Species Strength Survey

[NessOnett]

Movement speed and HP are two of the biggest factors, if not the biggest factors, in how strong a species will be in a wide number of backgrounds and different situations. Pointing this out is not one dimensional. On the contrary, the fact that Crawl is randomized and may confront you with a a variety of unexpected and unusual challenges in the course of a game is the reason that movement speed, in particular, is so valuable. This is because movement speed is directly linked with your ability to control when, where, and how any given encounter transpires.

"Objectively" the most lethal enemies in the game are orc priests, orc wizards, adders, etc. So it makes sense to place a lot of emphasis and weight on "ability to avoid/survive encounters with orc priests, orc wizards, adders" in terms of judging how strong a species is.

And by that logic, Nagas should be praised for their ability to trounce all three of those. They have some of the highest health in the game, which is a good way to deal with Orc Priests in the early game. They have natural ability to see invisible, which combined with their high health makes Orc Wizards laughable nuisances from D1 on. And Adders' main threat is their ability to poison, as well as their speed. Nagas have innate poison resistance, and a speed above average while being a death sentence to most species is just business as usual for Nagas.

You said yourself that HP is one of the most important factors.

[Sar]

I happen to enjoy playing Nagas and I disagree heavily that wizards or priests are easy to them. For most races meeting a priest in the open means you can kite it to a place where it will come into your LoS at melee range (or even to upstairs and then take another downstairs), for a Naga things aren't as simple. Wizards are horrifying not because they go invisible, they're horrifying because they can haste, slow and/or confuse you and then pelt you with a number of conjurations.

Also IIRC number one killers are either hobgoblins or kobolds.

[netkitten]

felids are surprisingly low, especially considering their 0.14 buff

I've just played (and won) a HEBe, and it was a hundred times easier than Fe anything. Although I admit I played very few felids.

dunno im pretty sure hebe would be harder for me than febe (i won one febe long ago at the first serious attempt, and modern fe can use wands)

btw if you check old tavern threads you will find a lot of posts how people claimed felids to be overpowered and those felids didn't differ that much from current ones, they were somehow stronger than 0.13 but probably close to the current 0.14 ones

[tasonir]

I feel like I should have rated nagas as above average just to bump up their score, but I was honest and just rated them as average Overall, I have to say the survey was pretty accurate, I can't really take too much issue with any race's placement. I'd personally put spriggans a bit lower (They should still be above average, just I'd rather have 90% of the fast speed bonus and have +5 hp aptitude in a centaur rather than no hp and just .1 aut faster movement), trolls down 2-3 spaces, but overall quite good.

[and into]

Nagas probably have an easier time with adders, definitely have an easier time against kobolds with early blowgun and poison needles, and much worse with orc wizards, gnolls, orc priests, Sigmund, etc. (Compared to Hu.) Because you generally want to avoid wizards and priests and Sigmund or, if you fight them, to lure them around a corner so they don't get multiple shots at you. Early on you are probably one confuse, and potentially two smites from death even with Naga's good HP.

Movement speed and HP are extremely important, but I'd say movement speed #1, HP #2. And I think the survey bears this out as consensus. Spriggans have terrible HP and very fast speed, and are nonetheless widely considered one of the strongest species. I agree with that assessment.

(fwiw I like nagas quite a lot, both in design and game play experience, by the way.)

[TravelLog]

I think the survey might be better served by separating it into "Early Game" "Mid Game" and "Late Game/Extended" given that some species have tough starts but become exceedingly strong in the late game, while other species have the exact opposite problems.

[netkitten]

Spriggans have terrible HP and very fast speed, and are nonetheless widely considered one of the strongest species.

consider that spriggans have amazing evasion too which actually makes them quite hard to kill

still i wouldn't place them at the very top, it's probably gargoyle and minotaur which don't need anything except simple tabbing

[KoboldLord]

I think the survey might be better served by separating it into "Early Game" "Mid Game" and "Late Game/Extended" given that some species have tough starts but become exceedingly strong in the late game, while other species have the exact opposite problems.

The early game is the more important factor by a huge margin, because by the mid-game you will have accumulated tools and treasure you can use to make your species choice less relevant. If you know what you're doing on both a strategic and tactical level, running through Pan with the species most poorly suited for doing Pan is still easier than doing the early game with one of the best early-game species.

[zardo]

FeBe is really quite good

[Sprucery]

FeBe is really quite good

Right. My first FeBe got 5 runes and died in Dis:7. And this was in 0.13, so without wands.

[zardo]

Aside from Felid, which has already been discussed - no fun to play a lot of the time and truly awful trying to come back after you've died once or twice but basically Spriggan lite for a lot of backgrounds. And FeBe just requires you to train all of three skills and berserk at the drop of a hat - some thoughts on under-and-overrated.

