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Techtree Contest #12 - Results

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Evolution

This is all about how you can build a whole techtree starting from one unit and one building. You are only allowed to have one single base unit and one single base building. Everything else your race may have must evolve from these two starter elements. Meaning that you can only build one type of building and only produce one type of unit. However, upgrades and transforming units are allowed.

This race must be balanced with regards to the other 4 Factions of Warcraft 3 and how it impacts the metagame of melee as a whole.


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  • First Place: 50 reputation points and your entry on the award icon
  • Second Place: 35 reputation points and an award icon
  • Third Place: 20 reputation points and an award icon
  • Remaining entries: 5 reputation points for each submission (for users with final entries who made it to the public poll)

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Final Score = (ReachedVotes/POSSIBLE_VOTES)*25 + (JudgeScore/MAXIMUM_JUDGE_SCORE)*75
  • 75 % of the winner's score shall be determined by the contest's appointed judge(s).
  • 25 % of the winner's score shall be determined by the results of a public poll.
Initial Impressions
-Standard harvesting
-Building progress bars a nice touch
-Until T2 I can build one combat unit
-It was a struggle to understand the tech tree requirements
-Evoke Units should be greyed out until I have one of the required structures
-Takes far too long to get cobat units out
-Spawn structure needs a smaller pathing area
-Psychic Noise, Spectral Bleed, and Third Eye are well thought out
-Long wait time to get into combat

Theme: 9/10

-Dreams, nightmares, and poor sleep are abound in this race. The lineup is the stuff of nightmares.

Role: 10/10

-Your unit composition is well done. My criticisms of it are based on magic relaince detailed in balance.
-It would have been nice to have one strong melee tank similar to a Tauren that I could toss into battle and not manage.

Balance: 3/5

-The Stone Wraith and Spook requiring different structures adds to the early game delay.
-The effect when a Lunatic is harvesting lumber is nice but it would be confusing to an enemy player who will want to click on the actual unit
-Buildings take far too long to complete
-There are too many negative buff spells. When playing it was somewhat taxing to manage all the spells but my enemy's army was inundated with crippling buffs.
-Because the army is so reliant on mana the Spirit Cauldron is a must have, but is not obtainable until mid/late game
-There are too many upgrades. Ifd the intension is to send the player down a specific path of units then it makes sense. If not I was spending way too much time and resources for the gains.

Creativity: 9/10

-While you recycled basic abilities in places for the most part this tech tree is exciting. The art added to the immersion and there was a high level of polish.
-Soulspinner seems like something from Sc2 =p

Awesomeness: 4/5

The art chosen made a substantial contribution to this category. Overall the theme is well portrayed.

Score: 35

Initial Impressions
-Antiquaroid is odd in that it seems to have only one purpose
-Starting units should be a mix so I don't need to wait to build
-Having to then build a Timber Generator adds too much time
-Asymptrone is basically another gate to getting a hero
-Falcon Canistro doesn't seem to work
-Proto-bot system adds a third resource requirement without much incentive
-Canceling a Anomalous Center results in a large bugged Proto-morph Generator
-Long wait time to get into combat

Theme: 5/10

-Units are vaguely connected via a robotic design aesthetic. When in a line I would not immediately associate them as a race. Buildings are a hodge-podge.

Role: 5/10

-I found myself constantly building Proto-Bots. They are essentially a third resource. You have two worker units, two basic combat units, a special combat unit that can steal hero XP, and a tank. This roster did not give me much to work with when countering my AI opponent. There is no siege damage.

Balance: 3/5

-Because Proto-Bots are a resource it is possible to create a situation where you run out of food and are unable to create more bots. They seem underpowered. I struggled to defeat T2 armies of comparable food. Being able to steal hero XP is too powerful of an ability for a unit to have.

Creativity: 7/10

-It's difficult to create new units using a robotic theme, there's so much sci-fi media. The most unique aspect was hero XP stealing. The construction system is interesting. If you streamlined it to require little micro on the resource management front gameplay would improve significantly.

