i didnt mind the magic shizzle dude

it was the work required into getting them playable seems rather a bit and they still seem to need work

its looks v messy

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What has nobody else done? Lets do that but different :)

trying to give help / outside box ideas.

I think the main concepts are
Gremlins cannot cast spells (other than rezone ones) nor be the target of spells.
and gold stealing


IF you have decided that no stealth,ms,fert,HC and slow is too much of a disadvantage over not being able to be farsighted then fair enough
(and i agree)

that isnt the way i would go about it tho

Yes to try and keep originality make their spies strong and magepower weak
your building concept was brilliant

but i was thinking more like;


-------------------------------------
"Bonuses":

-15% gold production
+5% population
Stealth costs 0 md
- 50% md production
starts with 1 spire

Spire Tundra Successful offensive spyops and magical spells against kingdom have a chance of getting reflected back 1 - 0.75^Spire% (90% max) of the times. Increases spy and magic power by 2.5 * Spire% (no max)
Counts as 10 mage power

maybe drop scout spy power a little

they have the spy power to steal some magic dust - not all and could not really stockpile but could buy it.


it seems much simple - would automatically make the playstyle strong on spy and weak on mage but give them enough to re-zone and cast some ms/fert when needed but not both 24/7 very easily
players would have choice of cast FS themselves or get ally to do it and cast MS.
I think the race would be teamworked nicely as they could get spy ops and realmie could get FS

you have not mentioned the gold stealing on the last post (that i read) has the concept been abandoned?


anyway - my sleepy thoughts outloud again but seems alot easier to get what i think the desired effect is

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What has nobody else done? Lets do that but different :)

I didn't either, until Nost Gam pointed out that this would make MD farms necessary. For the honest gremlin, they would be forced to run very high SPA. Very high SPA on a race nearly immune to mage ops is a bad idea.

Quick Thoughts on spells
MS: Abusable, see above
Fert: Nearly necessary in certain parts of the game. I would rather them have a racial buff and no fert.
Steath: Depending on cost, it will alternate between necessary to cast and pointless. This cost/benefit analysis adds little to the game.
HC: Only useful in very limited circumstances. It might be acceptable to add.
Slow: Necessary race spell if the race is to have a normal OOP.

Rezone spells: Needed unless being creative in available buildings.

LFS/FS: Necessary for calculating potential push sizes (If all resources had a decay rate, stockpiles could be reverse engineered based on an econ spy). 1 FS can save a lot of SS%, Allowing FS will reduce need from Realmates/Farsight farms.
Revelation: Not needed, but if giving Gremlins LFS/FS ability , I might as well add revelation too.
Power FS: Not needed

Offensive spells: Not needed

Overall, part of the concept was for gremlins to be immune to spells and be unable to cast spells. I chose the minimal amount of spells that I thought was necessary. This also will allow me to boost the Observatory without worring too much about balance (I will nerf the difficulty of intel spells).

It's annoying to play a race that one must cast a spell every X hrs. It's damn pointless if the spell is free. It would be better if we just gave them the racial bonus of + 3% SS per hr (Note: We actually gave them a racial bonus of +5% SS per hr)

It would be better to make towers produce 25md per hr. (This will make +MD% bonuses less powerful). Not a completely bad idea, but I prefer gremlins not being magical.

I'm assuming this is so they start with 10 mages. I don't think this is necessary (other races start with 0 troops, it would be acceptable for Gremlins to start with 0 mages. My observatory is actually a tower, so under my concept, gremlins would start with 200 mages (near immunity). For the active player, this is actually a nerf (could have 10 more GMs for 36 hrs of protection))

NO! I do not want to force the use of spires (in fact, I think spires should be nerfed with respect to offensive spy reflection)

Maybe. I haven't seen a convincing argument on why they should have a lower spy power.

I think it's too easily abusable. It will make balancing Gremlins impossible, because the strength of Gremlins would depend on the availability of players stockpiling large amounts of gold with few spies/spires. The smart players would forgo very high spa and use spires. I do not want to force the use of spires (would kill slave races).

that was because of spy power bonus from Spires -

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What has nobody else done? Lets do that but different :)

i dont like the way you are giving them so much mage power then trying to limit their spells and dust

to me a 1k land kingdom with 5% Towers

is getting 1000 mage power that they dont have to spend any considerable gold on - they are out maging XP'ers basically for free and they are supposed to be NOT magical.

why make their mages so powerful and not crap?


i think they should have crap mages and good mage defence which is close to original concept of the race.

easy ways for crap mages is
crappy mage unit
-##% magic power
drop their dust per hour

if the race was designed spy heavy so they can steal gold and that is not in the race anymore then i dont see any reason why they have to be so spy heavy now.

as for mage defence - we have a building that does that
or something like bonus of;
+30%-50% chance to reflect spell ops
or something similar would suffice


the race would run crap loads of imps and tinkerers now so scouts dont need to be that strong in my opinion

1000 mage power and stupidly strong spies at 1k land is a bit broken especially if the kingdom can still run 2% spires and be immune to ops

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What has nobody else done? Lets do that but different :)

They can easily cast:
(Lesser Farsight) .75 MD per acre
(Farsight) 1.875 MD per acre
(Revelation) 2.5 MD per acre

And cannot cast anything else versus others. I am not really considering that magic. More like an extended gathering of information of their spy powers. What they get by that building is the ability to decide how well protected they will be from magic.

