Race (Balance) Discussion

[JIntegrity]

Undead are still as powerful as ever, though it is worth noting you can no longer take Archmage with Favor of Fervus to get a bear every turn any more. Slight nerf, but won't really effect the power of this race.

Monsters are loving the new special city mechanics as they are currently implemented. As it stands, Monsters and Undead (due to their complete disregard for food) benefit the most from their being no food special cities. Monsters can focus on doing what the do best (food and the Best Archers in the WOOOORLD!) in their cities, while allowing the special cities to make up for where their race naturally lacks. I do hope they add food special cities, but, as of right now, Monsters are lookin' good.

Humans were already lackluster to begin with, having a solid, but unexceptional, unit roster. Size Two cities w/ Silver/Elemental weapons and a Rangers guild, early mages, and mass warrior/rogue were all strong early, but not as strong as what the other races allowed. Their late game, while powerful, wasn't notably more so than any other races. The Exiled hasn't really changed this, and, due to the lack of food special cities, they can't focus on gold the way Monsters can food, while allowing their special cities to make up for their weaknesses.

Arethi Elves will spam Archers and win games. Nothing changes. The special cities don't effect this balanced race's economy as much as they do those lacking food special cities in more extreme economies (Human and Svarts). It is worth noting they are one of the only two races that can spam research buildings (others being the Svarts). Moving on.

Planestriders seem to be a hodgepodge of the aforementioned four races. Versatility seems to be their keyword. However, their lack of a unit does Spirit damage as its base period, without capturing another race, is a cause for concern. None of their units stand out (save maybe that 20 gold price tag on Fighters of Planes) as exceptional, and I'm honestly not sure what I should be working towards with this race (perhaps one of you will enlighten me?). Balanced economy similar to Arethi elves, without the ability to spam research buildings, but seems to be more powerful at producing the other base resources. Meh.

Svarts have obscene gold production, and a powerful unit roster. If only their economy (outside gold and research) wasn't completely wretched. Temple special cities can make up for their lack of mana (though their god selection isn't exactly ideal), but they have a cripplingly weak food economy and using your main cities on food when they could be Warlock 2's El Dorado or Great Libraries leaves you feeling pretty terrible. You can always hope to conquer another race along the way, and allow them to do your farming, but this is unreliable at best. The Svarts, more than any other race, sorely need a food special city, as it is the only thing keeping them from being as powerful as they can be.

Anything I miss? Add your own comments, and feel free to discuss. Keep it civil, please.

 

[The Apprentice]

One large change in the Elves gameplay is that the Stun from the Bowmasters is not nearly as powerful as it was before. Many units will just suffer a -1 to movement as opposed to immobility.

Is that a bad change? I don't think so. But you can no longer leave base archers garrisoning your backwaters and emergency upgrade to bowmasters and be perfectly safe.

 

[Mardagg]

Ah,that change to Elves is interesting. Not sure if needed. Definitely makes Arethi Bowmen no no-brainer anymore,especially when you are starting with a different race and conquer an Arethi cities. I would like that change if they get compensated for it somewhere else. Need to play them next to have a look.
Of course the new support mechanic does benefit the Elves quite a bit ,too.

Humans still are very powerful on small and medium maps. For Large games,they need to get access to some other races or Holy Ground for Temple Units.
Personally Ive always felt they are quite boring to play, but pretty well balanced with the other races.

Monsters,yeah they get the most out of the special city rule...but since I hope we get Food Special cities soon,this might change.

Undead,yeah always has been my favored race. I still dont get why Favor of Fervus hasnt been further nerfed. Sure,no Archmage anymore together with it ,but its still the no 1 choice always if you play Undead and play for the win ( and not for fun).

Svarts look pretty good to me actually. I believe they are pretty strong on large maps,especially with Unity spell victory on. They desparetly need to conquer other races soon though to get better access to Food,Mana and more mobile units. Still, I think the devs did a great job doing this race.