Awesomeness: 2/5

-There's not a "wow" moment for me in this race. What stood out was the ability to steal XP from heroes.

Score: 22

Initial Impressions
-Starting with a Harvester Spire and a Extractor Spire would be good, however I know that's not within the rules
-Adjust the pathing for the Spire and resultant buildings to avoid the current pathing issues
-It is not immediately clear how vital Pristige Well's are. I would consider having the Temple generate one as well.
-Long wait time to get into combat

Theme: 9/10

-You made a noticeable effort to unify the style across units, buildings, abilities, and effects. It definitely showed through in the final product.


Role: 10/10

-I found among the nine combat units you covered everything in a straightforward way.

Balance: 3/5

-Against a T3 Human army my T3 army was wrecked. Granted I am not a micro god but I think damage values need tweaking.

Creativity: 7/10

-Many of the unit abilities seem to be simple offshoots from vanilla abilities. You did however present everything in an interesting way that made me want to explore the tech tree.

Awesomeness: 4/5

-You have a good idea on the Droplet system. It needs streamlining but overall it's a refreshing change from standard workers. You also did a superb job on visuals for everything.

Score: 33

Initial Impressions
-If I get rushed or at any point during a game get mineral line harassed and lose my workers
-One workers sacrifices and one summons UD style
-Must go Collector -> Vanguard to get Stinger or Bombarder
-Arachnathid from structure
-Collector -> Vanguard -> Stinger -> Brood Queen -> Seer Egg
-Collector -> Vanguard -> Stinger -> Corruptor Egg + Arachnathid -> Injector
-Long wait time to get into combat

Theme: 6/10

-The buildings and units tell partially different stories. While they are both Nerubian there is not much about the units based around cold. It's more of a general Nerubian race.
-Abilities are more poison based than anything else

Role: 9/10

-Everything seems to be present but the ease of access is an issue. I'll detail in balance.

Balance: 3/5

-The evolution idea sounds better than it plays in this iteration. There's too much time spent morphing units and it took several games to remember the "recipes".
-It is possible to get to a place where it's impossible to make workers, which should never be the case in a RTS (All Vanguards and Collectors die)
-While you have a full tree of units the inability to get to them when I need is an issue. For instance if I need to transition to deal with a tower rush I am not able to train a Fireshaper but must evolve one: Collector -> Vanguard -> Stinger -> Corrupter -> Fireshaper. There's no way I can do this in time.
-There are then exceptions to this such as the Arachnathid which are trained from a building
-An interesting fun upside to evolution is that I can make my forward army more advanced as I am attacking.
-An issue is that damaged units ordered to evolve create full health units

Creativity: 7/10

-The evolution system is interesting but I question the complexity of it.
-Overall abilities/spells are often takes on existing ones with little changes other than flavor text


Awesomeness: 2/5

-The learning curve here is real. Some units are layed in eggs by other units, some by buildings, and some must be evolved. There's a recipe system that needs to be memorized.
-There was obviously effort put into the unit creation system(s) but it's just too much.

Score: 27

Rationale: so I don't believe in an "Awesomeness" criteria. Really, it's just an extra 5 marks assigned to the role/gameplay criteria, at the expense of balance considerations. I've made balance equal to the other 3 categories and removed awesomeness, because to me, well-thought out racial mechanics are as important as bringing fun, wacky and innovative ones to the table.

