Age of Strategy Forums

Alexander82 wrote: ↑Wed Aug 29, 2018 12:54 pm Tonight (well it was night for me) I had a good chat with both @General Brave and @Sunrise Samurai

We tought a way to add more subrace expansion avoiding to set too strict limitations and without flattening out all the races around similar stats:

As I suggested here we will access subraces/elite units/other races by adding a tech requirement.

That wouldn't be much different from researching a tech if not for a few details

Since we want to be difficult to make all subraces alliances/researches in one game we wanted to limit diplomatic researches to one at time. To obtain that effect @Sunrise Samurai suggested that those techs will be researchable only in a specific building (for humans, elves and dwarves that shall be an embassy, for undeads it might be a place where to make unholy rituals and so on) that won't count as a factory; player will be able to build only one at time (so no research spamming).

Since not all subraces are the same in terms of strength, variety and number of units every tech will have its own cost and bigger/stronger races will require to research more techs before unlocking all the units of that subrace (e.g. warfell alliance will unlock the basic units, a second tech will unlock the elite units and the warfell siege contract will unlock their siege units).

This new feature, however, will influence every subrace already in game with orcs that will be allowed to build only orcish and goblin units at the beginning, humans only common human units, elves only wood elves (btw we tought to make sun elves the "Rising Sun Elves" with a more japanese flavor and the moon elves called "New Moon Elves" in contrast, being the arcane oriented part of the race).

This will also help a lot to keep balance in place since orcs won't have access to uruks and most of the giant from the start (probably the orc leader only since it is an orc unit), elves will require some time to obtain their best melee units (rising sun) and casters (New Moon), and we might go on with every race.

Of course some base races might require some expansion (like wood elves that might have some more unicorn riders variants and mounted archers).

We mostly tought that:

Humans can go Imperial and Warfell (and maybe some oriental style too if we like)

Orcs will start as orcs plus goblin (I'm still not sure about trolls but they will have probably to recruit them) and will recruit their uruks (I was thinking a tech for uruk infantry and another tech for ologs and caragors), Giants that aren't orcs and Minotaurs/Beasts

Undeads will start as zombies/ghouls and skeletons and can recruit phantoms, devils (lawful evil) and Horrors (chaotic evil chtulu style) all passing by some cultist recruiting first

Elves will start as wood and can go nature units (plus other beasts and such), Rising Sun and New Moon

Dwarves will start as dwarves alone and will be able to recruit gnomes and their technologic artifact units (so they will basically might have contracts related technology and such) and they might recruit other dwarven subraces

Scalefolk will mostly start as kobolds and lizards and will unlock more powerful races (that will need some more expansion, like turtles that will also have some easter eggs).