Poll: morale and routing

[magnate]

My first poll, following on from interesting suggestions in the Dammit thread (thanks to Panther and Sheap). This may take some editing to get right ....

[Esben Mose Hansen]

SC have plenty of advantages already, including low upkeep. No reason to make them even stronger. Now, if we take something and give something else, it's different. Such as greatly increasing the disadvantage of being surrounded. (-1 of each on front, -2 for each on flank, -4 for each on rear.).

[Boron]

Esben Mose Hansen said:
SC have plenty of advantages already, including low upkeep. No reason to make them even stronger. Now, if we take something and give something else, it's different. Such as greatly increasing the disadvantage of being surrounded. (-1 of each on front, -2 for each on flank, -4 for each on rear.).



battlemages would become MUCH stronger too .
they would be the real winners imho :

i would then only BUILD battlemages + scs to guard the battlemages .

this would be boring http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif


the disadvantage of being surrounded is already high enough . 24 vampires can sorround 1 SC . No sc survives this .
with 11 attack for vampires about 5-15 should hit each turn depending on luck .
because of their ap attack they do normally always damage + fatigue which lowers defense again .

same with ghosts .

[magnate]

Surely battlemages would be almost the least affected? If something can rout a battlemage's escort, wouldn't the mage fail a morale check? They tend to have much lower morale than SCs. If they passed, they might get killed anyway.

Esben, I don't see this as making SCs any "stronger" - anything which can kill them will still kill them. It just removes a mechanic which hampers them unjustifiably. If you feel that this mechanic is necessary because they are too powerful, that's something slightly different. If you want to argue that SCs should be toned down, I won't disagree with you. But I still think the routing mechanic should be changed. It just doesn't make any sense that any commander routs without failing its own morale check.

CC

[Pickles]

The same morale issues should also apply to troops. As a long term miniatures gamer it used to confuse me to see a few archers standing shooting when hordes of other troops went fleeing past but morale is only taken on a "squad" by squad basis not on an army level. On the whole the basic game systems are pretty simplistic but they do a job. The only real "bug" is that one point of PD is a liability if there is an SC, for example, around (as other situations can be worked around).

I would prefer a more sophisticated army morale system such that the morale of all units (leaders or "squads") was effected by things other than just their own casualties
(& eg fear spells). This would subsume the current quirks so that a unit would check morale if it's leader was killed or if another unit broke or was destroyed & heroes would be just another type of unit. There could even be more than 2 morale states, fine & routing could be joined by "shaken" -2 to att & def maybe.

However that would require a rebalancing of the game & is more a Dom3 wish list item rather than a patch issue so I am happier with the current system that some attempt to paper over a few cracks.

Pickles

[Arryn]

magnate said:
It just doesn't make any sense that any commander routs without failing its own morale check.

Sure it does. It's *common* sense. How many officers would stick around to face an enemy, alone, after their troops have fled? Answer: none that are sane.

[Arryn]

Pickles said:
I would prefer a more sophisticated army morale system such that the morale of all units (leaders or "squads") was effected by things other than just their own casualties
(& eg fear spells). This would subsume the current quirks so that a unit would check morale if it's leader was killed or if another unit broke or was destroyed & heroes would be just another type of unit. There could even be more than 2 morale states, fine & routing could be joined by "shaken" -2 to att & def maybe.

However that would require a rebalancing of the game & is more a Dom3 wish list item rather than a patch issue so I am happier with the current system that some attempt to paper over a few cracks.

I, too, would prefer a more miniatures-like morale system, but that -- as you say -- would entail a major rewrite of the game.

[magnate]

Arryn said:

magnate said:
It just doesn't make any sense that any commander routs without failing its own morale check.

Sure it does. It's *common* sense. How many officers would stick around to face an enemy, alone, after their troops have fled? Answer: none that are sane.



I'm getting quite frustrated here - you are just not getting the point. For a 10hp, 10 morale human commander yes, I agree with you, he won't hang around when all his men are killed. He will fail a morale check and flee.

For a 200hp, 30 morale uber-beast, it's a different matter. What do they care if the infantry or archers or whoever they are get mown down (probably trampled by their own fleeing mammoths)? Unless they are sorely wounded and fatigued themselves, they wouldn't rout. In a fantasy game, that's "*common* sense".

I'm not saying that anything major needs to change, just a morale check instead of an auto-rout.

CC

[atul]

magnate said:
For a 200hp, 30 morale uber-beast, it's a different matter. What do they care if the infantry or archers or whoever they are get mown down (probably trampled by their own fleeing mammoths)? Unless they are sorely wounded and fatigued themselves, they wouldn't rout. In a fantasy game, that's "*common* sense".



Hm. Pick a movie, preferably featuring the most fearsome weapon of destruction known to Hollywood, Arnold the Brute. Mr Stallone probably applies too.

If he's fighting overpowering enemy with some companions, the minute the wimps flee Arnie follows to cover them or drag their bodies to safety.

After an emotional scene when companions preferably die, our hero embarks on a quest of revenge, packing the biggest guns available in the movie's universe. Eventually alone kicking butt of the army previously so overwhelming against the company of wimps.

So, it makes perfect sense that SCs with troops rout as the troops rout. And don't claim you haven't been brainwashed by Hollywood, everyone with an access to Internet has been.

:p

[Gandalf Parker]

I think I will wait and see if the dev's pipe in. I thought that was how it was done now. The commander has a morale setting, the routing of his troops is harmful to his roll but not absolute, and there is always the items which can boost morale.

[magnate]

If only that were the case. I've seen a lot of undamaged morale 30 ice devils rout when a single PD archer gets killed - whatever the negative modifier for watching your comrades die is, it can't be that big. I'm inclined to believe those who tell me that it's an automatic rout (and there's no distinction between his troops and other commanders' troops).

CC

[johan osterman]

Gandalf Parker said:

I think I will wait and see if the dev's pipe in. I thought that was how it was done now. The commander has a morale setting, the routing of his troops is harmful to his roll but not absolute, and there is always the items which can boost morale.



When all squads are killed or routed all remaining commanders flee, unless berserk etc.

[The_Tauren13]

Esben Mose Hansen said:
SC have plenty of advantages already, including low upkeep. No reason to make them even stronger. Now, if we take something and give something else, it's different. Such as greatly increasing the disadvantage of being surrounded. (-1 of each on front, -2 for each on flank, -4 for each on rear.).


OK here's a crazy idea that the devs are free to ignore http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

use esben's suggestion about being surrounded, making SCs weaker. then, bring back the old dom I attack commanders battle option, to make battlemages weaker. then, poof, typical recruitable troops become more useful, and maybe the AI's massed armies strat might actually work.

[Arryn]

The_Tauren13 said:
use esben's suggestion about being surrounded, making SCs weaker. then, bring back the old dom I attack commanders battle option, to make battlemages weaker. then, poof, typical recruitable troops become more useful, and maybe the AI's massed armies strat might actually work.

Since the devs created Dom 2 primarily as a MP game, I seriously doubt that they'd bring back a command that would dramatically alter MP play just to attempt to fix a SP issue, and one they don't seem to consider much of an issue at that.

You've made an interesting suggestion. It just has about as much of a chance of ever happening as we have of ever seeing a major UI change. Snowballs in Abysia, anyone? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/skull.gif

[Cainehill]

magnate said:

Arryn said:

magnate said:
It just doesn't make any sense that any commander routs without failing its own morale check.

Sure it does. It's *common* sense. How many officers would stick around to face an enemy, alone, after their troops have fled? Answer: none that are sane.



I'm getting quite frustrated here - you are just not getting the point. For a 10hp, 10 morale human commander yes, I agree with you, he won't hang around when all his men are killed. He will fail a morale check and flee.

For a 200hp, 30 morale uber-beast, it's a different matter. What do they care if the infantry or archers or whoever they are get mown down (probably trampled by their own fleeing mammoths)? Unless they are sorely wounded and fatigued themselves, they wouldn't rout. In a fantasy game, that's "*common* sense".




Gee - I just lost a 200 HP, 30 morale uber-beast pretender, because after all the infantry and cavalry was mowed down, the _archers_ behind him were still plinking away at Man's heavily armored knights. Said knights surrounded uber-beast and lanced him into a grave in 2 turns, tops.

I'd say that yes, the SCs _should_ still pay attention to their troops, mostly.

IMO, it's only that summoned creatures shouldn't count / matter for making commanders rout, whether it be the Moloch's imps, or the single phantasmal warrior one of the mages stupidly summons after hir script runs out.

That, and possibly some changes to what happens when a commander dies in an all-commander force - force a morale check on each death, since if there are nothing but commanders then some friendly casualties might be expected.

[tinkthank]

Although I agree with Magnate and his description (I think the vision is: Big, bad, ugly Beast has his "army" of rabble which would just as easily jump on a sword and slay itself as run into enemy ranks -- Tolkien did some good descriptions of the Commander/Grunt psychology here), I think the current system must remain as it is until Dom3 comes around for balance reasons. If there were no autoroute, it would make certain scenarios (e.g. Wrathful Skies, Big Bad SC) overwhelmingly powerful, and that is a Bad Thing, since everyone would just rush to duplicate some form of overwhelmingly powerful scenario and the whole game would become a cookie-cutter boredom producer.

[The_Tauren13]

well it already seems to me that the game is nothing but a race to the ice devils/ air queens...

but im just a n00b

[The Panther]

Arryn said:

magnate said:
It just doesn't make any sense that any commander routs without failing its own morale check.

Sure it does. It's *common* sense. How many officers would stick around to face an enemy, alone, after their troops have fled? Answer: none that are sane.



Actually, this is precisely the point. What sane commander would go ALONE into a battle anyway? The game simply should not reward a lone commander like it does now and heavily penalize the commander with a few troops or PD. It seems so very wrong to me. If anything, the game OUGHT to penalize the lone commander quite severly. Sending in a commander without an army is a somewhat warped and totally non-intuitive strategy that works only because of the current routing algorithm.

So, when the commander's troops are gone, no matter whether he brought any along or not at the start of the battle, he should rout fairly easily. But he should rout on his own, not because one measly point of PD has disapeared. The absence of troops should be nothing more than another strong factor in whether or not he will rout. Have him subtract 5-10 morale points or something like that because he has no army, regardless of whether it was killed in battle or he had none to begin with.

The current routing algortihm seems busted to me, despite the fact that people have figured a way to take advantage of it. Of course people want the status quo so they can continue to use the cheap flying SC strategy and not have to bother with the mundane and expensive thing like having an actual army.

This is just another of the reasons the AI plays poorly. It tries to build a real army, which does not work overly well against the lone SC attack, especially the SC pretender strategy.

[Morphem]

I completely agree with Panther here.
As a TBS game vet, thats the only flaw buggin me with Dom2 so far.

Lets have 2 exactly similar SC facing each other :
- one is alone
- one is grouped with some small unit(s)

The one with extra small units will be the one routed.
(as soon as the small unit gets killed)

I can't see any common or roleplaying sense here.

[Boron]

Morphem said:

I completely agree with Panther here.
As a TBS game vet, thats the only flaw buggin me with Dom2 so far.

Lets have 2 exactly similar SC facing each other :
- one is alone
- one is grouped with some small unit(s)

The one with extra small units will be the one routed.
(as soon as the small unit gets killed)

I can't see any common or roleplaying sense here.



if you exchange though some small units with some good units the one with the good units wins .

and a lone sc has no chance against an antisc-sc or against a sc killer brigade .
while the sc with troops has good chances to win against them .

[Morphem]

[i]Boron said:
[if you exchange though some small units with some good units the one with the good units wins .

and a lone sc has no chance against an antisc-sc or against a sc killer brigade .
while the sc with troops has good chances to win against them .
/i]



That has nothing to do with the fact that a grouped SC is handicaped versus a lone similar one.

I even thought it was a bug when i first started playing.

[The Panther]

Boron said:
if you exchange though some small units with some good units the one with the good units wins .

and a lone sc has no chance against an antisc-sc or against a sc killer brigade .
while the sc with troops has good chances to win against them .



Boron, I can't help but feel that you have totally missed the point here. Your explanations clearly say to me that you have figured out how to use this odd inconsistency correctly. I already knew that, of course. Many others have done the same as you and figured out how to exploit this error.

The point is that ANY SC with ANY troop OUGHT to be superior to the identical SC without troops. Period!

But troops actually hurt your chances, not help. It does not matter that you or me or anyone else has figured how to get around this weird thing but using non-routing troops or power summons or whatever, it still stands as a violation of a fundamental axiom of war. Superior forces should win more often than lose, not the converse. This is something they taught me when I was an officer in the United States Navy and certainly rings true.

And MOST ESPECIALLY when the superior force is primarily caused by being home and in the presence of Province Defense.

[Huzurdaddi]

Esben Mose Hansen said:
SC have plenty of advantages already, including low upkeep. No reason to make them even stronger. Now, if we take something and give something else, it's different. Such as greatly increasing the disadvantage of being surrounded. (-1 of each on front, -2 for each on flank, -4 for each on rear.).



Well I have to say that you hit it on the head.

[magnate]

Just one thing is confusing me, which is what Cainehill said about battlefield summons. I thought when phantasmal warriors, or false horrors or whatever - when they got killed, the mage just carried on as if nothing had happened. I didn't think it caused routing like with troops brought in at the start of the battle. Maybe I've not been watching carefully, but I thought I'd seen my mages carry on casting.

CC
P.S. Where did I get three stars from?? I had none yesterday, one this morning and three now. Does having an Online spat with someone half a world away get you stars??

[Arryn]

magnate said:
P.S. Where did I get three stars from?? I had none yesterday, one this morning and three now. Does having an Online spat with someone half a world away get you stars??

Apparently so. In the real world, having a spat risks *seeing* stars.

[Boron]

The Panther said:

Boron said:
if you exchange though some small units with some good units the one with the good units wins .

and a lone sc has no chance against an antisc-sc or against a sc killer brigade .
while the sc with troops has good chances to win against them .



Boron, I can't help but feel that you have totally missed the point here. Your explanations clearly say to me that you have figured out how to use this odd inconsistency correctly. I already knew that, of course. Many others have done the same as you and figured out how to exploit this error.

The point is that ANY SC with ANY troop OUGHT to be superior to the identical SC without troops. Period!

But troops actually hurt your chances, not help. It does not matter that you or me or anyone else has figured how to get around this weird thing but using non-routing troops or power summons or whatever, it still stands as a violation of a fundamental axiom of war. Superior forces should win more often than lose, not the converse. This is something they taught me when I was an officer in the United States Navy and certainly rings true.

And MOST ESPECIALLY when the superior force is primarily caused by being home and in the presence of Province Defense.


ok it is perhaps not really realistic .
but it is needed for gamebalance .

just see it this way as somebody wrote already:
an elite lone warrior like "rambo" doesn't withdraw until he is killed or captured .
so the lone sc .

if "rambo" has some friends with him ( the archers lol ) and they are wounded he withdraws to help them .

i have now gotten your point and you are right it isn't logical but it stands at least in the manual http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.
and i think it is needed for balance too because otherwise i wouldn't use any troops at all expect freespawns anymore probably .
given how useless most national troops + lower summons already are taking away the role of route preventer from them makes them really useless .
i wouldn't even need them for sieging because my antisc-scs would have gate cleavers for that .

[Huzurdaddi]

getting back to Esben Mose Hansen's idea it would be really nice if the numbers were configurable at game launch.

So if we had the following configurable parms:

FrontFighterAdjustment=
FlankFighterAdjustment=
ReadFighterAdjustment=

That would be quite cool. It would allow people to specify ( basically ) if they wanted SC's to be then end goal in their game or not.

