Techtree Contest #13 - Coloured Mana [Optionally Paired]

[Heinvers]

Hi. How are you guys doing? Still working on your entries or are you all finished?

@Wazzz what was the question again? I'm quite swarmed atm.

 

[Wazzz]

@Heinvers there was inquiry by a contestant as to whether a week's long extension would be acceptable, however there was also discussion about how fair this would be to those who were able to finish everything in time and would find no value in a week's extension.

As such, we appear to be gearing towards the notion of a 2% penalty rate, wherein for every day overdue the submission is, the contestant loses 2% of their overall score to balance it out a bit. We were hoping to see what adjudication you may present to the situation in that regard.

 

[Heinvers]

1% would be better IMO.

Are the rest of you finished with your entries?
I need to update the contestants table.

 

[Yours Truly]

1% would be better IMO.

Are the rest of you finished with your entries?
I need to update the contestants table.

I'm all done.

 

[Wazzz]

@Heinvers three of us were finished, there was my entry:

Wazzz

And then the others:

Riki Martin
xYours Trulyx

 

[Wazzz]

The 2% rate was considered as an incentive to round out the competition more, given it is approaching the deadline very soon and the idea stems from a 10% penalty rate used within universities.

Sort of a "get into gear" notion, as well as to avoid penalizing those who were able to finish in time and get everything done.

 

[Leods]

@Wazzz , I admit it, that's an excellent idea. Also, I think a 2,5% penalization would be better. Now, I just need to make one Hero (can be eliminated, i have a hero for every attribute) and maybe some balancing exams. Also, i can improve the units with some new abilities, or add more race updates (actually, I have some like 4/5 to unlock abilities, 4 stat updates, 2 caster updates, 1 race update, 1 structures update, and background), so some like a day should be enough for me.

 

[Wazzz]

Technically speaking you only need 1 hero, but if an extra day will serve you well, I think I like the direction of 2.5% as a penalty rate.

 

[Leods]

Sorry, for personal reasons, I didn't post my entry yet. It's finished, so probably today I will do that. If you all want, just penalize me with the 2,5% less rate points.

 

[Wazzz]

Sorry, for personal reasons, I didn't post my entry yet. It's finished, so probably today I will do that. If you all want, just penalize me with the 2,5% less rate points.

No problem at all there
It does seem that general consensus is leaning towards an extension with a 2.5% penalty rate for each day overdue, so I think it may be safe for us to go ahead with that so @Mythic and @Spellbound can resolve whatever complications they are dealing with, and seeing as it /is/ now at the original deadline it's probably better to make a decision now than wait later for someone else to finalize it.

We'll just confirm that those active within the thread are okay with it, which so far everybody seems on board with it, and specify that if people didn't vote then that's their own dang fault.

 

[Spellbound]

Technically, if an extension has a penalty, it's not really an extension. In my experience, when you fail to submit (university) coursework on time, you get deducted points every day. Failing to meet the deadline in past contests didn't automatically fail you, but you would get point deduction IF there was no extension. Ultimately if no one agrees to an extension, the points that will be deducted daily will be up to Heinvers.

 

[Wazzz]

It does seem to be going ways of the penalty rate, and the rate opted for does appear to be 2.5% so far, which I think we can use as the fallback if nobody finalizes anything on it in time

And yeah, that's where I got the idea from, the university coursework submitions which can be much less forgiving, I think 10% a day in my experience

The other problem we run into is we don't have much being said by some of the other contestants who may need more time

 

[islesofurth]

I'm against the idea of an extension personally
but if there is one it should have severe consequence.

I joined this comp to teach myself about such things as this.

 

[MyPad]

With the worries about the deadline, I realized I couldn't finish the race without having to sacrifice Heroes and an item shop. So, if there will be no extensions, this would be my entry.

Edit:

Spoiler: gameplay

The Orderions are a crafty race hellbent on amassing a lot of resources for its allies. To that end, upgrading the town hall is relatively cheap, allowing access to advanced units a bit earlier than most.

Having no access to Heroes (due to my end) other than taverns, the strategies employed by the Orderions are varied, ranging from random abductions of workers, to assaulting expansions, gaining resources in the process. The ability to gather lumber is combined with the ability to defend in the Orderion Camp, further augmenting defensive capabilities and supplies. The primary role of the casters isare to disrupt the entire flow of battle on both sides, splitting up enemy armies as much as possible, while the role of the infantrymen is to ensure survivability by dispelling buffs from enemies (and debuffs from allies), translating that into temporary health regeneration.

The tankiest of the units, the Female Aragorn cannot attack, but it can taunt male units into attacking it (that's right, male units), which complements its' passive ability to reflect damage dealt from all sources (except those flagged as pure damage), dealing 65% of incoming damage as reflected damage. A second ability of the Female Aragorn further complements its' tankiness, healing allies by a substantial amount.

Having less than sufficient staying power in the long game due to insufficient scaling of power, the Neutral Tavern is the Orderion's best friend.

The recommended strategy for this race is to play supportively, sharing resources whenever possible. Having a free form of repair via the Orduon's Reverb State and the Elite Guard's Pillage-Based skill effectively grants this race the effects of having an expansion. Given that, a player must have a high skill in micromanagement in order to truly wreak havoc across the battlefield.

Spoiler: Lore

Once beings of transcendence as thought of by beings, mortal and immortal alike, the manifestations of Order were discovered by a secretive cult of fanatics dedicated to the maintenance of the status quo of the world. Mere glances at a manifestation or Order would result into the person gaining powers of Order, along with an obsessive directive to bring others to them. However, the manifestation of Order who had been glanced at would be corrupted in essence to never return to its' home plane of existence.

Exiled from their societies, the crazed cult and the exiled manifestations would soon attract to each other, twisting their very core until they merged into what will become the Orderions.

The secrets of defying the natural law through the fulfillment of its' transcendent counterpart were revealed to the most crafty of the pack, quickly showing their destructive potential in a realm that does not coexist well with it. Freely manipulating entropy as a weapon, casting a curse that lasted for as long as an army stood were things that would give pause to even the most ambitious of dictators. As for the exiled manifest, they, no longer capable of returning, had to settle for an illusory realm called the Aether realm, a home that cannot be for them.

As a result of merging with the manifest, they took on forms that are estranged from nature. Experiments with the remaining essences of the manifest led to the distortion of body proportions, in some cases leading to the Female Aragorn, with others gaining a form of ethereal wings, and still others reverting to an ape-like stance.

The Orderions will stop at nothing to fulfill the desires of the cult, and for the manifest to return to their home plane, however futile it ultimately is.

Spoiler: tips

• You can repair buildings by ordering the Orduon to attack them.
• Keeping your mages alive in battle is a must as they can decide the fate of the battle. (Especially Orderion Mages)
• Don't forget that the Arbiter has a dispel and heal ability in Purity Field that becomes more effective the more buffs are dispelled.
• Conserve the Glaive Fragments for tough enemies. The damage dealt bypasses any damage modification (even whosyourdaddy).
• Upgrade your army's armor regularly. The Arbiter benefits the most from armor upgrades with exponential armor scaling.
• Cast Mobius Field before throwing an Entropy Bomb. Then, cast Collapse Mobius Field before the Bomb explodes. This requires a lot of micromanagement.
• Cast Aether realm to banish both allies and enemies. Use this to avoid bodily harm.
• When training a Female Aragorn, remember that you'll gain two additional food supply when training is done.
• Use the scoutron as a harrassing tool against enemy workers.

 

[islesofurth]

I would love to Keep working on it but i would never stop

Only got 2 rushed heroes of the 4 i wanted and a couple abilities are not finished but, i'm still happy.
been a great experience. Can't wait for the next one.

 

[Vinz]

I vote for a 1% deduction per day.

 

[Wazzz]

I think my vote will go towards a 2.5% deduction per day, for some reason 1% just seems sorta like nothing to me. I am curious to see what comes of it, though.

