I'd like to give you all the opportunity to give us some feedback on the new races.

It's all new, so you can't expect us poor devvers to observe every single player in game; since we play as well we'd get an unfair information advantage if we did. Therefore, we require your help.

Preferably, given feedback is on the race you are playing yourself, or on a race one of your alliance mates is playing and told you about.

Reported imbalances are of course welcome, but this thread is not that narrow.

What we want to know is:

- how useful do you think the race is for alliance strategy purposes?
- is the race challenging or does it bore you to death?

This can of course go both positively and negatively: the race can be too useful or not useful enough, it can be too challenging or too boring. Some races are designed to be boring yet simple to play, others to be challenging and therefore hard to play.

We don't promise we'll do something with the feedback, but given feedback will certainly prompt us to consider the race. Also, the more complaints about a race, the more likely it is that it will be changed.

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As a last reminder: races will not remain static. Each age there will be some cost tweaks in a number of races, not because they are imbalanced, but simply to adjust the balance of the races and prevent the game from becoming stale. Say, if you all take rohirrim, they'll likely receive a small cost penalty next age, whereas underused races may get some small cost bonus. Of course this does mean race abilities and use must be different enough to make the choosing of the penalized race a reasonable (strategic) choice. Therefore, feedback :)

rohirrim is imba with the 50% military losses and can also cast FoR.

50% military losses was removed before age start; it's not in the guide either, if you check.

Don't ask me why it was not announced; I did raise the issue twice.

I think there are too many races. It's overwhelming to new players

Why? If you're new and have to choose, choose one.

If you're new and have to attack one, you'd look stuff up for both 15 and 30 races anyway.

Anyway, the same thought has crossed our mind for the selection of your race. Therefore we'd like players to first have to choose a race (Elf, Human, Cursed, Winged, Orc), and then a class (Rogue, Guardian, Spellbinder, Sage, Warrior, Crusader). That way, there's 1x 5 and 1x6 to choose from. Since we took care to create classes belonging to a race type according to some traits we envisioned in them, this does work and is not purely a scheme.

Anyway, there is no way to solve the issue when I don't know the motivators. What is too much? Knowledge required? Hard choice? What?

But you're the second with feedback so thanks. It's just a pity I can't comment on it decently.

Okay, I know my comment was off topic to your "new races."

I don't have much experience in these types of games, but even looking at the manual at the different types of races it's hard for a newcomer to understand which race is good at what.

Oleg Hai gets more land from attacking, so of course we would assume it's good at attacking. Sea Elf gets defense bonuses so it looks like a purely defensive race. But what makes Oleg Hai better than other attackers or Sea Elf better or worse than other defenders? Or if these races are better at something else entirely?

So yes I would say it is definitely a hard choice to find a race and know what it's good at right away.

Maybe showing a scale at the bottom saying what it's good at?

(random example)
Attack *****
Defense ***
Magic *******
Theivery *
Exploring *********

That might actually be a very helpful idea :)

You see, I know all factors so I have no trouble at all seeing their strengths and weaknesses. Yet for a newbie, it must be very hard to assess the exact effect of a race feature to any degree. I must add that the unit costs and statistics are most important :P

Anyway, THAT's why I need newbies (fresh minds) in development, for newbie-friendly ideas like that.

That also narrows down the problem from "there are too many races" to "it is too hard to understand the races".

Quite a chance you'll see your suggestion realized in the guide by the start of next age :P

Yeah definatly:)

YEY!

and maybe we can put at the bottom of the race if it's a fast race, medium paced and late aged race. just my 2 cents. :)

yeah we had the same idea, there's just a problem how to show a race when it's good @ mid age. Means you need some kind of color scale or something (like light blue - dark blue - light blue). Oleg would be dark-blue-light blue-white.

whatever you think will make the decision be easier :)

Another problem is that for some races the effectivity of a race in time can be very much dependent on gameplay. Daemons can be very fast attacker when going offspecs early but they can also be a late-gamer when going exploring till week 3 and be effective as thief end age with small raiding power.

I'd like if anyone reading this is posting his experiences with the race he/she played.

To start with myself:
Daemon was a pretty powerful race. A bit expensive sollies during OOP but after that gaining military power quickly. The offence is extremely cheap so you can dominate fast if you play well.
The offspecs were very inefficient though and the very efficient elite was expensive. I lost the long run battle with semisuiciding Rohirrim by lack of return time and the bad luck that Rohirrim DO use mortality with grabbing.
Nice feature is the 3/0 thieves: you can run a few TPA for TT and basic theivery defence without losing too much efficiency as the thieves even provide offence.
The PPA bonus is a must for this race to keep up later on as attacker. As massexplorer I'm not sure if the PPA bonus might be too good (I considered the PPA bonus so good that I came OOP with 10 PPA, something I would advise any Daemon out there)
Died by lack of activity and efficiency in a weekend I couldn't login much =)

Grokan Hai:

Easy-to-play, very good for semi inactive players. You won't be a focused kill target, you will have a good income and you will eventually be useful in a period you can be active. Overall very neat but not very exciting to play. Exploring cost pwns your tax/bank bonus. Very efficient at pumping science though.

thanks to Max_ for being able to work with our multitude of factors.