The looping feature is a really cool idea! The return on the defensive unit is completely unnecessary unless you are playing for experience. 8 hour return is super powerful in Elveron, I dont like it with such huge turtle, makes them way too powerful. Then again that -20% population makes them unplayable. Still way too much going on... And it seems like there are a lot of repeating features from other races, but I think thats only me =P

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The Age of Despair :: Round 2 :: 1 El Norte
The Age of Wisdom :: Round 4 :: 1 SmoochyWoochyPoochy
The Age of Wisdom :: Round 6 :: 1 Goblin Rings
The Age of Achievements :: Round 1 :: 1 Hufflepuff's Cup

I put in the resource return on the DP elite to kind of off-set for the extremely punishing OP elite demotion when you get hit. It also fits the racial theme--the race can't generate enough troops for all its needs because it dwells in the inhospitable steppes

I see your point about 8-hour return being too powerful; I think only Dark Dwarves have even a 9-hour return? Should I change the spell to give you 1 hour troop return reduction then? If so, I might change land gain reduction to 5 percent.

I am inclined to changing the population bonus to -15 percent. I think you played Frostzorbs before, right? What did you think of their -20 percent population malus? I think this race has just as much bonuses that offset it as do the Frostzorbs.

Edit: Changed the population malus to -15 percent; changed the racial spell to 1 hour troop return reduction and 5 percent land gain reduction.

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Our pack's Royal Family Message every round now:

"Please don't hit active guys with huge OP--even if they leave land DP!!!"

I like the "promote" concept of Keshik. ha

Taoist Master costs 5 rune is too heavy for me. I suggest maximum 3 runes or 10000g + 2 runes.

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080 says:
he is getting out of class to go to the "washroom" lol
Immor says:
ah, ok, "stomachache"
080 says:
aha ya
Immor says:
tell Lordrahl be careful and dont drop his iphone into the toilet bowl
080 says:
lolz

Agreed on the Taoist Master pricing.

Fixing.

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Our pack's Royal Family Message every round now:

"Please don't hit active guys with huge OP--even if they leave land DP!!!"

Jesus, now I understand why people had a hard time understanding the conversion process. My wording did not do what I wanted it to do. So I fixed it:

-6% of surviving Keshiks on successful "normal" attacks are automatically re-trained and "promoted" to Cataphract.
-3% of surviving Cataphracts on successful "normal" attacks against you are automatically re-trained and "demoted" to Keshik. (Note that this demotion also applies only to those Cataphracts who were home defending.)

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Our pack's Royal Family Message every round now:

"Please don't hit active guys with huge OP--even if they leave land DP!!!"

ZZZ ceek, theory craft and no numbers:

Let's assume 1500 land. You want some 45/45k stats. Assume you're fortunate enough to offset all you population penalty. That's a total of 30k units. (homes are the wrong choice).

Assuming no specs, 6k units are used for defense. And I don't know you have 30k OP from regular units which is maybe about 4.5k units. That's a total of 20k population left for workers and you definitely need 10k peasant since you lose population on R/R.

So you suggest to spend massive income building GQ, razing it, rezoning, building FT just so you can be in your comfort zone for what is 2/9 of your OFFENSIVE military value.

And this is when DP/OP requirements are 30/acre. It's even more obsolete in later parts of the game.

A few numbers (yours are really slowly played): 2.5k specs is good for running up to 1.5k land due to the cheap price of them (you have worker sends even post-oop to help with that). So you'd be on 5.7k total units after you started sitting and pushing dp, for 30k all-in. So make it some 6.5k units for extra all-in safety and some sendable. 30k-6.5k-7.5k=16k pop space for workers/mages/spies. 1k goes to mages/spies, the rest (15k) is workers. That'd be 25k/28k military when sending all workers.

Where do you get 45k/45k stats unless you plan to hit 1.5k acres 7 days into the round?

For most races it is worth of the gq push in any case at that size, and now the workers are even cheaper, at 85gpp with 7.5% effective cas, 6h returns, assuming you're willing to r/r those gqs to fts instead of dms, like one would usually would do. Even without fts the workers become really, really strong with gqs.

FT trolls and FT gryphs (at 1 worker op) were viable always (heck even, worker tapping zon without gqs was viable and abused to great extent), these guys just have way stronger workers than they've ever had, so... Disable gqs, they have cheap enough mages/spies/workers as is. You do realize that 20% gqs would also drop the taoist master down to 1r and 500g, which is just icing on the cake (and saves even more population space for workers if you save all your runes up the point where you do the gqs).

And I'm not saying you'd win a round because of the workers, but it is still an overpowered unit given the right circumstances, and even if you don't send the workers after the gq push, you still have the 15k op at 75gpp lying around, and you will eventually send them. It is by far the cheapest unit in the game, considering that it also produces 3.5gph.