 

[Leods]

Well, i would like to make it better, but it is not bad. I suppose it's my final entry. Just enter to the map, and you will receive a button with the options.
Cult of the Damned:

Spoiler: Lore

After the Lich King defeated Azjol-Nerub in the War of the Spider, and gained control of Northrend, he turned his attention south, to Kil'Jaeden's chosen targets: Quel'Thalas and Lordaeron. Though he was trapped bodiless and confined to the Frozen Throne, he could reach out telepathically across great distances to those seeking power and knowledge of necromancy - his first minions, and the beginnings of the Cult of the Damned.

Chief among the men and women who heard the Lich King's call was Kel'Thuzad, archmage of Dalaran. Forsaking his position as senior member of the Kirin Tor, Dalaran's ruling council, Kel'Thuzad traveled alone to Northrend. The vast nerubian ruins left decimated by the War of the Spider confirmed his desire to ally with the Lich King. His arrival was expected, and he offered his soul to Ner'zhul. In exchange for loyalty and obedience, Kel'Thuzad was promised immortality and power, but he remained a mortal human for his appointed task: the organization of the Cult of the Damned, which would set the stage for the Scourge's conquest of Lordaeron.

For three years Kel'Thuzad worked, preaching his new religion to the masses, promising them immortality and an ideal society free of all the burdens the existing one forced upon its citizenry. Many of Lordaeron's overworked laborers and disenfranchised masses were taken in by this charismatic individual, and willingly sold themselves into service to the Lich King. Kel'Thuzad also used his fortunes and those of his fellow Cult members to taint and corrupt men in positions of power, bringing them into the Cult through favors and gifts.

Plague cauldrons, artifacts which would spread the Blight Plague over wide areas, were created and placed by the Cult of the Damned in the cities they controlled, beginning in the northernmost reaches of the kingdom of Lordaeron. The plague spread quickly, wiping out the towns' populations and raising them as Scourge. Though this was a horror for an unsuspecting citizen, for a Cultist, undeath was a welcome reward.

Spoiler: Philosophy and ideals

The Cult of the Damned is characterized by search of power, both of magic and undead sources. For this reason, there don't exist any morality or limitations to the cultists acts, as long as they have enough power to take such action. The few times in wich a glimpse of altruism appears in one of the cultist, the others know that it will only be a matter of time before these "good people" disappear, being simply sacrificed for a little more of magic.
While cultist aspire to become undead and joint to the lines of the Lich King, being capable of sacrifice themselves, just for the promise of a better "life" as undead.
The Cult of the Damned has no concern for nature or light, and, for this reason, they are enemies of all the paladins and druids of Azeroth.
Sometimes, it might seem that there is a minimal feeling of brotherhood among the cultists, but don't be fooled. All of them are simply pretending, looking to get what was promised, no matter what they should do to take it.
The lie, the necromantic arts, the torture, the manipulation, the subjugation, and the dark magic are just some examples of the weapons of the Cult, and they have no problem by using this weapons, at any time, against anyone...

Spoiler: Strategy

The essential thing to handle the Cult correctly is, no doubt,to avoid getting attached to your units. The sacrifice of the live units in the Plague cauldron is essential to create new and more powerful undead units. The creation of the plague cauldron is essential, so you will need to update your ziggurat very fast.
The servants are units that must be sacrificed. They just aren't good, and will be better as skeletons, or, if you don't have your plague cauldron yet, zombies.
This techtree isn't good with the reources managing. The human slaves will just die before 5 minutes of his creation, leaving a dusty skeleton instead, so you need to pay attention, or play with a timekeeper (i am not sure if that is a joke or not). I reccomend to use the 5 starting slaves for gold and lumber both, or just gold, depending of your needs, being that them will not die in time.
I reccomend to (yeah, they cost food) keep the dusty skeletons (much more if you are patient, and have a lot of them. They can be useful in attack), being that they will help you in defense (you can also stop a zerg-rush with them).
The pest towers are good in defense (they will stop, as an example, a giant-murloc rush), but (hm) they can't attack air, so a army of dark mages/shadow skeletons with full mana (the "cheap sacrifice" of cultists can be useful) and dark bolt upgraded will be the better choice (with 6 shadow skeletons with full mana, you can do some like 3000 damage points, I think it is enough).
The shadows (yeah, it's strange, but i am protected by Wowpedia) are the 3 tier melee unit. They can be created in the plague cauldron, and they are (of course they are) excellent exploring. With the "Hide in the shadows" ability, they will become invisible and acquire the max allowed velocity. If they attack on this mode, they will do extra damage, so a good technique can be fill the enemy base with Shadows, and attack with all of them in a beatiful ambush.
The undead units have a 5% chance of creating a blood worm with 7 damage point (and Locust) for 10 seconds. You can upgrade Spooky curse to allow your live units to, when they die, leave a phantom (1 attack, haha) with Locust, who will allow you to look the enemies army and base for 2 minutes (he will just follow the enemy units).
The infected zone of the undeads (the Main ziggurat create it too) will serve you to heal faster your undead units, so this techtree is excellent against undead. Most techniques can become useless against humans (cloud, detection in towers, elimination of buffs. etc.). They have a hand-to-hand fight within orcs and NE.
Plague cauldron sacrifice list:
-Slave=dusty skeleton (you can create 2 dusty skeletons with this, useful if you slave have a short time of life)
-Servant=Skeleton (a good replace of the zombies technique)
-Dark mage=Shadow skeelton (it's a really good DPS unit)
-Casters=Lich (the best unit, with they excesive damage and they phylactery they can be very useful)
Always you use your plague cauldron, it will lose as much life as the created undead have, so you will forgive how many times you repare this structure.
-

Spoiler: "Thanks to..."

Thrikodius: Elder Shadow Dragon
Stefan.K: Kel-Thuzad Lich/Necromancer
HappyTauren: NecroStronghold
Direfury: Necromancers
Forgotten_Warlord: ShadowDragon by Forgotten_Warlord
SuPa-: HeroAbomination
Fuzzyfury: Geist
DeuceGorgon: Arch-Acolyte
Sorenkj: BTN_ShadowHand
Sellenisko: InquisitorMalendis
Seoki: Lich Phylactery
Just_Spectating: BTNAbominationReincarnation/BTNAbominationTauntIcon
Ujimasa Hojo: Building (Sunken Ruins) and Derivatives/Ziggurat (Ancient, Nerubian) and Derivatives
Korija2029: Black Garden
Marcos DAB: BTNEnchantedChains
PrinceOfFame: BTNJellyDarkBlade
kola: BTNDarkSteelSword
PeeKay: BTNRightDarkBlade
Mythic: Stormfall/Providence Aura
UgoUgo: NecroticBlast
PeeKay: BTNHook
Blizzard Entertainment: BTNSpell_Shadow_LifeDrain
General Frank: Orb of Blood (...or Orb of Emos)
Marcos DAB: BTNStompMurloc

And of course, speccial thanks to Blizz (for the game, the lore and the inspiration) and the Hive (for the contest and the neccesary push)

Sorry for the delay. The terrain can look a little modified (just some path). It wasn't intentional, when i was making this, the infected zone obligated me to copy-past the terrain from other base. I hope all is fine.

 

[Wazzz]

Nice, looks like we have a collection of final entries for now. I think in most cases, if the minimum requirements were effectively met, then that should suffice for the final entry. Otherwise it sort of does tend towards disrespecting those who did work to get theirs done within plenty of time and go the extra mile.

UPDATE: Been having a look at some of these entries so far, I'm loving the creativity behind them
Even if you're new or feel you could have done better, it's always a great place to start and a lot of fun seeing what kinds of ideas you come up with ^_^

 

[islesofurth]

lol i accidentally made my pool of wisdom super op trying to figure out how mana regen worked on buildings

 

[Wazzz]

Unfortunately, it appears the assigned moderator has gone AWOL again, so things are still a bit up in the air even two days after the assigned deadline. Perhaps a decision can be reached by those who have uploaded so far, or maybe there is somebody else we can get to decide for us?

