Techtree Contest #10 - Poll

[BlackRangerXIII]

Mythology
Create a new race based on Mythology, be it Real Life (Such as Greek, Hindu, Egyptian, Celtic and so on.) or fictional (Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth and so on)

Welcome to the poll for Techtree Contest #10! Please read through the rules before voting!

• Each user can only vote once in the poll. (remove this for a multiple choice poll)
• You cannot vote for yourself. If a voter has the same IP as the author then the vote will not be counted and it may result in the disqualification of the entry.
• You cannot create multiple accounts to vote for an entry in the poll. If a voter has been found to be using multiple accounts none of the voters votes will count in the final result.
• You cannot bribe users for votes. Contestants who break this rule will be disqualified and given negative reputation.

• First Place: 45 reputation points and your entry on the award icon
  
• Second Place: 30 reputation points and an award icon
  
• Third Place: 15 reputation points and an award icon

1. xYours Trulyx - Cthulu
2. Spellbound - British Folktales
3. N41 - Egyptian Mythology
4. Marcos_M - Children of the Forest
5. CLK Eclipse - FAKE HEROES
6. apcrabnightlive - Japanese Mythology
7. Astaroth Zion - Aztec Empire

• Kam Ghostseer

Theme	How well the various elements of the Faction (including aesthetics & design) fit together in a thematic manner such that they feel like they are representative of the given Faction, as well as that of the chosen Contest Theme. Well-fitting & polished aesthetics which complement a cohesive Theme will be graded well; poorly-considered or lacking Thematic elements will result in a poor score.	10
Gameplay	How well the various elements of the Faction work together to achieve the tactical synergy & gameplay style the Faction has, as well as how efficiently each element performs its particular function. Strategic systems that endow an identity to the Faction, comprehensive & well-though-out roles which complement a cohesive Faction will be graded well; ill-considered, insufficient or over-compensating roles will lose points.	20
Balance	Indicates how comparable the Faction is in terms of 'playability'; i.e. the ideal Faction should win/lose 50% of the time against others of it's class. Overpowered or Underpowered units/heroes/abilities/etc will result in a poor score; properly balanced elements will mean a good score.	10
Creativity	How original the design of the Faction is in terms of innovative ideas, clever implementations, or creative concepts. Innovation and creativity will be rewarded; re-use of existing elements & poor originality will result in a poor score.	10

• 75% of the winner shall be determined by the contest's appointed judge(s).
• 25% of the winner shall be determined by the results of a public poll.

Inviting your friends to vote for you, bribing random members with rep and otherwise cheating with the VB poll system will get you DISQUALIFIED, BANNED from future contests, -REPPED, and possibly INFRACTED. So don't do it!

This includes, but is not limited to, sending PMs out to various users, getting other people to send those PMs, advertising this contest on other sites with the intention to gain more votes (whether it is explicitly stated or not), and so on. If you are suspected of cheating, the staff will notify you and interrogate you (hopefully) over PMs. <3​

 

[BlackRangerXIII]

Due to the Request of Ralle, I've started the poll myself and I'm waiting for it to be approved.

StoPCampinGn00b: Poll approved.

 

[AditTechno]

Seems exciting. I can't wait who will win.

 

[Yours Truly]

Hurm,didn't notice this. Looks like crabgirl has the upper hand here.
Lemme test and vote for those I like (If I'm not stingy enough >:])

 

[Wasabee]

I didn't noticed the poll too.

 

[Spellbound]

It just occurred to me, have any of you been using the newest patch to make your maps? Because I never updated my wc3, I've been hearing too many annoying issues to make the upgrade, not to mention I'm running windows 10, so who knows what can of worms updating my game might open?

 

[AditTechno]

Hurm,didn't notice this. Looks like crabgirl has the upper hand here.
Lemme test and vote for those I like (If I'm not stingy enough >:])

I'm the first, man.

All I can say about yours is it's interesting to play. Not too overpowered. But your bug is on the tooltip. Check it back. It's one of the items in Sacred Orb and the whisperer training upgrade.

I've not making tests on the others yet. After that, I'm sure who I want to vote. Is this single vote only?

 

[Yours Truly]

That's one of the bugs I discovered. Too bad I can't change it because it was after the deadline.Apparently,yes,this is a single vote.

 

[Wasabee]

It seems like the poll isn't noticed that much.

 

[AditTechno]

I like Spellbound's race. It's really creative.

 

[Yours Truly]

Then go vote for him then

 

[AditTechno]

I didn't test on everyone yet.

Yours is also good.

 

[Yours Truly]

 

[AditTechno]

I mean your race is good.

 

[StoPCampinGn00b]

Cool stuff. I wish the Cthulhu one had a screenshot, though.

Oh yeah, poll approved and social media posted.

 

[BlackRangerXIII]

Cool stuff. I wish the Cthulhu one had a screenshot, though.

Oh yeah, poll approved and social media posted.

Thank you n00b
Can you Update the Notices too with the phrase that i've requested you to use?

 

[AditTechno]

I did review on some of them i can play. Sorry apcrabnightlive, i can't open yours.
Note: Just a review to vote

CLK Eclipse's one i can't download.

Spellbound has fun gameplay. But we have to get our troop production to the ring nearer. It's creative. Expanding base is great.

xYours Trulyx is creative. It is good to use the building to gather gold. But the tooltip is the problem. Expanding wil do after the gold mine is collapsed.

N41 is good. But the gameplay of it is like original example like the humans building an expansion. I don't know what to do after promoting Kheper to Builder Kheper. Can he return?

Astaroth Zion's one is hard.

So, as xYours Trulyx has only tooltip problem, i vote for xYours Trulyx

 

[Yours Truly]

AditTechno

Have you tested Marcos' entry? I think N41's Builder Kheper is for constructing (obviously). There are some bugs that you might have passed by. But thanks for the vote,really appreciate it.

Spellbound

Seems like no one is replying to your question,I think most of us updated our Warcraft patch (1.26)

 

[Spellbound]

I ended up updating to test the maps. apcrabnightlive's and Astaroth Zion's still wouldn't show up in the in-game list so I had to check them out through the editor.

 

[N41]

I don't know what to do after promoting Kheper to Builder Kheper. Can he return?

No. You can't return, but you can train new Kheper for harvesting.

I think N41's Builder Kheper is for constructing (obviously).

Yeah! you got it...

I ended up updating to test the maps. apcrabnightlive's and Astaroth Zion's still wouldn't show up in the in-game list so I had to check them out through the editor.

It shows for me... I haven't made any updates though...

 

[Wasabee]

I did review on some of them i can play. Sorry apcrabnightlive, i can't open yours.

I ended up updating to test the maps. apcrabnightlive's and Astaroth Zion's still wouldn't show up in the in-game list so I had to check them out through the editor.

Really? I'm not aware of the map being invisible in the game list. Well my map works fine here.
Can I try to reupload the map?

The only similar problem I've seen is N41's map, the map shows but it can't be played.

 

[Spellbound]

I tried playing those maps both in 1.26 and 1.27. Only the two I mentioned above would not show in 1.27. Most didn't show in 1.26. I have no idea what could be causing this., and I doubt it has anything to do with the maps themselves.

 

[Wasabee]

My Warcraft is still 1.26 though. Maybe if I tried saving the map in 1.27 it might possibly work?

 

[BlackRangerXIII]

I use 1.27 and i recommend you start using it

 

[Wasabee]

I'll try saving the map in 1.27.

 

[AditTechno]

If this is somewhat a multi-choice poll, I would have also voted for Spellbound.

 

[Wasabee]

If this is somewhat a multi-choice poll, I would have also voted for Spellbound.

No, you can only vote once.


Edit: I updated my game to 1.27 patch. Now, I can't play my map. Any thoughts?
The JNGP still displays as patch 1.21b while the normal editor is 1.27 but I can't save the map with the 1.27 editor.

 

[BlackRangerXIII]

Edit: I updated my game to 1.27 patch. Now, I can't play my map. Any thoughts?
The JNGP still displays as patch 1.21b while the normal editor is 1.27 but I can't save the map with the 1.27 editor.

Try opening as an administrator

 

[VeljkoM]

I shall first post my personal thoughts on each race before voting. I won't be scoring because I have no idea how to convert opinions to numbers.
If I seem harsh and negative with my opinions that is because I'll focus more on faults than virtues but doesn't mean I haven't enjoyed your techtree. It will probably take me race per day.

Also I'll be comparing with standard Wc3 techtree design style so some complaints won't mater if your race focuses more on unique gameplay. So let us begin with first race on the list!

Cthulhu Race

Initial Thoughts

An interesting attempt yet very little is based on Cthulhu mythos. This race could easily be labeled as faceless. If you came here expecting shoggoths, starspawn and other menagerie of dreaded mythos you won't find them.

Pros: Custom Resource Gathering; Two custom unit training; Invisibility Detection; Secondary Base defense.
Cons: Lacking unit designs and heroes; No expansion before tier 3; No Dispel.

Special Con: Map uses default 1.0 patch instead of latest patch. A very common problem with most map makers but only an actual issue for Altered Melee maps. I am wiling to bet that every single competitor made this mistake.

Buildings and Base Defense

- Main building has unpatched damage of Necropolis (that is how I knew map uses in game setting of v1.0)
Standard building selection and there is an actual secondary defense besides towers. Good start!

- Resource harvesting is easy to manage but perhaps is too good. Gold draining is very fast and efficient and starts at full power while other races have to invest in workers to increase gathering to 50 gold.
Lumber harvesting suffers for not being a possibility when you start the game but must invest 200 gold.

- Construction is fun and my only complaint is that units are often randomly misplaced instead of construction being canceled.
*Also there could be an issue that main building builds buildings, upgrades slaves and upgrades tiers at same time. It is cluttered

- Being able to relocate base only in Tier 3 is an extreme handicap.

- Dream Crystal is fine design of pop producing building. I just think it is very silly that it uses Holy Light, Death Coil would have been more logical. But really Moon Well healing would be way better because it would be auto-cast and convenient to use.
*All Seeing Eye might need to be moved to Tier 2. No race gets detection at tier 1 except from Item Shop (Dust of Appearance).

- Towers are an overkill, and I bet it was based of Naga Sunken Guardian. Fortified armor and sky high attack. I only don't get why would anyone even bother with the version of tower that sacrifices cultist when the other alternative has way better damage.

- The Flow of Life is a nice emergency security measure but it should be available earlier (maybe weaker version). I experienced a bug when I merged 6 warriors with 6 Waters and only 3 Warriors survived.

Units

Special Mention before we review units!
What I find curious is that there are 3 training methods:
-The slave promotion which I really even though it is very expensive and slave/cultist step is unnecessary micromanagement;
-The caster relic merging. I don't like this one because there is no tooltip and it is too fast;
-Normal training which feels out of place.

First Tier

Slave - Template unit got nothing to say here. Harvesting corpses is necessary idea since you aren't capable of creating of expansion bases, but 5 gold per corpse is too low to make this feature worth to use.
The bomb thing is funny idea but wasn't useful to me since you have to manually activate explosion instead of just using "Kaboom!" ability and no idea how much damage it causes.

