I spent some time trying to create some new cohesive race/personality identities and mechanics, so hopefully even if these suggestions themselves aren't great or balanced, there's some good food for thought. The devs said they wanted some shakeup, so here's something with some shakeup while still staying true to what people know and love from utopia (e.g. elves aren't gonna be a heavy attacker, they're gonna be a mage). The main thing here that I'm unsure about is faery. I could probably go with removing it, but I did kind of want an extra tanky race. I look forward to people's feedback on this:
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Races
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Elf
+25% WPA
+25% rune production
+1 dspec
+30% wages
7/3 elite 9nw 900gc
Spellbook: GP
Idea: Elf as a standard mage race feels pretty good right now, but I think it should be a bit harder to also have good offense, and IA seemed like it was a weird undoing of the main penalty elves were getting, which i think is a good penalty to have since they get much cheaper good defense than any other t/m race.
Dark Elf
dungeons hold 50 prisoners
100% of enemy casualties are captured as prisoners
75% of prisoners return after combat
prisoners act as 0.5 of a wizard
+1 ospec
Prisoners may also die on failed spells
4/7 elite 9.5nw 950gc
Spellbook: Fanatacism
Idea: I wanted to really make prisoners shine somewhere. A race that powers its dark magic with the essence of the enslaved seemed pretty...cool? This design makes DE a solid A/M with power increasing as long as they can keep enslaving prisoners, but gives good counterplay in the form of the oft-overlooked free prisoners op.
Halfling
+25% TPA
+6% population
-50% thief cost
-5% BE
5/7 elite 10nw 1000gc
Spellbook: MA
Idea: Halfling is in a perfectly fine spot as a primary thief. Slight adjustments and giving it MA instead of the oddly placed TW and aggression lets it potentially have some counterplay around the typical response to thieves, which is magic.
Human
+25% credits from combat
can use credits for thieves
+25% gains from robs and plunders
-25% Mercenary cost
Can send 1 prisoner/merc per 4 troops
20% of mercenaries sent join your army as ospecs on successful trads and plunders
+20% rune cost
8/3 elite 10nw 1000gc
Spellbook: IA, ToG
Idea: This is kind of a combination of the econ-based human we know, the pirate personality I proposed in the past, and the old Bocan with using credits for thieves. The idea of human is an economic powerhouse A/T with robbing and plundering and ToGing, Refilling and powering up your army quickly with cheap mercs that turn into ospecs, and gaining a lot of credits that you can use to keep your TPA up even when growing.
Undead
Spreads and is immune to plague
-20% casualties
+1 war horses
no food needed
+20% attack time
-20% enemy casualties
cannot use hospitals
10/2 elite 10.5nw 1100gc
Spellbook: AD
Idea: Ok for real it is WAY too easy to get UB as a T/M right now. 1-2 waves of chains and it's gonna take CQs, and I've been CQ-proof multiple times this age. Bringing undead back as a race, meshed with the old dryad, is the answer to that. Undeads have the offensive reach to pull down t/ms and can apply plague to allow allies to reach them as well. They are slow and lumbering so while they're very powerful and hard to stop, it's easy for enemy troops to escape them even if they lose the fight. Their offense * gains / attack time is pretty bad compared to other attacker races, so they'd get eaten alive by full orc/av, but they have the place as the tank-busters.
Orc
+20% battle gains
+15% enemy casualties when attacking
Soldiers are 2/2
Free draft
+10% casualties
-25% arcane arts science effectiveness
9/2 elite 9.5nw 950gc
Spellbook: Aggression
Idea: ORC SMASH! Orc is in a decent place. I sharpened their identity around drafting soldiers a bit more with 2/2 solds and aggression. RM is moving over to a new personality and I really wanted to weaken orc's T/M stuff a bit more while giving them a little boost elsewhere, hence the adjustment to their magic penalty as well.
Avian
-25% attack time
+35% birth rate
cannot use stables or horses
9/1 elite 9nw 900gc
Spellbook: TW, War Spoils
Idea: Avian moves land fast and populates into it fast. I don't think it really NEEDS the extra credits. It already gets more peons coming in giving it more income and more to draft. TW on avian makes sense because it will get lots of peons faster than other races, and that's supposed to be a strength so I want it to have a way to mitigate the unintended weakness that comes with it. I gave avian an overall bump to offense (it loses fanat and gp, so overall the adjustment to military power is small) and to their attack speed since they felt a bit underwhelming this age. War spoils lets avian get their land in and populated quickly when they're able to beat an enemy wave home.
Dwarf
+25% BE
-50% construction time
Free construction
+75% food needed
Cannot accelerate construction
7/4 elite 9.5nw 950gc
Spellbook: Gluttony, QF
Idea: Dwarves are pretty great at tanking up and being sturdy attackers. QF sharpens this identity, allowing players to sneak in a hit and get army back before their opponents, forcing opponents to consistently hit into high defense elites. Dwarf gives up MA to halfling in this exchange making them more vulnerable to magic.
