Military Race Rankings(Life+Warlord)

[Anskiy]

Gnolls:

Economy:

Gnolls do not have a good economy. They can't build up advanced buildings, and they miss the Magic Market, which is a serious hole in their infrastructure. They can build Shrines and Cathedrals, but this is a poor substitute for Wizard's Guilds and Magic Markets. Besides that, nothing really stands out in their lineup. They can thankfully build Sage's Guild and Amplifying Towers atleast, but without anything but a Miner's Guild to speed them up, they are delayed projects. This ranks a D, losing the Magic Market is disastrous but there's some saving grace in their late game buildings.

Military:

Regular units are very mediocre. +3 attack and 3 movement sounds great on paper, but in practice they are defeated by their low resistance and mediocre defense. You have to churn out many of them to have any fighting chance, and they are practically helpless against Chaos or Death wizards. They rank a dismal D here, the only real upside being their lack of any nerf against the "average" unit.

Of their unique units, only the Wolf Rider is worth deploying. Wolf Riders are their substitute for regular cavalry, sporting significantly more HP and attack. They lose First Strike, however they move at speed 5 and have innate pathfinding. This is seriously amazing, considering that all it takes is a Stables to unlock them. And I've not even mentioned the Scouting range of 2. Most Gnoll games are won or lost with this unit, as they can't survive well without capturing other races. Wolf Riders conquer most early game cities easily, provided they are massed enough and well supported. 

On the other side of the spectrum, the Jackal Rider is a disappointment in almost every aspect. They have high damage potential thanks to their high figure count, however it's hard to actually use that in practice. They have low resistance, low defense and low HP per figure, meaning that in any serious fight they will sustain huge casualties. For whatever reason, they lose the Scouting and Pathfinding of their predecessors, AND move 1 point slower. Seriously, this unit is straight up failed design in my eyes.

Thus, Gnolls get a C for their unique units. The amazing strength of the Wolf Rider is seriously dampened by the dead air of Jackal Riders. Infact were it not for Wolf Riders they would have ranked significantly lower here.

On the seas, their boats are solid, but not spectacular. They get no further than Galleys, and get nothing to substantially boost their production. This is firmly a middle of the road C navy.

Wizard support:

Gnolls are awful at supporting wizards. Not having Magic Markets is a serious liability, and restricts available power for a wizard. They are also not particularly good at claiming lairs, the offensive boost doesn't help them survive tough creatures, they can't hit the air, and they don't have any ranged capabilities at all. If the Gnoll wizard does survive into the late game though, Sage's Guilds and Amplifying Towers are handy buildings and will greatly boost research and casting skill, though it will take some time for Gnolls to build them.

Overall:

Gnolls are on a ticking clock from turn 1. They need to build and rely heavily on their Wolf Riders to conquer enough of other wizards, or other races before they get outmatched. If they miss their window, there's few chances of coming back. Wolf Riders are thankfully good enough to make this work usually, but this strategy has drawbacks in that you're limited to what neutral towns and races other wizards picked, instead of being able to build a solid core with your starting race. Gnolls are a rush race in the purest sense of the term, they have absolutely no late game to speak of.

[Suppanut]

So Gnoll need buff on Jackel Riders? I think another special infantry which is normal equivalent of lycanthropes mixed with characteristic of berserkers (Werehyena? Werewolf?, in same manner of how nightblade is to night stalker and doom drake to great drake) would be nice.

[Anskiy]

I think they need higher resistance and defense, maybe +3 on each would be enough. It would go a little against the idea of Gnolls being a rush race, but tbh as it stands, Armorer's Guild is a trap to build.

[Suppanut]

Agree on defense and resistance buffs on Jackal Riders, their concept should be bad omen for for enemy when they are there (caused fear) so they should be harder to kill by any mean even if it cost their actual raw attack power.

[Seravy]

Are Jackal Riders that bad? Let me see...

They have a massive 24 hit points which goes up to 32 at Elite level, far higher than any other normal unit in the game.
3 Defense is worse than I expected, even Halberdiers have 4. However Defense applies on each figure separately and in melee they have Cloak of Fear so the enemy won't be attacking at least half the time anyway.

So overall, they are bad against ranged enemies which is a common trait of Gnoll units, but definitely durable in melee.

4 moves is average or slightly better than average for an Armorer's Guild unit.
5 Resistance is pretty bad but it is the same for other Gnoll units as well.

