Strong races

[TeshiAlair]

There is a lot of discussion of boring races (Human, Mummy, Demigod) and weak races (Felid, Ogre), but I'm curious to see what people think of the races considered more universally strong (Gargoyle, Centaur). Should there be blatantly strong races? Centaur is arguable due to aptitudes, but Gargoyles are absolutely absurd.

[Sar]

Well Centaurs are much, much, much stronger than Gargoyles so here's that. I also don't think Felids are weak (though they could be called boring since a lot of equipment choices don't exist for them). I also don't think Mummies are boring, but that might be just me being masochistic.

[Sandman25]

Why not? Just don't play them if they are too easy for you. Crawl does not have difficulty levels except species/backgrounds/gods.

[TheDefiniteArticle]

Gargoyles are like in the middle of the pack, Centaurs are so obviously superior to virtually every single other race that they serve as proof that having strong races and weak races is an accepted feature of Crawl.

[ackack]

Bit of a tangent here, but I've been meaning to bash out an approximate ordering of the races. I think there's pretty broad agreement on the very best (Ce, DD, Sp) and the worst (Mu, Fo) but a lot of different opinions on what falls in between. In general, I would say that "melee races" are stronger, simply because there's an asymmetry where it is much more reliable to convert book starts into melee driven characters than vice versa. Races like DE or Fe have some good to very good combos but they also have some absolutely atrocious ones; a race like Tr or Mi is basically fine no matter what.

EDIT: bringing it back on topic, Ce and DD are among the least played races, Tr is low-middling, and Sp slightly more popular than the median race (presumably entirely due to SpEn). I would say that strong races are generally not super popular.

[Curio]

I still dont understand why Ogres should be "weak" or "challenging" race. That is not coherent enough for me.

[Sar]

Ogres you meet in Dungeon are glass cannons and can be taken out with skill 0 sling and some bullets, provided you have some distance.
Consistency!

[tasonir]

I'm not sure I would agree with that, ackack (that melee races are stronger). Good caster races are very strong even if they have slightly lower health (Deep elf). I'd definitely consider them an easy race.

Attempting to list all of the races as easy/medium/hard has been done before (by me, no less!) and the results are up on crawl wiki. There is always room for debate, caveats, and exceptions. Different playstyles rank the races differently. While nearly everyone will agree centaurs are powerful, there will be widespread debate on some other cases like Ogres, Nagas. Everyone knows mummy's are terrible, but I don't actually think Fo are that weak. I mean, they aren't strong, but I wouldn't put them anywhere near mummies.

Really the whole topic is very debatable and prone to flame wars. The following races are considered easy according to the wiki:

Centaur
Deep Dwarf
Draconian
Gargoyle
Halfling
Hill Orc
Kobold
Lava Orc
Merfolk
Minotaur
Mountain Dwarf
Spriggan
Troll
Vine Stalker

I personally hate spriggans, although I can see why they are listed. I'd probably put trolls on moderate since their early game advantages don't really last, but fine. I'd personally add Deep Elves as mentioned, but they're considered moderate. Again, no one will ever agree on every race

[Curio]

Ogres you meet in Dungeon are glass cannons and can be taken out with skill 0 sling and some bullets, provided you have some distance.
Consistency!

Provided you have sling and bullets. Not the point though.
Ogres still lacking compared to other races. And im saying this despite the fact that my first win was with the ogre.
They have good STR gain but no armor apt to use this advantage to the fullest or armor at all in most cases. They have high HP but without protection it matters not much. Trolls have similar HP but also crazy regen. What does ogres have?

PS. Also, I dont see how spriggans able to use bows at all with their size. I imagine something like this

Spoiler: show

[Sar]

I'm just saying player race ogres are similar to enemy ogres. I think ogres are a bit of a challenge race - their earlygame can be pretty horrible - but once you get a GSC and some skill you start doing pretty good. I don't think that having challenge races is horrible.

Their apts probably emphasize M&F a bit too much. After all, if ogres had +3 to any melee skill, I would still go for a GSC in over 99% cases, but I would be more inclined to train another melee skill if I had an awesome randart very early. That's another question though.

