Why do we hate the Orcs so much?

[Elvish_Pillager]

They have only ONE unit which has a decent level 3. Of the others, one actually exists, but takes a horribly large amount of XP to reach, and is fairly weak anyway. Two have graphics and stats, but have not been included for some unknown reason.

Worse, these graphics and stats have existed for a LONG time.

Their basic fighter, the Orcish Grunt, is slightly weak for its cost, making this supposedly melee-oriented faction rather weak in melee. If anything, it should be strong for its cost, not weak.

What's more, they have only one branching unit, which, to add insult to injury, does not even reach level 3. This can be forgiven due to the lack of graphics.

So, in order of priority:

Implement the Slurbow.
Implement the Stalker.
Reduce the Direwolf Rider's XP requirment to 65.
Reduce Orcish Grunt's cost to 11.
Create an alternate advancement for the Orcish Grunt which can reach level 3.

Who's with me?

[turin]

All excellent ideas. The first 4 should have been implemented months ago, although I'm not sure in 65 is not too low (I know the devs like to be conservative in balancing changes). I guess we could start with 70 XP and see if that is still too high.

[Noy]

Their basic fighter, the Orcish Grunt, is slightly weak for its cost, making this supposedly melee-oriented faction rather weak in melee. If anything, it should be strong for its cost, not weak.


Reduce the Direwolf Rider's XP requirment to 65.
Reduce Orcish Grunt's cost to 11.

Orcish grunt weak? Umm no. Maybe the most used Northerner unit, its one of the only ones that can do effective damage during the day, its a great unit to hold terrain and can be deadly at night. 12 is the perfect price. One suggestion I would have is to give the lvl1 archer a fire attack and up its cost ever so slightly... It would help balance them out against the undead a bit.

Lvl3s rarely concern mp players... so I really have no opinion there.

[Elvish_Pillager]

One suggestion I would have is to give the lvl1 archer a fire attack and up its cost ever so slightly... It would help balance them out against the undead a bit.

I do think that the Archer could use those changes. 5-2 flaming arrows and 13 gold cost sounds good...

[Attila]

One suggestion I would have is to give the lvl1 archer a fire attack and up its cost ever so slightly... It would help balance them out against the undead a bit.

I do think that the Archer could use those changes. 5-2 flaming arrows and 13 gold cost sounds good...

There should be an upgrade to the pillager instead, it already has fire damage.

[Elvish_Pillager]

There should be an upgrade to the pillager instead, it already has fire damage.

There already IS an upgrade to the Pillager. However, upgrading from the Archer to the Pillager is not only entirely ridiculous, it also is not a solution to the problem. Even if every level 2 in the Northerner faction had fire damage, the Undead would hardly be less good against it.

[elscouta]

While playing northerners, i have more problems against woses than undead, but the fire arrow will fix that all the same

Grunts are quite ok for me

[Attila]

There should be an upgrade to the pillager instead, it already has fire damage.

There already IS an upgrade to the Pillager. However, upgrading from the Archer to the Pillager is not only entirely ridiculous, it also is not a solution to the problem. Even if every level 2 in the Northerner faction had fire damage, the Undead would hardly be less good against it.

Sorry about that, I meant a level 3 pillager, not having the archer evolve to pillager.

[Dragonking]

While playing northerners, i have more problems against woses than undead, but the fire arrow will fix that all the same

Grunts are quite ok for me

I agree. Northeners need ranged fire attack - against HI, wose, skeletons/ghosts and saurians.

Grunt's cost is very good. It has (like I said many times bofore) a lot of HP, very good defence in villages, two strong attacks (same dmg like elvish fighter) and nice movement. It is worth 12g, not more, not less.

About other proposals I agree that they can make northeners more intresting.

I'd like to talk about trolls. There almost isn't single game with northeners, when you can't see lvl2 troll (during 3v3 lvl3 troll isn't something rare too - 70% exp) . They should IMO need more XP to advance. With 70% exp intelligent troll (why inteligent? cause it is so cheap that everyone will get few intelligent trolls) need only 18xp to lvl up - so 2 kills = almost guarant lvlup. Troll is probably fastest leveling unit in game. woulf think about incrasing it's exp points needed to advance from 32xp to 36xp (still below grunt-42, elvish fighter-38, spearman-42).

[Disto]

Or troll shouldn't be allowed to be intelligent, and i'm with you EP.

[Doc Paterson]

I'm with you on everything but the reduction of the Grunt. An 11 gold Grunt would be absurdly abusive.

(It strikes me as very odd that you think it's underpowered. Everything in my experience tells me otherwise. Come on MP one of these days; we'll do some field tests.)

[Dave]

Reduce the Direwolf Rider's XP requirment to 65.

Done.

[quartex]

I really like the idea of adding more level 3 units to the orcs. An alternate line for the orcish grunt would be especially cool, if we could think up an interesting unit concept and get good artwork.

There have been lots of philosophical arguments about whether the orcs (or any series of units) must have a level 3 progression. Some people think it's fine to stop at level 2, and that it helps show how a faction is weak in certain areas.

I like the idea of making the slurbow weaker than most level 3 archers, to keep the racial identity of orcs having bad ranged attacks, but I think having a level 3 progression for the unit would really help the gameplay. In longer campaigns there's a definite drawback to giving experience to a unit that can't get beyond level 2.

[turin]

As some who are subscribed to the wesnoth-dev mailing list may remember, a few weeks ago (might even be months now) Jetryl committed orcish slurbow graphics and .cfg file. The .cfg file was removed, because it created new strings, but the graphics are still there. If we could just add that .cfg file back (it was agreed the unit was a good idea, but it was removed because it violated the string freeze), we'd have another problem solved. Then we'd be down to:

Implement the Stalker.
Create an alternate advancement for the Orcish Grunt which can reach level 3.

After we cross out the orcish grunt cost reduction from the list..

[Jetrel]

Orcish grunt weak? Umm no. Maybe the most used Northerner unit, its one of the only ones that can do effective damage during the day, its a great unit to hold terrain and can be deadly at night. 12 is the perfect price. One suggestion I would have is to give the lvl1 archer a fire attack and up its cost ever so slightly... It would help balance them out against the undead a bit.

Actually, the thing about the orcish grunt is this. YES, it IS a bit weak for its level, but not for its cost. What the orcish grunts lack in terms of power, they make up for in numbers.

The more I play with them, I'm actually struck by how much this seems appropriate. Many orcish grunts fight and die against the ranks of their opponents - the few and the proud reach level-3. Orcs do not care about the lives of their soldiers, and this rather brutal form of combat supports that flavor.

Here's an idea: We should add a special trait to orcish grunts which weakens their attacks but gives them an additional attack. Perhaps we could call it agile, or any number of things, but this would negate the big problem with them.

----

However, I am not sure if the aforementioned ability to mass in numbers is dependent on map settings - orcs tend to need a good income to do this well. FWIW, I usually play with 2gp/village.

Lvl3s rarely concern mp players... so I really have no opinion there.

Speak for yourself. In my multi games, there are many of them (this may be directly related to the fact that I prefer playing Age of Heroes, but still).