Barbarian race discussion

[Seravy]

I still rather have something durable than more expensive, faster, glass cannons. Losing 6-8 units per battle isn't really a viable plan economically and the worst thing is low reliability - take just a little bit more ranged damage than expected and bam, you don't even win the battle.
Sure if the unit is faster and equally durable to berserkers then you lose fewer, but it also costs more so ultimate it's still the same thing - not a good unit to conquer AI cities.

I think if we want something that actually functions properly at that role, we need the Gladiator, except with fewer figures to make sure they are not worth it for Life magic.

Gladiators
3 figures
7 Defense
7 Hp
5 Thrown
5 Attack
+2 To Hit
3 movement
Large Shield
? Resistance

(+/- 1-2 attack, hp, thrown or defense as needed, this is just a generic idea)

(it might be fine to keep the low resistance drawback. Sorcery can work around it, Death can use Blood Lust to grant immunity to quite a lot of curses. Chaos and Nature though has problems so idk, maybe not?)

[Nelphine]

As mentioned, I think if you're concerned about it, given the barbarians lack of production buildings, any units can't require more than the fighter's guild. It's just too expensive for them to build armorer's guilds.

So, 7 defense puts this right up there, but the offense is lower. The HP is problematic; with warlord, bezerkers have just as many hp - defense helps against standard attacks, particularly ranged attacks, but spells will still hurt a lot - for instance if lightning bolt (from, say, fortress lightning) is a problem, this unit isn't going to be much better than bezerkers.

Lets compare to say, minotaurs (which are armorer's guild level).

Minotaurs (Armorer's Guild)
Cost: 200 (unknown, but presumably gladiators would be around 120 at most. Given changes to other units such as hammerhands, this is probably too high for minotaurs)
Melee Attack: 12 (2.4 times as high, but only 2/3 the number of figures. But gladiators have thrown as well, meaning gladiators are 'better', except of course that higher attack is always better than low attack. Personally, I think Minotaurs need an increase in melee, up to 14 or 15.)
Ranged Attack: -
Defense: 4 (minotaurs only have 4 defense? holy crap. this is low. this should probably increase to 6.)
Health: 12 (this is better than gladiators, and even with elite, still has more than bezerkers. with only 4 defense this is probably not enough though.)
Movement: 3 (same)
Resistance: 7 (decent?)
Figures: 2
Abilities: +2 to Hit, Large Shield (same as gladiators)


In the end, what we see is that minotaurs are currently actually very similar to the proposed gladiators - but I've always considered minotaurs awful. This discussion, with the demonstrated horrid defense of bezerkers, also seems to apply to minotaurs, and could explain why I crush them without sneezing, and never use them.

However, that implies that the proposed gladiator unit is probably good as a fighters guild unit, albeit probably more expensive than bezerkers.

But that goes on further, and implies that hammerhands have awful defense as well. I've never encountered that, but, life buffs.


I don't know, I think this discussion is showing that city troops are just generally weak and easy to kill, in which case bezerkers just follow the pattern. Do we really want to revamp most armorers guild units (that I consider not worth using at the moment anyway)?

[Bahgtru]

Keep in mind that minotaurs are supposed to be a myrran race with bonus to attack/hp and should be better.

[Seravy]

No. It shows my expectations form a unit produced from a race that can't do anything else is that much higher. Otherwise I can pick a race that has magic and research and gold and everything and not bother with the Barbarians.
So Barbarians need to have a LOT better units than any other race.

...but that makes the race a huge problem if you don't start with it and conquer it as neutral - you get the better unit but do not pay the price of bad economy.

So this approach doesn't work altogether - not in a game where you can mix races. Which leads back to Barbarians needing more economy buildings, but they still also need better units otherwise there will be races that get even more buildings and just as good units (Klackons, Orcs, maybe Gnolls)

[zitro1987]

I see and i think u are right, barbarians receiving a durable versatile unit successful against ranged to cover its weaknesses. I do recommend a resistance of 5 or 6.

Id increase attack and thrown to 6 and maybe movement to 4 for it to be a worthy 160-200 cost unit. If this unit costs around 120 with proposed stats it may be fine too

[MrBiscuits]

Barbarians just seem to be very one-dimensional and boring to me. 

It always annoys me when playing another race and my opponent has barbarians as it means their cities will be no good to conquer as I never take alchemy so no magical weapons, the cities have no economy and unrest is high for them especially with high elves.