Also Spriggans can only use sucky small bows, which is kind of a newbie trap.

Edit: Re: Your picture:

Spoiler: show

[Leafsnail]

I don't think Gargoyles are any better than Hill Orcs or Minotaurs. Also Centaurs being good isn't to do with their apts so much as their being fast and having loads of HP.

[Sar]

I think Gr are worse than HO and probably Mi.

[TeshiAlair]

I should clarify my statement. The issue I see with Centaurs and Gargoyles specifically is that, to me, they don't feel like they offer up interesting decisions. No matter how bad centaur aptitudes are, their problem solving method is "Can I kite it? Oh wait, yes I can, let's do that then. Oh damn, gotta run, oh wait, that was easy." Meanwhile, Gargoyles are so stocked on resistances their armor decisions become more trivial than usual, and their balanced apts, while definitely a good thing in some ways, means that they are almost too adaptable.

One tweak I'd make for Centaurs is to give them a breath-costing ability called Gallop, that is a burst of speed, rather than making them incredibly fast all the time.

[Sar]

I'm not sure what are you saying about Gr armour decisions. Their AC means I'll be more likely to use a robe with one (likewise I would be more likely to use a robe with a Naga), and they have a couple of resists (then again, I wouldn't make body armour choices based on rElec/rPois pretty much ever). And what do you mean by "too adaptable"? Are Humans "too adaptable"? Is it a bad thing?

[Tiktacy]

Native Africans are pretty strong. I hear they are sometimes castrated at the age of 13 in order to become men, it sounds rather juicy if you ask me.

[and into]

The thing is, except for the extreme cases, it is hard to say where exactly species fall, relative to each other.

You want to specifically play an IE that picks up a trident and gets its EV high quickly? Merfolk is super-specialized for that. But HuIE is basically as good and much more adaptable.

Aptitudes have to be pretty extreme before they make a major difference and even then, there are other innate characteristics that have a much bigger impact (centaur and spriggan speed being obvious ones and, in the other direction, nagas; beyond those sorts of intrinsics, HP "aptitude" and leveling speed is more significant than all but the most extreme cases of +/- aptitudes).

I do think Gr is pretty strong but they are as weak as deep elves against smiting, and orc priests are one of the major killers throughout early game (and can still be a threat quite deep in game).

But really this is just a lot of question begging. If by "strongest" you mean, "most likely to win the game with, using only one type of character" then the question reduces pretty much to "who makes the best berserker?", possibly plus DDNe and SpEn and a few different centaurs (including berserkers).

But if you mean, "what species is strongest overall at multiple different backgrounds?" then the question is more interesting but also a lot less clear. It is in this sense that HO, for example, really stand out as a very well rounded species that is also probably stronger than Hu in many backgrounds.

But if you mean, "what species has strongest innate attributes or starting bonuses, irrespective of background?" that's also somewhat different. DD and Ce and Sp and Tr stand out really clearly here.

But all these questions are somewhat artificial. There are more challenging starts and less challenging starts, and species choice is a major component of that, but talking about "strongest/weakest species" is, outside the clear and salient examples at each extreme, not a very useful question, IMHO.

[bcadren]

I'd say Trolls are the best race. They have the best innate bonuses and you have to make up for their Apts if you want to do anything that isn't UC. But then, roughly every race has it's own specialness. Though Mummies aren't made friendly (like Orcs with Beogh); a mummy has close to nothing to fear in tomb and has a much easier time in hell than other races; but the early and mid-game is much harder with the bad apps and lack of potions. idk.

[duvessa]

dd ce sp tr dg ho mi fe dr og vs mf hu gr ha ko vp gh op te he ds de na fo mu

[Sar]

Dr above HO? Og being that high? Ha being that low? Interesting, I didn't expect that.

[dpeg]

I wonder what makes so many people think everything can be linearly ordered, i.e. put in neat lists.

[Hirsch I]

@duvessa, why do you think Fe is strong, even if not a lot?
low hp, no armor, no weapons... i tought it would be near Mu for everyone.

[TheDefiniteArticle]

@duvessa, why do you think Fe is strong, even if not a lot?
low hp, no armor, no weapons... i tought it would be near Mu for everyone.