Cultist - Advanced template unit. In my opinion Slave could replace this unit and it would reduce the needed micromanagement of individually converting each slave with main building. Also cultist costs 2 food but ignores pop limit.

Warrior - 245 gold is a lot for Tier 1 Melee unit (170+75). Bash ability is unbalanced idea, you don't give stun on mass produced unit.
Running water is interesting alternate for late tier melee unit upgrade.

Huntsmen - 225 gold is kinda high for basic ranged unit (140+75). Also why is building requirement Tentacle Pit > Kraken Pit (Tower Upgrade) instead of Enchantment Hall (Upgrade Building). Also unit uses heavy armor instead of medium armor. Double Shot is an ok ability.
*Armor upgrade is lacking

Second Tier

Lurker - Really basic flying unit. Doesn't really fit the standard tier 2 air unit design as it lacks defining role like AA or Anti-Tower or Anti-Caster.
The poison ability really shouldn't need an upgrade. Overall an ok unit as an alternative to huntsmen since those two units overlap in purpose (pierce damage).
*Attack upgrade is lacking for this unit

Weirdling - I don't understand the point of this unit. You already have Warrior as melee unit and normal damage dealer.
*Attack Upgrade is Lacking.

Illuminator - A proper caster unit, my only complain is that Tentacle Protection should have been an Auto-Cast ability based of Inner Fire.
Also should use Unarmored instead of Medium Armor, it is a caster not basic a ranged unit.

Wavewaver - An improper caster, all abilities are damage dealing. Direct Damage abilities are for Heroes not mass produced units, especially AoE damage abilities. What offensive casters need is disruptive abilities that penalize enemy units or crowd control. Also rather high attack damage for a caster.
Also should use Unarmored instead of Medium Armor.

Gladiator - The only Siege unit. Stats are as good as Tier 3 melee units which is problematic. Building Crusher is kinda an overkill as Siege Damage already deals 2x damage (it works on Tinker because he is Hero). Charge is good thinking to help this unit to reach enemy buildings. And it would be real nice if at least one ability was initially available.

Third Tier

Fanatic and Marauder - Both are tier 3 heavy melee units and that is very redundant.
\Fanatic is weaker and has passive upgrade to deal increased damage to cavalry. A non existent category in Wc3.
\Marauder is better choice though I don't think he really needs Avanagance (which is not even a word). One passive is really enough per Tier 3 melee unit. Or maybe at least make avanagance available without an upgrade and reduce healing to balance it (not sure what is the current amount).

Whisperer- I guess this is supposed to be an anti caster but it isn't designed very well. Tier 3 is too late for anti-caster, piercing attack would be a lot better as it counters the caster armor and magic immunity would help a lot.
And on the other hand this unit can cast Locust. A Hero Ultimate ability. Direct Damage and Ultimate abilities really shouldn't be given to mass produced units.

Flying Terror - I have an issue when a unit has an ability to instantly kill a unit. Air Devour ok at least unit can be saved but stone gaze just kills a ground unit. Also ground targeting attack should have been magic. And of course this unit has heavy armor instead of small armor.

Overall: Techtree attempts to follow standard Wc3 design but it doesn't succeed.
1) There is a noticeable lack of second siege unit (Long Ranged), proper anti-caster (at least basic Dispel) and flying anti-tower.
2) Some units have problem with their intended roles or are redundant.

As Kyrib0 likes to remind me often the unit number ideally should be 12. There are more than 12 units here. Unless if we don't count lumber harvester and count slave and cultist same same unit then number is the proper 12. (yet we have roles missing and redundant units)

Heroes

I can already sum up my opinion of all 4 heroes. They all have waaaay to many direct Damage spells and mostly AoE. If you would kindly take a look at standard heroes you will notice they have at most 2 direct damage abilities per hero.

Cthulhu - A rather weird Class Name, I expected Grand Priest of the Old Ones.

Anyway standard strength hero with nice balance of damage dealing ability, support ability and tanking ability.

Byatis - Strange class name. I am unfamiliar with this god though, honestly I expected Dagon.

Yet another tank strength hero who kinda overlaps with Cthulhu. Melee ranged single target spell is unpractical and Magic Resistance is too good ability. But the really OP ability is unavoidable killing Doom Gaze. This hero at level one can walk to red level creeps and kill most powerful unit. This is an Ult Level ability.

The King in Yellow whom I shall not name - same naming thing as previous heroes.

This a rather unimaginative hero all he has is multi direct damage abilities. Special mention goes to Emerald Strike which I *think* is melee ranged AoE on squishy intelligence hero (I wasn't able to use it properly).

Head Cultist - I am surprised. Both by class being an actual class and that mortal is in same ranking as Gods.

This one is more versatile intelligence hero unlike King in Yellow. Multi unit damage ability, static summon, passive (an odd direct damage passive for caster) and ult summon.

Overall: Two tanking Str heroes and two Intelligence DPS heroes. There is no proper hero killer and there is a lack of supportive abilities

 

[BlackRangerXIII]

Sad news everyone
My C drive that has the OS crashed and I need to reformat my pc so i won't be giving support for a week or two

 

[Wasabee]

Recovered a backup file abut it only works at patch 1.26.

 

[VeljkoM]

Ok here the race of the day. But before I start I do hope the next 5 races won't also have automated resources harvesting and main building as builder like Cthulhu and British Folk here. I get it, the human/orc style is boring but even night elves and undead use workers to manage economy instead of just one button = 100% efficiency. Base and Economy management are RTS feature not a problem to remove.

British Folktales

The first real mythology that I am reviewing and Heroes and Units definitely are inspired by actual fairy beings from Celtic mythology of British Isles even with artistic liberties taken. I am sad though Dullahan didn't make it.
Race itself had a lot of effort regarding appearance and base custom features but actual techtree the units and heroes suffered.

PROS: Custom Resource Harvesting and Construction; Good Hero designs; Beautiful base aesthetics and functionality.
CONS: Lack of units and heroes; No Indivisibility Detection on a unit or building (One Hero does have detection); No unit with healing (mitigated partially by healing in base);
Special Con: Map uses default 1.0 patch instead of latest patch. So far two competitors failed to set map to use latest patch, will next five do any better? My money is still on "nobody remembered"!

Buildings and Base Defense

- Automated resource harvesting for both gold and lumber. Gold is balanced as it takes 5 food but still 100% operational right at start of the game which gives it advantage over other races.
Lumber is also automated but isn't limited by food and for 200 gold you get 50 wood income. Also for me it randomly stopped harvesting wood when I made several more Enchanted Meadows.
Overall while resources mechanic is beautiful to look at, it is far more efficient than other races with minimal effort expected from player.

- Custom building construction once again great and it doesn't teleport units if you construct building on top of them and instead units are ordered to move.

- Main building must be the toughest building ever as it gains damage reduction for each constructed building and gets an upgrade for 1000hp. While all of that is impressive as base defense it doesn't really offer protection from enemy attack. Still better some secondary defense system than none.

- Tower is standard, and the fairy attachments is a nice touch.

- Magic Mushroom is kinda buildable fountain of healing. Sure it doesn't heal all the time but you have several of them and they heal periodically without any cost like mana or gold.

- I really like that item shop sells Towers even if it is basically same as human item. There is no other way to make buildings outside of your base.

Units

Special Mention before we review units.
- All units cost exactly 3 food. Unit costs are kinda odd in general.
- Could be personal feeling but the time unit actually finished training feels long. Although the visual effect is nice it removes the Rally Point function.
- All units can upgrade armor even casters. And speaking of upgrades there are only two attack/defense upgrades but the cost hasn't been increased to balance it out.
-Units regenerate only during the day (accidentally discovered in editor)

First Tier

Spriggan - Unarmored armor is necessary to balance out the Vanish ability so I won't complain about melee unit not having heavy armor, if anything they might actually be too durable. I do wish this unit didn't cost lumber, or if lumber cost was lower.

Kelpie - Basic ranged unit. Statistics are high considering the partner melee unit is strong too. That's two rather strong tier 1 units. I kinda expected Fay to be more fragile. Flow definitely fits with the hit'n'run doctrine I expected from fragile race.
*(flow restores the base color of snap dragon to blue, the actual unit (default Snap Dragon) uses tinted color to turn it dark green. Unsure why blizzard didn't just make texture dark green to begin with).
*Regenerates always instead of "Day only" like the rest of units.

# Ardent Defender ability tooltip is broken and says 0%. That is because the tooltip is unchanged and it failed to detect the changed stats. Maybe that is just on my pc?

Second Tier

Pixie - Standard caster, the initial Mystic barrier rises 7 armor which is +2 more than Inner Fire and that is Tier 3 ability, and yes that is a bad thing.
Chain Dispel is the necessary anti-magic ability (though not effecting summoned units).
The tier 3 ability Twinkling Star is damage ability (45 damage per second?) and well standard rant about mass produced caster units and high damage abilities.

Water Sprite - Advanced range unit. No I don't consider this unit a proper caster since it has pierce attack and ability to empower the attack with extra damage. Kelipe already provides the necessary ranged pierce damage.

Brownie - Siege Caster, an innovative idea. Because of this I approve the boulder ability as its main purpose is attacking buildings and damage to friendly units discourages spamming during the battle.
Erode is way more effective than I expected. Brownie's faster attack and 25x damage seems too high and 800 range is out-ranges most towers. It is definitely faster at destroying bases than standard siege units who have way slower attack. Magic attack also means that Towers (those with heavy armor) don't stand a chance.
Second upgrade I question if it is really needed since 300 damage over half a minute on a building doesn't sound great to me. Especially since with Erode this unit can crumble anything.
*Regenerates always instead of "Day only" like the rest of units.

Leprechaun - AoE Ranged unit, or rather anti-range unit? There already are two ranged units and two normal damage dealing units so was this unit really necessary? Is it because there is no long ranged splash unit?
Jinx feels out of place on this unit since it is DPS oriented unit and not a caster. But the ability itself is necessary as it is the only disruptive debuff in the entire race.

*Also normally I ignore the technical implementation but wasn't it easier to give unit standard splash damage? The upgrade that increases AoE range could simply be upgrade that disables attack 1 (smaller AoE) and enables attack 2 (bigger AoE).

Third Tier

Owlman - Light Air Unit. Kinda feels like this unit should have been tier 2 like the rest of light air units. The only thing that makes it belong to tier 3 is multitarget attack which is to be expected from tier 3 air units. Because this is the only air unit it struggles to be AA light air unit and the late game anti ground Air Unit.
* Huh, surprisingly a modern cryptid.

Knucker - Heavy melee unit and the 1200 hp is very high especially for the cost. Water shell is definitely more creative passive but at this point was even more damage dealing really needed when almost every single unit seems to have ability to deal extra damage.
I hope I do understand the tooltip properly and that the shield misdirects incoming damage away from Knucker and thus serves as defensive ability instead of just charging up without reducing damage.

Overall: Despite there being lack of units, the current ones do good job to cower most of needed roles. What is lacking is second siege unit, proper anti-caster unit, proper offensive caster and air units in general (at least air building harassment). From abilities unit healing is lacking and spell to counter summoned units.
In general all units seem to be focused on dealing as much damage as they can and not much else.