Faery
Access to all racial spells
+25% self spell duration
can cast racial spells on mates
3/8 elite 10.5nw 1100gc
Spellbook: all racial spells
Idea: Faery is the tanky, supportive race. It's good at having a lot of defense, and it can kinda do anything since it gets access to all those racial spells. It can cast a lot of spells on mates, but no spells from personalities, so no BL or RM or CS. I'm not totally sure what the right role for fae is, but having some tanky race that doesn't get bonuses to T/M but is kinda in that direction with its tankiness seems like a thing the game should have. I could see it being paired with Guardian below as a Bank/Cow.
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Personalities
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Mystic
+150% guild land effect
+66% channeling science
+1 mana/tick
Spellbook: MF, MS, Chastity, Rev, Paradise
Starts with: 800 wiz
Idea: Mystic is fine as is, just slightly toned down on the science
Rogue
+66% TD land effect
+50% guild land effect
+50% crime science
+1 stealth/tick
Access to rogue thief ops
Spellbook: Invis, Rev, Paradise
Starts with: 800 thieves
Idea: Rogue is pretty fine as is (gluttony got moved to dwarf, kinda thematic yeah?). Tuned the TD effect to between this age and last.
Enchanter
+75% guild land effect
+30% channeling science
+25% duration of combat spells
can cast spells on mates
Spellbook: DS, SI, IS, Wrathful Smite, Pitfalls, Blizzard
Starts with: 400 wiz, 400 solds and creds
Idea: this is a slight rework of paladin. I don't really see much use of the paladin offensive spells. Enchanter is a buffer/debuffer and can be paired with a race that you want a spell from (elf for gp for example) if you don't want to invest in a faery
Heretic
+100% guild land effect
wiz don't die on failed spells
-66% losses on failed thief ops
+10% spell and op damage
+30% channeling, crime, and cunning sci
Spellbook: NM, FG, Amnesia, Rev, Paradise
Starts with: 400 wiz, 400 thieves
Idea: I'm pushing heretic more solidly into the instant damage T/M. No more blizzard or chastity, but they have the good instant spells. They also should get rev and paradise as T/Ms.
Tactician
-15% attack time
+50% siege sci
increased CQ range
accurate intel
Spellbook: War Spoils
Sarts with: 800 solds and credits
Idea: Tact is getting pushed more toward gains and tactical advantages. It keeps accurate intel and picks up the CQ range from warrior. It gets war spoils as a tactical option. Losing fanat and CS is a pretty hefty loss, so it gets more siege sci to make up for that.
Guardian
+40% defensive WPA
+30% shielding and strategy sci
Spellbook: GP, RM, CS
Starts with: 200 wiz, 200 thieves, 400 solds and creds
Idea: There isn't much now in the way of a defensive personality. I wanted to create something that would allow a prov to be really difficult to bring down but not confer to it any offensive capabilities, and this is the general idea I came up with. The idea for this kind of prov would most likely be some sort of bank/cow, or you could consider running this on core to make it tough on t/ms trying to do damage to non-chained core, but you would lack the significant attacker bonuses from warrior or tact for example. More play styles and options are better!
Warrior
+10% OME
+30% tactics sci
Spellbook: BL
Starts with: 800 solds and creds
Idea: Warrior is the simple, easy pick for attackers that just want to hulk smash.
War Hero
+50% honor effect
Honor also increases DME, defensive WPA, and defensive TPA
+30% dragon slaying strength
+30% valor and heroism sci
Spellbook: Hero's inspiration (PI renamed)
Starts with: 800 elites
Idea: War hero as it is now is better than it used to be but still feels underwhelming and has a tough identity crisis of being based around honor but also being an attacker personality, and attackers have a tough time holding honor. I've adjusted it to be more of a generally applicable personality that could be pretty strong anywhere. It's still risk/reward of if you can hold honor it scales incredibly well, but if you can't it's kinda mediocre. I moved dragonslaying bonuses over to it and gave it PI, so it still retains some of the quickly refill idea of before with the valor and heroism sci and PI. And now rather than just being immune to dragons it can really help the kd take out dragons.
Cleric
-25% casualties
+50% hospital land effect
Can cast Cure and Inoculate on mates
Spellbook: Cure (med cost, med difficulty, instantly cures plague), Inoculate (med cost, med difficulty, med duration, -75% chance of contracting plague)
Starts with: 800 solds and creds
Idea: With UD moving to a race, there's a gap needed for a durable attacker personality. Cleric can come back to fill that role and also offer some support with new spells cure (boosted NB for plague removal) and Inoculate, which I would see as being often used to keep T/Ms that are about to be slugged by an UD from contracting plague and being brought down to offensive range of other attackers.
Engineer
+10% land effect of all buildings
+10% sci effect
Spellbook: Revelation, Fountain of Knowledge, Ghost Workers
Starts with: +1 scientist, 400 solds and creds
Idea: I figured I'd bring back something sage-like for people that want a jack-of-all-trades kind of personality. Engineer has some interesting stuff going on. The land effect will apply to capacity buildings like homes, which could be a pretty nifty boost. I think there are a lot of designs for an engineer-type personality (boosting econ sci mostly, focusing just on tools, maybe housing, and build speed/cost, increasing homes effect, and more). Some combination of science, possibly focused more on the econ sciences, and building effects, generally boosting the multipliers of your province a little bit across the board like sage was generally all about. But for now not indexing too heavily on science since it's still a bit new and we don't want anything too out of control.