[Cheezeninja]

The Panther said:

Boron said:
if you exchange though some small units with some good units the one with the good units wins .

and a lone sc has no chance against an antisc-sc or against a sc killer brigade .
while the sc with troops has good chances to win against them .



Boron, I can't help but feel that you have totally missed the point here. Your explanations clearly say to me that you have figured out how to use this odd inconsistency correctly. I already knew that, of course. Many others have done the same as you and figured out how to exploit this error.

The point is that ANY SC with ANY troop OUGHT to be superior to the identical SC without troops. Period!

But troops actually hurt your chances, not help. It does not matter that you or me or anyone else has figured how to get around this weird thing but using non-routing troops or power summons or whatever, it still stands as a violation of a fundamental axiom of war. Superior forces should win more often than lose, not the converse. This is something they taught me when I was an officer in the United States Navy and certainly rings true.

And MOST ESPECIALLY when the superior force is primarily caused by being home and in the presence of Province Defense.



I think the point Boron is trying to make is that the gameplay is balanced, which imo is way more important than any perceived 'realism'. Yes its very quirky that PD can often be a detriment in a high powered SC fight, but this also causes to you to think about your army composition alot more instead of just throwing everything you possibly can at the enemy. You have to consider whether or not your chaff is going to be able to hang with the big boys the duration of the battle and whether or not the big boys should just go in alone. In the end your playing a game whose prime goal is to entertain, not accuratly and scientificaly represent mythical battles.

Bottom line for me, its quirky and i'd like to see it change, but its by no means a priority. I'd much rather see the dev's spend their time adding more content to the game than fixing percieved irrationalities.

[Morphem]

Cheezeninja said:

I think the point Boron is trying to make is that the gameplay is balanced, which imo is way more important than any perceived 'realism'.



Thats the whole point,
gameplay is - unbalanced - because of the current routing system , especially as the AI fails to work around it like players do.

This clearly shows that it's a very basic flaw, and not any perceived irrationality.

[Esben Mose Hansen]

Another, simple idea that would fix this problem: Make armies without troops rout always, without exception. Would make SC use so much more ... interesting. And summoned troops, single point of PD etc. would no longer be a liability, which I agree makes little sense.

[Arryn]

Esben Mose Hansen said:
Another, simple idea that would fix this problem: Make armies without troops rout always, without exception. Would make SC use so much more ... interesting. And summoned troops, single point of PD etc. would no longer be a liability, which I agree makes little sense.

An exception should be made, if IW were to do this, for lone pretenders. Gods should not be subject to the same rules as mortals.

[magnate]

Arryn said:

magnate said:
P.S. Where did I get three stars from?? I had none yesterday, one this morning and three now. Does having an Online spat with someone half a world away get you stars??

Apparently so. In the real world, having a spat risks *seeing* stars.



Hmm. Down to two stars this morning. What's going on?? I thought it was like the ranks, in that they accumulated over time or something, but obviously not. Is somebody rating my Posts somewhere?

Anyway, good morning Arryn - how are you today?

CC

[Esben Mose Hansen]

Arryn said:An exception should be made, if IW were to do this, for lone pretenders. Gods should not be subject to the same rules as mortals.


Why not? How can the god do battle without the support of his believers? Without belief the god is nothing http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Besides, making it so for everybody makes it more even, and SC (including Gods) will still be important... they just need to lug around an army of sufficient size, instead of being one-man-armies.

[Arryn]

Esben Mose Hansen said:
Why not? How can the god do battle without the support of his believers?

It worked well enough for Thor. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/firedevil.gif

A SC pretender *is* a one-"man" army. He/she/it shouldn't require help from mere mortals to crush small numbers of those opposed to his/her/its aims. It's a truly weak deity that cannot strike down even a single mortal without the need for there to be some friendly witness to the event. Such a pathetic deity wouldn't deserve to continue to exist. How laughable would be "Fear me, for I am all-powerful ... um, wait, where's my adoring audience?"

You are using the Dominions game mechanic that a pretender must have dominion to continue to exist as a justification for battlefield behavior (namely routing). The two (need for dominion and a god's morale/routing behavior) do not, of necessity, need to be connected.

Last, but not least, exempting SC deities from rules changes that would affect lesser SCs would preserve the thematic aspects of mighty Titans, Wyrms, and Dragons able to lay waste to most opponents, as is seen in myth and legend. From a thematic standpoint, it's absurd that a demi-divine dragon couldn't face down some impudent human knight-wannabe and his entourage of swordsmen without help. "I'm sorry, I cannot roast all of you to cinders now because my lackey is missing. Come back later."

[The_Tauren13]

i agree with everything esben has said here. either of his suggestions sound good to me ( the less SC use, the more fun the game is for me. but thats just me )

[Boron]

Esben Mose Hansen said:
Another, simple idea that would fix this problem: Make armies without troops rout always, without exception. Would make SC use so much more ... interesting. And summoned troops, single point of PD etc. would no longer be a liability, which I agree makes little sense.


and what would you do with immortality ?

it would strengthen the vq again to what she was pre 2.12 .

and wraith lords + vampire lords would be even more liked scs too .
furthermore sg ermor with their summonable immortal wraith centurion etc. leaders would get an unfair edge too .


if you would remove the fight to death with immortality rule it would be bad too because this would be very strange and not logic .

immortality is though a bit too strong perhaps .
i think it is not possible but perhaps you could add the following mechanism :
each time an immortal leader dies he has to pay 10 blood slaves or he dies .
immortal units get counters .
when they accumulate 5 counters they are too weak to revive again .

[The Panther]

Or even better yet, each time an immortal dies, it loses say 20 random points of strength/attack/defense/MR/HP/etc, thus making it weaker and weaker each time it spawns after death. Vampires themselves should also be subject to this weakening effect. By the time your VQ has died 5 times or so, it would thus become permanenty weak and die even faster, just like the mortal pretender who has lost all its magic and is covered with afflictions from too many battles. As for the vampires, when they drop to 0 hit points in the next spawn, they would be permanantly dead.

I agree that immortality is too strong, especially given the self healing of afflictions.

And I must say that I REALLY like the Moses Hansen idea that any commander automatically routes with no troops. This would be a piece of cake for the devs to implement also, by just simply removing the artifical construct where a lone commander is treated diferently than commanders with troops.

But immortality would be the exception to this auto-rout rule, just as it is now. Though this might make immortality even MORE stronger, which would be a very bad side effect.

[Esben Mose Hansen]

I briefly considered the immortal problem. But since immortals CAN be fought effectively, since it is limited to positive dominions, I didn't find it too problematic. Also, the immortal looses all those items when they die, which also helps. If it is still a problem, make the immortal gain a few afflictions when they die. Yes, they will heal, but it takes time, and that is enough in my opinion --- If the SC have to sit around and wait for 5 or 10 turns before being usable again, plus having to pay 50+ gems in items, a price has been paid. If we're going to play REALLY tough immortals could use a magic path point or two, but I think this is going over the top. And more work to develop.

To Arryns comment I can only say: My idea is consistent with existing design, it makes sort of sense, and it will weaken those SC pretenders, so that we may actually see human pretenders again. I mean, when did you Last encounter one in MP? I have never seen one --- except in games where human pretenders were forced.

Plus, the idea is simple to implemented, right devs? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Sheap]

This seems like it is turning into "I want immortality nerfed because it annoys me." If it were really that strong, everyone would play immortal pretenders, but in reality other than Abysia, Caelum and Ermor, it is rare.

Immortal pretenders pay, on average, roughly 70 points for the privilege. The fact that Abysia, Caelum and Ermor have more points to spend and can afford it is certainly not a coincidence. Immortal non-pretender units cost 50-100% more than comparable non-immortals. Not to mention that immortals that die still lose all their equipment (except for pretenders, this is often more valuable than the unit itself), can still get afflictions (whether they die or not), which don't heal right away, still lose the battle, and get sent back to the home province, which may or may not be conveniently located. And if you're not fighting in friendly dominion, immortality doesn't do anything except raise your price.

In reality, Esben's proposal doesn't fix anything, it just creates another problem that obscures the current one by forcing it on everyone. Instead of having strange routing behavior, we will have problems of "my SC should be able to fight this force by himself, but he can't because he hasn't brought his militia with him." And then anti-SC combat tactics, instead of revolving around defeating the SC, will instead revolve around killing his scrubs so he has to flee. This is not an improvement.

Edit: On the subject of human pretenders, the reason we don't see them in MP is because the Ghost King is too good. For a seven path rainbow mage, the GK costs you about 90-110 points over a human in chassis and path costs, has 2 points more dominion, and starts with death magic. The dominion and death magic alone nearly make up for this increased cost, and you've then basically got the GK's exceptional fighting skills for free, instead of legendary human wimpiness. From a pure power standpoint the only "human" that competes with the GK is the Skratti. For humans to be viable in MP, their "secondary skills" (gem generation, research bonus, whatever) need to be a LOT stronger, or they need to get significantly more starting magic (I'm talking 3-4 points in a single path here), or the GK needs to get worse, or some combination of these. Strong starting magic in particular paths could also help distinguish humans from each other.

With the GK out of the equation, humans become the only way to gain magical diversity, and become a lot more interesting. Although whether their searching/forging ability makes up for the lack of a good starting (titan/undead) SC, is debatable.

[Huzurdaddi]

This seems like it is turning into "I want immortality nerfed because it annoys me." If it were really that strong, everyone would play immortal pretenders, but in reality other than Abysia, Caelum and Ermor, it is rare.




That's not how I read it. I don't know how you could read it that way.

It's clearly a thread about nerfing SC's and the way some people want to do that is by changing the moral system slighty. The problem that follows is immortal units do not flee and so they may have to be special cased.

The people who want to nerf SC's via this method should also figure out what they are going to do about the beserk ability since the clear workaround to the SC retreating is to manufacture a suituation in which he goes beserk ASAP.

[Sheap]

Esben is not saying that I think, but Panther and Boron are, and I want to take a stand in favor of immortality being just fine the way it is before the anti-immortality bandwagon gets rolling http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[The_Tauren13]

if it does start rolling ima jump on it in a new york minute

i think esben's suggestion rules:

ok so you have:
case 1: troops and commanders - all commanders die - troops rout
case 2: troops only - troops rout at start of battle
case 3: troops and commanders - all troops die - commanders rout
so why not case 4: commanders only - commanders rout at start of battle

[Arryn]

Huzurdaddi said:
The problem that follows is immortal units do not flee and so they may have to be special cased.

You left out "in friendly dominion", an important distinction. They can rout outside of it. Their morale might make it difficult, but it's not impossible.

But I'm quibbling. Your post was very good and raised an excellent point re: berserk, a trait that almost everyone discussing SCs has been ignoring. I keep mentioning the bloody Berserker Pelt and folks keep sidestepping the issue.

Thanks for bringing it back to the fore.

[Arryn]

Sheap said:
This seems like it is turning into "I want immortality nerfed because it annoys me."

Remind you of anything? Such as the anti-VQ threads of a few months ago? Kinda makes you wonder what folks will want nerfed next?

Oh, and your analysis of Esben's proposal is dead-on. Good work, and well-stated.

[Boron]

Esben Mose Hansen said:
I briefly considered the immortal problem. But since immortals CAN be fought effectively, since it is limited to positive dominions, I didn't find it too problematic. Also, the immortal looses all those items when they die, which also helps. If it is still a problem, make the immortal gain a few afflictions when they die. Yes, they will heal, but it takes time, and that is enough in my opinion --- If the SC have to sit around and wait for 5 or 10 turns before being usable again, plus having to pay 50+ gems in items, a price has been paid. If we're going to play REALLY tough immortals could use a magic path point or two, but I think this is going over the top. And more work to develop.

To Arryns comment I can only say: My idea is consistent with existing design, it makes sort of sense, and it will weaken those SC pretenders, so that we may actually see human pretenders again. I mean, when did you Last encounter one in MP? I have never seen one --- except in games where human pretenders were forced.

Plus, the idea is simple to implemented, right devs? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif


mose i like your ideas http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

with immortals my main problem are not THE scs but VAMPIRES combined with unequipped immortal leaders !


one of my favourite strats is to take vq , bloodhunt , get lots of vampire lords which autosummon vampires .

then i can push dominion via blood sacrifice as abysia / vanheim / mictlan .

then i slowly push my dominion and when i have positive dominion i attack with some vampire lords , my vq + a horde of vampires .

all unequipped .
so when i lose i lose nothing just 1-3 turns to move to the front again .

defeating a vq which buffs , vampire lords which cast spells + a horde of vampires is really tough though when repeated several times .


you may not win with your first attacks but your enemy will always lose parts of his forces .

so in the long run you will probably always win .
on turn 100 of a game you have probably accumulated 50-100 vampire lords at least which means 50-100 vampires / turn for free through summon allies .

so from turn 100 - turn 110 you get about at least 500-1000 extra vampires for FREE .

if you make it to excess as e.g. abysia until turn 50 you have probably already about 300-500 vampires + 20-30 vampire lords .

if you play a wish nation wishing for blood and pushing hordes of vamps is good too .
caelum e.g. can then spread dominion via stealthpreach + use the vampire horde tactic in lategame too very well .




so i think at least the summon allies commando from the vampire lords should be taken away

[PvK]

Seems to me the least popular selection in this poll is the best, unless I'm not considering something.

Panther's suggestion of a morale check is flawed because there are really two different types of commanders for this question - ones which might want to stand alone against an enemy army, and everyone else, who wouldn't, as Arryn pointed out.

Sheap's suggestion would allow players to provide an exception to the general rule, and this would also solve the long-standing issues with super combattants routing when their minor allies rout.

PvK

[Sheap]

Well I can certainly understand the desire to leave the current system alone. But in reality no matter the situation you will have cases where your units either rout too soon or don't rout soon enough.

I really don't think Panther's idea is very good, though. Instead of having all your commanders rout because your troops died, instead half of them would rout, leaving the other half to die. So now instead of routing and losing the battle, you rout, lose the battle, and then a bunch of your mages die as well.

[The_Tauren13]

hmmm... if you lose the battle, dont you think you deserve to lose half your mages?

[Cheezeninja]

Sheap said:
This seems like it is turning into "I want immortality nerfed because it annoys me." If it were really that strong, everyone would play immortal pretenders, but in reality other than Abysia, Caelum and Ermor, it is rare.

Immortal pretenders pay, on average, roughly 70 points for the privilege. The fact that Abysia, Caelum and Ermor have more points to spend and can afford it is certainly not a coincidence. Immortal non-pretender units cost 50-100% more than comparable non-immortals. Not to mention that immortals that die still lose all their equipment (except for pretenders, this is often more valuable than the unit itself), can still get afflictions (whether they die or not), which don't heal right away, still lose the battle, and get sent back to the home province, which may or may not be conveniently located. And if you're not fighting in friendly dominion, immortality doesn't do anything except raise your price.

In reality, Esben's proposal doesn't fix anything, it just creates another problem that obscures the current one by forcing it on everyone. Instead of having strange routing behavior, we will have problems of "my SC should be able to fight this force by himself, but he can't because he hasn't brought his militia with him." And then anti-SC combat tactics, instead of revolving around defeating the SC, will instead revolve around killing his scrubs so he has to flee. This is not an improvement.