Heroes

There are only two heroes but I sure like them because they have balanced selection of spells and not just damage.

Faerie Queen - All hail Titania, a good intelligence hero.

Magic Missile is basic AoE damage Hero ability;
Dance of the Sylphs is an interesting choice since Heroes usually don't have single target buffs but what actually worries is me is that increased speed % seems high (unless max speed is reached);
Mystic Aura is what proper intelligence heroes should have in my opinion. I am just curious about how does it work and if it actually is beneficial. Does it restore 1% of mana per attack which would be rather low (imagine attacking 10 times to gain 10 mana if hero had 100 mana). Or does it on attack give unit a buff that overtime regenerates 1% mana per second. Think X% chance to trigger Mana regeneration that lasts restores X% Mana over Xseconds would be better idea;
Fairy Flag of Dunvegan is kinda mediocre ability since 50 armor for 30 seconds isn't that big deal and flag can be attacked. Big Bad Voodoo for example makes all units invulnerable for the same time.

Lantern Man - Interesting pick for a hero, I do wonder what made you chose this creature. Anyway this is unusual but proper agility hero. Has damage ability, survival ability and hero hunting ability which is exactly what Agility heroes need.

Dazzle is my favorite ability. It doesn't even need to damage, the stun area and duration alone are enough for me to always pick Lantern Man. I am worried, since this ability is probably coded, that you forgot to reduce stun duration on Heroes;
Hidden Lantern is the often forgotten hero scouting ability, in this case eternal but limited sentry wards. Definitely more useful than Far Sight or Owl Sentry;
Mistwalk bugs when you reach Ultimate ability, I can't use it but it activates itself when I use the ult. Think this ability would have benefited if Hidden Lantern was replaced by Passive that improves Hero attack. You know for synergy between abilities;
Abduct is a very scary ability, it disables enemy hero for 8 seconds and allows you to drag it around. Can't decide if this is OP or situational.

 

[Spellbound]

le review

Oh, man, I hadn't even considered all of this. I'll admit that a lot of the weirder choices (like the focus on damage-dealers, which was entirely unintentional) had mostly to do with the theme and the availability of resources. On one end, I had to find the proper models to match, on the other, I couldn't just give any unit any random ability because they had to respect the theme. This was the reason why the Lantern Man became a hero unit. It just happened that I found an appropriate model for him, and the model turned out to have been a hero. So you could say the choice was made for me, lol.

I was hesitant to make the water sprite a healer because there already was an effective healing mechanic with the Magic Mushroom. I was a bit worried to have overlapping roles, ironically, since that's exactly what ended up happening. Also I completely forgot some defense buildings have Heavy armor instead of fortified :\

As for some of the weirder things, like all units costing 3 food and piercing damage and attack/armour upgrades on casters, that's just memory failing me T__T

Thanks for the review

 

[VeljkoM]

I understand I am still satisfied how units in general turned out despite having the handicap of model lacking, myth restrictions and lacking number. And I learned more about British folklore.
I am kinda surprised how durable the race is, I expected from Fay more of misdirection, confusion and well hit'n'run gameplay. I mean it is there since all units are fast, majority are ranged and the racial vanish all point to it but melee units are good at tanking and there is large selection of ranged units. Race feels like mix of Night Elves (range combat focus) and Orcs (Lack of Air and durable ground units).
And Lantern Man happened to be my favorite hero so far since he really works well with the fay army.

Well regarding healing mechanics think of it this way. Both undead and night elves have healing in their base with Blight and Moonwell respectively but still have Obsidian Statue and Druid Rejuvenation. Granted in your case Magic Mushroom is way better at healing than Blight and Moonwell but it is still base mechanic and not available in combat.

 

[VeljkoM]

Please forgive me for double posting, and possible future multiposting but I am going to post these quick reviews even if participants don't respond.

Egyptian Mythology

I like Egyptian Mythology, it was actually cowered in ancient Egyptian classes I attended. But this submission is really more ancient Egyptians themselves with some myth references and very few mythological creatures. Honestly I am disappointed that major gods like Ra, Horus, Isis, Anubis, Toth and so on didn't make significant appearance. Lots of minor mentions of other gods.
Techtree itself isn't really innovative or good at following basic Wc3 design.

PROS: Unit with healing; (I honestly can't think of anything else, please someone point something I missed)
CONS: Lack of Units; Missing one Hero; Detection at Tier 3; No secondary base defense;
Special Con: Map uses default 1.0 patch instead of latest patch. That is right folks we three entries so far failed to use current patch in game. Four more and I win (I will reveal what in next review).

Buildings and Base Defense

- There is no secondary defense mechanism, the only defense are towers which are very weak and barely worth the cost. No I will not count main building it just has melee attack.

- Shenu Quarters is just human farm. Pop buildings are great opportunity for base defense mechanic (burrows, ziggurats and moon wells all have secondary function). Human farm secondary function is to be used as walls.
Also what is "Shenu".

- Item Shop is a mess.
You get Orb at tier 1. Said Orb adds 10 damage and has no additional effect and costs 800.
Critter item creates two Crabs (Why Crabs?) at same cost as Human Mech Critter which creates just one critter that fits map.
Also Ivory Tower but your tower is already dirt cheep and constructed by builder/soldiers that you would anyway bring with your army.
Dispel Potion is the only real new addition (shouldn't be a scroll, potions are for users).

Units

Usually here I say something about special features that effect most units in general. As far as I can see there is no racial to discuss or anything unusual.

First Tier

Kheper (both) - Harvester/Builder Melee Unit. I think the first mistake here is making harvester cost just 25 gold which is too low. Builder version is honestly pointless as unit becomes useless after constructing building. If builder was core tier 1 melee unit than it would have been an interesting concept. Both versions have small armor instead medium which is standard for worker units, and Builder if he wants to be a solder needs heavy armor. Also repair is now "reset" for some reason.
Resource Harvesting Upgrades are really not needed, it is just an unfair advantage.
Myth Trivia: Worker is an actual God Khepri (alt. spelling). How humble of him.

Khopesh Warrior - Basic melee unit. There are so many things wrong with this unit:
1) Medium Armor, Ghouls ate my Warriors alive.
2) 175 is too high cost, at least until we consider next issue...
3) Manaless Firebolt. You don't give Storm Bolt clone ability to mass produced units and certainly not at no mana cost or at tier 1.

Egyptian Hunter - Basic Ranged unit. Now I won't say this is copy statistically of archer as damage was slightly reduced and range was set to be comparable to the upgraded archer and rifleman (no idea why you did that). I will disagree with giving an Auto-Cast Damage increase and Marksman (Damage upgrade) when both serve the same purpose of increasing damage and not to mention the free increased range advantage.
There was no reason to set Huntress in separate building from Khopesh Warrior, the Barrow Range only trains one unit.

Second Tier

Voodooist - Offensive/supportive caster/melee unit, he is unsure which and that would be a disorder. Also what does religion from Caribbean have to do with Egypt? To make maters worse he is melee and non magical.

Dispel is fine initial ability but you removed damage done to summoned units which is a bad thing.
Poison Spray is Shadow Strike a Hero hunting ability that can't be removed. You don't give direct damage spells to mass produced units, yes even if you nerfed them. If you removed damage but kept the slow factor than it would have been proper ability but still an issue of not being removable.
Earth Essence is good choice as healing is essential.

Seba Haunter - Caster with problems. Also I would really like to know what Seba Haunters are in actual myths. Also costs 3 food, has small armor and high magic damage and that is not the way of Wc3 casters.

Haunt is Shadow Strike, again. This time slow effect remains. Same critics as with Voodoo Poison Spray.
Shadow Meld, you actually made night elf racial an upgrade for caster. Should I really say something?
Death Call is just confusing. A Tier 3 ability that turns creeps in to still hostile ghost units with 5 second casting time. What creeps are you going to kill at late game?

Mahk - Heavy melee unit, for some reason at tier 2. Stomp shouldn't, say it with me, "used on mass produced units"as it is massive damage AoE ability.There is no need for Tier 2 melee unit when you have Tier 1 core unit and Tier 3 heavy unit and 3 food is not appropriate. Resistant Skin is a good choice for melee unit.
Myth Trivia: I am curious what is "Mahk". It can't be an elephant since ancient Egyptians didn't use them at least not until Hellenistic period, at least as far as I know.

Wood(en) Catapult - Long Ranged siege, based of Demolisher. It is standard but Explosives as an ability is actually not good idea. Catapult is already quite capable of destroying buildings what long ranged siege units actually get is an upgrade that improves effectiveness on units (Burning Oil, fragmentation shot, Diessed Cloud, Impaling Shot).
Lore Trivia: I am pretty sure Egyptians did not have explosives.

Medjail Elite - Tier 3 2 heavy melee unit. This is most likely a mistake. Anyway Cleave doesn't need an upgrade which is bad and ensnare I would rather avoid. Yes Myrmidon from Naga race has ensnare, but the most broken race of Wc3 that failed to be in melee is not good example for anything but "Not to do". You see Ensnare is a powerful tool and while all are familiar with the AA function, the more important is disruption. One Ensnare can disrupt Starfall. You see my point? Also it can be researched at tier 1.
Oh and Chaos attack, it really has no place in melee because it is outside of whole Damage-Armor system melee has. Chaos actually has no benefits over normal damage except against buildings but normal attack has advantage against medium armor.

Third Tier

Sphinx - Medium Air Unit? Small armor goes for Air Units so they could be countered by pierce that is the nature of the game.
The other problem is that stats are still same as Destroyer (besides +30hp) yet you removed all abilities that justified the high cost and power of Destroyer. Without Orb of Annihilation and Magic Immunity this unit is mediocre and Dark Core is really unimaginative and not helpful. Hilariously Dark Core tooltip says +6 damage when it is +4.
Oh and detection at Tier 3 is kinda little too late, tier 2 detection is more benefiting (Sentry Ward, Sentinel, Gyrocopter/Magic sentry).
Lore Trivia: What does "Dark Core" have to do with egyptian sphinx?

Overall: Race attempted to follow the standard Wc3 formula and failed. Units have odd armor choices, odd traits for reasons I can't figure out.
Units that are lacking are anti-caster, secondary siege unit, light air unit (AA or Base Harrasment).
Abilities that are lacking are invisibility detection and crowd control.

Heroes

Heroes are like units, very questionable from my point of view. Also they have strange Int, Agi and Str stat changes.

Scarab Lord - Rather generic title, this probably is The Kheper. Strength hero with no combat ability and that is honestly unexpected.

Vision is Far Sight, that is it. I don't think tank hero needs scouting ability but it is the only detection this race gets.
Solar Flare is Inner Flame, and Auto-cast buff is not appropriate on strength hero as they tend to be low on mana. At least Defense/Reg buff is appropriate.
Aura of Dawn is an ok Aura nothing to say here.
Ureaus Form is really "Fountain of Healing" form, kinda underwhelming.
Myth Trivia: So my guess is that Scarab Lord Khepri but as another version of Ra because of Ureaus. Guess there was no appropriate Birdheaded model for Ra?