Asset usage is fantastic. No complaints thematically, but a few functional gripes.
  • Stone Wraiths, Dream Seers & Spirit Cauldrons lack team colour.
  • Veilrippers, Mindbenders and Dream Seers are hard to see during a fight. Needs a larger model, more colour, or streamlined details
  • Some buffs, such as Third Eye & Mind Over Matter, are hard to see.
  • Dying Wish's attack missile spawns too far out
Special effects are super-polished.
Icons are fantastic. No complaints.
Unit names were rarely unfitting, but often overly complicated and hard to extract the role of the unit from.
  • "Bewitch" doesn’t seem fitting for a gold mine. The adjective is usually anthropomorphic
  • Almost ALL building names are virtually interchangeable, with esoteric words that don't express the function of the building. As such, for a first time player, it is incredibly difficult to find where buildings are. Why does a Devotion Pond, for example, unlock casters? Why does a "Ghost Portal" sell items? Fortunately, the arrangement of units is intuitive.
Minor presentation & tooltip errors:
  • Empower's tooltip should say "100 bonus hit points". No mention of losing ability to gather lumber
  • Dream Seer's tooltip doesn't list attack targets
  • Stats on Writhing Assault's tooltip are wrong
  • Move button position of Mindbender Adept Training to match Mindbender from the Dream Rift
  • Should mention Soulspinner is a siege unit in its tooltip
  • Should mention that Nightmare is channeling

Unit roles are surprisingly well-covered - adequate healing, detection, anti-magic, base defense
  • All units have well-defined roles, there is no overlap and each unit would have usage in niche situations
  • All of the basic unit roles (tier 1 melee & ranged, casters etc.) are covered EXCEPT arguably the most important one for your race (given that your food source is flying): dedicated anti-air
Most abilities were fun to play with, but only a select few seemed well thought-out, as opposed to thrown together to fit a theme:
  • Spook's Haunt is a commendable idea, doubling as base defense and a minor siege option. Great utility out of that unit
  • I like the choice to make Stone Wraiths and Spirit Cauldrons partial caster support, with their mana regeneration passive. Races rarely synergise melee units with casters.
Economy and production is good on paper, but with room for improvement of execution
  • Figments would benefit from being able to target Dream Rifts of your choice - otherwise, the mechanic is robbed of depth. Due to the lack of real player input, figments serve as an aesthetic choice that occasionally frustrates you when you don't have Dreamcatchers nearby.
  • "Empower" is a simple, but effective idea. Still, more base defense options are needed aside from Empower and Haunt.
Hero roles are well-designed
  • Broker of Illusions - an overall well-designed hero whose skills blend together and give him a distinct personality - deal widespread damage from afar, and punish attackers that get close by. One gripe - his ranged attack has negative synergy with Mirage and Illusory Lash. See - KotG and Thorns Aura.
  • Malignant Chain is a cool idea, but poorly executed. I originally cited this as a balance problem, but it's not an over or underpowered ability. It is just needless micro. If it costs zero mana, why not just make it a passive?
  • Eater of Nightmares and Dominion Incarnate are very well-designed. The latter particularly has good abilities, but Nightmare Aura would be better suited for a melee hero.

Unit stats were for the most part well-tuned:
  • Dreamcatchers are WAY too weak - that's regarding stats alone, but consider that the race has no dedicated anti-air or towers. If the opponent goes mass anti-air (Flying Machines, Hippogryphs, Gargoyles or - probably the worst for you, Batriders), you are utterly screwed.
  • Stone Wraiths are too strong for a 3 food tier 1 unit.
  • Lunatics combine the best parts of Militia, Acolytes and Wisps. But, intentionally or not, base defenses are so bad they offset the strength of Lunatics.
  • Menhir costs too much for what it is
  • Considering the ease in which you can mass Incubi, Nightmare probably shouldn't target heroes
  • Soulspinners are too weak, require more DPS and more HP to offset the fact that they're organic
  • Phantasms are too weak, requires way more HP or DPS - and that's factoring in Phantasmagoria
  • Spirit Cauldrons are slightly too weak for their food cost
Hero abilities were often too strong at level 1, and too weak in higher levels.
  • Writhing Assault too strong at level 1, and scales very little
  • Wave of Fear scales too poorly at levels 2 & 3.
  • Dominate Essence is kind of overpowered, as it lasts so long and over infinite range for very little cost.
Building costs and timings were a bit wonky, due to build times being highly sporadic:
  • Figments completely break the early game. Other races can simultaneously build food sources and heroes, Dreamspawn cannot.
  • Figments are frustrating in the late game, where tedious micro is required to pump out large quantities of units
  • I don't believe the cost of Dream Rifts was factored into unit pricing - they should be
Overall, the user experience has room for improvement. In the context of Wc3, many design elements are confusing
  • The concentration of active abilities seems overwhelming, putting more stress on the player to use units/spells than reasonable. A large part of this is the abundance of casters, as well as the way in which unit training is relegated to one building, rather than compartmentalised. The unit-spawning abilities, such as Chimeric Spawns and Phantasmagoria, add to the sense of overwhelming-ness.
  • Figments are not explained well in-game, with no mention that range of Dreamcatchers is limited
  • Minor fix, would be nice if Lunatic returned to harvesting gold when Empower runs out
  • Some kind of rally point system that works for all rifts would be nice, similar to how the zerg do it for their eggs
  • Minor fix, would be nice if ESC could cancel the menus inside a Dream Rift
  • Minor fix, Liquid Rift and Scroll of Regen share same hotkey
  • Minor fix, Veilripper abilities are unlocked without research. Same for Mindbender Adept
  • Minor fix, Phantasm shouldn't have mana

