JukeJukestar
commented
2 years ago Six months later, most of these issues have been adressed and Orcs have a special tradition. Not sure if the AI orc hybridizing bug still happens, but that is worthy of being its own issue. Dont know about divergent culture names, but that was more of a small suggestion.
Closing this.
Orcs have some problems in the new RC culture system #
I could see two solutions to this, first would be to give a special "Orcish" cultural ethos and lock all orcs into using it. For divergence there would be a check and if you are an orc you will not be required to change any cultural pillars to diverge.
Second solution would also be to remove the divergence culture pillar check for orcs, but keeping them as bellicose for simplicity's sake and changing the AI to always choose bellicose when diverging as orc. This way players would have the freedom to change to a different ethos if they wanted to.
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All Orcish cultures currently share these three traditions:
  Regarding their gameplay impact, some of these are rather poorly chosen however.
"Quarrelsome" fits the orcs well since it causes more infighting and makes war declarations cheaper. The strongly decreased control growth however will, in combination with their instability and how often holdings change hands, make it so they will take much longer to recover from an attack or make use of newly conquered land. This doesn't fit their narrative very well, as the Dunedain should take longer to recover from their attacks while they can replenish their numbers quickly.
"Only the strong" may seem like a good choice as it fits the orc narrative, but its actual effects make MAA 25% more expensive and give 25% decreased levy in all holdings. This is terrible for orcs since they are already limited by their relatively low income and should rush Gondor with overwhelming numbers, so 25% less levy invokes the exact opposite effect of a smaller army with an emphasis on strong units. It also makes it so only 12+ prowess characters can be knights, which does not fit them as they are all about rushing their enemies with superior numbers. (At game start all uruks will only have 1-3 knights and have to sink a great amount of money into getting more) "A strong emphasis on having a few, well trained warriors" (-tradition description) does not fit them at all. The "Strength in numbers" tradition would fit them far better.
"Spartan" gives 35% less prestige gain and a strong buff to building costs for castles. This fits the orcs decently, although it may make them a bit less aggressive since a lot of their CBs use prestige. I believe there was the idea to make orcs use prestige to recruit MAA in the future, in that case this prestige debuff would be detrimental. Fine for now in my opinion.
In the future it would also be nice to see some of the starting orc cultures get an additional tradition depending on their location. For example, Ungur-Hai could get mountain warriors
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This is very WIP, but new divergent orc cultures should follow the "-hai" / "-kai" naming scheme, so it would be nice if there was a list of preset uruk culture names.