Planestriders I have to play more before I can judge. They do have though a pretty balanced economy as far as i can tell, with quite a few special things going on and a rather interesting lineup of advanced and elite Units. Ive not seen their temple Units yet, but from one of the preview screenshots I renember that the "Order" something temple unit of Dauros looks really cool . Their starting units are also pretty fast moving,which is always a nice thing.

 

[player1 fanatic]

Monsters,yeah they get the most out of the special city rule...but since I hope we get Food Special cities soon,this might change.

Note that they are also the biggest food spenders compared to other races too.

 

[JIntegrity]

I also wasn't aware of that change in the Bowmasters (haven't played the elves since W2).

While it seems like a good change, I have to agree with Mardagg. They're going to end up as bad as they were perceived as being before people discovered Bowmasters were OP, if they haven't been compensated.

 

[Efyian]

Have to disagree with your faction analysis JIntegrity.
Back in Warlock 1, yea UD was probably the most OP through the use of the bat and summons to loot lairs (cheap as hell, but ultra effective).

That said, humans were definitely in 2nd place, with their swarm of hunters/rogues/rat summons (a combo which is pathetic against UD, but strong vs everyone else), backed by 1-2 heroes, and some mercenaries (generally donkey knights and halberds) or a temple unit.


However, Warlock 2, the fact that you can choose to research summon skeletons by turn 4 turn (assuming you went for favor of fervus/krpyta/krolm/lunord) has severely weakened UD, and strengthened the other factions.
The 20/10 skeleton with 24hp and 7att (1 mana upkeep) is a better choice than the 30/15 bear (3 food upkeep ouch!), especially since the skeletons take 1.2 turns or so to summon while bears are now at 1.5 (I believe).
Skeletons are also amazing at taking neutral settlements, unlike bears.

My current opinion of factions (assuming use of skeletons) is:
Humans > Planestriders > Goblins > Undead > Arathi (the bowmaster change has made them really weak, especially since the iril bows need 1 food/gold/mana to upkeep) > Svarts

Both humans and planestriders have their 2 starting villages churn out hunters/archers of the plane, and then you summon mass skeletons to front of them.
No other faction can do this as they would need a village at level 2 to be able to start making units, as opposed to razing the farm and building the archer trainer building.

 

[Mardagg]

Humans > Planestriders > Goblins > Undead > Arathi (the bowmaster change has made them really weak, especially since the iril bows need 1 food/gold/mana to upkeep) > Svarts

I would still go with UD as best race,since for them the bears are basically Zero upkeep . It is true however that the other races are closer now due to availability of Skeletons and the more focused research in general.
I am not sure about the exact lineup for the rest of the races though, I think it very much depends on game settings,map size and preferred playing style.
I hope Arethi Elves are not underpowered now with the nerf to Arethi Bowmasters.
I do think that they did gain the most from the new support ability, I have to try them out before I am able to form a real opinion here.

 

[JIntegrity]

Hmm... learn something new every day.

To be fair, I got away from Warlock a few months after release, so I was not aware of all the strategies that had been developed for humans. At that time, one of the most popular posts was How Not to Suck at Humans, and generally said spam units, kill as much as you can with them. If they die, that's okay. Res' them when you get temples up. Make your highest level units temple units. Win. It wasn't very practical. Then again, Old Trolls were considered OP and unstoppable back then, so...

As for your line up, I agree with Mardagg and say UD are first. In all fairness, mine would look like this.

UD > Monsters > Humans > Planestriders > Svarts > Arathi

If the food specialty buildings come out though, Svarts would be an easy second place for me.

I'll have to try the playstyle you mentioned though. Sounds very Borg to me, but would probably improve my opinion of Humans/Planestriders.

 

[Arunvik]

I'm not one to care that much for balance, I usually play games in order to have fun, not in order to win.

