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[shadowclasper]

So I've been thinking on stuff. I didn't know where else to put this, so here it goes.

Evil races have a problem in that they don't have something like a regular low class invader that hits them constantly like goblins do for Good races.

We also have a problem in that there are A LOT of races, and we're probably going to cull them down some.

So my thought is this: Move the Drow over to replace the Ashlander elves and the Deep Drow. That gets rid of two races right there (And the Deep Drow aren't all that fleshed out ANYWAY).

What do we replace them with?

Centaurs.

Centaurs would be a nomadic people with portable forges, not meant to be played, fast reproducing, semi-decent stats but not much in the way of armor, natural lance and bow users. Commonly assaulting Evil camps on a regular basis like goblins do for the good guy races?

So our two sides are like this:

Good:
-Imperial Humans
-Dwarves
-Sylvan Elves
-Gnomes
-Centaurs

The dwarven legion could be replaced with the 'Legion of Light' a multiracial 'adventurer's' civilization that could be called upon. It would be composed of good guys of all races, predominently the good races, but also some examples of the bad guy races as well.

Evil:
-Orcs (non-taiga orcs should be redefined as Corsairs since they fit the bill quite well, more worried about profit than honor?)
-Goblins
-Drow (Rename these guys something else perhaps? Like Deep Elves, or Fae. Fae are said to have come from under the hill after all? They don't live in forests but under mounds).
-Warlocks
-? Something else?

Mercenary faction for the Evil races would be the Flesh Circus. Slave traders, bargainers, and vile fiends of all sorts. Give them a circus vibe obviously.


Any other thoughts on racial balance and stuff?

[Urist McTeellox]

This is a community-editable post. Please use it to concisely record ideas, thoughts, and the results of discussions as this thread progresses.

Centaurs

• Use little (or no) armour.
• Are frequently active.
• Attack early and often.

Open questions

• Can we get them to trade less, or not at all?

This post is generated automatically! You can edit it in markdown format to update it with the latest information about the race rebalance.  Be bold with your edits, they're easy to undo!

[Urist McTeellox]

Firstly, a huge thank you for this. NPC race rebalance is both hard and important, and I'm very appreciative of you kicking off the discussion.

So my thought is this: Move the Drow over to replace the Ashlander elves and the Deep Drow. That gets rid of two races right there (And the Deep Drow aren't all that fleshed out ANYWAY).

There are deep drow? Are they the 'evil drow' in the settings manager? (I've never used them myself.)

Centaurs.

Hell yes. Also +1 because they're naturally thematic in not using much armour, which is great for reducing clutter and improving early game balance. (As a thematic aside, they should have the AT_PEACE_WITH_WILDLIFE tag.)

The dwarven legion could be replaced with the 'Legion of Light' a multiracial 'adventurer's' civilization that could be called upon. It would be composed of good guys of all races, predominently the good races, but also some examples of the bad guy races as well.

There's a dwaven legion (ENTITY:MOUNTAIN_EVIL), who are aligned with the forces of chaos. I'm guessing this isn't the legion you're talking about? In any case, could you expand on this and their evil counter-parts?

Evil:
-Orcs (non-taiga orcs should be redefined as Corsairs since they fit the bill quite well, more worried about profit than honor?)
-Goblins
-Drow (Rename these guys something else perhaps? Like Deep Elves, or Fae. Fae are said to have come from under the hill after all? They don't live in forests but under mounds).
-Warlocks
-? Something else?

I'm honestly in favour of NPC orcs going away entirely. Taiga Orcs have corsairs as a caste, and because they can be born from Taiga Orc parents, they don't seem to represent a separate race. Plus it's really cool having invaders from a race you can play.

Can you expand on your desire to rename Drow? Is it because they spend so much time frolicking around in the sun?

Any other thoughts on racial balance and stuff?

Just a small note that we need to think about 'active seasons'. As far as I know, a race that frequently attacks enemies will also frequently trade with allies. I don't think it's possible to prevent that, but we might be able to stop them bringing wagons (by denying them COMMON_DOMESTIC_PULL), or animals altogether.  (I personally don't like caravans arriving every season, and I think if they do they should be relatively lightweight.)

~ T

[shadowclasper]

Okay. So.

Thoughts on centaurs:
1) They should bring all the benefits of Goblins, eg: materials that can be broken down into something that can be used and processed. Doesn't matter what it is. Personally I think just giving them lots of metal ammo and weapons will be enough.

2) I'm thinking not at peace with wild life. They're noble hunters. Think Lawful Good Extremists. Mongol Hordes but only towards the immoral. They go about on a eternal crusade type deal. They're noble hunters similar to the Orcs in that respect.

3) Trading with people should be an option. After all, goblins trade with Orcs don't they?