Demigod I believe we've been talking about recently... Along with Felid the most out-of-place and misunderstood of all. Book background, just try it.

Ogre I feel like a few people here do underrate their fragility a little bit, but most overrate it and the offense is nuts. Definitely at least a solid average.

Gargoyle melee is super overrated right now. Even if you think the armor outweighs the HP penalty eventually it can't possibly at the beginning, and I'm definitely of the school that weighs potential win-rate (and therefore early survival) very highly. Poison resist *is* nice early on. But putting these guys up there with Mi? Come on. Of course there are other ways to play Gr - GrEE is superb and Gr is good for sure. But they just don't beat Tr or Ho.

[zardo]

because it's starting to look like duvessa and I are a team here, I'm not quite as down on the low HP/high magic apt races like DE and Te. Nor do I know why he ranks Ds so low. But those four above I'm pretty sure about. Gr especially, while not nearly the most misplaced, is a good example of how ideas get reinforced as they pass from crappy crawl guide to crappy crawl guide without much thought. We are experiencing a GrBe bubble right now.

[duvessa]

Nor do I know why he ranks Ds so low.

Strictly worse than human at XL1, and usually stays worse for several more XLs that also take longer to get. The races I put between Hu and Ds all have something they're at least better at for the first few XLs (gr/ha/ko can have better defenses, gr/ha/ko/te/he apts can be pretty useful, gh/te/vp/op get better melee).

[Magipi]

Gargoyle melee is super overrated right now. (...) Of course there are other ways to play Gr - GrEE is superb and Gr is good for sure.

Let me add GrCj from personal experience. Very good aptitudes in the best places, and can get close to 40 AC in robe. Similarly, GrFE must be good.

(...) I'm definitely of the school that weighs potential win-rate (and therefore early survival) very highly.

For the vast majority of players, these are no-concerns. Winrate is just a meaningless number on your page (and if you play mostly offline, not even that). If you die early, you simply start again and be at the same position 5 minutes later.

But they just don't beat Tr or Ho.

With Tr, there are a lot of games with the character hitting the wall in the midgame, a melee character still in a robe, with terrible AC and terrible EV. This is practically every game where you don't luck into an early dragon hide drop. Of course, it is very hard to compare a (likely UC-focused) Tr with a blaster-type Gr, but I put Gr definitely higher.

[duvessa]

For the vast majority of players, these are no-concerns. Winrate is just a meaningless number on your page (and if you play mostly offline, not even that). If you die early, you simply start again and be at the same position 5 minutes later.

Well sure, if you don't care about winning then species strength isn't very meaningful to you. But I'm not sure why you feel the need to point that out in this thread.

[Magipi]

For the vast majority of players, these are no-concerns. Winrate is just a meaningless number on your page (and if you play mostly offline, not even that). If you die early, you simply start again and be at the same position 5 minutes later.

Well sure, if you don't care about winning then species strength isn't very meaningful to you. But I'm not sure why you feel the need to point that out in this thread.

If you read it again carefully, I was not talking about myself, but about the "majority of players". The other logical fallacy is even more apparent. Nice witticism though, I appreciate it.

[netkitten]

And FeBe just requires you to train all of three skills and berserk at the drop of a hat - some thoughts on under-and-overrated.

yeah, you train just 3 skills (fighting, dodging and unarmed), get crazy damage (claws with high unarmed are great) and evasion and on top of that you have more piety for brothers in arms and trog's hand because felids don't receive gifts and therefore don't waste piety to reduce the gift timeout, also you can zerk a lot because you can eat chunks any time, you can flee from most of the threats and have spare lives. the main disadvantage imo it's not even hp and ac, it's getting resistances

Demigod I believe we've been talking about recently... Along with Felid the most out-of-place and misunderstood of all. Book background, just try it.

considering that devs tend to remove lvl 6 spells from starting books, so even enchanters lose invisibility in 0.15 trunk (which is really sad btw, especially if you want to play fast, also in sprints too) it sounds quite luck dependent

also it's like to say "mummies are easy, just try a book background"

Gargoyle melee is super overrated right now. Even if you think the armor outweighs the HP penalty eventually it can't possibly at the beginning, and I'm definitely of the school that weighs potential win-rate (and therefore early survival) very highly. Poison resist *is* nice early on. But putting these guys up there with Mi? Come on. Of course there are other ways to play Gr - GrEE is superb and Gr is good for sure. But they just don't beat Tr or Ho.

gargoyle berserker is the only combo which was won by a bot to this time
it says a lot of its strength and simplicity imo

[Sar]

Actually FeBe was also won by a bot (but I think it was back then when Fe had something like +3 Fighting aptitude).