But I do feel like adding something, I'm not sure if it's relevant since it only concerns the exiled mode, not the more pvp-focused sandbox mode, but anyways, here goes;

The existence of the rainbow dragon, which is a pretty fan-friggin-tastic unit, seems to favor the races with good mana production.
Seeing as it only requires mana, hiring it costs mana, its upkeep is pure mana and enchantments are pure mana, the only thing that costs anything other than mana is equipping them with perks.
And, at least the way I play them, mana isn't really the limiting factor for arethi or undead, so when playing as them I could summon a fleet of dragons that pretty much only costed me casting time.

I do like the planestrider Chaos Archer (is that what they're called?) though, they're fairly uninteresting in terms of abilities and perks, but they're an archer unit with a base damage of 30, which is quite nice.

Also, the nerf to arethi bowmasters is because the way stun is handled has been nerfed, which affects everyone, though I can imagine how this hurts the elves more than any other race.

 

[pintocat]

As Svarts I chose to take the perks for +% food and +% gold production. Then I went for the research/mana lines, and am getting so much research I get a new high tier spell every turn or so... which let me research all the food/gold/etc techs, and +% food to city spells, etc. Also, the crow summon is really nice... makes up for the movement. Use a line of prospectors to take something down, then a crow to swoop in and take out the empty lairs, also as disposable cannon fodder for the ai to hit first, and disposable new-portal world exploration. Their other units I'm not really fond of, but the dragomorts and prospectors are nice.

 

[Efyian]

Mardagg / JIntegrity:
Assuming small/medium sandbox map, I'd be happy to MP vs you sometime and show you just how much hunters + skeletons will dominate bears + skeletons, especially since bears are -25% arrow resistant


Actually, speaking of warlock 1, I actually don't recall losing to UD as humans in MP games, ever... (Side note: In fact, the toughest opponent I had when I played MP was Modjo who ran monsters).

The biggest reasons UD kept losing to my humans was that:
- their capital tower does death damage, which can't hurt skeletons (so if humans captured a UD village, even a neutral one, UD was screwed).
- Similarly, the UD spellcaster (vampire) do death damage.

In other words, UD had nothing to actually fight skeletons with (skeleton archers do crap vs skeletons, and then their vampires were useless). Furthermore, all their units and population are supported by mana, which meant thier mana income was actually very low, and supporting constant summoning was a struggle unless they got lucky with lairs.

In fact, I generally found the rogues + hunters swarm eventually gave humans the advantage despite bears: I could destroy the UD forces faster than they could summon, and replenish my units faster than the UD do (due to # of troop trainers).
Fervus rats made clearing the map of lairs just as easy for me as it was for the UD bear+bat strategy.

You see, one of the biggest advantages of humans over monsters and UD in warlock 1 was that every gold focused city you create could also train rogues for 20gold. (market -> rogue building).
So you got hunters coming out en masse, some summons, and then all those extra cheap suicidal high damage rogues (with something like 8att, 4 death damage) to swarm the opponent.
It is less of an advantage here in warlock 2, where you're limited to 5/7 cities, and skeleton summon are so easy to create. But troop numbers still offers a massive advantage, especially since they've pushed the lightning spell way back into the tech tree (no more low mana cost AoE spell if the enemy has an armoured unit!).

This is my status on turn 29 as planestriders, using my traditional human strategy (minus rogues):
http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/3316080236175433760/0278882D3CA271FCFF0A35EE1830F46CC3C9005E/
http://cloud-3.steampowered.com/ugc/3316080236175432795/FFF45B48F178A922ABD7F98BDED34E462D252A4A/
http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/3316080236175431931/6CAACA2E4DF8F09FFC100B4CB1EBFFDD623091D6/

- World 1 is completely maxed out in settlements. I am shifting towards training those fire totems now (13 elemental, 35hp, 3 movement). Army is 2 Archers of the Plane, 1 fire totem, 1 settler.
- World 2 has been completely cleared. There are 4 or so settles there. I kept 1 or 2 under my control, which will continue to train archers of the plane. There are 2 portals, 1 on an island (which is connected to an AI) which I will ignore. The other goes to World 3. Notice there is still a pretty big army here in world 2 (can't fit them all into portal yet!). Army is 6 Archers of the Plane, 3 skeletons, 1 elven healer, 1 settler.
- I just began attacking World 3. Notice the huge army of skeletons and archers of the plane, despite it being only turn 29. Army is 4 Archers of the Plane, 3 skeletons, 2 Striders.

