IF they were going to do a MOM update, should the races be balanced or no?

Yah, Orcs are boring.

Barbarian Berserkers are awesome. The "Thrown weapon" attack increases with unit attack and to-hit enhancements, making those enhancements particularly deadly. Being a "hunger faction" Barbs are a poor starting choice, but nothing makes me happier as a Halfling commander than having Barbarians for neighbors.

Nomads have the best flying units, as well as pikemen and fast range units. High men also have pikemen, and Draconians and Beastmen have fast ranged units, but only Nomads have both. Nomads are also able to move armies quickly across the map with the unique "Ranger" unit, the only stock unit in the game with path-finding. Not even Beastmen get path-finding (although they probably should.)

I would've liked to see Nomad Horsebowmen moved up the tech tree and given stronger stats befitting their stature in human history, but that's a minor complaint.

You're right about Gnolls, though, they're pretty lousy. Theoretically they're all about speed, but wolf riders are pathetic on the battlefield.

Of the "hunger" factions Dwarves are probably the best. If you're playing a faction that can't grow much food you have to build really good units to compenstate for small numbers, and Hammerhands are like a tank platoon.

Just remembering all those cool units I agree with you that being Blizzard-neurotic about "balance" can leach some of the fun out of it.

The real question is whether Halflings were overpowered and whether that situation contributed to the gameplay experience or detracted from it. If Halflings were "nerfed" would they be less fun to play and/or less distinctive as a faction?

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Races should not be balanced as this will take the fun out of using their different abilities.

Nomads and dwarves were my favourites.

I would also disagree with balancing races. I would like to see much more individualisation of the cities and towns though. More race specific buildings would be very nice. Race specific spells would also be nice.

Paul.

~SDC~

I could see it reasonable to maybe take the slingers down a notch, but no more than that. That or introduce a range statistic for all ranged attackers and give slingers a much lower range than say, Elvish longbowmen. They'd still be super cool but would have to close on enemies a bit in order to attack.

Not true. It is stull possible to make races balanced well enough and still allow having fun through different abilities.

Warlords Battlecry III is a fairly good example - each race has their own perks and flaws (e.g. High Elves have a dedicated unit designed to be anti-Dragon but can't collect resources faster from mines), in addiiton to having powerful special abilities that are specific to one race. Even after all the game balance issues being fixed in the upcoming patch, there won't be any fun lost as the strengths will still remain.

Well, the potential balancing I'm worried about is on the level of minimizing those strengths and weaknesses to the point where the different races cease to be interesting. For me, it shouldn't be about giving every race an equal likelihood to kick butt and dominate the world quickly so much as conforming to different styles of play. As is, in a multiplayer game, certain races would clearly dominate player choices (my bet's on the halflings or lizard men. I'm saying that's okay, because it's still worthwhile to capture races that don't get powerful units as quickly as strong early raiders. While people might typically only choose from a short list of races to start as, it would be totally be worth their while to capture other ones just to get the right mix of specialty units in their armies or to take advantage of the economic/mana benefits of more advanced city builders. Now, in a single player game, any race to start as could be interesting as choosing a slow growth race mereley presents an interesting challenge. I just wouldn't want to see the races get genericized with only minor strengths and weaknesses for the sake of multiplay. In short, make every race useful, but not necessarily a great starting choice.

imo every race had something going for them (well maybe except klackons and trolls).

halfling slingers rocked indeed, but so did human Paladins, Elvish Lords and Longbow archers or Dark Elf Warlocks or Draconian Doom Drakes etc.

+ the most powerfull units were the heroes or summoned monsters (red/blue dragon, demon lord, Archangel etc).

fighting different races and Wizards with different spellbooks was the thing that made stuff interesting.

You don't like Klackon armor or stag beetles? And I love finding troll towns. They make a great disposable skirmish line since they just come back to life if you win the battle.

Lousy startup race, but that was the point I was trying to make in the first place. It's okay that some races are lousy starters. That doesn't mean people won't be throwing everything they have at a fully developed Dark Elf city just so they can get some Warlocks. Keeps things interesting. As it is now, I suspect everybody would start playing only like 3-4 races to start with in multiplayer games, so it might be cool to bring the Gnolls up to spec and maybe introduce a new race that's a decent raider.

But then, what's left to add? Yet another race of elves? The anthropomorphic [insert animal, plant, fungus, Greek element here] people? Gnomes? Kobolds? Goblins? The Middle Men?

Why should all the races be balanced?

When you have a heap of different races it makes sense there will always be stronger ones and weaker ones.

The fact that some races are weaker makes it more fun when you use them to conquer the more powerful races.

Historically, in games, I always play dwarves as I like the idea of their culture. It doesn't matter if they are the most powerful or the weakest it is what I like to play.

I come down heavily on the "unbalanced is good" side. Each race has its strengths (pretty minor in some cases) and drawbacks (pretty major in some cases :)). Taking a weaker race is a good way to give yourself a handicap if the game (or the MP opponent) becomes too easy.

