Plague/Scourge Race ideas?

[PajdomanMokri]

I'm making a race on my map that creates blight with all their buildings (like disease is spreading), ever building has an aura that deals 10 damage per second to enemy units and goes through spell immunity. Most of the buildings have abilities like locust swarm, parasite, etc.
Now, you might think this is overpowered, but the catch is that if a unit from this race goes off blight, it instantly dies. In addition to it, all buildings are organic, meaning that spells can be cast to damage them.

The goal of this race is to create unique gameplay style, where the player would focus on expanding the blight from his base to the enemy base, instead of just sending army of units, but also to create challenge to enemies, where they would be forced to retreat from a fight, and instead try to take away the blight.
In short, the plague race can win against other players if fighting on blight, but needs to grow constantly to maintain that power.
It's like the entire race is a single organism, buildings are its organs, and the units are like fleas or something, that lives on the bigger organism.

Now, I need some ideas on how to make that race, add more features to it and remove those which are a bit too much.

What type of units should I make? Techtree? What should "Town Hall" type unit be like? Should there be any heroes?

PS: I think it's worth mentioning that I also need unique way of harvesting resources and building buildings. And that unit production should only be through spells like Parasite, Carrion Beetles, etc.

PS 2: If it's possible to make another type of blight, different from undead one, ti would be great, but if not, it's not that big of a deal.

Anyhow, It's a good idea to start with, but I need some more creative people to think of more concepts, scrap my concepts that are not that good as they seem (provide the reason, please, I might have overlooked something).

 

[Ardenian]

10 damage is by far too much, if it has a greater range than melee, just saying.

Alright, here are my thoughts:
Your race is based on disease/blight, corrupting life and organic material.
One way for this race to harvest resources could be to leech off trees, completely ignoring gold.
You could reduce the resources this race receives from one tree, compared to other races,
to give it some balance.

About unit creation, you state you would like the unit creation be based on spells.
What do you think about something like Keepers or 'Broodmothers', strong solo units being able to cast these spells and functioning as generals/tactical support ?

For different strategies, two obvious ones coming to my mind would be either mass summon of small units, parasites, beetles and such or to fcous on some units ( maybe only one ?) and empowering these.
You could even link it to the race buildings, making them partly moveable ( like the Ancients).

About PS 2: Yes, you can create an alternate blight ( replacing any default terrain type your map uses with a custom one).
Interacting with these tiles is heavier though.

 

[PajdomanMokri]

10 damage is by far too much, if it has a greater range than melee, just saying.

Alright, here are my thoughts:
Your race is based on disease/blight, corrupting life and organic material.
One way for this race to harvest resources could be to leech off trees, completely ignoring gold.
You could reduce the resources this race receives from one tree, compared to other races,
to give it some balance.

About unit creation, you state you would like the unit creation be based on spells.
What do you think about something like Keepers or 'Broodmothers', strong solo units being able to cast these spells and functioning as generals/tactical support ?

For different strategies, two obvious ones coming to my mind would be either mass summon of small units, parasites, beetles and such or to fcous on some units ( maybe only one ?) and empowering these.
You could even link it to the race buildings, making them partly moveable ( like the Ancients).

About PS 2: Yes, you can create an alternate blight ( replacing any default terrain type your map uses with a custom one).
Interacting with these tiles is heavier though.

Well... The goal is to have a race that would be hard to fight in a conventional way, so other players try the tactic of limiting its blight.
Also, auras don't stack so its a flat 10 damage, it won't be 100 if i put 10 buildings around a unit. But the numbers aren't the problem, I'll balance it out when I finish making the race.

So, should I make a unit with autocast ability that gets 1 lumber for every tree in X range? Or do you maybe had a better idea on mind?

Having Broodmothers sounds like a good idea, with a little modification. Do you think it would be better to have them from beginning or to research them and have them later in the game (but limited to max of 2-3 of them)?

Also, do you know any good models for a race like this? I'm not having any luck with my searches.

 

[Ardenian]

10 is still a lot. Imagine, a Footman has 240 health, even without any
resistance he would die within 24 seconds and considering there is resistance,
even faster, maybe within 10 seconds or less.