I actually wasted around 4 turns idiotically trying to open the portal via reciting the spellwords. I got cursed 4x in a row and just said screw it at that point.

On a side note, more, and more, I find the the most effective army is to skip tier 2 units entirely.
Just use a huge army of tier 1 (meatshields) and tier 3 (e.g. temple elites) to wipe out the enemy.
Tier 2s just don't have enough of anything: HP or damage to actually cut through the enemy lines easily. The exceptions are, of course, mercenary units like donkey knights and halberds which are really cheap to recruit (75/100g) and need a new tier 1 building to get, as opposed to a level 3 or 4 city with all buildings focused on recruitment.

In terms of min/max efficacy, going for those fire totems are actually a mistake, since I could have had an additional +20 income (estimated) instead, and been saving up more gold in preparation of finding a temple which I can recruit temple units from. Well I'll recruit 3-4 of them, and then convert those 2 trainers into gold producers recruiting settler spam instead .

But of note, since a fire totem is 150g. And an archer 35gold... well I could recruit 4 extra archers for every fire totem.

 

[Pinstar]

I'm new to the Warlock series and never played the first game, but have found myself drawn to the elves. However, not for the archers but for their mages. The ability to fire high powered death magic OR elemental magic (with their tier 3 upgrade gaining access to a spirit magic attack!) I find they are flexible enough to take down just about any threat and completely ignore those high-resist melee units since most have some sort of vulnerability to death magic or elemental magic. Does anyone actually use the mages as their army backbone?

I also like them because they come with all of the research bonus buildings which lets me get my spell research going nice and early.

 

[Mardagg]

Efyian,if you look at my first reply on the top of this thread again then you will quickly see that I consider Humans to be very,very good on small and medium maps.
But I do consider UD almost equally good on those as well+ way superior on Large and Huge maps.

The Thing is,you cant really compare the summoned skeletons to the producable Skeletons of the UD.
They have different stats. UD can field UD Archers which TOTALLY destroy Hunters in 1 vs 1.
Bears totally crush Skeletons in Melee.
So its a lot more complicated.
But its always true that the UD can afford to upkeep a lot more Bears,than the Human can afford Skeletons.

 

[Efyian]

Efyian,if you look at my first reply on the top of this thread again then you will quickly see that I consider Humans to be very,very good on small and medium maps.
But I do consider UD almost equally good on those as well+ way superior on Large and Huge maps.

The Thing is,you cant really compare the summoned skeletons to the producable Skeletons of the UD.
They have different stats. UD can field UD Archers which TOTALLY destroy Hunters in 1 vs 1.
Bears totally crush Skeletons in Melee.
So its a lot more complicated.
But its always true that the UD can afford to upkeep a lot more Bears,than the Human can afford Skeletons.

Well I tend to talk about balance and gameplay with regards to MP in general, rather than SP.
- And large/huge were basically impossible to MP in warlock 1 because of lack of PBEM and extreme wait times and such.

But with that said, most of it always came down to the tactics/strategy.
- Again, UD in smaller maps struggle to recruit a good army as well as constantly summoning bears (due to low mana income due to population, skeleton barracks requiring level 2 villages, and unit upkeep). Also UD tend to struggle to kill a fire elemental to free up a holy ground. Humans can do it on turn 20 or so with 6-8 hunters and a lightning bolt.
- Bears do not crush skeletons if you use defend properly. Summon a skeleton in a critical spot. put it on defend mode. Suddenly you have a tile locked down for that turn in a critical spot.
- Also, if you are not weakening bears with hunters, and then finishing them off easily with your skeletons, you're doing something wrong. After that, even if you lose your hunters, you can easily finish off unprotected (or poorly protected) skeleton archers.
- Finally, if you allow UD archers to attack and kill your hunters, you're using the human army wrong, especially when hunters are 4 movement, with forestry vs 3 movement skeletons (which therefore can only move 1 time on rough terrain and attack, while hunters can move 2 on mountains, or 4 on forest). Honestly speaking, the skeleton army should never be able to catch your hunters, which lets you get in the decisive first strike on the UD army (which done properly, can be fatal).

