[.983] The Five Worst Faction Traits

I would say warriors is worse than warrior caste, though both are underwhelming.  Combine them, and you have a decent trait. 

I disagree with you about the sacrifice spells; they work great with Magnar's overall strategy of weak slave hordes backed up by powerful magic users.  He just needs a few more magic users.  Hmmm, now I have to go make a new faction...

I agree with the original post.  Some are pretty meh to be worth a point. 

My arguement with FBT and Death Magic is there's nothing comparable for life magic or other elemental types. 

Complete agreement with civics suggestion, why not have an efficient builder type ?

Would like to see warriors or warrior caste give a bonus to attack for trained units.  Or make a fighter figurine (think scar stone but its made out of metal instead of crystal )  Nothing huge.  Just a +1 per dude, same as the scar stone. 

Compared to master scouts everything else is worthless, no one should every chose this unless they want to ruin the game for themselves.

In second would be enchanters, scrying pool alone is worth the point, tomes allows you to spend 2 points of character points on something aside from magic since you can just get it once you research tomes, and the staffs are just icing.

The one that gives you +25? Dodge is also pretty op. Everything else is pretty trivial to worthless with wanderlust awaiting to see how valuable the quest books actually are once there completly fixed and balanced.

Yes,  the quest scrolls - unlimited xp and loot for 50 gold a pop.  That's outrageously OP. 

Adepts:

The spell power of water, fire, earth, air and life (Pariden) or death (Resoln) shards is increased by 1.

But you are using the time of a hero (with or without army), that could be spent killing other stuff. 

There is a limit to the "other stuff".  I could have already killed a lot of it off anyways.  Then only those with access to scrolls can continue to level up their champions. 

The trogg axe one isn't very good either.  the 15 dmg axe that also has armor penetration is pretty good, but the one that replaces the greatsword, the 21 dmg one is actually worse than the sword it replaces.  It does the same damage, but has backswing instead of counterattack, witch in my mind is worse.  It probably weighs more too.

It's sad that every single Yithril trait is downright horrible. I guess they feel that this is balanced out by their good blood trait, and nominal weakness? That's a horrible way to balance things out though as it totally skews custom factions.

Also a special mention for the Wraith and Quendar blood traits. Neither of them are actually good. The Quendar one is neutral because it gives equal cold weakness and fire resistance, and the Wraith one is actually bad because the minuscule healing from kills is far outweighed by the -1 hp per level. 

That's only because Master Scouts allows you to ignore 1/3 of the game. The entire concept of this trait is just wrong.

The "Scholars" trait seems to give +10% research on top of the Knowledge tech.  The other tech traits should probably each give another bonus as well.

I had recently suggested different scrolls with varying levels of quests unlocked by different techs.  If this were added or modded in, what do you think would be appropriate prices for Weak, Medium and Strong quest maps?  My original post on this is here so ideas welcome there.

I don't use this much to keep the challenge, but I like having this as an option to help me at a higher difficulty than Im used to (like a "cheat").  But what if this cost 2 points?  Should  Tarth have a weakness as well?

I think the one that gives Quest Scrolls could be balanced out by turning inns into map features (or resources similar to monster lairs that you can't build on) and giving them a chance to gain a new quest each turn they don't have one up for offer - quest scrolls would then just allow you to accelerate this a bit by giving a guaranteed quest for 50 gold. Perhaps also do this for the Arena of the Slakhanan (unsure of spelling) - its been around since before the cataclysm and it shuts down just because I beat the contest? Just have the final part where you can fight Obsidian Golems be something that only the first to get to that point can do, and put a limit on how frequently it can be done to limit the rate at which you can harvest experience (and make there be a few similar things spread throughout the map so that one player cannot dominate a huge wellspring of experience, or give it its own wildland-type region that no one can absorb (just, not a very big one)). You'd need to ensure that the trait giving Quest Scrolls is still better than just relying on these, though.

As for faction traits that I don't think are very good:

1. Civics. Maybe this should also give you an extra +1 or +2 production per material in each city?

2. Great Axes - as Lord Xia said, the Trog Battle Axe with armor penetration is reasonably good, but the Great Axe does the same damage as the Greatsword (even though the trait claims that the Great Axe has a higher attack, it does not) and has backswing, a worse special ability than counter-attack for trained units, and also usually for champions (high level champions rarely miss, and by the time I can get the Great Axe, my champions should be high level, while trained units don't seem to trigger backswing unless everyone in the unit misses). If backswing were re-worked into something like 'you make two attacks every time you strike' then it would be a much better ability, and the claim of doing more damage would be true for a Great Axe compared to a Greatsword, even if you nerfed the attack a little to compensate for the double attacks.

