Races, Units, Buildings

[zitro1987]

Gnolls:
*Seriously remove that resistance penalty. We have too many races with these. This is a military race. It shouldn't be there, period!
*Wolf Riders - 80 cost, maybe 5 resistance
*Halberdiers having +3 attack instead of +2 ... or having a +1 armor
*Shift Lizardmen amplifying tower to Gnoll (so Gnolls stay relevant later in game)

Economy : Poor - No change

Production : Average - No change
Military : Above Average - No longer with resistance penalty. Minor boosts to wolf riders and halberdiers
Other : The race has pretty good interracial unrest tables that encourage building lots of non-gnoll cities.
Magic : Slightly below average - many restrictions but now with amplifying tower to stay relevant.

Lizardmen:
*Remove amplifying tower to give race a serious drawback. Done! Balanced.

[Seravy]

Okay, let's see.

The role of lizardmen is to be the race that can claim the largest territory early and rule the seas. Since the point of territory is to either produce troops (if you go the military route) or power/casting skill/research (if you go the magic route), limiting either to below "average" would be bad. That means we can't take out the Amplifying Tower and Wizard's Guild (despite my first though being "move the amplifying tower to gnolls").

Economy : I see no room for nerfing here.
Production : They already have no production buildings, so only the population growth can be changed but that would also drag down the economy so nothing drastic is possible. Also, I don't think this a category where a race should even have a "poor" rating.
Military : The units are good, but their strength comes from hit points and it's not possible to have 1.5 hit points per figure. So the only possibility I see here is giving the race -1 or -2 resistance (they might even have had that before they got buffed to be playable)

Other : These benefits are necessary for the race to fill the intended role
Magic : I see no room for changes here either.
Extras : I suppose taking away their shaman is a possibility, but what would it achieve? It's not a good unit in combat, and corruption isn't very relevant if you go quantity over quality on your territory.


And that's it. I don't really see anything else that could be done without redesigning the whole race.
We can have less resistance, or no shaman, or perhaps a little bit less growth (+90 or +100 instead of +120, but this doesn't matter all that much either, a +10 is only 1 people every 100 turns and, well, high growth is a benefit that cancels itself, by hitting the max pop limit faster.)

Klackons are fine the way they are.

Gnolls...
The intended role is to have a race that has strong troops that excel in the early game but can hold their own later as well, without completely sacrificing late game like Barbarians, or early game like the late races. And the race already does this, it just does it way worse than the other two.

Economy : Allowing Bank or Merchant's Guild requires allowing the Advanced Building tree they're part of (although the other buildings can be disabled, there is a limit to how many can be per race) and I don't think this race should have that tree - I can't see wolf people having advanced technology. So we can either raise growth (not a fan of it, we have a lot of high growth races already) or leave this category at poor and improve others more.
Production : Same as above, I don't see anything that can be done for this.
Military : This is probably where the race fails most. +2 melee is a lot but these guys have no durability whatsoever to be able to use it, being all melee, they are easy to counter before they get to attack. Low resistance makes them even more vulnerable. Raising resistance, and/or movement to 3 could make the race work better on the whole. Reducing the cost of Wolf Riders to improve early game potential is also an option. If we remove Lizard shaman (don't like that idea much) then Gnoll bowmen or another new Gnoll unit becomes possible.
Magic : Any race that isn't designed to be "disposable" early game only race should have an Amplifying Tower. There is no way around that, if I get +140 casting skill out of having 20 other cities and I don't out of Gnolls, I will want other cities. Exception being a purely military strategy with low need for combat spells but this race is the exact opposite of that, being all melee and nonflying they can't fight a battle without proper spell support. Aside from that they are okay, power and research potential are not good but acceptable. (8 power and 11 research/city, about half of normal)
Extras : Giving the race Shaman could actually help them out, both by keeping ores clean (Gnolls benefit a lot from adamant and mithril) and healing troops in battle until they reach enemies. We have no graphics for such a unit though, nor a slot and I'm not a fan of the idea anyway. Engineers are not an option (No builder's hall) and don't fit the race.

So we can do higher resistance (best to pair this with less resistance on lizardmen), more movement, adding amplifying tower, possibly a new unit if we removed shaman from lizardmen.
And/Or we can try to come up with an entirely new racial trait/ability.

[Nelphine]

As an avid lizardman player. Who also totally misunderstood how amplifying towers work. I can completely say: lizardman have no need of amplifying towers - yes they make a big difference, but its icing.

I wouldn't take away the lizardman shaman. Corruption hits them very hard.

