Lord Thane could just get rid of lithar. Or make it the undead provice
Crazy idea Re: techs
Lord Thane
i like this. Should be something to think about in the future.
Agree on Lithar. I think I suggested a production bonus somewhere but the only thing I don't like about it is that is disproportionately affects Tuth, and they will likely reign supreme, and the bonus would end up being a win-more type bonus. Generally, probably. I feel like a BAS bonus and crime reduction fits best lore-wise? ie Max crime single race provs = 15. But we're starting over in terms of balancing because range is doubled, so who actually knows where humans are now. We will re-establish the baseline balance starting point after this round, wrap our heads around what's going on, and likely have solid suggestions later after we feel out the changes, particularly to gold and range. It's impossible for any of us to suggest minor race/unit balance with no experience in this game, but some big obvious stuff will come up... like mages and SW being rendered ineffective. I do hope that we do not enter a "Race 1 counters Race 2 who counters Race 3 who counters Race 4" type balance, it's cheap. There should be some soft countering, but nothing hard.
We got rid of retals on fireballs? Thank god.
Hard disagree that Elves should be torn up by another warring race of similar size. They should still lose, but not be torn up. I'm not sure an Elf would gate their army back to be torn up, right, what would be the point. The army can stay out tbh, particularly if you have mages... they CANNOT be home or you will lose huge. All situational sure but just another balance conundrum. I'm not convinced that being able to buff or Fireballing/EQ'ing in general is worth the substituting an actual functioning army, but we'll see.
I haven't had the feel that most people want races equal, or maybe I've dismissed it because it's silly. Race homogenization will kill the game and i'd stay far away from that.
It feels like you want to balance the game based on racial diplomacy between provs? You mean like axing Lithar? I think it'd be fun as something like an event round. I've always like the idea of accelerated event rounds, very similar to the tournament. Separate login, 30 minute ticks, 1 month rounds, single race provs.
Man, I also really want to rant about Caragous. But Mages are so bad that they have my focus.
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As humans have no major weaknesses or traits, Tuth would be exempt from racial province bonus.
Or maybe something token, like increased birth rates (on account of there being fewer sexy orc womenfolk to be intermingling with). And then maybe lower birth rates for Lithar for same reasoning 
Lol
Jules Elves should not be an attacking force and should rely on Guard towers and pure defensive skills to be able to be good combatants. Make them rely on Shadow hall, firewall, Guard towers and again, I HIGHLY suggest, they are the only race allowed to gate. These are huge advantages given to the weakest army builds and should be incorporated into the build. They shouldnt be winning offensive fights against Dwarves and humans of their size, but on defense can put up a fight and hard to break.
I also disagree with you on the"" "Race 1 counters Race 2 who counters Race 3 who counters Race 4" type balance"" , it makes it so every race has its strengths and weaknesses and can help take down 'runaway' provinces. If they are all equal in army strength, it makes replayability kind of repetitive... You find the OP build and everyone just copies, then were into 'rebalancing again'.
It would be more fun to have to be switching up your build depending on the enemy. Dwarves having issues with Humans: get more Med Centres, ally Orc's, add another Tech, don't take away their upkeep in an attempt to 'balance'.
In conclusion I just feel your thoughts are more catering to equality of armies and I think the game needs to steer more into the strategy and diplomacy and not making every races army 'fair'.
Maybe I am crazy? Lol
Lord Thane
Provincially maybe keep with the theme already going about BAS, "Fighting Spirit - BAS cannot drop below 0 while humans work together?"
Take away gating to stop their end game dominance.
Remove a Light armor tech and swap it to another Plate?
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Mack10 the thing with what everyone seems to believe is that bringing in friends doesn’t actually matter if you are being attacked by a human as a dwarf and you bring an orc in to help you, how does that benefit you at all if your not expected to win a battle against a human is the orc going to take the human castle and pass it back to you? Does that seem like what we are trying to do… I certainly don’t think so. I’m also of the mind set that while some races should be stronger in ways but should have equal offsetting downsides so that it’s playable but you won’t be a super god at any one thing.
Wether it’s a mix of army strength and economy where if you have high one you have low other, or if it’s more nuanced where if one type of unit gets to a certain tech lvl it’s cost decreases becuase it’s easy to train and then your balancing a deep tech with army efficency and exonomy. (By balancing I mean the player is making choices in this instance)
Mack10 yeah that's pretty much exactly why I wasn't ready to shit on all ranged units -50%, no point to playing anything other than Orc. Orc is shit at ranged, that's just the nature of the beast, figure out a counter with diplomacy if Orc really needs to hit a strong ranged kd.
