Development details!

[Firetooth]

I think the problem with making Wildcat "mainstream" is it's complicated to play well, even for an experienced player. It's also not really viable solo compared to the other races, but as you've said it can easily be overpowered. Considering how much fuss it takes to run as one, and the limited output due to having to make loyalty, I don't know if I speak for everybody else, but I can't be bothered whislt there are still stronger and simpler races for indying.

I am wondering, though, how do cities factor in? Other then being a way to prevent kills, I think they increase how much food and cash you consume iirc. Do they increase how many workers you produce? Would it be possible to factor cities heavily into a wildcat strat? Use them as a way to increase production, then lock the land with the troops you produce via pressgang maybe. I still have no idea how much cities affect costs.

I'm tempted to try a solo Wildcat and see how far I can get trading troops for resources and using the market to gain cash.

[Shadow]

cities count as 1500 tents, and 500 camps, but only take 1000 land. So for every city you have instead of 1000 tents, you get 50% more workers from that land than you would otherwise, while at the same time making your mercs buy cheaper and sell for more. I believe camps also slightly reduce upkeep costs on armies, but I am not sure offhand.

Ideally, a wildcat would be entirely cities, with someone else feeding them loyalty. If that were happening, not only would the wildcat blow rat completely out of the water in terms of troop output, it would also have effective landlock unless someone managed to take the cities, which can easily be blocked with weasels.

Course, takedowns are easy since they would have low leaders, but it would take some work.

[Shadow]

Some early tweaks: wolf has has its defensive stats lowered slightly in both leaders and troops, and its food consumption has been lowered to balance out the change.

Lizard has had its income bonus moved to foraging, to make it a little more indy-friendly.

[Twilight Shadow]

The mercanaries red and greens are off some positives are green and red so that is incorrect. Please fix thanks!

Also from my belief did you make stoats a half and half or just overpowered?

[Sevah]

Different coders look at the race guide differently. They made a quick fix by color coding good or bad for the race your using.
For an indy it's good to have real expensive sale prices so the coders made it green with plus+.
For a leaderer who buys cheap troops they have it green and with a minus-(discount).

Jus wait and watch, eventually it'll get changed to the way it should be.

[Twilight Shadow]

Just saying they should coordinate it like every other one so noobs dont get confused. I understand it but I am sure newer people will struggle to

[The Lady Shael]

If we changed it, it wouldn't make any sense. Green means good, red means bad. + means more, - means less. So there's no other way we can display the chart.

[Genevieve]

The colours do make sense, but why do you have them on there at all? If the point of balancing the races was to allow any strat to be played with any race, then I don't really see why you should have to point out which stats are good or bad for each one.

[Shadow]

Haha, all white on the race chart makes your eyes cross when you read it.

Maybe we should add a little blurb about the color code on that page.

If someone is using a leader strategy on a rat, for example, it is obvious that they don't really understand the race bonuses anyway - which is fine. The changes made it so that it won't be that bad if this is the case, basically making it more newbie friendly. When they do understand the system enough for the numbers to be meaningful, the colours will make it easier to read, but they are there really only for that purpose.

After balancing, I intend to write up a (very basic) strategy guide for each race and have the race names link to it in the guide, as well as put in a blurb about what each stat means in newbie readable form. So when we are all done this round of development, it will be quite a bit better. For now, that will have to wait on other development.

[Firetooth]

Thanks for the clarification, Shadow.

I'm confused about painted ones, though. They seem to have a bonus spell that suits a leader race, but none of their stats support this. Obviously, their main advantage is being cheap to maintain from what I can see, but a few points in leadership definetly wouldn't hurt imo.

[Shadow]

Well, I chose a race spell for them based on newbies always running out of food and cash :) I don't want to make Painted One a leader race though, I just wanted to to have a spell that will help newbies get out of the hole if they get stuck, and introduce them to making cash and food in genera's hut.

[Firetooth]

Makes sense, I suppose. I still can only really see Painted one as a starter race atm though.

[The Lady Shael]

Makes sense, I suppose. I still can only really see Painted one as a starter race atm though.

I think that's pretty much the idea. =) Newbies are the only ones who would choose a race called "Painted One", anyway.

[Firetooth]

Makes sense, I suppose. I still can only really see Painted one as a starter race atm though.

I think that's pretty much the idea. =) Newbies are the only ones who would choose a race called "Painted One", anyway.

Lol I suppose that is true. At least it serves a purpose now.

[Shadow]

Yeah, Painted One was designed with learning in mind, it was not a race intended for mainstream use. New players scout a lot, and tend to overspend, so we gave it good scouting bonuses, reduced costs across the board and gave it a way to make cash and food at the same time.

Eventually, I'll write a little newbie tutorial centred on Painted One to go with it.

Speaking of which, anyone who wants to write a paragraph or two outlining the basics of the strategy each race is designed for, it would be appreciated. It will go into the game guide (though I reserve the right to edit it first), hopefully linked on the race chart, along with credits to the author.