I was, however, thinking of an alternative possibility for the penalty rates. A cumulative effect, wherein it starts at 1%, then it adds an extra 1% for each day, so the second day would be 3%, the third would be 6%, and so on. Sort of stops things becoming too prolonged, but also gives a good start for those who just needed an extra day or so.


Also, from the ones I have played, I personally have a love of the way it captures so many raw aspects of Warcraft 3 modding at one of its coremost elements - creating an extra race to play with in the melee game. Sometimes there is imbalance, sometimes it's incomplete, and it all adds that much beauty to it
I would like to compile a small review of what worked for me with various factions, or perhaps the pros and the cons, just to give a bit of a gist of my experience with them, although I will probably need to play some a little more to capture them better. All the same, I'll get started in this thread.

Leods - Cult Of The Damned

For me, when I first heard of how the workers functioned, I deduced that rush tactics would be the only feasible way to go. Playing a macro game when your workers die out just isn't feasible, and given they permanently spawn a skeleton that is more powerful than militia on death, it seemed the natural way to go. Then I saw the early ranged unit, the Dark Mage. This added so much added strength to the early rush, and more than made up for the Cultist being rather lacking. The Shadow Bolt ability adding 75 damage on attacks, even at a cost of 100 mana per shot, is phenomenal - the chance to spawn a Dark Minion on kills is a bonus. With a cap of 400 mana and a readily available Mana Pool in the center of the map, rushing with Slaves and Dark Mages is truly the optimal way to go.

For me, I think a lot of these sorts of techtrees get a bad rap, as they get accused of ripping off the Undead despite demonstrating completely original takes on the idea. Yes, there happens to be Undead within the faction, but that does not inherently mean it's a rip off. Unfortunately, I have not really played a lot with the rest of the techtree because a prolonged game is probably not all that favorable, but as a starting template it is certainly interesting - the early ranged unit using a magic attack rather than piercing is atypical to the established norms of the established Melee, and I am a sucker for little details like that

Ultimately, strive for the five minute push, since that's about when the first of your workers will start expiring, and just pump them out with a full gold mine, and direct any excess straight to the enemy base. 65 gold for a permanent Skeleton Warrior that surpasses the Militia is pretty strong, so take advantage of it.

islesofurth - Animal Kingdom

There's something about this that I just have such a soft spot for. The use of ingame models, the raw content of it, even as a rushed job it feels very reminiscent of what it once meant to try and make an extra faction within Warcraft 3, and with very limited resources.

For me, I don't quite understand why the Sasquatch is as fragile as it is, while costing as much as it does, so I tend to skip those and go straight for the Gnolls. The idea of using Trees as their lookout towers is so bizarrely intriguing - while it wouldn't trip up any ingame pathing or automatic targeting, I love the idea behind it and that you can put some of the units up in them. Although then they become the Human Guard Towers and it's kinda funky.

When it came to the original playtest, I didn't get too far as apparently massing Watchers only got me so far, but having a quick look through the unit roster I do believe getting Siege Golems may be the way to go. Those stats are nothing to look down on, and while they take a while to train and cost 6 food, they only cost 225 Gold and 80 Lumber, so having two Mystic Stones pump these out may actually be optimal.

There are some various errors, like the Gold Mine not starting out Entangled, the sorts of complications that I think in time you will definitely learn how to handle. Entangled Gold Mines can be so... finicky. I definitely look forward to seeing what else you come up with in future contests should you choose to join them, and there will probably be a lot of pointers for things that need ironing out, but I think some of it may be chalked down to time management, in which I was certainly impressed with your attitude on in regards to late submissions

xYoursTrulyx - Xetkin Clan

Based on this entry alone, I am deducing that you may have played Battle Realms once or twice at some point :^)
The custom training system is rather interesting, although I did unfortunately find myself completely hamstrung in the early game. The techtree starts me off with five "worker" units that can do nothing but produce a few buildings, two of which are essential for gathering resources, another essential for getting the actual builder. For me this was not a very good pace to set, as instead of going straight into getting resources as the ingame factions can, I am almost forced to fall behind as I have five population dedicated towards non-worker units that can't get any resources.

Usually the early game for most ingame factions is geared towards getting an Altar ASAP, quickly followed by a food production structure. However, to get the gold miners, you have to allocate 40 Lumber and 1 Food per Miner, and that's after having 5 Food dedicated towards the Laymen. Starting with 150 Lumber and a 10 Food Cap, it makes for a very messy beginning, as while it is technically very difficult to soft lock yourself in the early game, considering 150 Lumber means you can only afford 3 miners before getting more Lumber, it does make for a very confusing beginning.

Once you get past that initial hurdle, the techtree seems pretty solid. You got your sword guys, you got your archer guys, moving on to tier 2 you have your assassins, casters and cavalry. Tier 3 offers the Serpent Incarnate, which for some reason is really powerful but you can only get one of - I tend not to be too much of a fan of the use of "titan" unit options in Warcraft 3 but this one doesn't feel all that intrusive, and given the difficulty in the early game, it can potentially offset it. Maybe. Although it is very late game by the time you get it so maybe not.

I am not sure if this was corrected in the update, as this is based upon the first upload that I played, but I only ever required Tier 1 to get all the heroes, and I could get all four. Although apparently getting an army of four low level heroes was quickly proven by the opposing AI to not be the wisest investment, I think maybe there were some complications regarding that. I had some similarly fiddly complications with my own heroes, too.

I definitely love Gluma's Lizardmen models in this, and a lot of the ideas implemented are interesting. Some of them feel a little superfluous, and in the early game can really hamper the flow, but there is definitely a lot of effort put into this and, of course, a very "subtle" nod to Battle Realms. On a critical aspect, I think a lot of the difficulty lies in worrying about trying to come up with entirely new features for innovative gameplay, when there's a lot of perfectly good ingame things to use for just that. That is my opinion on the matter, however, and I know others will tend more towards effectively reinventing Warcraft 3 from the ground up, and when they can do it well, it's damn impressive :^)

Unfortunately, however, the hindered early game does not lend itself towards the intended hyper aggressive tactics, and with those being the primary goal in mind I would gear it more towards making things readily accessible in the early game for the core basics, but that may be something more vanilla to the melee style of gameplay. Still, if it isn't broke, don't fix it.

Riki Martin - Dark Elves And Friends

Unfortunately, I felt this faction had similar early game complications to the Xeltin Clan, wherein you start off with 5 Worker units that then need to allocate more population towards the actual worker units. There are differences, however. While the Xeltin Clan would use the Laymen to lay down the foundations for their base economy, and would siphon out as you sent them off to Training Camps to move on to bigger and better things, the Evokers more or less just... sit there. This is mildly offset by the fact that you don't actually need workers for the gold mine, and when you allocate your cap of three Elemental Souls to them, it doesn't cost any further population. However, you still end up with a lot of Evokers just sitting around and effectively offering nothing other than to summon replacement workers for when they are consumed - wherein the difficulty lies in figuring out which Evoker needs to resummon. I tended not to bother and just resummoned them all, which would hamper the lumber income until I was able to get the new workers back on task. While there is a nice ability indicating whether or not the Evoker has already summoned, there is not a distinguishing feature for the Evokers who have it themselves if you select more than one of them at a time. Couple that with investing 2 population for a unit that harvest lumber exactly like a Wisp and it can make for a clunky start.

The theme for this faction gears towards the Banner System, designed to be more geared towards an aggressive style of play. Beating down opponents quickly and having a chance to capture slaves from your kills is the name of the game, and the more slaves you get, the more effects you can produce from your Town Hall structure.