If there's a glaringly obvious issue with balance, then that's something we can work on - with incremental changes.
I'm liking the provincial race traits idea, pretty sure that's gonna have to be implemented, which will help reduce human dominance a bit - and help break up Lithar dominance.
I'm like 90% sure Gate is gonna be an elf thing. Just gotta figure out exact mechanics of that.
It would be interesting if rounds were short enough that full-length technologies forced you to choose a path rather than having all of them by the end of the round. We'd need huge buffs to magic attacks though. Maybe fireball kills troops at home to weaken the army allowing the weaker attacking army to break a weakened defense (in this scenario, only 1 retal between the attack and the spell(s) so maybe if the spell and attack happen in the same tick, only 1 retal)
trupheus I’ve been saying this re techs for a long time. You should not be able to reach max tech by the end of any round.
The part about magic I haven’t thought much about I like the idea of one constant retal that refreshes duration this would pit kingdoms against one nemisis rather that having elves fireballing everyone for fear they would get multiple attacks… you fireball 2 different kingdoms sorry you lose 4 castles…
Maybe there’s something to be said for stacking protection so if you get pre/re’d then you get like 25 hours or something… rather than just 15
Offensive spell retals should only give you land. No castles.Since you don't gain much by fireballing someone else, it's just to destroy THEM not to gain for YOU. So the downside shouldn't be this big.
Xliest I dont think you are following...
You ask the orc to break their army, once broken you now can breathe or start hacking away at them with your weaker army. When they are distracted by armies that can counter them, they are no longer focused on you...... I thought this would be common sense?
Just because you are not gaining castles is beneficial because you are not losing them every 20 hours.
Return the favour when a gnome starts beating on the orc, or just be a complete ass and attack the orc like the Pinos do.
saadht This would be a find compromise, I mean it still hurts the fireballer to lose the schools and wizards but not enough to discount the impact of the fireball.
Maybe like 5 hours retal rights and every fireball resets this counter, not stacks.
4 Fireballs would hurt, but then you couldnt bless and GC yourself risking loss of wizards and troops, or resources at the minimum.
trupheus Would a Technology "count" be feasible here? Gnomes will always have more Gold and can get much more done with their -Research time as well.
Maybe something along the lines of;
"You have researched 5/20 Capable technologies" with a possibility to 'forget' (with no refund) and switch them (by researching of course).
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Elves should not be an attacking force and should rely on Guard towers and pure defensive skills to be able to be good combatants. Make them rely on Shadow hall, firewall, Guard towers and again, I HIGHLY suggest, they are the only race allowed to gate.
I agree, generally. More below.
These are huge advantages given to the weakest army builds and should be incorporated into the build. They shouldnt be winning offensive fights against Dwarves and humans of their size, but on defense can put up a fight and hard to break
This is where I disagree. Having to build MC's, GT's and use a completely ass army(to only compete on defense?) just so you can bless your friends, fireball/GB or gate is not even close to a good trade-off. That's 30% build space, wizard upkeep and an ineffective army, but in return you get magic. As I currently view magic, it's a bad tradeoff to be only marginally better than a human(at magic). TERRIBLE TRADEOFF. Nobody would make that trade. I do not disagree they should be losing fights against races of similar sizes. It's not binary bro, they can lose without being demolished. Even then, all this is aside because mages cannot be left at home in their current form. We're left with a scenario where the elf cannot afford to attack, nor can they afford to leave their mages at home. So bottomfeed a rando I guess? Also, caragous are utter trash lol.
I also disagree with you on the"" "Race 1 counters Race 2 who counters Race 3 who counters Race 4" type balance"" , it makes it so every race has its strengths and weaknesses and can help take down 'runaway' provinces. If they are all equal in army strength, it makes replayability kind of repetitive... You find the OP build and everyone just copies, then were into 'rebalancing again'.
Again, nobody is saying races ought to be equal? The races do have strengths and weaknesses, it's great, but let's not lean into hard countering. I don't think anyone wants to wake up to getting destroyed by a player of equal size because they got hard countered with their army at home. There are things that are balanced, some things that are unbalanced. Do not construe balancing for attempting to create equal army strengths, it's not the intent, not even close.
It would be more fun to have to be switching up your build depending on the enemy. Dwarves having issues with Humans: get more Med Centres, ally Orc's, add another Tech, don't take away their upkeep in an attempt to 'balance'
This is what normally happens already....and it's not part of my arguments. It's been decades of this lol, it's always been this way and nobody(?) wants to change that. Adaptation and optionality is great. I love empowering the player with choices, a common theme with my suggestions. Which upkeep are you referring to? Mages?
