Orcish Empire

[Boron]

yeah they too need strong national troops like with cohens crusaders mod
in early game they are very great but when magic comes to play they will loose the egde.
i didn't play to far with them until now but i think the orcrace which gets the unique shaman from beginning could quite quick research conj6 for spectres to speed up research .

[PvK]

Heh... ya everyone needs "strong" national troops like Cohen's Crusaders!

I tried them out a bit and I guess I mainly think some Ratings are higher than make sense, rather than higher than are balanced for the entire nation in a high magic game.

Some things are severely off the usual scale for gold and resource costs compared to what you get. That can be all right if that's what you want, but if you want things to have appropriate numbers compared to similar things in the existing units, then I think there are several things I would change, like the "daggers" that are +1 to everything including length, and the 22-hitpoint orcs (unless these orcs are _supposed_ to be like half-ogres, or to be like Claymen).

The gold and resource costs are much lower than unmodded units with similar or lesser skills or equipment. However that could be the special ability of the orcs, which is fine.

The double hitpoints and built-in (magic ?) superior weapons seem more like mistakes, though.

I'd rather go even further and halve the cost of common orcs from 8-10 to 4-5 gold, but give them half as many hit points, change their daggers to normal daggers, perhaps change them from defense 10 to 9 (since they have attack 11 and are not elite troops). That would actually make them more powerful, in some ways (two for the price of one), but would make more sense to me than the super hit points and superior weapons, etc.

If these are based on Warcraft though, and in Warcraft the Orcs are like half-ogres, then maybe it's partly that I don't recognize what's trying to be represented.

PvK

[Boron]

Originally posted by PvK:
Heh... ya everyone needs "strong" national troops like Cohen's Crusaders!


PvK

the problem with cohens crusaders is that they are even stronger than the orcs. but in cohens mod you have almost no magic at all . 1 fire or 1 earth on the "mages" . and they have only 3 rp . for small maps they are really unbalanced . at faerun your opponents have most likely already researched quite far in magic. but since sages are so common you can still research quite quick .
what really imbalances cohens mod is the far to strong phoenix knight pretender . you can get powerful bless effects with him and an immortal sc without equipment . because 2 of the commanders produce 20 supplies furthermore you really can do very well for almost the entire game without much magic .

though i admire cohens effort and ideas and his drawings of the troops are very nice too i think it is really imbalanced for small maps because 1-2 of his neighbors can do whatever they want but almost 100% sure will be overrun .
at faerun it is perhaps more interesting since you have very low gem income and only your pretender can search either directly or with some spells . and as long as you don't find sages your research speed sucks bigtime too.


the orkmod is nice too .
but what i think is really imbalanced is primarely kronotauron the shaman hero for the renegade tribes . he has as good magic paths than a archdemon . no other unique summon has as high / many paths than he expect the 3 archdemons . + 4 death / 4 nature income is too much too .
with recuperation + 76 hp he is like a second pretender from start onwards .
+ for forging / summoning you already have covered death nature and air so you can design your pretender taking this into account and give him e.g. blood and earth or something similiar that you cover 60+% of the magic paths .
since the basic orks only need 1-3 resources and the most expensive unit only 17 resources you can take sloth 3 for additional points .

the mod is really very stylish and has much rpgflavour but is only good for either 1on1 with the 2 orcraces or as an aienchanting mod together with cohens if you don't take one of the 3 races yourself .

the oger's from orcish empire are like a trampling troll from turn 1 on with the same upkeepcosts . but i find the renegade tribes all in all even stronger because of their supermage .

the only real balanced mod so far which could be a official 18th race is really your amazon empire mod pvk but it was quite easier for you since 90% of the units / leaders you did just take from the game or ? you didn't alter any stats on the 4 tribes units / leaders ?
you "only" added the amazon scout / leader + the wayfarer and amazon + the 2 pd units or ? and of course the national heros .
but balance was much easier for you then if you made something completely new like cohen and weissi did

i think psycholochy plays an important part there too .
you want to make a really cool new nation and then you easily oversee that it is too powerful.
nothing is more frustrating than to hear your nation sucks because it is so weak. the other side of this is that you almost can't avoid overpowering it .

[Cheezeninja]

To the mod creator: I am currently well into production of my own orc mod, and right now the only real holdup is creation of orc sprites (im modifying existing ones to look 'orky') I was wondering if you would mind if i used your fantastic sprites in my mod . Being an extremely un-artistic person they are far better than anything i could come up with, and my mod is going to have a very different feel from yours. More along the lines of LoTR and D&D orcish hordes.

[ July 17, 2004, 00:36: Message edited by: Cheezeninja ]

[PvK]

Crusader Mod's troops are so much more powerful and cheap than anything anyone else has, that they can easily either wipe out everyone before magic is strong (on a small map) or find other mages (on a large map - not just sages but many other types), though they aren't likely to really need much magic, since their units are better than most summons anyway, and much cheaper.

This orc mod isn't necessarily that imbalanced, but some of the values just seem a bit incorrect compared to what I think they are trying to represent. I'm not sure they are (or aren't) necessarily imbalanced as a whole. I just think some of the values don't seem to make sense, such as catapults firing faster than arbalests (let alone as fast as shortbows), or daggers being like shortswords (could just change their name to "Blade" or something), or them having heaps of hitpoints.

Oh, and the Shamen I think may accidentally have the #mounted property, because their defense scores seem to be higher than their base + equipment would indicate.

Originally posted by Boron:
...
the only real balanced mod so far which could be a official 18th race is really your amazon empire mod pvk but it was quite easier for you since 90% of the units / leaders you did just take from the game or ? you didn't alter any stats on the 4 tribes units / leaders ?
you "only" added the amazon scout / leader + the wayfarer and amazon + the 2 pd units or ? and of course the national heros .

Yes, Amazon mod does not change any of the existing units' statistics. I only made 7 or 8 sets of graphics, which is the most time-consuming and tiresome part for me. I added 9 units including heroes, and used 16 units, so if it makes any difference (I don't think it does ), 64% are directly from the game.

but balance was much easier for you then if you made something completely new like cohen and weissi did
...

Actually, it's pretty easy for me to invent new unit types which are balanced, or to think of what appropriate values for new units and weapons would be compared to existing ones. That's why I've given feedback on these mods, because it seemed like maybe the authors would be interested in what seemed to me like more appropriate numbers, mainly so they make sense for what they say they are, compared to existing units.

PvK

[Boron]

Originally posted by PvK:
Actually, it's pretty easy for me to invent new unit types which are balanced, or to think of what appropriate values for new units and weapons would be compared to existing ones. That's why I've given feedback on these mods, because it seemed like maybe the authors would be interested in what seemed to me like more appropriate numbers, mainly so they make sense for what they say they are, compared to existing units.

PvK

you are a shining exeption there if i myself make mods or scenarios for any games at the beginning i am moderate but in the end it will always get imbalanced . in heroes of might and magic 3 when i made a scenario in the end most guards were packs of dragons or even azuredragons and so on .
when i wanted to spice up some fewused units in age of wonders 2 shadow magic at the end the syron lvl 4 ship and the human air ship were the most powerful lvl 4 units and the halflings centaur the most powerful lvl 3 unit . it started moderately but in the end ....

[ July 17, 2004, 01:58: Message edited by: Boron ]

[PvK]

Heh. Well I have over twenty years of gaming under my belt, and close to a year playing this game series, so that probably helps.

PvK