The topic pretty much says it all. To me, Orcs are the worst race in the game. It's not that they are ineffective - most of the primitive races, like Gnolls, Klackons and Lizardmen, are far less useful, either as capital races or as conquered subjects. The problem with Orcs is that they are just boring.

They have no special bonuses of any kind. Their citizens are purely average workers and farmers. They are not especially friendly or unfriendly with other races. Their military units do not have any particular advantages or disadvantages. They can build every single building in the game. Their only unique racial unit is the horribly bland Wyvern Riders. They might as well be called Generics - they have no distinguishing characteristics.

At least when I find Klackons, I'm excited. Not happy excited, but I at least care. I care enough to purge the bugs from the face of Arcanus, at the cost of significant fame. When I find Orcs, I just shrug. They neither help nor hinder me in any way.

Boring! Is it just me that feels this way? Or does it feel like Orcs were designed on a Friday afternoon when the team really wanted to take off for a long weekend?

Wut? Orcs are awesome! They can build everything (so no unrest problems) and have engineers!

Engineers aren't *THAT* rare. Not rare enough for "They have engineers" to be a justification for the existence of the Orcs. I'd rather have something interesting. Having a blank page as the race description just seems lazy. Well, I guess somebody scribbled "Wivern Riders" in the margins somewhere.

IIRC, their innate unrest levels are quite low - not quite as low as halflings, but lower than the vast majority of races, and they have a far greater range of unit and building types available than halflings do.

It might be worth going through the manual to see whether their units or structures have any other inherent perks - most races have unit-specific and structure-specific modifiers that aren't announced in the in-game descriptions.

As I recall, the main special trait of Orcs is that they can build all buildings, and get units out of all of them, and the get Engeineers (which can be a handy find if you're playing something like elves or nomads). But, like the OP, because they don't have any super-awesome units either early or late in their development (no elvish archers or nomadic horsebows, no paladins or... well, there's nothing better than paladins). So I pass them up every time, as well.

I disagree on the uselessness of the monstrous races. There's nothing quite like a small planet early game Gnoll curbstomp.

Yea other then being able to build every structure in the game there is nothing special about them when I was playing as humans I was able to steamroll over the orcs with the paladins (plus magic). Although you should not raze there cities.

Absolutely not. Razing is for cities of races that are an active obstruction, which would involve them having some distinguishing (albeit negative) characteristics. Since Orcs lack any distinguishing characteristics of any kind, it's pointless to raze their cities.

Well, maybe if those cities are on mithril or adamantium. It would be a shame to waste perfectly good mithril and adamantium on a city that cannot produce any interesting or really useful units. Still, most cities are just there to pay taxes, make trade goods, and farm up food to support your armies, and Orcs are fine for that. Just don't waste time and money building or maintaining any military buildings in their cities.

Still.

I can imagine it being fun playing a game as "Orks", saying things like "Zug zug" and "Needs more dakka" as I win despite their relative weakness. I can imagine them being awesome. Perhaps, if I can match them to a good wizard, that is enough.

What is strange to me is that they are, in fact, such a civilized race, in game. For a game that is all about fantasy archetypes, the Orcs seem, to me, to break type in a big way. Can anyone else think of what the developers were thinking? Perhaps some aspect of their "type" I am unfamiliar with?

What's fun about orcs?

When I play orcs, I pick the 'Rjak' picture, go all death books, and rename him 'Sauron'. I rename my home city 'Mordor'. Usually it doesn't take long before the hero 'Bhagtru' is available, and I rename him 'Grishnakh'. As soon as I have enough mana, I summon wraiths and go off in search of halfling villages to conquer. All the while colonizing everywhere with orc villages filled with halberdiers.

Die, Frodo, die! And your little gardener, too!

This was one of my few complaints about the differences between the races...
They all had different units and could build different buildings, but they are all city-building and -dwelling.
Always seemed to me that there ought to be something different about the way the Barbarians and Orcs lived (perhaps the Lizardmen, too).

Say, a population cap, or a quickly rising unhappiness-population correlation...
Perhaps no way to stop growth, so a village would have to periodically send out settlers to lose population.
Decrease the minimum city build distance, and give some sort of bonus to hunter/gatherer food production to allow these races to live off the land.
These nomadic races would then, instead of a few very large cities, would have a collection of villages, filling up every available niche of their territory.

It would add a wrinkle to the way you'd have to war with these enemies...

Having just double-checked the readme, I can confirm the plus that I suggested above: orcs share the lowest racial tension values with halflings; the only difference between the two is that halflings generate +1 unrest with barbarians while orcs generate +1 unrest with lizardmen.

There has to be one,they are the boring race,no biggy,you can play them for the win.
You can role play them for mean.
MoM goes the gamut, powerful races, weak races,boring races.Pick one that suits your mood.

I absolutely love Orcs. They're possibly the best slave race in the game. Every time you play as one of the highly uncivilized races (Gnolls, Klackons and Lizardmen - and you could maybe even lump in Barbarians), Orcs are fantastic to find nearby because they're a cakewalk to knock down (probably the worst race in the game as far as combat goes) and you can use them to generate all the income, food, and magic power that you need while your main units are off crushing stuff.

Unrest is rarely an issue with them since you'll probably be crapping out as many religious buildings as possible to generate more magical income.

I just played a game of Gnolls and imagine my delight when I found Tlaloc nearby leading some Orcs. A couple of wolf riders and hell hounds were enough to completely wipe him out, and now all of a sudden I've got a great economy and solid magic.

Personally I prefer the halflings as they are better farmers

The advantage Orcs have over Halflings as a slave race is that Orcs generate everything except military units. Halflings just generate food. At medium-high tech, even that advantage goes away, since Orcs can build Animists' Guilds.

Halflings are amazing for producing Slingers, but if you don't want a city to bother building any military units, and just want the food, money, and mana it produces, Orcs are better.

I still cannot imagine ever playing with Orcs as my capital race. They're boring and their mid game units are actually worse than average, since their cavalry lose first strike and their halberdiers lose negate first strike.