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Ander 
Postmaster General
Joined: 24 Apr 2011
Status: Offline
Points: 1269
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 Posted: 23 May 2012 at 18:29 |
The racial description is totally wrong. It would have you believe that the elven mage tower is somehow slower to build than the mage towers of rest of the races (what is that particularly valuable time written there?) and that elven cities have to take special care about the cycles of moon. Elves Elves are one of Illyriad’s more difficult races to play well. Although they tend to make excellent archers and swift riders, it can take valuable time to get an Elven city to a necessary level of magical proficiency, and it takes skill to co-ordinate your empire’s operations around the various waxing and waning cycles of the moon.
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Createure
Postmaster General
Joined: 07 Apr 2010
Location: uk
Status: Offline
Points: 1191
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Posted: 23 May 2012 at 17:46 |
 dunnoob wrote:
Well, when I picked dwarf I had no clue about racial differences in Illyriad, but I considered "human" as boring, "orc" as too warlike, and "elf" as not militant enough. |
IMO this kind of misconception is fostered by old preconceptions and things like the racial descriptions linked off the homepage. http://www.illyriad.co.uk/GameInformation/Races Simple fact is that humans are the most powerful race offensively by quite a margin - but also possess the fastest T2 defensive units in the game (longbows)... Elves excel in defense AND offense with the ability to strike and reinforce faster than anyone else as well as being able to mass produce the most powerful defensive troops in the game. Dwarves are NOT a powerful defensive race as the racial description would have you believe: "Dwarves are a strong choice for those who want to rely on their defensive game" But it is undeniable that Dwarves fulfill an important role in siege warfare as well as quite specialised offensive abilities (breaking seiges that are set up in buildings/forests for example). The Orc role seems to be that of general cannon fodder for other races' specialist units... they certainly have absolutely zero offensive advantages above any other race as the description would have you believe: "Orcs excel in waging an offensive playstyle..."
IMO whoever wrote those descriptions has absolutely no idea about the in game mechanics - or simply decided to make a bunch of stuff up to make things sound different/more interesting/more balanced.
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Gilthoniel
Forum Warrior
Joined: 11 Oct 2011
Location: Cuiviénen
Status: Offline
Points: 211
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Posted: 23 May 2012 at 10:45 |
I must say I find these "nuances of thievery" utterly fascinating 
Edited by Gilthoniel - 23 May 2012 at 10:48
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dunnoob
Postmaster
Joined: 10 Dec 2011
Location: Elijal
Status: Offline
Points: 800
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Posted: 23 May 2012 at 01:36 |
Createure wrote:
perhaps people
simply don't care that things are imbalanced |
Well, when I picked dwarf I had no clue about racial differences in Illyriad, but I considered "human" as boring, "orc" as too warlike, and "elf" as not militant enough. So now I'm stuck with dwarf, and don't want to be something else (but I'd love an orc in my alliance). IOW, I'm a fatalist wrt racial differences, and so far not unhappy with dwarves on ponies or as diplos. Maybe I'll be annoyed when I try to manage thousands of troops or diplos, that's not yet the case.
For diplo contingents I put a T2 spy in each army to give it a diplo visibility radius of 4 squares. If other races have a better radius I'd hate it.
For thieves my consulate won't let me elaborate above Kumomoto is right in public, and one odd observation: A catastrophic failure (as your loss of 10K) can also happen on the side of the defender, and a too small group of attacking thieves can get away with lots of saddles. Sadly figuring out "too small" consumed a major part of the loot. 
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Createure
Postmaster General
Joined: 07 Apr 2010
Location: uk
Status: Offline
Points: 1191
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Posted: 22 May 2012 at 19:16 |
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I haven't seen a spread sheet of terrain modifiers for quite a while. Still it seems pretty balanced to me the spread of effective terrain types for defensive units.
I don't think the issue here is about terrain modifiers though.
Edited by Createure - 22 May 2012 at 19:18
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Kumomoto
Postmaster General
Joined: 19 Oct 2009
Status: Offline
Points: 2224
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Posted: 22 May 2012 at 18:41 |
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I believe that spears get significantly better bonuses in the Building terrain type than ranged.
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Createure
Postmaster General
Joined: 07 Apr 2010
Location: uk
Status: Offline
Points: 1191
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Posted: 22 May 2012 at 18:16 |
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It is Ander.
@Dark: With regards terrain modifiers versus range and spear units... the undead tournament demonstrated admirably how good range units are for defense on plains... compared to spears which suffer heavy penalties [did anyone ever wonder why people hunt rats above all other NPC types for experience? [Hint: rats are all spear-units]. In hills, buildings and mountains both unit types receive positive bonuses... although ranged units have equal or greater bonuses on all of these. The only place spears out perform range is in forests.
Essentially... your claim that spears generally outperform range in terms of terrain modifiers is patently untrue.
Again the comment about high upkeep rates for range compared to spear seems a little odd. As I already mentioned previously - a MUCH better reflection of an army's strength is it's upkeep, NOT the number of units in it... the fact that an elf could train 10000 sentinels in the same time as an orc could train 10000 kobolds simply demonstrates that an elf can train an army of MORE than twice the strength [20 attack value versus the kobold's 9, and 86 total defence versus the kobold's 43] of the Orc in exactly the same time-frame and for approximately the same cost.
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Ander
Postmaster General
Joined: 24 Apr 2011
Status: Offline
Points: 1269
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Posted: 22 May 2012 at 16:23 |
Darkwords wrote:
As for defence rankings, I tend to ignore them as they merely seem to represent who has lost the most troops in defence, which is kind of odd.
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Is it not who has killed most while defending?
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Ander
Postmaster General
Joined: 24 Apr 2011
Status: Offline
Points: 1269
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Posted: 22 May 2012 at 16:21 |
KillerPoodle wrote:
Two questions:
1) Did anyone figure out quote 13 yet - I know those words are spoken in Blade Runner but I'm guessing there are any number of films with that sentence.
2) Did anyone notice that the visibility for Elves looks totally wack?
- Trackers 1.6
- Outriders 2.8
vs Is that an error or a compensation for the speed of the elven units?
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Visibility matters more for army encampments than diplomatic missions. Since elven any army can afford to have 1 'Farseer' in it, their encampments will have a little more visibility than human encampments. An added bonus to elves. Look at the table
Unit Vision Ranges: - HUMAN SCOUTS & SPIES
- Scouts 1.9
- Rangers 4.1
- Agents 2.6
- Spymasters 3.6
- ELF SCOUTS & SPIES
- Waysmen 1.6
- Farseers 4.2
- Trackers 1.6
- Outriders 2.8
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Darkwords
Postmaster General
Joined: 23 May 2011
Status: Offline
Points: 1005
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Posted: 22 May 2012 at 15:59 |
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In my experience, of running both elven and orc characters, elven bows do not compare to Orc spears in defence in anyway. Partially because of the upkeep rates, but mostly due to their modifiers on so many terrain types. Infact about the only use archers have is in attacking spears on open plains or small hills. Whereas in contrast the only major draw back spears have is that they are pretty useless defending against archers. But that is not to say you are wrong, each of us will value certain things more than others. Also I would expect you have looked into the mechanics deeper, as I do not bother myself with such stuff as much as someone who has played this game aslong as I have probably should.
As for defence rankings, I tend to ignore them as they merely seem to represent who has lost the most troops in defence, which is kind of odd.
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