Skirmisher
Before your tweak, this unit was broken. After your tweak, this unit is clearly useless.
You have a night elf archer with better regen at day, 3x less DPS, no Elune grace, no significant upgrades and no cloak with a higher price.
I know your faction doesn't rely on ranged units, but that's not a reason to make them so weak it becomes useless.
For a higher price you can get better anti-air with your flyers, easily accessible at the same time as other factions air (except maybe gargoyles ?).
Either delete the unit, make it stronger or change its purpose.
This is an example of how I would improve it :
☼ Base damage improved from 10 to 15
☼ Number of dices improved from 1 to 2
☼ Number of sides improved from 2 to 3
☼ Attack cooldown reduced from 2.5 to 1.8
☼ New passive ability : dodges 35% of ranged attacks
☼ Gets poisoned arrows in a T2 tech
☼ Attack speed bonus reduced from +30% to +15%
☼ Cost increased from 130/20 to 135/20
Here, it will go from an useless ranged unit to an average ranged unit. In mid-late game they would still be outclassed by riflemen/fiends but they would suit well in early stages. Faster attack, movement, regen in addition of poison would make a good ambusher & peon stalker (it fits the swamp/jungle theme of the race). They would also soft counter air units in significant numbers. Poison is a good addition to pile a bit more DPS for your big ones fighting in the front. Admitting a 2 DPS poison, in late game they have 15+5d3 every 1.3 seconds, to a total of an average of 21 DPS.
To compensate a bit the new bonuses, I increased the price to put a bit more risk.
Of course, they aren't as potent as night elf archer in early game, due to their still slower attack.
And since your faction isn't supposed to have heavy ranged units, we are still well within your intent.
In my opinion you mistook useless and not ranged-specialized. Your faction would have a better gameplay with a potent light ranged unit, even if it doesn't have better ranged !
Cleaver
For the exact same price of a Grunt, you get a much squishier early warrior with poor DPS, a human footman has more !
Even with upgrades it becomes average, but outclassed by any tier 3 unit.
I saw that you made it like a well rounded defensive fighter, but it is too passive to be counted as versatile, as well as being awful at soaking damage compared to its price.
In late game they have an unreliable attack, even fully upgraded. The damage reduction is too underwhelming for the price and location in the tech tree. I used it in my first games, and they struggled to kill green camps while barely surviving. With 4 cleavers you can have instead almost 6 footmen with better reliability. Their price made them hard to mass in early stages, making them useless enough to incite players to tech rush instead.
Let's assume first I haven't talked about the Piercer yet. There's two exclusive ways of making this unit more interesting in paper : cheaper or stronger.
Cheaper
☼ Base damage increased from 7 to 11
☼ Damage per dice decreased from 8 to 4
☼ Training time decreased from 30 to 24 seconds
☼ Attack cooldown increased from 1.4 to 1.5
☼ Cost reduced from 200 to 160
☼ Food cost reduced from 3 to 2
☼ Level decreased from 3 to 2
☼ Direhorn shield damage reduction chance increased from 25% to 50%
☼ Direhorn shield damage reduction decreased from 6 to 5
☼ Direhorn minimum damage increased from 0 to 1
☼ Direhorn shield tech cost reduced from 150/100 to 100/100
☼ Direhorn shield tech available at T1
☼ Warrior cast upgrade changed to Worker caste upgrade
☼ Warrior cast upgrade cost reduced from 200/250 to 150/175
Stronger
☼ Base damage increased from 7 to 13
☼ Damage per dice decreased from 8 to 5
☼ Hitpoint increased from 500 to 625
☼ Scale (ahah, scale) increased from 1.15 to 1.25
☼ Range increased from 90 to 100
☼ Direhorn shield damage reduction chances increased from 25% to 100%
☼ Direhorn shield returns 10% of damage to the melee attacker, with a maximum of 4 damage
In both cases, the cleaver would very well fill its role of reliably engaging enemies, either by number or strength. While still outclassed by big tier 3 elite units, it is a good corner stone for Tier 1 and 2 when you have to put something at hand in front of your casters.
The cheaper version would better swarm the enemies because of the increased speed. It can be made coherent with the fluff by assuming Cleavers are low caste warriors instead.