Serpent Queen - I must express ignorance of this goddess/person. This is agility hero that is pretending to be Intelligence caster and all abilities are damage dealing and no survival abilities or passives at all. Also custom soundset is annoying to me.

Wild Winds tooltip is misinforming as it creates 2 Tornadoes per second. This badly desinged ability because it is channel and damage is poor and around caster which is ranged;
Sand Blast is appropriate ability as it is hero killing ability (damage + slow). The fault comes from the fact that there are two casters that can spam Shadow Strike. Yes I know this isn't Shadow Strike clone, it is Acid Flask, didn't even need to check editor;
Drain Essence is yet another channel ability which drains hp and mana from target. Still since it drains mana and hp you nerfed ability so I am wondering if it still worth using.
Internal Degrade kills a unit and spawns worms which I have no idea what they so. Definitely not a useless ability but is it really appropriate for an agility hero?

God Of Chaos - The Great Seth god of Chaos, Disorder, Deserts, Foreigners, Wars! But you wouldn't guessed from this poor imitation of Set. This is my least favorite hero and lets see why. I mean it is melee intelligence hero for starters.

Mummification is a summon spell. Positive side is that summon lasts for long time. Negatives sides is that it needs a corpse and summon does not get stronger with leveling.
Howl of Seth is an ok ability, because Seth is melee (why!) it does effect enemies. It really should go on strength hero but I am not going to complain about a rare appearance of support ability.
Strike of Chaos is very simple single target damage spell and that is it. Really needs a secondary effect.
Sand Storm creates Sand Tonado. It is non channel Naga Witch Tornado which I like, except that hilariously enemy can target it. Also 10 damage is just on impact which is a joke.
Lore trivia: Why does Seth of all gods have mummification, you would think guy hates the concept because of Osiris. Shouldn't be Anubis the god of mummification?

 

[N41]

Thanks for your review VeljkoM.

Response

Honestly I am disappointed that major gods like Ra, Horus, Isis, Anubis, Toth and so on didn't make significant appearance.

Me myself was disappointed to not actually able to include them due to lack of models..

Also what is "Shenu".

Shenu = Eternity

Item Shop is a mess.

Rather incomplete

I think the first mistake here is making harvester cost just 25 gold which is too low.

This was to compensate the total cost of builder...

Worker is an actual God Khepri (alt. spelling). How humble of him.

Lol..

Barrow Range only trains one unit.

There were supposed to be more.. anyways :/

Also I would really like to know what Seba Haunters are in actual myths

Egyptian believed in life after death...

The ancient Egyptians believed in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. This belief was rooted in what they observed each day. The sun fell into the western horizon each evening and was reborn the next morning in the east. New life sprouted from grains planted in the earth, and the moon waxed and waned. As long as order was maintained, everything was highly dependable and life after death could be achieved provided certain conditions were met. For example, the body had to be preserved through mummification and given a properly furnished tomb with everything needed for life in the afterworld.

Seba = Afterlife !

I am curious what is "Mahk".

They are actually Mammoths, influenced by a movie in which Mammoths are used to build pyramids in ancient Egypt.
"Mahk" is jumbling of "Dahkm" which means Mammoth in Arabic

I am pretty sure Egyptians did not have explosives.

Wasn't able to think of something else ... Sorry!

Oh and Chaos attack, it really has no place in melee because it is outside of whole Damage-Armor system melee has. Chaos actually has no benefits over normal damage except against buildings but normal attack has advantage against medium armor.

Is this positive thing or negative

Rather generic title, this probably is The Kheper

Yup

So my guess is that Scarab Lord Khepri but as another version of Ra because of Ureaus.

No, not really...

Khepera is the manifestation of the rising sun. Khepera would roll the sun along the sky, much as the dung beetle rolls a ball of dung in front of him. This ball of dung is what it lays its eggs in. The beetle larvae eat the ball of dung after they hatch. The Egyptians would see the beetle roll a ball of dung into a hole and leave. Later, when many dung beetles emerged from the hole, it would seem as though they created themselves. Khepera also had this attribute of self-generation and self-renewal.

Guess there was no appropriate Birdheaded model for Ra?

Thats true, and I really wanted to add Neith, Seth, Anubis and Ra instead of current Kheper, Seth and Wadjet

Also custom soundset is annoying to me.

Thought it did be good addition...

Why does Seth of all gods have mummification, you would think guy hates the concept because of Osiris.

I wanted to add this ability.. My mistake though to put it on Seth...

In all thanks for trying my race. This is my first attempt at making a techtree (This is no excuse but just a fact). I have much to learn and I be considering the points put forth by you in future attempts, so thanks in all!

 

[VeljkoM]

Heh it got little to big so I placed it all under hidden tag.

Response N41

Me myself was disappointed to not actually able to include them due to lack of models..

That was the reason why I was against mythology theme in the first place, it became modeling contest. I thought though that Gryphon hero or Arakkoa models would have been used for Ra or Horus. And this is more snakelike for Wadjet. Though if you do not mind too much WoW rips than proper Ra/Horus and Anubis models would have been available. Too lazy to browse other Wc3 sites for models at the moment.

This was to compensate the total cost of builder...

Yes but resource harvesting needs large amount of workers, building does not. For 125 gold Egyptians get 100% gold efficiency compared to 375 of other races or 300 for Night Elves.
On other hand you don't need more than one builder. You were right to divide the cost but it should have been 50-60 for harvester and 25 for builder.

Egyptian believed in life after death...

Shenu = Eternity
Seba = Afterlife !

I never did learn Coptic Egyptian language (or are you using Arabic?) so thanks for translating. And of course I knew about Egyptians and afterlife that is big part of their cults but I didn't know about afterlife haunters.

They are actually Mammoths, influenced by a movie in which Mammoths are used to build pyramids in ancient Egypt.
"Mahk" is jumbling of "Dahkm" which means Mammoth in Arabic

Still better explanation than "Aliens built pyramids"!

Is this positive thing or negative

Strictly speaking neither but let me show you the actual statistics of Chaos and Normal attack so you can decide which is better.

Unarmored; Small; Medium; Heavy: Hero; Fortified
Normal: 100% 100% 150% 100% 100% 70%
Chaos : 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%

Thus we can see that difference is that chaos is better vs buildings by 30% while normal attack is better against Medium armor by 50%. That's it. I personally prefer normal attack over chaos.

No, not really...

What I was aiming is that Ra tends to be merged with other sun related deities because contrary to the popular belief there was not "single" Egyptian cult but rather actually each city had its own myths but the city in charge would push for its own view (or in Seth case foreigners). That is why Amon and Ra are merged even if Amon was its own god or why there are several creation myths and different primordial gods. Egyptian mythology is not set in stone.

I remember that Khepre was also considered another version of Ra duo to sun attributes.
~Wikipedia Ra Article, source of claim "The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt" by Richard H. Wilkinson.
Also mostly because of Ureaus which is related to Wajet and later to Ra.

Thought it did be good addition...

It is a subjective thing not a fact. I personally found quality of voice acting not fitting with Wc3 units. Too slow, silent and mellow. Other people might like it.

In all thanks for trying my race. This is my first attempt at making a techtree (This is no excuse but just a fact). I have much to learn and I be considering the points put forth by you in future attempts, so thanks in all!

Best way to learn is trial and error if you ask me. So chin up and become better thanks to the experience you received from this contests both from your race and your competition. Good luck to the future attempts.

 

[N41]

I thought though that Gryphon hero or Arakkoa models would have been used for Ra or Horus.

Wish i had found this model before. Those keywords didn't click.

Though if you do not mind too much WoW rips than proper Ra/Horus and Anubis models would have been available.

I don't use rips or any model outside THW due to issues in past.

I never did learn Coptic Egyptian language (or are you using Arabic?) so thanks for translating.

Its Egyptian not Arabic; And neither did I learn Coptic Egyptian, its just little things I found during research...

Still better explanation than "Aliens built pyramids"!

Agreed!

Best way to learn is trial and error if you ask me. So chin up and become better thanks to the experience you received from this contests both from your race and your competition. Good luck to the future attempts.

Thanks!

 

[VeljkoM]

Lets Review!

Children of the Forest

Children of the Forest, a mythical but very real and alive race from Song of Ice and Fire series or if you prefer Game of Thrones. I think we are stretching here a bit the meaning of mythology.
First thing that caught my eye in this race is that tooltips are very bad, icon placement is bad, some buffs are not edited, one ability even uses A as hotkey which is used by Attack, some models fail to load and I am pretty sure caster requirements are not even in English. I avoided commenting on appearance of previous races because I understand the cruel limits of this theme and I didn't want to hunt grammar mistakes that did appear. But here I had to point out how unpolished this techtree is.
Speaking of actual techtree we are going to go over some interesting and fun ideas that don't always work properly or are unpractical. Also I was unable to open map in editor and that made it harder for me to inspect this race.

Pros: Healing is cowered;
Con: No Dispel; No invisibility detector besides one hero; (The unit I suspect had these two abilities didn't load model in which case these two would have been Pros)
All units are overpriced; Abilities that do not function; Lack of unit roles and overlapping roles; No secondary base defense;

Special Pro: Well I'll be damned this map does use more current patch. Thinker, Fire Lord and Alchemist are in tavern, Spellbreakers have Medium armor, Hall of the Dead has 10 attack and everything. I don't know if it is because maker set the Melee Patch or did he used one of the 3 new heroes as base for his heroes. Either way I lost the bet.

Buildings and Base Defense

- There is no secondary base defense mechanism. Or rather there is no primary defense mechanism because towers use workers like burrows. Also towers has Human barrage and needs human upgrade for it. Also unit armor upgrade upgrades buildings which is odd.

- Pop building is based of human farm so it lacks features. But it got worse as the cost is increased to 30 lumber and barracks also costs 5 lumber more. What I am saying is that your game start is slower because you can't make second farm fast enough.

- Upgrade building doesn't serve as wood drop point, it serves as gold drop point. Just no. Also it costs wood.

- Beastcaller is as big as main building.

- Item shop tier 1 items are from humans shop, the two new items are nice. Orb on the other hand gives double attack for 375 gold which is bad.

Units

The racial handicap of this race is that there is no natural regeneration of mana or health. Wish it was mentioned somewhere.

Archer - Basic ranged unit. Stats are based of NE Archer but the cost has been increased and I don't see the justification. There is standard range upgrade at tier 2 and tier 1 stat upgrade which I'll cower later.

Watcher - Basic melee unit. I paid 190 gold and 3 food expecting unit strong as Grunt and instead I got a Ghoul. I have been robbed because this unit has low stats to justify the high cost.

= Both units just need barracks, and neither needs additional requirements (either different training building or upgrade building) which I find unfair.
= Both units get Enchanted Obsidian. This is a tier 1 simple stat upgrade which is too early for stat upgrades and is also kinda redundant when there are normal attack upgrades already. But the worst part is that this is an Orb Stat ability which ignores tech requirements so you don't need to research.
= Both Units also get Stealth in the Nature (Why not "Nature Stealth"?). This is interesting in theory but not in practice which is something we are going to be seeing a lot in this race. It is weak windwalk for units that only is supposed to work near trees. It is impractical to use and also on other hand you get an army of Blademasters and anyone who played online against orc player who starts with Blademaster knows what point I am making here.