3. Warriors and Warrior Caste - these should be combined

4. Slave Lords - why do I want to lose all of my growth structures and not even be able to train slaves for it?

5. Guile - does anyone actually care if they have 0 influence or 1000? I know I don't. I also don't know what it is useful for, except giving to AIs in place of something actually useful.

6. Adepts. I don't really want to build shrines early because altars are good enough and build fast, and hopefully I'm not in desperate need of mana in the early game. Also, 40 extra mana doesn't go far if you use magic as your primary attack, and if you don't use magic as a primary attack is probably more than you need to cover the occasional curse spell you use if you're using a more mundane strategy. Maybe Adepts should give a small mana income (making it better early in the game for magic users) or a small percentage boost to mana income (making it better for late-game magic strategies)?

Those are some good ideas Joeball123

I agree but then Yithril would need a entirely new trait.

I say take juggernauts from being a racial trait and make it a faction one.  Their racials are fine with out it.  

I would agree with making juggernauts a faction trait, especially if Slave Lords gets changed to allow you to actually train slaves when you have the trait rather than slaves being a bonus from somewhere else (I think a hidden bonus from being Quendar).

Speaking of racial traits, what do people think of those?

Overview (I will put the special 'train a unit' abilities in with the racial, since I don't know of a better place for them, and since custom factions with that race also get the special units)

Resoln - Wraith Blood: -1 health per level, heals three health on killing a unit

Umber - Urxen Blood: +2 Attack when in an army of 5 or more units

Yithril - Trog Blood: +20 Weight Capacity, +1 Attack, Train Juggernauts

Kraxis - Krax Blood: +10 Defense when below 50% health, grants units the 'Fortify' tactical ability (+10 Accuracy, +20 dodge in Fortified tile)

Magnar - Quendar Blood: +50% Fire Resistance, -50% Cold Resistance, Train Slaves (weaker-than-normal troops who have no wages)

Tarth - Tarth Blood: +3 Attack and Initiative when in an army of 3 or fewer units

Altar - Altarian Blood: +10% Experience, Train Henchmen (trainable champion-type units).

Gilden - Ironeer Blood: +1 Health per level, +30 spell resistance, +50% to mana cost of tactical spells, Train Golems

New Pariden - Amarian Blood: +1 initiative per Air Shard, +1 Spell Mastery per Fire Shard, +1 Spell Resistance per Water Shard, and +1 Health in combat per Earth Shard, -1 Health per level

Capitar - Mancer Blood: +1 Accuracy per level, ability to build roads.

My thoughts:

Wraith Blood is terrible for trained units and high-level champions, and okay for low-level champions. Why? Trained units only heal three points, which is usually negligible compared to their health pool, and if it isn't negligible compared to the damage they've taken then they didn't need the healing. High-level heroes get most of their health from leveling up, so this essentially halves the health of high level Wraith champions and reduces by about one-third the health of mid-level champions. For low-level champions it isn't bad, because most of their health is from their base health and three points of healing per killed enemy actually means something at this point.

Urxen Blood isn't bad, but it doesn't seem great either. It looks like the bonus translates to an extra one or two maximum damage when looking at late-game units, which isn't really all that much.

Trog Blood doesn't have any penalties, and lets me drop the Strength trait for something more useful in unit design, or lets me equip heavier armor earlier on my sovereign and any similar-race champions. It also means that I am less likely to have encumbrance penalties, so my units should have higher initiative than identical units (i.e., same traits and same equipment) of other races. I don't think that there is anything bad about this trait, and the +1 attack at all times is more useful than the +2 bonus Urxen get in armies of five or more units, especially since I can make use of the extra attack from the start of the game. Also, you get Juggernauts for this? You need more bonuses to go with this trait? Really?

Krax Blood grants a very nice tactical ability which makes trained units much more useful as meatshields, and when you add in the +10 defense when they're at less than 50% health it just gets better. Not perhaps the best trait but far from the worst.

Quendar Blood would be worse if there were more things in the game that actually did cold damage. As things stand currently, it seems like it's more of a bonus than a penalty, but my view on that would change if I were to find monsters that deal cold damage or an AI that makes frequent use of ice weapons or water magic's damage spells. Being able to train slaves makes this better, but that really feels like it should be attached to the Slave Lords faction trait rather than Quendar Blood.