Edit: On the subject of human pretenders, the reason we don't see them in MP is because the Ghost King is too good. For a seven path rainbow mage, the GK costs you about 90-110 points over a human in chassis and path costs, has 2 points more dominion, and starts with death magic. The dominion and death magic alone nearly make up for this increased cost, and you've then basically got the GK's exceptional fighting skills for free, instead of legendary human wimpiness. From a pure power standpoint the only "human" that competes with the GK is the Skratti. For humans to be viable in MP, their "secondary skills" (gem generation, research bonus, whatever) need to be a LOT stronger, or they need to get significantly more starting magic (I'm talking 3-4 points in a single path here), or the GK needs to get worse, or some combination of these. Strong starting magic in particular paths could also help distinguish humans from each other.

With the GK out of the equation, humans become the only way to gain magical diversity, and become a lot more interesting. Although whether their searching/forging ability makes up for the lack of a good starting (titan/undead) SC, is debatable.




I'd have to agree with all of this. What Esben's suggestion would do is replace one strange and slightly irrational dynamic with another. Sure commander + group dynamics would make more sense now, but instead of attacking the SC everyones strategy would basically revolve entirely around getting rid of his chaff. This would give an ENOURMOUS advantage to the nations that can spit chaff (Caelum, Ermor, Ctis..) As they can simply spit chaff long enough to tie the SC up and kill or route his troops, then the SC splits too. With some creative cloud trapeezing or ghost riders he has nowhere to go too and you now have a dead SC, without ever actually having to deal with him. It would almost completly re-define the dynamic of the game and the balance therein, as major strategies like wrathing would now be almost useless.

The game IS balanced right now, and well. One little change like this will NOT bring the AI up to par because the AI's still going to be ignorant of so many other strategies (ghost riders, castling, vampire spam, clam hoarding).

I definetly dont think a major re-define of the game dynamic is justified because a few people dont like the way combat plays out, plenty of other people DO like the system and you'd be forcing this change on them. I'd be all for an optional mod that does this, but thats about as far as i'd want to go.

oh, and i second the motion of buffing up the human pretenders, i personally would like to see each one of them start with 2 in 2 seperate paths, making them double bless contenders which currently only fire and astral really have.


[edit] Nevermind the cloud trapez'ing part, as the proposed patch would all but eliminate its offensive capabilities.

[Arryn]

The_Tauren13 said:
hmmm... if you lose the battle, dont you think you deserve to lose half your mages?

No.


Any military commander who's not brain-dead knows when a battle is lost and when to retreat to save his forces for another day. Only a fool or a madman (not that there's a difference) wastes valuable lives.

[Cheezeninja]

Arryn said:

The_Tauren13 said:
hmmm... if you lose the battle, dont you think you deserve to lose half your mages?

No.


Any military commander who's not brain-dead knows when a battle is lost and when to retreat to save his forces for another day. Only a fool or a madman (not that there's a difference) wastes valuable lives.




Arryn i believe you meant any commander who's not undead http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

I finally beat everybody to the cheezy Ermor pun, and boy do i feel clever. =)

[The_Tauren13]

Arryn said:

The_Tauren13 said:
hmmm... if you lose the battle, dont you think you deserve to lose half your mages?

No.


Any military commander who's not brain-dead knows when a battle is lost and when to retreat to save his forces for another day. Only a fool or a madman (not that there's a difference) wastes valuable lives.



ive heard people say many times on this forum that they dont go into battle unless they can win

[Arryn]

The_Tauren13 said:
ive heard people say many times on this forum that they dont go into battle unless they can win

I've said that myself. However, be that as it may, none of us are perfect, and thus we can (and do) make mistakes such as misjudging an enemy's strength. And, if one does get themselves into a situation that is hopeless, the smart thing to do is retreat, as quickly as possible, so as to conserve as much of your force as you can so that you can try again later. Some call it a learning experience, and one needn't suffer a slaughter in order to realize one has made a mistake. As for deserving punishment for mistakes, only masochists enjoy and desire them. Which is why certain games (like Doom 3) exist, to fulfill the needs of such folk. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif

[Cainehill]

Sheap said:
This seems like it is turning into "I want immortality nerfed because it annoys me." If it were really that strong, everyone would play immortal pretenders, but in reality other than Abysia, Caelum and Ermor, it is rare.




Actually, it's more like, "I want immortality nerfed because I don't like the morale system we have now, and to break the morale system, we have to break immortality, and we have to add a _lot_ more rules and commands, and waa waa waa..." http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

That said - Jotunheim, Pangaea, the underwater nations can all support immortal pretenders and not infrequently do. Likewise Vanheim, except Vanheim has an uber-pretender that gives another awesome choice. (Actually, so does Pangaea.) I've seen a number of other nations with immortals, even post VQ nerf - Tien Chi VampQ'ueen, and others.



In reality, Esben's proposal doesn't fix anything, it just creates another problem that obscures the current one by forcing it on everyone.



Agreed.



With the GK out of the equation, humans become the only way to gain magical diversity, and become a lot more interesting. Although whether their searching/forging ability makes up for the lack of a good starting (titan/undead) SC, is debatable.



The Nagas are also splendid ways to get versatility, and are also considerably better bang for the buck than humans. Problem is that almost all of the humans have abilities that ... rot. Or no ability at all, such as the Hag. Most of the abilities are ones that _might_ be useful in the early game, but are really a waste of a serious rainbow pretender's time. Turn 40 - my druid pretender will ... summon vine men! Right.

Ulm's Alchemist is one that doesn't totally rot - at least he can alchemize gems for gold without losing a turn. The Sorceress gets a free astral gem, the Frost Father won't get killed by murdering winter or the other cold spells.

The sage bonus is handy early in the game, but gets less and less worthwhile as the game goes on. Like - past turn 5. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif The Archmage - he _really_ ought to be a more impressive chassis. As is? Likewise the Freaklord, the Hag, etc.

But that's really a different thread. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

And I just want to reiterate the insanity of the proposal that commanders rout if they don't have any troops. A grand red dragon, a bane lord, a GoR'ed Tarrasque - any and all of them turning and running, not from a Knight - but from a single stinking point of crappy PD.

What a hoot.

[Cainehill]

The_Tauren13 said:

Arryn said:

The_Tauren13 said:
hmmm... if you lose the battle, dont you think you deserve to lose half your mages?

No.


Any military commander who's not brain-dead knows when a battle is lost and when to retreat to save his forces for another day. Only a fool or a madman (not that there's a difference) wastes valuable lives.



ive heard people say many times on this forum that they dont go into battle unless they can win



Most people don't go into a battle planning on losing. But even if they "don't go into battle unless they can win", it doesn't mean they're 100% sure they'll win. Historically, commanders can and do gamble - balancing the loss of 100 men (or 1000) against the benefit gained if they do win.

They also go into battle because, while they're not sure they'll win, they know that the other possible battlefields and situations will be worse.

And they go into battle figuring that while they may lose, they'll inflict greater casualties on the enemy - this is especially true both of military defenses and ambushes.

An example of this in Dom2 is sending 4 or 5 spellcasters with a screening troop of 10 or 20 militia or archers in front of them. Going against, say, knights, they can expect to lose - the knights are going to tear up those screening troops, but are going to sustain heavy casualties from the mages.

This is _planned_ for by the force with the mages and militia.

And you think that they _deserve_ to lose half the mages, who are sitting all the way in the rear of the battlefield???

Nice to know the kind of superior military intellects who are in favor of demolishing, I mean, improving, the current morale system. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Esben Mose Hansen]

OK, a few Last points.
I never wanted to nerf immortality. I just mentioned a few easy ways to do so, if it proved to be a problem. From the above, it seems to be vampires that are the problem, if any. That can be solved in a mod, and is therefore irrelevant to the current discussion. The arguments that "it would be a matter of just killing the chaff" etc. is just lame, for obvious reasons. Just use quality soldiers. Most importantly, the entire reason I proposed this was to illustrate that the proposal wasn't about fixing a flaw, but was about making SC even more powerful. I think sheap, Arryn and others have illustrated this point nicely by now. I find it extremely funny that after proposing a SC-boost, these people turn around and deride "my change" as a whine-de-jour. Just like Norfleet did, really http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif To bend this point in neon: I proposed this change without any hope that this would happen, but solely to prevent SC to become even stronger by proposing another fix that would stop the "The Moloch is treated so unfairly". That was all.

[The_Tauren13]

Arryn said:

The_Tauren13 said:
ive heard people say many times on this forum that they dont go into battle unless they can win

I've said that myself. However, be that as it may, none of us are perfect, and thus we can (and do) make mistakes such as misjudging an enemy's strength. And, if one does get themselves into a situation that is hopeless, the smart thing to do is retreat, as quickly as possible, so as to conserve as much of your force as you can so that you can try again later. Some call it a learning experience, and one needn't suffer a slaughter in order to realize one has made a mistake. As for deserving punishment for mistakes, only masochists enjoy and desire them. Which is why certain games (like Doom 3) exist, to fulfill the needs of such folk. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif



since battlemages are far stronger and more useful than troops, losing half of them when you lose a battle would be a good thing; it would help balance that out. i mean, would you rather buy 20 militia or a mage? about the same cost, but the mage is far more useful.

[Cainehill]

The_Tauren13 said:
since battlemages are far stronger and more useful than troops, losing half of them when you lose a battle would be a good thing; it would help balance that out. i mean, would you rather buy 20 militia or a mage? about the same cost,
but the mage is far more useful.



You really just don't get it, do you? The militia, when you buy them, are bought because they're disposable. It's the same reason the peasants were rounded up and levied historically : so they do do the dying, instead of the expensive, hard-to-equip-and-train archers, knights, halberdiers, etc.

And then battle plans are made, historically and in Dominions, to ensure that the peasants are the ones dying and not the commanders, knights, mages, etc.

If you think losing half your mages when you lose is a good thing, put them in front of your infantry and militia. Then you can lose your mages, which you think is a good thing, and the rest of us, who don't think losing our mages is a good thing, can continue to try and avoid having that happen.

Also note: Battle mages can and _do_ get wiped out in Dominions, if the opposing commander out-battles and out-thinks them. Try 11 out of 12, and 5 out of 6, mages and commanders killed in a battle between roughly equal forces.

But then, all you're concerned with is the fact that you think SCs and battle mages are over-powered and that the game is more fun for you without them.

To quote the US Army: Suck it up and drive on.

[Arryn]

Cainehill said:
To quote the US Army: Suck it up and drive on.

To also quote the Army: F***ing-A!

[Boron]

Cainehill said:

But then, all you're concerned with is the fact that you think SCs and battle mages are over-powered and that the game is more fun for you without them.





no tauren is true .
and you don't get his point here i think .

tauren says just that almost no national troop is worth being produced .

if you are honest you will admit that with most nations you replace the national troops as quick as you can by better summoned troops .
if leaders alone woudn't rout once the first 1 dies would you build troops at all anymore ?


marignon , ulm , pangenea , vanheim and perhaps jotunheim are somehow exeptions here since they have special national troops which are worth being built over a longer timespan with the right bless effect .
or with flaming arrows + wind guide for marignon x-bows .


but i think you will admit that in general you only use as many troops as you think you need to avoid routing. the rest of your gold goes in commanders instead .
you basically said that in your post . at least i understanded it this way .

[Endoperez]

Boron, do you mean that if given the choice of having 50 Winter Wolves or 40 Winter Wolves and 40 Coral Guards you choose the 50 w-wolves? What if the choices are 100 Lamias / 70 Lamias, 20 Knights and 30 Longbowmen set to Fire Archers?

If you can only choose between all-summoned and all-mundane armies you should choose the summons to be competitive in lategame. But DomII isn't HoMM4*, and you don't have to. You can use both mundane and magical units in a nice, joyful and often colourful mix that is stronger and more varied than either of the one-sided armies. You might have a mage or two less, but you don't have the gems to use all of them for summoning if you only recruit mages and build fortresses/labs to make more of them, not recruiting any national units. And besides Mictlan every nation has something useful. If nothing else, archers that can be Wind Guided and/or given Flaming Arrows.


Endoperez
* I never played it, but I have heard that it forced you to choose between good in beginning/bad in the end, bad in the beginning/good in the end and mediocre at all stages. And AI had access to the best units from beginning to the end. If this is not the case, http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/redface.gif.

[Cainehill]

Boron said:

Cainehill said:But then, all you're concerned with is the fact that you think SCs and battle mages are over-powered and that the game is more fun for you without them.



no tauren is true .
and you don't get his point here i think .

tauren says just that almost no national troop is worth being produced .

if you are honest you will admit that with most nations you replace the national troops as quick as you can by better summoned troops .



Duh. You do ... research in order to get better weapons, troops, spells.

Once the semi-automatic rifle was ... researched the nations that didn't have them tended to get chewed up and spit out. No intelligent leader said, "Hey! We can't replace our breech loaders! It wouldn't be right!"

As better units, weapons, spells, are researched, the earlier, less effective ones tend not to be produced or used as much any more. If the newly researched ones _weren't_ significantly improved and better, there wouldn't be much point in doing research.

"Hmm - I think I'll research conjured units - they may suck compare to my regular troops, but they're _so_ neat!"


if leaders alone woudn't rout once the first 1 dies would you build troops at all anymore ?



*smile* Considering that in general, leaders alone get killed, yes, I think I'd tend to still build and use troops. This remains true at least into the mid-game, and even after that, some troops tend to be used. They may not be the recruitable national troops - but again, there's a reason people did research into conjuration, construction, and enchantment - to get better things to use.


marignon , ulm , pangenea , vanheim and perhaps jotunheim are somehow exeptions here since they have special national troops which are worth being built over a longer timespan with the right bless effect .
or with flaming arrows + wind guide for marignon x-bows .



Let's see - you leave out Man, R'lyeh, Caelum, Pythium, and I expect there are other nations that I'm not thinking of. All these nations have national troops that remain useful into the late game, at least as part of a mixed army that includes conjured and constructed troops as well.


but i think you will admit that in general you only use as many troops as you think you need to avoid routing. the rest of your gold goes in commanders instead .
you basically said that in your post . at least i understanded it this way .



No, I use as many troops as I think I need in order to _win_. Leaders by themselves can rarely do it on their own, although there are some exceptions (Vanheim, Man, Caelum, etc) and even those function better with some troops - some disposable, some not.

And you need to reread my previous post - Tauren used 20 militia vice battlemages as the example in his post. I made a rebuttal using that same example. _Militia_ are disposable - they're used to keep your mages from getting killed, and also to keep your more valuable national troops from getting killed. Good cavalry, archers, even heavy infantry are all valuable and useful, and the screen of militia is used to try and keep the casualties of good troops low.

Frankly, it seems that you and Tauren (and let's not forget Cohen) want a game that has more emphasis on troops, and less on powerful combatants, summonings, spells, and magic items.

I'd suggest you find another game, because Dominions is designed around those things. We're talking beings that are trying to become God here - not beings that are trying to become King or Pope. If the powerful SCs and magic were removed or nerfed, as y'all want, the majority of the players would be upset.

Now, I have posted before that it would be nice if Illwinter would include a command line or game creation switch that would allow some things like magic research to be limitted. After all - it's already limitted to research level 4 in the demo, it shouldn't be hard to implement that as an option in the full game.

That way, people like you could have a game that played more like the game you want to play, without screwing everyone else's game over. For that matter, even some of us who _like_ the powerful magics and SCs and such might enjoy the odd low-research game as a refreshing change of pace.

But again - if you don't want a game that's geared and designed around powerful magics, supremely powerful beings and combatants, I'd suggest finding another game. There are _plenty_ of games that don't put such emphasis on mages, SCs, etc. It's hard to think of any that put the emphasis on them the way Dominions2 does though - not HoMM (which is a game for simpletons who like rote solutions in comparison), not the original MoM, not Disciples, Age of Wizards.

