Lizardmen

[Seravy]

Although I wanted to avoid this, I decided to allow Lizardmen to build the Sawmill.
There is no way around it, the race is just far too slow in the early and even midgame without one.
Yes, the high population means good taxes and buying buildings is an option but...it's just not good enough, I never felt inclined to play the race for any reason, other than the obvious Tiny and Small landmass where swimming is a potential game changer. The largest problem here is, while the human player can just decide not to play lizardmen unless the landmass makes it worth the choice, the AI will be playing it on any land size.

What I do know :
-I will enable Sawmill
-I will not enable / disable anything else with a production bonus : Miner's Guild, Forester's Guild.
-All the units will remain the same except the Dragon Turle

What I do not know and could use advice on:
-Since they'll have a very strong early game (no drawback essentially with the addition of sawmill, but still superior units and population growth), I'm not sure what buildings they should have : the limitation of no Builder's Hall and derivatives might be enough, but might not and removal of Wizard's Guild, Amplifying Tower or Alchemist Guild might be needed. However if there are no good buildings the race might not be viable : Their units are only good for the early game, and quick expansion is worth nothing without buildings in the cities producing resources.
-How well Dragon Turtles will function when the race actually has acceptable production. I suspect the unit is actually pretty good, it just wasn't viable to build an Armorer's Guild with the race due to slow production. At a cost of 100 and same health and better armor than Stag Beetles with somewhat less attack power but identical fire breath, it should be a strong unit in theory. It certainly is better on defense than offense.

[namad]

Is it possible to just give the lizardman fortress +8 production? I actually like building lizardman settlers when I conquer lizardman neutrals. Maybe the ai's only problem is in the capital?

Lizardmen settlers are great at claiming territory, they populate fast and cheaply without needing to buy gold a sawmill or granary and in the later game you can use lizardman gold to purchase neutral griffins or paladins?

Also stag beetles are a rapid deployment response unit at 4 movement, dragon turtles have 2. That's a key difference in usage. With roads 9 stag beetles can sometimes defend 3 or 4 cities, dragon turtles cannot do that, although they can launch very very slow sneak attacks across water. A great trade off for the rest of the lizardman units but not so great on their ultimate unique.
Halberdiers of both units have movement 2 as well. Maybe give dragon turtle 3or4 movement and increase cost if needed?

The weakened capital can be a problem though especially since capital sites in caster of magic sometimes suck. If you want ai lizardmen wizards to claim the world, they need the sawmill in their capital. Although revamping them to be more "normal" with a sawmill, more buildings in general, better units and worse population growth is all fine with me too.

also IIRC ai can blacklist races, I read it on the wiki, you could just make it so on high difficulties the ai never picks lizardmen?

EDIT: Fire immunity? what does it do? I am attacking a lone efreet with a lone dragon turtle. The efreet is dealing full damage with each attack. His attacks look like fire, I guess they're technically chaos magic. Is this right? (I know it's how MoM works but is it how you want your mod to work? Illusion immunity makes you immune to many sorcery spells AND to some sorcery attacks? right?
Oh, btw, I landed black sleep. Then my dragon turtle killed the efreet. I didn't have flying on my dragon turtle. That means fire breath damaged the efreet? right? but efreet ALSO have fire immunity.

[Seravy]

also IIRC ai can blacklist races, I read it on the wiki, you could just make it so on high difficulties the ai never picks lizardmen?

I can but don't want to. If I do that I admit the race sucks. In the vanilla game the AI can only pick 5 races (on arcanus), High Men, High Elf, Halflings, Orcs, and idk maybe Nomads. Coincidentally the other races were very bad and no one ever used them.

Maybe give dragon turtle 3or4 movement and increase cost if needed?

It's a turtle. So it has to be slow and high defense, especially as no other race has a unit like that (golem is close but it's faster and has magic immunity as well as myrran)

I actually like building lizardman settlers when I conquer lizardman neutrals.

To quote a friend "I always raze lizardmen cities first". I myself don't but I'm rarely happy getting them instead of any other race.
A large growth yielding a lot of gold in taxes sounds great...until you do the math. Let's say your city produces 20 more gold in taxes due to having 10 higher population that a different race would and a tax rate of 2. But it takes them 2-3 times longer to build anything so you will need to at least buy half the buildings. A Wizard's guild costs 1600, so 80 turns worth of taxes, and that's just one building out of the many. The other problem, even if they grow faster, the maximum is the same, so they reach it 50-100 turns earlier than others but eventually their advantage just vanishes as everyone else catches up to them...but they'll still produce units slower, despite no longer having an advantage at all and being a bit limited in buildings (no bank, merchants guild, ships, parthenon, oracle, university, mechanicans guild, miners guild). So they only have an advantage in the early game...except they don't because without a sawmill they produce everything slower than others. Having 2x as strong units does not help if you can only produce half as many, and 1 tier below others because the fighter's guild would take 25 turns.
It's true that settling works very well, you can spam 8-10 outposts while other races can only 3-4, the problem is you have nothing to defend them and the AI gets hostile earlier than the last time I tested the race to work. Back then I could build those 10 cities, and get at least some swordsmen or summons to protect them before the AI was first allowed to start a war. Now, I would probably get attacked while still having no units in any of them except maybe the closest. The AI is also way faster at settling now, so grabbing enough territory in the beginning is harder than before.
Of course with enough luck a game where no one declares war can happen, and then having those 8-10 cities while others have fewer can win a longer game...but considering the late game of the race being generally medicore, this would only work up to Hard at best.

Is it possible to just give the lizardman fortress +8 production?

