Draconians

**Draconian**

*The flying race in the game, Draconians can scout the map the fastest, and are great for strategies that rely on combat-cast spells while the enemy can't engage them. They are quite fragile in melee combat, but they can eliminate enemies before they can retaliate thanks to the combination of flying and breath attacks and have a small armor bonus to ensure they don't take too much damage from the remainder.*

*I've spent by far the most time playtesting this race, as flying is the most powerful racial special ability in the game, only comparable to the Troll's Regeneration. While having both breath attacks and extra armor sounds way too powerful, you have to consider what the other Myrran races are : Dark elves eliminate Draconians at range, Dwarves, Trolls and Beastmen have additional hit points so taking their units down with a weak breath attack is inefficient, and finally enemy Draconians will fly, so taking full advantage of Breath attacks will be difficult.*

*Nonetheless, Draconians are still a great race, due to the excellent early scouting ability a Draconian player can easily find unused spots to build cities on, exploit lairs and nodes, spot any weak points in enemy empires where an attack can be launched, and even dominate the naval game by eliminating enemy transports from the sea. Their bowmen needed special attention as shooting arrows has an entirely different meaning if your unit flies and is thus unreachable - sadly, after a lot of testing, it was proven they needed to be limited to only 4 ammo while others have 8. This does make sense though, as carrying arrows while flying is not so trivial as is for walking races.*

*Draconians play similarly to Lizardmen from the Arcanus plane, except they lack the ability to overwhelm others on their plane in direct military conflict, instead having a strong late game with full availability of economy buildings and even a power bonus from population. Draconians have relatively forgiving interracial unrest tables - I don't remember if there was a particular gameplay reason for that or it's simply for flavor, but only a few races are brave enough to rebel against the intelligent and powerful Draconian race.*

### Features

* **+60 Growth**
* **+0.5 Power per population**
* **Bowmen have less ammo and cost more.**

### Units

Spearmen, Swordsmen, Halberdiers, Trireme, Galley, Warship, Catapults, Magicians, Bowmen

+1 Armor, Flying, Fire Breath.

#### Unique Units

**Saints** (100, Shrine, Parthenon) : 2 Melee, 4 Magical Ranged (4 ammo), 5 Defense, 7 Resistance, 2 Movement, 5 Figures, 2 Health, Healing Spell, Healer, Purify

**Doom Drakes** (210, Stables, Armorer's Guild) : 10 Melee, 7 Fire Breath, 5 Defense, 7 Resistance, 5 Movement, 2 Figures, 10 Health, Cloak of Fear

**Air Ship** (200, Maritime Guild) : 5 Melee, 15 Ranged (10 ammo), 5 Defense, 8 Resistance, 4 Movement, 1 Figures, 20 Health.

*Doom Drakes and Air Ships offer extreme mobility and air superiority. Fear makes the drakes able to take out low resistance units without taking damage - slightly less useful on Myrror but excellent against Arcanus races. The new Saints are the unit which provides decent reliable flying ranged capacity or support for your melee armies against other wizards while having just enough durability to survive combat. While testing the race, it was found that such a unit was necessary, as Draconian units still lacked the versatility they needed - bowmen and magicians were too fragile while every other unit except the very late Air Ships was melee. Bowmen excel against neutral targets who don't cast spell against them, but they are very inefficient at attacking other wizards. So a new unit was needed to be able to actually take advantage of the flying superiority theme against enemy empires.*