The overall racial theme is quite creative. Ghosts that arise from dreaming is a cool idea!
Figments were poorly executed, but innovative nonetheless.
The production and building systems were a mish-mash of previously-explored ideas, but combined they are quite unique.
Stone Wraith and Spirit Cauldron are so cool, theme-wise! Veilrippers are pretty unique, function-wise.
The tier 1 shop items are pretty much the only blatantly uncreative elements in the Dreamspawn!

Most models were fitting, but a couple buildings were just melee models that didn't fit the mechanical theme at all.
Some buildings did not have a training animation
Could've displayed gold/lumber cost properly in tooltips.
Antiquaroid tooltip should mention it gathers lumber from inside a Lumber Generator
Proto-advancement icon is the same as Proto-bot's
Synaptic bots have a hero glow when they're units
I'm going to guess Falcon Canistros were based off Tauren - you tell me how I'd know :p

Only a quarter of a full race's techtree roles are met. There's no casters, magic damage, flying units or siege units. No real attempt was made to make the units gel with each other
Falcon Canistros are kind of useless - the premise of RTS games is killing units. If you have a unit that sucks at killing units, and doesn't synergise with other units that can kill units exceedingly well, it won't be used.
Asymptrones are a unique role, though the coding behind their ability must be a bit buggy, because often I can't transfer the stolen experience.
There's no base defense options or a shop for items.
Only a single hero, and no synergy with tavern heroes.

From the limited techtree, to the poor unit stat choices, this race is woefully underpowered.
Because of the lack of units, and thus roles, the race has major structural issues. How does it counter enemy spellcasters? Or mass air?
An all-mechanical race will always suffer from imbalance - though this is the least of the race's balance problems.
No attack or armour upgrades means units scale poorly in the late game.
Unit timings are thrown off with the Recombination training system. You're susceptible to virtually every kind of rush strategy, from tower rushes to tier 2 pushes with a tavern hero.
Performing basic things, like training units and harvesting lumber, is way more difficult than for other races. Simple fixes, such as having rallied Proto-bots automatically load inside Generators, would do wonders for the playability of the race.
Repair Modules ability is too weak at level 1. Electric Disruption is useless against 98% of Warcraft 3's units (don't quote me on that statistic).
Activate Discharge is too weak, and the reliance on chance means it is technically possible to be drained of mana while having the chain lightning effect activate zero times. I'm also fairly certain the coding behind it is buggy.

Theme-wise, a race of robots is not fresh ground. There is no twist on them either.
There were few innovative gameplay ideas. The Asymptrone was a novel unit.
Enhanced Propulsion does look cool.