In conclusion I just feel your thoughts are more catering to equality of armies and I think the game needs to steer more into the strategy and diplomacy and not making every races army 'fair'.
Yes sorry, you are crazy LOL. My focus for units has only been on:
- Elf army in general with a focus on mages, caragous later
- SW's getting fucked from range
It would be more accurate to say I am simping for Elves yet somehow advocating for range to go back to 50%. This has nothing to due with unit/race homogenization or getting rid of counters currently in place. Some stuff is just what it is, unbalanced. If we want to debate it, the best spot would be to start with how much tradeoffs Elves have to make for magic, how good magic is, and where the balance lies. ie; compare Human and elf armies, now compare their magic effectiveness. It doesn't jive.
I love the idea of and have thought about adding many more techs as well. Techs trees with choices even, pick-a-path style would be cool to further differentiate individual KD's. The idea of "late-game techs", and some kind of gatekeeping keeps crossing my mind but a timed release seems lame and I haven't thought of anything better yet. Maybe Elves cast a powerful spell that does things(?) and officially marks mid or late game, or even ends the round. You'll actually notice a theme of mine is to never make equal, homogenize or otherwise between races. I'm staunchly against it.
Where do you actually sit with the countering? I think you just have the wrong perception of what i'm espousing. imo we maintain the countering system of old, not specifically increase or decrease it at this point. We can think about and adjust that as needed after we get the easier balancing out of the way. When I say hard countering, I am talking current gnomes vs current Orc, that is bad. Old Dwarf vs old Elf, those were bad. They should still lose but be brought more in line. The only thing that bothers me about existing (Non-racial)countering are the mounted units. They have a hard counter but offer no benefit and have an increased armory cost, unless we consider their stats to be baked into the balance on it.
Mack10 I think you and I just have different views on this, that is fine, what I will say to your point is, yes if the orc can catch the human army then sure it’s feasible that he will stop attacking you but in most insances army are in and out very quickly at this stage in the game so the chance of catching it is low, and the human won’t want to attack a big orc that counters him he’s going to just attack the dwarf again. And the dwarf will have to rebuild and may never fully recover in the 15 hours of protection. And then what, he gets hit again by a human, and the orc retals and gets his castle then the human waits out his protection and attacks the dwarf again. Crippling him. Unless the dwarf can recover faster that the human can attack him it’s a vicious cycle. Also keep in there is no such thing as a fair fight in thardferr no one is hitting up or around their own Ks until the last week giving the defender even less of a chance to recover. Due to the smaller Kd size
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yeah that's pretty much exactly why I wasn't ready to shit on all ranged units -50%, no point to playing anything other than Orc.
This is just...false, honestly it is. No other way to say it. Remember Humans? They were still always more powerful. Surely you've played the same game we have in the last 20 years. Race representation has always been mostly somewhat even, just depending on the groups who came out on top of the rounds. Orc's/SW's were not a topic of balance for being OP lol. Gnomes already kept them in check without your range buff. The above statement makes me feel like you haven't played the game since round 3.
Said differently: There were no qualms with ranged damage before with similar units stats played out over decades, then you buffed it by 50% while calling for incremental changes lol. wut
If it is your intention to completely redo balance as-it-was, as a whole on everything, just state it that way and i'll stop harping on it and look for ways to improve from where we are, or from where you want it to be.
Edit: I'm going to add gold production into this topic as well because it's the same. A complete departure from the old game, yet i've had the feeling we are trying to re-create the old game based on the game guide and balance/change after. What are your intentions? Is it fine we are making 2, 3, 4x as much gold as before in prot? Am I screaming into the wind every time I bring markets up? Is this gold production overall fine for you?
Jules I don't know what game you're referring to that has been getting played with a -50% nerf "for decades", but I know it's not Thardferr - it's been dead for decades. If old Thardferr silently changed the rules to rebalance at some point, that's fine - they had 16 rounds to tweak things however they wanted. Maybe the new Thardferr will adopt a ranged nerf too at some point, who knows - there hasn't been a single real round yet, so it's really pretty moot.
Regardless of all that, we're following the game guide as best we can while trying to make some sensible adjustments. It's not like we aren't listening to community input either - there's been tons of player suggested changes made, a far cry from the secrecy of how things used to be, we even publish a changelog that has 90% of changes published (small bits excluded to not ruin gameplay).
When it comes to the suggestion of nerfing all ranged attack -50%, I don't think there's even community support for it, so it's double vetoed. At least for now.
Cut lithar prov sizes in half and limit the total number of lithar provs. Or you could give a bonus incentive for going racial?
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Blahblah already did it. Lithar birthrate is slower, tuth is slightly faster, the rest are faster + some modest racial trait boosts.