[Cainehill]

Endoperez said:
Re HoMM4 : I never played it, but I have heard that it forced you to choose between good in beginning/bad in the end, bad in the beginning/good in the end and mediocre at all stages. And AI had access to the best units from beginning to the end. If this is not the case, http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/redface.gif.



HoMM also tends to have maps and situations that favor, and sometimes require, one exact sequence of actions in order to win a scenario. "Build these units first; attack this stack of monsters in order to get this resource; use that resource to build / upgrade a building to recruit stronger units; build these units; attack that stack to get this resource / castle, etc."

This isn't an exaggeration - the maps often channel you towards only a few specific routes, and the AI competes by having huge amounts of creatures and resources in comparison to the human player. If the human doesn't follow the optimum sequence of actions, the AI rolls over him.

That's why you can find step by step instructions for winning various HoMM maps/scenarios - a totally different scenario from Dom2 (or the old MoM).

[Boron]

caine i say this because i extremely enjoy the lategame when i have ultrascs , vampirehordes etc. en masse and 500+ gem income from sites + clams etc. etc. etc.

i just think that a few things are too overprized ( national troops ) and a few special units are severely underprized . so it needs only a bit finetuning i think .
basically like it was with the vq pre 2.12 .

tartarians were nerfed because of this too a bit .
they are still extremely useful .


but dominions is a game not real life . and dominions is extremely well balanced and there are uses for lots of units .

but as it is it is the following :
most national troops are only good until you get summons .

but since national troops and national mages both need gold and mages result in a much higher RoI as soon as you have your first summons like e.g. vine ogres you start replacing your troops with them .
later you chose stronger summons .

but even on turn 10 it is already a hard decision if 1 mage is already worth more than 10 troops which have the same cost / upkeep .
and after earlygame this decision is so clear as nothing else .

so as it is almost EVERY leader / summonable leader is really useful .
lots of summoned units are really useful too .

but from the national troops 9/10th are already almost useless and only needed to prevent routing after turn 20-40 .

this is what cohen and tauren dislike . i just replace most of my national troops by summons but i feel too that this is just not right that there are about 500 national units which all have flair but only about 50 have still some value midgame and about 0! have value lategame .


if upkeep/resourcecosts of national units would be 1/2 after turn 30 and 1/4 after turn 60 until end of the game then the choice recruit 1 battlemage / priest or 5-10 national units would not be the nobrainer as it is atm anymore while it would not make SCs etc. useless .

[Boron]

Endoperez said:
Boron, do you mean that if given the choice of having 50 Winter Wolves or 40 Winter Wolves and 40 Coral Guards you choose the 50 w-wolves? What if the choices are 100 Lamias / 70 Lamias, 20 Knights and 30 Longbowmen set to Fire Archers?

If you can only choose between all-summoned and all-mundane armies you should choose the summons to be competitive in lategame. But DomII isn't HoMM4*, and you don't have to. You can use both mundane and magical units in a nice, joyful and often colourful mix that is stronger and more varied than either of the one-sided armies. You might have a mage or two less, but you don't have the gems to use all of them for summoning if you only recruit mages and build fortresses/labs to make more of them, not recruiting any national units. And besides Mictlan every nation has something useful. If nothing else, archers that can be Wind Guided and/or given Flaming Arrows.


Endoperez
* I never played it, but I have heard that it forced you to choose between good in beginning/bad in the end, bad in the beginning/good in the end and mediocre at all stages. And AI had access to the best units from beginning to the end. If this is not the case, http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/redface.gif.



you just neglect that it is not 100 devils or 70 devils and e.g. 50 lava warriors because they use different resources , gold vs mana .

it is rather 100 devils and 50 lava warriors or 100 devils and 10 demonbred e.g. .

so i always chose the mage option once i can replace national troops with summons .


so i make a workaround as everybody but i , tauren and cohen think that this is a bit bad .

i really love dominion and i love the huge variation of strategies .
but it is only true for mages + summons that there are really few no-brainers .


after early game the choice mage vs 5-10 units is normally a nobrainer .

[The Panther]

Actually, what I think Boron was saying was that the best troops are the summons in general. That does not mean Vans are inferior to Vine Men. Just in the aggregate. And you are still better off using your gold to build mages and gems to get summoned troops. And this is not even counting the fact that your troops cost a heck of a lot more in upkeep than the summons do. If anything, summons ought to cost more since they are superior.

National troops are much too weak in general late game. They are mostly used only as fodder from mid-game on.


Also, Cainehill missed the point above. He said that if the rule was that commanders could not stay on the battlefield without troops, the battles would be all about killing the chaff. But nobody except a weak player would play that way. No, it would be all about getting STRONG troops to accompany STRONG leaders, which is much more logical than the current system. If you send in a leader with chaff only and lose, too bad for you.

Arryn, on the other hand, made an excellent point above about berserk. That would be a good strategy if you didn't want your commander to retreat. However, berserk is a double-edged sword. Your defense drops and you get hit easier. And maybe some aflictions to. Also, you would want to be DARN sure you will win since the berserked guy will fight to the death. If you miscalculate, then poof, your SC is gone for good. But it sure is a nice tool to have in the toolkit.


I want to make another point on this subject. In Karan game, where I am subbing for Cohen, Vyelina is playing Ulm. She attacked a Cohen castle with a superb army, which included her VQ, 2 ice devils, an arch devil, a bunch of nice summons, and some national troops. She had it backed up with lots of mages casting all kinds of nasyy things. It was almost a pleasure losing to that army, for it was well constructed and excellently scripted.

On the other hand, Cohen had a super-powerful SC arch devil as his prophet. The devil simply cast fire shield and then attack. Pangaea hit it with over 100 troops and lost everything to a single SC. It was almost ridiculous watching that battle. It did leave a sour taste in my mouth for sure, totally unlike losing to the Ulm army.

Needless to say, I definitely admired the Vyelina approach far better. She certainly avoided the chaff problem with her SCs, like Cainehill was suggesting above would become the norm.

Now why do I feel like Yvelina was playing the game the way it was intended to be played and Cohen was taking advantage of a rule glitch?

Of course, I know that the developers are not going to put out a patch to fix the routing inconsistency. It would be a huge change to everything we are all doing now. It will have to wait for Dom 3.

On the other hand, fixing the routing inconsistency in a patch would make everybody come up with a new strategy and just might increase the longevity of the game. Who knows? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Arryn]

Actually the true point I was trying to make wasn't so much about folks overlooking berserking, but that in Dominions, every problem has a solution, and all solutions are "double-edged". The true beauty of Dominions is that, unlike in all other strategy computer games, there is NO one single strategy that will always win. No perfect strategies, no perfect counterstrategies. As in real life, matters are reduced to luck and who's the more flexible strategist/commander (player).

Folks who refuse to accept this are ... pissing into the wind.

[The_Tauren13]

i just dont understand why nations can recruit so many troops if all but 1 or 2 are useless. there just isnt any good argument for including something useless in a game

[Gandalf Parker]

The_Tauren13 said:
i just dont understand why nations can recruit so many troops if all but 1 or 2 are useless. there just isnt any good argument for including something useless in a game



Hmmm that would seem to clearly say that you missed Arryns point. The game is designed so that you can develop your own tactics. If all of the units except 1 or 2 are useless then Im guessing that they are useless to you in playing the way you play. One person plays a nation and only uses the highest armored units. Another uses the cheapest in bulk. Another makes huge use of the sneak units. And yet another buys all mages except for the minimum needed army.

Personally, I love to explore the "useless" pieces of the game. The pretenders that people wonder why they are there. The nations people think have no winning strategy. The units no one uses. The spells that seem worthless. Very few end up having NO tactic although there are a good number of them that tend to be only useful to some people in some situations.

PLEASE dont make an effort to "tidy up" the game of worthless pieces. One of the things I love about this game is that its full of things that even the developers didnt realize how we would use them when they were put in.

[The_Tauren13]

ok i worded things poorly

i dont think useless troops should be *removed* from the game, i think they should be made, well, usefull. have you ever seen anyone recruit e.g. a salamander?

[deccan]

When I started out playing Dom2, one of the mechanics that shocked me the most was that summonables had no upkeep while national troops do. As a MoM fan, I was used to the idea that summonables were cool, powerful but rare due to the need to pay magical upkeep for them.

Whether or not you like armies Dom2 style or MoM style is I suppose a matter of personal preference, but I have to say that I tend towards the MoM thing.

I think that the description of an army of bowmen, spearmen etc. and two or three golems towering above them and some gargoyles whirling overhead is cool. When it becomes all golems and gargoyles, it becomes not so cool.

[Cainehill]

The_Tauren13 said:
ok i worded things poorly

i dont think useless troops should be *removed* from the game, i think they should be made, well, usefull. have you ever seen anyone recruit e.g. a salamander?



Let's see - I've had them used against me, so yes.

And when I play Abysia, I've recruited them, so yes.

Perhaps you have another totally "useless" troop in mind?

Well, actually, I can think of one, maybe. Man's Slinger unit, useless because of the Longbowmen, albeit I'd have to check and see if the slinger is substantially cheaper, in which case I can think of a use for it also.

And then I believe C'tis has a commander that's worse than the stock independent commander, which begs the question of why anyone would recruit one of those instead of the readily obtained independent.

But these are basically anomalies, imo.

[Stossel]

Well, I think Tauren has a point.

When I was in IRC, everyone I talked to about playing Vanheim said sloth-3 was good to take. Now, Vanheim troops are not that cheap resource-wise. I was blown away at the thought of sloth 3, but everyone in the chat seemed to think it was no big deal. Now, I think any negative-3 should hurt, badly, but with mostly commander-armies, it's no big deal.

I don't think national troops are useless, but at this point, they seem highly cost inefficient.

I'm determined to find a decent strategy that fields me armies as well as mages and fighting commmanders, but it doesn't look promising.

[Arryn]

The_Tauren13 said:
ok i worded things poorly

I'd call that an understatement.


The_Tauren13 said:
i dont think useless troops should be *removed* from the game, i think they should be made, well, usefull.

Just because you consider something to be lacking in usefulness does not mean that others share your opinion. I do not intend for the following to be an insult, but have you stopped to consider that others might be more creative than you are in thinking up of uses for what you deem "useless"? Gandalf was making such a point in his Last post. I'm sure that the guys at IW do not agree that the game has useless units, just as I'm sure that they had something in mind when they created said units.

Please do not confuse the concepts of efficient and/or cost-effective with "useful". All too frequently folks dismiss what they perceive to be non-optimal. For example, when playing Jotuns, I build spearmen, almost exclusively. But I would not assert that axemen or slingers are useless. It is simply my preference to not build them. I could, if I chose to, make effective use of them.

Rather than dismiss certain units as "useless", likely because they are less than optimal for your chosen play style, consider Gandalf's words and see if you can devise a clever way to put them to good use. You might just do two things: surprise yourself, and stumble upon what was going through the developer's mind when they created the unit.

[Graeme Dice]

FM_Surrigon said:
When I was in IRC, everyone I talked to about playing Vanheim said sloth-3 was good to take. Now, Vanheim troops are not that cheap resource-wise.



Van and Valkyries do not cost lots of resources. If you plan on paying for a decent bless effect, then they can be quite effective. Einheres on the other hand, do require a large number of resources, and they are very useful in most situations.

[Stossel]

Graeme Dice said:
Van and Valkyries do not cost lots of resources. If you plan on paying for a decent bless effect, then they can be quite effective. Einheres on the other hand, do require a large number of resources, and they are very useful in most situations.



This is just what Tauren was talking about. Going sloth-3, which most of the people I've talked to seem to think is no big deal, makes everything besides vans and valkries cost inefficient before the game even begins.

[Kel]

On SCs: SC's add an element to the game. To make them less powerful, as a whole, is to reduce the impact of what I consider an essential, and intentional, element of the game. I wouldn't even play a limited magic game as a change of pace, I would play another game that was balanced specifically for low magic.

On useless national troops:
Technically there are few that are utterly, in all situations, useless...but let's be honest, there are *many* that serve the same function and, if they had never been introduced to the game, noone would care. Yes, there are situations where I might recruit a halberdier instead of a pikeneer but if I didn't have one or the other, it would not make any significant difference in the long run. So yes, a lot of units are kind of 'filler' units (which are still nice for flavor and all).

However, that said, there is only so much you can do with them and still maintain the nation's strengths and weaknesses. If you take a nation that has 3 kinds of medium infantry and make one a little lighter and one a little heavier, to make them 'useful', you just expanded that nations' power by giving it flexible infantry. Now you have to balance that...and somehow maintain the nation next door who was known for his heavy infantry and is now competing with your HI, MI and LI. So what now, give him some MI maybe to keep up ? Now everyone starts to look the same...

Summary: Yes, there are some units that are redundant in the roles they play...but expanding their roles would bite into the balance or individuality of nations. So, to me, you either have some extra units that are somewhat redundant or you don't have them at all. Having the choice doesn't hurt.

- Kel

[The Panther]

The sloth 3 thing is normal for many pretenders. That is because you can overcome it with high admin castle or use low resource troops like mages and some of the sacreds.

Turmoil 3, on the other hand, is a killer. Even with luck 3, you still get those horrible bad luck events far too often. Finding 5 air gems in a mirror 3 times, erecting an extra 10 PD in a random province, and getting a bunch of free militia somewhere does not even come close to making up for losing 1/4 population in your home province early on. Plus turmoil 3 kills your income and you can barely afford mages at the crucial begining of the game.

The scales are not all that well balanced, but this has been discussed in the forum before. Order and magic are, in general, worth more than the other scales.

[Graeme Dice]

FM_Surrigon said:
This is just what Tauren was talking about. Going sloth-3, which most of the people I've talked to seem to think is no big deal, makes everything besides vans and valkries cost inefficient before the game even begins.



Even prod 0 and a castle allows you to recruit enough einheres to significantly increase your offensive punch over what you would have with only Vans and Valkyries. They are, after all, extremely expensive and vulnerable to elemental magic.

[Kristoffer O]

Boron said:

but dominions is a game not real life . and dominions is extremely well balanced and there are uses for lots of units .





Unfortunately real life is not as balanced as Dominions. I suspect I was a useless unit, at least early in life. Hopefully I will be a late life winner, spending my days on Bahamas or whatever. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

[Sheap]

The Panther said:
The sloth 3 thing is normal for many pretenders. That is because you can overcome it with high admin castle or use low resource troops like mages and some of the sacreds.



Sloth is unique in that it becomes less important over time. It's the only scale that works this way. Order and Luck remain constant, Growth/Death becomes more important later on (especially Death), and Magic remains important as long as there is research to do. But the effect of sloth is not very significant in the late game. It matters at the start - only if you need to build high resource units to do initial expansion.

The thing is, by taking negative scales (sloth+misfortune) you can make your pretender strong enough to overcome the economic disadvantage. By the time your pretender is ready to retire from indy-busting, you're ready to convert your nation over to summoned units.

This doesn't have anything to do with how strong/weak national units are or how they are priced. It's fundamental to the game design: All national troops are available from the start of the game. For summons to be relevant at all, eventually the summons have to become more powerful than the national troops.

Part of the "problem," if such exists, is that resources are fairly abundant, relative to gold. Gold is needed for castles, temples, mages, troops, and upkeep. Resources are only needed for troops, and there are few troops that require more resources than gold (both in absolute terms, or in terms of relative abundance).

