Centaur and Kentauride Faction

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BedazzleHooves
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Centaur and Kentauride Faction

Post by BedazzleHooves »

I'm currently working on a Centaur/Kentauride faction... But I don't want them to play the exact same way as the Equestrians faction. Any ideas on ways I can make them play differently are appreciated.

General concept at current is a low defence, high attack, high movement faction. Like the drakes, but without flying and horsemen-esk resistances.

Currently, units are
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All units will have higher levels and such, but hopefully that's enough for a general picture. Large amount of the art is done. I'm just concerned with making them interesting to play. Ideas and feedback?
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Xalzar
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Re: Centaur and Kentauride Faction

Post by Xalzar »

BedazzleHooves wrote: General concept at current is a low defence, high attack, high movement faction. Like the drakes, but without flying and horsemen-esk resistances.

All units will have higher levels and such, but hopefully that's enough for a general picture. Large amount of the art is done. I'm just concerned with making them interesting to play. Ideas and feedback?
Interesting faction.
First thing you have to give this faction all the "roles" that are needed for your idea of gameplay.
I see you have for now: a healer/magician, a light fighter, an armored fighter, a heavy hitter, an archer, and the wolf and alligator which are less defined. And all are quite quick.
A faction need absolutely a swimmer or a flyer (or both, default factions have only one of these roles). Perhaps the alligator is your choice for a swimmer?
A scout is also needed, you can make on of your units quicker than the others or in your case you can even give this role to most of the units (that would be surely original, but clearly should be balanced).
In general, every unit must be useful for some battle situation (some units more, other less ofc). No one should be OP or useless.

Sufficient diversity among units is needed, so the player could use some creativity and fight well against whatever other faction he's battling.
So resistances should be quite varied, movetypes, HPs, XP requirements, advancements, attacks, abilities as well. From the scarce information you have given for now, I see you are diversifying at least attacks, HPs and movetypes.
Of course, too much diversity could be instead be negative for the cohesion of the faction, so balance cohesion and diversity keeping all the stats as much logical as you can. Keep this in mind in particulare when assignign abilities and specials (do not abuse them).
Make forking advancements for some unit lines.

The leader should have 4, 5 or 6 movement points (if it has 4 it will gain the trait quick automatically), no more.

This is obviously very generic feedback. With more complete information I could eventually be more specific.
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BedazzleHooves
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Re: Centaur and Kentauride Faction

Post by BedazzleHooves »

Thank you very much for the feedback.

I’ve changed the information in my original post slightly and added a sprite tree.

I was debating on a weak “ghost” one that would have low HP and high res’s.
I was also debating on making the armored one an advancement of the basic unit.

Healer would mainly be healer. If I give her to much attack, it seems OPed to me, thinking around 4-2 magical.

Wolf would be the more defensive unit with 50% def on hills and a weak melee attack.

Alligator was going to be my water unit/mixed fighter. Unless I can find a good seahorse sprite I like and can tear apart.

I have been debating on a scout unit. My issue is: what scouts for horses? Was thinking about just making a light un-armored unit that moves a little faster.

Res’s were going to vary bases on the armored level of the unit. Least being the mages, most being the heavy armored one. Wolves would have cold res. Alligator would have pierce res.

The only specials I was planning on was the magic/healer unit, the charging unit, and marksmen on the level 2/3 elf. Don’t know what to do on the ghost unit yet.

Don’t know what to do about the movement for my leader right now… had planned on making most units 7. Might have to reduce most of them to 6.

As for more detail: all units would have terrain def of 40% on flat as their best terrain except for elf and wolf, which would do better in woods and hills. I’m still nailing down the details, but that is the general plan.
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Xalzar
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Re: Centaur and Kentauride Faction

Post by Xalzar »

BedazzleHooves wrote: I’ve changed the information in my original post slightly and added a sprite tree.
Nice variations on advancement lines.
How many of them are recruitable? All the first units of every line? Normally a complete faction has from 6 to 8 units, just for reference.
I see you added the ghost line (?), previously unmentioned, and under that probably is the "dark" line?
I don't know if you want feedback on the graphics, but sometimes you should give better differentiation between levels (I speak of the zombie line levels 2-3, dark line, healer line). Even small detail additions could make a big difference. Mind you, I am absolutely not an artist so I can't comment on the quality of your graphics (which for me seems good frankies, btw). I only say because now some units of different level could cause confusion to the player and this affects gameplay too.
BedazzleHooves wrote: I was also debating on making the armored one an advancement of the basic unit.
Wolf would be the more defensive unit with 50% def on hills and a weak melee attack.
Good choice since you have already a "defender" (the wolf) and a "heavy hitter" (the charger) on level 1.
BedazzleHooves wrote: Healer would mainly be healer. If I give her to much attack, it seems OPed to me, thinking around 4-2 magical.
I try to interpret the healer line:
On level 1 you have a healer (+4? +8? w/ or w/o cure?) with very weak attacks (I suppose a weak melee with the staff and the 4-2 magic - fire? cold? arcane?).
Then the level 2 gains a hairtail which helps for distinction (I told you even little details help). I don't know if would have been a better idea to fork here the unit line, I should know her stats (is she a better healer? is she a better magician? does she gain a new ability?).
In the upper fork (I guess it's the "pure healer" line) you have a level 3 who is too similar to the level 1 graphically in my opinion.
The level 4 changes horse color but needs some differentiation too.
In the second fork you have "dark wizards" I guess. If they abandon the healing ability it is not so good, since it is present on two levels before them; drastic changes on advancement are admitted and interesting but should be gradual (think of the standard Mage line: it differentiates heavily on 2nd level - choosing healing and arcane or more fire power; then in the fire line there is an other variation with the Silver Mage - but gradual: it gains a movement and the ability to teleport but everything else is the same as the Red Mage). But again, let's see the stats; these are only generic advices.
BedazzleHooves wrote: Alligator was going to be my water unit/mixed fighter. Unless I can find a good seahorse sprite I like and can tear apart.
I can advice you to check the Khthon faction. There are a few interesting "animals". The idea of an "alligataur" is cool but it's a bit difficult to innest an humanoid torso on a crocodile and make it convincing.
BedazzleHooves wrote: Don’t know what to do about the movement for my leader right now… had planned on making most units 7. Might have to reduce most of them to 6.
It's a solution, but not the only one.
Keep in mind that leaders are level 2, so could be that a level 1 can lose one movement point when advancing to certain level 2s (for example the "spearman" advancing to the "armored"?), so some level 2s have 6 movement points and you can use them as leaders.
Or, best of all, you could create a game modification which gives the trait "slow" (-1 movement + 5% HPs) to a 7-movements leader. So you can keep intact the concept of your faction and don't have OP leaders.
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BedazzleHooves
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Re: Centaur and Kentauride Faction

