Custom Race: Ogre Legion 1.3.5 w/AI

[FlameofChange]

☼ This race is actually completely broken due to the worker gather rate and their upgrades. Why not simply put a regular gather rate for gold ?
You got an ogre in your team ? Free additional gold for everyone.
You very quickly swim in gold and it quickly gets boring due to their overall slow movement speed.
☼ Slaves and gladiators have very low utility, beside sacrificing one through the necrolyte ult (else they are just free XP for enemies).
☼ Why getting 1 food basic gatherer unlocked through upgrade while you have peons gathering gold twice (!) as fast ?
☼ Having only one attack and armor upgrade, even expensive, limits the strategic choices.
☼ I would definitely reduce overall attack damage but increase attack rate, which will make the battles juicier.
☼ I'm not against a faction with bellow average heal, but the supply building heal would definitely benefit from being automatic, so you have less micro to care of. Furthermore a 4th hero with a healing ability would be a plus.
☼ Hunters tends to get in the front while formation moving, you better check movement formation indexes so they won't get chomped right away.
☼ All troops would also benefit from the 270 regular movement speed while not getting above it. Speed boosts provided by your support won't make them too swift too.
☼ Like the Iruxi Confederation, your faction suffers from a too high melee count which curses the tactics. Against entrenched enemies it is difficult to engage and pull out, making combat swinging to either sides. Not all units can nuzzle something to hit at the same time.
☼ Drummers not having an attack make them walk into enemy lines when attack moving everything. You might add them an attack, even a shitty one, to stay at range.

I won't make a full review just yet, as I did only one game. Core mechanics are there but really needs balance and polishing. By that I mean it's time to make them fun to use.
Two stars for now until improvements. That doesn't mean your faction is badly made, but has a lot of leverage to be improved. Most of the stuff pointed out are low hanging fruits.

More tests will arrive in the following days. Take this feedback as a first hot take, at the risk of taking back what I have said.

 

[CollectorofStoriesUntold]

I've updated map tp 1.3.1

☼ This race is actually completely broken due to the worker gather rate and their upgrades. Why not simply put a regular gather rate for gold ?
You got an ogre in your team ? Free additional gold for everyone.
You very quickly swim in gold and it quickly gets boring due to their overall slow movement speed.

The gold rate is slightly overlooked on my part. For a good portion of testing, the unit costs were a lot higher, and I got used to the amount of income.

Update 1.3: I've reduced the Runt gold cap from 20 to 15.

☼Slaves and gladiators have very low utility, beside sacrificing one through the necrolyte ult (else they are just free XP for enemies).
☼ Why getting 1 food basic gatherer unlocked through upgrade while you have peons gathering gold twice (!) as fast ?

Runts cost 2 food, harvests 20G and 20/30L (2/4 per hit), and slaves cost 1 food, harvests 10G and 10/20/L (1/3 per hit). Slaves are intended to replace runts for high-keep play and to open up food at low-keep. 2 slaves on lumber outpace a runt. Gladiators are initially included for lore reasons and as an early emergency defense. Though I'm using them in Pit Master AI as their primary forces (AI trains them from Rings).

Update 1.3: I increased Gladiators' damage and armor. Permanent Gladiators no longer require Gladiator Training, making them suitable for early creeping or scouting. Gladiator warriors now deal more damage when grouped together. Summoned ones no longer grant xp.

☼ Having only one attack and armor upgrade, even expensive, limits the strategic choices.

At the time of original development, the faction lacked Ogrekin units, I felt two sets of upgrades were unnecessary given the small number of units.

Update 1.3: I've included Ogrekin hide upgrades.

☼ I would definitely reduce overall attack damage but increase attack rate, which will make the battles juicier.

I see where you are coming from, however I chose the low rate, high damage output to demonstrate the ogre's aesthetic of being strong stumbling giants.

☼ I'm not against a faction with bellow average heal, but the supply building heal would definitely benefit from being automatic, so you have less micro to care of. Furthermore a 4th hero with a healing ability would be a plus.

I agree with you about the need for more healing. Perhaps I could boost Arcane Disruptions' heal/damage output or add AoE healing to the ritual ground.

