Test games played

[Nelphine]

I'm beginning to wonder if dwarves aren't underpowered. Super slow military, super slow city growth. Great economy once the cities are finally built but no amp towers! On a Myrran race.. Most important economy there is. And other races get banks/merchants guilds/colosseums which lets their gold economy surpass the dwarf anyway (well, maybe not by the time the dwarf city has max population, but that takes ages). Steam cannons are great, hammerhands are ... great raw stats, but the speed really hurts (see hydra..), and golem are great if you're attacking magician heavy cities. But then.. lots of things are great if you attack magician heavy cities. And while they have awesome production, all their units cost a bajillion compared to anything else, so they end up not actually building the unique military any faster than anyone else.

They're really an early race, except, they are too slow for an early race. So they end up being a mid game race; they beat other early races (none on Myrror...), and then beat late game races.. until those races get banks/amp towers. Feels like there is no place for dwarves.

I'd definitely reduce cost of hammerhands/golems. I really want to give them amp towers and increase outpost growth. And I'd probably give their units +1 defense in addition to the hp/resist bonuses due to their horrible speed.

Maybe even make hammerhands 5 hp base (then you could leave their production cost as is), and give common units +2 hp (instead of the +1 hp they currently have and instead of the +1 defense I suggested above.)

Edit: also, I wish AI could use engineers better. It'd be super cool to remove dwarf engineers entirely, and give all dwarf swordsmen/halberdiers/hammerhands the engineer ability. I suppose you could just leave them their engineers with the double speed, and give the military units normal engineering.

Double edit: forgot they had outpost growth improved. That might be fine now.

[Tlavoc]

I tried dwarves earlier, they did seem a bit slow, particularly in early exploration, but if you plop down a nice dwarven city on two gold deposits you can get some solid early-game income... until some asshat uses corruption.

It also lets them get the full 50% unit cost reduction off a single coal deposit if I remember correctly due to the racial bonus and the bonus from a miner's guild.

I do agree with the movement thing though, they get mountaineer, which is nice, but they only have 1 movement anyway... Compare that to draconians and it's like night and day. The dragons are flying which puts them out of the way of a lot of dangerous nonsense, but it also lets them explore better than any other race due to -spearmen- moving 2 over any terrain and seeing a block further, so you can easily plan out where to build without wasting any resources early on.

I always have a hard time justifying amp towers. 20 gold is quite a bit, more so if you're running alchemy, then again I'm still getting a feel for it. Your average town - particularly if you're paying attention to what you can bump your tax rate up to - should generate more than enough gold to account for one.

[Arnuz]

Not a fun of dwarves either. One thing that I noticed when I came to the mod is that they are the one race that was actually slowed down: in the original they walk 2 in mountains overland due to how pathfinding worked, IIRC, but now they only walk 1 and on top of that, myrran roads - which they excel at building - got nerfed.

I wouldn't raise their stats - which raise strategic power, with all the entailing issues - and rather raise speed and drop cost.

[Seravy]

Not a fun of dwarves either. One thing that I noticed when I came to the mod is that they are the one race that was actually slowed down: in the original they walk 2 in mountains overland due to how pathfinding worked, IIRC, but now they only walk 1 and on top of that, myrran roads - which they excel at building - got nerfed.

I wouldn't raise their stats - which raise strategic power, with all the entailing issues - and rather raise speed and drop cost.

Wrong, Mountaineer only allowed movement for 1 cost on mountains.
You needed a Forester unit to merge it into Pathfinding to move twice as fast.
Dwarves, like Draconians, might need changes, but I haven't had a chance to play Myrran in a year so...hard to judge it right now. (and I'm definitely not going to play more test games after 2 weeks of nonstop doing that. Maybe next month :D )
AI perfomance with them does seem a bit underwhelming. I'll keep running AI games in the background and gather more data and see if any race stands out as too weak or strong.

[Nelphine]

Tlavoc: Amp towers give you 7 casting skill. NOT 7 points towards skill production. 7 full casting skill.

Arnuz: I agree raising speed is better, but that loses a lot of flavor. And HP is the one thing that is (largely) accurately done by strategic combat. Especially on low (less than 8) defense units.

[Domon]

talking about flavour, i'd say it feels very strange for dwarves to not have a bank.

[Tlavoc]

They generate double tax income based on the description, so they have one, it's just unofficial

[Arnuz]

Not a fun of dwarves either. One thing that I noticed when I came to the mod is that they are the one race that was actually slowed down: in the original they walk 2 in mountains overland due to how pathfinding worked, IIRC, but now they only walk 1 and on top of that, myrran roads - which they excel at building - got nerfed.

I wouldn't raise their stats - which raise strategic power, with all the entailing issues - and rather raise speed and drop cost.

Wrong, Mountaineer only allowed movement for 1 cost on mountains.
You needed a Forester unit to merge it into Pathfinding to move twice as fast.
Dwarves, like Draconians, might need changes, but I haven't had a chance to play Myrran in a year so...hard to judge it right now. (and I'm definitely not going to play more test games after 2 weeks of nonstop doing that. Maybe next month :D )
AI perfomance with them does seem a bit underwhelming. I'll keep running AI games in the background and gather more data and see if any race stands out as too weak or strong.

Right. But who wouldn't play dwarves with a nature book or two? Summon a bear and they've got pathfinding. I forgot that part but it was so ingrained with dwarves that I considered part of them
Now that's impossible. And the myrran roads nerf are also an important part of their slowdown.

[Tlavoc]

With the increased speed of everything, roads don't seem very useful, and I don't think the 'enchant road' spell exists anymore. Are the roads in Myrror hard-coded to be 'enchanted'? If not, it could be fun, both in flavor and in usefulness for dwarves to be able to build enchanted roads. I expect it's impossible though since a check would have to run once they completed and somehow make the road enchanted.

Maybe it would be easier to use road as a terrain type? Could 'mountaineer' be adjusted to move for 0.5 on roads rather than anything to do with mountains? It would make roads an advantage for dwarves without further enhancing other races.

Edit:
As for the movement speed of dwarves in fantasy, isn't it that they are short so aren't good in sprints, but have incredible stamina? That would translate to moving overland quickly, but still having a slow speed within battle. Rather than linking it to roads, mountaineering making them move at 0.5 per tile would give them similar movement (further buffed by endurance) but still move at a standard 1 in battle (I don't think movement abilities did anything in battle, but I don't remember off the top of my head).

[Arnuz]

> With the increased speed of everything, roads don't seem very useful

Agreed.

> I don't think the 'enchant road' spell exists anymore.

Confirmed.

> Are the roads in Myrror hard-coded to be 'enchanted'?

Yes.

I would actually propose to make roads "enchanted" everywhere, now that the spell is gone - they have no speed bump on planes and deserts which is weird. If not too difficult, I'd make roads movement cost 1/2 on planes and deserts but 1 on the more expensive terrains. But it's finesse, wouldn't do it if it takes too long or messes with the AIs.

Dwarves deserve a fix on myrran, their home plane.