I don't see Centaurs as trading using wagons at all. They might have hunting animals. But think of them as a hunter gatherer society. They shouldn't be farming anything that takes longer than 1 or 2 seasons to grow. They should have exotic animal taming, some mining (the idea being they pick surface places). I'm thinking tomb building too for their leadership. Leaving big old cairns and such behind them. It's not possible to actually build nomads sadly. But I'm sure there's probably a way to have them set up something like 'camps' instead of full blown towns and cities?

The Dwarven Legion I'm refering to is: "Special: The Mighty Dwarven Legion. A smaller dwarven civ, all members are either good fighters or mages. You can call them to your aid for 10,000 gold coins in the Embassy. Might be worth it when you are besieged and cant break the invasion." in the Dwarf masterwork manual.

Deep Drow are the evil counterparts to Drow. And I'm thinking reworking Drow entirely for a couple reasons. The biggest one is that naming them Drow, and giving them spiders, and making them all 'under ground elves' is lazy writing. We should start with 'underground evil elves' and then rework them from there. Involving spiders or not. It'd be pretty awesome if we could make them more cave adapted. Using glass and crystal items and strange, vile magics similar to the Warlocks. Or hell, if we go with the Fae, that gives us WAY more wiggle room and having them suggested to be native to the 2nd cavern layer with it's crystal stuff going on is just going to help with them thematically.

[Meph]

Just a few things on why races are like they are:

Before the GUI could toggle babysnatcher, and before we had a playable evil race (orcs), players couldnt have the good races as enemy. Thats why the evil twins were added. I literally copied dwarves, elves, humans and drow (your allies), and added babysnatcher. Smakemupagus, who made the orcs, suddenly had the problem that they arrived in caravans, which is good for orcs, but bad because they have no own character.

He then added a few things here and there. Evil elves became ashlander elves with special glass (Morrowind style Dunmer), Evil drow became Deep drow (more like their DnD counterpart, because they are more evil), Evil humans became Bandits and thieves, with casinos and gambling, and Evil dwarves became Chaos Dwarves (Warhammer style), with dark gods and mutations.

The drow were the first evil ally introduced into the game, and I dont see a problem with them.

I agree that the dwarven legion should be remade into a generic good mixed race/group, and a evil counterpart be added, some generic evil mixed race/group.

Gnomes are pointless in this discussion, since they have no active seasons, and dont appear anywhere, except if you call them. They also never siege.

Quadruped animals are super strong, see the tuskoxen. Even cows and horses can kick goblins to death. An early invader race of fast, quadruped creatures that use bows... these guys wont be an easy target. No armor helps of course.

The main problem is active seasons, sieges and caravans. If you want something that can siege 4 times against Orcs/Warlocks, you will have something that trades 4 times a year with dwarves and gnomes. Its that simple.

Suggestion: I wouldnt add them with active seasons, but instead hide 1-2% "siege forge" boulders using probability syndromes in all reactions for Warlocks and Orcs. Mixing different races in. This way Orcs, which seemingly dont get enough sieges atm, have a chance to trigger them now and then, just from reactions.

Another thing, which I already suggested in the orc thread, is adding this to the Orc creature itself. 1% chance of triggering a randoms race siege for each orc. If you have 50 orcs, thats 0,5% of an extra siege per year. 100 orcs, 1 extra siege. If you have 200 orcs in your fort, 2 extra sieges. This naturally scales up and down with the amount of units you have, and doesnt muck up worldgen balance by adding/removing races.

[shadowclasper]

So if we wanted to simulated Centaurs (or something else. Maybe Pan/Satyrs instead? due to the insane strength of quadrupeds) we'd have to include a method to avoid them trading with everybody each season, or make it so that what they traded didn't have a significant impact upon that race?

[Teneb]

So if we wanted to simulated Centaurs (or something else. Maybe Pan/Satyrs instead? due to the insane strength of quadrupeds) we'd have to include a method to avoid them trading with everybody each season, or make it so that what they traded didn't have a significant impact upon that race?

You could simply make them not trade, only sieging instead. EDIT: To elaborate, simply not including a few tokens in the entity file is enough to achieve this.

I'd call the evil multiracial faction the "Forces of Destruction" (or something stereotypically evil like that), but that's just my own opinion.

EDIT: I think we should split races into GOOD/NEUTRAL/EVIL instead. Then we could have Gnomes/Elves/Centaurs(or whatever these will be) as good, Humans/Dwarves/Drow as neutral and Orcs/Goblins/Warlocks as evil. Kobolds are a wild card, as it suits them. Of course, this list does not include the automatons or frost giants, so there's that problem.

Hmmm, maybe turn the Antman into a good creature instead of creating something from scratch?

[Meph]

There is no real neutral. There is only BABYSNATCHER and not-BABYSNATCHER. (and skulking, but thats only for kobolds)

[IndigoFenix]

I think it may be worth mentioning that there are four "factions" in DF: regular, babysnatcher, itemthief, and babysnatcher\itemthief.  Members of the same faction will trade, members of other factions will attack.  Skulking races have their own rules, and non-speakers have no allies.

