Orcish assassins have half movement on hills?

[Samonella]

Question of the day, since a basic search of the forums didn't come up with anything relevant. Why do orcish assassins have half movement on hills? They also have a movement cost of 3 on mountains, compared to other orcs' 2.
Lore-wise, these are the fastest, lightest-armored orcs, so they certainly shouldn't be slowed down in orcs' favorite terrain.
Balance-wise, the assassin is already less versitle than units filling a similar niche in other factions, due to a lack of the "skirmisher" ability, so in my humble opinion it is quite unecessary to slow them up in this way. In campaigns, the "fast, light" assassins slow down the whole team on hilly maps.

There probably is some good reason behind this, or at least a good reason to not change anything, but if so I sure would like to know what it is.

[ForestDragon]

it's the fact that they use the 'elusivefoot' movetype, which is meant for human theives. i guess we could make an 'elusiveorcishfoot' or something

[zookeeper]

It does seem like something that might be unintentional. Probably the only reason not to change it is if it would upset current balance, but we'll have to wait for some multiplayer people to chime in on that.

[Gyra_Solune]

I wouldn't exactly call the Orcish Assassin particularly weak. It has basically one role - to offensively poison enemies to make them easier for the main forces to break through. It will succeed at doing this 94% of the time so it's pretty reliable at that (it only needs to hit once to do the bulk of its damage, and as a bonus it's not affected by time of day so it's particularly effective to use during the daytime so as to disorganize the enemy come nightfall). It then ideally will not immediately be trapped and killed so it can be used elsewhere (particularly undesirable since it's the most expensive unit in a faction that relies on sheer numbers) - it does this reasonably well by being elusive and relatively fast at getting away. Skirmisher would kind of break the whole thing...being slowed by hills, I'm not too sure. It's the kind of thing that ought to be further tested to make sure that they're not impossible to deal with - any buffs or changes to the Assassin have a major ripple effect on the faction as a whole.

[Velensk]

Searching for this question being asked before may yield some results you find interesting. I don't have time to relate it now but it has been talked about before.

For what it's worth, although I really don't think northerners need any more help, I really don't think orcish assassins being able to move through hills would in any way be a problem.

[Eagle_11]

If northerners would need anything that'd be goblin suicide bombers with efm_sapper spec and 3 fire dmg to knack these woses, but thats irrevelant to default era.

[Samonella]

Here's the post Velensk mentioned:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source= ... QmZskouWPw
Idk why I couldn't find it before. Google > wesnoth forum search I guess.

Anyway, it looks like the debate got quite heated, with most of the heat coming from the pro-change folks and most of the actual debate/reasoning coming from the anti-change ones.

After a quick read, I still think that half movement is a bit odd, but my question is certainly answered satisfactorily.

Here's the most compelling arguement, IMO:

IMO this, especially combined with EP's suggestions to make factions entirely composed of one race each, will lead to an incredibly boring game, always decided entirely by terrain. I would like to push for much more terrain diversity within factions, rather than less.

[Gyra_Solune]

Well, yes, it is good to have diversity in factions, and the Northerners have a decent amount of it - nagas, trolls, and wolves all handle very differently...but it's also of note that it is decidedly 'the orcish faction', dominated by orcs and their goblin lower caste, with the only exceptions being the trolls they've sort of roped into their armies and the nagas they have sort of an alliance with. It stands to reason roughly half of the units should handle similarly because the core of a faction is different variants on its primary race. What defines elves is their ability to move through forests rapidly so it'd be weird if, say, the Elvish Shaman struggled to move through woods. What defines dwarves is their ability to run around on all terrain while being exceptionally potent on mountains, so it'd be weird if say, the Dwarvish Thunderer was only as good on mountains as everyone else. The Orcish Assassin is an orc, and more or less the same stature of physical ability as the Orcish Archer, just without armor (which explains the physical damage weaknesses), and presumably some training in evading attacks and generally being all ninja-ey (which explains their being more dodgy).

The game is usually good about integrating lore and gameplay balance, so that begs the question - why does an orc who's like this other kind of orc except with less armor struggle to climb hills more than the other one?

[kurt751]

Just my 2 cents, I'd vote for consistency too (ie orc assassins having the same movement as other orcs).
They're orcs for crying out loud. What does slow them down? The absence of armor?...

[ForestDragon]

btw, here is what elusiveorcishfoot could look like:

Code: Select all

    [movetype]
        name=elusiveorcishfoot
        [movement_costs]
            shallow_water=2
            reef=2
            swamp_water=2
            flat=1
            sand=2
            forest=2
            hills=1
            mountains=2
            village=1
            castle=1
            cave=2
            frozen=2
            fungus=2
        [/movement_costs]

        [defense]
            shallow_water=60
            reef=50
            swamp_water=60
            flat=40
            sand=60
            forest=30
            hills=30
            mountains=30
            village=30
            castle=30
            cave=50
            frozen=60
            fungus=30
        [/defense]

        [resistance]
            blade=130
            pierce=120
            impact=120
            fire=100
            cold=100
            arcane=100
        [/resistance]
    [/movetype]

as you can see, i tweaked the hill/mountain movement cost, as well as made their resistance to arcane 0% (just not to have to copy-paster the 0% arcane resistance in every orcish assassin unit file)

[Eagle_11]

^
implement this.

[Ravana]

There was no question about how to implement it.