You should do it the way you want it to. I only make suggestions

You could use the same mechanic as the wisps
or just make a worker Leecher who does basically the same as the common workers, but faster. Dunno, that autocast idea does not appeal to me.
However, that autocast ability could be a good idea if you have a moveable caster, a caster you can walk around with, like a Harvester.

Hm, you could give the player one initial one, but less Leechers than workers other races receive.
Else, I would base the whole combat on them, limiting their total count or
heavily increasing their food cost.

Try browsing the model and skins section without any keywords, but after race.
It may take a while, but you will find a lot more models you can use.
Remember, there are also a lot of other sites with wc3 resources.

 

[PajdomanMokri]

10 is still a lot. Imagine, a Footman has 240 health, even without any
resistance he would die within 24 seconds and considering there is resistance,
even faster, maybe within 10 seconds or less.

You should do it the way you want it to. I only make suggestions

You could use the same mechanic as the wisps
or just make a worker Leecher who does basically the same as the common workers, but faster. Dunno, that autocast idea does not appeal to me.
However, that autocast ability could be a good idea if you have a moveable caster, a caster you can walk around with, like a Harvester.

Hm, you could give the player one initial one, but less Leechers than workers other races receive.
Else, I would base the whole combat on them, limiting their total count or
heavily increasing their food cost.

Try browing the model and skins section without any keywords, but after race.
It may take a while, but you will find a lot more models you can use.
Remember, there are also a lot of other sites with wc3 resources.

Thx for the suggestions. I'll try to combine them with my idea. If you get more ideas, let me know.

 

[Ardenian]

You are welcome and good luck!

What about a Disease Walker ? An invisible unit, like the Undead ghost, emitting blight
around itself ( or the terrain type the race uses) ?
The trick could be to positionate these ghosts without letting them die in the battle and
enable your forces to move forward on the emitted disease.
Additionally, he could have an ability to temporarily transforming an area into blight.

 

[cleavinghammer]

While the concept is interesting, there's likely to be a major problem with pathfinding: if the shortest path between the current position and destination goes off the blight, the player is suddenly going to find himself short one army. Not to mention anyone with Dispel Magic/Disenchant can cheerfully remove entire armies from existence in a few seconds. Maybe give them severe handicaps when they're off blight, or rapid negative health regen when off it?

A sacrificial unit that creates blight where it dies or a siege unit that creates blight wherever it attacks.

For defense, have the blight react to the presence of enemies by randomly spawning zombies as long as the enemy is around.

The SC2 mechanics like increased speed and teleporting anywhere there's blight could be useful.

 

[PajdomanMokri]

While the concept is interesting, there's likely to be a major problem with pathfinding: if the shortest path between the current position and destination goes off the blight, the player is suddenly going to find himself short one army. Not to mention anyone with Dispel Magic/Disenchant can cheerfully remove entire armies from existence in a few seconds. Maybe give them severe handicaps when they're off blight, or rapid negative health regen when off it?

A sacrificial unit that creates blight where it dies or a siege unit that creates blight wherever it attacks.

For defense, have the blight react to the presence of enemies by randomly spawning zombies as long as the enemy is around.

The SC2 mechanics like increased speed and teleporting anywhere there's blight could be useful.

Pahtfinding is not much of a problem, if a player is paying attention where he moves his units.

I didn't think of that dispelling thing. That could be a problem...
Maybe if I made an upgrade that would make my buildings silence whoever tries to cast Dispel Magic? Would that work?

Teleporting anywhere there's blight, even though it's a good idea, would be broken, because I would be able to destroy undead players in minutes by teleporting to their blight.

I just tested it, Priest cannot dispel blight from under buildings that have blight create ability, so that's ok.

 

[cleavinghammer]

Not necessarily, you could have a negative buff that gets applied just after the teleport if enemy buildings are close by, leaving the attackers vulnerable.

 

[PajdomanMokri]

Not necessarily, you could have a negative buff that gets applied just after the teleport if enemy buildings are close by, leaving the attackers vulnerable.

Wouldn't it be easier to make teleport to player buildings? Because if there is no blight, the building is dead, like all other units, and there is nobody to teleport to on unblighted area.