Unfortunately, the Banner System seems more of a hindrance to me than anything else. You spend a substantial amount of time getting your War Academy, which doubles as your unit production facility (for everyone), as well as your population structure - but it also comes with a substantial price tag and a long construction time. The Banner Armies themselves force you into predesignated unit combinations, making you pay up front for all of them at once, Food included. This means if you are at, say, 47 Food and you want a 3 Food unit to avoid breaking into Low Upkeep, you do not have that option available to you. Instead, you are stuck with 10 Food being your minimum investment option.

With the slave system, while it is crude and rudimentary, it actually does lend itself towards the aggressive style of play that was intended. If you collect enough slaves from beating down the enemies, you can get a Banner Army for free, which includes a band of Assassins or a duo of Hydras, so not a bad bonus to get from just killing things. If you want to invest your Slaves into something else, there are other Rituals you can allocate them to. Among them is one for a universal regeneration boost, which heals a total of 60 Health, a small pittance but a universal wide one, so not all that bad. Ritual of Malice makes your buildings angry and hurt enemy melee attackers for 30 seconds. Finally, Ritual of Slaughter gives a substantial attack boost for 45 seconds, while disabling the capacity to capture slaves throughout its duration.

There are definitely interesting ideas within the faction, and while I am not a fan of the Banner Army system, I do have a bit of a soft spot for the creativity behind some of the rituals, even if I think some are more expensive than they probably should be when some of the effects are considered. This feels like a rather slow paced faction, although it is hard to say that given you get multiple units at once, but it bother hinders and pushes you forwards. So it's rather bizarre and difficult to quantify.

MyPad - The Orderions

Right off the bat, I notice some of the costs are strange. The Altar only costing 160 Gold and 35 Lumber being one, and the Academy costing... 200 Gold and 75 Lumber. Very unusual, but then the Food Production facility only costs 100 Gold, and doubles as a lumber gathering structure as well as a tower, so maybe triples? Almost definitely triples, yes. A very bizarre opening, mildly offset by starting off with the Tier 3 structure, which I believe is not intended but may also make it difficult for me to quantify how the faction functions.

The lack of heroes has been previously established, which is unfortunate, and does not meet the established minimum requirements but nonetheless, submitting as is takes balls and I have substantial respect for that. After all, deadlines were set and the goal is for the contest to be for fun - as such, in my mind, submitting as is /perfectly/ captures the purpose of the contest, and just accepting things as is. Kudos to you right there

The Orduon worker is consumed for everything it produces, yet it does not share its cost with the Wisp, which makes it rather difficult to quantify the investment, especially given how expensive some of the buildings are. Early game, you are also permitted access to a Scoutron unit, which is in effect the same as the Protoss Observer in form and function. The Orduon worker is also capable of healing friendly targets, but only through attacking them - they can also heal enemies in this way, but on an attack move are more likely to attack enemies than friends, and so it's... both unique, but also seemingly impractical, as a means of healing.

Looking at the Arbiter, I am not sure if it functions as advertised, but find its statistics to be... rather lacking. There doesn't really seem to be much reason to get this unit, which is a shame as it is an early game footman-esque unit, but it simply does not have the statistics to justify it. Realistically, you would be better off investing the early game towards the Orduon Acolytes, however they also cost an insane amount. Their ability makes them pretty formidable, though, so maybe they're worth some of the investment. These guys definitely look like they have a difficult early game ahead of them.

In mid tier, you get the Orduonic Mage and the Themyscian Nymph. The Nymph starts off with the capacity to permanently silence enemy casters and... assumedly heroes? So long as the caster in question casts a spell while under its effect. So if you have anything on autocast, that's unfortunate. And if you aren't paying attention with your hero, then that's just extra rough. The Orduonic Mage, however, has no attack to speak of, but instead relies on manually casting a timed bomb ability, which... may not be the most practical idea, but I feel this is the theme for the techtree. A lot of the ideas, while impractical, are rather interesting in the way they are designed. You will almost never find anything here that doesn't function in some kind of bizarre and unique way.

Finally, at top tier, you get access to the Orduon Elite Guard, and the Female Aragorn. At least, I may be incorrectly asserting the Elite Guard is top tier, I am not sure when he is intended to be available. Nevertheless, he is a solid siege unit with a melee attack. For what he lacks in range, he makes up for with bum rushing the enemy with his Zealous Charge, rapidly attacking three times and gaining resources for every attack. This unit is brilliance. The Female Aragorn is a woman born with giantism, and despite wielding a massive weapon, she never seems to use it. Instead, she dedicates herself to being physically (and perhaps emotionally) abused, trusting that some day the perpetrators will get what's coming to them. Strangely enough, she costs 275 Gold and Lumber apiece, and 10 Food. It's rather difficulty to quantify such an investment into her, considering her health is 1100 and her armor is 6, while her attack is none, but perhaps in being so difficult to quantify, she perfectly captures the essence of this techtree. I have no idea what is going on, but I do know that I'll never see anything like it anywhere else.

Overall, I can't really quantify any real balance for it, but I like some of the ideas implemented, even if in many aspects it seems obscenely overpowered. A lot of the model choices are alright at best, especially when it comes to the structures, but without heroes it is impossible to hold it up against anything else. I did notice the worker was no longer flying, and that the Themyscian Nymph was also not a flyer. I don't really know what happened with that, or if the Nymph was ever intended to be flying. But I don't really know much about any of this techtree as a whole - it's bizarre, it's unique, it's definitely an experience to see it. For something so incomplete to be submitted due to contest deadlines, I have nothing but respect for it, and an adoration for the ideas put into it, even if it didn't get to see finalization

Wazzz - The Bandit Outlaws

The Pros of this techtree is they are made by a stunningly handsome individual. Realistically, there could be no one more perfect to gaze upon in a cool Summer's breeze.

The Cons is that. try as I may, he is ultimately unobtainable, and my affections will go for naught. A pity, when one considers what could have been.

 

[Yours Truly]

It's actually spelled "The XeTkin Clan", with a T, not an L.

Your review is on point. I knew I felt a little clunky when testing out my entry. There's so much to do in the early game. I was planning to put in 2 Artisans at the start, but I required further testing and now it's a bit too late. Maybe I can change it, maybe I can't. At this point, the penalty rate has rise up to 5%, and I'm not sure if it's worth to edit my race and be penalized, or to keep it as it is and suffer a deduction in the balance trait.

I am not sure if this was corrected in the update, as this is based upon the first upload that I played, but I only ever required Tier 1 to get all the heroes, and I could get all four. Although apparently getting an army of four low level heroes was quickly proven by the opposing AI to not be the wisest investment, I think maybe there were some complications regarding that. I had some similarly fiddly complications with my own heroes, too.

I actually updated it a few minutes later after finding out that the Heroes wasn't working properly. Since the map was still at 0 views (0 downloads), I'd figure I just post the map with the necessary fixes to the Heroes problem without sending a notice.

"Wazzz - The Bandit Outlaws"
The Pros of this techtree is they are made by a stunningly handsome individual. Realistically, there could be no one more perfect to gaze upon in a cool Summer's breeze.

The Cons is that. try as I may, he is ultimately unobtainable, and my affections will go for naught. A pity, when one considers what could have been.

 

[Wazzz]

I have no idea how I got "Xeltin" clan, I've now edited it to amend that error.

Ah, I thought you might have fixed that, I have yet to play the updated version but I had a very similar problem with the two of my heroes which were based upon Campaign heroes. It's all just as well we had time enough to appropriately fix such errors.

So, if time goes by enough, should we perhaps consider our own setting of the penalty rate? It seems as though such a thing would have been nice to have decided upon by the deadline so people aren't left wondering how long they should continue on for, and so on so forth.