Second Tier

Singer - Essential Support unit. Because this race has no natural health regeneration this is your main way to heal units. That is cruel and unusual since you need to be in tier 2 to enjoy simple natural regeneration. The mana regeneration is good but there should be some limitation like mana cost (Ironic I know) or at least cooldown. (by the way doesn't this ability make mana recharge abilities of casters pointless?)
There is also a passive effect that slows down units and is supposed to reduce armor but that didn't work for me and no idea how long effect lasts.
*Hilariously Health regeneration, mana restoration and passive attack are all same icon which has cluttered tooltip. There was no reason not to have a Passive Icon.

Village Greenseer - Caster without caster status. That means he doesn't get extra mana or mana regeneration from caster upgrades and there is no caster icon. Abilities are supportive in nature. Because there is no natural mana regeneration there is Green Sleep that makes unit sleep and restore part of mana (amount unkown). Also why 3 food for a caster?

Premonition of Bless still uses Parasite tooltip but it is instead healing ability but I don't know how effective it is. Considering it is initial ability it shouldn't be stronger than priests 25 Hp heal. Also I have a feeling like there are some triggers or something that keeps ordering Greenseer to use this ability.
Premonition of Death I have no idea what it does. It says "Cause 40% of damage during 12 next 12 seconds" and I just don't understand. If this is direct damage ability then insert here my standard rant about mass produced units and direct damage abilities and casters with damage spells.
Fake Premonition of Death costs 300 mana on unit with 200 mana. I had to use "thereisnosppon" to cast it and it did nothing, no buff or anything as far as I can see. Even it worked I wonder how useful would this ability really be.

Deathspoker - Support caster and very morbid one. This is another example of cool in theory but unpractical in reality. I have a problem when abilities demand my own units to die. Also same not being a caster issue like Greenseer. Because of no mana regeneration this unit regains mana by consuming souls of units that died near it (friend or foe, Deathspeaker cares not whom he eats). Additionally I think this unit should either stick with using mana or souls of the dead and not both sometimes. Oh and 3 food for a caster?

Cry of Dead I didn't manage to use, it requires my own unit to be killed by an enemy and then I punish the killer with -20 attack for 12 seconds. It should be % decrees and a longer duration (less for Heroes of course) and not an initial ability. It says it works on allied units but it didn't work when I was killing my own units to test out the next ability.
Aid of the spirits didn't work for me either. I killed several of my units, even craftsman who has tauren designation. Nothing. There already are two other healing abilities, so yet another heal is redundant.
Soul Punishment works which at this point is surprising and it is great crowdcontrol ability. But it lasts shorter than Polymorph (60 seconds) and both are tier 3 abilities.

Wierdwood Priest - Model didn't load. Why do I have a feeling that Invisibility Detection and Dispel are sadly on this unit.

Raven - Light Air unit, both AA and base harassment. Has mana for some reason. It is simple and useful unit but it really odd to see a simple raven as a siege unit.

Dire Wolf - Medium melee unit. The second normal damage melee unit which means same role as Watcher. Cost is sky high and I am guessing because it is Dire Wolf creep and creeps have higher cost than regular units. Also I don't think Critical Strike is something units should have. And no corpse because it is spirit wold model.

Bear - Medium melee unit. The third normal damage dealing melee unit and again high cost and well that is it.

Third Tier

Mammoth - Heavy melee unit. Yes yet another normal damage melee unit but with tanking twist. As usual cost is sky high and this unit wants to be Mountain Giant but it lacks any tanking abilities besides high hp and taunt. There is something wrong with herbivore being able to eat people, I mean why Devour on a hard to kill unit?

Weapon Craftsman - Heavy melee unit. And we reached 5, that is 5 normal damage melee units and last two are both ultimate high cost tier 3 melee units (seriously two 7 food units?). This unit also has demolish for some reason that I don't get.

This unit can add +5 Attack and Armor permanently and this is something that I think could have been an interesting alternative concept of Attack/armor upgrades. But right now as it is this system comes too late and is only limited by mana cost. It should be earlier and on a support unit not on a heavy melee unit.

Overall: I am unsure should I count this as Wc3 design or Innovative design. It lacks too many basic Wc3 things to be Wc3 design but the Innovations leave a lot to be desired.
Lacking Units are: Long ranged siege unit, anti-caster, heavy air unit. Ironically there are exactly 12 units as it is expected but roles overlap.
Lacking Abilities: Dispel and invisibility detection.

Heroes

If you look pass the bad grammar and odd icon placement heroes are not bad. They might be slightly boring but they are functional part of the army with both support and DPS abilities.

Beastmaster - It said that this hero has great auras. He only has one but still this feels like it is support hero. Surprisingly no ability regarding actual beasts.

Ambush is decent AoE ability and escape ability so I like it.
Wild Inspiration aura increases Armor and Attack speed which is an odd choice. Also I once experienced bug where aura remained even though hero was dead. Oh and buildings sometimes were effected.
Devour is a melee ranged Life Drain that stuns an enemy. So basically this is Dota Pudge ability. I don't think it is good design to have melee range ability in a melee game. And because tooltip contradicts itself I don't know if this is unbalanced. I don't even know if stun duration is lower on Heroes which I hope it is because 5 or 15 seconds are both too long.
Primal Spirit DSBTN icon is missing so it is green. Ability simply adds extra 250 hp to units around you which isn't bad but not really impressive.

Greenseer Sage - He "invokes a powerful crow", quite unusual description. Anyway standard intelligence hero.

Green Dream I would need to calculate but I believe it is high healing spell, but I suppose it is balanced by the fact that it can be disrupted by enemy and it removes your unit from combat.
Crow Companion is unbalanced, there is a reason why Beastmaster Eagle gains attack at level 2. It is unfair to the poor creeps and also a lack of air counters that early in the game. Also tooltip is broken and I didn't check the power progress per level.
Premonition told me that I am a Dummy and I am inclined to agree because I clicked on that ability. It is very bad scouting ability when you can only target yourself and invisibility detection is situational at best.
Premonition of Ruin is Earthquake but it reduces armor too. I guess I should tell you that by improving an existing ability you should nerf some aspect of it but the damn Earthquake is stupid ability to begin with. It is still channel AoE that doesn't harm units so I won't be using it when I can spam Crows (don't be sad I do the same thing with Archmage).

Obsidiian Master - Feels like unfinished hero with placeholder abilities. Still the design idea is ok for an agility hero.

Relocation name and tooltip is kinda odd, I mean what is wrong with "Rush" or "Charge". Also being limited by charges is odd since Warden can blink just fine as long as she has mana to do it.
Piercing Strike is standard single target ability but the purge part didn't work for me. The slow factor of purge would be quite useful for hero hunting. Damage progress is kinda random.
Sharpened blade just adds extra agility. That is lazy damage boost and you know it.
War Prayer is surprising for an agility hero since it is army support ability and Agility heroes tend to work alone. Ironically it is also best Ult ability of the race and also similar role as Beastmaster Ult (both are mass support abilities)

Elemental Mage - Model failed to load, please try again later. your time is important to us.

 

[VeljkoM]

If anyone knows how to get CLK Eclipses entry FAKE HEROES, I would be very grateful. Since I couldn't download it (why do some of you hate file attachments?) I instead moved to Japan. It is lovely there. Also I should really stop doing these things so late I find myself missing some obvious things.

Lets Review!

Japanese Mythology

The land of the rising sun is rich with history, culture and of course mythology. This race has nice selection of Japanese myths along with surprisingly late era human units armed with primitive guns and rockets.
While race lacks fancy features the techtree is full exactly 12 units that cower all roles. However I find this race lacking a weakness as units are very powerful.

Pros: Units cover all roles; healing is covered; there is secondary base defense; invisibility detection.
Cons: Some units appear to be too strong for their cost; No Dispel (Only an Item); Lack of Heroes and Heroes more fitting for RPG;
Special Con: And we are back to the land of v1.0 Wc3. Good Bye Tinker, Fire Lord and Alchemist it was nice that you visited last time.

Buiildings and Base Defense

-There is secondary base defense in form of armor increase aura on main building and slight regeneration aura on houses. It isn't groundbreaking but it is there and that counts.

-Population building serves as wood drop off. Well that sure makes lumber harvesting efficient although it is slightly odd when lumber drop points cost lumber. It is surprisingly cheap for what it does. Farmers are very generous with Healing Aura that is balanced with small area and low regeneration,

-Towers are present but are you sure that fortified armor and 3 armor were good necessary. Especially since upgrade has multitarget. Feadback and Multitarget do not stack.

- Items are interesting like short Area Armor Buff (why is this tier 2?) and Dispel (because no other unit has it). Smoke bomb makes me allergic because idea of invisible moving armies scares me, like what if they are stalking me as I am about to attack creeps. Mystic Bamboo creates clone that deals double damage and is surprisingly tier 1 and rather cheep item considering how powerful it is.
And the orb is proper Orb with ability to reduce damage to target.
I do wish there was one healing item.

Units

Before we start with units I want to express things I noticed.
Many units have surprisingly bigger defense (not too big) than what you would normally expect which suggest that this is defensive faction.
There is a special upgrade that increases attack and hp of human units. It is unfair since that means units get 64attack upgrades plus two times 20%hp increase. I had Samurai with almost 2000 hp and orcs felt humbled with my ground army.

First Tier

Yari Ashigaru - Basic melee unit. Seems appropriate and the slight range boost is a nice touch. My only complaint is that unit is cheap for how good it is.

Bow Ashigaru - Basic ranged unit. Again I feel that this unit slightly is cheap or maybe it is just unusual to have two 2 food costing tier 1 units. Ensnare is a nice addition though not really needed as Bowman can target air and it hinders your other AA units from doing their job.

= Both units get time training reduction but I am unsure they need it. I didn't get an impression that this was swarm race especially since units seems to have higher defense than usual and there is hp upgrade. Either you go for quantity or quality.

Second Tier

Yuki-Onna - Support caster. Stats are appropriate and spells are for the most part good choice.

Ice Heal in the long run is actually inferior ability to Geal as it uses double mana for 50% heal amount increase. I find Yuki running out of mana fast if I allow her to heal.
Frost Shield is Anti-Magic Shell so all is ok.
Blood Drain however is not appropriate caster ability, it is direct damage and as I said it once I'll say it again "casters don't get direct damage abilities" and "don't give direct damage abilities to mas produced units".

King Oni - Heavy Melee Caster. Stats are more fitting for a tier 3 heavy melee unit and this unit has all benefits of Heavy Melee and Caster with no downsides. This is Wc2 design of unit and even then caster part would have been an upgrade in tier 3.