You're right about Gnolls, though, they're pretty lousy. Theoretically they're all about speed, but wolf riders are pathetic on the battlefield.


Why are they bad? They have huge numbers and 3 movement points. I have yet to put them onto the battlefield but they seem good to me.

Uh... okay, I'll answer that question in this thread too.

Only 4 figures per unit though. Gnoll units look good on paper but that halfling luck bonus and extra health for lizardmen womp 'em pretty good. I'd put good money on Clackon regular units vs. gnoll regulars too.

Yeah, you shouldn´t worry too much about multiplayer race balance.
But I found that most races were pretty good anyway. barbarians, nomads and dwarves were my favourite, only orcs and beastmen seemed to be pretty boring.

With gnolls you had to go with swordsmen or spearmen, where their +attack bonus would be most useful. Rushing with lowcost units doesn´t work on impossible though, that´s why they seemed so weak.

As long as every race has something special going for them, i´m happy. Most often you would have a mix of races anyway, depending on which neutral cities you found.
I am much more worried about magic school balance, in MOM life magic was soo horribly overpowered, it made impossible a cakewalk(just cause, heroism in the beginning; later invulnerability,incarnation and all the awesome global enchantments), whereas you had to play really good with nature/death magic.

I say keep them unbalanced. It was part of the game's appeal.

I would rather sacrifice multiplayer than have balanced races/spells/heros/etc.

Make all races attractive if not balanced. Gnolls weren't very attractive for lack of interesting units in the late game. Wolf riders are fun to start with, but lack power long term. In comparison, slingers become stronger as you can field more of them and as you learn enchantments to make them even tougher. Beastmen would really require some beefing up. Manticores were crap, centaurs were crap, minotaurs weren't up to par with paladins or hammerhands.
In MP there is one thing which could prevent early rushes: If you play on Myrror, it will require much more time to reach you from Arcanus. And one guardian wind on a strong unit can get rid of slingers easily enough.

~SDC~

I've had good success with all the races. Back when my time was more plentiful, I beat imposible 3 times with each race, trying out different spell book combo's. The ones people smack on so bad (like gnolls and klackon) I actually liked.

For every strat, there is a counter. Nothing can beat *every* unit in the game, and I think thats perfectly well balanced as it stands. Halfing slingers are a good example. Put guardian winds on a high defence stag beatle, and you will have dead slinger, to the tune of about 2/1.

Even did some multiplayer with the shell that was written quite a while back. It was a bit buggy but let you actually play with a friend.

I really think there is no real need for restructuring. Halfing slingers were good, but then take a look at the rest of their units..... nothing else really there. Have fun assulting myran nature nodes with slingers.

I wouldn't be opposed to racial spells though. I think thats a cool idea.

The point is different races required different strategies. Gnolls were good for initial conquest, and then you could use summoning spells for instance or heroes to mop up the map. Slingers tend to require some enchantments to boost them a bit (make them invisible for example). Paladins need flying, etc.
Did you manage to do something interesting with orcs and beastmen? I like beastmen but their units are mostly crap until you get magicians and minotairs (at least for myrran units).

Old-timers may remember how Kobolds existed in the red-box edition of D&D. They were extremely weak and were basically fodder to the sleep spell - in fact, kobolds were so weak that they were put to sleep twice as easily as their goblin cousins.

The story behind Kobolds was that these humanoids survived because they bred like rabbits. However, this caused problems when looked at more closely, as it wasn't understood how exactly they could survive for long when a simple human magic user could wipe out large armies of them using only level 1 spells. This was partially fixed in 2rd-edition, where kobolds were stated to target spellcasters and use overwhelming odds, and a bit more in 3rd-edition where the sleep spell now requires a saving throw.

Nine times our of Ten, the game imbalances result in similar circumstances - a racial weakness or strength is too significant. As a more practical example, The Psilons from MoO2 were the most powerful race because of their massive research benefits (they get the entire tech tree because of their "creative" attribute.) However, the story behind MoO3 said that they were too weak to defeat the Antarians, inspite of the fact that their tech overcame the racial weaknesses ten times over. While it can be fun for some players, the gameplay mechanics messed havoc with the intended plotline, and therefore felt unrealistic.

I have also seen cases of game balances in RTS games - in many cases, there is always a game balance issue that messes things up, with the most common one being one type of unit dominating. Not only that, but the same unit dominates right over the "anti-dominator" and thus results in a one unit-type battle (which is generally unrealistic, as there is no point in including any other unit within the game.)

I disagree with your MOO 2 assessment. As far as the AI was concerned, Klackons, Silicoids, and Sakkra were always much more of a threat and once I got over the creative thing, I found that custom races with lithovore and high pop growth were much more effective. It wasn't that hard to fill out most of the empty slots in your tech tree with diplomacy, espionage, and captured ship scrapping. Not to mention going for ultimate ground combat race for that early Antaran capture (a gamble but always fun when it pans out). Not much the Psilons can do against a race that just got Xentronium armor when they're just completing their first third tier research project.
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