Gnomish issues

King Haybol

Lord Thane I managed the Gnome race very well during the test round. I believe they are balanced; they may appear weak at the early stage but become very strong at the late stage. This is only my observation. I don't know with others. 😇😇😇

I only choose to play ORC now because I go with racial province as agreed in our GC discussion. 🤭🤭🤭

Mack10

Lord Thane
I played gnome quite a but before, the Additional housing is super important and makes sense, does it not? Allows the troops to be built and suicided more often and allows gold production bonus to buy wood. Also you can Jam a bunch of those lil MF's in a hole in the ground.

Since CLI has been introduced their strategy has been tampered with too much.
You are supposed to be hitting a lot and able to stop the retals but now that is nullified with CLI.
The weapons are not quick enough as well with 2.4. Maybe increase that more in an Aldard province?
You can say they are for advanced users but they have been nerfed and not a viable contender, take this round for example, there are barely any. and none climbing to the top. They should be powerhouses right now, especially with little Dwarves in the mix.
With all the humans there are plentiful targets to slap on Far Fighting and climb up very quickly.

The Catapults are to soak damage, but you really should never spec into ATC units for gnome because Riders suck (as you said), and its already too difficult for keeping up on wood for Militia/Inf.
The food costs alone should be a deterrent....
Keep in mind without the 115/house bonus you need to jack up housing as well.

End game the idea is to eventually switch to Infantry (When Light Armours are teched) and RT's with Cats/bals on build for as many castles as you have, again, to soak up a bit of damage from the RT's.
Their Racial Tech bonus is absolute trash, and I can say I tested that a few rounds ago when most of my army was ATC driven and explosive power researched.
There was no way I could build that type of army without the resources supplied and no way to sustain it.

With all of this said, I really feel Gnomes should have 115 housing bonus... Allows them to thrive.

King Haybol You have no say, you are fed from your fellow pinos, in the form of resources/retals/pretals/intimidation.
Play a round without your crew and then you can give feedback.

Lord Thane

Mack10 Oh yeah I think it makes total sense for them to have a housing buff, and they really need it since TC units requires massive use of pop, and I have at least 1/2 and sometimes 2/3 my pop just for wood production which is crazy lmao

I don't agree with raising the armory production more though, even when I was running heavy TC it was not a problem as long as I kept it running all the time and kept a stockpile. Not to say it's not a difficulty for people, but every race has difficulties and sometimes they just need to figure it out.

King Haybol

Mack10 Nope, I didn't ask for any resources on my provmate. Yeah I agree on the population because Gnome really consume too much pops on TC troops especially during wars. ☺️☺️☺️

DougEfresh

Lord Thane are you making lots of attacks? I was losing 2k fodder a hit last round.
How are you keeping up on slings and spears?

Lord Thane

DougEfresh no I'm not attacking anyone. I'm getting attacked everyday though, luckily been repelling them ever since the <70% rule went into effect, not getting BFed anymore.

I think my armies would be in better shape if I was attacking, better than getting zeroed out by BFers.

When I can get the barracks tech then I think I will go 1:1 medical centers. I'm actually trying to figure out how I can adjust things to get MC now, just not sure what to sacrifice, my wood or housing.

Nolio

Lord Thane The Rider seems to have been originally built just as a placeholder

Does this mean that you're going to revamp them into something useful?

I think @Mack10 is right about needing the housing bonus. Just to afford a constant supply of cats and bals they need to have 2 or 2.5 mills, and to be able to run that you need almost 5:1 houses. To get the gold bonus you need to run 1:1 markets. that leaves very little room for much else.

I have found that you don't need the armory bonus nearly as much as the ability to get wood, either through buying it with gold, or with a wood production bonus.

DougE and Mack are right about the armory being impossible to build up fodder if you're in a war or constant state of fighting, which is essentially the point of the game. So for that, I believe that the fodder units could simply use a balanced tweak by cutting their production in half, or even more. Make 5 or 3 per TC, but make them units that are worth having. Double their stats, halve their production rate. This would also solve the armory problem if done right.

Now considering there are 8 gnomes in the game, and 3 of them are inactive, it does seem they need a buff. I'm getting killed by humans that bf me which feels like the mechanic for hitting lower kingdoms isn't working, but I'll chalk that up to me being salty.

I hope some solution can be found because I love playing them, but it's hard to find them viable in their current state.

DougEfresh

Nolio i like the idea of them being 2/2 with half training speed.
also on the pop thing, i dunno what the bonus on gaining is in racial province vs lithar, and ive only played gnome in lithar, but it should be higher than other races since you burning through pop every attack.

Nolio

Lord Thane For gnomes, I think it's important they live in Alderd to get racial bonuses, they really need it.

What is the racial bonus they get?