Devour is a curious ability in general. Original unit that has it is a range unit and despite high hp was surprisingly easy to kill. King Oni on other hand is melee fighter so it is easier for him to use it and heavy armor is better at surviving so it is harder for enemy to rescue unit. In short, the hindrance that Devour normally has is not here and you might want to reconsider if that is a good thing.
Enraged Roar is AoE direct damage but more alarmingly it is AoE stun. I wouldn't give this ability to mass produced units, one hero with it is powerful enough.
Dark Fire is a surprising support buff on this rather offensive unit. Well it is important to buff units and seems you did balance out duration of spell, hp drain and speed increase.

Kyuubi - Anti-caster unit. I was starting to think I won't see one of these in this contest. Magic Immunity is there naturally but unit has normal attack instead of piercing. Pierce counters caster armor, normal dies not.
This unit gets auto-cast Slow+Manaburn chain that hits five targets (cheap too). I am not going to sugarcoat this, that is an overpowering unbalanced ability. Manaburn is alone strong spell that damages mana and hp (the burn part means converting destroyed mana into damage). With one Kyuubi you can hinder an enemy army, with more Kyuubis enemy can forget about using magic because each will drain 100 mana on primary target, most likely a hero, and chains will take care of casters. Actually this ability seems to hurt units without mana too.

Shikigami - Scout, hey I forgot this role exists. It is shade but at tier 2 so it is more useful but that might be a too good thing.
But the actual issue of this unit is that it has Possess at tier 3. An invisible unit that can possess. Possess an ability that has been nerfed constantly from path to patch until eventually it ended up having long cast time and banshee taking increased damage. You have buffed the most nerfed spell by making a cheaper (100 gold) and invisible unit use it and since map ingame is v1.0 the possess isn't nerfed either.
Except for a minor problem of ability costing 200 mana for a unit with 100 mana.

Hwacha - Long ranged siege unit. Actually the range is quite low for a siege unit and to counter that at tier 3 there is an ability to increase range but at cost of movement and gives AA attack. I personally think ground range increase should be higher than standard 1150 range, since that makes it just equal with other siege units but with no move handicap. On other hand I do believe that AA damage is too high and it isn't like this is the only AA option this race has. Oh also there should be some indication that Hwacha is using stationary mode.

Bo-Hiya - Secondary siege unit. I didn't see a guy with a gun coming. Still this is an odd unit since normally siege units are either fast harassers (Raider), durable tanks (Siege Engine) or long ranged (Guess). This unit is none of those things, it is just simply ranged unit with siege attack and ability to fire faster but move slower. I am trying to see the reason why I would be consider this unit over Hwacha since they share the role in similar way but Hwacha having advantage of being AA unit too.

Tengu - Light Air unit. I feel like there was a mix up because this unit gets magic attack but is labeled as AA unit. Now don't get me wrong magic attack does deal extra damage to small armor but this unit also counters heavy melee units a tier too early. The unit even gets multitarget passive which is something heavy air units normally get.
I am saying that this is too good unit because it has magic attack instead of pierce attack. Yes I know it is a magic bird but so is fairy dragon and gargoyle yet their missiles use pierce too so they wouldn't overlap with Chimera and Frostwyrm for dealing with ground units.

Third Tier

Katana Samurai - Heavy Melee unit. It wouldn't be Japan without our noble horseback archers armed with naginata. Well you know if we were realistic.
Anyway the stats on this units are too high and yet the cost is lower than King Oni. Higher damage, attack speed and (1400) hp than tauren for 4 food? And level 6 is for creep units that are hero equivalent since it decreases magic potency on them. Passive is poison that adds more damage and slows down enemy and I am unsure how to feel about that (enjoy irony of honor bound warrior using dishonorable poison?). Oh and poison doesn't actually need the upgrade.

Seriyuu - Heavy Air Unit. And well this is what I expect from this type of unit: high attack, high hp, high cost (maybe too much?) and upgrade that adds multi-target damage ability. What I didn't expect is pierce damage instead of magic and level 7 (why did you even edit that?). Oh and multi-target passive is a hazzard for your own units so watch out (still not as bad as Chimera).

Overall: Well this race follows the Wc3 doctrine as there are exactly 12 units and I believe all roles are cowered actually. There are problems like that some units are too good and HP upgrade is too powerful.
The only ability that is missing is proper dispel, Frost Shield sadly is not good enough substitute as RoC Undead have shown before they got Destroyer. There also is missing ability that disrupts buildings but not a big deal.

Heroes

If this was AoS Hero making contests I would be satisfied with heroes and their designs. But this is Techtree Contests and Heroes here should work with armies and not try to kill entire army by themselves.

Shining Light - High damage dealing agility hero with half abilities for killing people and the other half improving the killing. She takes dealing damage very seriously. The idea of "avoiding" damage is an alien concept for her.

Blade Dance is an ability you see on AoS or other Hero maps. It is based of Hero attack because it is expected to grow with hero levels and items. But in melee there are few levels and items are not that spectacular so this ends up being kinda underwhelming ability but not entirely useless. Fixed damage would do wonders here. Leveling up this ability only increases AoE so it is as good as it gets at level 1.
Sunburst is direct target spell that damages target and hurts units near it while slowing everyone affected. One would think that this was Frost Nova from description that I had given but hilariously it is triggered spell. Damage is quite higher than Frost Nova though but mana cost is significantly lower because agility heroes aren't meant to cast abilities like this.
Illuminate (odd name) confuses me a bit because it seems to imply that it is like critical strike only each attack deals the double damage of the previous attack. Actually it adds on level one +2 then +4 and then +6 but I feel like this ability should be auto-cast and cost mana. Oh and killed units don't leave corpses. You should really restore original tooltip and edit it instead of trying to write your own.
Overwhelming Chaste is ultimate selfbuff that improves move/attack speed and regeneration. I feel like this would be way more interesting ability in hero vs hero map.

Thunder King - He is a big muscled guy armed with giant hammers. If you said "That is an Intelligence Hero" than you are right! Huh? Well of course he is not strength hero that would be just silly.
Ok joke aside he too like Shining Light would fit more in a hero map instead of here.

Raiju is our first ability, it is line damage but at level one it already puts to shame both Shockwave and Carrion Swarm (at top level) with high damage and 2000 range. There is 8% damage reduction after first hit but the abilities I mentioned have more strict reduction of total damage limit.
Thunder Crash is a special ability. Did you ever look at your Lich or Archmage and said "I must bring him in to melee range of the enemy". You probably didn't because intelligence heroes have no business jumping in middle of enemy group and that is what this ability does. Blink that damages. Range is 2000 and instead of costing mana, mana is drained the further you travel and damage depends of distance. I suppose the real usefulness is for running away but then you waste all that damage.
Crescendo is a passive that boosts attack speed after you cast a spell. Considering the task of caster heroes is to cast spells to effect the battle usefulness here is not as high as it would have been for agility or even strength heroes who generally have better attacks.
Lightning Storm is like Starfall except it follows your hero, you don't channel it and it doesn't attack all units at same time (I think) and lasts for a minute. Serious firepower.

 

[BlackRangerXIII]

Guys very sad news
Since the C hard drive of my pc needs reformating i thought of all the archeives i've lost.
Among them was the entire contest template doc and the Contest Voting template (yes I'm a genius).
But thankfully in a week or two i'll get my PC back and I'll redo the templates

 

[Kam]

The download link here seems to be corrupt: http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/2823435-post450.html

 

[BlackRangerXIII]

The download link here seems to be corrupt: http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/2823435-post450.html

The reason it's because it is a puuush link instead of an attachment link and it sometimes crash so it's not advisable

 

[VeljkoM]

Well this is a last review unless CLK Eclipse gives his map. Also I noticed that in this map 90% handicap wasn't removed when I was playing with Aztec race so there is a chance this also happened to the previous entries and I didn't notice. Kinda why I dislike this Wc3c race system and prefer the removed one that was here on Hive. I'll post some time later which race I think was the best.

Lets Review!

Aztec Empire

Today we come to the distant lands of Mesoamerica to honor the feathered snake god Quetzalquatl. So grab your Macuahuitl, capture your enemy alive and become adolescent man in Aztec society because blood must flow. The world will end without sacrifices!
I will describe this whole race now with two words. Unfinished mess. There are complicated requirements which are straightforward in normal Wc3 gameplay and there are some quite unorthodox elements. Everything feels unfinished like unedited tooltips, placeholder heroes and barely any custom ability.

Pros: Healing and Detection.
Con: Obviously unfinished witch shows everywhere.
Special Con: Game Data set to Default setting. Which means map is for all intended purposes Wc3 v1.0. That means five people don't know how or forgot to set their map to actually use current patch, one who possibly does (couldn't open editor) and one person who won't get a review until he attaches map normally. That means later you all get free tutorial and explanation about "what the hell am I talking about"

Buildings

- There are no base defense mechanics, not even a tower.

- Race starts with main building and two farms. I understand that farm is needed to make more workers but because two farms are already made I can't make altar and barracks at same time because I lack resources.

- There are too many buildings and some don't do anything besides unlocking units. There are 3 upgrade buildings, 4 troop buildings, one empty building, market, farm and main building. Altar trains units (eventually) and revives heroes but main building actually makes heroes.

- Farm makes workers which is efficient and workers are inferior compared to other races. Your economy will be weak despite being able to make more workers (sadly this is Wc and not AoE).

- Item shops only has items shared by all races. Race items didn't make it.

- Besides Main Building, Armory also has tiers that are needed to unlock units. It just puts you at disadvantage.

- Gate of the Underworld icon is BTN even when disabled.

Units

First I want to make it clear that unit requirements are all over the place. It is complication for the sake of being different from regular techtree without actual benefits.
Also most units get at second attack upgrade poison Obsidian Bleeding that lasts for 3600 seconds (why?) and most units get passive that reduces range attacks. With those two abilities we already covered half of units. And regeneration edits are all over the place.

Aztec Worker - I understand that resource collection reduction is nerfed because you can make workers in farms but it hurts gold economy because only five workers can mine a gold mine. Lumber at least gets an upgrade to speed up cutting down the trees but only second upgrade increase +1 gathering. I had problems maintaining economy and had to boost number of wood cutters than I am usually comfortable with.
I do find upgrade mechanic stupid because it replaces workers and after upgrade is finished researching I had idle workers because they forgot what they were doing (also lizard model becomes red colored peasant).
I am unsure why are they unarmored and so fragile, even with upgrades they barely reach ordinary worker HP.

Youth Melee - Basic melee unit. Before damage reduction upgrade this is useless unit because it has medium armor. Upgrade sadly only helps against ranged units that already are not good against medium armor so this unit remains useless in melee, and melee units fight in melee.
Also he can gather wood same as not upgraded Aztec Worker and I don't know if that is really that important.

Skirmisher - Basic ranged unit. Lumber price is kinda high and there are no upgrades or abilities that improve either attack or range besides racial bleeding. Also this units shield ability needs 2nd tier of shield upgrade and it reduces more ranged damage than ability Youth Melee.

Aztec Priest - Support Caster. Tier 1 is kinda early for casters and bigger problem is that he doesn't need caster upgrades at all. Priest starts with 400 mana limit and with Heal and Healing Wards And he has normal attack that can be upgraded which is kinda random.