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www.ceekayed.com

Ceekayed, what if we make the worker OP 0.5--like Gryphon and Amazon workers--instead of 1.0 and then reduce their price slightly. Would that work? I think not having the benefit of a GQ push would be too much--esp. because Gryphons didn't have that benefit and is in my opinion a lot stronger race.

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Our pack's Royal Family Message every round now:

"Please don't hit active guys with huge OP--even if they leave land DP!!!"

4 point attackers are even more expensive than frost zorb's 4 point attacker and defender. I would like to see you rush to 1.5k land and destroy everyone with your measly 30k op.

How do you expect to be the first on 1.5k land
-20% population
-enough diamond mines for +10/+10% in imps
-Units less efficient than zorb specs
-20% GQ space wasting

Then again even in your scenario (impossible), you are going 20% GQ so that you can have 1/2 your offensive troops in your comfort zone.

Safe DP
1k land = 20k DP
1.5k land is at least 40k unless you're the first one there.

.5 would make it a situational unit, like (I assume) it should be, and not just a source of cheap op for post-oop grabs. No one has ever liked races that can use workers for every send early on due to it being so cheap in terms of long-term benefit from the extra land gained. If you insist on having those low casualties, at least make the unit cost 100-120 gold per point with full gqs.

Wilan: If troll can rush to 1.5k acres among the first kingdoms who are up there by using the said worker op on post-oop sends, these guys can aswell. We have seen enough of people growing to the top with very little op, with races that shouldn't be able to pull it off. And whatever land size over 1k you end up with post-oop, the gqs are worth of pushing from the incoming land due to the -50% r/r costs, and the fact that it's just too damn cheap to use the workers as flexible source of extra op for extra growth, which in long term gives you a big advantage over people who didn't use them. The other worker op races have the 650% casualties for a reason.

I shouldn't even bother with you though, since you have never understood how or why people can sacrifice a few gold per acre for extra acres.

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www.ceekayed.com

It's good that you brought up the Frostzorb comparison, because that race seems to be the best analogue in terms of comparing the power of this race.

As a general matter, what makes Frostzorbs an above-average power race by consensus, and my race under-powered in your opinion? To me it seems the cost and efficiency of the main military units seem comparable if I keep the -20% population malus (I've temporarily changed it to -15% for now). Of course, I don't know Frostzorbs well, esp. because they were gone as soon as I began playing competitively.

Also, your reply to Ceekayed regarding the spec unit's under-poweredness misses a few things: Namely, the spec unit has a huge turtle at 4/3 and currently 6 percent of all "survivors" in a successful attack (so 6 percent of 92.5 percent of specs sent?) will receive a "promotion"--meaning that their OP doubles.

So I tend to think the middle opinion in your debate with Ceekayed about whether the race is under-powered (you) and over-powered (Ceekayed).

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Our pack's Royal Family Message every round now:

"Please don't hit active guys with huge OP--even if they leave land DP!!!"

Ceekayed, Gryphons had 350 percent casualty rate and Amazons had 300 percent at 0.5 OP per worker; so I think 250 is reasonable if we assume Ungols are superior fighters according to my RPG narrative

But I will change the OP number to 0.5 and reduce price accordingly (they have to be a lot cheaper than Gryphon or Amazon unit now--because Gryphons have an insane economy and Amazons have spy power on their workers).

_________________
Our pack's Royal Family Message every round now:

"Please don't hit active guys with huge OP--even if they leave land DP!!!"

I'm not saying the race in itself is over-powered, and I think the spec is very interesting and usable (as in strong), I'm just saying that currently worker sends are an automatic choice, not a debate, and that, imo is a bad thing, especially since it also enables a potentially very abusable strategy coupled with the spell and fts.

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www.ceekayed.com

Yeah, I see your point. 1 OP is probably too much on the worker. So I will change.

And thank you again for patient feed-backs. It's amazing how much one newb trying to design a balanced race can miss!

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Our pack's Royal Family Message every round now:

"Please don't hit active guys with huge OP--even if they leave land DP!!!"

LOL you shouldn't bother with me... It should be me not bothering with you.

This race is more like zorb instead of trolls. Show me a round where zorbs were the first to 1.5k land.

We can ask kalle, he'll say I'm right. End of discussion. kthxbye

More seriously: The 5% promotion/demotion hack is best described as specs with lower casualties and elites with higher casualties:

For example if you attack 7 times without training new units, you get

Jumpy Specs: 3.58 op per hit
Regular Spec: 3.2 op per hit

Jumpy Elite: 6.16 op per hit
Regular Elite: 6.4 op per hit

Of course the comparison varies as you change the number of attacks but not by much.