The Great Orc Debate

[Aaron]

Alright guys, this post is to take a vote on what culture the first Orcs in Worlds of Magic should have. Keep in mind that other cultures may be added later, but we'll be adding new races before we add new cultures to existing races. There has been a bit of a debate about what culture the first orcs should have. In short they are:

Honorable Horde – In my mind this is a lot like MoM and Warcraft. The Orcs have their own honorable culture. They have fairly normal units and cities and are much like the other civilized races.

Barbarian Horde – This a much more tribal and barbaric take on Orcs. They will have unique play mechanics like the ability to relocate their cities, but will have the inherent weakness of having certain buildings limited by a city's population.

Noble Tribes – The idea behind this is that, although the Orcs are tribal in nature they are not barbarians. The suggestion is to model their culture after the American Indians. The play mechanics discussed have, up to this point been fairly “normal”.

Those are the big three as far as I see it. If you want to take a more in-depth look at the discussion before you make a decision you can read all about it here:

http://forum.wastelands-interactive....e-Goblin-Hoard

Once you make your decision cast your vote. We're only going to leave this vote open until tomorrow. I need to get the information together for the race vote soon

I'll try to give you guys more notice in future, but I don't think it's the kind of thing that's hard to decide about, lol.

The poll question looks odd... we're working on it

[Frederik Hugger]

I voted for the noble tribes. It is something I haven't seen before and I liked the concept and imagery, but I would like it combined with the city relocation. Because that idea is really great.

[doomtrader]

The poll visibility is now fixed!

[Rybon]

Man that was a hard choice. I like one and three because, in most games orc are always 2.

[Happerry]

Though honestly I wouldn't mind choice 3 borrowing the idea of making buildings population limited instead of really tech tree limited.. Barbarians are tribal societies too, so it should be ok, right? I'd save the mobile city bits for the multicultural expansion, if that ever comes out, though..

[Iron Kaiser]

This is a really tough poll. Here's how I analyze the three:

Honorable Horde: Definitely the weakest of the three. For one, the "honorable warrior tribe" thing is very close to how I imagine the Draconians being. The "Honorables" also seem to normalize the faction. I'm already worried about the Humans, Elves, and Dwarves not being distinct enough. I'm definitely pushing for more unique factions with their own twists to gameplay. The "honorable" path seems to get rid of what would make the Orcs unique.

Barbarian Horde: I think the one con of the Barbarian Horde is that it's very "cliche." That can be considered positive, since it means the audience will be used to them as a faction. But I think it's a negative, because it robs your game of establishing key parts of its own individuality. Ditto why I really hope for some awesome, unexpected factions like Draconians, Golems, and Happerry's Spirit faction in the game. Having said that, the strategic variety Barbarian orcs provide is dearly needed (IE, cheap and fast game style, raiding mechanics, "Super Settler").

Noble Tribes: Okay, so the whole flavor of the Noble Tribe Orcs is completely awesome. I love the idea of basing anything off the Native American tribes, and I love the idea of taking the fantasy stable orcs and putting them in a whole new direction. I absolutely adore that direction.

Having said that, there are two major problems to the Noble Tribes idea as I understand it. First, if "Noble Tribes" are the first Orcs to get in, then the "Good/Neutral" factions will far outweigh the evil one. Undead simply need a partner in the core game to share the "bad guy" limelight. Second, if the play mechanics are "fairly normal," then it removes the variety in strategy gameplay. A lot of the Barbarian Horde gameplay features, like the "Horde/Super Settler" mechanic and the "cheap and fast raiders" style, are desperately needed to spice up the gameplay.

So given that, I feel compelled to vote for the Barbarian orcs. Noble Tribes is awesome, and if the gameplay mechanics were unique and wildly interesting, and there were enough badguys already in the game to justify it, then I'd be voting Noble by a long shot.

[Happerry]

Having said that, the strategic variety Barbarian orcs provide is dearly needed, and some of the unique

Just so you know, this sentence seems cut off..

But, anyway, have some further thoughts on the Noble Tribes, with the cautionary remark that I am not an indian expert. But, anyway! On how to make these guys unique.

I have two distinct directions I want to bring into this. The first one is the biosphere realities of the American continent. Or, in less fancy talk, the place didn't have any horses until us palefaces imported them. While you could theoretically argue into having dog/wolf riding Indian goblins, I think options 1 and 2 have pretty called dibs on that. So.. trait one. No cavalry.