Update 1.3: To reduce crowding, I have extended the husband's cast range from 200 to 450.
Update 1.3.2: Arcane Disruption Heal/damage increased and Ritual Ground now has the life and growth ability

☼ Hunters tends to get in the front while formation moving, you better check movement formation indexes so they won't get chomped right away.

I had completely forgotten that the stat were there. I couldn't figure out what was wrong and had figured it was something up with map pathing.

Update 1.3: Fixed

☼ All troops would also benefit from the 270 regular movement speed while not getting above it. Speed boosts provided by your support won't make them too swift too.

I see where you are coming from, but won't the increased base make the speed boosts even faster? | 200x0.15=30 230 | 270x0.15=40.5 310.5 |

Update 1.3: Units now have 240 movement speed. Incite Frenzy movement speed reduced from 75% to 25%. | 240x0.25=60 300 |

☼ Like the Iruxi Confederation, your faction suffers from a too high melee count which curses the tactics. Against entrenched enemies it is difficult to engage and pull out, making combat swinging to either sides. Not all units can nuzzle something to hit at the same time.

Its entend for the player to go either with ogre units or transition to ogrekin with little mixing. Replacing Guards with Champions will reduce the pathing and Breakers deal sige dmage to help with building being obstacles. I might increase Gronns AoE damage and/or radius.

Update 1.3: Breakers now deal 25% cleave damage in a 150 radius.

☼ Drummers not having an attack make them walk into enemy lines when attack moving everything. You might add them an attack, even a shitty one, to stay at range.

Your correct. Should have done that in hide sight.

Update 1.3: Drummers now have a 1 magic damage attack at 300 range with formation rank 1.

I won't make a full review just yet, as I did only one game. Core mechanics are there but really needs balance and polishing. By that I mean it's time to make them fun to use.
Two stars for now until improvements. That doesn't mean your faction is badly made, but has a lot of leverage to be improved. Most of the stuff pointed out are low hanging fruits.

More tests will arrive in the following days. Take this feedback as a first hot take, at the risk of taking back what I have said.

Thank's for the quick review any inputs helps. Look at changelog 1.3 and 1.3.2 for more information.

 

[FlameofChange]

The gold rate is slightly overlooked on my part. For a good portion of testing, the unit costs were a lot higher, and I got used to the amount of income.

Update 1.3: I've reduced the Runt gold cap from 20 to 15.

That's still utterly broken. An +50% early game bonus makes you 50% stronger at early game ; increasing global cost is counter productive since it desync the statistic scale with the other factions. After the first game, I had to fix it myself (see bellow for more details).

Runts cost 2 food, harvests 20G and 20/30L (2/4 per hit), and slaves cost 1 food, harvests 10G and 10/20/L (1/3 per hit). Slaves are intended to replace runts for high-keep play and to open up food at low-keep. 2 slaves on lumber outpace a runt. Gladiators are initially included for lore reasons and as an early emergency defense. Though I'm using them in Pit Master AI as their primary forces (AI trains them from Rings).

There's still an overlap in terms of gamedesign. You can throw the slaves and gladiators out of the window without damaging your faction (it even makes it more synthesized). In my later test I transformed the runt like this iirc :
☼ Food cost reduced from 2 to 1
☼ Gold gather rate reduced from 20 to 10
☼ Lumber gather rate reduced from 2-3-4 to 1-1-1
That makes them an heavy peon harder to raid and having a better lumber gather rate (and they benefit from having +10 movement speed compared to a peon). The 100 gold and 20 seconds cost is perfectly justified and makes a good strategical implication of "slow start" ogres. The runt hits hard for a peon which would dissuade other peon rushes, however they are intended to not have any defensive ability (burrow, militia, wisp suicide). I would add them a bit more HP if needed, or making the player start with 3 or 4 of them instead of 5 to avoid second 0 rushes.
If you reaaaaally want to keep the gold bonus, put it as a late game upgrade giving them +1 per trip. Above it would be broken. As (almost) all warcraft 3 mechanics and rhythm is tied to gold gather rate it can be very sensible.