Post by BedazzleHooves »

First off, thanks Xalzar for the help/advice.

Second, I hope to push my first version of this faction this week, just been busy since I last posted. I have changed around the unit tree and here is the new look. (Blue circles are by the units I have animated in some way....) Some unit trees are done and some are scrapped from last time. Still working on some of them,
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Dixie
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Re: Centaur and Kentauride Faction

Post by Dixie »

I haven't read everything, but judging from that last image, my gut feeling is that your faction will be too versatile. Have I counted 10 base units? Loyalists are considered very versatile and cover most of the ground with 6. Also, it seems to have everything: a tank, snipers (magicians), ranged attacks, movement, high mobility, flight, healing, maybe even leadership... I also don't think any other faction has both fire and cold attacks - you seem to. No mainline faction has ALL of these. And you know what? From my experience, factions are often defined not so much by what they have but by what they lack. It's what makes them interesting.

My opinion is you should maybe return to the designing board. Think about how you want your faction to play. What you want its core strategy to be, what will it be efficient at? And what will it suck at, and how can it make do? Factions often have a staple unit, one that is more cost-effective than others, one you will most likely see at least one or two of in most every game. Loyalists have the spearman, orcs have the grunt, etc. What would be yours? You also said you wanted them to play different from some other existing faction. Well play around with that faction and find out what defines it. What does it have, what does it lack? And try to find different characteristics for your faction.

And also, if you haven't yet, read all of this. It's a lot of text, but it is very enlightening :)
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BedazzleHooves
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Re: Centaur and Kentauride Faction

Post by BedazzleHooves »

I've working on the coding and art for this in my spare time the last few years... Hoping to upload the Alpha build soon. Ballooned into three different factions.

Centaur/Kentauride faction (Low defense, mixed res, high move faction, like the drakes) (Six unit lines done) (Two unit lines animated)

Mutant Faction (tanky faction) (with the strange units being moved into this faction) (Three unit lines done) (One unit line animated)

Genie faction (Low health, all flying faction) (Six unit lines done) (Four unit lines animated)

Will start posting Gifs of the Animations as soon as I figure it out how to make them a gif, and I will upload the alpha factions in hopefully two weeks once I get the last few bugs out.

These are the Genie Unit's that I've Frankensteined/made so far... I've marked the units that I am overhauling. Overall opinions and advice is always appreciated.
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ghype
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Re: Centaur and Kentauride Faction

Post by ghype »

hello there.

first of all I think the thread is on the wrong category.
I first posted my artwork here to and was advised to move it to the "art workshop" thread.

secondly, it was your sprites who gave me the idea to make my own centaurs, mostly because I felt there was something off with your centaurs. after researching the centaur as a mythological creature, I found out what weapons they used and what armour they wore. I think some of the centaur lines are ok but most of them are not. unfortunately I cannot point to which are good since you have no elaborate system to display and name your sprites yet. Furthermore, the horse body you used are the old default horses which are too small to properly display a fully grown (male) centaur. There are better horse bodies out there, you just have to look for them. In my thread you can find examples on how the male centaurs are more bulkier then the female ones. Also they feel a bit too much loyalist-ish, but I guess thats due to the franken-material. Here you can see my Centaurs.

Thirdly most of the bodies you used for the green genie line are not UMC content but posted on PixelJoint. I know Mr.Matti says it is made for Wesnoth but I don't know what laws apply as long as he doesn't upload them on the forum himself. You should seek his permission first before doing that. This is a link to the art I refer to.

Fourthly, genies are magical creates (so far best known from EoMa) so having genies with magical tail but human body feels a bit off. the ghost type genies look ok though.

Lastly, out of experience it is very hard to do workable factions consisting of one unit type (e.g. full centaur, full genies, full skeleton,...) since they all mostly have similar vulnerabilities. considering to add other creature types to your faction will help you with faction design. Best example is Bitron's Centaur faction (where I helped doing the centaur sprites), which consists of centaurs and "minotaurs". both filling the gaps of the others faction's problems. For actually seeing them though I think you to download his era Millenium Era or play them in Ageless Era.

PS: these are definitely too many units for a faction. when it comes to faction design, you will probably through out some.
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Re: Centaur and Kentauride Faction

Post by RolfDhew »

Very interesting ideas and sprites!
The sprites look good so far, but if I may give my opinion, maybe you should try to edit human part of the centaurs, maybe change their faces and armor, try to make them a bit different from Loyalist units as pointed out by the poster above.
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