My suggestions for improvements would be address this Last issue. Instead of castles and temples taking fixed time to build, they require resources, and live in the build queue just like units. Sloth doesn't seem quite so appealing with this change - and this would also make the long build time castles more tolerable.

I should also point out that many people play in games with more spacious maps than the developers intended, and higher site frequency than the default. This amplifies the conditions that make sloth-3 so tolerable.



Turmoil 3, on the other hand, is a killer. Even with luck 3, you still get those horrible bad luck events far too often.



I don't really have a problem with Turmoil-3 being viable only for Ermor, or maybe Carrion Woods. Drain-3 is viable only for Ulm, Heat-3 is viable only for Abysia and Machaka. But Sloth-3 is viable for almost everyone.

Turmoil+Luck has bad events significantly less often than Order+Misfortune. The problem isn't the random events, it's the income loss. Turmoil-1 has about 75% as much money as Order-3. Turmoil-3 would have about 65% as much money as order-3. That's a big, big, big difference. Part of the difference is upkeep. Upkeep accumulates over time, resulting in a constrained growth situation; if you've studied differential equations (or ecology), you know that a 35% loss of income translates into much more than a 35% loss of population. Where the population, in this case, is mages. And mages are critically important. It's fair to say that order scale is almost important to research as magic scale is.

[Pickles]

Kel said:
On useless national troops:
Technically there are few that are utterly, in all situations, useless...but let's be honest, there are *many* that serve the same function and, if they had never been introduced to the game, noone would care. Yes, there are situations where I might recruit a halberdier instead of a pikeneer but if I didn't have one or the other, it would not make any significant difference in the long run. So yes, a lot of units are kind of 'filler' units (which are still nice for flavor and all).

However, that said, there is only so much you can do with them and still maintain the nation's strengths and weaknesses. If you take a nation that has 3 kinds of medium infantry and make one a little lighter and one a little heavier, to make them 'useful', you just expanded that nations' power by giving it flexible infantry. Now you have to balance that...and somehow maintain the nation next door who was known for his heavy infantry and is now competing with your HI, MI and LI. So what now, give him some MI maybe to keep up ? Now everyone starts to look the same...

Summary: Yes, there are some units that are redundant in the roles they play...but expanding their roles would bite into the balance or individuality of nations. So, to me, you either have some extra units that are somewhat redundant or you don't have them at all. Having the choice doesn't hurt.

- Kel



I would agree with idea there are too many troop types particuarly for eg ulm with 4 types of identikit infantry. They are however subltly differentiated in the way you describe due to differing weapons. However the subtleties are too subtle for it to make an interesting choices between them. I dispute the fact that the variety of troops adds character in fact I think it reduces it. Ulm for example could be famous for its armies of Knights backed up by pikeneers & crossbows rather than its hodge-podge of miscellaneous heavy infantry. Warhammer the miniatures game did this in its latest edition - by reducing the choices you increase the character of the armies. Same with abysia - every abysian could have a weapon with a spikey ball on a chain for example.

This is of course a different issue from troops being too weak and is a massive none-priority (more the Dom3 wish list - rather than making up 1000 units we could have 500 and a better messaging system)

There are lots of understrength units too of course but picking them out is harder. (Salamanders go on my list BTW as they die just too much for 70 gp & I cannot find a way to pad them should be maybe 50 gp or tougher - double HP.)

Pickles

[Mark the Merciful]

Edit: Realised I was replying to a post at the bottom of the first page when everyone else was halfway through the second. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/redface.gif

[Boron]

one problem that makes national troops which you could use in large numbers so bad :

SUPPLY .

as vanheim e.g. i could use hordes of skinshifters or everyone hordes of barbarians .
they are not bad units in theory .
but given the fact that they require low resources why shouldn't you take a watchtower / mausoleum ?!?

vanheim e.g. can't forge supplyitems early on .
so even if you build only e.g. 60-80 skinshifters you run soon into supply issues .
if you take a castle it is a shortly later time but when you are 3 provinces away from your capitol it is the same and you can build castles not as easy as a watchtower .


for ryleh this is very severe too : if you have enough gold you can produce hordes of illithids which are quite useful .
but they are size 4 so they eat a lot .

caelum could produce hordes of their cheap archers .
they would be really useful for their prize but supply is again the limiting factor .



so the supply system is just too harsh at the moment .
without supplyitems in any province 2-3 provinces away from the nearest castle with 2-4k pop and those are quite common in mountain/swampland you just have about 20-50 supply .
rarely you have over 100 supply when only 2 provinces away from your next castle .





overall earlygame at least 30 slingers / archers = cost 210/300 would beat 1 mage probably .

but supply prohibits you to use more than about 50-100 troops anyways for most nations .
midgame the archers aren't useful anymore because they have little chances damaging most mages at all .
e.g. 1 ulm mastersmith casting invulnerability + magma eruption would defeat about 50 archers very likely .


there are several severe problems :
- most national troops have 8-14 hp which kills them with 1 single hit by almost any spell most likely .
- scs get easy lightning + fire resistence . with 20-30 protection + lifedrain even 50 knights ( e.g. ulm ) lose probably . if the sc has fire shield this is just absurd .
with f9 blessing you have some chances but if the sc has fire shield + high protection etc. you defeat him perhaps but at least lose lots of your troops .

i think you all admit that any national unit without f9 bless or n9 berserk bless ( only true for jotunheim + pangenea ) can't even defeat a standard banelord cheap sc .


it is just national troops suck against most mages after the first 10-20 turns .
most have no chance against scs .
summoned creatures are upkeepfree + have often a really good morale so you don't need that many to prevent routing .


so you always buy only as much as you think is enough to avoid routing and replace them soon by summons .
not that most summons are directly that stronger than national units but most summons have high morale , need not eat and cost no upkeep .

as panther said that approach was good in age of wonders .
there the summoned units costed mana as upkeep .
so though they were the strongest units you couldn't field too many of them .
and for national units there was a techtree .
so your armies were about 2/3 national troops 1/3 summons .
the lvl 4 national units were almost as good as the lvl 4 summons and the lvl 5 summons were the most powerful units but 2 lvl 4 summons / 3 lvl 4 national units were normally enough to kill a lvl 5 summon .
since you had about doubled gold income compared to manaincome normally this was really fun + well balanced .

with the combat system that each definding unit has only 4/5 retals cheap lvl 1 units to steal defending strikes to let the lvl 4 units kill the enemy lvl 4 units without having the risk of being killed too made the lvl 1 units quite useful too .

with heroes of might and magic series this was true too .
there lvl 1 / 2 units could kill lvl 7 units too .
so they all served a purpose .

[Cainehill]

So, Boron, since you like the way things are in HoMM and AoW, why aren't you _playing_ those instead of arguing that Dom2 should be changed?

[Stossel]

Cainehill said:

So, Boron, since you like the way things are in HoMM and AoW, why aren't you _playing_ those instead of arguing that Dom2 should be changed?



I think it's because he sees the way things are in HoMM and AoW as better, and would like to see Dom2 improved in his eyes.

There's no crime in advocating change.

I think he's got a point.

You and others may not think there's anything wrong with how the game currently plays out, but some people do, and they're going to advocate it because they enjoy Dom2 enough to do so, instead of ditching it and playing something else.

[Esben Mose Hansen]

I just think that the no-upkeep of any troops are problematic. But does it matter? It is not as if it's going to change http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[The Panther]

Actually, it would make great sense to have the summoned troops cost 1/15 of the initial gem cost per turn. That way, it matches the troops. And when you run out of the proper gems, they desert just like troops!


You would see more troops being built for sure.

[Graeme Dice]

The Panther said:
Actually, it would make great sense to have the summoned troops cost 1/15 of the initial gem cost per turn. That way, it matches the troops. And when you run out of the proper gems, they desert just like troops!



What would be the point of such a change? Summoned troops are already very expensive when you consider all the other uses for gems. It would hardly improve the game to make it so that you don't bother to use summons and magic at all because they weren't cost-effective. That would make it far too much like most other fantasy strategy games.

[Huzurdaddi]

The Panther said:
Actually, it would make great sense to have the summoned troops cost 1/15 of the initial gem cost per turn. That way, it matches the troops. And when you run out of the proper gems, they desert just like troops!


You would see more troops being built for sure.



Actually this would only promote more SC use. *bleech*

[Boron]

The Panther said:
Actually, it would make great sense to have the summoned troops cost 1/15 of the initial gem cost per turn. That way, it matches the troops. And when you run out of the proper gems, they desert just like troops!


You would see more troops being built for sure.



yeah i say that too panther and esben http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

actually dominions is the only game i know where you pay upkeep for some things while you pay no upkeep for other things .

have you ever played age of wonders 2 shadow magic cainehill ?

i played it seriously for about 1/2 year and enjoyed it .
the only problem is that you have only about 200 units and 200 spells and know all too quick .
but it was really well balanced .
and with each patch the developers made much fine tuning.
as with starcraft.

if you say small developers can't do that i point at paradox entertainment .
they make awesome patches !


i just wonder why you are so reluctant against small changes cainehill where the majority agrees that they would strengthen the dominion experience even more .
esben agreed to me , panther agreed , cohen will agree .

something like 1/10 gem upkeep of summon cost on scs and 1/50 on summons would make national troops more useful and balance it at least a bit .

to be at least somehow competetive against mages national troops would need to have less upkeep then mages too .

until turn 30 normal upkeep . turn 30-60 halfed upkeep .
turn 60 - end 1/4 upkeep for normal national troops .

this way it would then be e.g. about 12 knights vs 1 mage which would the choice not make the absolute nobrainer between mage + knight as it was before .
and with limiting the use of summons a bit too it would be all more balanced .

the aow / MoM approach here is just more righteous .

[Thufir]

Boron said:
if you say small developers can't do that i point at paradox entertainment .
they make awesome patches !




And man, do they need 'em!!! Well, couldn't help that one - but I've said elsewhere how much I like Paradox games. Their first releases do leave something to be desired, however.

[Boron]

i think all these suggestions take only 30-60 minutes for illwinter to implement into dominions .

so they could bring out a big evaluation patch with the new rules and make a survey after 2-4 weeks .
then everybody votes and the majority gets right .



from a balance aspect though can you name me ANY REASON why a summon should not need upkeep costs ?

especially with the blood summons this is very THEMATIC too :
do you think such a powerful being as a arch devil / arch demon doesn't demand permanent tribute in form of e.g. 10 blood slaves / day ( = turn in dominions ) ?


in any pen&paper rpg / fantasy novel normally the necromancers / demoniacs who summon demons need to satisfy them every day otherwise they will kill them and go away again to their plane .

[Graeme Dice]

Boron said:
from a balance aspect though can you name me ANY REASON why a summon should not need upkeep costs ?



Can you name me any reason from a balance point why they should?

[Graeme Dice]

Boron said:
i played it seriously for about 1/2 year and enjoyed it .
the only problem is that you have only about 200 units and 200 spells and know all too quick .



The balance isn't that great. Summoned creatures are pretty much a waste of resources, and are far too expensive for the small amount of power they give you. Battlefield magic is weak and unimpressive in general. The only spells that are worthwhile are those that boost your individual units and even then you can't cast very many of them. The experience granting system has the standard problem where only killing the unit grants experience, so you have to do silly things like save weakened attackers for your heroes. Spellcasting heroes don't gain experience anywhere near as fast as melee ones, since the spells that they can cast are extremely unlikely to actually kill more than one unit in a battle. It might be a game with magic, but the magic doesn't have nearly enough effect.

[Huzurdaddi]

Can you name me any reason from a balance point why they should?




Let me say again: this would only PROMOTE SC usage.

BLEEEEECH.

[Boron]

Graeme Dice said:

Boron said:
i played it seriously for about 1/2 year and enjoyed it .
the only problem is that you have only about 200 units and 200 spells and know all too quick .



The balance isn't that great. Summoned creatures are pretty much a waste of resources, and are far too expensive for the small amount of power they give you. Battlefield magic is weak and unimpressive in general. The only spells that are worthwhile are those that boost your individual units and even then you can't cast very many of them. The experience granting system has the standard problem where only killing the unit grants experience, so you have to do silly things like save weakened attackers for your heroes. Spellcasting heroes don't gain experience anywhere near as fast as melee ones, since the spells that they can cast are extremely unlikely to actually kill more than one unit in a battle. It might be a game with magic, but the magic doesn't have nearly enough effect.



are you serious with this ?
gold dragons , dark angels , angels , the dark dragons etc. were a waste of resources ?

most battlespells were great like fireball , the armageddon like spell , cosmic spray etc. etc.

heros which are SCS in dominions 2-3 lvl 4 units were normally enough to kill any hero no matter how highlevel he was .
2-3 kharags , dragons , etc. killed normally every hero .
even 10 black spiders with web or 3-4 druids with entangle had good chances.


you seem to have not played aow 2 sm much right ?


magic was great but not that overpowered .
it was basically 50/50 over the whole game with magic + gold .

[The Panther]

Huzurdaddi said:


Can you name me any reason from a balance point why they should?




Let me say again: this would only PROMOTE SC usage.

BLEEEEECH.




Hmm.. this does not make sense at all. If your ice devil costs you blood slaves every turn it is alive, how does that promote SC use? And your air queen would cost like 5 air gems PER TURN at 1/10 and just over 3 gems per turn at 1/15! If you buy too many devils, they would desert or you have to blood hunt even more to pay for them, thus hurting your economy.

A single player would not be able to easily buy all the ice devils or air queens anymore. I think the ice and arch devils would be more spread out this way to the races that can't get blood as fast as Abysia can.

Artifacts would be more important for your gems since they would not incur a recurring cost.

So this would dissuade SC use, not help it. Heaven forbid that an SC just MIGHT cost something close to their true value in the game!

[Boron]

Graeme Dice said:

Boron said:
from a balance aspect though can you name me ANY REASON why a summon should not need upkeep costs ?



