Race balance

[AlexGK]

Do races feel balanced to you guys?
Even with the direct nerfs harpies still seem above the rest to me. Their keeper bonus + the easy early rep generation + the sheer amount of constant rep generation is way too much.
Even with the rainpunk nerfs foxes are still close second. Good mid/lategame keeper bonus, + early rep generation + good and easy constant rep generation (favoring + race trait makes for 3 whole points on just housing + food while you have 12+ woodcutters working, lol)
Beavers feel like distant 3rd along with lizards depending on biome.
Humans feel dead last regardless of biome. Always too late to help with rep, useless keeper trait, mostly irrelevant race trait and mostly unremarkable building specializations.
Any thoughts? Especially for humans? I am very sad to have to avoid them as much as possible atm :/

[Samseng Yik]

Harpy do have downsides in exchange for their rep generation.
They are using the more annoying luxury item.
And they take break more often.
Means they got lower productivity and higher consumption.

Human is good at being stable and rarely leave settlement.
Farming bonus is good and generally seen some use.
However "Brewing specialization" is extremely scarce, and not widely use as engineering/wood/meat.
There is another thread in maybe next few page about human is the most OP and the only viable one (from the perspective of that poster only)

Beaver always seen some use. Some engineering and wood exist surely in all settlement.

[Kyresti]

Unless something's changed since I last played, foxes are just straight-up broken.

You have this looming mechanic. Hostility. If it gets too high it wreaks havok on your resolve unless you've got a good selection of complex needs met. Foxes, though. Foxes take one look at hostility and really don't give two aaaaaaAAAAAAA!!!s

I find lizards and harpies a little UP early-game, but it's pretty mild in comparison to that.

[DG]

Humans vastly reduce two loss mechanics by finding fertile foil and lowering impatience rates. Once you assume that any stable settlement will win eventually, humans will give you that stable settlement and extend your time.

[Alexander]

Originally posted by AlexGK:

Even with the direct nerfs harpies still seem above the rest to me.

Have you seen numerous threads about harpies being absolutely worthless?

[Kynslagh]

Foxes feel the strongest to me because of no -2 resolve per hostility, and it's fairly easy to hit 50 resolve with them and outright win the game. 8 from houses, 14 from 3x hearth resolve, 19 from favoring, 23 from porridge, 31 from pickled goods, 41 from wine and 51 from tea. All it takes is an alchemist's hut for wine/tea and a market or some random service buildings and the game is done. There are also a lot of buildings that give +5 fox resolve which makes it even easier.

Harpies are almost on par with foxes. Their carry capacity buff is great and tea/scrolls are a fairly common blueprint path for me. Coats in most runs are also manageable for that 1 resolve push year even with a 2 or 1 star building.

Beavers are my 3rd favorite. They want most of my common products like pickled goods, coats, wine and scrolls, but their hearth buff is useless and hitting 30 resolve to start gaining rep takes a while which can stall out the early game because I'm not constantly getting more blueprint unlocks.

The main use of humans is to find out where the first farmland is, and I like their farming doubling chance, and I can multiply their food with porridge, but other than that they are just a filler species. I almost never go for human resolve because incense and ale aren't usually goods I end up with (because they are shared with beavers who have a very high starting resolve break point, and lizards who aren't good for resolve runs).

Lizards are the most 'meh' species for me. They have a lot of +5 resolve buildings which is nice, and they start with 10 tools, which can serve as a replacement for starting amber if I sell them to the first trader. Brawling, religion and skewers are things that I almost never produce, so for resolve farming they are close to useless. Getting 2 reputation from the 15 and 22 break points is relatively easy but after that it gets significantly harder.

[AlexGK]

Originally posted by Alexander:

Originally posted by AlexGK:

Even with the direct nerfs harpies still seem above the rest to me.

Have you seen numerous threads about harpies being absolutely worthless?

Yea, I never understood those. Yes, they can leave easily if things go south, so what. As long as at least one remains its enough :D
Anyway those threads were all old (2+ patches) and I didnt want to ressurect them.

[Wintersend]

Do remember, there are people who swear by tools as the one true way to win and insist every other win con is bad because tools exist.

That's probably why because Harpies contribute nothing whatsoever to a tools win.