Fast movement is the best ability you can possibly have. There's probably more than that, but I don't hate myself enough to endure playing a felid.

I wonder what makes so many people think everything can be linearly ordered, i.e. put in neat lists.

Valuation skills, critical thinking, common sense, etc.

[Sandman25]

I suspect duvessa ordered that list assuming everyone starts with the best god i.e. Trog.

[Patashu]

@duvessa, why do you think Fe is strong, even if not a lot?

There's a reason why Crawl bots use FeBe. It's very mistake tolerant due to high movement speed for running away and extra lives.

[duvessa]

Dr above HO?

oops, i missed dr while building the list. moved it to the correct place

Og being that high? Ha being that low?

hp

@duvessa, why do you think Fe is strong, even if not a lot?

fast

I wonder what makes so many people think everything can be linearly ordered, i.e. put in neat lists.

crawl species are sortable by strength under most definitions of strength (in my case I am using winnability, i.e. inverse of the probability of unavoidable death; of course, this would take an impractical amount of computation to actually calculate, so I have to guess; hence the obvious implication that these rankings are approximate). but of course you're only interested in picking a fight, so whatever.

I suspect duvessa ordered that list assuming everyone starts with the best god i.e. Trog.

i did not assume any backgrounds (and i am not sure why you think that i did, let alone this specific one!)

[diviton]

DD, Sp and Ce seem to be the strongest races overall.

[Tiktacy]

DD, Sp and Ce seem to be the strongest races overall.

When played optimally, I would imagine a felid to have a higher win rate than centaur.

I would imagine players like duvessa prefer centaurs because he doesn't make mistakes. Ever. Because he is duvessa. But overall, Felids are probably stronger.

My list is DD, Sp, Fe.

As far as how fun a race is, my favorites are probably draconian and Felids. I like draconians simply because of the surprise factor(I like surprises) and Felids because I love cats and it gives me an excuse to wear my full body cat suit.

[Sar]

Ce are good precisely because insane HP pool combined with fast movespeed makes them extremely forgiving. You can roll your face on the keyboard in most encounters and still win; doubly so if you pick up a bow and some arrows and put that stupidly high aptitude to good use.

[DracheReborn]

@duvessa, why do you think Fe is strong, even if not a lot?

There's a reason why Crawl bots use FeBe. It's very mistake tolerant due to high movement speed for running away and extra lives.

qw uses GrBe though (the only bot with an online win, I believe). There's something to be said for Gr's resistances and high AC making it beginner friendly.

[KoboldLord]

There's a reason why Crawl bots use FeBe. It's very mistake tolerant due to high movement speed for running away and extra lives.

Crawl bots often use FeBe because the decision space is small. There's a lot of decisions that you can outright ignore, so for many problems that are normally difficult it's relatively easy to verify that your code is going to produce the best possible result for all situations given that starting combo. You code isn't going to cause your FeBe to pick the wrong weapon or body armour, for instance. The fact that FeBe has extra speed and lifesaving is more of a happy accident. The process of actually winning with a bot is still a matter of having your bot throw a sufficiently large number of FeBe at the Dungeon and waiting for one to get through.

[dpeg]

I wonder what makes so many people think everything can be linearly ordered, i.e. put in neat lists.

crawl species are sortable by strength under most definitions of strength (in my case I am using winnability, i.e. inverse of the probability of unavoidable death; of course, this would take an impractical amount of computation to actually calculate, so I have to guess; hence the obvious implication that these rankings are approximate). but of course you're only interested in picking a fight, so whatever.

No, not really. I think it's a pretty sad trend that everything is ranked: cities, universities, people, just about everything.
In order to rank something, you have to map the objects you're interested in to (real) numbers. This should be highly controversial --about as controversial as interpreting statistics-- but doesn't seem to be. And this doesn't even scratch the issue that some things plainly are not orderable: under very reasonable and natural conditions, it can happen that A beats B, B beats C and C beats A.

