I love the urkan design, they're amazing and whilst they weren't necessary for the game they do bring some new fun elements to the game. After having played a few games and talking to different people on discord (as well as a streamer/youtuber who's played it a lot), the general feel is that the urkans are just too strong whether it be their army capabilities or bonuses they give for someone like Cultists or just for anyone in rooted form.



In my opinion I don't feel the bonuses they give to cities are the main issue, even if they cause a problem, not the other upgrades. The problem I feel is that once someone has an urkan it's easy to defend them. The more urkans you got and the more you unlock their combat skills, the more impossible it becomes to retake them, especially for those who has them conveniently rooted next to a city or several. It just ends up a snowball game from here.

Not just that, but what I've noticed is that the urkans are so incredibly strong as military units (more capable than guardians) that if someone has 2 of them they're near impossible to stop from wrecking everything, only protection you got is making sure you're on a different contentinent with no free regions left. I've found it in several playthroughs that I either lose everything to someone who has an urkan or my whole army dies just to grab them, but that just leaves me vulnerable afterwards with the urkans too weak to fight and no army left to defend incase the enemy got backup, which anyone being aggressive with urkans can afford.

Another issue I've heard but not experienced is that unless there's no territory left to conquer you can easily just move your urkan away across the map if someone's about to attack yours and you got no defenses ready, which is fairly frustrating to deal with. This is more a player vs player issue than against AI, but it's an issue worth bringing up.



Urkan's aren't completely OP, but compared to guardians I feel urkans give way bigger advantage than they should for what benefits they give. There's several ways to solve this which I've discussed with multiple people, such as forcing urkans to take a turn, two or three to move location when rooted and decrease their stats by a significant amount when rooted. Other ideas that requires more work is having the urkans actually cost luxury upkeep similar to Empire Plans (paying every 10-20 turns), which imo (and several others thought) is fairly fitting to their lore of being wild immortal beasts nobody truly gains control over and to keep them loyal you need to entice them with something.

Something else I noticed, which I hadn't thought of until yesterday, is that unlike guardians urkans don't have any clear counters. Guardians has scythers and an accessory for heroes (there's also fotios that are good at killing other guardians), urkans don't really wanna fight eachother so another urkan isn't a clear counter towards it and I haven't found other guardians that successful against urkans, more often than not the enemy has one themselves too.

Only clear counter is the Mykara hero which really isn't a good counter as the skill you need requires so many points to get it that it's likely way too late at that point unless you play Mykara. I feel a simple solution would've been to add a weapon/accessory tech or quests later into the game that allowed for extra attack/defense against urkans and their lice which could be available to Mykara earlier on. Around era 3 or 4 when urkans are likely tamed and becomes an issue to fight against.



These are just some ideas and general things I've discussed with other people, so far I haven't heard anyone say that urkans are fine, though perhaps someone has figured out ways to deal with them. It'd be nice to hear other people's opinion on this subject, whether there's something I missed out on in regards to urkans proving their strength, any other ideas to balance them or if you got any arguments against this.

In my opinion I don't feel the bonuses they give to cities are the main issue, even if they cause a problem, not the other upgrades. The problem I feel is that once someone has an urkan it's easy to defend them. The more urkans you got and the more you unlock their combat skills, the more impossible it becomes to retake them, especially for those who has them conveniently rooted next to a city or several. It just ends up a snowball game from here.

You have right. And the problem is largely enhanced if you leveled your Urkan, against neutrals. A Urkan level 5 have far more health than a level 1 Urkan.
About Snowballing, you have right too. But I don't see what could be done against this.

[Proposition 1] The only thing I see to nerf Urkan owning snowballing is to techniquely PREVENT to use tamed Urkan to attack Wild Urkan.
In the logic of the lore, it can be justified by the fact Urkan are not a war pet you control to do what do you want. They will refuse to fight any other Wild (and Free) Urkan.

It would prevent the use of Urkan to quicly tame the second Urkan in the game...

There's several ways to solve this which I've discussed with multiple people, such as forcing urkans to take a turn, two or three to move location when rooted and decrease their stats by a significant amount when rooted.  