Piercer
Now, we have the first main incoherence of your faction. You have two basic melee units, one more on defense and the other one on offense.
The common problem of those two are their expensive cost, unreliable damage and low durability.
On top of that, the piercer have so low defense it is even brawled badly by green camps half its price.
In late game, they become average due to their good damage, but their normal armor gives them bad mashup against other ranged units, and an one sided disaster against tier 3 elite melee (pulverize & sundering blades goes brrrr) even fully upgraded.
Let's explore together the different solutions we can provide.
Delete it completely
Taking in account the changes I suggested for the Cleaver, the Piercer becomes clearly useless as it is. We could clearly drop it completely and continue with the other units, however there's also other means to assess the situation.
Short-Medium ranged spear thrower
This is a way to have a straightforward change for the unit. You may think I'm adding a second ranged unit beside the skirmisher, but we will safely land on our feet for reasons I will explain soon enough.
☼ Weapon type changed from normal to missile
☼ Range increased from 110 to 325
☼ Base damage increased from 7 to 20
☼ Sides per dice decreased from 11 to 8
☼ Attack cooldown increased from 1.4 to 2
☼ Missile speed set to 900
☼ Hitpoints increased from 400 to 525
☼ Cost increased from 200 to 200/20
☼ Training time decreased from 30 to 26 seconds
☼ Ensnare ability, unlocked from T1 tech at the barracks
☼ Fury of Blade replaced by Impaling shot
► Passive ability
► A successful attack on an enemy have 20% of chances to pierce through and also damage the unit just behind
► The effect is recursive at each hit, for example there's 4% of chances to pierce 2 times, 0.8% to pierce 3 times, etc
☼ Fury of blade upgrade renamed to Impaling shot
Notice the inability to attack air ? Its role is to support the units in the front lines with it medium ranged attack, giving it more punch.
Coupled with the reworked Cleavers, they blend together much better : the swordlizards in front soaking damage while a second line of Piercer just behind giving the punch the Cleavers need. Of course, their range won't enable them a 3rd row of attack so your intent to limit ranged is kept !
Cherry on the cake, you may add the reworked skirmisher on the 3rd row. You would have here a very good core of T1 units giving a good scrap at T2.
For Tier 3 they would also fit behind the big steaks, helping them adding more damage in the very front. However it would be the elite unit who makes most of the work, the Piercer would just fill the gap to add some DPS.
The ensnare hits multiple birds with one stone. First it can pin down enemies to help your melee pursuing them. Second it gives an early anti-air without having to rely on unupgraded skirmishers or building a Bestiary. Last but not least a group of Piercer can safely hunt an isolated air unit, even chimeras and wyrms. To put it more simply, it looks more like a crypt fiend.
The strategic drawback of this reworked Piercer is their low range when pursuing enemy casters : they need to threaten themselves more by getting closer. But this is perfectly coherent as it counterbalance its strengths.
Melee spearlizard with great range
This one is trickier. Instead of giving a thrown weapon, we accentuate the range to make it attack directly units across allies.
On one hand we won't have to drastically change its Fury of blade, but in the other hand we have to make it more interesting beside more range.
☼ Range increased from 110 to 225
☼ Base damage increased from 7 to 13
☼ Sides per dice decreased from 11 to 7
☼ Hitpoint increased from 400 to 575
☼ Movement speed increased from 270 to 300
☼ Scale (ahah, scale, cough yeah I stop it) increased from 1.05 to 1.1
☼ Training time decreased from 30 to 27 seconds
☼ New ability passive ability piercing blows : ignores up to 3 damage reduction, and gets bonus damage against medium armor
☼ Fury of blades on trigger stuns for 1s an organic unit if its level is equal or lower than 3
☼ Fury of blades has a recursive effect, meaning it can do a rapid succession of attacks in rare occasions.
On paper, it would be killed 1/1 against a grunt even with full upgrades. Its role is to attack from behind other melee units, but in some case hunting casters with their above average speed in combination of lucky Fury of blades occurrences. Going back at your faction's fluff, this would make it wilder and juicer ! The piercing blow makes the unit more threatening against other basic ranged units by being a soft counter. Of course your faction have much better options, so it's not overlaping much.