Can you name me any reason from a balance point why they should?



panthers Last post is again great .
i would like something like this too .

if magic troops / scs would need gem upkeep too it would just be fair .
this way the choice : summons or national troops would not be the nobrainer anymore .

it would force you to use all 4 elments :
scs , national leaders , national troops and summons .

and not as it is completely neglecting national troops , building mostly mages / priests with all your gold and with your gems mainly build scs and only summon as many summons as you need to prevent autorout .


the only thing that can kill scs half reliable are battle mages or other scs .
even summoned troops normally can't kill scs at all ( expect maybe vampires / ghosts with lucky drain life attacks ) .
a regen + reinvigoration sc is almost impossible to kill by lifeless hordes like living statues too .


as it is investing gems in scs and gold in mages is just too good .


a well balanced system should always be like rock , paper & scissisor .


battlemages just defeat too easy national troops .
summon troops are defeated almost as easy by battlemages .

scs beat national troops + summoned troops quite well too but not as easy as battlemages .

battlemages can kill scs too but only a few , either with death or earth or astral magic .
99% reliable are only death + earth magic .


so as it is you try to just summon as many troops you need to prevent routing .



if the routing system that commanders rout without troops wouldn't exist most players wouldn't buy troops + summoned troops at all probably and only build battlemages + scs .



magic imbalance is another chapter too .
as it is expect for clams + quickness water magic is almost useless .

if you want good scs you should either take blood or air .
blood gives you lots of super scs : ice devils , arch devils , heliophagi , arch demons .

if you want infinite quite good scs/thugs you should take death for bane lords + wraith lords + later tartarians ( they need much effort though thnx to the patch removing healing by fairy queens http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif ) or nature for firbolgs .


if you encounter a bane lord standard sc if you don't have blessed troops which many nations lack with national troops only you already almost can't beat him .
if you have only firemages since he will be fire resistent they don#t work too .
air mages may only work with false horrors but against scs with fireshield this is not reliable too .



really lategame with wish you can get the best scs unlimited but it is rather expensive and pretty lategame .


since normal mages can be killed by assasins / flames from the sky etc. relative easy too and you can't move them around via magic move since they would lose their army scs are overall even better then battlemages probably .


there is teleport to move around but this is always difficult because of mind duel .
so bringing astral mages to battle is always risky .
fairy trod + stygian path work but compared to cloud trapeze they are rather expensive .



as it is proper used scs and battlemages are too strong .
given that some scs have good magic paths and are a synergie of both these are the strongest overall units at all .
they are your pretender of course and e.g. airqueens , arch devils etc.

especially the airqueens are outstanding too :
they have in storm the highest base att / def rating .
they are lighting resistent already .
they have all slots expect feet .
they can move cheaply by cloud trapezing .
(lategame they are massproduceable by wish .)


so you normally play this way :
build a few national units at the beginning for expansion against indies .
replace them as quick as you can with a few summons .
invest almost all your gold in mages ( rest in temples + castles and a few preists , scouts as item mules ).

start producing scs as quick as possible .
just exchange them with better ones like first : banelord , then airqueen .

try to catch almost all unique ( until wish ! ) scs .
abysia e.g. if everything goes right can catch most of the ice devils and normally all arch devils .

invest your rather useless gems ( mainly water ) in clams .



there are some nations that brilliance lategame but are not weak early-midgame too , mainly :
abysia
arco
mictlan
caelum
pytium

as it is if some players of equal skill play against each other if one takes caelum , one abysia , one atlantis and one pan cw normally the pan cw and the atlantis player have no chance to win at all and only caelum + abysia fight for who is winning .



making summons cost magic upkeep ( gems , slaves ) , reducing upkeep for national troops after early game and improving the water school a bit would be not too difficult.
expect improving water school the other 2 mentioned things should take 30-60 minutes to implement i think.

if it is done with a constant balance within the summons / national units themselves is not much affected at all since all cost the same factor less / more .


but balance between national troops , national leaders , summoned troops and summoned SCS would be greatly improved .



just look at starcraft . it is the almost perfect example for a really well balanced game where each unit has a use .
it is like chess but with 3 completely different nations .

for a more dominonlike game i recommened a closer look at the age of wonders series , especially age of wonders 2 sm .
with the newest patches balance there is really good .

age of wonders 2 has about 300 units and 200 spells or something like this , so about 1/5 of dominions units / spells .

in age of wonders 2 though at least 250 units and 150 spells are useful during the whole game .


in dominions unfortunately though from the 1000 units about 200 are useful only ( most mages , most scs , some summons , a few national troops ( mainly those with bless / archers with flaming arrows ) ) .
with spells it is similiar .


example : with ulm : at the beginning your master smith cast probably flying shards / fire flies .
then it is replaced by magma bolts .
then by blade wind.
then by magma eruoption .

once you have magma eruption there is no better mass damage spell available for ulm mastersmith against units .

against scs you have petrify .


with the ulmish master smiths this is most obvious .

damagewise magma eruption is so much more effective then the before mentioned spells against all troops .

so why would you ever cast anything else with them against other troops ?



once you have the choice between banes and bane lords :
you always take bane lords .

once you have the choice then between bane lords and tartarians you always take tartaians .




i just begin to realize how much potential is left in dominions 2 .
it is a really great game but i think as it is it is balancewise still far away from near perfect .


but the improvement from dominions 1 to dominoins 2 is just great .

i have full trust in you illwinter that with a few relative quick to do patches though dominoins 2 could be further balanced .

and dominions 3 i will buy blind anyways for sure .


i just complain so much because dominions 2 is already so great but with fixing these issues i mentioned and where esben e.g. often agrees , cohen would agree etc. i am not the only one .
even zen always said the water school needs improvement .

balancing takes time .

for starcraft + age of wonders 2 it took for both an expansion and about 10-12 patches .

fortunately you hear at resonable complains ( like the vq nerf ) so i hope i may be successful too if the changes i suggest are not too big http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Sheap]

The Panther said:
Hmm.. this does not make sense at all. If your ice devil costs you blood slaves every turn it is alive, how does that promote SC use?



By making all troops require upkeep, the pressure would be to focus on the troops that are most efficient relative to their cost. Since most of the value in SCs is in their equipment, not their summoning cost, they are comparatively more efficient than non-SC summons. If summoned troops cost upkeep probably no one would cast Vine Critters, undead, etc any more.

I should also point out that the summon-requires-upkeep is totally incompatible with Ermor, which would rapidly find itself with a hundreds of gems upkeep http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Huzurdaddi]

Sheap said:

The Panther said:
Hmm.. this does not make sense at all. If your ice devil costs you blood slaves every turn it is alive, how does that promote SC use?



By making all troops require upkeep, the pressure would be to focus on the troops that are most efficient relative to their cost. Since most of the value in SCs is in their equipment, not their summoning cost, they are comparatively more efficient than non-SC summons. If summoned troops cost upkeep probably no one would cast Vine Critters, undead, etc any more.




PHEW! Thank god someone was able to reason it out.

I have to agree that the moral system is a little wacky and probably should be changed I seriosuly doubt it was designed this way.

Also I seriously doubt that the game was designed with the idea that it would revolve around SC's *by themselves* in the end game. I'm sure that they wanted some units to be very powerful and for these well equiped units to be the center pieces of the massive armies but not to be the whole army.

I still think that Esben Mose Hansen 1st post ( the 1st post on the whole thread!) fixes basically everything by itself. Heck the human pretenders start to become better with his change as well ( however the ghost king is still probably a better choice for almost all nations ).

[Graeme Dice]

Boron said:
gold dragons , dark angels , angels , the dark dragons etc. were a waste of resources ?



You can't build anywhere near enough of them to make up any significant part of your army.


most battlespells were great like fireball , the armageddon like spell , cosmic spray etc. etc.



They can kill one or two units at most, like I said. They have very little real effect on the battlefield. Fireball for example, would have to have about a fifth to a tenth of the cost to be really worthwhile.


you seem to have not played aow 2 sm much right ?



I've played AOW2 enough to know what the major problems with its design are. Unless the game rules have been completely overhauled from the ground up in Shadow Magic, the basic problems are still going to remain.

[Graeme Dice]

Boron said:
it would force you to use all 4 elments :
scs , national leaders , national troops and summons .



If you aren't using your national troops, then you will almost certainly be beaten by somebody who is, unless you have an absolutely massive blood economy. In that case, you've traded the gold from those provinces for magical ability.


the only thing that can kill scs half reliable are battle mages or other scs .



This is not a problem.


a well balanced system should always be like rock , paper & scissisor .



No, it shouldn't. That's an overly simplistic system that leads to ridiculous results.


if you encounter a bane lord standard sc if you don't have blessed troops which many nations lack with national troops only you already almost can't beat him .



Why should you be able to beat one with only normal troops and no magical backup?


if you have only firemages since he will be fire resistent they don#t work too .




air mages may only work with false horrors but against scs with fireshield this is not reliable too .



Air mages should be using thunderstrike, not false horrors.
You should make up your mind about what kind of equipment your banelord has. If it has fire and lightning immunity, then it's MR will be low enough to kill it with the instant kill spells. If it isn't fire and lightning immune, then you can kill it with incinerate or thunderstrike. 20 Lamias can also often hold off a completely equipped bane lord for more than 50 turns.


since normal mages can be killed by assasins / flames from the sky etc. relative easy too and you can't move them around via magic move since they would lose their army scs are overall even better then battlemages probably .



Are all of your strategies based around your opponents sitting there and not doing anything to affect how well your plans work?


there is teleport to move around but this is always difficult because of mind duel .
so bringing astral mages to battle is always risky .



Astral mages that can teleport or gateway are not at a serious risk to mind duel attacks. They should probably be dueling themselves.


replace them as quick as you can with a few summons .
invest almost all your gold in mages ( rest in temples + castles and a few preists , scouts as item mules ).



Once again, how is this a problem, and what are you planning to use for summoned troops. There are very few that will replace your normal troops.


as it is if some players of equal skill play against each other if one takes caelum , one abysia , one atlantis and one pan cw normally the pan cw and the atlantis player have no chance to win at all and only caelum + abysia fight for who is winning .



I think you need to play more games and spend less time theorizing. You might also want to avoid playing games on huge maps, and not put magic site frequency above 50%. Both Atlantis and Carrion Woods have everything they need to defeat the nations you've just listed.


but balance between national troops , national leaders , summoned troops and summoned SCS would be greatly improved .



Destroyed you mean, since there would no longer be any point in summoning them.


for a more dominonlike game i recommened a closer look at the age of wonders series , especially age of wonders 2 sm .



I have looked at it. I've already outlined a few of the many numerous problems with the game. Another one is that unit upkeep is far too high.


so why would you ever cast anything else with them against other troops ?



Are you now complaining that there are choices that are better in many situations? This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. You paid for the better spells with research, and put a huge amount of resources into that research. Why _shouldn't_ it give you real benefits?


once you have the choice then between bane lords and tartarians you always take tartaians .



Hardly. Tartarians require you to be able to hold on to either gift of health or the chalice, and to have a nature gem income of more than 20 per turn for gift of reason. You won't be able to keep gift of health for that long in most games, and the chalice moves around anytime someone wishes for it.

[Cainehill]

Boron said:
have you ever played age of wonders 2 shadow magic cainehill ?




Trust me, I've played more computer games than you can imagine under heaven and hell. Yes, I've played AoW, AoW2, AoW2SM. The first one was the best, SM was seriously flawed right down to the campaign system. Worst of all, like the Disciples series of games, units had to _kill_ an opponent to really gain experience, making you play stupid arse games (in the game) to get the good units / heroes to get the kills. In this, it was rather like several of the Final Fantasy video games, where even if you could kill a group of enemies right away, you had to dick around and swap in each character if you wanted them to advance / get experience.



i played it seriously for about 1/2 year and enjoyed it .
the only problem is that you have only about 200 units and 200 spells and know all too quick .
but it was really well balanced .



No it wasn't. Certain races and heroes were definately better than the others. The campaign mode helped to disguise this by _forcing_ you to use certain races.

You point out that you only played it for 1/2 a year, because you know it all too quick.

So - why do you want to dumb down Dominions2? Yes, it gets frustrating seeing your carefully crafted army get toasted by an SC or a couple of mages. So _LEARN_ from it. I'd like to think that at this point I'm a solid intermediate Dom2 player; there's still a lot of things I _know_ I don't do well enough, and personally, I like that.

My SCs don't match up well against the really good players yet - I don't forge enough items. Oh well - solution, forge more. I didn't scout enough - solution, build more scouts. I didn't use summoned troops well enough - solved.

Proper use of summoned troops, of SCs, of powerful spells (not counting Wish (half-joke) , is a huge part of being a good Dominions2 player. I've been playing _very_ steadily for over half a year, and there's still a lot to learn and improve on.

So, again - why do you want to cripple the parts of the game that give it such a long lifespan?



i just wonder why you are so reluctant against small changes cainehill where the majority agrees that they would strengthen the dominion experience even more .
esben agreed to me , panther agreed , cohen will agree .




Okay. Now I'm going to give voice to my inner feelings based on this. Is your nickname "Boron the Moron" by any chance?

My reason for this is: "The majority agrees"???? You gave three names - Tauren is certainly a 4th. This is a bleeding majority?

Second - you're an idiot if you think that what you, Tauren, and even Panther (no moron there) propose are "small changes". You obviously aren't a programmer, aren't a grognard, aren't an analyst or anything close. "Small" changes have big ripples, especially in a game with such widely varying factions as Dom2 has. And what y'all propose aren't small changes.

You propose having reduced upkeep for national troops. Why? I've served in my nations military. They don't get paid any _less_ as the years go on. Why do you think knights would take 1/4 salary as they got better at their trade?

And you want _upkeep_ for all summoned troops? Where in Dog's name is this justified? If I summon ... undead, I slit a throat, and I have zombies. Why would they cost upkeep? If I conjure sea monkeys, I enticed them with the gems I offered in the casting. Demons, I offer some souls up front - I don't offer them "20 souls, plus 5 souls a month amortized and averaged over the per diem cost per soul in Ulm."


the aow / MoM approach here is just more righteous .



And you're on bad drugs. MoM's approach was totally different, as was AoW's. They have different game systems, different mechanics. If you want a MoM style game that's better - write it. Two amateurs (programming wise) did a damn fine job with Dominions and Dominions 2. Why can't you do the same? Especially since "the majority" agrees with you.

( Note : I just spent 3 hours on the phone before I completed this message, so it might not have the overall coherency I usually prefer. Then again, I'm not debating coherent people. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif )

[Stossel]

Is your nickname "Boron the Moron" by any chance?




Cainehill said:
( Note : I just spent 3 hours on the phone before I completed this message, so it might not have the overall coherency I usually prefer. Then again, I'm not debating coherent people. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif )



Ad Hominem never helps your case.


So - why do you want to dumb down Dominions2? Yes, it gets frustrating seeing your carefully crafted army get toasted by an SC or a couple of mages. So _LEARN_ from it. I'd like to think that at this point I'm a solid intermediate Dom2 player; there's still a lot of things I _know_ I don't do well enough, and personally, I like that.

My SCs don't match up well against the really good players yet - I don't forge enough items. Oh well - solution, forge more. I didn't scout enough - solution, build more scouts. I didn't use summoned troops well enough - solved.

Proper use of summoned troops, of SCs, of powerful spells (not counting Wish (half-joke) , is a huge part of being a good Dominions2 player. I've been playing _very_ steadily for over half a year, and there's still a lot to learn and improve on.



A proper RTS analogy for this idea would be, in order to stop the rush, rush yourself. This attitude however devolves the game into nothing but rushing, and is a big sign of a design flaw.

He's not attempting to "dumb down" the game, his intention is to make the game a richer experience by not making national units completely obsolete in the late game.

It just seems to me there's something wrong with how things are working. However, like many people have already pointed out, the game setup migh have a huge part to do with it. Easy research, lots of magic sites, over-sized maps for how many people are playing, etc. contribute to an SC/mage-heavy type of setup.

Even so, I'd like to see research and gems, items, etc. be able to benefit troops as well. Create a series of flag standards that would be forgeable and give bonuses to the units under the bearers command. Strengthen troop-bonusing spells, or give bonuses to the national troops when they get buffed. These troops are after all your loyal subjects. Trolls and Ice devils are all fine and dandy, but they aren't building your temples and worshipping you day to day.

[deccan]

Whoa, a flame-fest. This kind of reminds me of the debate I ran across on the White Wolf forums. Basically there was one group going: werewolves are slice 'em and dice 'em killing machines, vampires are pale-skinned effetes who drink blood, an average werewolf should kill an average vampire in, like, two seconds tops.

Then the other group was going: no, no, no vampires are "IMMORTAL LORDS OF THE NIGHT" and werewolves are mortals who can shapeshift into wolves, werewolves should be pet *****es for vampires etc.

What was amusing of course is that neither vampires nor werewolves exist in reality, everything lies in how the individual wants to conceive them as being.

In the same way, there's no universal, end all, be all, fantasy strategy game. Inevitably, different players will conceive of what is for them the ultimate fantasy strategy game in different ways.

