Races, Units, Buildings

[Seravy]

I do not think the nomad road gold income bonus works. Or if it does work it's not a +50% gold bonus as a road bonus. It is instead a +50% bonus to gold earned from roads. Which is roughly 1-2 at most per city. As in nothing.

Road bonus is capped at population*3 just like the vanilla game. So although you do get 50%, until the population is high enough to actually take advantage of all of it, it'll be lower. Is this the problem?

[namad]

No. I'm getting like 4 gold from a city of size 14-15 and that's in a city that I'm pretty sure would've had 3-4 gold anyways because of all the actual roads I built (I don't understand the trade mechanic that well though)?

IIRC I do think I got a bonus 1-2 gold early on before I built any roads but uh... It's never been more than population*1 and often it's population*.2 or .3...

Check the savefile? maybe I'm just totally misunderstanding how much gold I am supposed to get. If it is working as intended I think the description should be rewritten to say something like nomad's get bonus gold equal to 50% of what they would've gotten anyways if they had a lot of roads. Or maybe conjure roads bugged it out? Because I did conjure the roads.

[Seravy]

No. I'm getting like 4 gold from a city of size 14-15 and that's in a city that I'm pretty sure would've had 3-4 gold anyways because of all the actual roads I built (I don't understand the trade mechanic that well though)?

IIRC I do think I got a bonus 1-2 gold early on before I built any roads but uh... It's never been more than population*1 and often it's population*.2 or .3...

Check the savefile? maybe I'm just totally misunderstanding how much gold I am supposed to get. If it is working as intended I think the description should be rewritten to say something like nomad's get bonus gold equal to 50% of what they would've gotten anyways if they had a lot of roads. Or maybe conjure roads bugged it out? Because I did conjure the roads.

Checked the save file. Surveyor says your capital has a 78% gold bonus. 30 of that is the bank, leaving 48. The population is 16. 16*3=48, the maximal road bonus for this population. Works as intended. Since it's already at the maximum possible, you get no further benefit for being nomad. However, it would be this amount even if you had no roads at all, since nomads get up to 50 on top of what comes from the roads and the city can use only 48 of it.

[namad]

I had no idea that was what it did or what you meant.
I thought you meant it would show up on the town screen as income from roads. Which is something you can see if you click on the gold in the town screen.
My bad. Still might warrant a re-write of the description to somehow explain what the bonus is and where it appears. Glad it's working!

[Seravy]

I had no idea that was what it did or what you meant.
I thought you meant it would show up on the town screen as income from roads. Which is something you can see if you click on the gold in the town screen.

It does. Multiply the "taxes" row in your city screen (28 in your capital) with 0.48 and you'll get what appears in the road/river row (13). Surveyor is convenient because it shows the actual percentage, but you do see the gold itself in the city as you expect.

[lechium]

I do like to build some dark elf cavalry early for their speed on a larger continent.

[namad]

OP says warlock's have 7 ranged attack, they in fact have 9.

[zitro1987]

Some early observations on races:

Barbarians are not that outstanding in terms of early military, in my opinion insufficient at compensating for race's limitations. The combination of base armor/hp, below average resistance (especially berserkers!), and lack of magic weapons (unless alchemist) make average melee units that happen to move +50% faster (except oddly cavalry still with 5mv, it'd be nice if it had 7). Gnolls have a superior early military thanks to the unusually early wolf raiders.
If you do conquer other races, the racial penalties hurt your economy a bit, encouraging researching 'move fortress'
Suggestions?
*lower unit base cost, meaning 20-25 swordsmen/bowmen, 30 cavalry, 35-40 shaman
or
*doubling bonus of Colosseum (kind of how halflings double research building benefits) - makes barbarian more unique and fits the theme of being more war-like, encouraging very high levels of 'fame'

Gnolls - I like the race, though fighter's guild providing a comparable (or slightly inferior) unit to wolf raiders seems silly.
Suggestions?
*Wolf Raiders requiring fighter's guild or suffering a 1melee/1hp/30 cost drop

Lizardmen - pretty good once you allowed sawmill. Nice sturdy units with the problem that they have slow movement and no boats to carry them around until you conquer other towns.
No Suggestions

Klackons - probably the most boring race and one I played with a lot. This is because of the low unrest (yet high racial penalties) that makes it too obvious to pick the retort that forces you to raze opponent cities. The sameness and lack of variety of military units (high armor melee first, then a good-at-everything stag beetle) can get tedious if you only play that one race.
*Suggestions?
*make that auto-razing retort (overlord in 2.3) give +66% gold bonus (instead of +100%) but include buildings - making it a less obvious pick for klackons and rewarding a race that can build bank and merchant guild.
*Stag Beetles to cost 180 and/or 3 to 4 upkeep ... Their 2 upkeep feels particularly cheap for such a great sturdy, fast, attack-flyers unit.

High Elves -
Suggestion?
I gave them +1 scouting as elven lore tend to state they have outstanding vision

Orcs - I like the race the way it's set up a lot, though wyvern's poison level could be 1 higher (if you compare against half-priced manticores and giant spiders)

[namad]

Barbarians are the best AI race in the game. Almost without it being debatable. That might be due to the fact that strategic combat ai versus neutrals and ai versus ai doesn't take into account resistance. Only hp and attack and defense. Barbarians have the best ratios of hammers to attack rating and can take out great drake nodes very early.

That said once they have a commanding lead on you it is not always enough if say you can choke point them.

Additionally barbarians can fully attack flying enemies, and gnolls cannot.


Cavalry IMO cannot at all whatsoever be movement 7. Normal melee units should not be able to deal damage on the first turn of combat IMO. Movement 5 combined with pathfinder still improves pathfinder though. I think the problem with barbarian cavalry is just that berserker's come online too early. That said in a war between human played draconians and barbarians cavalry are actually better than berserker's because first strike works on defense, but thrown does not. Maybe a cost discount for barbarian cavalry would be acceptable. Then again at the same time, I still think every race's cavalry might be what need buffing, not just this one specific race's.


That said if you're able to improve the math in strategic combat to make barbarians less overpowered in it, I'd be all for some sort of buff. If not though, then not.
An interesting idea might be to average defense and resistance and use that number as the new defense in strategic combat? That said a lot of neutrals resistance doesn't matter.....

[Seravy]

I think the double research on Halflings might be way too good.
Even if only looking at the raw numbers, it's 2 (Library) +9 (Sage's Guild) + 3 (Wizard's Guild) + 5 (University) = 19 additional research.
Assuming an average town to be about 19 people, this is as much as the bonus of Dark Elves, except in research not power which is worse - but buildings are way easier to get than population, and research buildings are cheap.

Maybe the bonus should be +50% instead? Rounding would be ugly on that as most research numbers are odd. Only 1+4+1+2 = 8 research could be gained per city that way and that feels far too low.

Or we can keep it the same but disable the university? Then it's at most 14 extra research, but the race also loses the base 5 of university so we're back at only +9 compared to other races....even worse as it means no mechanician's guild.

Or does the weak military balance out this much research? Slingers and magicians are good especially with buffs, but are fragile and weak to sorcery or anything anti-ranged in general, and the race has no decent melee units at all.

Maybe the bonus should be population/2 research like how high elf works with power?
This would mean no combo with Nature's Eye and Tranquility though.