That would be overpowered. Other races spend like 20 turns building the sawmill for that, so it would mean a 20 turn advantage in the beginning, paired with a race that has more than twice as durable units as normal.


Edit : Fire Immunity works on magic spells that say they do fire damage : fire bolt, wall of fire, immolation. Additionally it works on fire breath. magic attacks from units that are red are chaos magic but not fire.

[namad]

Sure +8 raw production might be OP but well we could look at the concept, they save 20 turns, they don't pay the gold maintenance, okay, how about +3 or +4?

In the late game it doesn't matter if those cities are weak because they're free, as in they would've been enemy cities otherwise because of the settler cost reduction and the swimming. Even if swimming isn't amazing on a large landmass map it's not useless. That said, this is my reasoning for not RAZING captured lizardmen neutrals, it doesn't address the flaw in actually starting the game as lizardmen. I guess my reasoning was if I don't raze the neutrals the flaw with lizardmen is their capital. If starting with a free sawmill is OP maybe lizardmen should start with a free granary? another building they cannot build that would help boost the capital? or how about this? The lizardmen capital city gets +5 max population? Helping to solve the problem you listed earlier? last game lizardmen cities reach max population faster but it's still the same (actually lower) max population (part of this problem is no granary and no farmers market).

Or another totally insane idea... remove a retort, add a new retort, this retort makes you start the game with a settler, of the race directly below your own in the list of races? (insane idea but helps make lizardmen viable if they use it?)

Also fire immunity specifically just now did not work on fire breath (so does black sleep cancel it? or does fire breath allow you do melee damage to a flying unit when you cannot fly? because my dragon turtle killed the efreet one on one)

[Seravy]

Also fire immunity specifically just now did not work on fire breath (so does black sleep cancel it? or does fire breath allow you do melee damage to a flying unit when you cannot fly? because my dragon turtle killed the efreet one on one)

Both. Black Sleep turns the attacker's attack type to doom which ignores all armor including immunities. Breath and thrown not only enables the units to attack the flyer with that attack, but normal melee as well.

[namad]

Also fire immunity specifically just now did not work on fire breath (so does black sleep cancel it? or does fire breath allow you do melee damage to a flying unit when you cannot fly? because my dragon turtle killed the efreet one on one)

Both. Black Sleep turns the attacker's attack type to doom which ignores all armor including immunities. Breath and thrown not only enables the units to attack the flyer with that attack, but normal melee as well.

Oh wow, I always thought barbarians were great against flyers because they could harm them at all, not because they could harm them fully, next playthru warlord barbarian life10 :-p

[Tiltowait]

I think Lizardmen aren't really meant to be viable in the long-term. You're supposed to use your great swimming ability to go and take over other, better races, and use them. They're a harder race to play.

Moreover Seravy nailed it: the player will only likely play Lizardmen on smaller worlds that enhance their greatest advantage. The CP will get stuck with them on any size. Well, let's be honest, any race without Alchemist Guilds needs to conquer a race that does have them to have a chance in the late game. Either that, or make sure there *is* no late game by winning during the stage when Dragon Turtles are viable. I think a lot of people overlook this possibility, or maybe play the game to cast the Spell of Mastery instead of going for a conquest win.

the other races were very bad and no one ever used them.

Really? The concept of "races" was new to the world at the time. Civ1 had nations with different names but generic traits. Different races with different abilities - genius! Combine this with the customizable wizards and you've got a game which can be played in a blizzard of possible starting positions.

No one ever used them? Everyone I talked to did, except the munchkin powergamers. And honestly, those got bored of MoM pretty fast and moved on after breaking the game a few times. The lesser races are a challenge, they must be played differently. They provide more of a spice to the game than just playing High Men every time because of Paladins.
I don't always raze Lizardman cities first. They're still good for food, it's always helpful to have a crappy city because you don't really care what it makes and you can turn all your citzens to food without feeling bad. Plus there are those Javelineers if you want to go for them. Best garrison unit ever, stick a pair in all your towns. And if you do raze them? So? Effective use of a tactic to deny the enemy growing space, it's part of the game.

I think maybe the Lizardmen should just be torn down and rebuilt in Caster of Magic. If they're meant to be equal, water walking and fast expansion won't cut it against races that can build Cathedrals and Wizard's Guilds.

[namad]

I just realized another flaw with lizardmen, they cannot be taxed properly. They lack several unrest reducing buildings, so even with high population they only will accept about half the tax rate of many other populations.

So either give them back a few more unrest reducing buildings, OR pull a klackon? Give them an unrest bonus that's smaller than the klackon one, justify it because uh every other race is a mammal and they're a reptile (klackons are somehow insects).

I concur with Tiltowait though I loved every race in MoM even the bad ones, because a bad race can be fun in it's own way. This is a mod though, if you want every race to be good, do it. I have fun brainstorming bad ideas on how to make it happen.

[Tiltowait]

In the vanilla game the AI can only pick 5 races (on arcanus), High Men, High Elf, Halflings, Orcs, and idk maybe Nomads.

This only applied to Hard and above, I believe. On the other 3 difficulty levels the CPs could be any race. I should look it up on the OSG to make sure.

[Hadriex]

Well, if you're worried specifically about dragon turtles, you could up their production cost.

Honestly though I think of lizardmen as a race that plays wide rather then tall. Able to expand quickly but not able to build any of the high-end buildings. I would prefer that they keep the alchemist's guild though, as restricting it prevents a race from making use of resources.

Lizardmen (and gnolls) should have a strong early game advantage, but they'll have to change strategies as the game advances and their turtles are outclassed by the 'builders'.