On the one side, we have Graeme Dice and Cainehill whose idea of fantasy is fantastic, high fantasy, the stuff of legends, like Middle Earth in the First Age, when there were lots of dragons and balrogs about, when Morgorth walked the earth in physical form, when the Ents were awake and the power of gods like Tom Bombadil were in full bloom, and mortal humans could do no more than stare at them in open-mouthed awe.

On the other side, we have people like Panther and FM_Surrigon whose idea of fantasy is a more subdued, subtle kind, where ordinary joes can and do play a part in the great scheme of things. Sort of like Middle Earth in the Third or Fourth Ages. This is the age of mortals, where force of arms determine the fate of the world. Magic is rare but when found, always prized. I have to say that I tend to lean towards this camp.

But that doesn't mean that we can't agree to disagree. This is simply a matter of taste. I agree that at this point Dom leans heavily in the direction of high fantasy and it may well be that this is what the developers prefer themselves.

But surely, we of the latter camp can make suggestions and say what kind of game we'd like to have. After all, not everyone has the time, inclination, dedication or talent to make a game as good as Dom2.

[deccan]

FM_Surrigon said:
Ad Hominem never helps your case.




I second that. Cainehill's remarks were totally uncalled for.


FM_Surrigon said:
Even so, I'd like to see research and gems, items, etc. be able to benefit troops as well. Create a series of flag standards that would be forgeable and give bonuses to the units under the bearers command. Strengthen troop-bonusing spells, or give bonuses to the national troops when they get buffed.



Great ideas. I miss the MoM mechanic of enchanting the equipment of ordinary troops, or having troops builts in places with mithril deposits have better weapons / armor.

However, I agree that changes of this magnitude will be impossible in Dom2. These are all things for a future Version of the game or some other game entirely.

[deccan]

Cainehill said:
And you want _upkeep_ for all summoned troops? Where in Dog's name is this justified? If I summon ... undead, I slit a throat, and I have zombies. Why would they cost upkeep? If I conjure sea monkeys, I enticed them with the gems I offered in the casting. Demons, I offer some souls up front - I don't offer them "20 souls, plus 5 souls a month amortized and averaged over the per diem cost per soul in Ulm."




Makes perfect sense to me, thematically anyway. This way if I don't keep my 7/7 flying trampling Lord of the Pit well fed with blood slaves, he will come to my capital and personally kill my pretender. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

[johan osterman]

Boron:

If summoned troops start to cost upkeep it will skew the game in favour of items and gem guzzling spells. This will, if items are not made upkeep dependent as well, amongst other things make SC's more prevalent, render far summons and army killing spells relatively more effective etc, in short result in a number of balance changes whose merit is debateable. Besides the balance changes upkeep would also introduce gameplay changes. For example it would render early summons with bad gem for punch ratio that much less interesting. It would also make you very reluctant to cast summoning spells with gems from which you do not have a reliable income, if as was suggested units without the gems to keep upkeep were to depart. There are more problems of this sort. Besides balance and gameplay changes there are implementation problems that are quite a bit more demanding than what you seem to imagine. First of all there is no hardcoded gem cost for a unit like there is for the gold. This means that each summonable unit would have to be assigned a gem cost induvidually. If this was derived from the summoning spells most commonly used to summon the unit it would mean that units that are summonable in different quantities dependent on outside factors would have to be subjected to some consideration, take a troll for example, part of the cost for the troll is that it requires a lvl 3 mage to spend a whole turn sommong it, should it still cost just 1/15 gem in upkeep? or should it be calculated based on the troll court? While these problems are not insurmountable the gains of the change is not readily apperent either, especially since part of what you appear to desire can be achieved by fíddling with starting parameters. In other words, upkeep for summoned units is not going to happen in dom2.

[Arralen]

written without seeing johans posting ..

supplies:
One big problem with standard troops is the lack of supplies in most provinces. (As someone stated above)
This not only makes it impossible to use more than, say, 100 human troops in one army, it almost 100% assures that the AI will attack you with an army of starving and diseased units, if it ever gathers a strong enough hord of its medium inf to do so. (That it doesn't build castles isn't that much of a help, either)

This supply issue stems from the fact that units in Dom2 eat at least as much as in Dom1, but provinces have noticeable less pop, and therefore less supplies, too. Furthermore, on most of the popular maps you'll notice a overuse of the terrain feature. But anything else than grass land and plains has poor pop, and modifiers from terrain plainly add up, so you can "ruin" a grassland prov by marking it as forest .. .


upkeep-free troops
There are, obviously, 3 types of upkeep-free troops:

At first the auto-summons which are rather week and sometimes cause more problems than they help. Charging a, however small, fee for them will simply kill some themes. (Pan CW, Pan w. turmoil, Ermors etc.)

Then there's the second type: Troops/commanders you can summon using gems. Some of them are quite costly for their stats etc., some are one-shots-only as they don't heal etc. Those aren't that much of a concern, balancing-wise. The problem is with those which are better than all buyable commanders/troops and don't have a glaring weekness within the area of their "intended use" - as soon as you have the gems and the path level, there's few reason to buy any regular commanders/troops any more.

But worst of all are those commanders/items which can summon upkeep-free units .. so you basically all you pay for commanders and units is the starting gems .. speak of deminishing cost, exponential returns here.

excursus:
Midnight Games ruined their Module "Realm of Immortals" for their PBEM "Legends" that way: Every unit had a race and a magical status. Some stati where able to inflict lesser ones from their "chain" onto soldiers for free - and on commanders, which in turn could inflict lower stati themselves, than. Units were upkeep-free in general. Game ended up after 100 turns with armies of tens of thousands "Vampire Lord Elven Guards of xy" - soldiers or similar crap. Each of them as strong as the avareage fighting commanders where - but the game was designed with a clear emphasis on those commanders/characters, which where only useful as troops trainers in the end. (And mages, using a handful of critical spells).
Been there, tried it, suffered horribly .. why should we repeat this in Dom2?


suggestions for solutions
Temporary solution to fix (and test) the suppliy issue is to use a scale mod that ups supply production by 200..300%. I'm running 150% at the moment, and it seems it could use more. Creates an interesting strategical effect: Because it's a %-tage, mountains and swamp don't get that much improvement, so there's the choice to take a smaller force through the mountain and/or make a detour with the big horde.
(ATM, you'll either forge supply items en masse or use non-eating summons)
Maybe one wants to beef up gold income, too .. would tip the scale in favour of buyable units as well.

Using max. 40% magic sites and very difficult research will let players test how the game plays without über-magic and -summons.
To really fix the problem, making those summons limited in number definitly isn't a solution. Quite the contrary: this does encourage rushing for "tech".
Upkeep in gems most likely poses too much programming problems.

One possible solution would be that the summons simply leave after a while (this mechanism is already there).
"Secondary summons" shoudl be either very weak, or completly removed, imho.

[Boron]

Graeme Dice said:

Boron said:
gold dragons , dark angels , angels , the dark dragons etc. were a waste of resources ?



You can't build anywhere near enough of them to make up any significant part of your army.



uhm : normally 1 city gave you about 60-70 gold and between 30-50 mana ( depending on nation ) and about 20 research points .
since once you have researched all spells research points were converted in mana too it was normally the following :
while researching gold to mana ratio was 2:1 .
at the end it was about 1,5 : 1 .

normally i had about 60% of my army composed of national troops and 40% of summons lategame .
if they would have fought each other they would have given a very close fight .



Graeme Dice said:

Boron said:

[quote]
most battlespells were great like fireball , the armageddon like spell , cosmic spray etc. etc.



They can kill one or two units at most, like I said. They have very little real effect on the battlefield. Fireball for example, would have to have about a fifth to a tenth of the cost to be really worthwhile.



you have missed the main point of spells in aow :
e.g. a chain lightning normally always hitted 5 enemies .
the purpose was not to kill the enemy totally but to weaken it that much that you can kill it with the first blow .
thanks to the good dice roll system in aow 2 too if e.g. a karrag ( goblin lvl 4 unit ) fought against a dredd reaper ( the undead lvl 4 unit ) in about 50% of the cases the karrag won and in 50% the dredd reaper .
if you used battle tactics / spells better than your enemy you changed the odds to 90% vs 10% for you .




Graeme Dice said:

Boron said:
[quote]
you seem to have not played aow 2 sm much right ?



I've played AOW2 enough to know what the major problems with its design are. Unless the game rules have been completely overhauled from the ground up in Shadow Magic, the basic problems are still going to remain.



you played only aow 2 ?
with what patch ?
in aow 2 shadow magic with the latest patch the game was really overhauled .
most strong attacks like a fire breath of a dragon were reduced to 3/battle , same with the making immobile attacks like entangle from druid , grasp from rock bird , web from spiders etc. etc.

spells were fine tuned etc.

[Thufir]

deccan said:

FM_Surrigon said:
Ad Hominem never helps your case.




I second that. Cainehill's remarks were totally uncalled for.




I third that. This forum is the worse for such immaturity.

On the subject at hand, I think Esben has made a number of excellent (if provocative) suggestions in this thread. The two that I like the most I think are impractical to implement in Dom2, but well worth consideration in Dom3. Those being:

1) Increase the penalty for being surrounded.
2) Add maintenance cost for summons. I'd also like to see a maintenance cost for Ritual spells with continuing affects.


Both of these changes would make for an underlying mechanic that "feels" more realistic. I believe that while both really require a ground up rewrite for balance to be achieved (especially #2), I think that both of these changes would provide a basis that is cleaner, and if anything easier to balance. While Johan's comments are undoubtedly correct if this change is made to the current system, there's no reason why magic maintenance cost can't be incorporated without unduly favoring SCs or items, if this is considered from the ground up.

So, that said, I don't think either of these changes are a good idea for Dom2. Dom2 as it stands is a wonderful game. Otherwise we wouldn't all be spending such time and energy in this forum. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif And, to me, the best thing about Dom2 is it's extraordinary richness and complexity, measured against the fact that despite all that complexity, it is still a very well balanced game. Maintaining balance in a game as complex as Dom2 is no easy feat, and it goes to the credit of the designers/devs for Dom2 and no doubt to the Dominions community as well. These changes are dramatic, and I think will be problematic to accomodate, in terms of game balance.

[Boron]

well cainehill since you started name calling me again as you did cohen before once you need to use such things and can't keep it rational you proof with this that you have run out of arguments and it lets luck you just bad .



can anyone of you name me a game where an upkeep mechanism is included but about 50% of your troops ( nationals) cost upkeep and about 50% (summons) are upkeep free ?

since you state you know so many games caine :

a nearly perfect balanced game is starcraft broodwar :

there the troops with the lowest tech levels can beat some high tech troops .
to win you have to mix your troops but all troops have a role in the whole game .

example : a terran marine is tech wise the cheapest troop , it is your first one .
a proton scout who is very lategame tech wise and has huge costs is easily defeated by marines for the same cost .

the protoss base unit , the berserker wins against 2 marines , the same costs .
terra can advance then to flamethrower infantry .
they win against berserkers .
they lose against the next toss unit , the dragoon .

the dragoon though loses against marines again .


if you combine marines with medics they are rather horrible . then you need e.g. reavers to properly beat them .

reavers beat everything on ground expect good managed terran siege tanks .

both of this units have no anti air capazities .

so against a few fliers they lose .


most fliers again lose against Medics + Marines .

the medics + marines lose though against a reaver .




so it is well balanced and depending what your opponent uses you need to build a counter but normally your cheapest troops techwise : marines , berserks and zerglings are useful in the whole game .


in dominions this is simply not the case .


and a few REAL LIFE history examples which show that new tech is not always better :

world war 2 :
surely in a 1on1 comparison a king tiger was much better than the german mark 4 tank .
costwise the ratio though was something like 1 tiger to 5 mark 4 tanks though or 3 panther tanks .


the soviet union had about the same capazities than germany .
germany focused on their ultrahuge tanks like tiger , king tiger , jagdtiger , elefant ... and wasted lots of resources .

the soviet union concentrated on the very good t 34/85 .
while in a 1on1 clearly inferior to a tiger tank it was so cheap to produce that it normally fought in a 10:1 ratio against the tiger and won easily .

furthermore 1 infantry with a bazooka could defeat any tank when it came close enough .
a tiger was as vulnerable to an airattack than a t 34/85 e.g.


so though the tiger series was technically far superior than e.g. the t 34/85 or the sherman they could be beat still by them .

[deccan]

Boron said:
the protoss base unit , the berserker wins against 2 marines , the same costs .




Actually it was a Protoss Zealot. But yeah, SC is great game. I wish Blizzard had seen it fit to make an SC 2 instead of a WC 3.


Boron said:
so it is well balanced and depending what your opponent uses you need to build a counter but normally your cheapest troops techwise : marines , berserks and zerglings are useful in the whole game .




Yeah, that's my personal preference as well, emphasis on personal. One of the interesting card-design policies that Wizards of the Coast devised (but didn't really put into practice consistently) for Magic: The Gathering was that cards should be balanced, so that rare cards should not be more powerful per resource (mana, card in hand whatever) than common cards, but instead should be more complex. That is, rare cards should have wide-ranging, game-changing effects that are really powerful but limited in application to very specific niches (combos, specific strategies used by an opponent, vulnerable to a prepared opponent etc). Common cards however should be versatile and good just about any time.

But of course, that's something that's easy to idealize after, but very hard (impossible?) to put into practice.

[Kel]

Graeme Dice said:
I think you need to play more games and spend less time theorizing. You might also want to avoid playing games on huge maps, and not put magic site frequency above 50%.



AMEN !

- Kel

[Arryn]

OT discussion on tanks ...

Boron,

First, the USSR had a larger industrial base than Germany, and one that wasn't being bombed day and night. The T34/85 wasn't 10 times cheaper to produce than a tiger (as you imply), though it was significantly cheaper. (Perhaps 1/2 or so.) What allowed the soviets to build vast numbers of them was a combination of a much larger manufacturing base, coupled with ample raw materials -- materials Germany was always short of, and an armaments industry that wasn't wasting valuable time and people in designing a plethora of different tanks (like Germany's absurd assortment of models). During the war, the soviets would design one model of medium tank, and one model of heavy, and then build just those. If they found a shortcoming to the design, they'd modify the base design. The Germans, OTOH, designed multiple different medium and heavy tanks, and preferred to design entirely new models to correct perceived shortcomings in their forces (though they also modified old designs too). The net result for Germany is that while their industry suffered from incessant attack and materials shortages, they were also heavily dividing their attention and failing to focus on any one design. The soviets, second only to the U.S., fully understood the concepts of economies of scale.

Second, the German tiger was so superior to the American Sherman that it was all but impervious to the latter. Shermans did NOT win against the tigers at 10:1 odds. Far from it. The single biggest killer of tigers was allied air attack, followed by allied artillery attack. Very few tigers were ever disabled, much less killed, by allied tanks (or even allied tank destroyers). Allied tanks (except the Sherman Firefly 7.6cm and Pershing 9.0cm models) were simply not good enough to get the job done. Sherman armor was pathetically thin and their 7.5cm gun was 2-3 years obsolete compared to what the Germans and soviets were using.

Finally, even had the Germans been able to concentrate on just one cheap-to-produce model of tank they'd've still lost, though the war would have been much bloodier than it already was for Germany's opponents.

In summation, Germany's problem wasn't their new tech, it was that they never had enough of it. I think this is the point you were really trying to make. However, the way you went about saying it implies that had they focused on building older models or just one new model things might have been different. The analogy between Germany and Dominions isn't valid because Germany's reasons for losing the war are much more complex than that.

[Graeme Dice]

Boron said:
normally i had about 60% of my army composed of national troops and 40% of summons lategame .
if they would have fought each other they would have given a very close fight .