[Meph]

itemthief isnt a faction, and neither is babysnatcher/itemthief. I am fairly certain that even itemthief will be friendly to non-babysnatchers and hostile to babysnatchers. And the babysnatchers will be friendly to babysnatcher/itemthief, and so forth.

If I am wrong, it would be great. I will do a quick test. Mind. Blown.

[shadowclasper]

don't morals play a role into it as well? So that you can end up with elves at war with the dwarves and such? I know it's not an automatic thing like babysnatcher is, but I thought it might up the chances to make races as far from one another morally as possible to result in war?

It's a pity that babysnatcher is auto-evil. Cause 'babysnatcher' good guys who steal and raise children of evil races as good guys would be pretty cool.

[Meph]

IndigoFenix: WOW.



This is with a new civ that has itemthief. Allied with kobolds, hostile to everyone else. That opens possibilities.

Edit: And here again with babysnatcher/itemthief in the same entity. Not that all are not hostile, even the previous friendly kobolds.



This is amazing.

(@shadowclasper: factions dont have anything to do with WAR. Thats indeed ethics. You can be at war with entities that have different ethics, but it will never change your faction.

You can just reverse all babysnatchers. Make elves and dwarves and humans babysnatchers, and goblins/orcs/whatever non-babysnatchers.)

[shadowclasper]

I think it may be worth mentioning that there are four "factions" in DF: regular, babysnatcher, itemthief, and babysnatcher\itemthief.  Members of the same faction will trade, members of other factions will attack.  Skulking races have their own rules, and non-speakers have no allies.

sorry, missed that. Editing post to reflect.

So basically. We have, potentially. 6 Factions.

There are the 'NBS/NT' (Not Baby Snatcher, No Theft), which makes up Humans, Dwarves, Elves, Gnomes, and Drow.
There are 'BS/NT', which are Goblins, Orcs, and evil flip races.
There are 'NBS/T', which are things like Kobolds.
There can potentially be 'BS/T' who sit outside of all of this.
There are Skulking races, like Kobolds, which apparently have their own deal and may or may not sit outside this dynamic?
And there are non speakers like the Fortress Defense races and automatons?

[Meph]

Code: [Select]

No-Baby-Snatch/No-Theft
Baby-Snatch/No-Theft
No-Baby-Snatch/Theft
Baby-Snatch/Theft?Yes. It seems so.

Faction members are always allied with all members of the same faction. (Exception of WARs)
Faction members are always hostile to all members of a different faction.

This means if we add 2 to each faction, we always have 1 home civ, 1 ally and 6 enemies. Regardless of who you play. Now that is something I can get used to.

Speciality: You can summon caravans from ANY faction (even enemies), and they will be friendly towards you.
Speciality: You can summon sieges from ANY faction (even allies), and they will be hostile towards you.
Speciality: Races with no active seasons will only appear if summoned.
Speciality: Races with no pack/pull animals will never trade. But they can steal, kidnap and siege.

Additional Factions:
 - Nospeak => Hostile to everyone.
 - Layer-Linked => Hostile to everyone, wont show up in worldgen as civ.
 - Skulking => Hostile to everyone, wont show up in worldgen as civ.

[shadowclasper]

Okay then. So should we figure out who sits where? It seems like Warlocks would go in both baby snatching and theiving crowd, they have NO scruples, will fall to any low? I assume making them skulking (EG: hidden cabals and shit) would make them unplayable?

Dwarves/Humans probably should go into the category of Theft/No Babysnatch in my opinion. They're unscrupulous bastards after all! Their mercenary faction should be the Mercenaries Legion, a group of mercenaries with rules of conduct, but no real loyalties except to those who pay them.

Elves/Gnomes are goody-two-shoes, and go in the category of doing neither. They have the Druidic Compact as a mercenary faction, dedicated to setting this world filled with horrors and tragedy to right.

Orcs/Goblins are Baby Snatchers, but not thieves. They'll 'save' others from living in their horrible societies, but they won't steal shit. Their mercenary faction would be the Corsairs or the Shadowbroker or something perhaps?

Warlocks/???(Drow? Deep Elves?) are both baby snatchers and theives. Despised by all, with no scruples. Their mecenary faction is the Flesh Circus, a depraved and maddening traveling 'entertainment' group hiding a dark secret about their true nature.

We stick Frost Giants and Kobolds into Skulking I guess? I dunno how that would effect them really... Same for the other beast man civs? Or does making them layer based make that not matter?

Automatons and Fortress Defense races are non-speaking, so they just attack everyone regardless.

We could potentially expand that to 3 factions per group I guess... Warlocks might get friendly with Frost Giants and a third faction that all want to basically obliterate the world as it was created today?

Elves/Gnomes could get that Satyr/Centaur Faction.

Kobolds might join as a kind of... slave race, to the Dwarves and Humans. Protectorate as it were?

Orcs/Goblins, I dunno...

The ashlander elves with all their glass tech should probably go to the Deep Elf BS/T faction though.