Units and buildings are well-represented. Each hero is thematically distinct
Overall, special effects and details were good, but not as polished as they could be:
  • Spires and several units do not have team colour
  • Upgrading Spires next to one another creates some funky bugs with the location of the buildings
  • Extractor effects look cool, but are a tad too large. They also don't disappear when the gold mine depletes.
  • The Temple of Tide's ubersplat texture often doesn't match buildings
  • The transition from Spire Shard to Welling Spire could be a bit nicer
  • Shimmering Bubble lacks an explosion, or any effect that illustrates the stun happening (apart from the stun buff itself)
  • The Runic Watcher's bouncing attacks were kind of jumpy in appearance
Quite a few minor errors with tooltips and presentation:
  • Certain button positions of abilities are weird - usually, the command card is filled from left to right.
  • Good usage of passive tooltips to give the player information
  • Most unit tooltips don't show when techtree requirements aren't fulfilled
  • Seastriker Orb definitely does not last 1-2 seconds.
  • Seatapper tooltip says "Streaming Waters" - the upgrade name is "Stream Waters"
  • Aqua Entrapment says it snares a unit for 20 seconds, but lasts 40 seconds?

There are three melee units with normal attack and heavy armour - that's too much overlap. Aside from this issue, all your other bases are well-covered, and roles well-defined.
No dedicated anti-air unit. The Runic Watcher somewhat counts, but lacks damage against other air units.
Eyes of Crustacean - a novel idea, that is useless on most maps. But hell, I liked it.
Could benefit from the addition/replacement of a unit with strong ranged damage. Right now, nothing outputs much DPS from afar.
Temple Sage's Siphon has more gameplay potential if you were to let it transfer mana to allied units. Right now, they just kind of sit there with max mana at all times.
Ascended's mechanic is kind of shallow, with no real depth apart from them being the strongest when you have six of them. No decision-making involved, no dynamic use or change of their role, not much counterplay unless you count enemies focusing them down one-by-one.
Heroes are functionally distinct, though Riptude and Shimmering Bubble are a bit too close for comfort, in terms of similarity.
  • Maybe it's because of the similarity of abilities, but there was a lot of synergy within a hero's skills, and with other heroes
  • Each hero had at least one skill that perfectly emphasised the hero's role: Blob Attack, Deranged Fling, Abyssal Voyage, Titan's Endurance.
A number of abilities have the same hotkey as Hold Position, e.g. Heroism
No hotkeys for releasing Droplets, or for evolving a bunch of units
Gold and lumber harvesting is fairly intuitive, but having to rebuild Harvester Spires is tedious. Extractors could also auto-harvest from a nearby mine when built.
Rally point system would be nice for evolving units.

Unit statistics were very well adjusted, with only a couple issues:
  • Seatappers are too weak for a tier 3, 4-food unit. Stream Waters makes him a tad more formidable, but he should be stronger without the upgrade.
  • Overflow is kind of costly for a spell that doesn't guarantee that a summon occurs
  • Crushing Tides is overpowered - it's an AoE 0.5 second stun for every attack the Basin makes. Hard stuns should never be that commonplace
However, too many area-of-effect damage and stun abilities render the race's arsenal one-note and potentially overpowered
Hero ability stats were chosen less well. Particularly, ultimates were rather weak:
  • Luminescence Mace barely scales with levels. Levels 2 and 3 should be noticeably stronger
  • Call of Ascended has a mana cost appropriate to its effect, but not an effect appropriate to being an ultimate. It should either be stronger or have a lower cooldown.
  • Deranged Fling deals less damage than both Riptide and Shimmering Bubble, despite being single-target.
  • Insanity is far too weak for its mana cost, not to mention the fact that it is an ultimate ability
  • Salvation is far too mana-intensive.
Major bug - a new Pillar of the Loch doesn't sell Spire Shards
Gold and lumber harvesting was not imbalanced per se, but lumber was annoying to gather. Perhaps give Harvester spires an uproot ability, or at least refund their full cost when out of lumber?
Hero timings are roughly okay, not too early and not too late, provided a Heroic Droplet is produced very early on.
It is too long and tedious to amass an army, which is particularly a problem against tier 1 rushes by opposing players. Some things that could've streamlined the training of units: an intuitive rally point system, hotkeys for Droplets and unit training.