[AlexGK]

Originally posted by Wintersend:

Do remember, there are people who swear by tools as the one true way to win and insist every other win con is bad because tools exist.

That's probably why because Harpies contribute nothing whatsoever to a tools win.

This I agree with. But harpies/foxes make it even safer and faster by providing early blueprints via rep in case of bad RNG. All thats needed is 2-4 harpies with 1-2 houses and food. You cant rush foxes houses like you can harpies.
I feel like harpy/fox/lizard is the dream team. With foxes doing all the remote labor (woodcutting, long distance gathering, etc.)

[Wintersend]

As someone who runs that a lot, it is very strong, but it suffers from being very vulnerable to early game disasters decimating your population.

[Spacesuit Spiff]

Even at P20 the game isn't vicious enough to punish the high risk high reward species. Humans and Beavers are fine (Beaver starting bonus is actually really good now) but I'd never intentionally take them. The amount of rep you aren't squeezing from them in the first half nullifies any benefit.

Regardless of whether you commit to tools, 10 tools is either an early order or almost half a rep so that's excellent. Starting coats are good when I remember to toggle them off. Geyser intel is somewhat useful when drafting the first buildings. Fertile soil isn't hard enough to find to make me excited about that perk.

Treatment is a really tough luxury though, since you can make tools with it instead. Brawling isn't something I'll actively produce (maaaybe if there are reeds in the map) but I'll often take it as an embark to open crates so that makes it better.

[AlexGK]

Originally posted by Wintersend:

As someone who runs that a lot, it is very strong, but it suffers from being very vulnerable to early game disasters decimating your population.

For example?
The only disasters, I can think of, are all self-inflicted by either opening dangerous glades too early, picking greedy/timed orders or taking wrong/greedy initial blueprints.
Also, If some villagers die/leave early, that simply self-corrects the map with the increased impatience and decreased hostility. It only feels bad, its never bad in the end if you think about it.

[Hariman]

Originally posted by AlexGK:

Originally posted by Wintersend:

As someone who runs that a lot, it is very strong, but it suffers from being very vulnerable to early game disasters decimating your population.

For example?
The only disasters, I can think of, are all self-inflicted by either opening dangerous glades too early, picking greedy/timed orders or taking wrong/greedy initial blueprints.
Also, If some villagers die/leave early, that simply self-corrects the map with the increased impatience and decreased hostility. It only feels bad, its never bad in the end if you think about it.

Even opening some glades when you're normally safe can be risky, as a few events throw a curveball that's hard to deal with, even with preparation.

EDIT: But yes, a lot of that is also "Curse my hubris!" for not preparing better or waiting a little longer.

[Wintersend]

^
Probably my best example of that was kind a perfect storm on opening a dangerous glade that had one of the detonating "destroy everything in range" events I couldn't clear that early, and it blew up during storm with the -10 resolve for 3 minutes per opened glade. Granted that was a lot, but with 3 low resolve species there wasn't a lot I could do to keep people from leaving and it meant Y2 ended up being entirely damage control.

You are right that its usually hubris or lack of knowledge/preparation that causes that to become a problem. But I tend to not think of mechanics as necessarily needing to be balanced around perfect play.

[Lucky_Star_Fan]

I think Beavers are the weakest currently, they have really bad base resolve+ rep gain threshold. Lizards second worst simply because they have limited positives and also a poor combo of resolve and rep gain. Foxes, humans and harpies are all in a good spot.

[LotusBlade]

Depends on your playstyle. Sometimes i just go nuts and kill 1 race if there are humans, cus it allows to easely favor them by -5 to bump other race and have a nice run overall. Combining them with foxes (given their overpowered passive to survive in storms) turns run into walk in a park.

Beavers are good in bioms with very bad wood production cus you have to compensate it somehow. And in plentiful bioms (wood extra +1 60%-100%) they can be used to mass-make wood, then turn it into boards > then into packs > trade. Cus think about it - you do not actually need any resources nodes to do this, nor big ammount of workers, not expensive buildings, it is very cheap to start and brings tons of amber. Then you just buy cornerstones and blueprints, which compensates for beaver's weak resolve generation.

I would say all races are greatly balanced, it all depends on how you going to use them. Some combinations of races do suck in my opponion, like Lizard, Harpy, Foxes. And some are shining due to all sharing same luxury good / food.