Exploring the depths of the 94 million procedurally generated fantasy races in ‘Warsim: The Realm of Aslona’

Currently, there are exactly 94,887,852 possible fantasy races that can be spawned in the world of ‘Warsim: The Realm of Aslona’. I’m the game’s developer and in my thousands of hours of playtesting I’ve seen tens of thousands of random races and seen tons more from other players in the Warsim community.

After recently setting out to discover the strongest possible race out of the 94.8 million (The answer was Behemoth Arch-Demigods), I got more intrigued and wanted to explore a whole bunch of random races and document them.

Warsim is a kingdom ruling simulation game that tasks you with controlling a small kingdom in a lively procedurally generated world. In each game there are five foreign kingdoms made up of completely randomly generated races.

There aren’t many restrictions so some players might find their world filled with five savage kingdoms made up of unintelligent creatures unable to be communicated with. This would remove the diplomacy aspect of the game for those players (Although there are rare random events where savage races grow more civilised). Other players might find a kingdom with chaotic personality constantly turning from ally to foe with the passing years, or a kingdom of pacifists who will never attack anyone.

It is guaranteed to be a different experience with the independent kingdoms everytime as even if you looked at one random race per second, it would take you three years to see them all.

LETS EXPLORE

I started a new world and loaded up 5 completely random kingdoms, they were:

• Entoloma, a kingdom of 2816 Sunset Fungus Folk ruled by King Russlan the Wandered VI.
• Ashroot, a kingdom of 1792 Minor Ents ruled by King Treewood Great Bear.
• The Masterdom of the Ever-Young Boulder Faun, 1960 of them ruled by Great Master Laraak the Boar.
• The Opulent Clanlands, a kingdom of Moon Trows ruled by Chief Napki the White-Eyed.
• And finally, the Land of the Tormented Ice Half-Demons, 1330 of them ruled by Overseer Xzeferak the Frostbreather.

Unfortunately at the start of this game the Moon Trows and Tormented Ice Half-Demons were at War with me.

I ended up visiting King Treewood Great Bear to learn about the Minor Ents.

Treewood had a friendly personality, so when offering him a trade deal he gave me a big gift of gold.

Treewood wasn’t the only important member of the Kingdom of Ashroot, there were also 6 noble lord Minor Ents.

Seems like LeBronch the Griddler and Oakentendril Stonetosser are ones to watch as they aren’t happy with Treewoods rule.

Next up was the Ever-Young Boulder Faun. Here’s the race description;

‘Love, Void’ — Ever-Young Boulder Faun

These creatures looked the same as regular Faun but had shorter faces, and their ruler Great Master Laraak the Boar was strong but stupid. I double checked and they got a slight bonus of strength for living among boulders but a significant strength nerf for being Ever-young (which also made them slightly less civil).

For reference below are two additional procedurally generated Faun kingdoms, here I got Slime Faun and Inbred Faun. The Slime Faun have normal sized faces but they get green skin.

The Inbred Faun however lose 2 levels of civility, half their battlestrength, gain twice as much population and each of their characters will have a random part of their face removed which can result in some interesting combinations.

I tested this by assassinating 10 of their rulers and seeing who took over next, some of them were missing ears, some their eyes, and some their noses.

The Ever-Young Boulder Faun were weak and so I was able to try and make them a vassal state and they accepted.

The Tormented Ice Half-Demons intrigued me and I wanted to check their unit strength as they seemed tough. For reference the standard units of a human kingdom of Peasant (50 battlescore), Soldier (100 battlescore), and Knight (150 battlescore).

Turns out they weren’t half bad and would give any standard kingdom a run for their money.

Half-Demons are human and demon hybrids who look humanlike but tend to have red skin. Ice Half-Demons however have a pale icy skin.

Also in what is pure chance, the Ice Half-Demon leader has the Frostbreather suffix, also 358 Battlescore is quite something and would make Xzeferak someone to avoid if he wasn’t stupid.

I wasn’t as interested with the other two races left out of the five but I captured their leaders. King Russlan would beat Great Chief Napki in a fight but Xzeferak would beat them both with ease.

WHAT CONSTITUTES A RACE IN WARSIM?

This is something I’ve always thought important and aimed to deliver, each race feeling completely different to eachother. A race in the game constitutes the following data:

• Kingdom name and Type (i.e. The Lost Viceroyalty, ruled by a Viceroy instead of a king).
• Currency (with its own currency graphic), however, primitive and savage kingdoms might not have currencies.
• A ruler with a unique personality and stats (of course, these can be killed and replaced), and in the case of Ungovernable races the leaders are replaced annually.
• A government system, i.e. totalitarian, individual, feudal, etc. Some government systems don’t allow for nobles/lords, but those that do will spawn a lord/captain/warlord for each territory, each with their own information and opinions.
• A unique flag and kingdom colour.
• A skin colour relevant to their stats and core race identity (Orcs will be green, but Fire Orcs will be red-skinned, and Arctic Orcs will be blue-skinned).
• Each has a troop tree with three unit types each with their own combat score, and some even having combat abilities (such as resurrecting from the dead in combat, or letting out a warcry before battle).
• Each kingdom has its own laws and rules such as its own stance on slavery and sacrifices which will also effect its diplomacy with you. A race that’s against slavery will not make deals with your if you’re a slaver.