As an additional point, humans have the best temple:
- Krolm Blademasters with 4 movement, 70hp, 35 base attack (highest in the game btw, equal to gold dragons) + whirlwind, immune to banes and document inspection. Give him a few damage perks, and cast things like frost blade on him and his damage spikes like mad.

They do also have the priestess of agrela for healing / spirit attack, but I always found them redundant (just make more and more blademasters instead, and bring a few low cost clerics for healing)

UD has Paladins of Death, Ancient Liches and Adepts of Lunord, but they all have their weaknesses comparatively speaking.
- Paladins of Death: no match for blademasters
- Ancient Liches: Great ranged attacker which may actually be able to take out your bladmeasters if you're careless, but low hp (thus very vulnerable to spells like fireball), and death magic attack limit them.
- Adepts of Lunord: amazing movement and great attack, but 54hp is a weakness.

Small maps: Humans just flat out beat UD in short maps with sheer troop numbers. Quantity has a quality all its own.
Large maps: Insane gold income + Krolm Blademasters buffed to 60-100att each (& preferably with things like levitation cast on them) will absolutely wreak anything it comes across.
Market + rogue + tax/bank/mint/treasure house cities (which then make craftsman shops) will generate frightening amounts of gold income for you. And be able to train rogues to support your blademasters. So you not only have one of the best temple units, you also have more of them due to your income.
You can feel free to disagree though, but I found even the Dremers campaign a joke with humans (but challenging with all the other factions).

End of the day, well I freely admit I'm a MP & max/min fanatic: I really hope they do a MP tournament or 2 the way they did for warlock 1

 

[Fenryder]

I really hope they do a MP tournament or 2 the way they did for warlock 1

I think that was set up by a player. tag you it ?

 

[JIntegrity]

I remember reading about that tournament. I wasn't playing the game at that point, but I'd occasionally stalk the forums. I remember UD + Favor of Fervus being banned in one of those tournaments. I thought they straight up banned UD in another? Either way, I admit you make a compelling argument, and even used some of your strategies to great effect in a game of Warlock 2 I started (I'm probably done with the game until Sandbox Shard Mode is a thing). However, I had 18 or so Archers of the Plane on turn 35 (and that is with losing a few to an Assassin spawning in my home shard, and a few misplays on my part), and while I was winning handily, I wasn't having as much fun. I suppose I prefer quality over quantity strat's, even if they are inferior. I like to nurture a single unit, and get is as powerful as possible. This is probably due to preference for trying to win games with a single character/unit that are intended to have a party (Baldur's Gate being my prime example).

I would have beat the LT's in the Exiled Mode game I won with a single unit had I been patient enough to deal with the incessant creep spawning in my shards. It wasn't dangerous. Just annoying. Took turns that should have been, attack LT's, manage whatever cities are currently needing improvement orders, end turn, and made them several minutes long. However, that is another matter entirely.

Thank you for the information, though. I learned a lot, and it was just the sort of information I wanted on this thread. It even got me to reevaluate Planestriders. Planestrider archer spam leading in to the Fervus temple unit is probably the best way to go with them. Base 30 attack ranged units are no joke.

Also note, the only reason Monsters rank where they do is that I find food economies to be extremely powerful due to Land of Life. +50% food yield on tile with the Monster food economy allows for obscene levels of both food and money late game. I was floating 700+ food at one point, with no need to use any of it. I could have had more had I terraformed any shards past my first, but spamming Lands of Life got tedious by the time I finished with my first shard. Besides, what point is there to finding all these interesting shards with varied terrain types if I just turn them all to Lands of Life, no?