Second Tier Main Building

Eagle Warrior - Medium melee unit. Better than Youth but has small armor type so he is still not good melee unit. And worse he becomes redundant fast.

Owl Creature - Light melee unit. Tiny attack and low hp but first melee unit with heavy armor and has tier 1 shield and seems to have 3hp/s reg. But it is redundant unit.

Nagual - Offensive caster. Like priest before he doesn't need caster upgrades and has tier 3 caster mana. Starts with Slow, Curse, Cripple and True Sight. Two auto cast abilities with similar purpose and very powerful ability. Medium armor for some reason and can upgrade attack.
Also DSBTN icon is missing.

Chenque - Medium air unit. It is unedited Couatl without abolish and for those who don't know Couatl is strong as Wind Rider but costs 2 food.

Second Tier Aztec Armory

Teqiuha - Advanced range unit and siege unit. Simply put this is too strong ranged unit. Tooltip says Flaming Arrows add AoE and deals 50% more to mechanical units and buildings but there is no trigger for any of that so it is just searing arrow that deals +50 damage every 20 seconds which I don't like at all because base attack is already very high. Incendiary Ammunition is liquid fire and the only siege option you have in second tier. Both abilities use same upgrade.

Lizzard Warrior - Heavy Melee unit. We are at Tier 2.2 and we get another melee unit which makes the other three obsolete because it is Myrmidon without any abilities. And in case you didn't know Myrmidon is tier 3 equivalent.

Third Tier Main Building

Cihuatoteo - Flying Caster. Call me paranoid but I think this unit was made to troll me. It is flying unit with medium armor because pierce is natural counter to air units you do not do that. But lets get to the actual fun part, this unit has Raise Dead and Death Coil. Regarding Death Coil goes my standard rant of "no direct damage abilities on mass produced units".
Oh and Animate Dead. So this is flying 6th level Death Knight.

Third Tier Aztec Armory

Aztec Nightmare - Ultra Heavy melee siege unit. There must have been a lack of melee units in this race because this unit is overcompensating for something. It has 1900 hp, at full attack upgrade deals 83-195 siege damage and has the shield based of Elunes Grace (Pierce and Magic reduction).

Overall: Complicated unit requirements, redundant units and ultimate units can not be a good thing. There is also lack of actual abilities and upgrades besides 2 racial upgrade abilities and abilities of advanced archer unit. Caster abilities are actually creep abilities.
Lacking Units: Long range siege, anti-caster, heavy air unit. There are 12 units as it should be sadly I wish there wasn't.
Lacking abilities: Dispel. Probably would be more correct to say "Abilities" in general.

Heroes

Heroes are unfinished and creator stated that abilities are placeholders so there is no point of going over heroes. I will mention few odd things.

High Priest is the only hero at tier 1 and can use Obsidian Bleeding Ability racial (3600 sec poison). Attack and armor can be upgraded with unit upgrades.
Cheif Army Commander is tier 2 and can use Obsidian Bleeding. Has attack upgrade.
Emperor is tier 2 and doesn't have Obsidian Bleeding. Doesn't get upgrades at all.

 

[BlackRangerXIII]

@VeljkoM:
I'll fix this issue saturday during game design class. (Yay! Last day of class)

 

[VeljkoM]

Fair enough I'll wait. Oh and I didn't get to say it but sorry for your PC and great job organizing this whole contest. Wish someone like you was there the last time.

 

[Wasabee]

Thank you again VeljkoM for that having your time testing my race and making a review about it. Honestly I've expected some comments about it and if only I have more time to test because I've really want to focus the balance and how each unit would synergize. I think I still failed in that part.

Reply

Pros: Units cover all roles; healing is covered; there is secondary base defense; invisibility detection.
Cons: Some units appear to be too strong for their cost; No Dispel (Only an Item); Lack of Heroes and Heroes more fitting for RPG;

I intended to make only one dispel tool because I felt that the units are a bit OP(but they were too OP) and made weakness against spells.
I lacked the time to finish all heroes and what I’ve finished first are heroes that can match solo heroes in the game.

-Towers are present but are you sure that fortified armor and 3 armor were good necessary. Especially since upgrade has multitarget. Feedback and Multitarget do not stack.
- Items are interesting like short Area Armor Buff (why is this tier 2?) and Dispel (because no other unit has it). Smoke bomb makes me allergic because idea of invisible moving armies scares me, like what if they are stalking me as I am about to attack creeps. Mystic Bamboo creates clone that deals double damage and is surprisingly tier 1 and rather cheep item considering how powerful it is.
And the orb is proper Orb with ability to reduce damage to target.
I do wish there was one healing item.

I didn’t realize that feedback and multitarget doesn’t work until the submission day. The smoke bomb should have a small AoE so it wouldn’t be much of a problem I suppose. That was a fatal mistake, the Mystic Bamboo is supposed to be a tier 3 item.

Before we start with units I want to express things I noticed.
Many units have surprisingly bigger defense (not too big) than what you would normally expect which suggest that this is defensive faction.
There is a special upgrade that increases attack and hp of human units. It is unfair since that means units get 64attack upgrades plus two times 20%hp increase. I had Samurai with almost 2000 hp and orcs felt humbled with my ground army.

Maybe I should have buff their attack speed and movespeed instead of increase attack and hp. I didn’t have much time in testing it against others.

= Both units get time training reduction but I am unsure they need it. I didn't get an impression that this was swarm race especially since units seems to have higher defense than usual and there is hp upgrade. Either you go for quantity or quality.

I made a time reduction upgrade because they’re supposed to be cheap, slightly weak units which should work with the defensive base.

Yuki-Onna - Support caster. Stats are appropriate and spells are for the most part good choice.
Blood Drain however is not appropriate caster ability, it is direct damage and as I said it once I'll say it again "casters don't get direct damage abilities" and "don't give direct damage abilities to mas produced units".

I made the cast range very small to compensate the life steal ability which actually should make her more vulnerable.

King Oni - Heavy Melee Caster. Stats are more fitting for a tier 3 heavy melee unit and this unit has all benefits of Heavy Melee and Caster with no downsides. This is Wc2 design of unit and even then caster part would have been an upgrade in tier 3.
Devour is a curious ability in general. Original unit that has it is a range unit and despite high hp was surprisingly easy to kill. King Oni on other hand is melee fighter so it is easier for him to use it and heavy armor is better at surviving so it is harder for enemy to rescue unit. In short, the hindrance that Devour normally has is not here and you might want to reconsider if that is a good thing.
Enraged Roar is AoE direct damage but more alarmingly it is AoE stun. I wouldn't give this ability to mass produced units, one hero with it is powerful enough.

Yes, the stats should’ve been weaker and it was supposed to be a tier 2 light melee caster. If this unit was nerf down, devour wouldn’t be much of a problem. The enraged roar could be change into an attack buff.

Kyuubi - Anti-caster unit. I was starting to think I won't see one of these in this contest. Magic Immunity is there naturally but unit has normal attack instead of piercing. Pierce counters caster armor, normal dies not.
This unit gets auto-cast Slow+Manaburn chain that hits five targets (cheap too). I am not going to sugarcoat this, that is an overpowering unbalanced ability. Manaburn is alone strong spell that damages mana and hp (the burn part means converting destroyed mana into damage). With one Kyuubi you can hinder an enemy army, with more Kyuubis enemy can forget about using magic because each will drain 100 mana on primary target, most likely a hero, and chains will take care of casters. Actually this ability seems to hurt units without mana too.

This was the last unit I’ve made and lacked much testing in his part. The slow+chain manaburn could be nerf down too so that it players can’t abused it.

Shikigami - Scout, hey I forgot this role exists. It is shade but at tier 2 so it is more useful but that might be a too good thing.
But the actual issue of this unit is that it has Possess at tier 3. An invisible unit that can possess. Possess an ability that has been nerfed constantly from path to patch until eventually it ended up having long cast time and banshee taking increased damage. You have buffed the most nerfed spell by making a cheaper (100 gold) and invisible unit use it and since map ingame is v1.0 the possess isn't nerfed either.
Except for a minor problem of ability costing 200 mana for a unit with 100 mana.

I know I changed the mana cost but is possess really and op spell for this guy?
[/QUOTE]

Hwacha - Long ranged siege unit. Actually the range is quite low for a siege unit and to counter that at tier 3 there is an ability to increase range but at cost of movement and gives AA attack. I personally think ground range increase should be higher than standard 1150 range, since that makes it just equal with other siege units but with no move handicap. On other hand I do believe that AA damage is too high and it isn't like this is the only AA option this race has. Oh also there should be some indication that Hwacha is using stationary mode.

Bo-Hiya - Secondary siege unit. I didn't see a guy with a gun coming. Still this is an odd unit since normally siege units are either fast harassers (Raider), durable tanks (Siege Engine) or long ranged (Guess). This unit is none of those things, it is just simply ranged unit with siege attack and ability to fire faster but move slower. I am trying to see the reason why I would be consider this unit over Hwacha since they share the role in similar way but Hwacha having advantage of being AA unit too.

It was my mistake that I forgot the range of the Hwacha. Bo-Hiya is faster than Hwacha and could be an alternative if you want fast units in your army or a combination of the two, where Bo-Hiya could atleast protect the Hwacha and also provide additional siege power.

Tengu - Light Air unit. I feel like there was a mix up because this unit gets magic attack but is labeled as AA unit. Now don't get me wrong magic attack does deal extra damage to small armor but this unit also counters heavy melee units a tier too early. The unit even gets multitarget passive which is something heavy air units normally get.
I am saying that this is too good unit because it has magic attack instead of pierce attack. Yes I know it is a magic bird but so is fairy dragon and gargoyle yet their missiles use pierce too so they wouldn't overlap with Chimera and Frostwyrm for dealing with ground units.

I guess pierce attack should’ve replaced the magic attack and I made a multitarget passive to match to match its fragileness.

Third Tier
Katana Samurai - Heavy Melee unit. It wouldn't be Japan without our noble horseback archers armed with naginata. Well you know if we were realistic.
Anyway the stats on this units are too high and yet the cost is lower than King Oni. Higher damage, attack speed and (1400) hp than tauren for 4 food? And level 6 is for creep units that are hero equivalent since it decreases magic potency on them. Passive is poison that adds more damage and slows down enemy and I am unsure how to feel about that (enjoy irony of honor bound warrior using dishonorable poison?). Oh and poison doesn't actually need the upgrade.

Well actually Samurais had a wide range of arsenal from naginatas, long bows, guns and their main weapon and symbol the katana. Long bows primarily became a favorite in the later period, this bows are up to 2 m long. Also a Samurai are the ones who can carry a daisho, which is a pairing of a katana and a wakizashi(short sword).
The bleeding skill well I went through it a couple of times but I can’t think of any, my deepest apologies,
The Code of Bushido occurred during the Tokugawa Era where the dominant religion is Buddhism.

Seriyuu - Heavy Air Unit. And well this is what I expect from this type of unit: high attack, high hp, high cost (maybe too much?) and upgrade that adds multi-target damage ability. What I didn't expect is pierce damage instead of magic and level 7 (why did you even edit that?). Oh and multi-target passive is a hazzard for your own units so watch out (still not as bad as Chimera).

