This.

Specifically, when you're a low-tech race, you're going to need magic. Lots of magic buildings. Low-tech races can't provide that - but Orcs can. And they can provide the income to pay off those maintenance costs - with change.

Don't get me wrong - I still hate Orcs. They're incredibly boring and suffer a handicap that is totally unnecessary. As a capital race, I'd actually put them as practically the worst in the game, hanging out with the Klackons. They're just too lacking in any actual distinguishing features to bother wiping them out the way I prefer to do to the Klackons.

Orcs: so boring their cities aren't even worth razing.

What I like best about the Orcs in MoM is that they're not the High Men.

Seriously, when was the last time you ran into a baseline race in an RPG that wasn't labeled 'Human'? Average stats, jacks-of-all-trades, can do it all but not especially well? MicroProse could've called these guys the Low Men, and none of us would've batted an eyelash.

I think that naming them Orcs instead was one of the coolest things that the developers could've done. It's only a guess, but it wouldn't surprise me if they'd been influenced by having read Mary Gentle's fantasy novel Grunts.

I was all set to agree with your excellent point, 2HS - the "Orcs" here really are a basic human race renamed. "Low Men" is about right.

But then you had to mention that appalling, irritating novel. I'm gnashing my teeth just thinking of it. But I suppose there's a clear connection betwixt novel & game - both involve things that are orcs in nothing but name (in the novel's case, after the supposed 'curse' that gives them advantages but no disadvantages, while conveniently erasing the disadvantages they started with). Actually, one could say the whole novel was an excercise in bad game balance.

Ah, I'm sorry you obviously didn't enjoy that book as much as I did. I took ti for what it was worth: an ironic trope-bending fantasy romp, told from an unusual perspective, similar to Gregory Maguire's Wicked and Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister.

And a halfhearted vote of support is still one step up from no support at all. ;)

Oh, there's no doubt my loathing toward Grunts is deep-rooted and largely irrational. To be as fair as I can be, I did like it's portrayal of heroes as dolts with divine favour. But even so, it was the first book I tossed out before finishing (though I retrieved it and did make myself slog through the rest).

Back on topic, it really does seem MOM Orcs were just humans given a new name, and while a few posters have rightly pointed out their strange disadvantages in cavalry & pikemen, I think it's this incongruity that is most off-putting. Ask anyone about orcs, even if they're not devoted Tolkienites, and they'd never suggest the race is a civilized builder of cathedrals and advanced cities. MOM is a wonderful game, but it's not one that gives a deep background to its races, so it depends on tropes, rather than breaking molds. This works well for all races (except perhaps the troll cathedrals, but there the race needs the power boost), yet orcs stand out as a jarring exception. The break from orc "norms" is unearned.

Maybe the developers felt they could use . . . More Dakka!

On a somewhat more serious note: as more of a Trekkie than a Tolkienite, I've always drawn a parallel between Orcs and Klingons; and Klingons are very much capable of building advanced cities and cathedrals. Of course, they probably also eschewed pikemen as somehow not being honorable enough: after all, how impressive is a sharpened stick against the fury of a rampaging bat'leth?

I'm playing an Orc game right now, and actually find the Wyvern Riders pretty spectacular. 2 figures with a strength 6 poison attack deals pretty serious damage to most non-summoned units. Plus, 3 flying movement makes them good for scouting around and taking down isolated groups of units. They eat dragon turtles for breakfast, and can hop over city walls to demolish anything inside. Their main weakness is poison-immune fantastic creatures, so they're not great for dungeon diving, but they shine almost everywhere else.