I expected you to have compiled a meaningful list of Crawl species, and you explained your criteria. Whatever, to add something to the thread, I realised that there is a very clear and non-ambiguous answer (sortet strongest to weakest):

  Code:

Tr - Og Mi Fo - DD Ga DG Mu Gh - HO Na Ce Dr VS - Hu Mf Te DS - HE Ko Vp Op - DE Ha - Sp Fe


[Sandman25]

I suspect duvessa ordered that list assuming everyone starts with the best god i.e. Trog.

i did not assume any backgrounds (and i am not sure why you think that i did, let alone this specific one!)

I based my assumption on really low position of good casters like "te he ds de" which are only superior to "na fo mu" in your list.

[khalil]

  Code:

Tr - Og Mi Fo - DD Ga DG Mu Gh - HO Na Ce Dr VS - Hu Mf Te DS - HE Ko Vp Op - DE Ha - Sp Fe


Is this a joke?
I presume you ranked them by STR values or something, because it certainly can't be based on the odds of them winning.
As far as ranking strongest and weakest races in an objective manner, I'd do something based on (games won with that race)/(total games with that race). A better version would be (games won with race/background combo)/(total games with that race/background combo) because races aren't equally good at all things, but this thread is just about races so eh.

[dpeg]

khalil: I think it makes sense to group species in few tiers, but to actually go and order them completely drastically undersells on complexity, in my opinion. I was just trying to point out that I see the perpetual desire to do so as a flaw of today's society (and not of particular individuals, posting or not). Rankings in general pretend to possess a level of precision which is almost always unrealistic.

[Sar]

I think he ranked them by HP, which resulted in silliness. I think your version would be not ideal either - some combos are more popular among bad players, for example.

Edit: wait, no, it's not HP.

[DracheReborn]

dpeg's list ranked them by starting species strength, because the topic asked about "strong" races after all.

[khalil]

khalil: I think it makes sense to group species in few tiers, but to actually go and order them completely drastically undersells on complexity, in my opinion. I was just trying to point out that I see the perpetual desire to do so as a flaw of today's society (and not of particular individuals, posting or not). Rankings in general pretend to possess a level of precision which is almost always unrealistic.

While rankings can be unrealistic, it's better than not having anything at all. Imagine a world where people started playing crawl and thought MuWn would be a perfectly acceptable combo.
Now stop imagining it, because doing so for more than five seconds results in permanent SAN loss.

[Sar]

Well, that's one way to do that.

[khalil]

some combos are more popular among bad players

Yes, but is that because the player is bad or because the combo is bad?
I like to play Mu, and I suck at this game. Does Mu just look like it sucks because I'm the one playing it, or is my love of playing Mu the reason I suck?

[Hirsch I]

there are good players that like playing Mu, but normally everyone agrees it is the worst species, power-wise, of the game.

[Sar]

MiBe is/was one of the most popular combos among new players. I don't think it's a bad combo, no.

[khalil]

there are good players that like playing Mu, but normally everyone agrees it is the worst species, power-wise, of the game.

and I'd be willing to bet that the statistics would support that, with Mu having the worst win ratio of any race. I'd also be willing to bet that the worst combo for them would be either MuCk or MuWn, although that doesn't say much because if those backgrounds suck, it means they're working as intended.

[ackack]

khalil: I think it makes sense to group species in few tiers, but to actually go and order them completely drastically undersells on complexity, in my opinion.

I actually agree with this, for the most part. I think you can use more granularity than the wiki's "easy/medium/hard" for sure, though.

[duvessa]

In order to rank something, you have to map the objects you're interested in to (real) numbers. This should be highly controversial --about as controversial as interpreting statistics-- but doesn't seem to be.

In this case it's basic mathematics, how can it be controversial? Crawl has a finite number of states, and a portion of the game's turn 0 states will result in losing the game regardless of player input. Species choice influences how many of these states exist, and that is the metric I used and attempted to explain to you. And as I specifically clarified, I do not have the resources required to actually compute these numbers, therefore I had to guess them.

I was just trying to point out that I see the perpetual desire to do so as a flaw of today's society (and not of particular individuals, posting or not).

I am sorry that I offended you by fulfilling someone's request.

I based my assumption on really low position of good casters like "te he ds de" which are only superior to "na fo mu" in your list.

Those species are awful casters (well, compared to the species I placed higher), they die to exploding darts.

