Races, Units, Buildings

[Seravy]

Did 5 test games on easy (completes much faster than higher difficulties due to low amount of units) - lizardmen were still by far the most effective AI race even with the above changes.

I can only think of these now :
-Easy favors lizardmen a lot - magic is weak and any military/economic advantage is massively more effective as it makes the difference of "none" and "a little" unlike on other difficulties where it's "lots" vs "even more". Other wizards won't have any troops in the "settler" phase to stop it either.
-Water movement ensures lizard units build doomstacks which can access the entire map and harvest gold/mana/neutrals to further accelerate, while other wizards get that done much slower.


So I guess I have to also try higher difficulties. Maybe I'll do some games up until turn 100-200 only to save time.

[GermanJoey]

Based on test data from AI vs AI games, I think a change to races is needed, see : http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...#pid642800

Current : Lizardmen 12 growth, 30 Outpost growth. Klackon 8 Growth, 0 Outpost growth.

Proposed change :

Lizardmen growth -> 7, outpost growth unchanged.
The race has good military, decent buildings, water movement, and faster settlers. It doesn't need extremely fast growth on top of that.

Klackon growth 8->11, Outpost growth 0 -> +20.
The race benefits from having no cities of other races, but its growth rates don't really make razing and rebuilding a favorable option, even in the early game which makes the unrest penalty overly harsh, especially now that you can't get around it via Move Fortress. The production and gold bonus is there to help building cities, but without people, neither is really helpful as both taxes and production are per unit of population.

Sounds good, IMHO. This also gives human players a motivation to play Klackons now that Inquisitor is gone.

[Nelphine]

I think the outpost growth should also match the growth rate - meaning lizardmen should have slow outpost growth. They can get lots of outposts, but it should take some time to get them. Similarly, klackon need the outposts to change to cities before the growth matters.

But as mentioned, its the settled speed that makes the biggest difference, nor the city growth. Innate water walking plus speed two means WAY more cities, much faster.

[Nelphine]

So, maybe make lizardmen settler speed 1, give gem some pop growth back (+30 or 40), and give gnolls the speed two settlers. (Since gnolls seem overly weak).

[Seravy]

4 tests done on Impossible (up to turn 200), the lizardmen do not seem so excessively powerful here, so it clearly is the effect of the easy difficulty level. They seem to generally place 2nd on first 100 turns and drop to lower at turn 200 which is how an early race should be.
Also worth mentioning the land sizes in all tests were "Fair", on Large and Huge I'd expect them to do even worse.
On Small, probably better, on Tiny, very ranrdom, depends on how many islands are on the map where no wizard is starting. If many, they dominate, if none (3-4 larger islands) they have minimal advantage. At least this is my guess.

So far I think the race works as intended and no further change is necessary but ofc this might change once I have more data.

[Seravy]

I have been thinking and maybe Colosseums would be better if they didn't need the Fighter's Guild, only a Smithy. As is, they are nor particularly viable to build : In cities where you did build a Fighter's Guild, you generally want to keep producing troops and won't stop that for a minor economy bonus that requires a huge investment. In cities without the Fighter's Guild, building both the FG and the Colosseum means you have to pay what you gain in building maintenance, so your net gain is 1 unrest reduction only which is not very interesting for a total cost of 550 and can usually be achieved cheaper.
If we do this, we might want to raise the cost of Colosseum though, as it does mean access to better heroes and more hero offers in the early game, albeit 300 is already fairly expensive for an economy building that is barely better than Marketplace aside from what it does for hiring heroes and mercenaries so it might not be necessary.

[Arnuz]

Do prisoner heroes found in lairs have the same fame requirements as the offers for hire?

[Seravy]

Aside from Colosseums, I'm still playing Klackons and despite the high population growth I still have gold problems.

Time to do some quick math.

Let's assume you can maintain max taxes while playing Klackons but only 2 levels below for other races (not true, I know, but at least true for the early game), so there is a 0.5 gold extra for klackon citizens.
They don't get a marketplace, that puts them 7 gold behind other races.
They don't get a farmer's market, that puts them 3 population (6 gold) behind.

So for a total loss of 13 gold, they get...7.5 extra on 15 pop cities, so basically, their gold production is below average, even in the early game.

Later, others get a bank and a merchant's guild, albeit the klackons do get roads (and those come out earlier) instead, it's not the same - roads don't work on maps with many smaller continents, and races without engineers can also get roads through conquest and mercenaries (and the Conjure Roads spell). However, you will probably face much more unrest than other races in your conquered cities, further reducing late game income.

So, while Klackons do get a bit of extra early gold through faster growth and higher taxes, considering how early marketplace comes, that doesn't result in any advantage in the early game, while in the late game they are at a disadvantage. (in fact, not getting a farmer's market negates most of the growth advantage)

This, paired with the fastest production in the game means you'll be building more and faster than what you can maintain, and will find yourself constantly producing around zero or even negative gold.

I think it might be necessary to allow Klackons to build the marketplace and farmer's market (but keep bank and merchant disabled) similarly how Lizardmen needed the Sawmill despite their "no production buildings" trait.

Do prisoner heroes found in lairs have the same fame requirements as the offers for hire?

No, you can find any non-champion hero there.

[Nelphine]

I agree about klackons. You can make it work but its very difficult.

[Arnuz]

Barbarians are OP because:

- they sum higher than usual movement with path-finding

That's it. That's the main reason. This lets me:
- plink at waaaaay stronger than expected nodes with archers: 8 chaos spawn? lol, piece of cake for 2 barb archers, on difficult terrain nodes they have the same speed of nomad mounted archers with 8 shots.
- explore the nodes and lairs with very high chances to stay alive for a mere spearmen unit
- give pathfinding to mages other heroes that don't normally have it without a need for items
- in terms of logistics, be always very quickly to the front-lines

Sure, then there's berserkers, but frankly I think that bersies are less of a problem - barring strategic combat considerations. Speed 3/PF on each unit takes away the gnolls' role completely.

I think that speed 2 and PF would be perfectly fine. Maybe keep bersies with speed 3, as they are melee anyhow so it's less of an issue than archers, but for the others it makes no sense imho.