Nah I tried to make the unit expensive because of that. Level 7(Hmm I guess I’ve mistaken for it as the Food), is the multi-target passive affects my units? I was not aware of that!

Heroes

Shining Light - High damage dealing agility hero with half abilities for killing people and the other half improving the killing. She takes dealing damage very seriously. The idea of "avoiding" damage is an alien concept for her.
Blade Dance is an ability you see on AoS or other Hero maps. It is based of Hero attack because it is expected to grow with hero levels and items. But in melee there are few levels and items are not that spectacular so this ends up being kinda underwhelming ability but not entirely useless. Fixed damage would do wonders here. Leveling up this ability only increases AoE so it is as good as it gets at level 1.
Sunburst is direct target spell that damages target and hurts units near it while slowing everyone affected. One would think that this was Frost Nova from description that I had given but hilariously it is triggered spell. Damage is quite higher than Frost Nova though but mana cost is significantly lower because agility heroes aren't meant to cast abilities like this.
Illuminate (odd name) confuses me a bit because it seems to imply that it is like critical strike only each attack deals the double damage of the previous attack. Actually it adds on level one +2 then +4 and then +6 but I feel like this ability should be auto-cast and cost mana. Oh and killed units don't leave corpses. You should really restore original tooltip and edit it instead of trying to write your own.
Overwhelming Chaste is ultimate selfbuff that improves move/attack speed and regeneration. I feel like this would be way more interesting ability in hero vs hero map.

Thunder King - He is a big muscled guy armed with giant hammers. If you said "That is an Intelligence Hero" than you are right! Huh? Well of course he is not strength hero that would be just silly.
Ok joke aside he too like Shining Light would fit more in a hero map instead of here.

Raiju is our first ability, it is line damage but at level one it already puts to shame both Shockwave and Carrion Swarm (at top level) with high damage and 2000 range. There is 8% damage reduction after first hit but the abilities I mentioned have more strict reduction of total damage limit.
Thunder Crash is a special ability. Did you ever look at your Lich or Archmage and said "I must bring him in to melee range of the enemy". You probably didn't because intelligence heroes have no business jumping in middle of enemy group and that is what this ability does. Blink that damages. Range is 2000 and instead of costing mana, mana is drained the further you travel and damage depends of distance. I suppose the real usefulness is for running away but then you waste all that damage.
Crescendo is a passive that boosts attack speed after you cast a spell. Considering the task of caster heroes is to cast spells to effect the battle usefulness here is not as high as it would have been for agility or even strength heroes who generally have better attacks.
Lightning Storm is like Starfall except it follows your hero, you don't channel it and it doesn't attack all units at same time (I think) and lasts for a minute. Serious firepower.

The heroes that I’ve made are most likely solo heroes and I haven’t made an army support hero.
Shining Light is the main damage dealing hero which could hunt enemy heroes as well.
Thunder-King is a mixture of support/damage dealer hero and his skills must be used in the right way or else you’ll lose a hero.

 

[Yours Truly]

I feel like VeljKom could be the second judge,what with all these reviews and stuff.
Late reply,so thanks for the review on my entry,m8.

 

[VeljkoM]

Thank the Ralle for there being Hide tag. And it was a pleasure to test this race.

response to apcrabnightlive

I intended to make only one dispel tool because I felt that the units are a bit OP(but they were too OP) and made weakness against spells.
I lacked the time to finish all heroes and what I’ve finished first are heroes that can match solo heroes in the game.

Fair intention but if RoC and TFT had thought us something is that lack of dispel is far too great weakness. You'll notice that almost all of new changes in TFT was to address how strong magic is. Undead got Destroyers with Devour Magic (AoE Dispel) and Orcs got Disenchant (AoE Dispell) though orcs are still bad against magic as they lack magic immune unit and bot their casters with dispels can be dealt with (Spirit Walker ironically with magic).
Of course since there is an item in this race for dispel it isn't dire situation.

The smoke bomb should have a small AoE so it wouldn’t be much of a problem I suppose.

And Windwalk is just one Hero yet Blademaster is the biggest problem early in the game. Still Smoke Bombs are an item so unless Hero is ready to spend a lot of money it isn't that big deal so I am just paranoid.

Maybe I should have buff their attack speed and movespeed instead of increase attack and hp. I didn’t have much time in testing it against others.

Well I would be happy with smaller hp boost but I like your idea better. Since it would make tier 1 units less durable and Militia training would then be more logical.

I made a time reduction upgrade because they’re supposed to be cheap, slightly weak units which should work with the defensive base.

Doesn't seem to me that Yari and Bow Ashigaru are that weak for tier 1 units, more like standard except having higher armor (which I doubt is that big deal). They aren't strong as tier 1 units that cost 3 food but definitely aren't weak to need high numbers to balance out against other units. Or maybe that is just my impression. I was going to say that they lack stat boosts that other tier 1 units might get but I would be wrong because they do get the Art of War.

I made the cast range very small to compensate the life steal ability which actually should make her more vulnerable.

Not the point, point is that casters don't DPS, they support or disrupt enemies and let attacking units deal damage. Nerfing doesn't help much in this case.
There are nine casters in game and you won't find one with ability that aims to deal damage directly. Best you can find is lightning shield but that one serves more to disrupt enemy range units than reliably deal damage.

Yes, the stats should’ve been weaker and it was supposed to be a tier 2 light melee caster. If this unit was nerf down, devour wouldn’t be much of a problem. The enraged roar could be change into an attack buff.

Yeah that sounds about right.

This was the last unit I’ve made and lacked much testing in his part. The slow+chain manaburn could be nerf down too so that it players can’t abused it.

Yeah make it less "auto-cast chain lightning that destroys mana". Since it is multitarget you need to nerf it a lot, perhaps to 25 mana instead of 100 and maybe remove hp damage since there is already slow and mana reduction effects.

I know I changed the mana cost but is possess really and op spell for this guy?

You can kill banshees at least, but unless you actually remember to carry with you all the time detector (orcs and night elves don't even get mobile detector) you won't see invisible units that can instantly steal your units. Possess is an OP spell on any unit but on this unit you removed all weaknesses of Possess and unit that costs 100 gold and 1 food which makes it easy to mass and cost effective to lose.
Think of it from cost effective point of view, does it sounds right when 100 gold unit can counter 250 gold unit instantly.

It was my mistake that I forgot the range of the Hwacha. Bo-Hiya is faster than Hwacha and could be an alternative if you want fast units in your army or a combination of the two, where Bo-Hiya could atleast protect the Hwacha and also provide additional siege power.

Well I suppose I can consider Bo-Hiya the fast siege unit, but I do still think that Hwacha is better choice of the two since it has AA role while Bo-Hiya is just siege. I don't see how Bo-Hiya serve as protectors of Hwatcha when they both deal siege damage which I don't think is that effective against most units and Hwatchas don't exactly need help with buildings.
Think the problem for me is that the weaker siege unit has single role while the stronger siege unit has additional role. Usually long siege units are the one role units and secondary siege units have additional traits. (Raider with Net; Siege Engine AA and no ground unit attack; Mountain Giant being tank first and siege unit second).

I guess pierce attack should’ve replaced the magic attack and I made a multitarget passive to match to match its fragileness.

Yeah think pierce and magic should be switched around between air units. Hey multi target is ok, I probably would have made it to only work for air units but that is personal preference.

Well actually Samurais had a wide range of arsenal from naginatas, long bows, guns and their main weapon and symbol the katana. Long bows primarily became a favorite in the later period, this bows are up to 2 m long. Also a Samurai are the ones who can carry a daisho, which is a pairing of a katana and a wakizashi(short sword).
The bleeding skill well I went through it a couple of times but I can’t think of any, my deepest apologies,
The Code of Bushido occurred during the Tokugawa Era where the dominant religion is Buddhism.

Well I did say horseback archer and naginata, I just didn't mention guns. Katans are symbols of Samurai just how european swords are symbol of european Knights but both didn't use them in combat unless something was wrong.
That was my point katanas are symbol of prestige and not weapon they used in war. Of course this is an issue for all swords in general since knights used lances (no bows or guns, that was against the code of chivalry), and most infantry through all ages preferred spears, pikes, polearms or anything that gave them range to avoid getting killed. Swords (and horses) in most cultures were sign of upper class. That was just random trivia anyway not a critic or else I would go insane criticizing every single media with swords.
And don't apologize for bleeding skill it isn't wrong at all. It just feels weird to me.
Or maybe Samurai doesn't actually need a passive at all since he gets Art of War, so consider him like human Kinght who gets stat boost instead of passive.

Nah I tried to make the unit expensive because of that. Level 7(Hmm I guess I’ve mistaken for it as the Food), is the multi-target passive affects my units? I was not aware of that!

Well it is burning oil right? Last time I checked abilities that deal damage on ground over time (Burning Oil, Blizzzard, Flame Strike) had tendency to hurt all units unless you edited in which case I am wrong. Still not a mistake because as I said Chimeras attack alone is bigger danger to your units since splash from that high attack is way higher than from your ability. Kinda why I stopped bothering with Bears in NE army.

The heroes that I’ve made are most likely solo heroes and I haven’t made an army support hero.
Shining Light is the main damage dealing hero which could hunt enemy heroes as well.
Thunder-King is a mixture of support/damage dealer hero and his skills must be used in the right way or else you’ll lose a hero.

Shining Light still could use one survival oriented ability instead focusing only on damage. Compare her to fellow damage dealing agility heroes like Demon Hunter with Evasion, Warden with Blink and Blade Master with Mirror Image and Wind Walk.
I don't see any support ability on Thunder King only damage and they are rather unusual damage abilities for intelligence hero.

I feel like VeljKom could be the second judge,what with all these reviews and stuff.
Late reply,so thanks for the review on my entry,m8.

Aww thanks that is very kind of you to say. But if I was an actual judge than I would have to figure out how to convert thoughts to numbers and judge by Creativity, Theme, Gameplay and Balance. I didn't consider the Theme criteria too much when reviewing because this contest puts big handicap with available imports and I do not know that much about presented mythologies to know what fits and what doesn't. And Creativity is too subjective for me except in case of using existing barely edited Wc3 abilities and I don't consider Creativity equal to Gameplay and Balance.

And most importantly if you would check the previous contests you'll see that judging tends to be more detailed examination and yet way less informative.

Oh and rankings, I have to figure out how to compare six races and I already am conflicted about who should get which rank.

 

[Marcos_M]

My fucking models FAILED to load!

Never make a change in your race and upload BEFORE testing it.

And yeah, everything had a high cost, specially of wood, because the race harvest wood faster. The problem that i had with my race is that i only updated on weekends, and not all weekend i had time to make changes and fixing ALL my bugs, then the deadline is near and i had to put some shitty items on the store.

But the skill that gives you agility is just a shitty damage booster, yes. I just needed something to make him hit harder. And also, my regen system didn't work out, the units are supposed to heal out of combat

And yeah, engligh is not my main lenguage, so i have grammar errors, specially when writing a lot of text

edit: Thanks for taking your time to review :3