Either way, have fun, and feel free to give your input on other races, if you have any as in depth as you provided about humans, and why they're superior to UD. I find it highly educational, and I'm sure I'm not alone in this.

 

[unmerged(492719)]

IIRC the mp tournament was on small maps which kinda skews things. Factions that are slow out the gate get pretty shafted. Mostly 'summon' units are stupid strong in them since you can sorta bulldoze down neutral camps for mana, and just keep going, especially if you are undead and don't need food to grow. Mana summons bears, bears eat food, no cost.

I'm not super sure who'd win in the short game, and I think it's a little myopic to take serious. If you can barely even get to advanced units before the battle ends, a lot of the longitudinal balance of the game is lost.

I will say that end game those with the stronger economies will almost for sure win out, independant of what units they have to field, since in the long run it is more important that you have lots of units than the right ones. I haven't really played the humans in Exiled yet, since I played them so much in W1. They were generally the strongest then due to some surprisingly good early to middle game advantages - Hunters being solid tier 1 units (and so are rogues), Magic Gardens being an incredibly powerful bonus resource, and the treasure house giving you an extra base +100% gold income to your biggest cities... it's all pretty huge. Oh yeah, and the library is fairly easy to get to in cities to increase your research rate nicely. Late game, I honestly don't think it matters if you have a blademaster, if the other guy has two other units of roughly the same strength (though some units are surely better than others, few are twice as good, or half as good).

That said, I still think beast masters kinda suck hehe.

 

[Zanze]

Beast masters are ok. They are pretty much tankier archers compared to archers of Helia. Trying them out in a 2 man dremer impossible game and I picked them up over Helia archers to try them out, and because my rangers/hunters kept getting sniped by dremer spawns when attacking the gate. Haven't lost a single beast master yet due to their beefiness, regen, and free cannon fodder when retreating.

Anyways, I'm still poking around with the newer races and while not as good as most people here am lost on certain things. What exactly are Planestriders good at? Off their building tree I notice that they have a lot of mana % boosts, but only 7-10 actual mana before bonuses. Not to mention how expensive that whole route is. Their gold production looks ok, as does their food production. Are they just meant to be ok economically as the norm, and good at exploiting resources in exchange for interesting (and sometimes op) units? (Though some Fervus based planestriders with 2 mana nodes in a mana city does seem expensive awesome.)

 

[Mardagg]

Efyian, all the strategies you posted are viable and look good on paper,but it comes down to the abiltiy of Human Players involved in MP games.
You are posting things that seem to make the Human player play perfect and the UD to not play perfect. E.g. While its right that Hunters have more mobililty than UD Archers you still will have them killed from time to time by UD Archers. Same with Bears vs Skeletons. While in theory your tactic of ordering them to defend some key places might work here and there ,there will be lots of game situations where your skeletons will simply be eaten alive by Bears, that have forestry walking and are simply much better in melee. By the same approach you are taking I could simply argue how unbeatable my Bears are in Forest tiles vs most low level melee units.
Furthermore I didnt even touch some of the other problems the Humans face in my last posts, like for example being totally prone to Lightning spam regarding the Warrior/Veterans.

Its right that Blademasters are slightly better than Paladins of Death raw stat-wise,but... Paladins of Death got that Favor of Dauros perk which makes it impossible to dispel unit enchantments on them iirc. So,in MP games i am like 100% that the Paladins are the superior unit exactly because of this.
The thing is though,that UD can field pretty nice Elite units before getting access to temples,where Humans need either access to temples or access to other races.
Also very problematic for the specific Human vs UD setup is ,that rogues and cutthroats pretty much suck vs UD.

The thing with W2 is,that now we got some kind of semi simultanous turns, with the ability to set production and research while waiting for the other players, so playing on large maps will be a better playing experience in MP as compared to W1. I prefer large maps. I will be very happy to play you there,as soon as some more patches are out.

 

[Gaslov]

I wish the developers would interact with the community more in these discussions. It's not like there are that many people playing their game. We all want the same thing: a great game.