Lizardmen

[namad]

Jackal Riders are one of the best normal units in the game, Dragon Turtles aren't. IMO.

[Seravy]

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.

Correct.
I would also like to mention, currently lizardmen have the alchemist guild, wizard's guild and even the amplifying tower and cathedral.
They do not have the parthenon, university, miner's guild, oracle, ship wright's guild, bank, merchant's guilds, mechanicians guilds. Oh and builder's hall so they have no bonus to housing to go with the high pop growth.

Honestly though I think of lizardmen as a race that plays wide rather then tall.

That strategy worked half a year ago when I made the race to be the way it is now, and this was the intention for it.
Currently it would not. The AI is way faster at settling and thanks to their production bonus they would not be all that much behind, on top of that they can attack you earlier, so aggressive settling without troops to defend is only viable if they do not attack you at all.
Without a sawmill, production of those cheaper settlers would still not be quicker than what other races do, at least not significantly. It was faster than Hard AI when the AI was still bad at using settlers, now that they do it faster, not anymore.
The last problem I see, even if you manage to go wide and defend your territory, lizardmen cities are so much less productive that twice as many cities would still not result in an advantage compared to, for example the half as many orc cities of other players.
The larger population is a short term advantage as everyone else will eventually reach it, and you can take less advantage of it because without an Oracle and Parthenon your unrest reduction options are much more limited.

I'm not 100% sure but I think at least these 3 needs to be true for wide to be viable :
-strong enough military to be able to defend the wide territory : they have this one.
-fast enough early progress to be able to expand early. Cheap settlers and high population growth is enough for this objective as long as the race is not slowed down by the lack of Sawmill. What if Lizardmen settlers could also move 2?
-At least average cities for late game so that the larger amount of them does provide enough advantage to win instead of merely compensating for the cities being much inferior or failing to do even that. This is currently not true, while Lizardmen cities beat Barbarians in economy, and are equal to gnolls, they are inferior to about every other race significantly. A Sawmill would help the production go up to at least average, but unrest might still be a problem. Enabling Oracle would work but it requires the Builder's Hall which I want to keep disabled. Same for the Parthenon. If unchanged, Lizardmen players would need to rely on spells to reduce unrest further than 7 (Colosseum+Shrine+Cathedral+8 units). If we go with the idea of using the racial unrest tables, we can solve the problem however. That would be an advantage in one more way, it would not apply if someone else conquered the city.

[namad]

I just wanted to say, I do agree giving them the sawmill would fix things. I just felt that you wanted to avoid that if possible (because it made them less uniquely interesting) which was why I was trying to brainstorm other solutions that might be a bit more off the wall.

[zitro1987]

I'd balance it the following way:

++Give access to sawmill. Lizardmen without sawmill just doesn't cut it. I like the idea, but the race often falls behind.
+ Have settlers have 2 movement points
+ increase rate hamlets turn into 1pop towns even further
- Remove access to advanced buildings Wizard's Guild and Amplifying Tower, maybe even cathedral or sage guild
- Increase cost of dragon turtles (but maybe raise attack by 2) to compensate for higher production of lizardmen

This way Lizardmen would strongly benefit from expansion regardless of whether it's a small world or a large world. However, the many towns are not as productive later on with lack of access of advanced buildings.

[namad]

That seems like an overly harsh nerf to sorcery though. Maybe I could see either Wizard's Guild OR Amplifying Tower but both renders Uranus' Blessing inert.

[Seravy]

I'm going to do
-enable sawmill
-lizardmen racial unrest if ruled by lizardmen is -1 (klackons are -4 so they are unique enough still)
-lizardmen settlers move 2
-dragon turtle breaths lightning instead of fire

I think lizardmen will be fine with these changes.

What I'm worried about is gnolls seem to compare unfavorably. Both races are strong early game with medicore late game so their roles are similar, but :
-Lizardmen have water movement
-Lizardmen have extra health which is better than higher melee
-Lizardmen have faster settling and population growth
-Lizardmen have less unrest in their own cities
-Lizardmen can build more magic related buildings (wizard's guild, amplifying tower)
-Lizardmen have a ranged unit, gnolls don't.

at the same time Gnolls have Wolf Riders in the early game which has fast movement on land and good stats, and jackal riders are a way stronger unit for offense for the late game, and they have a miner's guild and can make ships but is this enough to be worth playing them over lizardmen?

Edit : What if Lizardmen didn't have Sage's Guilds? That would make them the opposite of Gnolls (who have that but not wizard's and amplifying). This would put a lizardmen city at 5 research at most which is quite significant restriction.

[namad]

If you think lizardmen need a nerf compared to gnolls, maybe can lose the settler movement of 2. No one has that?
If you want to buff gnolls give them wizard's tower or amplifying guild?
Gnolls are an amazing neutral though, imo, no one ever razes their first gnoll settlement because their military units are too good.

Gnolls could be seen as somewhat midway between lizardmen and barbarians (at least if lizardmen lost their mapmove 2 settlers, or if you gave a similar bonus to a few other races you also wanted to buff the expansion of)

I'm of the opinion that you probably don't need to take a building away from lizardmen, they were bad before, they have more buildings now, more than bad could very well be perfectly balanced (we cannot know yet?)

In fact I think mapmove settler 2 would speed up the game in interesting ways, as well as make the ai much better at getting around blockades? Right now I often split my stack of military units along the border up into 1 stacks and just block settler movement.

Maybe give it to the 3-5 worst races? or half?

[Anthony]

When I was playing around with modding, I wound up giving gnoll infantry +1 Move, which is an interesting mobility benefit.

[Seravy]

If you think lizardmen need a nerf compared to gnolls, maybe can lose the settler movement of 2. No one has that?
If you want to buff gnolls give them wizard's tower or amplifying guild?
Gnolls are an amazing neutral though, imo, no one ever razes their first gnoll settlement because their military units are too good.

Gnolls could be seen as somewhat midway between lizardmen and barbarians (at least if lizardmen lost their mapmove 2 settlers, or if you gave a similar bonus to a few other races you also wanted to buff the expansion of)

I'm of the opinion that you probably don't need to take a building away from lizardmen, they were bad before, they have more buildings now, more than bad could very well be perfectly balanced (we cannot know yet?)

In fact I think mapmove settler 2 would speed up the game in interesting ways, as well as make the ai much better at getting around blockades? Right now I often split my stack of military units along the border up into 1 stacks and just block settler movement.

Maybe give it to the 3-5 worst races? or half?

I think removing the Sage's Guild from lizardmen will be enough, if not we'll notice while playing

Overall Gnolls have better military, I forgot to consider they have War collage while Lizardmen don't. While raw power might not exceed lizardmen, and they even lack ranged options, mobility is far superior and two valuable abilities, pathfinding and fear are available. They also have ships which if buffed can carry units faster over ocean than how lizardmen move. Now they also have better research. They have better production and food too (miner's guild and forester's guild), but lizardmen have much better population and expansion and are generally better in sea combat as their "land" units can participate. Lizardmen have better magic power to make up for slightly weaker endgame military.
This should be enough differences to grant both races a role I guess. The slightly more expensive (250) fighter's guild should make Wolf Raiders for gnolls even more valuable as they do not require one.

When I was playing around with modding, I wound up giving gnoll infantry +1 Move, which is an interesting mobility benefit.

Yes, that's good, but Barbarians already have it instead.