How is this powerful and not crap?

i feel if they dont have fertility and magic shield then they are losing out

and that changing all the spells cost to suit just them its alot of work and can be done by scaling their dust production instead


currently it would work, it just might make a race to play against information nightmares
requires lot of coding, and seems that mpa would be to strong start game
especially for the cost involved


that and the bits i liked about the concept of the race are being chipped away

_________________
What has nobody else done? Lets do that but different :)

A lot of work how so? Coding it should be very very easy. It is simply a lower number of dust with spells already there. It is nearly as easy as gold price change of a single unit.



A lot of coding?! How so? Yes their one upside is a strong mpa early making fs on them very hard if they focus on it, however the cost of not having those buildings as gold production is deadly if they also want enough spy rate to steal which they really need to get their improvements up. They are still far from immune from others gathering information and their ability to gather fs on everyone is by no means overpowered as any one can sacrifice similar income to get that power.

To not make their mage building useless they then have a much easier time converting buildings.

I agree it is a very different race than the first draft by baron. I only supported this race in the version Fergy state which I made clear in the which races we support thread because I am strongly oppose to the gold stealing idea.

Does the "half cost spy operations" count towards "steal gold"?

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Maybe it would be better to start with this version. My version is still unbalanced, but I think it's closer to an implementable form.

Hmm. I prefer The Barons version.

_________________
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

Alignment: Good/Evil

"Bonuses":

• -15% gold production
• Very limited spell selection
• +5% Spy refresh each hour
• Land houses 21 citizens, buildings house additional 0
• Zero destruction costs

Troops

• Gold Golems train direction from peasants.
• Every 20 Tinkers act as a Laboratory.

Buildings

Frost Temples on Forest
Homes on Highlands
Observatory (Tower) +50 magic dust/h per Tower.

Race Spells

(Slow) 3.5 MD per acre
(Stealth) 0.5 MD per acre
(Volcano) 1.0 MD per acre
(Erosion) 1.0 MD per acre
(Ice Age) 1.0 MD per acre
(Global Warming) 1.0 MD per acre
(Lesser Farsight) 0.75 MD per acre
(Farsight) 1.875 MD per acre
(Revelation) 2.5 MD per acre
(Dispel)

Change History

• Replaced: + 5% pop
  With: Land houses 21 citizens, buildings house additional 0
• Removed: Can store up to 200% Spy Strength
• Changed double SS regeneration to +5% SS regen (same thing, but this is more clear)
• +0.1A Mage power on Ornithopters (Only useful for farsights/revelations )
• +0.1D mage power on Automation (Only useful for magical defense)
• Tinker priced cut in half. Double amount of tinkers to act like 1 building. Tinkers now act like a laboratory instead of an alchemy.
• Observatory no longer acts like mages. They are now just towers.
• Slow and rezone spells now have a spell cost
• Can now cast stealth

To Do List

• Give Ornithopters a High secondary resource cost (maybe lumber). This is to make them fade out near-endgame.
• New names for "race spells", that do not seem magical.
• Balance tinkers
• Consider lowering Observatory production to 40 MD / hr
• Rename Frost Temples

Could you please explain why.

Sure!

Your first post in this thread was a complete rework in the race. This tells me you put little effort in making the original concept work. Your version is completely different than THE Baron's.

The Baron's main unique concepts - How you changed them

• No spells - Allowed Gremlins to cast spells
• Tinker unit - Completely changed it's functions
• Steal Gold - Removed it all together

I prefer to vote for the original author's idea.

_________________
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

That's because they don't work.


Tinker Unit

With the Tinker unit, if the bonus is anything above 0.1666% bonus to imps (either kimps or rimps), the unit will become so powerful that it will allow the player to have infinite population. Baron's original concept had it at 12%. Even my concept was extremely overpowered at 0.175%.

I'm currently undecided on how to fix the tinker unit (I'm considering giving up and just attaching a rune value, but I despise runed units).

Cannot cast spells

I do not want to force gremlins to rely on a realmate / ops multi to get FS on people.

With my recent change, I allowed them to cast stealth. I am undecided as if I want to keep this in or not (leaning toward remove).

Immune to magic ops.

I do not mind the immune to FS, I do mind the immune to Lesser FS. I will not force the players to keep accurate tabs on how many resources each gremlin has stored (This race has 6hr trains).

Immune to cripple may also be a problem with relic whores / expers.

Please also read Tundrahe's objection... but you aready did read it.

quaffle wrote:
I agree with Tundrahe about gremlins. And therefore I see that race as impossible to balance since the whole concept revolves around the whole no-spells idea.