At the time of original development, the faction lacked Ogrekin units, I felt two sets of upgrades were unnecessary given the small number of units.

I would separate the attack and armor from regular/special. Having only 1 attack upgrade is still a main concern of mine no matter the cost.
Even with a small amount of units it has a word to say. I still have to test doomstacks of other unit types.

I see where you are coming from, but won't the increased base make the speed boosts even faster? | 200x0.15=30 230 | 270x0.15=40.5 310.5 |

The goal of a movement speed bonus is to make the unit above average, not less slow. In my tests I also put the base speed of non-heavy units to 270 and I had a much better experience without feeling any kind of swiftness. They are maybe fat but also tall, making bigger steps so it may be equivalent. Of course I never meant them being fast walker. This change made them from a ridiculously slow faction to a coherently slow faction.
Even with this boost and the other self made fixes, I had to make the faction using 100% handicap (current one is 90%, hence the bizarre HP values). Despite all of this, using regular unit composition struggles against normal AI ; which is not a too bad thing since it demonstrate it has no broken units (well... there's one. But that would be for later in this message). On the other hand the ogres may display impressive stats but they don't have much staying power compared to their cost. It is maybe plagued by their too low combat healing.

Arrakoa scout
The latest game I made was doing mass flyers... and oh boi they are utterly broken. Just mass them and you won (with your 3 hero support). Yeah, you may get some losses and they need babysitting so they won't spread out and kill themselves solo on towers, but in terms of stats there's a great problem for 4 reasons
☼ High damage per dice value coupled with sensible attack speed
☼ Heavy armor
☼ Low cost
☼ High range

For cheaper than a rifleman you get a flyer with an absurd value. You can stack a lot of DPS within your food capacity and they receive neutral from piercing attacks (which was MEANT to counter flying units). Spam their buildings and right click on your hero, you get an almost infinite supply of wallmart A-10 warthogs. And it was AFTER the changes I made earlier in the message. There's two way to balance it
☼ Heavier scout
► Damage per dice reduced from 6 to 4
► Cost increased from 215 20 2 to 215 45 3
► Armor type changed from heavy to light
► Armor reduced from 1 to 0
► HP increased from 325 to 450
► Range reduced from 500 to 400
☼ Lighter scout
► Damage per dice reduced from 6 to 3
► Cost reduced from 215 20 2 to 170 30 2
► Armor type changed from heavy to unarmored
► Armor reduced from 1 to 0
► Range reduced from 500 to 400
► Detection no longer need upgrade
► New upgrade to give them a 15-20% evasion

However, beside their scouting role I don't see much use... but that's not a key strategical element.

Butcher den
Why do they cost gold only ? Is this an oversight ? The only exceptions are necropolis and wood deposits. You also might to remove their mana as it has some synergy with mana related abilities (I can't think of one actually, but take in consideration other potential custom factions) ; replacing it with another kind of custom value of your discretion.

Hero stats
There's a problem for the stats of your heroes. On average they need to start with 50 total stats and +6 total stat per level.
Right now your ogres have better scaling, beware of the power creep !
☼ Necrolyte : 60 base stats, +7 per level
☼ Magilord : 60 base stats, +6 per level
☼ Battlelord : 60 base stats, +6.5 per level
"But ogres are stronger !" yes and no, everyone would have the same thought about their favorite faction and we would all have equally broken heroes which all overshadows the vanilla ones.
However you may instead slightly increase their base HP, damage and armor if balance is a concern.

I think there's more to talk about your faction after more tests & exploits, but that's all for today.
Remember I see it in a broad balance perspective with the other vanilla factions.