I'd highly suggest looking at other races - do dark elves really need priests (OK probably yes - what about making warlocks fill that role, giving them corruption removal, and removing any healing from the race - they seem very offensively oriented)? Do halflings really need magicians? Or high elves? Basically any race with multiple ranged units can probably be examined. I'm sure we could find one that really isn't needed. (I think troll magicians are silly, but I'm aware you really like them.)

[Nelphine]

What I really wish is if we could give gnolls invisibility until they attacked, and not on overland. Call it ambush. Then they can be super frail, get one massive hit in, and get to use that extra attack.

[zitro1987]

Gnoll Thoughts:
*What if Gnoll bowmen don't have the ranged bonuses, but instead have 1 poison (6 figures = 6 poison). We could call them something else, like 'assassins' and could wreck havoc against high men.
*I'll be ok with normal resistance, +1 movement, and the +2 melee .. and of course cheaper wolf raiders for balancing purposes (closer to halberdier or centaur in cost)
*I think the top unit should have at least 5 resistance.
*As for economy, just adding amplifying tower I think is all that is needed

Lizardmen:
Weakening military by removing shaman and losing resistance is a pretty neat idea, opening up a new vulnerability and maybe encouraging sorcery (resist magic) a bit more instead of the usual 'chaos' route that works well with them.
* However, I still prefer just taking out amplifying towers instead of severely hurting their military. That's what makes them extraordinary.

Dark Elves:
*What if warlocks get 40mp (and just 1 shot instead of 4) instead of doom bolt. More flexibility (based on wizard's own spells), but less long-term damage potential. While I'm not entirely sure how it balances out, it could be REALLY FUN.

[Nelphine]

I've never played chaos lizardman...

[namad]

can you please remove the spoilers from this thread?

if I want to look something up real quick there's no way to just search for it, like if I see say a golem, but forget it's a dwarf unit I cannot search the thread for golem without opening every spoiler tab....

Also I see no real benefit, to anyone who... isn't on a phone? my monitor is plenty big enough to read everything.


It's fine on the other threads, they're not so confusingly set up. Another idea though. IF you really want there to be spoiler tags in the races thread, add every unique unit to every building that produces it? and vica versa? as a sort of cross reference idea? that way you can look things up even if you only know it comes from an Armorer's Guild or that it's an elf.

[GermanJoey]

If anyone could lose a ranged unit to give one to the gnolls, my vote is definitely for the Draconian bowman. First of all, that race has 4 (!) ranged units, plus all of their units fly and have flame breath. Secondly, Drac bowmen are super abusable in how early they're available and how easily they can cheese so many different nodes/lairs/neutral cities, especially with adamant, and furthermore this is an advantage the AI can't use. Finally, that race is super strong anyways and could eat a nerf like that.

Other ideas for Gnolls:
- 100% give them an Amp Tower, even if you don't take it away from Lizardmen
- 2 move settlers would greatly help their economy. Lizardmen would still be the settling kings, with water-walking (which also acts like semi-pathfinding in a lot of cases) and faster growth rates.
- An idea for a ranged unit if one can't be added: rename gnoll halbers to be "Gnoll Lancers" and up their cost a little bit. The idea here would be that each gnoll lancer carries 2 lances - one for throwing, one for stabbing. So they'd get a single ammo each, with a strength equal to their melee strength.
- Could give jackel riders death immunity instead of (or perhaps in addition to?) cloak of fear.

[Seravy]

What I really wish is if we could give gnolls invisibility until they attacked, and not on overland. Call it ambush. Then they can be super frail, get one massive hit in, and get to use that extra attack.

I like this idea but it's entirely impossible to do.

I've never played chaos lizardman...

My first lizardmen test game was Chaos+Chaneller. Grab lots of territory early using settlers while maintaining peace with everyone - Chaos spells are weak in the early game. Lizardmen units are not very good for late game, but they are durable, which gives a lot of opportunity to cast combat spells and win through magic. Amplifying Towers are essential for this strategy.

Okay, so what we seem to all agree on :

Gnolls :
+ RES
+ Amplifying Tower

Lizardmen :
- RES

Let's see the current distribution of resistance among races.

-2 : High Men
-1 : Barbarian
0  : Beastmen, Klackon, Orc, Troll
+1 : Draconian, Halfling (from Lucky), High Elf
+2 : Dark Elf
+3 : Nomad
+4 : Dwarf

I guess Lizardmen at -1 and Gnolls at +0 makes the most sense.

[Nelphine]

I don't think that will be enough for gnolls. That will make their very late game OK but they still have to survive to get there. Res will help some of their units, but it won't help them kill anything they can't already. They really need a ranged unit.

Speaking of, I'd be OK with removing draconian Bowman. Even flavorwise it makes sense - why give up a fire breath for a bow? At least the other draconian ranged units give up a fire breath for magic.