[Proposition 2] Needing 3 turns (in quick speed, in normal speed, I dont know) to migrate Urkans would make them less instant-mobile killing machine. Or instant-retreat machine. Which would be a good thing.

Other ideas that requires more work is having the urkans actually cost luxury upkeep similar to Empire Plans (paying every 10-20 turns

I disagree with the idea. Too much micromanagement. And it's contradictory with the function of the Urkan : you migrate him in a region to pump ressources, you don't want he pump YOUR ressources. ^^

I think nerfing the snowball phenomen would be the most important thing to do.

Only clear counter is the Mykara hero which really isn't a good counter as the skill you need requires so many points to get it that it's likely way too late at that point unless you play Mykara

Yeah, the Mykara hero skill is another good idea but bad exploited. It should be a Mykara faction bonus (if Mykara are specialist in Urkan fighting and controling, this bonus should be EXCLUSIVE, not available for any faction).

And two, this bonus is never taken, because no player will recherche several governor skill, just to grab this small bonus...

[Proposition 3] Yeah, I think Mykara units (the 3) + the Mykara heroes should have all have a natural +50 % attack against Urkans and Lices. And removing this heroic skill.


Another propositions to make the Conquest of Wild Urkans harder :

[Proposition 4] The first wild Urkan begin at level 1 with all his lices, but the second begin at level 3 (as his lices), and the third at level 6 (as his lices). Why ? Because at this point of the game, it's too easy to conquier the second and third wild Urkan. They should be stronger in level !

(Is it possible to reduce level of tamed Wild Urkan to level 1 ? It's not good if players tame a Urkan already at level 3 or 6. ^^)

Another thing: Urkans should not recieve reinforcements. If you attack an Urkan, no matter the owner, you are to only fight against said Urkan and his garrison.

I just played a game (okay, it was only on serious difficulty) where I gained control of all 3 Urkans. The first Urkan was pretty lucky, the 2. and 3. Urkan were tamed by using burrowing to neighbouring regions and taming the Urkans with my other one. 

Now, I had three Urkans - I placed them very closely next to each other and my main city. If someone were to attack the Urkan, they would at the very least face another Urkan and or my main city.

(if someone attack Kazar in a really bad angle, he would have to deal with my city AND all three Urkans)

Another possibility would be to actually make the Urkans uncontrollable until you gain the passive requiring all Urkans. As in, only after taming all 3 are you able to completely control them.

While I dont have any specific suggestions, I just want to chime in and say that I agree with them being completely OP. They warp the whole meta and gameplay around them. I like the idea of having other objectives around the map for players to achieve, but as it is currently, they are NECESSARY to win the game, because if you dont have them, and another player does, there is not really much you can do about it.

One of the first things that I will probably do in ELCP is introduce a seperate cooldown for their teleport that triggers if an Urcan changes its owner, so they cant immediatly teleport away as soon as the player conquers one.

A lot of great stuff as always, Jojo_Fr, it's some good insight on a few things. I for example hadn't thought about using urkan against other urkans to capture them, I thought their trait made it worthless to try, but not that I have nor actually checked what the trait does seeing as you can't hover over them outside of combat. At first I thought that trait made them unable to fight eachother (whether it was to skip out on a battle or deal no damage to eachother) which I thought felt rather balanced.

Nor did I actually value how much a leveled up urkan gets, though that goes generally for all units, but obviously for urkan that's even more important to continue snowballing. I do agree that the snowballing is the most important thing to deal with, atleast add more ways to deal with urkans in military, make it harder for someone who has an urkan to gain more and possibly to just reduce the fact that getting one is such a huge deal. As you mentioned LeaderEnemyBoss, the fact is that they are the center of the meta is a problem cause as cool as they are, I don't think they should be the focus on of the game and devalue other strategies.

I'm glad you're taking a look at them, one step at a time, with ELCP. The teleport CD is a good step, I'm assuming this includes when an urkan is wild?

Also what you mentioned Atord is exactly what I've been doing in one of my games but with two Urkans and my capital. It just becomes impossible for anyone to ever capture them with a fully garrisoned city and lice, it doesn't help the AI is really dumb sending armies one by one to suicide into them, giving me free XP.