I would prefer the ranged alternate than this one because of the redundant melee nature, but both are viable, you call.
Direhorn
A melee siege unit, because your faction isn't supposed to have good ranged.
The unit is broken because it cannot attack buildings lol.
You set wall but no building in the target.
Also the hardened scales upgrade changes it to hero and not fortified. What did you have in mind ? Is it reinforced or hero ?
Before continuing, let's assume this unit can attack buildings.
You have a unit more expensive than a Demolisher with worse stats everywhere, except HP. Speaking of which, it is as durable as a grunt with at least 40 times its mass. Congratulations, your Direhorn is the big cheese cake everyone wants a piece of it.
Of course, you have an upgrade to increase a bit its melee threat with spiked armor & fortified armor.
But this makes this unit even worse for two reasons. First, the more obvious, it reduces its attack speed. Yeah you may though it is a T2 tank so it won't bother from having low attack ? Well it becomes an even worse siege unit. On top of that the attack speed reduction is broken because instead of increasing the attack cooldown by +33% it increases x33 ! Secondly, a significant side effect of that upgrade makes the Direhorn very weak against other siege. In general siege vs siege fights with artillery in long range, but when your already very clogged melee oversaturated by a shitton metric cube of lizards gives you no hope to neutralize these siege, understand that even with a cheaper cost it's not worth it. I don't mean it must counter other siege, I want to say here they become worse in the role you picked.
Even with a purely tanking role, the Devilsaur is much more versatile !
So by having both a doomed strategic presence and an other unit filling better this role, you could simply remove this unit.
HOWEVER, again, it's not fun to simply remove a unit, let's do some research !
So, on paper, this unit does 2 things : tanking and demolishing. Your intentions weren't bad, again it had a terrible execution.
This is how I would rework this unit:
☼ Base damage reduced from 33 to 22
☼ Number of dice increased from 1 to 2
☼ Sides per dice reduced from 21 to 8
☼ Attack cooldown reduced from 3 to 2.5 seconds
☼ Range increased from 110 to 135
☼ Hitpoint increased from 800 to 1500
☼ Food cost increased from 4 to 5
☼ Level increased from 4 to 5
☼ Training time increased from 30 to 40
☼ Hardened scales removed
☼ Sharpened horn renamed to Reinforced head
► Only enemies in front (180°) of the Direhorn have 20% of their inflicted damage dealt to the attacker
► Gives 10% of chances to ignore the damage of any attack coming from the front (180°), but still counts as hit
☼ Gets by default a cleaving attack
► 10% damage spread in a 150 radius against units
► 25% damage spread in a 200 radius against buildings
☼ New passive ability Scale leather
► Reduces melee damage by 2
► Reduces ranged damage by 4
► Reduces building damage against the Direhorn by half (including spiked barricades)
☼ New T3 upgrade Improved scale leather
► Increases the melee damage reduction from 2 to 4
► Increases the ranged damage reduction from 4 to 8
► Gets resistant skin
► Costs 125/150
☼ Gets the same devour ability as the Devilsaur with the same requirement
☼ Devour upgrade cost increased from 75/25 to 100/50
A lot of things are going on, let's break it down. The role of the unit isn't to deal a lot of damage against units, but more against buildings.
Its attack has been adjusted to keep the defense intent without being disarmed. In bonus we can say the Direhorn would love to play with clods of enemy unarmored casters. The cleaving attack is a good idea to start with, but we get either a too strong anti-unit or a too weak anti-building. The solution was to divide it into two types of targets, putting more emphasis on buildings. If the enemy is spamming towers at the same spot, the Direhorn would deal good AoE damage on par with other classic siege units.
This is an organic medieval ram with hard skin and big spikes, so I picked some inspiration from Age of Empires 2 rams (they have a melee AoE attack against buildings).
To live long enough to trample puny stone structures, I put a lot of elements getting together.
First is the HP bonus + hard skin, making the Direhorn looking more like a Mountain giant.
The difference is the heavy armor. Whereas Mountain Giants are literally rocks to put in front of the enemy, soaking almost everything ; I thought that the Direhorn's high defense and cheaper price could be balanced by giving them a weakness to magic attacks (i.e. gryphons, chimeras, destroyers) if the enemy rushes these types of units. So the hard skin upgrade can come handy to both temper its strength in T2 and making it viable in T3.