 

[MyPad]

@Wazzz

Don't worry about casting spells as a Hero when affected by Last Word, as they won't be permanently silenced, unlike units. The Arbiter isn't supposed to deal a lot of damage, but with enough upgrades and enough buffs and debuffs, the arbiter can essentially grant allies a non-channeled Tranquility effect, further increasing survivability. The Nymph was never intended to fly.

About balance, it seems that I still have much to learn about it.

Given that this hasn't been closed yet, I'll update my entry to include bug fixes such as Eudonis' Curse (Orduonic Mage's Mastery Spell) effectively becoming permanent, and some disabled icon retouches (looking at Reaver icon.)

EDIT:

… including something to ease the pressure experienced by the Tier 1 units (Arbiter and Orduon Acolytes)

 

[Wazzz]

Ah nice, I wondered about the hero targeting for Last Word and come to think of it, I think you may have mentioned something about it

Balance can be such a tedious thing, but definitely something that comes with experience

 

[Yours Truly]

Our arena moderator, Heinvers, hasn't been online for like 3 days. I think it's safe to say that the deadline extension is granted, on behalf of all the contestants. The penalty rate however, might needs further discussion.

 

[Heinvers]

@Wazzz feel free to go for your suggestion.

By the way, the contest has reached its zenith. It's over, so the poll should come up this week.

@Spellbound @Wazzz take care of it will ye'?

 

[Wazzz]

@Heinvers thank you very much, we'll certainly do what we can.

So, the penalty rate will be cumulative, starting at 1% for one day over and so forth.

I'll scrounge up the links for the uploads so far, if anybody changes it just let me know and I'll try and fix it where I can.

Entries:

Riki Martin - Sons Of Tyskhadi, Black Color

Wazzz - Bandit Outlaws, Black Color

xYours Trulyx - Xetkin Clan, Red Color

MyPad - The Orderians, White Color (2 Days Overdue)

isleofurth - Forces of Gaia, Green Color (2 Days Overdue)

Leods - Cult of the Damned, Black Color

Spellbound & Mythic - Starfall Empire, Blue Color (2 Days Overdue)

 

[Yours Truly]

xYours Trulyx - Xeltkin Clan, Red Color

XeTTTTkin.

 

[Wazzz]

XeTTTTkin.

Sweet Jesus how do I keep getting that wrong? I'll learn it properly one of these days, I swear

 

[MyPad]

@Wazzz

Link to updated entry here:

EDIT:

A rundown on the changes:
- Gold and Lumber costs were altered for most units and buildings.
- Entropy Bomb's damage type is stated in the tooltip.
- Purity Field now grants all allies near the caster a base bonus of 1 hit point regeneration, which stacks with the additional bonuses.
- Reflective Domain now reflects the damage in an AoE.
- Female Aragorn now has an AoE heal ability (which is immediately available).
- Entropy Bomb now excludes allies when computing for the total damage, as described in the tooltip. (Previously, it would include allies as well when computing the total damage, but not deal damage to them).
- A bug with triggered stacking buffs has been resolved (previously, the bug would cause the effects of the buffs to become permanent). Nerfs the effects of Eudonis' Curse, and Aether Realm, to name a few.
- Glaive Fragments now deals damage based on max health for Heroes (and Hero-units). (Previously, it would be based on Current Health).
- Added a blink ability for the Scoutron in cases where it gets stuck due to phased movement being deactivated near enemy workers. (Only available near workers as a situational escape ability).

 

[Wazzz]

@Wazzz

Link to updated entry here:

Nice, I'll update it. It will mean yours is a little overdue, but in the first few days the decline will be pretty negligible. Not to mention, I look forward to giving the updated version a play

Same for @xYours Trulyx's entry, loving the collection of techtrees we're getting so far ^_^

 

[islesofurth]

@Wazzz

Here is my updated Entry for the Forces of Gaia

- Goldmine is now entangled on start
- Limited custom Heroes to 1 each
- Added icons for abilities that were missing them
- Added multiple upgrade requirements to abilities that didn't have them but were meant to
- Connected units with their upgrades that were not already connected
- Fixed all Tooltip errors (i think )
- Changed some units Health and Food costs to make them more reliable as they were not performing well enough.

 

[Leods]

Ohh God, we don't have the Mythic and Spellbound entry yet! Please, hurry up, or the penalization will affect you.

The Shadow Bolt ability adding 75 damage on attacks, even at a cost of 100 mana per shot, is phenomenal - the chance to spawn a Dark Minion on kills is a bonus. With a cap of 400 mana and a readily available Mana Pool in the center of the map, rushing with Slaves and Dark Mages is truly the optimal way to go

Well, in fact, one possible technique (in addition to turning cultists into zombies) is to create cultists with the only objective of regenerating the dark mages mana with Cheap sacrifice (by the way, using Shadow skeletons is even more effective. These have more mana and damage, and a little more acceptable amount of life, besides having Shadow bolt too). Also, if you plan to dedicate yourself to the dark mages, I recommend invoking the Shadow Lord, who has an aura of extremely rapid mana regeneration, in a fairly small area.

For me, I think a lot of these sorts of techtrees get a bad rap, as they get accused of ripping off the Undead despite demonstrating completely original takes on the idea. Yes, there happens to be Undead within the faction, but that does not inherently mean it's a rip off.

A lot of people just forgot that (Blizz used the "undead" name for the Forsakens in Frozen Throne) the Undead techtree is more a Scourge techtree than anything else. The other undead groups uses different techniques in battle (the Forsakens have, per example, the Real Boticary Society. The Ebony sword knights have... Well, death knights. And the CotD, of course, have Orcs, humans, etc.

65 gold for a permanent Skeleton Warrior that surpasses the Militia is pretty strong, so take advantage of it.

I think I forgot change it, at the start, the dusty skeleton will just die at time (i changed it because i think is interesting accumulate them.

 

[Spellbound]

Features

- Unique unit-training system
- custom building models
- custom unit models
- 2 heroes
- custom ground texture for the buildings.


Screenshots




Units

Unveil

Buildings Units

Known Issues

- Hero tech requirement is ignoring gameplay constants, so you will have to use 'synergy' in singleplayer if you wish to use both heroes of the Starfall Empire in the same session. I do not currently know how to fix this.
- On game start, your star location may clash with that of another player, requiring you to restart the game. I am not sure what's causing this, but it's most likely Custom Race System. Something probably broke when I converted it to wurst. I do not currently know how to fix this either.
- The Phantasm ability is ignoring tech requirements because Blizzard. /sigh
- One hero is missing an ultimate :/
- Evoking the Tutelary will pop up a debug message because that unit has an ability based on Defend, which fires an undefend order the moment the unit is indexed. This then causes an empty instance to be deallocated, which creates a warning.
- Similarly with the Witness, the same issue causes it to be unable to move :'(
- Glittering Comets potentially leaking. Unsure.


Note

- You need Warcraft 3 patch 1.31 or higher to play this map.
- Do not save this in the editor or you will clear ALL triggers from the map.
- Accidentally uploaded the wrong version. Please re-download map.

 

[stein123]

View attachment 334073
Features

- Unique unit-training system
- custom building models
- custom unit models
- 2 heroes
- custom ground texture for the buildings.


Known Issues

- Hero tech requirement is ignoring gameplay constants, so you will have to use 'synergy' in singleplayer if you wish to use both heroes of the Starfall Empire in the same session. I do not currently know how to fix this.
- On game start, your star location may clash with that of another player, requiring you to restart the game. I am not sure what's causing this, but it's most likely Custom Race System. Something probably broke when I converted it to wurst. I do not currently know how to fix this either.
- One hero is missing an ultimate :/


Note

- You need Warcraft 3 patch 1.31 or higher to play this map.
- Do not save this in the editor or you will clear ALL triggers from the map.

Holy Crap!!!!

