too easy to build 'stacks of doom' with no healing or reinforcement needs and win the game.
Also War Mammoths have too much melee for a very durable 3-figure first strike unit that barely costs 180.
*My suggestions:
-Slightly higher costs for spearmen/swordsmen/halberdier (20/50/100)
-Weakening war trolls somewhat or increasing their cost. 7hp per figure instead of 8 (still 28, 32 at elite) and 6 base resistance?
-lower melee and/or higher cost for war mammoths

Draconians: less extraordinary than trolls but very good, I'd leave the race as it is

Dwarves: less extraordinary than trolls but very good ... however, golems should at least require fighter's guild with mechanician's guild.

Dark Elves: less extraordinary than trolls ... priests didn't get the base unit cost increase yet receive a massive +2 ranged damage.

Beastmen: less extraordinary than trolls ... bowmen and magicians could use 1 more melee

[Seravy]

Orcs: lack of racial bonus, but for balancing purposes it should be marginal and situational. How about 'wall crusher'?

Their "special" is having no special but higher growth rate than any other late game capable race.
Oh, and I forgot to list, they do have a special :
Orc normal units have 1 lower maintenance in gold than normal.

Trolls

I have to play these to be able to judge, as enemies they did not feel particularly strong.

Dwarves: less extraordinary than trolls but very good ... however, golems should at least require fighter's guild with mechanician's guild.

Looking at the current stats of Golems, I agree.

Dark Elves: less extraordinary than trolls ... priests didn't get the base unit cost increase yet receive a massive +2 ranged damage.

Will be fixed to cost 150.

[zitro1987]

Trolls is a race that may not seem extraordinarily powerful in the hands of AI because regeneration works best in large groups with nothing but regeneration. All a player needs is fast recruitment of 6+ swordsmen early in game, then 9 magic-weapon halberdiers, then game-winning 9 war trolls. In the meantime, sprinkle summons, other race units, and war mammoths for city defense or small aggressive stacks. It is hard to come up with better strategies in the game.

What do you feel about giving gnoll and beastmen bowmen one additional melee point? Given the base '1 melee', the extra boost doesn't seem as helpful as with melee-oriented units.

[Seravy]

What do you feel about giving gnoll and beastmen bowmen one additional melee point? Given the base '1 melee', the extra boost doesn't seem as helpful as with melee-oriented units.

Bowmen are not meant to be used for melee anyway, I don't see why I would care.
Beastmen bowmen have their extra health which is useful for them.
Gnolls...well idk, don't think that extra melee would make them all that useful.

On the other hand...it would be interesting it we could turn gnoll bowmen into some racial unit , for a race that is supposed to be about military, they only have 1 racial unit...problem is graphics would not change, nor do I have any good unit ideas for the race.

btw, looked into mercenaries, having them appear with magical weapons is easy. Having it show up in the dialog is harder but seems doable. Having it based on fame, close to impossible. Wouldn't this reduce the value of alchemist's guild in the early game though? I'm starting to have doubts.