Archavin Kingdom by Ashbringer753
The tower summoning heroes was a little odd, not a major fan of that
progressing through the tiers with requesting new units was interesting, though with the large chunk of finances needed to do so seemed a little meh
Having 2 abilities on a hero combo together is pretty cool, I liked how disarm and that other ability I can't remember the name of synergised with each other.
The siege engineer was a pretty creative unit, building a trebuchette and towers in the midst of battle.
The race seemed to have an overall unique flavor for a human race, which seemed pretty coherent and well-executed.
Cabal by Dionesiist
The workers seemed a little to expensive, costing 25 more gold and 1 more food than the other races. To offset this perhaps they could have been more effective at harvesting (maybe add a haunted/enchanted gold mine, and have it only hold 3 with higher gold gains form each).
The instant build times seemed a factor with their cost, though I think the build time of the Town Hall alone made it at least harder to mass produce units, as they only came from 1 structure that requires a lot of time and resources to build.
The ultimate air unit had the same extended tooltip as the Destroyer.
The Colossus disappeared pretty fast after it died, I think it's death time may have been to short.
Using a flying model for a ground-based basic ranged unit was an interesting choice, I thought they were flyers for a bit.
Requiring the Wisps to commit to building a single structure was a little annoying and unexpected considering their split roll from the harvesters (thus less incentive to have more than 1), as well as both the wisps and Undead's build animations. Having the heal ability on them was a pretty cool way to keep them working for their food cost when nothing needed to be built though.
The hell knights didn't require their special building to be constructed. Their exaction ability was interesting, not sure weather I liked or hated it. IMO it would have looked a little better if you triggered the effect and added in custom floating text, seeing the 4523876 damage float above a units head was a little comical at first but seemed a little unnecessary to display the exact value after a while, and felt more like clutter after a while. There is a reason most games go for +EXp over +2531 Experience when floating text is involved.
It was pretty cool to see all those units with their custom animations moving about.
The paragon's ultimate spawned effects over structures but didn't damage them. If the ability wasn't intended to effect structures it should be modified to not strike them, at least.
All the units fit together aesthetically pretty well.
Lost by Kam
The aesthetics aspect of this race was really well done, all the models and units fit really well together. There were a few things that could have been implemented better (giving hover movement to the skulls so they would skim over water rather than have their flamingness and mouths at an awkward height, adjusting the walk/run animation of the tentacle-guy you can get early on to fit it's movement), but overall pretty solid here. The spell art was even rather nicely done.
The balance was pretty much the opposite, using mana as the sole resource needed for unit creation seemed overall unbalanced. Having no use for food seemed unbalanced (buildings could have at least cost food considering their roll in unit production). The unit attributes themselves seemed unfitting as well, the beholder had Medium armor and was a flying unit. I mean, no flying unit in WC3 has medium armor because it doesn't make sense. Why would a unit that can only be struck with ranged and magic attacks take reduced damage from ranged and magic attacks? Ok, so heroes and gargoyles/hippogryphs don't deal reduced damage, but really now. The damage and attack speed on a lot of the melee units seemed over the top as well.
Not being able to see the time left for units was a tad disappointing, I'd be for seeing the summoned-unit bar on units, that way you could at least see the effect of prolonging the life bars. Having units cost food and perhaps have shorter lifespans at higher upkeep could be cool as well, if their lifespan was cut dramatically short at beyond 100 food your system would probably feel more balanced. (also, it seems it would be easy enough to do this, the expiration timer seems to be modifiable in several ways via GUI). Something should probably be done about the structures that extend unit's lifespan as well, like giving the bonuses a maximum cap.
I wasn't a major fan of the early game with this race, their was really nothing going on with the gold-mining being entirely automated and the workers with NE lumber harvesting capabilities. Long build times made this less exciting as well. Maybe exciting isn't the best word there, but early game seems almost agonizingly slow paced.
The hero was pretty awesome, i liked his circle of death spell. The disarm/sleep aura was a little annoying though, and seemed to proc more frequently than necessary.
Speaking of the hero, only the tier 1 town hall seemed capable of reviving him (not that I suck at melee games and let him die or anything, but there was this one time, and...)
Slayers by shiik
The build system was really cool and well-implemented.
