Birthright: Chimaeron

Ehh it’s all about economy. Dwarven “team” has to spend temple actions as well as the province ruler action to rule up their provinces. A Gnoll realm could rule up their hill provinces without temple aid well up to level 3 or 4 or more especially with the 2 NWPs that give rule bonuses. This makes more room for guilds and temples in those provinces increasing the wealth of their “team” much faster than the dwarves with less actions. The Gnoll team will overcome the dwarven team all things being equal as far as cooperation per team.

Why do people think Dwarven are better than for example orog or humans? Gaius is making a good point that Dwarven are the worst race in ruling up provinces. Why punish them even more? Its only in the mountains the dwarven are any good and that is mostly because of the terain bonus. Outside they are worse then most other units.

Elf and Dwarf are tied for worst for ruling DC.

Dwarven not needing Wood or Grain s awesome. Little competition for favoured provinces. Great bonus on melee units. Long Life and multiclass options. With artificer no longer restricted from arcane magic. Their drawback of no mounted units, is not a real drawback as there is no charge in their realms terrains. Their only real drawback is movement of 1, (Which goes away with ships as jeans games have lots rivers, or isolationist diplomacy)

Dwarf is definitely better than humans, they may even be situationally better in a game without high mountains.

Dwarf vs Orog. Dwarf is not a 'kill on sight' race. Orogs suck in forests too and desperately need the wood. Orogs also don't have mounted (but care a tiny bit if they were going to be raiding humanoids) Orog military bonus is great, but not as helpful to all units like dwarven def (Archers benefit from def not melee). +2 racial bonus to strength is Fun, but -Dex&-cha does impact more important nwps for domain stewardship.

Dwarf is better then Orog (7/10 times), but are different enough that they are good rivals, with things the other can do better.

DM Juan wrote: ↑

Tue Jun 30, 2020 8:39 am

I wouldn't increase the muster cost, but we could do a training differential.
Goblins cost 1 less train point (min 1), Karamhul/Sidhelien cost 1 more train point per unit (from Tier 3 onwards).

A manpower pool would solve these issues if applied intelligently.

True. It seems like another thing to track, but if the pool refilled proportionally to the racial aging, that would work too... but again. Tracking.

Sidhelien/Karamhul: X/turn
Humans/Orogs/Halflings: 2X/turn
Gnolls/Goblins: 3X/turn

Until now actions and gold have been the limiting factor for military recruitment. Adding manpower to the equation is not easy to see in advance what the consequenses will be. What is a correct amount to be gained from a province? If you set it to low the Sidhelien and Karamhul will be severly handicaped and if set to high it is a meaningless bookeeping. There is already a lot of things to keep track of and I am not a fan of adding more. Juan would need to maintain a spreedsheet for amount of province levels and which race they are and remember to subtract the correct amount each time you muster.

There has been another limit, it's not possible to muster more units in a province per turn than the province level. So if a realm has only 9 province levels, and 5000 GB, it can still only raise 9 units per turn (and it'll have to raise them in every province at once, not just one).

Is the idea that non-Sidhelien/Karamhul would be able to muster two or three times as many units per turn? So that they have the option to dump gold on vast conscript armies, but Sidhelien or Karamhul don't? That makes a lot of sense, but I'm not sure we need muster limits to be increased overall--it seems like they're only occasionally reached, as it is. The current balance of that could be maintained if Sidhelien/Karamhul province muster limits were halved, while Goblin/Gnoll ones were increased by half.

This will have the consequence of realms that can train units faster having more action flexibility and paying less in maintenance costs while building up. Though, it'll also tempt them to use swarm tactics and have a weaker standing army, while it'll incentivize Karamhul and Sidhelien to focus on training and preserving a permanent force of elite units.

Only way to realistically have a longer lived race with less births and population as surviving in a world with races that breed like rats is for them to have a huge bonus in their preferred terrain. And not just a bonus because they could still be easily rooted out with vastly superior numbers. You need to give forests (when occupied by elves) and Mountains (when occupied by dwarves) an attack on every enemy unit that enters. So if you have 10 Elven units defending forests and being invaded by 50 units the forest gets 1 attack on each of those 50 enemy units. You still have the limits on the Elven and Dwarven units and make them more expensive and no bonuses outside their favored terrain. Giving them a paltry couple of points of defense or attack is not going to save them at odds of 5 to 1 or more. Not to mention the enemy can bring 5 to 1 odds again and again. Give their favored terrain an attack on every enemy unit to denote "elven magic" and "dwarven traps and maze-like tunnels". If you do this you can limit their mustering and increase training costs. If you don't give them this then you are cutting their throats if you limit them any more.

This game doesn't keep track of births, deaths, or populations. Even when units are defeated in battle or provinces are hit by plague, it's left ambiguous how much of the damage is from deaths and how much is just damage to the organization. For that matter, it's ambiguous how many individuals are in each unit. Two different units of irregulars, even from the same realm, could (in the abstract) contain hundreds of runty goblins, or just a few score of bugbear berserkers.

Likewise, it's ambiguous, when provinces and holdings are ruled up, how much of the improvement is from births and immigration, and how much is from improved methods, infrastructure, and coordination. That leaves a lot of wiggle room for stuff like Sidhelien/Karamhul having an almost 100% skilled workforce of thousands, while a realm ruled by ogre barons, of the same strength, may have innumerable slaves, but only hundreds of citizens, and no craftsmen whatsoever.

It is hard to imagine how the Sidhelien realms could have survived in the original Birthright rules, sometimes they had special rules like free musters to reflect this (and provide an incentive not to break character with them, since this would make the benefit go away). But it's better to use the existing rules, like armies, spells, and holdings, to justify their existence, than to create unique rules, like innately magical forests. (Forests are already innately magical, and Sidhelien already have a special benefit in that their high-level provinces don't harm the source potential of their provinces. It's strongly implied that they're supposed to use wizard regents and uniquely powerful army units to protect themselves.)

High defense values and easy-to-build fortifications seem to fit the needs of Karamhul regents well already.

Edit: We are missing one basic advantage Sidhelien and Karamhul had in the original setting, though. Being there first. By being there first, they got to have built up before humans arrived, and before goblins had access to magic or technology, so they had a huge head start and only needed to stay ahead... of course, they tended to slip down the rankings.

I can see an argument for having all players play humans, by default, while giving the other races special advantages but highly restricted play options. This would make it so playing a human means playing the game as a classic PC, while playing non-humans means playing part of the supporting cast. This fits in better with the design of Birthright, where humans come in five different flavours, each with unique armies and navies, competing for control of any land they can find, while no one else gets to have ships or expand far beyond their native terrain type.

The other races also aren't supposed to care about bloodlines, dynasties, or the pantheon from which bloodlines are derived, while for humans (and the game system) these are core features. To a non-human, the human gods and bloodlines are a frustrating irritant, a prize to be won via stabbing someone, or just another means to an end. They aren't core to their identity and worldview. At least, not in the game natively.

(Edit: Since this was how things were, more or less, back in Taelshore, and an issue then was a proliferation of half-elf PCs, maybe a remedy for that would be making it so half-elf PCs take an automatic loyalty hit every turn. Similar to the Leadership NWP, but in reverse, and automatic instead of rolled for.)