 

[Kyrbi0]

Ridiculous

 

[Wazzz]

@islesofurth @Spellbound @Mythic

Nice, post edited with the updated entries

There were a couple others who were working on their entries a while ago, but it has been so long since we've heard from them. I suppose if they show up, they show up.

Also, if I get anything wrong, please let me know and I'll see if I can't fix it up ^_^

I'll also add in some additional reviews for the more recent updated versions of things, as well as the new entries. The reviews don't really mean anything, I just like showing the entries some love <3

Spellbound & Mythic - Starfall Empire

Right from the get go, this feels like a Spellbound entry. When coupled with Mythic's aesthetics, it truly paints a picture of a vintage Spellbound techtree, which, of course, went along with the Blue theme. Again, classic Spellbound.

The Starfall Empire is a techtree that draws heavy inspiration from the Protoss playstyle of Starcraft 2 specifically, in that it borrows from the concepts of warping units in as well as the way the Colossus attacks. It even uses a shielding system, which I am pleased to see does not use the Mana Shield ability as I have seen many predecessors that have attempted something like this do before, but in fact implements it entirely passively. Perhaps more obscurely, I feel a bit of a Magic: The Gathering - Battlegrounds vibe with the way the more mystical variant of Giant Turtles are used both as Food Production, and as a potential form of defense. Other aspects feel reminiscent of the Blue's aesthetic in Battlegrounds, and perhaps some inspiration was drawn from the title, presenting an overall pretty aesthetic.

The playstyle of the techtree is unique to the ingame factions in that rather than leveling up your Town Hall to tech up, you simply build the next structure, somewhat similar to how the Zerg play where the base structure produces all the units, while the unit structures provide the upgrades and unlock the next tier of units. This provides a much cheaper, and much faster way to tech up, as you can skip the expense and time investment of going to tier two or three, and jump straight into unlocking the units, all while expanding your Evokation field and the rate in which you collect the charges that allow you to produce your units.

This does, unfortunately, provide a very fast means of going straight into the third tier, allowing you to fast track your way right into Channellers. This is actually optimal, as I was able to defeat an Insane AI with absolute ease using these. It also makes for easy creeping when you are able to use flying Colossi before the first Night Time even hits. Their primary weakness is that they can't attack air units, but that tends to not be much of an issue as you upgrade the Channelers to do additional damage against buildings and destroy waves of Food Production structures while picking apart entire armies.

Unfortunately, none of your structures actually qualify as a Town Hall, either, making Town Portal ineffective for this faction. The potential oversight of Tavern Heroes, however, was well taken care of as they require the appropriate Tiered facilities - something that can be overlooked, and I am very glad to see it wasn't.

The towers available to the faction are additionally interesting, as they are geared more towards levitation and can be picked up by the Giant Turtles, which are colloquially referred to as Stormbinders. Upon moving near them, the Tower can be picked up by the Turtles, turning them into Stormbearers. Pretty cool stuff. This gives them a Tempest ability which produces a debug message, and after a while begins Thunderclapping the ground with bolts of lightning.

But in most likelyhood you probably won't use too much of those, or any of the other units, as Channelers are the way to go. Unless you come up against some fast Gargoyles or Hippogryphs, you're likely to be fine, and if anything does cause them damage it goes straight to their mana instead, which regenerates rather nicely. In some cases it does seem like the mana shielding could be easily exploitable by units like the Spellbreaker, or a Demon Hunter with his Mana Burn, but none of that really matters if you don't have a base.

Some other things I noticed was that the Backpack upgrade seems strangely more expensive, suspiciously sporting the same icon and cost as the Thaumapagy upgrade found in the Aether Vault. Additionally, the Aether Vault requires only the Mystic Loom, allowing you to skip tier 1 units altogether, and realistically, this seems to be the best course of action. While the tier 1 units are by no means bad, they're no Channelers.

A part of me can't help but wonder what the philosophy behind the entry is, either. While they feel similar to the Magic: The Gathering - Battlegrounds Blue faction stylistically in addition to Magic Protoss, I do wonder what the philosophy behind the faction is, as well as how that would translate into their playstyle.

Overall, this techtree lives and breathes everything that is Spellbound, and the artistic style is classic Mythic, which appears to be a very fitting union. There are definite faults with this, possibly due to time constraints and being overly ambitious in some areas, but with the minimum requirements met it seems suitably established. Perhaps we will see an updated version over the horizon?

xYoursTrulyx - Xetkin Clan Revisited

A few minor updates have been made to this techtree, rounding it out a little more and making things a little neater. While a lot of the initial gripes about the early game mechanics still persist, having revisited them I have found they have a substantially useful exploit to take advantage of.

When it comes to the strategy aspect, I recommend starting your early game with trying to establish your miners and getting an architect ASAP. Go for the Architect Tent, get two miner's guilds, and two lumber mills. Once you have an Architect out, for some reason this doesn't cost food, so you can afford to use another slot for an extra miner.

Using the Architect, lay down the foundations for structures, but use the Laymen to finish them off. To do this, pull the Architect off and just set the Layman to work. When it comes to unit production facilities, you will need to manually click repair and target the structure in question, otherwise the Layman will get confused and want to get some early training. This will help you establish yourself in the early game economy wise, although you will always be a few steps behind because of it.

This is where it picks up. Personally, I recommend getting two Hunter's Halls. You don't really want to bother with Scrappers, they're decent but the Archers are where it's at. For your hero, go the Pyromancer. The damage spell is fantastic and when you start leveling up his passive, he almost never runs out of mana to keep casting it. It makes for an effective early game hero killer.

When you have a few archers out, start creeping with your Pyromancer and Archer party. Once you free up a Gold Mine, expand to it - you'll want to be producing laymen at twice the rate anyway, so you can pump out more archers, and having the extra gold income will be invaluable for the upcoming push. Creep a little more to get your Pyromancer to a decent level, and then hunt down the enemy base.

This is where it gets obscene. You should be at tier 2 now, and have all the upgrades available for the archers, improving their attack range, attack rate and movement speed, and giving them an ability to expend 8 mana on a shot to deal an extra 50 damage. Once you have the enemy in your sights, activate Passion For War on all your Archers. It doesn't matter how far away they are, as long as you see an enemy they will pursue them. While you don't get to control the units individually anymore, you do get an immense attack rate boost, and if any of them die it's easy enough to replace them. Using the Refinery you can also upgrade their damage and armor values, which makes for an insane midgame push.

So far this strategy seems to be the optimal way to play the faction, as you end up with an insane attack rate on your archers and they automatically attack move for you. As you pump out more Archers, just keep exploiting Passion For War on them and they'll take care of everything else for you. Then you can focus on just keeping your Pyromancer alive so he can tank up those juicy levels, and kill off any enemy heroes or units that look menacing enough.

Considering this strategy is effectively an automatic attack move, I have to say this is actually god damn perfect for the Red theme. Once you get around the fiddly early game mechanics, it's a pretty chill "all in" strategy that you can use when playing them, and you get a hero that burns everything. What's not to love?

 

[Spellbound]

That was a quick review! Thanks for taking the time.

This does, unfortunately, provide a very fast means of going straight into the third tier, allowing you to fast track your way right into Channellers. This is actually optimal, as I was able to defeat an Insane AI with absolute ease using these. It also makes for easy creeping when you are able to use flying Colossi before the first Night Time even hits. Their primary weakness is that they can't attack air units, but that tends to not be much of an issue as you upgrade the Channelers to do additional damage against buildings and destroy waves of Food Production structures while picking apart entire armies.

That... was unintended xD The Mystic Loom initially required an Aegisary to be built but I worried about causing too much of a dependency chain. Turns out, without an upgrading town hall, you kinda need said chain to nerf the rush to tier 3. I've also since made Aether Vaults and Lyceums as expensive and time-consuming as upgrading town halls. Should help with slowing things down a little bit.