Theme-wise, a water elemental race is nothing new. But I like the twist of it being droplets evolving into greater forms.
Cool gold-harvesting system, and a novel way of training units. Could have been executed better, but creative nonetheless.
A few copy-and-paste abilities with stats modified, like Sacred Water (Heal) and Celerity Aura (Endurance Aura), but overall, fairly unique ideas. Over-abundance of area-of-effect damage and disable spells, however.
Eyes of Crustacean gave me a good laugh - it's definitely an "out-there" idea!

The asset usage for your race was serviceable, but the organisation of visual and information elements needed improvement.
  • A few units lack team colour. Unit models are not very distinguishable from one another
  • Luckily, their icons are fairly distinct from one another and well-chosen for their respective models. Heroes are quite distinct too
  • Brood Queen lacks a portrait
  • Predator's Draining Whirl lacks an effect. It would be nice to have one to see when it procs
The myriad of buttons for most units was overwhelming - you should've found a way to make it more ergonomic and less taxing to look at it. The worst example, the Stinger, has 11 out of 12 icon positions filled in.
The way tooltips showed gold and lumber costs was inventive, but you could have experimented with Charge Gold and Lumber to get it properly shown. The floating text training countdowns could've been executed better, but did their job well and was intuitive to see
Spell effects were pretty cool! Abyss Well was so powerful it almost sucked my GPU into it! (seriously, you might want to check up on its coding)
Some minor presentation nitpicks:
  • Why does "Cancel" have an Orb of Corruption icon?
  • Not the biggest fan of the ground ubersplat for your buildings. Too blurry, and the bright teal colour clashed with the duller blue-grey of the buildings.
  • Arachnathid Egg button position is a bit perplexing
  • Venom Widow - "Scream" tooltip says "0 seconds". Her ability icons are monotonous - they're all coloured wispy beams of light
  • Venom Widow's corpse doesn't fully "evaporate" when dying. At one point, I couldn't revive her from the altar properly.
  • I don't like the Dark Elder's tooltip - it doesn't really say much about its function in combat. "Counterpart to Lich" is too vague.
  • Errrm "Genocide Gas" could be a bit insensitive, no?

Overall, your unit roles are covered well, and there are some opportunities for synergy in your race.
  • Congratulations, this race is the closest to covering the necessity of anti-air! Not only do you have actual towers, but Web and a flying building that shouts good damage against air!
  • Not the biggest fan of leaving anti-summon dispel to an expensive tier 3 item, but I can't say it doesn't cover that base.
  • Brood Queens are my favourite unit. I like their dual usage as ranged and siege units in the late game.
  • There is a slight issue of later tier units overshadowing the tier 1 units, such as Arachnathids overtaking Vanguards and Brood Queens overtaking Stingers. Given your production system, I'll let it pass, as one can still find usage in upgrading them to the later forms.
  • In general, I like that you kind of distributed the race's healing options across several abilities. It adds more utility to spells like Spell Shield and Shadow Blend.
  • Spell Shield could've seen even more utility if it removed and healed based off allied buffs.
  • Brood Spawn synergises well with Scroll of the Law of Blood - probably too well
  • It doesn't make sense for attack speed to be a penalty for Shadow Blend - the unit loses invisbility upon attacking.
While looking at the units in the context of combat, their roles are well-covered and synergistic. However, when looking at the way in which they are produced, things become a bit muddled.
  • Half the time, there doesn't really seem to be a real gameplay reason as to why you have chosen a specific unit to upgrade into another one. What this results in is a unintuitive and messy system that players will find difficult to learn.
  • It wasn't clear what you were trying to achieve by allowing Vanguards and Stingers to build Ziggurats and Bastions respectively. It just seemed like a gimmick, or you ran out of space fitting both onto another unit.
  • Heroes requiring unit sacrifices are strange and unnecessary complication. They don't really add any meaningful choices, so much as just extra steps compared to how melee races train their heroes.
  • I can't tell if you thought of the implications that each techtree route would have on playstyle and strategic variety. For example, you're pretty much forced into going Stingers as a combat unit every game. They simply have too much access to the rest of the techtree. Caster units being laid from ranged units is just strange - and you are forced into synergising casters with Stingers and Brood Mothers.
  • One upside I can think of is that there is some added decision-making in the order of laying and evolving. This does add uniqueness to the roles of the hatching units (Stingers/Brood Queens), allowing you to amass armies on the move, launch surprise attacks, or quickly replenish your troops and go for a second wave.
  • I have no clue why the Corruptor turns into a Fireshaper, theme-wise or gameplay-wise.
Heroes were very well-designed, each with distinct roles that complement one another and their armies. They had no functional or thematic overlap with one another, so great job here.