[netkitten]

Actually FeBe was also won by a bot (but I think it was back then when Fe had something like +3 Fighting aptitude).

if you mean cashybrid it was bot + human, i.e. bot for the most part of the game and human in zot, it's on lg, also i just checked the log, his fighting was just 13
felids didn't lose level on death that time though

[zardo]

If you read it again carefully, I was not talking about myself, but about the "majority of players". The other logical fallacy is even more apparent. Nice witticism though, I appreciate it.

I'm pretty sure duvessa means "you" meaning "one," not necessarily you, the poster of this message. In any case I would not venture to say what the majority of players think, but several of us explicitly take "strength" to mean "ability to win any particular game starting from the beginning" because that's a fairly logical definition. What do you propose?

With Tr, there are a lot of games with the character hitting the wall in the midgame, a melee character still in a robe, with terrible AC and terrible EV. This is practically every game where you don't luck into an early dragon hide drop. Of course, it is very hard to compare a (likely UC-focused) Tr with a blaster-type Gr, but I put Gr definitely higher.

This is entirely contrary to my experience. The most obvious solution to this "problem" is Makhleb, but I've found Ashenzari (troll with haste is good) and even Chei (fastest I ever tabbed through a game until I failed to notice Tiamat and got killed in a few moves) to be strong troll gods. I bet Oka is too, Trog of course. You can get from "terrible" EV to simply mediocre by training dodging, maybe a little from rings, and combined with your HP and regen you're sturdy enough for your insane offense to carry the day. I mean I've seriously just never encountered this "wall."

[zardo]

considering that devs tend to remove lvl 6 spells from starting books, so even enchanters lose invisibility in 0.15 trunk (which is really sad btw, especially if you want to play fast, also in sprints too) it sounds quite luck dependent

also it's like to say "mummies are easy, just try a book background"

What are you even talking about? Okay, what convinced me specifically was IE, but VM, Wz, Ne, AE back when swiftness was totally broken etc. I'm not talking about "level 6 spells" (how many books ever had one? En, old Cj?) I'm talking about the many low-level spells that stay strong for a long time - the reason I say book background is that you're wasting the high MP and INT (and STR to an extent) without them. Then I would expect to either take up a weapon or branch out in magic depending on what you find. Dg is always "depending on what you find" which is another reason to start with a good spellbook.

Yes a book background is also the easiest start with a mummy. But it's not "easy." It is with a demigod - try it!

[Magipi]

(...)several of us explicitly take "strength" to mean "ability to win any particular game starting from the beginning" because that's a fairly logical definition. What do you propose?

I don't have a definition ready. But I think that in the realm of average and below-average players, where winrates are 1% at most (and more likely 0.1% or just 0%), things like streaking are nonexistent. For the average players, species strength means something roughly "being able to win sometimes with pretty bad play" (pretty bad play, because they play pretty badly. I do play pretty badly, even though I have 20+ wins.) As the bot qw proved, gargoyle is the king (or probably one of the kings) of this category.

I mean I've seriously just never encountered this "wall."

Well that's strange.

[zardo]

(...)several of us explicitly take "strength" to mean "ability to win any particular game starting from the beginning" because that's a fairly logical definition. What do you propose?

I don't have a definition ready. But I think that in the realm of average and below-average players, where winrates are 1% at most (and more likely 0.1% or just 0%), things like streaking are nonexistent. For the average players, species strength means something roughly "being able to win sometimes with pretty bad play" (pretty bad play, because they play pretty badly. I do play pretty badly, even though I have 20+ wins.) As the bot qw proved, gargoyle is the king (or probably one of the kings) of this category.

I mean I really just don't buy that you get to discount the early game. That's... the definition of startscumming. And I don't claim to be that good. I do claim that the strongest races are the ones that give the best results when you play as well as you are able to (which may not be as well as some people are able to) starting at XL:1. Whether there is a difference between the rankings for experienced and novice players is certainly an issue for consideration when you look at things like DD. I guess I evaluate from the standpoint of a mid-level player with access to a lot of information and I suspect most of the disparities even out by that point - i.e. I'm not sure the rankings are the same for me as they are for someone just starting but they're probably not too far off for me and elliptic even though he's unbelievably better than I am.

The position of Gr is certainly up for debate - I said I thought it was good, just not in the very top tier. I dunno, maybe Be is in fact good enough on the first few levels that the Gr AC starts to take over. Or maybe there are also reasons to think a bot could be different than a player - i.e. poison resist may be better unless the bot is specifically programmed to evaluate poisoners as a greater threat. And I don't know how many trials there were either with this bot versus others. But you could just as easily be right.