Also I hate having mithril or adamantium and being unable to use it. There's not much fun to be had with them.


By the way I saw some talk of a way to be able to do use mithril/adamantium with them with a spell. What was it?

[Sapher]

By the way I saw some talk of a way to be able to do use mithril/adamantium with them with a spell. What was it?

Uranus' Blessing

[zitro1987]

If the issue is one-dimensional boredom with severe lack of magic, maybe this top-tier unit could be a mix between a durable warrior (the proposed 'gladiator' ) and a 20-caster.

I propose: 'High Shaman' or 'Elemental Shaman' to be arguably among the very best fighter's guild units due to top-tier abilities/stats.


Requires: Shrine and Fighter's Guild
Cost: 160-200
3 figures
6 or 7 Defense
6 or 7 HP
5 Thrown
5 Attack
+2 To Hit
3 movement
Large Shield
5 or 6 Resistance
Caster 20

Pros vs Berserker
*Higher durability with more armor, more resistance, and large shield
*Caster capabilities expected to be of extreme help for a durable melee unit. More effective than a fragile magician
-> I don't think we have any melee casters outside of heroes?
*Self-casting buffs can mitigate some of weaknesses mentioned below
Expected to be among the very best arcanus units, to compensate for the many weaknesses of barbarian … yet a few players may actually prefer berserkers:

Cons vs Berserker:
*MUCH Lower damage potential per unit cost, even if resisting a few more hits than berserker.
*Lower hp per unit cost for spells like lightning bolt or doom bolt
*Does not benefit much from alchemists
*Does not benefit as much from buffs
*Lower strategic combat rating

[Seravy]

Actually, a barbarian caster unit might be interesting. We'd still need the gladiator (caster 20 is powerful but not that powerful) but this could be a good unit to mix into those gladiator or berserker armies.

However if we do have one, I'd prefer it to come from a wizard's guild - but it would have no ranged attacks, would have more hp and would have thrown as you say.
I do see one major downside : they would be able to cast healing which allows for zero cost battles (shaman don't, they are too fragile), although we can probably make it work out somehow.

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About having no magic weapons and no mithril, I agree it's not fun, and we already agreed Alchemy being overly required to play the race is bad as well.
The only reasonable solution I see for this is enabling alchemist guilds.
That however means adamantium berserkers will be a thing, and it's fairly easy to stack that with Life magic. That's very worrying.

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About Gladiators, we have to consider the armorer's guild discussion. This would be a unit halfway between an armorer's guild and fighter's guild unit, without requiring an armorer's guild. We have to be careful to design it in a way that it isn't too powerful. Limiting overland movement to 3 and having not-so-good resistance (5) is probably good enough. There is no way to significantly buff resistance against poison. I think we should probably have them at 6 hp and armor the highest.
While the unit would still have very high potential to be effective at early conquest, you are paying for that by having Barbarians as your main race, which comes with bad economy. If you just randomly conquer a barbarian city, it won't have the population to really support mass producing such a unit, although you can spam buy them, but it's probably unlikely to have that much gold from treasure on Arcanus? While the unit is good, you'd still need them in larger numbers as unlike AG tier units, you suffer losses of these through poison.

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Finally the economy. That gladiator unit likely makes the race slightly more powerful than Klackons in military, so it's fine if they are weaker in economy. Disallowing advanced buildings, Cathedrals and Wizard's Guilds might be appropriate. That still leaves open the ability to have Sage's Guilds, Magic Markets and Amplifying Towers. Gnolls miss Magic Markets but have Cathedrals instead though so they might be far too similar. I don't have a good idea how to make it different, maybe also disable the Amplifying Tower? If we add the caster unit then we should likely enable the wizard's guild and disable the tower anyway.

[zitro1987]

So in other words, Barbarians could have 3 mid to high tier units?
*Berserkers - unchanged (even with alchemist guild)
*Gladiators requiring colosseum - your proposal seems mid-tier with 6 armor/hp, costing maybe 120
*Elemental Shaman requiring wizard guild (and fighter's Guild?) - the high-tier melee caster, maybe as a 4-figure 1-to-hit with slightly less hp/armor than gladiators. Please give it 3 move, not 2

That combo will definitively make the race much more entertaining and multi-dimensional, with the magic revolving around a unit, and melee units that could work with many magic realms.