 

[CollectorofStoriesUntold]

That's still utterly broken. An +50% early game bonus makes you 50% stronger at early game ; increasing global cost is counter productive since it desync the statistic scale with the other factions. After the first game, I had to fix it myself (see bellow for more details).
There's still an overlap in terms of gamedesign. You can throw the slaves and gladiators out of the window without damaging your faction (it even makes it more synthesized). In my later test I transformed the runt like this iirc :
☼ Food cost reduced from 2 to 1
☼ Gold gather rate reduced from 20 to 10
☼ Lumber gather rate reduced from 2-3-4 to 1-1-1
That makes them an heavy peon harder to raid and having a better lumber gather rate (and they benefit from having +10 movement speed compared to a peon). The 100 gold and 20 seconds cost is perfectly justified and makes a good strategical implication of "slow start" ogres. The runt hits hard for a peon which would dissuade other peon rushes, however they are intended to not have any defensive ability (burrow, militia, wisp suicide). I would add them a bit more HP if needed, or making the player start with 3 or 4 of them instead of 5 to avoid second 0 rushes.
If you reaaaaally want to keep the gold bonus, put it as a late game upgrade giving them +1 per trip. Above it would be broken. As (almost) all warcraft 3 mechanics and rhythm is tied to gold gather rate it can be very sensible.

Update 1.3.3: Runt's Food cost reduced from 2 to 1, Gold gather rate reduced from 20 to 10 and Lumber gather rate reduced from 1-4 to 1-2
Slave's Lumber gather rate reduced from 1-3 to 1-2

I chose to keep the slaves and gladiators. While I agree that removing them would have no negative effect on the faction, they are part of the ogre lore, thus I presume it wouldn't hurt to keep them in for players to play around with. I also built a forth Ai around them.

The goal of a movement speed bonus is to make the unit above average, not less slow. In my tests I also put the base speed of non-heavy units to 270 and I had a much better experience without feeling any kind of swiftness. They are maybe fat but also tall, making bigger steps so it may be equivalent. Of course I never meant them being fast walker. This change made them from a ridiculously slow faction to a coherently slow faction.
Even with this boost and the other self made fixes, I had to make the faction using 100% handicap (current one is 90%, hence the bizarre HP values). Despite all of this, using regular unit composition struggles against normal AI ; which is not a too bad thing since it demonstrate it has no broken units (well... there's one. But that would be for later in this message). On the other hand the ogres may display impressive stats but they don't have much staying power compared to their cost. It is maybe plagued by their too low combat healing.

Arrakoa scout
The latest game I made was doing mass flyers... and oh boi they are utterly broken. Just mass them and you won (with your 3 hero support). Yeah, you may get some losses and they need babysitting so they won't spread out and kill themselves solo on towers, but in terms of stats there's a great problem for 4 reasons
☼ High damage per dice value coupled with sensible attack speed
☼ Heavy armor
☼ Low cost
☼ High range

For cheaper than a rifleman you get a flyer with an absurd value. You can stack a lot of DPS within your food capacity and they receive neutral from piercing attacks (which was MEANT to counter flying units). Spam their buildings and right click on your hero, you get an almost infinite supply of wallmart A-10 warthogs. And it was AFTER the changes I made earlier in the message. There's two way to balance it
☼ Heavier scout
► Damage per dice reduced from 6 to 4
► Cost increased from 215 20 2 to 215 45 3
► Armor type changed from heavy to light
► Armor reduced from 1 to 0
► HP increased from 325 to 450
► Range reduced from 500 to 400
☼ Lighter scout
► Damage per dice reduced from 6 to 3
► Cost reduced from 215 20 2 to 170 30 2
► Armor type changed from heavy to unarmored
► Armor reduced from 1 to 0
► Range reduced from 500 to 400
► Detection no longer need upgrade
► New upgrade to give them a 15-20% evasion

However, beside their scouting role I don't see much use... but that's not a key strategical element.

Thanks for revisions. The scout was based on the base harpy creep with little changes.

Update 1.3.3: I went with your Lighter scout outline.

Butcher den
Why do they cost gold only ? Is this an oversight ? The only exceptions are necropolis and wood deposits. You also might to remove their mana as it has some synergy with mana related abilities (I can't think of one actually, but take in consideration other potential custom factions) ; replacing it with another kind of custom value of your discretion.

This was indeed a over sight.

Update 1.3.3: Gold cost rate reduced from 205 to 180 and Lumber cost increased from 0 to 40.