While that doesn't make them unique enough on their own, it is a good mark of difference when combined with a few other things.. such as the Warrior Lodges, Or Warrior Societies, whatever you want to call them.

Lets say that, in game, there are.. say, five warrior societies. To make things simple, I'm going to run with fake stereotype indian warriors for this example. Lets go with.. Wolf Lodge, Fox Lodge, Eagle Lodge, Bear Lodge, and Beaver Lodge. (Yes, I know beavers weren't common on the great plains. Roll with it.)

As their basic line up, lets say that the indian orcs have.. Oh, Orc Braves as their basic warrior, Squaws as their settler, Goblin Hunters as their ranged units, and Medicine Orcs as a basic shaman unit.

Well, that's not a full list now, is it? But when a city reaches a certain size, either by progression up the building tree or by unashamed stealing of the population limit idea from the Barbarian Horde, well, they can choose to invite a Warrior Lodge to join the city! These societies don't play nice with each other, so you can only invite one per city however, and some have requirements before they will join. The Bear Lodge needs places to meditate on the fury of the bear, for example, and so demand mountains within the city limits, whereas the Wolf Lodge needs places to teach its members to hunt and track as the wolves do, so needs a forest. And so on and so forth.

But once you've invited a lodge to join a city, you unlock both new buildings, and new units as the warrior lodge trains members of the city to their standards. (And if we knew more about the building trees, I'd give examples of the potential bonus buildings the lodge could allow...)

Say, you've invited the Bear Lodge to the city. The Bear Brothers are a stout and hearty band of warriors, fighting with their famous bear claw weapons, and prone to fly into horrible rages. So.. they unlock the Bear Warriors, Barbarian Orcs who use claw weapons as heavy melee troops, the Bear Brothers, Druids who abuse natural form to turn into a cave bear and eat people's faces, and as top tier units have the Bearbloods, barbarian werebear warriors who fight with claw, bite, and battleaxe. A very nice combination for a heavy melee society, yes?

But over there, in that city, you've invited the Fox Lodge into your city. Fox Brothers are cunning and deceitful, planning for the worst and taking advantage of the best, who are infamous for ancient connections and deals with the spirit world. As such, they grant you Fox Scouts, Rogues with backstabbing daggers and throwing blades, Fox Shamans, Stealthy sorcerers who have taken a level of rogue to backstab with their ray attacks, eventually progressing into Arcane Tricksters, and the rare Fox Lords, Fox Shamans who have started taking class levels in eldritch knight, combining spell and blade into the Fox Lodges top tier unit.

And then we have the Wolf Lodge, who runs with tamed packs of wolves and melee focused ranged, verses the Eagle Lodge, who get to be the ranged focused ones of the team, and ending with the Beaver Lodge, who give you your engineers and siege specalists.

While non of the lodges 'top tier' units are true top tier units, they are distinctly above the common middle tier units, providing pseudo top tier units in both numbers and in more specialty directions then any other army has in their single true top tier unit.

Of course, these lodges are just me making it up as I go along in sterotype land, but it does give you a basic idea of how that could work, right?

Edit: Also, has anyone else noticed that when you add up the poll percentages it adds up to 110%?

[Trudd]

yes 110%! Blackmailed orcs are in the place!

[Iron Kaiser]

Just so you know, this sentence seems cut off..

Ha! I guess this is payback for "Gate Master" earlier. Fixed.

Edit: Also, has anyone else noticed that when you add up the poll percentages it adds up to 110%?

On my screen, I have 23.08% + 38.46% + 46.15% = 107.69%. The poll also says 13 voters have voted, even though the results show 3 + 5 + 6 = 14 voters. Maybe it doesn't count yourself as a voter? Funny oddities.

Anyway, Happerry, I do like your ideas a good deal. In your version of these "Indian orcs," they don't have cavalry, and they don't have true high-tier units, and their cities have limited military production. But their units tend to be specialists for whatever job they're designed. In theory, they could also train faster and/or cheaper than most other faction's units. I do like it a lot. But as far as the base game goes, I think you've got to have another baddie, and a mass-attack, horde, raider faction does wonders for the game variety. So you'd have to consider my vote... unchanged! (Dun-dun DUUUN~!)

[Aaron]

Just to let you guys know I reopened the poll for a little more time. We have new people coming in and it has been very busy for us... I plan to take the poll results tomorrow and work them up into the culture explanation for the race vote