Then, let's talk about his front defense. A triceratops have a big shield on his head, why not taking the inspiration into the gameplay by giving it a directional bonus defense ? With all of that stacked together, the Direhorn alone still struggles against other melee units.
I may been a big too generous with the defense, but it can be easily nerfed by decrementing some values.
In my games against orcs, having a bunch of melee units hurts a lot when destroying their buildings, even more accentuated by the fact of lacking any potent ranged damage nor battle healing (I used red dragons to destroy their base...).
All of that is made without changing the unit price ! Again, just reducing would make it better cost-efficient but still strategically useless.
Finally, to make it more like a siege unit, it have more ranged damage reduction, furthermore from tower attacks.
So even with an average melee attack, it can grind enemy defenses in the long run while the other big boys take care of the crying townfolks.
Your faction is meant to have big bad lizards rampaging the front, so I just reminded you how far you could go.
Pterosaur
You copied the Hyppogryph, good idea.
You made it less cost efficient, bad idea.
Making it even cheaper would be counter productive, since it would be too weak for its food cost.
Don't worry it wont be a beefy textwall like the Direhorn.
My take would be to make a glass canon : hits harder but shorter lifespan. Your faction wants melee eh ? You'll get better melee.
☼ Base damage increased from 49 to 54
☼ Sides per dice increased from 8 to 9
☼ Attack cooldown reduced from 1.4 to 1 second
☼ New passive ability : Scavenger
► Converts 20% of inflicted damage towards organic units into HP
► Every attack against organic units grant the day lizard regeneration to the Pterosaur for 3 seconds, the time accumulates
Here, it would somewhat fight on par against Hyppogryph plus having more flexibility.
Devilsaur
Here is a perfect example of a well rounded T3 elite unit.
There's however some simple faults in its design.
First being its high cost, making it less interesting to reach a critical mass. It is roughly as strong as a Tauren but with a higher cost.
Second is the medium armor. It excels at melee but is too weak against other elite melee T3. In addition of above average HP and armor it lacks the staying power to be reckoned with.
Remember we have already a tanking unit, we could perfectly make the Devilsaur more interesting as a super heavy shock unit.
Plus, your faction prefer to weaken enemies than boosting yours, with all of that in mind, we can improve the Devilsaur !
☼ Base damage increased from 25 to 35
☼ Number of dices increased from 1 to 2
☼ Attack cooldown increased from 1.65 to 1.8
☼ Range increased from 100 to 150
☼ Attack sound changed from medium chop to heavy chop
☼ Armor type changed to Heavy
☼ Base armor reduced from 4 to 2
☼ Hitpoint increased from 1000 to 1300
☼ Level increased from 4 to 6
☼ Gets cannibalize by default
☼ New passive ability : Primal instinct
► Every attack inflicted or received above 20 damage will increase its attack speed & movement speed by +1%, to a maximum of +20%
► If not attacking or attacked for more than 5 seconds, the bonus decreases by 1 every second until null or triggered again.
► Unlocked from a T3 upgrade, costing 150/150/60s
☼ New passive ability : Apex aura
► Reduces enemy melee damage by 20% within 300 range, doesn't accumulate
► Unlocked from a T3 upgrade, costing 100/125/45s
All of this will make it a better T-Rex than your previous one. We accentuate the apex predator thing, making it more dangerous in the heat of battle.
Its upgrades pushes even forward the idea of monstrous elite unit rampaging enemies : imagine some giant dinosaur in a epic battle against other big targets ! I traded armor for more hitpoints, as it's not supposed to be defensive while being harder to heal, furthermore it will get a weakness against magic damage. The previous medium armor made it too hard to crack even with less HP.
The Devilsaur is supposed to stay in front or maybe rampaging the flanks, so it gets a high dps with bellow-average defenses for its price.
You may think it attacks a bit too slow, but keep in mind the very late game potential with Primal instinct and Apex aura, while (at least temporarily) neutralize a medium sized unit with devour. However against ranged unit the Apex aura doesn't help, making the matchup a bit less one sided.