Thank you, Danjen! I think the layout of the races page could still be improved, though - I'm not very good at wiki layout (Nudibranch is a genius when it comes to that, maybe we should bring Leylines to his attention
)
On to the other races. I have written my opinion on Regency. The Goblins and the Alliance will have to wait, since I still can't really make up my mind about them. They play very different from other races and may still need to be tweaked in order to be properly balanced. In any case, I haven't playtested them enough yet to form an opinion.
Regency:
Strengths:
Regency is a race themed about being evil (and lazy). They can convert enemy cities into slaves, which is great in cases where you wanted to destroy the city anyway. For combat they rely heavily on undead units. Their top-end units, the daemon and the liche, are impressive monsters (with a monstrous upkeep, too). The regency possess unique abilities that enhance the abilities of undead further. Necromancers are able to heal undead and spectres provide the undead equivalent of a blessing. Keep in mind that this also works on summoned undead, such as golems, nightmares and archons.
If this is not evil enough for you, have a look at the assassin, capable of killing mighty foes as an overland ability. This works especially great against heroes. Keep in mind, however, that it doesn't work on bulky units (such as dragons).
A very sneaky option is to sabotage enemy cities. This will disrupt the production of the city for one turn. When used simultaneously on the most important enemy gold and mana producing cities, it could have severe consequences, such as negative mana feedback and buildings collapsing for lack of maintainance.
Another key strategic unit is the acolyte, which can sacrifice
living units for instant mana. The most logical sacrifice is the
phalanx, since the amount of mana gained is proportional to production cost. The ability to quickcast negative spells on enemy units can be a great help.
The catapult adds the possibility of dealing overland damage. Even though the saboteur grants access to siegecraft, taking along a catapult is arguably even better, since it forces the enemy to leave their city and attack you.
One spell that deserves special mention for the Regency is Jinx. Many Regency units have magical attacks. These are greatly enhanced after reducing resistance by three points.
Weaknesses:
Relying on undead troops has its drawbacks. First of all, travelling the map becomes harder since they can't cross rivers, except by building a bridge (road). Worse yet, most races have special anti-undead units, often highly effective. And what makes the Regency even less flexible, is that almost all of their main combat units (daemon, wraith and liche) rely on non-physical attacks. This makes units with high resistance (Firewalkers!) hard to deal with. If the enemy starts building an army of say, priests, I would honestly be at a loss what to do. Assassinating them all is not a serious option, Ornithopters are slightly too weak to consider as a main attack force, while Catapults can't safely approach the enemy without the protection of strong (undead) armies.
The list doesn't stop there. The regency have no cheap scout unit. Ornithopters and to a lesser degree Mountaineers are reasonably good at reconnaissance but too expensive to build in large numbers. However, if your enemy is reckless enough to let his scouts approach your ghouls, you can still gain a couple of cheap scouts.
Further, the much-needed backup units (necromancer and spectre) are both quite slow and the Regency have no special methods of compensating for this low speed.
Altogether, Regency is a challenging race to play with, though it can certainly be lots of fun.
Edit:
I just tried a novel (at least for me) strategy with Theria, relying heavily on Aetherlings. Magic was BMM, for the combination of Might of Giants, Psionic Gift and Ancestral Learning. Of course, the latter is not an enchantment and does not auto-cast with affinity, but it can still be used to boost them further. Plus, skeletons provide an early militant unit. (Normally, rush strategies are hardly possible with Theria because they have no early militant unit.) God was Fenyela (Eryonix would also have helped a lot, but since aetherlings are low on health and resistance I still prefer Fenyela here).
It worked very well. Actually, I would call this a rush. And there I was saying Theria can't rush.. I love it how you can just keep learning and discovering new strategies in this game.
It also turned out that when a unit with Psionic Gift gains a level, his psionic blast gets stronger, too. Is this intentional or a bug?
[Last edited by grobblewobble at 03-09-2010 06:49 PM]
), and lumberjacks double as extra work if they don't need to scout any more.
)