Well done CA, Dwarfs are looking really good
I am a firm believer that it is important to let developers know both when they mess up and when they get it right, and in my opinion the dwarfs are looking really good.
Yes I know there's issues with the new Age of Reckoning system, but many or those issues are almost certainly misplaced decimal points that will be fixed. As for actual changes to that system, I have seen a lot of people in the community suggesting a "floor" to the age of reckoning which would be increased, to a point, by doing legendary grudges. For example, there's ten legendary grudges. Have each of them increase your starting point on the AoR by 10%, to a max of 50%. You pick any five and do them, which should be pretty achievable by the midpoint of a standard campaign and gives you a big incentive to keep driving towards them, and that will keep you out of the red for the rest of your campaign. This is pretty loreful too, and the reason I don't think it should be able to go any higher than 50%, because while your fellow dwarfs will recognise your past achievements, nobody gets a free ride no matter their achievements, and there are ALWAYS more grudges to settle... Plus it adds a nice extra reward to these legendary grudges, which always feels good.
BUT this is already being discussed plenty, and by people better at balancing than I am. What I'm more curious about is if anyone else has the same feeling I do - that the dwarfs are feeling pretty damn near done, from a roster perspective. Like as in, one more DLC to complete the faction done. The new slayer units are GREAT to have. Cause what's really missing now? Basically an engineering campaign. Yes we have Malakai but he seems to play more as an adventurer than a tinkerer. Which fits his character great, but it seems really odd that the empire have a workshop mechanic now and the DWARFS don't. And it'd coincide with bringing in Grimm Burloksson and maybe a couple other units too, I know they're more runes than engineering, but the Dwarfs are lacking big monster units, and Rune Golems and Shard Dragons would fit very nicely in that niche, just saying...
As for my own ten cents, I know Workshop mechanics are a bit of a meme right now, although I personally think they're really cool, but I wanted to throw my inexperienced hat in the ring regarding how I'd love to see it come to fruition, using a different Skaven example - Throt!
Throt has his growth lab, which is a kinda underused mechanic by TWWH standards. We've had a couple Ikits Workshops and Groms Cauldrons but very few offshoots of Throt (at least that I can recall). Lemme break it down.
Let's say you have the "Engineering Guild Prototypes", a good fit with Grimm who is the youngest Master Engineer in the lore and often considered impulsive by the older dwarf engineers, although not to the degree of Malakai ofc, but still pretty flippantly willing to innovate rather than waiting the standard dwarf testing period of several centuries before something is considered sufficiently tested lmao. So let's do this.
Everything below here is completely me just talking, somewhat inspired by how Zhufbar is in Mixus LL, but different too, and thus probably unbalanced or never gonna happen, but I just think it's cool and wanna share the idea so y'know, fair warning.
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Certain units with explosives, firearms, crossbows, artillery, basically anything that isn't just a guy with an axe, can be selected, and have upgrades applied. Unlike throt, this doesn't introduce instability, but it does introduce a massive upkeep cost, as the Guild doesn't believe in your invention and won't support it. Just complete finger in the air, maybe every upgrade you put on costs a varying amount of Upkeep. Like, some you could stack small bonuses (+5% range, scaling like the new nurgle plagues do, 5, 10, 15 etc, and 5% extra upkeep per tier) or bigger upkeep penalties for fancier things like grapeshot ammo for cannons, or a different firing angle, maybe you could make cannons act more like mortars for example, or making Ironbreakers Grenades leave behind a little mini dreadquake effect or something, the sky is the limit with this sort of thing, like with Throt you could have a load of different effects in different tiers and ofc, some combinations could be just bad. Like you might try out Grapeshot on a high firing angle cannon and find out that when fired upwards it spreads waaaaay too much to be at all effective. But this experimenting would get PRICEY very quickly. You could start seeing really maxed out units costing thousands per turn if you're not careful.
To offset this upkeep you'd have a meter called "Guild Backing" or something which would represent the faith the guild has in you and your ideas, which you can increase by proving your inventions are sound, i.e. getting kills with them in battle, but will be decreased if you lose these tested units, i.e. through attrition or destruction in battle. The more the guild believes in you the more they'll "subsidise" your projects, represented by a lowering of the upkeep penalty to a max of like 90%. So these upgraded units will always be significantly more expensive than their base counterparts, but also significantly more powerful.
That's my little idea anyway which will likely go nowhere, but I wanted to share it anyhow.
It'd make a really cool FLC if they wanted to round out the Dwarfs, or alternatively if there's enough units it could be a cool DLC.
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What do you think about the Dwarfs? Do you think they're done now, or they need more DLC/FLC? If so, what would you add? I'm super interested in hearing other people's ideas for things to add - not even just to Dwarfs but to any faction. I'd love to read all the crackpot concepts for mechanics that are floating around.
And what faction do you think is closest to being "done", if not the Dwarfs? Skaven have gotta be pretty close too, Thanquol and some Verminlords are pretty much the missing pieces rn!
Thanks for reading and lemme just say, I'm so happy that positivity is coming back to this community. The time after SoC was really crap, even though that negativity was well deserved don't get me wrong, it definitely brought me down a bit, it just is always more fun to be able to be excited about something, I think, and I am very excited for Thrones of Dela- Decay!
Edit: just to make it extra clear since some have gotten the wrong idea, I'm spitballing here, I'm not making a request or suggestion or saying these ideas are necessary, since there's a lot of other races that need more help first! I'm just sharing an idea I had the other day that I thought was cool, and it's fun to think about how to "finish" a race. All the best!