Here are a bunch of races with many of them having specific visual traits affecting their faces based on their race prefix, for example the ruler of the sightless bogeymen has no eyes, the mini-cthuul is visible smaller than the Swamp cthuul and so on.

So halfway through writing this article I tried to reflect and think, what would I want to see in an article like this if I was reading it, and the answer was… the content of course. It’s not just some math and a little bit of background, but seeing what is actually possible through the system! So without further ado, here’s some random race generation-y goodness.

Of course, each of those prefixes has effects beyond just aesthetics. I just think it’s super cool to see all of these weird random combos.

As a developer seeing these random mashed up possible races is super exciting. To make the face system I wrote thousands upon thousands of lines of different face parts over the span of years. Prior to the race prefix system things were very basic, each of the 50 or so races at the time felt different but for me they were predictable, and for any player who played long enough they would become familiar and no longer a mystery. With this system the vast majority of what I see is something I never imagined, planned, or designed, it’s something new in a game I know from top to bottom.

Anyway, time for more examples!

Here we see an example of 5 completely different races of orcs spawned in a world. You can see that by the Battlescore of Sultan Yurnakh, that his kingdom of ‘Blood-Orcs’ are likely the toughest of the 5 orc groups. Each leaders stats are based on their races base stats along with their individual personal bonuses. While they look normal, Reaver orcs will raid you each turn like a bandit faction, and Strange Orcs will always have strange and weird customs in diplomacy, and last but not least Ice Orcs will have massive buffs if they happen to fight during a snowstorm or any other kind of cold weather but have huge debuffs if fighting in high heat weather.

Here we can see a double effect in place on the Baby Volcanic Minotaars, they have a smaller face and it’s red due to the volcanic modifier. Lucas Bogbreath the deformed vampire master looks very irritated. Sidenote, Inbred Arch-Trolls are probably one of my favourite random races ever!

Green Slime Corpselords, Short Childlike Psions, Grey coloured Metal Bloodlings, Blue Water Ghouls; each of them different to their basic racial counterparts!

THE RACE SYSTEM BEYOND THE GRAPHICS

Not to get too hung up on the varying graphics and looks each race has, there are also many features and functions of race prefixes that lay beyond just the look of them, such as:

• Doomed (A doomed race will have a set time in the future that their kingdom will collapse. This date can be found on the doomstone, a little stone tucked away in the games exploration system.)
• Demonic (Demonic races will assist in bringing the demon horde, the games end-game faction, to the world sooner and stronger.)
• Ungovernable (Ungovernable races are hard to deal with, as each year they kill their ruler. Each ruler will have a different personality so it will be hard to find consistency with any diplomatic action with them.)
• Hermit (Hermit kingdoms will be significantly poorer and a little weaker in game. Watch out Hermit Gnomes, I’m gonna take those 3 gold coins from you!)
• Raider (Raider races will act just like bandit groups in game, they will rob you and others of your gold each year unless you are friends with them. So, beware of Raider Orcs or Reaving Trolls.)
• Stupid (Stupid races are very dumb, diplomatically talking to them is a different game, and sometimes much easier.)
• Deatheater/Souleater (These are one of the toughest races in game depending on what race gets the prefix added to them. Deatheater or Souleater races will gain 1 point of combat skill per 100 kills made by members of their race, that’s not so bad, but over the course of a big war that can add up. I once had a world with a giant horde of Deatheater Goblins, they went from having 80 Battlescore per unit to over 5000 by the time I was able to crush them, it got desperate and I almost lost control. There are also likely some combinations of other prefixes with the Deatheater prefix that might be basically impossible… so have fun!)
• Sentinel (Sentinel races protect a special artifact, and they are a bit tougher in order to protect it. If you destroy them the artifact is yours, but get there first or it’ll be lost forever!)
• Chaotic/Psychotic (These chaotic or psychotic races will randomly change their relation with each faction in the world every year. One turn they might love you, the next they will attack you with all their fury, if they last long enough they will be hated by all.)
• Chanting (This is a weird one but weird features are encouraged in Warsim. Chanting races will chant a strange and deep chant before battle as your army approaches them to try and spook you.)
• Laughing (Similar to Chanting races, Laughing races will let out a bunch of creepy laughs as you approach their lands ready for a fight. Can you hold your nerve?)
• Mercantile (Mercantile races will always be up for trade, and will try to make money out of you anyway they can. You want to visit their lands and have a look at their kingdoms crown… it’ll cost ya.)
• Space (If you get a space race, the story is that they’ve come from somewhere else and are trapped in your world. At some point in game this kindom might blast off into space on some strange levitating metal structures and be gone from your game forever.)
• Void (A race with the void prefix will be stronger than usual but that’s not it’s main draw. With the void prefix it’s possible that one of the kingdoms 3 special buildings will be something called a Void gate. If this happens then at some point in the game a unique faction will spawn out of the gate and wreak havok on your world.)
• Academic (This race will be significantly smarter than others and will have a giant towering library you can visit.)
• Harmless/Pacifist/Gentle (You can probably guess what these prefixes do, races with these prefixes will not attack you even if they despise you, they will defend themselves however.)
• Resurrecting (Resurrecting races units will be able to possibly spring back from death mid-battle and keep on fighting, much to the dismay of their enemies.)

Those are just a handful (albeit some of the best ones) out of hundreds of prefixes, which each have different benefits and changes they make to each race!

And so that's a little delve into the wild world of Warsim races!

Thank you for reading!