This is a continuation of this thread on the old forum: https://aow.triumph.net/forums/topic/increasing-the-interest-of-multi-race-strategies/
Context
In most games I’ve seen (in PBEM), players stick with their starting race and most often than not, try to get Monoculture with 8 cities of the same race. Migrating cities is easy, and getting evil alignement is also a generally good strategy with no drawback: empire boost, Pure Evil Empire Quest (EQ), possibility to plunder, raze and migrate. Monoculture is very good as it gives three free T3. Multiculture on the other hand is pretty lacklustre with 5 support from 5 different races for a difficulty much higher than Monoculture (try to get 5 different races!! on a small map, that’s basically impossible and even in larger maps, it’s pretty complicated, except if you play 4vs4 and all allies have different races).
You gain a lot of advantages from playing only 1 race with racial governance (RG) and high race happiness providing morale bonus for your units. You gain no advantage from playing multiple races, except your increased production options and thus potential higher adaptability. But except if you want to get flyers and you play one race with no flyer (and thus you want Elf or Draconian or Halfling cities), there is no real need for such increased diversity of units.
I think it’s a shame game mechanics favour playing only 1 race like that. The game would be more diversified and fun if it was more viable to play more races in a given game.
How could the incentives to play multiple races be boosted?
1. Better rewards from Multiculture: each unit would be a support OR a T3
Or they could have abilities like Meditate, Volunteer, High Morale, stat boosts, etc.
2. Lower difficulty of Multiculture: needs 3 races or 4 races
Might seems like a bad idea because in team games, would be pretty easy, but in practice, that's still quite an investment to transfer a city to another player and have him absorb it. Also, team games are an edge case, relatively rare.
3. Increase the time needed to migrate by 1 turn for all migration
My favourite idea, pretty neat and make Mab’s Boon more useful. However, at first sight, we didn't find a way to implement it with Zaskow because there is no parameter setting the minimum time required for migration (currently 1 turn, and we want it to be 2 turns). I just thought about an alternative: doubling all migration time through an invisible Avatar skill which does the opposite of Swift Migration. To be tested.
4. Create a multiracial race governance
Unfortunately that does not seem moddable.
The idea would be that this RG would increase only if you have more than 1 race in your cities. E.g. X points every turn where X is the number of races in your cities. It would provide Empire-wide boost to economy or military as current RG (e.g. all Irregulars get +5 HP or all cities get +5% all income, etc.).
5. Create abilities based on multirace stacks or units
Not sure how to mod it.
E.g. +100 happiness for each unit of different race in the stack, +1 melee if a friendly unit of different race is adjacent in tactical map, etc.
Several people (gladis, Rodmar) were against as it seems more logical that units from different races do not like each other.
6. Make it more rewarding to get cities from new races
Give (temporary?) bonus to (the first?) cities outside your starting race that you get into your empire. That could be achieved with a new Empire Quest which is triggered when you get 2 races in your empire for instance.
7. Change totally the Migration mechanism
When Migrating a city, it razes it and gives you a Settler of that race for free. (see initial idea from Jolly Joker here: https://aow.triumph.net/forums/topic/increasing-the-interest-of-multi-race-strategies/#post-249098) which means that if you want to go for Monoculture, you need to produce the Settlers of your race yourself.
8. Make Migration much more costly
Migration costs gold and the racial happiness malus is 150 (as for Razing or Plundering). It could also possibly gives -400 city happiness for 10 turns to the newly migrated city.
9. Lower rewards for Monoculture
Monoculture could yield weaker units, or 2 instead of 3 T3, or just no units at all and instead an economic bonus.
10. Add morale malus for cities beyond 3 cities of the same race
All cities now start with a base modifier of “-100 vast empire”.
Add 3 unique buildings called “Source city #1-3” that gives cities +100 city happiness (or better would be if the “Source city” buildings could remove the “-100 vast empire” malus). Technically the buildings are like Beacons.
That way, you tackle two issues at once:
– beyond 3 cities, your extra cities have lower morale and it’s not as easy as before to just expand forever
– you are encouraged to play multiple races as you can build 3 “Source city” for EACH race
11. Lose race happiness when losing, disbanding or killing Builders and Settlers
I don't think it's moddable though.
