Barbarian race discussion

[Seravy]

Alternately we can make the caster unit require amplifying tower or sage's guild (whichever we decide to make available) and possibly even require armorer's guild which would make this the race's late unit - that eliminates the risk of the early game zero cost battles using healing and makes it more of a mid/lategame only unit.

[zitro1987]

If we make the caster unit require both amplifying tower and armorer's guild, this unit should be comparable in usefulness to a paladin, if not more and probably costing around 240

So either:
*The caster unit is slightly better than gladiator stat-wise, meaning the extra cost is for the caster
*The caster unit is not too formidable in melee, but has caster 25 or even 30

[Nelphine]

I'm a fan of keeping them as a no research race, so I'd prefer no sages guild. But an amp tower is so strong, I'd rather not do that either. My vote is for the Wizards guild, although I wish we could make it a Parthenon, but I realize we can't, and cathedral would be too similar to gnolls.


I personally don't see an issue with people hating barbarian cities - we already hate dwarf cities that aren't on ores, and klackon cities or orc cities if we're high elves, etc. Razing cities should make good economical sense sometimes too, not just tacical. I'd rather avoid giving the alchemists guild.


For the two units, I like idea of an elemental melee shaman (sigh, wish it could be Parthenon). I'd rather not give it healing and not require an armorers guild. 
Gladiators seem fine as an overpowered fighters guild unit (but they're already as good as minotaurs - if they required the same building I could accept being as good as a myrran race unit, but I remain convinced that minotaurs are too weak for a myrran armorers guild unit. For instance they're like half as good as war mammoths, which is a ridiculous difference. Yes I believe this means many races armorers guild units aren't good enough.)

[zitro1987]

Of course, if we give it caster, we remove the 'healing spell' ability, so only life wizards can use the spell.

I believe alchemist guild is meant to allow more flexibility with the race (including when you conquer it), as this is meant to be a relatively overpowered race military-speaking.

So if we do allow amplifying towers (otherwise, what's the point of the race? such an essential building), but really want 0 research, the only viable solution might be to remove the library requirement for alchemist guild.
*which to me isn't a big deal at all

[Seravy]

If we don't give them the Alchemist Guild, the other option would be a racial special trait of "cannot gain magical weapons" to cancel alchemy, and then we'd need to give them the +1 to hit on all units that do not already have it. This would prevent the potential problem of mithril and adamant berserkers and if we go this path we can even keep the library unavailable. It would also preserve vulnerability to Weapon Immunity.

However it's pretty hard to justify the race being unwilling to wield magical weapons, but having a wizard's guild and caster unit at the same time. For gameplay it's not a problem but it's very self-contradicting in flavor.

Alternately we could say the race automatically has magical weapons (full or partial with only the hit bonus, either way it wouldn't be cumulative with Alchemy) but again that's very hard to justify for Barbarians, of all things.

Allowing a Wizard's Guild is already pushing it a little.

...Unless, maybe, we want to rename the race? "Barbarians" doesn't really make sense as a playable race name - typically other 4X games call neutrals/raiders as "Barbarians". The word merely implies less civilized versions of any other race, not an actually different life form.
In this case we need a name that implies a society that values raw power, physical or magical, and doesn't care much about anything else, culture, economy etc...

Edit : alternately we could maybe change the description of Alchemy to say it only applies to races capable of producing an Alchemist Guild.

[zitro1987]

I like the 'cannot gain magical weapons' idea.

Without alchemy, are berserkers above-average units? Would they need 1 more melee? I also think the 5melee/5thrown for gladiators could be 6/6 instead.

Race? maybe "Tribal Men" "Brute Men", "Primitive Men" something that is a contrast to 'High Men' (elves have 2 races, and barbarians are clearly human-looking)

We could also give a nod to Age of Wonders and call them "Azracs"

[Seravy]

How about Vikings? Did Vikings use magic? (I mean, in games and fantasy, obviously not in real life.)

If we go the "cannot gain magical weapons" route then we probably need to disable all magic related buildings....unless we reword it as "Barbarian society values using one's own power, thus barbarian warriors refuse to wield magical weapons." Magic used by shaman and the new unit would be their "own power" technically. In this case, Sage's Guild and Wizard's Guild seem acceptable, Amplifying Towers, which sounds more like an external source of power, does not, but being an upgrade to Alchemist Guild, we wouldn't really have the option to allow it anyway.

So then we could have either Library+Magic Market+Sage's Guild, or Library+Magic Market+Wizard's Guild, or Magic Market+Wizard's Guild, or Library+Magic Market only, 4 distinct possibilities. (the new unit would require whichever of these is most expensive, possibly with armorer's guild, but at least fighter's.)
Question is which direction we like, no power, no research, or a little bit of both. Sorcery and Chaos, the realms which have same basic synergy with the race benefit most from research. Life which is already best at using the race, benefits from power. So based on gameplay, I'm leaning towards allowing more research and less power, but for flavor and being different from Gnolls, probably the opposite.
Nature will likely remain a bad choice for the race, so it's not relevant. Death I think uses power and research equally, but their commons are the best support for the race so probably power.
However power can be spent on research, and wizard's guilds even produce a bit of RP so that seems better overall.

Regardless of which explanation we choose, we also need to decide if we want Berserkers to have their "with alchemy" stats, or the "without alchemy" stats. Other units would obviously need to gain the +1 To Hit, but the current Berserkers already included that once, still we are using them with Alchemy most of the time basically having the bonus twice, and it worked fine (in my test game, though Nelphine's win rate is worrying. I probably need to play Life Barbarians one more time to decide on this?)

Edit : another possibility is Barbarians refusing the magic weapons because they trust their own weapons more - they are already used to them and that also explains their natural bonus To Hit. We probably should explain this on the Alchemy retort instead of the race description as there is more room there and it only applies to that specifically. (I don't think we have a reason to disable Uranus' Blessing granting magic weapons, makes the race a LOT more playable for pure Sorcery, which btw will suffer early against weapon immunity due to not having a common/uncommon spell to overcome it.)

[MrBiscuits]

I'm not a big fan of the idea of disallowing magical weapons on Barbarians. It seems like you're breaking one of the core mechanics to prevent mithril and adamantium berzerkers. If the unit is so powerful that the same rules can't be applied to them as every other unit in the game then I would prefer to change the unit rather than make a confusing exception. 

Are mithril berzerkers that powerful? And it's rare to get adamantium berzerkers as you'd either have to choose Barbarians on Myrror or break through a tower with them and settle on an empty part of the map with adamatium. And this would be late game so there would be other powerful stuff to worry about by then.

I suppose you have transmute as well, but that's just one strategy in the game.

[Seravy]

No, mithril or adamanium berserkers aren't that powerful, although the possibility is there to stack it with Life buffs.

This is about whether we want Barbarians as a no research race (no library means no alchemist guild) and/or a race with no ability to bypass weapon immunity without using the appropriate spells. Both of these require having no access to Alchemist Guilds.

I don't think making one exception to one retort's effect breaks a core mechanic. Ultimately, it's just a race with no library, and thus no alchemist guild. If we keep allowing Alchemy granting magic weapons, that ruins the whole design but the worst part is it means you will generally not want to play the race without it. That's bad enough for players starting with the race as 1 of their picks has to be a specific retort, but much worse for players who conquer Barbarian cities - they have no way of knowing in advance so they won't pick Alchemy.

[Nelphine]

As a note, the last time we discussed barbarians, alchemy being a boost was considered a positive point by letting people grow into that combo.