Races, Units, Buildings

[Seravy]

Gave some more thought about Rangers and also tried them in the game (though I'm way ahead of the AI so it isn't telling me much, and my rangers even have mithril.)

I think they're overpowered as they are.
They have the same damage output as Magicians, +1 hit better at range below 4.
They have a decent melee attack which the magicians do not.
This in itself is enough to warrant the 150 vs 120 cost of the unit (more damage and more attack types)

But rangers also get 4 times the health on top of this and an 1 extra armor. That's just too much. 4 times the health makes a unit 4 times more powerful! Since it has a melee attack, we can't get away with saying the health is irrelevant once the unit has no more ammo, either. If I were to compare the two units for strategic combat values, rangers would rate about 10 times as much as magicians. (double attack power as it is coming from two types, multiplied by quadruple health and then extra armor and hit from having a magical weapon...)

I think a drastic rebalancing is necessary. Not sure exactly what but maybe this?
Melee : 6 (no change)
Ranged : 6 (1 lower)
Armor : 3 (1 lower)
Health : 3 (1 lower)
Ammo : 6 (no change)
Movement : 3 (no change)
Pathfinding, Long Range.
Cost : 150 (no change)

This still puts them at the same total health as Javelineers, which are from a race with a health bonus, so that seems fair. Damage output, movement and abilities are also superior, although there are fewer figures, 6 attack from 4 figures is better then 4 attack from 6 figures without buffing, plus this unit has Long Range, Javelineers do not. So I think they still keep enough advantages to be worthy of being 1 tier above Javs.
They would still be massively superior to magicians, but bow attacks being easier to stop, and having no caster makes up for the triple health and melee attack partly and keeps the units different enough.
Comparing them to horsebowmen might be a bit more of a problem as those have only 2 lower attack and ranged, 1 less armor, but the same health and better movement for only a quarter of the price. Horsebowmen also have enough movement to be able to attack without a range penalty most of the time.
Maybe keeping the ranged at 7 and only reducing health and armor is better?

[Seravy]

Gave some additional testing to rangers by sending in some of them into various nodes and lairs, and I believe their damage output is reasonable, no change needed on melee and ranged.
Their durability is way too good however, especially for a high resistance unit from a race that already has plenty of advantages. I think the -1 armor and health might be necessary.

[namad]

Honestly I think rangers could be much lower on melee and still be fine. Having good ranged and melee and durability runs into the problem of not having any real gaps in the usage of the unit. Meaning you can spam nothing but rangers, rendering too many other units obsolete. Even if rangers were the best ranged attacker you'd still want a couple other units around to serve other roles (although you proved this is not necessarily true when testing steam cannons. rangers don't bypass missile immunity)

[Seravy]

Something I have been considering ever since I saw it in PC and still can't decide :

What if Stables increased production?
Gameplay wise, that would be a cheaper - but weaker - alternative to the sawmill. It'd make cavalry (not the racial but the generic) units more viable, I think the greatest problem with them, they're clearly better than swordsmen, but inferior to halberdiers (and they even counter cavalry specifically). So the natural progression would be swordsmen->cavalry->halberdiers. However you don't need a Stables to make halberdiers, so skipping the "cavalry" stage is always strictly superior if you can afford the delay. Branching out towards bowmen does not suffer from this problem because the Sawmill is necessary anyway, and bowmen aren't hard countered by halberdiers. Stables on the other hand is a complete waste to build early unless you want to make cavalry, a unit that gets obsolete pretty fast.

If we want to do this, I believe it should be either +2 or +3 production in the same fashion as the sawmill, possibly reducing the sawmill to 7 at the same time (though probably not).

Flavor wise, horses are animals that work, so it's weird they don't add production.

The downside is, you also need a smithy so the stables is only available in your capital right away, in new outposts you need the smithy for it so it's not a good way to boost production unless you also want to build units right away.

This would however mean a buff to races whose racial cavalry is strong :
Gnolls - they certainly can use some more power anyway
Nomads - they are good enough but I suppose it won't hurt if they are slightly better in the early game.
Beastmen - they certainly don't need such a buff, not that it really matters for them.

Races who can't build one will be slightly less productive compared to others :
Halflings - their additional food output means more workers which can make up for the lack of this building
Dwarf - they have the best production in the game anyway

Finally, this could be used as a minor nerf to races by taking away their stables :
Lizardmen - Dragon Turtle needs the Armorer's Guild so it's somewhat pointless to also need stables, and this race would benefit far too much from more early production
Klackon - Stag Beetle is similar to turtles and this race already has a 50% production boost. Don't think the race needs a nerf though, so it might be better to keep the stables.

[zitro1987]

I like the idea of stables providing a small production boost. +2 would be perfectly balanced (as it is technically +3 for some terrains), +3 will also be balanced if sawmill is brought down 1 point.

I also like the idea of naval buildings providing small economic benefits, not sure what you think about that:
*Shipwright and/or shipyard adding +20 city growth (fishing!). Alternative is adding 2 food points 
*Maritime Guild adding +15% or +4 gold or a terrain commerce bonus, making coastal cities more viable.

Maybe Oracle could have additional scouting to make it tactically more useful than sticking a high-scouting unit. My idea is giving it 6 scouting.


Maybe Mechanician Guild adds a +1 defense bonus to 'city walls'

Gnolls appears to get highlighted as the weakest race here, usually with 'gnoll challenge' commentary sparkled around. I think adding +1 resistance to all units may be needed to allow this to be a true military race (meaning that spearmen have 3, and others 4 to 5). If that causes the jackal riders to be too powerful, increasing cost by 10 may be needed. It feels like Arcanus is truly missing a 'pure' military race.

[GermanJoey]

I really like the idea of a small production boost to stables - I almost never build Cavalry unless there's an early dungeon I can beat by kiting with summons, and even then suicide spearmen usually work fine. The fact that this would be a nice buff to both Gnolls and Nomads is perfect, as those two races could use some help. Beastmen, OTOH, are IMHO the #1 race, but then probably the thing to do there is nerf their units. (say, by making them all more expensive)

zitro - IMHO coastal cities are already viable because of Merchant's guilds. All other considerations being equal, its worth it to plant on the coast if your race can build those. Maritime guilds are pretty good already for situations where you want Warships, for Death or Sorcery, although I wouldn't think it was tragic if the Shipyard/Maritime guild were alternates of each other. (nobody is ever going to bother making a galley when you have warships available)

[Tlaloc]

The description of the Lizardmen race says Settlers cost 80, but in my current game with version 3.02b, they cost 120. Is this a bug? Or is the description incorrect?

Also, does the AI know where the player's capital is without discovering it?

[GermanJoey]

The description in the manual is incorrect, Lizardmen got a big nerf to all sorts of stuff a few months ago.

[Tlaloc]

Ok thanks. The incorrect description is in the 3rd post of this thread, so that info should be kept up to date as well.

[Seravy]

Thanks, fixed. Let me know if you find any other outdated information.