Hero stats
There's a problem for the stats of your heroes. On average they need to start with 50 total stats and +6 total stat per level.
Right now your ogres have better scaling, beware of the power creep !
☼ Necrolyte : 60 base stats, +7 per level
☼ Magilord : 60 base stats, +6 per level
☼ Battlelord : 60 base stats, +6.5 per level
"But ogres are stronger !" yes and no, everyone would have the same thought about their favorite faction and we would all have equally broken heroes which all overshadows the vanilla ones.
However you may instead slightly increase their base HP, damage and armor if balance is a concern.

I think there's more to talk about your faction after more tests & exploits, but that's all for today.
Remember I see it in a broad balance perspective with the other vanilla factions.

The higher base stats was i mis count on my part. I total the stats to 60 rather than 50.

Update 1.3.3:

• Battlelord now has 25+3 strength, 15+2 intelligence, 10+1 Agility
• Magilord now has 12+1.5 strength, 26+2.25 intelligence, 12+2.25 Agility
• Necrolyte now has 10+2 strength, 25+2 intelligence, 15+2 Agility

 

[deepstrasz]

There are definitely some nice and innovative ideas there. A bit all over the place with the unit roles but maybe concentrate more on upgrading them in various forms instead of cluttering the unit roster with similar stuff.

Approved.

---

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[Shido]

My boys start playing drum? I guess my Kodo Jockey has a rival now.

 

[The Nightmare Book]

This race... I see that your altered melee race creation changed, if we compare the Ogre Legion race to your more recent Kingdom of Stormgarde release.
I think that this race is quite strong. Maybe too much.

I understand - they are frigging OGRES, the might of Gronns, powerful and full of vigor like their orc descendants. But I did not understand this race - what is the point of using a slave laborer, if a normal ogre worker is not as costly as he "seems to be", compared to the slave?
And the Ring of Power mechanic - it comes way too late to taste it, cause my Ogre Necromancer & bunch of guards & shooters kill everything in their sight.

But, honestly, seeing an unusual custom melee race is always a pleasure for my eyes.
If you want to see ogres deeper than "Bam boom fart he-he"-ones, then you should try this custom race.
Why Ogre Legion have arakkoa?

 

[CollectorofStoriesUntold]

This race... I see that your altered melee race creation changed, if we compare the Ogre Legion race to your more recent Kingdom of Stormgarde release.
I think that this race is quite strong. Maybe too much.

I understand - they are frigging OGRES, the might of Gronns, powerful and full of vigor like their orc descendants. But I did not understand this race - what is the point of using a slave laborer, if a normal ogre worker is not as costly as he "seems to be", compared to the slave?
And the Ring of Power mechanic - it comes way too late to taste it, cause my Ogre Necromancer & bunch of guards & shooters kill everything in their sight.

But, honestly, seeing an unusual custom melee race is always a pleasure for my eyes.
If you want to see ogres deeper than "Bam boom fart he-he"-ones, then you should try this custom race.
Why Ogre Legion have arakkoa?

I appreciate the review. I know the ogres seem to be a little OP; I had difficulty balancing it while keeping the feel of their might. They will be getting some tweaking at some point.

Addressing the slave laborer. In earlier versions, the Runt was equal to two laborers; the idea was in the late game, when resources were stocked, to swap to slaves to open food. Laborers were also to be used expendable fighters in a pinch. However, by the time I changed the Runt, I had already created an AI for them, and I didn't want to have that time go to waste, so I left them in. In the next update I'll probably disable them for the player.

The Ring of Trails and Ritual Grounds mechanic becomes increasingly useful in free-for-all or team games with three or more players. When facing late units, it is more helpful in the transitioning.

The reason the legion has the arakkoa scout was I had difficulty finding air units for a Draenor/Outland themed unit. So I used the Arakkoa as they were allied at one point with the ancient ogre empire. However, several Rylak skins and models have been released on the hive since then, so I'll most likely be replacing the scout in a future update.

Once again thanks for review. It a joy to watch your video. After watching I realize I forgot to enable Victory conditions. If you evey have any idea on improvements or thing to change, free feel to provide input.

I'm currently working on the next update of my Custom Race: Cult of the Flesh Weavers, I've posted the updated tech tree if you want an idea of what coming.
2.1 Tech Tree