Reserved

Capitar Pioneers can build roads. It isn't mentioned anywhere, and isn't useful to anyone but Capitar (or a custom faction with Mancer blood), but they do get a blood ability. Perhaps it should also grant a 'hire mercenaries' ability to champions, so that it's at least useful to non-Mancer factions? Get a unit of Silver Sword Mercenaries or something for a small amount of money?

I really wish that this and Warrior Caste would be combined. Together, that might be a fairly decent trait. Separate, they are at best passable but uninteresting. The other issue is that the tech-granting traits seem a little odd compared to one another - Adepts and Scholars both grant secondary bonuses (40 mana and 10% research boost, respectively), while Civics and Warriors grant nothing but the technology (at least according to the tooltip). Improving the Civics trait by, for example, adding a 10% income bonus, or a 5% faction-wide unrest reduction, or +1 production per materials, would help make Capitar a little more unique (especially the income bonus; when taken with the Bazaar from Legacy of Serrane, this would really make Capitar the money faction). If Civics got one of the bonuses in the previous sentence (or any other bonus; also note that the specific numbers given above were just things I made up rather than thinking about what might be reasonably balanced), and Warriors were combined with Warrior Caste, none of the tech-granting traits would be significantly superior to the others any longer.

Yithril would probably need to get something additional, though, because I don't think that Training and an extra level on trained troops is really worth two faction points, not now and not later. Tough or Axe Mastery could perhaps be made better enough to justify costing an extra point (for example, if Tough gave +10% fire, cold, and poison resistance in addition to +10% health, or something like that), or someone could come up with another trait worth one point (such as Conscription, X% discount on unit wages, production cost, or rush cost).

I'd support this. I also agree that the stat bonuses rarely come into play. Perhaps the stat boost could be worked into the city walls, and grant fortresses slightly better walls?

More like it's overkill - you get double swarm bonus, which encourages using big armies, and you get a bonus simply from having a big army, regardless of how well you can swarm. It might be better if they had a significant drawback like Resoln's lack of advanced armor, but either way everything the blood trait does is designed to improve big armies.

I agree that Tarth's blood trait needs a rework - either it also needs to grant the ability for individual units to escape the battlefield, or it needs to be changed to something else entirely, because in Legendary Heroes there is not really any good reason to make use of small armies if you can use a larger one instead (and, in fact, all the game mechanics aside from Tarth blood will punish you for it). Three attack and initiative might have been enough to turn Tarth into an early rush faction, but city militias are about the size and strength of early-game field armies, and if there's an actual army present in addition to the militia that extra initiative and attack isn't going to do much for you anyways.

Tarth Blood feels especially weak when compared to Urxen Blood, since Tarth Blood encourages something that the game mechanics fight against while Urxen Blood encourages something that is already strong due to the basic game mechanics.

Also agree about changing the Rebels trait to encourage a tall faction.

I agree that Betrayers lost a lot when champions dropped off the map, and that Heroic and Slave Lords are a bit expensive for what they do for you.

I think the faction should have ONE powerful blood ability and ONE powerful general ability. A few examples:

Pariden:

Soul spark (inflicts 3 + 1 per level lightning damage per unit, no mana cost, 3 turns cooldown)

Enchanters (unlocks the arcane monolith spell, unocks ranged lightning staffs that improve the damage of lightning spells)

Tarth:

Double strike (two attacks with - 15 to accuracy, 3 turns cooldown)

Scouts (unlocks powerful bows that cost no metal, heroes and units ignore rough terrain)

I think all abilities should have a cooldown of 3 turns to use them more than once per combat and make the combat more interesting.

The combat in my games lasts 3 - 8 turns, because that is enough time to kill most enemies with attacks or spells. I think an "ability spam" is more interesting than using standard attacks every turn.

I am playing on hard world difficulty and hard AI difficulty, because i do not like huge AI bonuses. The fights vs. enemies of similar or slightly higher strength get shorter from early to late game, because the spells and attacks get more powerful and the AI is in most cases not able to counter them.

hmm i don't like the idea of rolling the faction traits into the blood. one of the unique features of this game is the option to make custom factions based on various traits that were used in the default factions. if you roll many of the traits into the blood, you reduce the variety of possible custom faction combinations.

the ability cooldowns are fine imo. with 5 turns cooldown, you'll realistically only use your superpowers once per battle (which is true for about 90% of all battles), so deciding when to use it is an important decision. do i charge with my axemen and cleave the enemy line on turn 1, hoping that they will be wiped out or crippled to the point where their retaliation is harmless, or do i try to get the enemy units out of defense stance first by setting up my own line of defenders while circling around with my axemen and then cleaving them from the back when they are helpless.

by lowering the cooldown, that decision is less meaningful.

Concerning Gilden:

I have actually come around to believe that Gilden Blood (the traits the Gilden faction comes with not so much) may very well be among the strongest boni available for custom races.

This has a couple of reasons:

1: Excluding your Sovereign, most spellcasting will come not people with Gilden blood anyway. Getting a free endurance trait backed up by other endurance traits coming from level 3 fortresses is however, quite huge.

2: Guarded strike is suprisingly powerfull. On insane difficulty, it gives you a fairly decent chance to actually kill things like Mite Mobs and darklings without suffering permanent casulties.

3: Iron Golems can in fact be quite usefull, certain stuff with overpower on insane, or Yithril, really requires Iron Golem to deal with in an efficient manner.

Concerning traits:

The in my opinion strongest traits are enchanters (the extra essence is just huge), defensive (one handed spears are even better than spears are normally), lucky (effectivly 2 promotions for everyone).

Honorable mention goes to master scouts (mobility is always nice), and Wanderlust. Fending blades are actually quite usefull (especially for Gilden), and Wanderlust also eventually offers a way to turn Gildar into experience.

The by far weakest traits are those that give extra techs at the start.

Not if you're playing on an Epic length game, having a faction with a couple starting techs could mean you get up to 100 turns head start compared to everyone else, that is huge.

i think the "warriors" traits should be changed. instead of the rather weak "Training" tech for barracks, it should unlock "Leatherworking" instead, which is way more powerful early on. the option to build a barracks without research is "meh", the ability to build units with leather armor and shields right at the start without wasting 15 turns of research is far more valuable and probably good enough to warrant picking up the trait for an "early rush" type of race.

in a similar vein, "civics" could unlock the free tech and also provide a lasting bonus (for example, +10% gildar income, or +1 production per material - much like scholars with the lasting research bonus on top of the free tech)

adepts could also give a lasting bonus to mana production (for example, 1 extra mana per shard improvement) instead of the one time 40 extra mana at the start.

that would make those tech based traits more desirable, imo.

opps

I believe that is not really related to factions, but to number of Victory Conditions available. Look at Civ 5, there's plenty of ways to achieve victory, and fit various playstyles and challenges.

This adds a lot to strategic diversity since you can't use same skeleton for your faction to achieve different victories.

I would like to see a VC where you have to conquer all wildlands for example, to civilize the world or something