Unfortunately, none of your structures actually qualify as a Town Hall, either, making Town Portal ineffective for this faction. The potential oversight of Tavern Heroes, however, was well taken care of as they require the appropriate Tiered facilities - something that can be overlooked, and I am very glad to see it wasn't.

I do wonder if that's the cause of some of the issues I've been having. I never intended for the Fountainhead to not be a town hall. That was an oversight. 'twill be rectified.

This gives them a Tempest ability which produces a debug message, and after a while begins Thunderclapping the ground with bolts of lightning.

Whoops. Will remove debug msg.

Some other things I noticed was that the Backpack upgrade seems strangely more expensive, suspiciously sporting the same icon and cost as the Thaumapagy upgrade found in the Aether Vault.

Backpack upgrade was an afterthought and copied and modified from another existing upgrade and in my haste I forgot to change icons and stuff like that.

A part of me can't help but wonder what the philosophy behind the entry is, either. While they feel similar to the Magic: The Gathering - Battlegrounds Blue faction stylistically in addition to Magic Protoss, I do wonder what the philosophy behind the faction is, as well as how that would translate into their playstyle.

It's about perfection and quality over quantity. Notice that the only 'human' (or elven, rather) units at play are tier 3 units and heroes. Everything else are constructs or animals. The Starfall Empire is all about the excellence of the individual, and being elves, they have a long, long, long time to get there. There's also elements of misdirection or subversion in there, like the Tesseract's Inverse Lattice and Phantasm (an illusion that will hurt you if you attack it). Mana shields can also be considered Blue, as you hit something and expect it to bleed, but you strike a barrier instead. The Witness is also a superlative scout, which gives you much needed insight into enemy movements so you can outmaneuver them.

Perhaps we will see an updated version over the horizon?

Mebbe

Thanks for that rather thorough review

 

[Wazzz]

@Spellbound hmm, if the lack of a Town Hall status was what caused some of the problems in the first place, perhaps it was as simple as all that after all? Well here's hoping, that would be awesome if it really did chalk down to something so deceptively minor

Oh dang, I also forgot to mention that the Observer-y unit didn't move in either form.

 

[Spellbound]

Review time!

Dark Elves

The first thing that stood out to me was how the workers justs didn't do much. I sorta see where you were going with this, but the implementation could have been better, imo. In general I feel like worker should constantly being doing something, and the summoner chicks should have been given some role, like mining gold the way Acolytes do it. Building construction could have been done by summoning an Elemental that will then sacrifice itself to create the building. Obviously there's a lot of coding involved there but I think that's something worth trying.

For the Banner System, I feel like then again the implementation could have been better. It's not bad, by any stretch of the imagination, but it can be somewhat confusing the first few times you're playing this faction. When I got to the point where I could train Black Amazons, they were basically the only units I bothered with. I didn't get the sense that they were overpowered, but it was simple to remember what I was getting. I would add, though, that something like the Banner System would work wonders had there been some sort of squad system to go along with it. Then again, those tend to be rather clunky so it's can be something hard to accomplish in the wc3 engine.

Cult of the Damned

The idea of the Plague Cauldron sacrificing units into better things is super neat. While my first instinct was to ask why not just use a morph, I do feel like this method is potentially more fun, especially if you take that concept and combine it with custom UI to make a global ability. Maybe it even comes in AoE and Single-Target versions, allowing you to convert swathes of units at a time. I did spend a fair amount of time testing the Cauldron's sacrifice on a number of units to see what they become. Really neat feature.

On the downside, workers with timed life? Can;t say I'm fond of that. I was constantly running out of gold because my workers were dying (though I did have a bunch of skeletons hanging around). It's an interesting way to turn the harshness of slavery into a game mechanic but something more like a health degen and potential ways to curb that (at the cost of effciency) would have been preferrable. What's more, this creates the opportunity for a taskmaster kind of a unit that would specialise in base-management a bit like the Zerg Queen from StarCraft II.

Also one of your ranged heroes has an no-target aoe spell. Better to give that to the melee heroes imo. Also, Pact of the Damned costs more mana that the caster's maximum.

Forces of Gaia

First of all, Racoons as worker? Brilliant.

The idea of Growth of Green is quite nicely implemented with the Sasquatch and the green drakes. The use of Gnolls on trees as turret is a nice idea but the implementation could be a lot better (eg using the Orc Burrow technique or some sort of right-click detection). Some things like the Pool having a healing role but also having upgrades means it can't heal while upgrading. Rock Golem with chaos damage means I don't need to make anything else, also Dropbears have a *lot* of mana so they can heal infinitely. Remains quite a fun race to play.

Orderions

This faction has hands down the *BEST* unit in all of RTS history: Female Aragorn. She can't attack, but will return damage if stuck, and she's also a healer. She can also taunt male units. Specifically male. I did not test this against Night Elves, but I choose to believe the tooltip and trust that MyPad actually went through the trouble of listing all female units and checking if the unit being taunted is not on there.

On a more serious note, the method of lumber harvest is neat, reminds me the race I made for the first Advanced Techtree Contest that was rife with bugs and was nigh-unplayable, but the lumber was harvested by loading workers into a cube. Although, it didn't appear that the more workers inside of a food-production building increased its gathering power.

Visually the faction is a bit all over the place. 'Twas fun, but feels unfinished, what with the lack of heroes and all.

Xetkin Clan

It's an odd feeling to see Battle Realms inside of Warcraft 3 but it's been done quite well. The unique training system feels original and intuitive but the worker system does need improving. It would have been preferrable for the Layman to be able to construct food production, and for said food production to produce more Laymen since your only source of Laymen is the town hall. When you're teching up, you can't produce any Laymen for at least two-and-then-some minutes. Artisans also just hang around doing nothing. Being able to train them into warriors like the Laymen would allow players to recycle idle Artisans into a more active role.

Aesthetically, this faction is cohesive and quite nice. It has to be said, however, that the units tend to all look alike. That's not really a criticism on your work, but it's worth pointing out, imo.

When it comes to combat, I entered a melee with the Serpent Incarnate and all my unit suddenly caught fire and started doing w/e they wanted. I understand this is a Red faction, but... but... my units. /single tear. They did wipe the floor with an Orc army, but they remained uncontrollable even after the fight. GG, best army, strongk af but one-time use only. The Serpent remained uncontrollable even after combat died. I assume that's not by design.

Quite a fun faction, however. Plenty of neat upgrades to buff those units. Also the Scavenger deals 56 - 276 damage at level 3 damage upgrade. Might wanna nerf that.

PS: if you want to cancel an order immediate after it's given, run a zero-second timer and then order the unit in question to stop. It will look seamless.

Bandit Outlaws

Soundtrack is Necropolis theme from Heroes of Might and Magic IV! That game might not be the best HoMM title out there, but imo is has some of the best soundtracks.

This is a very cleverly developed faction, in general. Everything from their altar-type structure being a tavern to the town-hall having the same recruitment functionality as a mecenary camp make it feel extremely well thought-out. Thematically, it's very coherent and it's well at home with its Black philosophy; bandits are mostly selfish bastards, and this is a whole faction of them.

The Skaven units are really fun to use and work really well with the whole army. If you have a few Sharpshooter Teams and Gunner, they will *violate* bases. The amount of siege damage on display is impressive, to say the least.

The Void Walker seems to be the only unit with a healing ability, and the shop doesn't appear to have any way to heal units. Loading a unit inside of a tent will heal them, but the cargo system being somewhat clunky makes this hard to control at times, requiring constant mirco to heal multiple units. For a Black faction it makes sense to not have a lot of healing but I still would have preferred a more efficient way to heal my units after a confrontation. Simply allowing more than 1 unit per tent might have made this better. It's quite a minor point, however. Overall this faction is really good.