[Sandman25]

Those species are awful casters (well, compared to the species I placed higher), they die to exploding darts.

I see. I forgot that your list is based on unavoidable deaths, it does not take into account ease of play i.e. chance to die by avoidable death (running out of MP for example).

[damiac]

The problem with trying to rank them is, what is your actual criteria?

Duvessa's ranking (I assume) is going by the idea that if you can get to like D5, you've won the game, because at that point if you make the right decisions you can win any character. And I think those rankings make sense in that context. But to a normal player, that's a terrible criteria for ranking, because for most of us, the game is still hard after D5.

But even for a "normal player" it depends on what you're trying to do. Just win? get 15 runes? Get the best win%? Streak? I think you might get different lists depending on what you're asking.

I'll assume you're asking for best win%, since that's the best definition of a strong crawl race to me. That's pretty much the same as best streaking races.

I'd say the strongest races are: CE, DD, SP, MI, HO, GR. I say that because the aptitudes, high HPs, fast movement speed, or other built in advantages mean you can make a lot more mistakes and still survive.

I wouldn't use that same list for trying to win with 15 runes.

[dck]

@minmay: vs over mf what

[TheDefiniteArticle]

but to actually go and order them completely drastically undersells on complexity, in my opinion.

Battling complexity is the reason for ordering things in the first place. Reducing and simplifying complexity as much as possible is the inherent goal. Vague tiers are lazy guesses that are less likely to be wrong, but also guaranteed to be less informative.

And this doesn't even scratch the issue that some things plainly are not orderable: under very reasonable and natural conditions, it can happen that A beats B, B beats C and C beats A.

That would be true if, as in Street Fighter or Fire Emblem, A and B had the ability to alter each other's outcomes, but that is not the case here. They are just taking turns running through a closed course and comparing numbers afterward. The order can change depending on which numbers you set as criteria, but a lower number cannot beat a higher number. Even when it is true, it only adds a wrinkle to the proceedings. In MvC2, Megaman has a favorable matchup against the best character in the game, but no one is crazy enough to put him even close to the top.

Just win? get 15 runes? Get the best win%? Streak?

3 of those are the exact same thing. "Just win" means picking the race with the lowest lose%, which therefore means picking the race with the highest win%, and of course if you are trying to streak you will want your win% as close to 100% as possible. 15 runes is an entirely different game with new rules, but because winning a 3 rune game is a prerequisite for winning a 15 rune game, even that will for the most part favor a high 3 rune win%.

If you want to talk about "low effort" then that will change up the list a bit, sure. (though putting Gr as high as HO is still a stretch; HO is genuinely very powerful, and is even stronger than it looks, while Gr looks much stronger than it actually is)

[damiac]

Just win? get 15 runes? Get the best win%? Streak?

3 of those are the exact same thing. "Just win" means picking the race with the lowest lose%, which therefore means picking the race with the highest win%, and of course if you are trying to streak you will want your win% as close to 100% as possible. 15 runes is an entirely different game with new rules, but because winning a 3 rune game is a prerequisite for winning a 15 rune game, even that will for the most part favor a high 3 rune win%.

If you want to talk about "low effort" then that will change up the list a bit, sure. (though putting Gr as high as HO is still a stretch; HO is genuinely very powerful, and is even stronger than it looks, while Gr looks much stronger than it actually is)

[/quote]

Well, not really. For example, if talking about "just winning", I don't care about win%, so maybe I quaff every mutation potion I can find up to some point in the game. That results in a lot of ruined characters, but also a few extra powerful characters. If I'm a bad player, maybe my only chance of winning is with that oddball extra powerful guy

Same thing with 15 rune, maybe I don't care that mummies have a really tough start, but what I do care about is that they're pretty good in extended. Who cares if I splat 50 of them trying to get to extended, the 1 mummy that I get to extended has a better chance of winning than the 10 felids I got there more easily.

Now, I don't actually play like this, but if someone just had to get one win, I might make a different recommendation than if they were trying to get a good win%.

[duvessa]

@minmay: vs over mf what

it doesn't have *that* much less hp, and gets regeneration and a bunch of extra melee damage to make up for it

mummies ... pretty good in extended

what