I mean I've seriously just never encountered this "wall."

Well that's strange.

Is it?

[Sandman25]

fwiw I experienced this Tr "wall" too, and even more problems with Og.
Yes, it's not correct to ignore early game difficulty but it's not correct to ignore late game difficulty ("good player has tools" blah-blah) either

[Klown]

I play a lot of Trolls and they all hit the wall around Lair.

[WalkerBoh]

Trolls hitting the wall in lair? Any troll should shred lair easily. Just keep training UC and fighting.

I don't think I've ever "hit the wall" with a troll. In my experience you always find dragon armour before HP and claws start being insufficient to just murder everything (i.e in late vaults/depths). I tend to have a problem more with ogres than trolls, perhaps because clubs need more investment.

The only two species I consistently hit a wall with are Dg and Fe. Demigod happens in late Lair/first rune depth if you fail to find any type of decent weapon (I play melee), and felid because you just don't have any hp ever and I get sick of tedious kiting.

[duvessa]

I've never encountered this "wall" either and furthermore I've never observed someone encountering it. As a troll you are guaranteed really high melee damage, and also above average HP. Several of my troll wins wore robes the whole game, and didn't feel "squishy."

[Sandman25]

I've never encountered this "wall" either and furthermore I've never observed someone encountering it. As a troll you are guaranteed really high melee damage, and also above average HP. Several of my troll wins wore robes the whole game, and didn't feel "squishy."

<offtopic> Was it no pickup conduct?
http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/minmay/morg ... 004324.txt
</offtopic>

[dck]

Drop what? (_ for help) (? for menu, Esc to quit)
You start removing your armour.
You continue taking off your +0 gold dragon armour.
You finish taking off your +0 gold dragon armour.
You drop a +0 gold dragon armour.
Drop what? (_ for help) (? for menu, Esc to quit)
You start removing your armour.
You continue taking off your +1 cap of intelligence.
You finish taking off your +1 cap of intelligence.

Spoiler: show

You feel stupid.

[Klown]

The Wall doesn't mean it turns into a mummy btw. It means you go from tabbing anything mindlessly to easily dead if you keep doing so. A noticeable difference occurs where you're seemingly invincible early game and have to actually start using your head mid-mid game.

[Magipi]

You drop a +0 gold dragon armour.

Well, wearing a +0 GDA in the endgame is strange to say the least.

[duvessa]

Yes, that was 100% spite-fueled.

[WalkerBoh]

The Wall doesn't mean it turns into a mummy btw. It means you go from tabbing anything mindlessly to easily dead if you keep doing so. A noticeable difference occurs where you're seemingly invincible early game and have to actually start using your head mid-mid game.

Then it seems to me that most of the chars I play hit a wall on turn 1, and then some of those just fall backwards off a cliff somewhere after Lair.

[duvessa]

You know Klown is joking right? I'm more interested in how Sandman25 defines this wall, since he apparently isn't.

[WalkerBoh]

Someone could tell a knock knock joke on this forum, and I probably still wouldn't know if they were serious or not.

[archaeo]

I mean, I think the "wall" is just an artifact of lots of players getting lulled into not thinking about playing the game when otabbing through the early levels with Troll and a few other species. It's a "wall" in the same way that you might hit a "wall" in Myst or something, finding yourself stuck on a problem despite it being totally solvable. It's the same thing as a new player who gets to Vaults/Depths with an SpEn and realizes that most of the tools they've abused thus far have become considerably less reliable.

Maybe that's just really obvious though and everybody already gets that.

[Sandman25]

You know Klown is joking right? I'm more interested in how Sandman25 defines this wall, since he apparently isn't.

Shoals were too hard for Og/Tr because of no flight and bad defenses vs javelins. Vaults/late Dungeon were hard because of low defenses and low MR. Obviously the god was not Trog.

[cerebovssquire]

Drop what? (_ for help) (? for menu, Esc to quit)
You start removing your armour.
You continue taking off your +0 gold dragon armour.
You finish taking off your +0 gold dragon armour.
You drop a +0 gold dragon armour.
Drop what? (_ for help) (? for menu, Esc to quit)
You start removing your armour.
You continue taking off your +1 cap of intelligence.
You finish taking off your +1 cap of intelligence.

Spoiler: show

You feel stupid.

dicks

[zardo]

Klown is joking? I used to think Klown was joking back in the "tavern bullies" thread when he was going on about bashing guides made by players with more wins than you that lead to 60 game streaks and the ToME community looking down on the Crawl elitists but since then I've started to think he's never joking