Context
In most games I’ve seen (in PBEM), players stick with their starting race and most often than not, try to get Monoculture with 8 cities of the same race. Migrating cities is easy, and getting evil alignement is also a generally good strategy with no drawback: empire boost, Pure Evil Empire Quest (EQ), possibility to plunder, raze and migrate. Monoculture is very good as it gives three free T3. Multiculture on the other hand is pretty lacklustre with 5 support from 5 different races for a difficulty much higher than Monoculture (try to get 5 different races!! on a small map, that’s basically impossible and even in larger maps, it’s pretty complicated, except if you play 4vs4 and all allies have different races).
You gain a lot of advantages from playing only 1 race with racial governance (RG) and high race happiness providing morale bonus for your units. You gain no advantage from playing multiple races, except your increased production options and thus potential higher adaptability. But except if you want to get flyers and you play one race with no flyer (and thus you want Elf or Draconian or Halfling cities), there is no real need for such increased diversity of units.
I think it’s a shame game mechanics favour playing only 1 race like that. The game would be more diversified and fun if it was more viable to play more races in a given game.
How could the incentives to play multiple races be boosted?
1. Better rewards from Multiculture: each unit would be a support OR a T3
Or they could have abilities like Meditate, Volunteer, High Morale, stat boosts, etc.
2. Lower difficulty of Multiculture: needs 3 races or 4 races
Might seems like a bad idea because in team games, would be pretty easy, but in practice, that's still quite an investment to transfer a city to another player and have him absorb it. Also, team games are an edge case, relatively rare.
3. Increase the time needed to migrate by 1 turn for all migration
My favourite idea, pretty neat and make Mab’s Boon more useful. However, at first sight, we didn't find a way to implement it with Zaskow because there is no parameter setting the minimum time required for migration (currently 1 turn, and we want it to be 2 turns). I just thought about an alternative: doubling all migration time through an invisible Avatar skill which does the opposite of Swift Migration. To be tested.
4. Create a multiracial race governance
Unfortunately that does not seem moddable.
The idea would be that this RG would increase only if you have more than 1 race in your cities. E.g. X points every turn where X is the number of races in your cities. It would provide Empire-wide boost to economy or military as current RG (e.g. all Irregulars get +5 HP or all cities get +5% all income, etc.).
5. Create abilities based on multirace stacks or units
Not sure how to mod it.
E.g. +100 happiness for each unit of different race in the stack, +1 melee if a friendly unit of different race is adjacent in tactical map, etc.
Several people (gladis, Rodmar) were against as it seems more logical that units from different races do not like each other.
6. Make it more rewarding to get cities from new races
Give (temporary?) bonus to (the first?) cities outside your starting race that you get into your empire. That could be achieved with a new Empire Quest which is triggered when you get 2 races in your empire for instance.
7. Change totally the Migration mechanism
When Migrating a city, it razes it and gives you a Settler of that race for free. (see initial idea from Jolly Joker here: https://aow.triumph.net/forums/topic/increasing-the-interest-of-multi-race-strategies/#post-249098) which means that if you want to go for Monoculture, you need to produce the Settlers of your race yourself.
8. Make Migration much more costly
Migration costs gold and the racial happiness malus is 150 (as for Razing or Plundering). It could also possibly gives -400 city happiness for 10 turns to the newly migrated city.
9. Lower rewards for Monoculture
Monoculture could yield weaker units, or 2 instead of 3 T3, or just no units at all and instead an economic bonus.
10. Add morale malus for cities beyond 3 cities of the same race
All cities now start with a base modifier of “-100 vast empire”.
Add 3 unique buildings called “Source city #1-3” that gives cities +100 city happiness (or better would be if the “Source city” buildings could remove the “-100 vast empire” malus). Technically the buildings are like Beacons.
That way, you tackle two issues at once:
– beyond 3 cities, your extra cities have lower morale and it’s not as easy as before to just expand forever
– you are encouraged to play multiple races as you can build 3 “Source city” for EACH race
11. Lose race happiness when losing, disbanding or killing Builders and Settlers
I don't think it's moddable though.
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