A gnome doing 100k long-range damage against a human who can’t even hit 100k total damage across all phases—even when both are around the same size—feels way off to me.
Even a fully teched 1:1 GHS human with a normal build (say, 60–70% ATC) wouldn’t stand a chance in the current balance. I understand that Kingdom Strength (KS) is influenced by a bunch of factors, and early-round techs can inflate it, but at this point in the round, KS seems almost meaningless compared to real attack power.
When I evaluate an opponent, I usually focus on land size and presumed build, then glance at KS just to see how inflated it might be. But it’s all just educated guessing. Maybe ATCs should contribute more to KS, so a kingdom’s true strength is more visible? Not sure what the right balance fix is.
I don’t know if this is just a Human problem or a broader issue, but our units feel like paper compared to what other races can achieve, especially in the long range. The amount of ATCs gnomes can efficiently run now is way higher than in OG—and really, that’s true across the board. Human ATCs get decent stat points, but every other race’s ATC units either hide, have insanely high defense, or dominate at long range.
Humans clearly aren’t the baseline for balance anymore. As it stands, dwarves are the only hard counter to gnome long range. Elf vs. gnome might get bloody, but I still see the gnome wiping the elf army and training back more effective units. Undead can hurt a gnome if they go 3:1 GHS full skelly, but they still lose 80% of those skeletons. Humans and orcs? No chance. Humans can’t survive long range with enough melee to threaten ATCs, and orcs are paper in every phase besides SW.
Economy-wise, gold is abundant. Resources are readily available via the market, and the gold influx makes them even more so. Back in the day, 25:1 iron trades were standard—15:1 or even 10:1 for wood—because we were gold-starved. Now it’s just a loop of attacking for protection, hoping for retail, and rebuilding the army over and over. The biggest limiting factor? Training speed. Even when I was on top, it felt like I was just fighting to maintain protection. If you didn’t send first, someone was trying to army-kill you.
On war mechanics, there was a lot more bloodshed before the CLI system. Pre/re used to mean another kingdom had its army out—easier to hit. It was brutal. I still believe we could’ve taken a different direction to address pre/re instead of going the CLI route.
I wish I’d been more active on the forums when the core of that debate was happening. Since then, I’ve seen suggestions for direct war systems like Utopia or Orkfia have—formal NAP requests flagged in-game, the ability to declare prov-vs.-prov or multi-prov-vs.-multi-prov wars, and clearer war statuses. That would help deter players from spreading across multiple provinces just to abuse racial synergy while acting as one unified team.
Let me know what you all think. Curious if anyone else feels the same, or has found reliable ways for humans to stay competitive against long-range heavy races.
(This forum post was edited by ChatGPT to remove all my smirky remarks and random trolling.
As well as cleaning up the ramblings of a stoned man on his day off)