 

[Yours Truly]

"Xetkin Clan"
It's an odd feeling to see Battle Realms inside of Warcraft 3 but it's been done quite well. The unique training system feels original and intuitive but the worker system does need improving. It would have been preferrable for the Layman to be able to construct food production, and for said food production to produce more Laymen since your only source of Laymen is the town hall. When you're teching up, you can't produce any Laymen for at least two-and-then-some minutes. Artisans also just hang around doing nothing. Being able to train them into warriors like the Laymen would allow players to recycle idle Artisans into a more active role.

Aesthetically, this faction is cohesive and quite nice. It has to be said, however, that the units tend to all look alike. That's not really a criticism on your work, but it's worth pointing out, imo.

When it comes to combat, I entered a melee with the Serpent Incarnate and all my unit suddenly caught fire and started doing w/e they wanted. I understand this is a Red faction, but... but... my units. /single tear. They did wipe the floor with an Orc army, but they remained uncontrollable even after the fight. GG, best army, strongk af but one-time use only. The Serpent remained uncontrollable even after combat died. I assume that's not by design.

Quite a fun faction, however. Plenty of neat upgrades to buff those units. Also the Scavenger deals 56 - 276 damage at level 3 damage upgrade. Might wanna nerf that.

PS: if you want to cancel an order immediate after it's given, run a zero-second timer and then order the unit in question to stop. It will look seamless.

Really appreciate that you reviewed my entry. I really, really need to update my race, but I still don't have answers as to weather or nor the penalty rate is applied to this deadline extension. I wish I could review the marvelous entries we have so far, but the patch I'm running on seems to have a bug where the AI can't properly find an attack route, thus freezing the game every few seconds. Heck, I can't even test out my own entry.

The Serpent Incarnate is meant to do that. When he fights, you fight. No questions.
I agree that my worker system is kinda shite right now.

 

[Wazzz]

Bandit Outlaws

Soundtrack is Necropolis theme from Heroes of Might and Magic IV! That game might not be the best HoMM title out there, but imo is has some of the best soundtracks.

This is a very cleverly developed faction, in general. Everything from their altar-type structure being a tavern to the town-hall having the same recruitment functionality as a mecenary camp make it feel extremely well thought-out. Thematically, it's very coherent and it's well at home with its Black philosophy; bandits are mostly selfish bastards, and this is a whole faction of them.

The Skaven units are really fun to use and work really well with the whole army. If you have a few Sharpshooter Teams and Gunner, they will *violate* bases. The amount of siege damage on display is impressive, to say the least.

The Void Walker seems to be the only unit with a healing ability, and the shop doesn't appear to have any way to heal units. Loading a unit inside of a tent will heal them, but the cargo system being somewhat clunky makes this hard to control at times, requiring constant mirco to heal multiple units. For a Black faction it makes sense to not have a lot of healing but I still would have preferred a more efficient way to heal my units after a confrontation. Simply allowing more than 1 unit per tent might have made this better. It's quite a minor point, however. Overall this faction is really good.

I had a feeling you'd pick up on the soundtrack used
At first I was pondering using the Chaos theme since it has Bandits available to that faction in the game, but listening through the soundtrack I just felt the Necropolis fit better. Definitely one of the more underrated entries in the HoMM series, but I've always had a soft spot for it.

Healing was absolutely a tough one for the faction. On the one hand, I found myself having a huuuuge aversion to doing traditional healing for the Black theme, but god damn it there needs to be some means of maintaining your troops! So, there's a few things here and there, the Tent Cargo Mechanics are a tad on the tedious side as I did actually find I had to queue up entering the unit within, and because it precluded the flying units from having access to it I provided them with the Shadow Form as a means of regeneration. The Void Walker ability is sort of a double-edged sword, phase a unit out and let them regenerate, but overall it's definitely a more offensive faction
Very glad you liked it

@xYours Trulyx, the penalty rate still applies now but it's up to you whether you want to take the penalty or not. As it stands, the race is still pretty playable, and I updated one of my posts up above to show a strategy for playing around with it ^_^

 

[Yours Truly]

The penalty rate still applies now but it's up to you whether you want to take the penalty or not. As it stands, the race is still pretty playable, and I updated one of my posts up above to show a strategy for playing around with it ^_^

It's around 7.5% penalty right now, right?
This is a big gamble. I need a few minutes to decide.

 

[Wazzz]

Well, we'd be on the third day still, based on GMT, so it should be 6% now. But the fourth day will be 10%.
I don't know if that helps or not, but it is 1.5% less than you were initially thinking, so maybe that will be the deciding factor

 

[islesofurth]

Review time!

First of all, Racoons as worker? Brilliant.

The idea of Growth of Green is quite nicely implemented with the Sasquatch and the green drakes.

Thank you
I had a lot of difficulty balancing those 2 units

The use of Gnolls on trees as turret is a nice idea but the implementation could be a lot better (eg using the Orc Burrow technique or some sort of right-click detection).

Originally I had tried to make the Gnoll jump onto a tree. But having a lot of difficulty making it & needing a tower building anyway...Next time maybe.

Some things like the Pool having a healing role but also having upgrades means it can't heal while upgrading.

Oh, i never considered this.
If it was only the healing upgrade it would be a good thing, but since its the main upgrade building its a very bad thing

Rock Golem with chaos damage means I don't need to make anything else,

Really?
But it can only attack buildings and air, also it have slow movement& really bad turning. Not to mention it gets even slower when it splits.

also Dropbears have a *lot* of mana so they can heal infinitely.

Hehe, ya that i missed that one
they are only meant to have as much as a preist or a sorc.

Remains quite a fun race to play.

Glad you enjoyed it

 

[Wazzz]

I actually thought the Golem were going to be super good and then I realized no, they can only hit buildings... and air, but no ground other than buildings...
Which was a little baffling, the tooltip probably should mention that one

Oh well, it's still a fun techtree to play and I have a real soft spot for it

 

[Spellbound]

Oh.. I genuinely thought they were attacking units. Might have been confused in the melee..w was attacking a base ^^;

 

[Leods]

The idea of the Plague Cauldron sacrificing units into better things is super neat. While my first instinct was to ask why not just use a morph, I do feel like this method is potentially more fun, especially if you take that concept and combine it with custom UI to make a global ability. Maybe it even comes in AoE and Single-Target versions, allowing you to convert swathes of units at a time. I did spend a fair amount of time testing the Cauldron's sacrifice on a number of units to see what they become. Really neat feature.

hahaha, so I spent writing that manual, for you to continue experimenting? Although I admit it's fun. Even I, knowing what could happen, I spent about five minutes just watching my units die. I save your work. Those are the only combinations. Any other will just kill the unit. I was thinking of creating some secret combinations, but I had no more human units that could be involved.

On the downside, workers with timed life? Can;t say I'm fond of that. I was constantly running out of gold because my workers were dying (though I did have a bunch of skeletons hanging around). It's an interesting way to turn the harshness of slavery into a game mechanic but something more like a health degen and potential ways to curb that (at the cost of effciency) would have been preferrable. What's more, this creates the opportunity for a taskmaster kind of a unit that would specialise in base-management a bit like the Zerg Queen from StarCraft II.

That's a good idea.
Maybe at some other time, after the tournament, I steal you this idea.

Also one of your ranged heroes has an no-target aoe spell. Better to give that to the melee heroes

It's based in the argument of shooting star, of the priestess of the moon. A little secret? This ability is, also, based in that ultimate. I just maded little changes.

Also, Pact of the Damned costs more mana that the caster's maximum.

Hmmm, it does? After the contest is over, if I do that review, I will decrease the damage and life of the caster at the expense of more mana. For now, you can simply update it, until you have the necessary statistics. Thanks for the review!
So, the poll will start soon, i suppose.

 

[Riki]

I was planning to make some improvements to my faction, mainly banner armies and evokers, but I couldn't do it.

I have had some obligations during these last days and I even had to upload my entry before the time I had planned. I plan to make the improvements later and upload it to the map section.