I appreciate very much the fact that you incorporated evolving units into the cost of subsequent forms/buildings. I believe you also tried to incorporate unit training times to be comparable to melee races', so that's a plus too. That being said, collectors take too long to lay - all other Worker units take 15 seconds to train. The casters felt like they took slightly too long to hatch as well.
Stats-wise, your units were pretty on-point.
  • Vanguard could be a bit cheaper. It's identical to a ghoul right now, yet for some reason costs 10 gold more.
  • Brood Queens are a really cool unit, but their combined ranged and siege utility, plus the fact that they train Seers, makes them too integral in your techtree. I always found myself massing these units due to their versatility. Their scarabs might be a little bit overpowered as well. I don't think you should nerf the Brood Queen's stats, but change them from a jack-of-all-trades to a jack-of-a-couple.
  • Speaking of, I don't know if you intended it or not, but Scroll of the Law of Blood works a little too well with scarabs. The funny thing is, for most other units, it probably doesn't work well enough given its cost. Remember you are essentially paying for the unit, as well as the 300 gold cost of the item. I don't like the capability of it targetting heroes - sacrificing a hero to deny enemy's experience would be way too easy. On top of that, your army gets a super-strong area-of-effect salve & clarity potion. I think the item should be reworked.
  • Given that it's the race's only dispel option, Scepter of Absorption could probably stand to be a bit cheaper. It's more expensive than your orb right now.
  • Hero abilities were well-tuned. No complaints.
From a design standpoint, your evolution & hatching mechanics seemed reasonably well-thought!
  • Hatching units on the fly has a trade-off of enemies sniping the eggs. I don't see this being imbalanced.
  • Hero timings seem to match up quite well. My only issue is that when reviving them, you can revive multiple at a time - a pretty big advantage to have over other races.
  • I don't like the potential for an opponent to screw you over with potent base harass. If they kill all your Collectors and Vanguards, you have no way of reproducing your economy. Any other race requires all workers to be killed, as well as their town halls.
From a playbility standpoint, the laying and evolving mechanics were executed fairly smoothly. The working hotkeys and rally point system really helped to set your race apart from the other entries.
Some minor bugs:
  • Eggs can be laid past the food cap
  • Summon Ziggurat/Bastion cooldown does not reset when the building is not built due to a lack of resources

Theme-wise, nerubians that performed body augmentation is an interesting idea. Except, it never really comes across as such in your race. Maybe you needed better models, or gameplay mechanics that emphasised the fact that these nerubians were genetically modifying themselves or what have you. Right now, they are far too reminiscent of the Zerg, from the egg laying mechanic to their focus on bio-monstrous forms. When you said "substituting their flesh for their masonry", you raised my hopes for a cyborg nerubian race, and expertly dashed them :(.

Ziggurats were uninspired, copying everything frame name to tower-upgrade functionality from the Scourge.
A few too many straight copy-and-paste ideas, such as Web and Improved Lumber Harvesting.





First Place
The Dreamspawn by
Spellbound &
Retera



Second Place
Wellings by
xYours Trulyx



Third Place
Shadefrost Nerubians by
EternalOne


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