I'm with you, I only see a couple of benefits by playing a extreme biome tribe. One benefit is the ability to gather rare resources or possible trade or sale. Another bonus is you don't have to worry much with War or Invasion since the outside world probably won't be able to survive. And finally another bonus from living in a harsh environment is that the individuals need to band together in order to survive, so I would see the communities being more tight nit than the average.

The benefits can be seen in how difficult it will be to have a group of people not of that tribe try to take over the area biome. Hrothi tunnels, poisonous swamps, natural camouflage in forest, most races's benefits are fitted to their specific climates.

I recall from the last QnA that Caspian mentioned that the Yoru would be receiving a few extra benefits for the exact reasons you mentioned above though.

Yeah, the game must have asymetric balance not "dificult levels", i belive very few people would play just to brag about how mutch time they endure with a character in extreme boime with almost just NPCs to interact with. While the survival aspect of playing the tribes from harsher biomes should be a chalange, other aspects should compensate, but that's kind of stating the obvious.

At least now they'e more time to think about this balance for some of the most extreme tribes.

Yeah who in their right mind invades a swamp? Dras master race!

ah, well I just watched the latest Q&A where they somewhat addressed this. The Yoru and nomadic tribe will not be accessible at launch due to them living in such hazardous biomes. I still don't think the swamp would be all that attractive as compared to other biomes though.

So, here are my thoughts on the matter.

Difficult to Invade

As was mentioned above, if you live in a hostile biome, then the environment is your first line of defense. The Dras don't have to be extremely powerful fighters who build massive defensive structures....because their home will kill most people who try to invade it, and all the Dras need to do is encourage this (fling diseased things into enemy encampments, for example). Not to mention that enemy supply wagons, siege engines, mounts, etc...are all just going to sink into the muck.

See also: Everyone who has tried to invade Russia, especially when winter comes.

Adverse environments may breed stronger creatures

The wolves of the far north tend to be more robust and lethal than the ones who inhabit easier climates. The creatures that can survive and thrive in a rainforest tend to be more lethal than those who live in a grassland.

If your tribe can tame these creatures, you now have lethal beasts serving as your weapons. (This may be a powerful advantage of the Kypiq, whose forests were inhabited by creatures so dangerous that they took to the trees in order to survive).

Advantages of being left alone

Because your territory is so hostile, so undesirable to other tribes...you are likely to be left alone far more often than races with traditionally desirable biomes (like the Neran grasslands). If you aren't constantly fighting battles and struggling to keep out invaders, you can focus inward on research and development. And on that note...

Adversity drives innovation

Who do you think figured out digging wells first? The people who lived in riverlands and had abundant water everywhere...or people who lived in a dry area where water was hard to come by? This doesn't seem like a huge deal, until you realize that wells are a critical component in surviving a siege.

Who figured out how to preserve food first...the people with a temperate, nearly year-round growing season, or the people who had long harsh winters where food was scarce? Again, we see a technology that is crucial to surviving a siege.

In short: adverse conditions drive a tribe to innovate to improve their quality of life and improve their chances of survival. These advances can easily turn into other useful technologies. The same knowledge used to clear a water road through a swamp can be applied to creating a harbor on the coast. The same improved tracking skills and techniques from living in an area where you must hunt all your food translates well to scouting enemies. The traps you develop to help catch your food can also be turned against your enemies.

Tribes who have an easy life because they live in an accommodating biome just don't have the same drive to innovate. That's not to say that players won't still innovate, but harsh conditions certainly produce more ideas for the sorts of things you should try to invent.

Great post, GB.

Napoleon & Hitler could tell you a thing or two about competing with 'Yoru.' Wherever I land up in Elyria, I hope it's not the equivalent of "Finland"...

I belive, form what i got in the Dras writeup, is that if you play as a Yoru in the tundra, or Erishé in the desert etc, it should feel easy to medium to just live there, since these tribes have inhabited these biomes for a gazillion years and know how to strive in that middle of nowhere, but when you go out and face other biomes the dificulty for just being alive must go up. If one of the tribes is hard to play even in their native biome... well, i don't see a significant number of players wanting to take the challenge. And a bunch of features that no one uses means development effort thrown away.

Yeah, players will be creative, but the players will not be able to do things that aren't possible in the game. So, every technology, building, survival skill etc will have to be thought and balanced by SBS before any tribes are playable, and we're talking about even the technologies that are up to be discovered.

And, again, The tribes from extreme biomes must be attractively balanced when compared to the other ones, i don't think that many players will like the idea of "Just keeping your character alive in the native biome is a challenge and if you don't travel you will interact mostly with NPCs, since few players dare travel to your cities, but at least you will look exotic and your lands probably won't be invaded."

Anyway... SBS has some time to figure out this balance now and the Dras writeup gave me the feeling that this is what they're trying to do.

I also think that this goes with the fact that the populations are designed to be unequal across the biomes.

Neran will be the most adaptable to the widest range of settings. And thus they will probably be played by the most players and compose the most NPC's. The Yoru (and Eriche) are going to be rare creatures in any biome other than their native ones.

So the ability to progress within the social circles of the smaller population may also be easier due to less competition? You could become the bigger fish quicker in a smaller pond.

And the adventurous "minority" race member that ventures out of the initial biome to a semi-beneficial biome (or at least one that is not a hindrance) would then gain additional value as a unique novelty with a unusual skill set that may be in high demand. A unicorn among the ponies, if you will. A skilled Yoru mercenary or two might be a big prize for a Brudvir lord vs another Brudvir group in the same setting.

There are some game mechanic issues I see when it comes to nomadic tribes like the Erishe.

1. Land ownership - how does this work when your family frequently moves? Or will the Erishe instead have another housing system like portable tent housing that you can pick up and take with you and plop down anywhere in the dessert you have room for.

2. Since the number of children you can have is tied to the number of rooms you have in your permanent dwelling, how does that work with nomads who essentially don't have a permanent dwelling? Would the nomad tent take the place of a permanent dwelling? If so, would you then be able to "upgrade" your tent to add more rooms/partitions for larger families?

Folks are touching upon most of the points but there is one point in particular that it seems will only really reach out to a small minority of players, which is fitting.

That point would be that one more benefit of living in an extremely inhospitable biome would be the challenge of surviving in that environment should aid the player in at least advancing their survival skills into the higher and more elite levels of survival skills. You want to come back home and become a famous survivalist? Go and live somewhere that is an extreme biome for awhile.