Units didn't seem overly complicated and seemed to have a pretty solid roll.
Their seemed to be a lot of weakness to piercing damage in the race early on. What with all the small and unarmored units. I'm not sure why the archers has small armor anyways, it made them rather frail. I could sense sort of a Zerg trend with the early units, but there stats seemed pretty on-par for their costs without needing to give them less attractive armor types.
The first ability on the working hero didn't seem to do anything. Also, you should have just removed the non-working heroes as well, that is one of the cases were less is more.
Fallen by Spinnaker
Custom tentacle-build was pretty snazzy.
The custom build style in general was pretty cool. It seemed a little rough, but worked well enough for the scope of the contest, and overall felt pretty cool to use.
All the units seemed to fit pretty well together, there was a decent and consistent aesthetic here.
The little critter had a walk animation that was waaaay to fast, the fields under walk/run animation should be set to a much larger number for him.
Demons by Wazz
The tooltips were really well done, liked those.
Mana being used for summoning units was implemented pretty well, it acted more as a modify-able progress bar than anything else. Sort of reminded me of Protosses Chrono Shift capabilities without as much micro. The colored text used here looked pretty nice to. (I think one of the units towards the bottom had a screwed up text code though).
The dual aesthetic this race had was a little weird. All the units, icons, and effects seemed pretty standard WC3 demonic, but the tooltips and text was entirely high-tech. The words didn't seem to match the general aesthetic is basically what I'm getting at. Would have been nice if you added little jetpack attachments on some of the guys, or used more high-tech looking units (not that your chosen direction has a lot of resources avalible; but I seem to remember General Frank did a decent amount of high-tech chaos orcs).
The guy with the rail-gun's projectiles could use a lot of love. I'd recommend setting his projectile arc at 0.15 max, probably something lower. And change his projectile art to something else, the chimera acid didn't do it for me. Annnnnd change his projectile launch X, Y, and Z coordinates to something more fitting (z is up, Y is forward, X is the unit's right, 32 is the same distance as the squares in the smallest terrain grid). Lobbing acid not out of his belly-button was awkward is what I'm getting at.
Beyond the text, this race seemed like pretty generic demons, with a Naboo fountain thing in the mix. The units all had pretty clear rolls which seemed pretty standard of the other races.
Drow by 67chrome, notes on points brought up about them:
The slaves were randomly picked for use in the town hall's abilities because it's the only method I could get to work via triggers. Ya, it sort of sucks. Seems there isn't much built in to GUI for easily selecting units inside a transport, really wanted to have the abilities pick the uppermost unit.
The walls get destroyed when the farm that spawned them gets destroyed. The linking-ability was done by Pharoh_ to, so kuddos to Pharoh_ for the awesome linkage ability.
Even though heroes can gain EXP from fighting it costs 75 gold if you purchase the slaves to do so. (they do gain more EXP than is listed when below level 6 though).
Chaos damage isn't that awesome, the only difference between chaos and normal is chaos does 100% to buildings instead of 70%, and chaos does 100% to medium armor instead of 150%. For practical army vs. army battles, normal is better because it is 50% more powerful against ranged units and workers. The Wyrm deals less damage than the blue dragons (which deal less damage than other dragons due to their slow debuff) of respective levels (to compensate for a larger aoe, their upgrade dot, and armor penetration). Considering Chimera's deal siege damage and can out-range buildings (and deal 200% damage to melee units) and Frost Wyrms can perma-stun buildings I don't see chaos damage as being to unbalanced to include in melee play, especially for it's roll. As a small-armored unit the Wyrm is still easily countered by ground-based piercing attacks, and as it only does 100% damage to units rather than 150% or 200% there are still better unit choices for different situations.
Other units can be enslaved if they die while under the effects of Shackle (the umbralmancer's base ability).
All races basically have 2 tanks, a tier 1 and tier 3 one. The Alliance has Footmen and Knights, the scourge has Ghouls and Abominations, the Horde has Grunts and Tauren, the Sentinels have Druids of the Claw and Mountain Giants, and the Naga have Mur'gul Reavers and Naga Myrmidons. Which is why my race had 2 as well
It seems I didn't set the race selection trigger to remove haunted gold mines, so yeah. If you pick undead it will be lame.