Tarth Blood seems alright for now, but the game seems to be punishing the use of small armies more and more with each patch, so I don't know how good Tarth Blood will look in the future. If small armies continue to be discouraged by the game, perhaps Master Scouts should be re-worked so that it only applies for armies of the same size that Tarth Blood works for (or, at the very least, lose the monster invisibility when you add a fourth unit). This is good early game, and for when you just can't afford to have big armies, but the bonus is something that I'd forget about if I could afford a large enough army that the bonus no longer applied.

Altarian Blood is good, because it accelerates the rate at which your forces get better. It's bad because it doesn't do anything else (except maybe allow you to train henchmen - I noticed when I made a Quendar Empire with the Heroic faction trait I could not train Henchmen, but I haven't tested this to see if only the race of Men can train henchmen). I'd say that this is one of the better faction traits.

Ironeer Blood is also a good trait - you can get non-Ironeer champions to be your casters and I believe that you've just dodged the only penalty this has. It's great for making tanky troops and champions, and the spell resistance bonus is the largest single boost to spell resistance that I know of in the game. With it also having the ability to train Golems, I'd say that this racial trait is a strong contender for the best.

Amarian Blood has the same weakness in health that Wraith Blood has, and is extremely depended on the number and type of shards available to you, so it can be variable. If you have a whole bunch of Air Shards, then it's great to be Amarian. Having Earth Shards can partially (or, with champions at sufficiently low levels, fully) make up for the lesser health bonus on leveling, but the small boosts to spell mastery and spell resistance from having Fire or Water Shards don't really seem worthwhile, unless you have a lot of shards. Overall, I'd say this is more or less neutral, but it can be very good if you have lots of shards (especially lots of Air Shards, perhaps lots of Earth Shards), or very bad if you don't have many shards (or have mostly Fire when you have sufficiently high level casters that the extra spell mastery isn't that useful, or mostly Water Shards when you aren't facing much that makes use of offensive spells).

Mancer Blood is kind of worthless. The only time that I really need more accuracy is when my units are low-level, and this only provides noticeably more accuracy when my units are high-level. I'd sooner have something else. Also, this doesn't come with any other bonuses, so it's kind of weak. It at least doesn't have any penalties.

So:            Good               Neutral                Bad

                 Trog              Quendar              Amarian (with exceptions for certain circumstances - like lots of Air shards)

              Ironeer               Tarth                  Wraith

              Krax                   Urxen

                                      Mancer

                                     Altarian

It's a well fought out analysis, joeball123, and I mostly agree with it.  A couple of things, though. The Mancers get the ability to build roads, and the Altarian henchmen are tied to the blood.  This singlehandedly moves them into Good category.

I also disagree with your conclusion about Tarth.  Sure, smaller armies work less and less well, which is why this +3 to attack and initiative is even more important in the early game.  Apart from Magnar, not one will have armies bigger than 3 up until 20-30 turns into the game.  These 20 turns will make or break a nation, especially at the highest difficulty levels.

Oops, I hadn't noticed that - I thought that Henchmen came from Heroic. I also hadn't noticed that Mancers get the ability to build roads. I'll add these to the list of blood traits.

I will agree that Tarth blood is great to have in the early game, but I feel that the lack of benefit beyond those first 30 or so turns leaves it in the neutral category.

The Henchmen require the blood, but they may also require a tech. I have been playing standard races only, lately, so I am not 100% sure.

The henchmen only require the blood, no tech.  Same with golems, slaves, and Juggs.  

Adepts was good before the change that allowed shard harvesting to be built without the tech. 

I'd like to see a bigger change here, I'd like to see it be hella expensive to upgrade shards (moreso then building the shard) , but upgrading a shard gives you +1 element power in addition to the +1 mana.

My suggested buff: constuct and upgrade shards at half cost

Warrior Caste: Training Yards, Barracks, and Command Posts can be built at half cost.

Warriors: trained starts start with Potential.  Training yards upgrade to Potential II, Command Posts to Potential III.

Flesh Bound tome: upgrade scar stones and sacrifice spells.

Ya in my opinion anyway Juggs are the only ones that should be linked to a race, as the lore supports it. Not having Slavelords unlock slaves is stupid.

Like I said elsewhere I think Wraith Blood should just give 25% health drain. So they heal for a quarter of the damage they do. That would make them very unique. I think it would be cool if Quendar Blood unlocked a fire breath ability. Say (3 * unit size)+ 1 per fire shard and +1 per level fire damage, with a range and cooldown of 4.

This would be insanely powerful. But I like the idea, and think that 10% is enough.

Don't forget that they also get -1 hp per level. So maybe 20%.

Wraiths (I think) get a trait that lets one gain 3 mana when the unit kills something. This is awesome (far more so than the gaining of 3 hp), and is a good reason to play them. Only gaining 1 hp/level net is harsh, though.