Overall, Jackal Riders are not particularly good as is but definitely not weak either, more on the average side, however if you can cancel their weaknesses with spells, they become very powerful.
Sorcery can give them Resist Magic and Guardian Wind, later Invisibility to cancel both the resistance and ranged weakness.
Life can do the same by Bless, True Sight, and Endurance/Holy Armor/Invulnerability.
Chaos is less than ideal, you need to roll Defense on Chaos Channels to fight against ranged, but turning the creature into fantastic can at least prevent Possession. However the "failed" rolls will give you units that can hit air which is absolutely amazing for Gnolls to get.
Nature can cancel the ranged weakness with Resist Elements and Elemental armor.
Death has no way to support the unit at all.

However these latter two realms have a strong early game, so you should have conquered more than enough other races to not rely on Jackals anyway.

[Anskiy]

Yeah, Jackals do have great potential when buffed. But that's the problem, almost any decent military unit becomes powerful with buff stacking anyway. That Jackals have the highest potential gain with buff stacking is thus a fairly minor point for me.

[Suppanut]

If Saravy design by want it to be buffed, why not make it into innate buffed itself with random enchantment at the start of battle (mini-mystic surged)?

[Seravy]

Yeah, Jackals do have great potential when buffed. But that's the problem, almost any decent military unit becomes powerful with buff stacking anyway. That Jackals have the highest potential gain with buff stacking is thus a fairly minor point for me.

Yeah but that's the thing you don't need to STACK buffs on them.

Fighting a death wizard? Resist magic is enough. (Or Bless if you play Life)
Fighting a bunch of magicians? You might need one buff that raises defense vs ranged attacks.

Even if both applies, you only need one spell of each category.

You don't need to buff attack, yes if you do that's super good but you don't need to. 8 figures at 7-8 attack each (from levels) will destroy most everything except very rare creatures. You don't need to buff movement speed - 4 will reach enemies in 2 turns just like 5 does. You don't need to buff HP - the unit already has the most among normal units anyway.

The unit works fine without buffs as long as you do something about their weaknesses - or fight enemies where it's not relevant. Unit buffs are not even the only way to do it, it's just the most trivial so I listed those, but you can use something like a Prayermaster hero, a Mana Leak spell, or Reinforce Magic, Holy Bonus and so on. Even Counter Magic works if the issue is low resistance vs Black Sleep or other common spells or you can simply destroy enemy ranged units with Warp Wood or Flame Strike.

This is nothing unusual - plenty of good units in the game need Resist Magic if the enemy has Death magic, and even more need protection against ranged attacks due to low health or defense.

On the other hand the race is supposed to have above average military units so comparing them to average races isn't ideal. Jackals having 1 lower attack and defense than halberdiers is hard to justify. Jackals have 50% more HP than Halberdiers. Their damage output is roughly the same - 2 more figures but 1 less attack power on each. They move 1 faster but have 1 less defense, that roughly balances out. Then it has Fear. However it costs 150% more and is only 50% better in stats. Is Fear worth the extra 100% cost? 60 Hammers. We could argue it is - Cloak of Fear costs 60 MP and hammers are much cheaper than casting skill. So then the unit is equally cost effective to Halberdiers. You can however pack more total fighting power in a 9 stack but pay for that through having to build the Armorer's Guild.
...overall I think the unit is balanced. It would need more defense and attack if it didn't have Fear, but it does, and Fear is definitely a powerful ability. We can consider adding 1 defense and attack anyway but then the unit needs to cost more. I would be cautious about improving the unit with the highest total raw stats on Arcanus though.

[JustOneMoreTurn]

One other downside of gnolls: the discrepancy in figure count, and thus realm choice, for the two best units. Life and chaos buff the JRs well, but is somewhat wasted on WRs. Will life or chaos help your early game enough to reach JRs, and enhance them enough to deal with late-game opponents? Maybe gnolls are best played with multiple realms, depending on common spells to help the WRs wipe out all opposition early.

[JustOneMoreTurn]

Thinking more about gnolls, the mismatched figure numbers are actually a good thing. If both of a races top units were too similar, it would limit the reasonable choices for realms and retorts. Gladiators were made with fewer figures to give barbarians more options than warlord/life. So, JRs not being ideal for the same realm/retort/spells choices of WRs is good.

I do feel that they are a bit lacklustre as a race. I did think of one minor change that could be made: increase the pop growth rate. As it is, there's not much motivation to create more gnoll cities than your starting settler(s) if you can find anything better. They don't even benefit from much from high population, since they can't build many economy buildings or unrest reducers. Allowing them to put up WR-producing cities faster would help their 'send out fast attackers early' strategy without making them overpowered late-game.

If their lack of unrest-reducing buildings is too much of a handicap, is it possible to code gnoll garrison units as more effective unrest reducers, maybe limited to gnoll cities? Scary guardsmen who eat your liver if you annoy them?