DougEfresh

Nolio pretty sure hes talking about population growth rate. at least gnomes got all the other ones in lithar.
i havent paid any attention to it this round cuz it doesnt affect me like it did as a gnome

Lord Thane

Nolio we didn't publish the provincial bonuses, but they're definitely worth it for gnome, including an increased birth rate to refill pop faster.

We may tweak the housing for gnomes this round, but other major changes would probably need to go into next round. Orcs and Elves also have wishlists for tweaking their units, so it would be better to bundle those changes all together before a round starts so people know what they're getting into.

We had a lotttt of gnomes in the test rounds, I think people just wanted to try something new and so gnomes didn't get well represented.

Nolio

DougEfresh I noticed that the growth rate was identical to everyone else, but that I started with a slight bit more pop than other races. I started with 10 more population

Nolio

Lord Thane we didn't publish the provincial bonuses, but they're definitely worth it for gnome, including an increased birth rate to refill pop faster.

Things like this would be incredibly helpful to know. I get why you went into Alderd to play now given that you know these things. If I knew what kind of benefits each one gets, it would help me choose a race and province more carefully.

I personally hate when things are ambiguous within games like this. Not for the sake of min maxing, but just to know if things are useful and if they sound fun.

Please publish as much of the info as you can, when you get around to it. I know there's a lot on your guys' plate so it's not a priority, but the "fun in the mystery" is definitely not something that applies to me. And seeing as almost no one else went gnome, statistically it doesn't seem like they believe it either.

DougEfresh

Nolio the fun in mystery doesnt apply to anyone who plays this game. i voted hard no on gnome based on my experience in the last round. is there an increase forge rate for aldred? any of the inactives wanna lets us know?

Cora

Nolio I would say going racial province is beneficial for any race. I see quite a difference in my resource production this round since I was encouraged to go into a Lithar province. I definitely prefer the racial bonus.

trupheus

Some mystery, good. Complete fog surrounding what the bonus is for the races, no good.

Orc, wood, iron, food buff?
Dwarf, iron and gold buff?
Elf, wood and magic buff?
Human, broken and don’t need anything? (Hehe)
Gnome, weapon bonus?

skigglez

trupheus
Agreed - don't need the exact %'s but would be great to know what areas have the bonuses. I have the same issue with some of the techs - True Silver for example says tougher shields for shieldbearers. For the major tech that takes 175 hours it would be nice to know exactly what it does. I know Thane mentioned he was going to consider adding that in (as well as caragous/wolfmaster explanations), so I hope he does that sooner than later.

Nolio

skigglez I agree. Human Orc and Elf have detailed explanations of how they work. Gnome and Dwarf are just super vague. What are "thougher shields for their shieldbearers" and what does "increasing their attack radius." mean?

Lord Thane

Nolio each race actually has mysteries. Orcs have the Wolf Master secret of how it affects the othe mounted units, and Elves have the caragous unit thats a total mystery.

I think humans are the only ones with no mysteries, because they aren't special in any way lol... The Undead are pretty much a total mystery since we haven't published anything on them yet (other than unit stats I put in the military unit costs table).

Nolio

Lord Thane I know that they have mysteries, but why keep it that way?

Why not say "Wolf masters increase the attack of 3 wolf riding units by 15% for every 1 Wolf Master" if that's the case? This way people can actually make strategic decisions around these really cool mechanics in the game. Sure some people will try to min max it and do the calculations, but those people should be rewarded for putting in the hard work. But most people won't go that far. Though knowing what it does will make players feel better about it.

I get that there's nostalgia with the things like "wagging war" or "caragous" and that Gen. probably didn't go in depth with all of the mechanics because it was too much work at the time with too many other things to do. It's like you said, Pony Riders were probably just a place holder since every race had to have a riding unit for fairness. That's why I personally feel like it's not a priority for you guy to fix, but I'm just hoping that it's on the list.

You've put some wonderful changes into the game so far, this wouldn't even be a change, just a way to make it better and more helpful for players, old and new

Your guys' work is appreciated, thank you

Xliest

Lord Thane lol thank you Thane, I think the games needs more of this. I think that the fact that it says there are bonuses should be enough for people to understand and maybe work out what they are by talking to people of different races and experimenting with different races each round…

skigglez

Nolio
Ya having all of the relevant info in the game guide would be a big improvement. Markets say increase gold production - but by how much? Some buildings have the numbers in the description, others don't. Some techs provide the numbers, some don't. Tactical knowledge - what does it do? What does greatly increased chances of victory mean? It's a huge investment that people are essentially going in blind with. Not a criticism at all, just think that if the devs know what all of these numbers are, it would be a relatively quick fix maybe? If not it's all good, just always been something that i've wondered throughout the years.

Lord Thane

Nolio yep, it's just because that's the way it's been for 30 years lol

We've had this discussion a few times since the test rounds, I think there's enough support we may run another poll to see if it's something everyone wants. I'll put it in my notes to circle back to when there's time.