31JUL12 - MAJOR RELEASE (Crafting)

Hm? Now why would anyone make trueshot only cities? .... Well it's simple, it's way overpowered unit for a very low cost. The cost should be at least 2 leather armors like any other t2 ranged unit and some of the stats should be lowered... The other overpowered unit in the game is knight, but it's production costs are normal, so there is at least some balance. Another reason for this huge elf and human bonus is time to train units in aspect to their experience points. While you can train t2 archers and t2 cavalry at the same speed per experience point, you can't train other two specialist units so (for dwarfs t2 infantry and for orcs t2 spear). While this training times per exp points will not be changed there can be no balance between races. I'm afraid orcs are most penalized here. 

Crafting will not change this fact. In fact it will make it even worse, because we orcs have to produce more numerous armies of low quality troops to make it comparable to much smaller amount of human, dwarf and elf units. That means that large number of units will also need larger amount of weapons and armors. Trueshot (t2 elven archer) and clan guardsmen (t2 orcish spearmen) both need 1 leather to produce, but 1 crafted armor on trueshot is worth way more then 1 crafted armor on clan guardsmen, because all the basic statistics for trueshot are much better not to mention training time per exp point. I'm afraid that if you put a bit higher % bonus on bad basic stats this still makes it overall much more bad stats for equipped unit.

So I have a question for the devs. Why have you made bad situation for orcs even worse with this release?
Equipping low upkeep units is just waste of weapons and armors. For example if I give the same spear that has 10% attack bonus to knight, it will give 6.5 attack bonus per weapon or 13 in elite division. If I give the same weapon to kobold it will only give 0.9 attack bonus or 1.8 in elite division. Of course this is the same weapon and production times for it are the same? The same is true for armors.... Even 4 kobolds are not comparable with 1 knight except their upkeep. It is much more time consuming to make 4 kobolds then 1 knight and even before this update 1 knight was way better in every statistic then 4 kobolds. Shouldn't spearmen that use weapon especially made for them have the same bonus as the knights which historically didn't even use spears? Well 8% orcs on the server... I wonder if this % will be even smaller after this release? I'm certainly thinking of leaving like 2 other orcs from my alliance have done already...

Another aspect of this crafting business. It penalizes big players and rewards small players. Big players with 200K+ army will never be able to equip big percentage of the army, but small player might equip all of it. I have no objections regarding this aspect of crafting.