After the inferno update, the Wild Walkers act and feel even less like an Endless Legend faction, they work in the most generic of ways for simplicities sake to be the faction for beginners, understandably. While I want to discuss this with some of my personal feelings and ideas on the matter to expand and elaborate my points, I do understand that point.

                While the Wild Walkers have a “strongish” economy, it is something that can entirely not work with you if you do not have the terrain in your favor. Their theme is derived from this tribalistic elven idea, which plays into a lot of their elements being stronger on forest tiles, but if you get a map that’s mostly desert, or mostly water and volcano, I fail to see the capability for this faction to succeed at most things, because most of their operation is occurring on forest tiles. Their units and unique techs all run on these effects. In the inferno update the Kapaku was added, another faction that gets large benefits on its “favored terrain”, but it has the volcanoformer, so if its in trouble or needs a tile, it can just make it. So, the idea of terraforming the map to suit your faction is now in the game, but only for one faction, and not for others. Adding something like this to the Wild Walkers (after some changes talked about in this thread https://www.games2gether.com/endless-legend/forums/6-game-design/threads/31447-rebalancing-volcanoformation?page=1) would allow for this faction to come into its own and work towards keeping its advantage on forest tiles going rather than stay as generic as it is. The concept is lore friendly as well, the Sharing, the core mechanic of the Wild Walkers that gives them the radar on the map (short version) also talks about Terraformation and other earth magic. This could also have a diplomatic effect as well, because of the economic effect forestry has on EVERY ONES economy, so maybe you negotiate to grow a forest of some sort on one faction’s doorstep is exchange for some well needed strategic resources.

Here is my first discussion question, in granting the Wild Walkers such an ability to alter the map, like the Kapaku, empower their economy too much?

Expanding on the concept of the Sharing, the idea of granting vision of potential units on the map, it is powerful, but if that’s the only thing its doing gameplay wise, when, if you read all the lore snippets in the game, and its doing all this other potentially mechanically significant stuff, it becomes weak when compared to the other factions. The lore describes the Sharing as this ritual, wherein you commune with the spirits, somehow granting you great power over nature and an eternal connection to nature from hence on. It also describes transformations into animals, something not in the game, and while it said they have “shed this dark past” it is also said in great stress the Sharing allows for a great spirit beast to burst forth and take over. This is mechanically interesting, because it allows you to have a transforming unit, even if it’s just your heroes. This is more interesting than just a radar ability and allows for more dynamic combat strength while still being easily playable.

Second discussion question, would adding to the Sharing in a meaningful way like adding a transformation mechanic add anything to the faction that could otherwise be done better in simpler or less complex ways (for the coders)?

The dust eclipse mechanic introduced in the Inferno expansion, only gives the Wild walkers the sharing across the entire map, and before you hound me, yes I recognize the strength of that, however, in light of that fact I thought of Endless space2 and its random occurrences, and I thought of how tribal the Wild walkers we in the past, and how potentially those 2 things could come together in some form of rituals that occur periodically during not only the dust eclipse ,but also during spring, summer, and winter.

Third question is mainly if that is going too far? Is it too much? Or is the sharing (as is) across the map already enough as is?

Last topic is about the units, and after all the civility of the past paragraphs this is going to get negative. I just don’t like the Wild Walker faction units. The ranger is solid but is boring and has no unique or stand out features besides forest rage, which all Wild Walker units share, but since It is so situational at present and they are so squishy, it really does make want to look for other choices. There is the shaman to kind of make them less squishy, but since his buff is percentage, and they have such a low amount of defense, it helps very little, not only that but the shaman doe sonly the same debuffs as any other support due to the staves, no unique nature based debuffs or other potential spells or curses(I get that magic is really left for the ardent mages). Lastly is the walker, which feels like a weird/ weaker alternative to the stone sentinel. All these units feel like they just need a little bit more to help themselves become more competitive. It might be small tweaks to the stats, because the stats bother me, not as much as other things, or they could get more capacities, or they could get more unique weapons to use ( kind of like the heroes) so that even if they  weaker to start, they end up STRONG but expensive by the end, or some new alloy of luxury and strategic resource is made into weapons and armor or some sort, IDK.

This last discussion question is simple, do you like the units or no, what are your reasons?

Jojo_Fr wrote:

From my opinion terraformation should be non reversible and exclusive to Kapaku. Because :

- 1.It's their own faculty. If others (even just Wild Walkers) can revert the volcanic land, it's less unique. It reduce the unique atmosphere.

- What I say include the fact to have a reworked Volcanoformer, with a higher area of affects, to make it viable and very usefull in an agressive strategy.

- I see the Volcanic land as the OXYGENE of the Kapaku. They need economiquely and maybe more, militarily. That's why players should be heavily incitated to volcanoforms up to the frontiers of your rival land, to make them reasy for conquest "Mordor effect".

- If you fail to prevent their volcanoformers to change the earth, you failed, and it's non reversible. You have a mordor land you have to deal with. Volcanonic land is not so bad. The output is Okay.

- 2. Volcanising is making a land sterile by the action of a mini volcano which rejet huge quantity of ash. It's a destructive process. Planting forest is a very slow and complicated process.

- 3. Wild Walkers want to preserve natures and forest, not terraform the entire world into a forest.

1. having a counter to the current strongest faction in the game is not destroying one factions unique trait, its having a counter to their unstopable progress......

2. the forest growth should be mechanically slow, unlike the volcanoformes which are reletivly fast.

3. its not about terraforming the world into a forest, its about having the capacity to now use the forest as a tool because so much of their toolset works off of it.