And you'd probably have a more effective army if you ignored those summoned units and instead boosted your level 3 and 4 units with various magic spells.


Boron said:
you have missed the main point of spells in aow :
e.g. a chain lightning normally always hitted 5 enemies .
the purpose was not to kill the enemy totally but to weaken it that much that you can kill it with the first blow .



Which is, like I said, the problem with the battlefield spells in that game. They can't actually be used to kill troops, which renders spellcasting heroes rather useless.


Boron said:
you played only aow 2 ?
with what patch ?



That wouldn't matter much, since the basic issues are ones dealing with the economic nature of the game. Take level 1 units for example, where the upkeep costs are ridiculously high.

[Graeme Dice]

Thufir said:
I third that. This forum is the worse for such immaturity.




I think Cainehill said exactly what needed to be said in this case.


1) Increase the penalty for being surrounded.



The penalty for being surrounded by size 2 units is currently a minimum of 18 defense points by the end of each turn. That's not small.


2) Add maintenance cost for summons. I'd also like to see a maintenance cost for Ritual spells with continuing affects.



I don't know why people have such a liking for this idea, as the very thing that makes the game worthwhile is that magic is actually powerful, unlike the vast majority of fantasy games.

[Graeme Dice]

Boron said:
a nearly perfect balanced game is starcraft broodwar :



Why should we be dumbing down this game to make it more like Starcraft, where your options are artificially limited?


in dominions this is simply not the case .



Like I've said before. You need to spend more time playing the game, and less time making up theories about how it works.


and a few REAL LIFE history examples which show that new tech is not always better :



An argument from realism has no place in determining what would make a game more fun.

[Gandalf Parker]

Thufir said:

deccan said:

FM_Surrigon said:
Ad Hominem never helps your case.




I second that. Cainehill's remarks were totally uncalled for.




I third that. This forum is the worse for such immaturity.




I am glad to see the community seek to police itself. Especially anyone who will take offense at the alternative.

So let me again point out that flames force us to examine a post for any real content. Allowing such flames to get out of hand endangers useful threads with the possibility of editing, locking, or disappearing. One person regularly coming to mind for such actions endangers their login.

[Arryn]

Graeme Dice said:
I think Cainehill said exactly what needed to be said in this case.

Agreed.


Graeme Dice said:
I don't know why people have such a liking for this idea, as the very thing that makes the game worthwhile is that magic is actually powerful, unlike the vast majority of fantasy games.

Because a very vocal minority of players, whose names we're quite familiar with, want to turn Dominions into just another in that vast sea of mediocre games. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/Sick.gif

Furthermore, Johan has already categorically stated IW's official view on the subject, yet this same vocal (dense/oblivious) minority continue to beat their drum hoping to either deafen or tire the rest of us into submission to their whims. Newsflash: won't happen. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/yawn.gif

[johan osterman]

Boron said:
...
can anyone of you name me a game where an upkeep mechanism is included but about 50% of your troops ( nationals) cost upkeep and about 50% (summons) are upkeep free ?
...



This does not constitute an argument. It is just an observation, and perhaps not even an interesting one.


Boron said:
and a few REAL LIFE history examples which show that new tech is not always better :

world war 2 :
surely in a 1on1 comparison a king tiger was much better than the german mark 4 tank .
costwise the ratio though was something like 1 tiger to 5 mark 4 tanks though or 3 panther tanks .


the soviet union had about the same capazities than germany .
germany focused on their ultrahuge tanks like tiger , king tiger , jagdtiger , elefant ... and wasted lots of resources .

the soviet union concentrated on the very good t 34/85 .
while in a 1on1 clearly inferior to a tiger tank it was so cheap to produce that it normally fought in a 10:1 ratio against the tiger and won easily .

furthermore 1 infantry with a bazooka could defeat any tank when it came close enough .
a tiger was as vulnerable to an airattack than a t 34/85 e.g.


so though the tiger series was technically far superior than e.g. the t 34/85 or the sherman they could be beat still by them .



What bearing does this have upon dom2 upkeep?

[atul]

deccan said:
On the one side, we have Graeme Dice and Cainehill whose idea of fantasy is fantastic, high fantasy, the stuff of legends, like Middle Earth in the First Age,...[snip]

On the other side, we have people like Panther and FM_Surrigon whose idea of fantasy is a more subdued, subtle kind, where ordinary joes can and do play a part in the great scheme of things. Sort of like Middle Earth in the Third or Fourth Ages.


And since thinking along only one axis is so boring, there are as many interpretations as there are players. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif I for one like the feeling of advancement in Dominions. I mean, sure, the game starts with these pretenders thinking too much of themselves leading few faithfuls into battle, relying on the strength of their followers. But as the war goes on, more and more [censored] hits the fan and the pretenders in their pride become more and more detached from the real world. Men who first fought with their kind are first sided with some monsters, later to notice that their God has very little use for common rabble bar taxing them to death. A bit like WW2, starting with Polish cavalry and ending with the two bombs.

And yeah, big spells are just cool, special thanks to IW for including them in the game. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif Can't think of too many games that have anything comparable.

And in respect to items to boost normal troops. I'd say there's a very good way to make normal troops useful in late game: while alone hoplites are no match for say, Mechanical Men, try casting Army of Lead, Mass Regeneration, Weapons of Sharpness and Mist Warriors and watch 'em sweep the floor. Of course there's little reason to recruit troops just to have them sit in the garrisons, but garrison duty isn't the thing to have soldiers do anyway.

[Boron]

Arryn said:
OT discussion on tanks ...

Boron,

First, the USSR had a larger industrial base than Germany, and one that wasn't being bombed day and night. The T34/85 wasn't 10 times cheaper to produce than a tiger (as you imply), though it was significantly cheaper. (Perhaps 1/2 or so.) What allowed the soviets to build vast numbers of them was a combination of a much larger manufacturing base, coupled with ample raw materials -- materials Germany was always short of, and an armaments industry that wasn't wasting valuable time and people in designing a plethora of different tanks (like Germany's absurd assortment of models). During the war, the soviets would design one model of medium tank, and one model of heavy, and then build just those. If they found a shortcoming to the design, they'd modify the base design. The Germans, OTOH, designed multiple different medium and heavy tanks, and preferred to design entirely new models to correct perceived shortcomings in their forces (though they also modified old designs too). The net result for Germany is that while their industry suffered from incessant attack and materials shortages, they were also heavily dividing their attention and failing to focus on any one design. The soviets, second only to the U.S., fully understood the concepts of economies of scale.

Second, the German tiger was so superior to the American Sherman that it was all but impervious to the latter. Shermans did NOT win against the tigers at 10:1 odds. Far from it. The single biggest killer of tigers was allied air attack, followed by allied artillery attack. Very few tigers were ever disabled, much less killed, by allied tanks (or even allied tank destroyers). Allied tanks (except the Sherman Firefly 7.6cm and Pershing 9.0cm models) were simply not good enough to get the job done. Sherman armor was pathetically thin and their 7.5cm gun was 2-3 years obsolete compared to what the Germans and soviets were using.

Finally, even had the Germans been able to concentrate on just one cheap-to-produce model of tank they'd've still lost, though the war would have been much bloodier than it already was for Germany's opponents.

In summation, Germany's problem wasn't their new tech, it was that they never had enough of it. I think this is the point you were really trying to make. However, the way you went about saying it implies that had they focused on building older models or just one new model things might have been different. The analogy between Germany and Dominions isn't valid because Germany's reasons for losing the war are much more complex than that.



i was unfortunately hindered by a heavy storm to finish my tank posting http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

so i continue now :

first with your shermans :
a sherman m4a3e8 hvss , one of the late war models , had the new 76 mm m1a1 gun as main weapon .

he had ap and apcr ammunition .

in close combat ( about 500 metres ) he had even good chances to penetrate a king tigers front armor with apcr ammunition .

on side + rear the king tiger had only about 90 / 80 mm of armour , on front about 220 mm for the turret and 160 for the front .

if a sherman could face a tiger on the side / rear he could kill the tiger at almost any range with his ap ammunition even .


perhaps you know the MAUS panzer .
the germans built 2 prototypes .
he would have had armour of 200-250 mm everywhere .

this tank would have had a weight of 150-200 tons .

the king tiger had already a weight of 70 tons but only about 1/3 of the engine power of a modern 70 ton tank like the leopard 2 / abrahams .

so the tiger was very immobile and strategic movement ( bridges ) was a huge problem .

since the germans built only about 450 of this monsters and most were used in the east front in a normal battle you normally never saw more than about at maximum 20 king tigers .
it is easy to flank them .

furthermore your m26 pershing tank / m 36 jackson tank hunter had with their 90 mm cannons good enough equipment to kill even a king tiger with some luck .


now to your industrial base of the soviet union :

according to a statistic from the "Kriegstagebuch of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht" 1941 the sovietunion invested 8,5 billions of $ in prices of 1944 in total in their total war production of war material in 1941 .
1941 the germans invested 6,5 billions $ in prices of 1944 in their production of war material .

1943 the figures were :
13,8 billions $ for germany
13,9 billions $ for soviet union


so their industrial base was about even and the german one would have been far bigger but you all know how insane hitler was and how many resources he wasted .
in 1944 when the war was already lost germany produced about 40% of its total war production !


in total from 1940-1943 the industrial total production of japan / italy / germany vs great britain and soviet union was about 0,9 : 1 .

until 1943 britain had good air force but bad tanks .
the sovietunion had bad airforce but good tanks .


the huge difference made the us :
in 1943 they produced war material worth 37,5 billion dollars !!!
that is about 2,7 times more than germany produced in total 1943 and about 1,5 times more than the soviet union + great britain produced 1943 in total !!!!!


combined with given how superior the us weapons were already in world war 2 if the usa would have been no democracy but a dictature like germany / soviet union the usa would have been able to conquer the whole world .

luckily that was not their intention http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif



but in general :
the british army was far inferior to the german army during the whole war .
the british air force was equal to the german air force .

the russian army was equal to the german army .
the russian air force was clearly inferior to the german air force .

germany had almost no navy so this section is irrelevant at all .



the us air force was even equal to the late war german planes . since germany couldn't build them in large enough numbers anymore the us air force was clearly superior .

the us army was absoulutely equal to the german army .
you had better rifles , sub machine guns etc.
you had the bazooka as really good anti tank weapon .
your shermans were better than the german main battle tank mark IV F2-J series .
they were almost even to the panther .
the pershing / general jackson could defeat all german tanks .


add to this that you had ALWAYS air superiority and with e.g. the thunderbolt excellent ground attack planes the us military of world war 2 was far superior to all participants of world war 2 .



but what i wanted to say there in analogies to dominions 2 :
lets say a knight is a mark IV / sherman / t 34 tank .

a midlevel sc ( bane lord / firbolg ) is a panther tank ( no real equivalents on us / soviet side there )


a lategame sc ( tartarian , airqueen etc. ) is a king tiger / pershing / josef stalin III tank .


finally fodder in dominions ( militia , light inf etc. ) is infantry in WW 2 .


in WW 2 something like 10 medium tanks could still defeat a lategame tank .
something like 5 improved medium tanks ( panther ) could still defeat a lategame tank .

in right terrain ( city , wood etc. ) 100 infantry could defeat any tank with an ambush + a panzerfaust / bazooka .


in dominions though even 500 light inf can't defeat a sc .
all they can perhaps achieve is reach the 50 turns battle limit but then the sc just lost 1 turn , is still alive and killed about 400 of the 500 light inf at least and kills the rest next turn .

even 100 knights can't beat a sc .



as it is once you reach midgame phase the war is just mainly between scs and antisc mage squads .

you need to either build anti sc mages or scs to have a chance .

since scs normally have better strat move overall fully equipped scs are just the best choice .
furthermore lategame your gold base can be damaged indirect ( plague , instill uprisings , utterdark to mention a few ) while your gem income from sites can only be damaged by conquering the province and your itemgemincome ( clams , fetishes , bloodstones ) can only be killed by complete defeat .

combined with that all summons don't cost upkeep at all scs / summonable mages / freespawn creatures ( ghosts , vampires , devils mainly ) make just what you aim at .
given that you have 1 sc from turn 1 with your pretender and can get e.g. equipped banelords at turn 20-25 easy this game mechanism is sorry to say that in my opinion unfortunately really almost "broken" .

you start playing and know that at least after turn 20 most national troops are already useless and after turn 40-50 even blessed ones etc. are only cannon fodder and should be avoided too cause the money you invest in them is better invested in castles , temples , mages and priests .


if you rush earlygame if you don't have fliers no national troop can defeat a single vq on turn 10 even .
even with many mages as support you have problems , e.g. water mages , lightning/fire mages ( a copper plate is damn cheap , so is a burning pearl ) .


while in a real life war it is the following :
infantry can defeat tanks alone . they take heavy casualities but they win .

with artillery support ( bombers , artillery ( e.g. panzerhaubite 2000 , paladin ) you just minimize your casualities .

in dominons 2 though the "only" weapon that comes close to an anti tank weapon for invantry is the fire 9 bless .
against protection 30 this is not reliable though at all .
even with mage artillery support you normally don't win at turn 10-30 at all if the sc is not undead .
so against a properly played nataraja e.g. until you can field a really expensive drain life mage squad you have normally even with mages + troops not the touch of a chance at all .

[Boron]

johan i was unfortunately hindered to finish my world war 2 excursion to make a comparision with dominions because of a heavy storm http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

now i finished my arguments .

please don't misunderstand me . i am so critical because i love dominions so much .
you made such a damn great game .



i am just convinced that the upkeep mechanism is a bit "broken" . once you have to pay upkeep for your summons , especially scs dominions is just even greater .



as it is i just get the sad feeling though that the only strategy you do is to try to get your overpowered things quicker than your enemy .

upkeep would balance that definetely though in my opinion .

johan have you or kristoffer ever played either starcraft or age of wonders 2 shadow magic with the latest patch ?

to make a Last starcraft example :

in starcraft if you rush to carriers e.g. which noobs often think are overpowered even if the experienced player doesn't rush you but just builds 120 marines with 30 medics or 150 hydraliks which cost about the same like carriers worth 150 supply and about equal in material costs too the lategame carriers get defeated by the earlygame marines / hydralisks .

in dominions though all kinds of national troops don't win against the lategame troops once you have them .
so they are useless after a few turns .

but it is only because of the different treatment of upkeep .
the few summons who cost upkeep ( though gold , the trolls + water trolls ) are not very popular .


maenads e.g. since they cost no upkeep as one of the few national troops at all though are because of this always useful as fodder .


so the different treatment of upkeep is afaik quite unique in dominions i know no other strategy game where an upkeep mechanism is included and about half of the troops cost upkeep and the other half doesn't .



so finally again i think just the different treatment of upkeep is the point .
as it is dominions is very entertaining and fun but unfortunately not well balanced .

with this change though i am sure it would become well balanced .


perhaps this is a reason why so many noobs are deterred from dominions .
it is so complex but a few things , mainly the routing system without army as panther said in the beginning and what was the topic of the thread before AND the upkeep are both just :
non-intuitive and they ruin the balance .


you say that nations are balanced within each other this is quite true but :
if you take for 2 nations a pretender like a oracle and the same scales .

most nations would be then :
they win easy against 3-4 nations , lose easy against 3-4 nations and are about equal to the rest .
this is a sign of good balance i admit .


but now take e.g. atlantis :
they will win against no other nation in this test i am SURE as long as they are not very lucky with their found sites .


i put this effort into this because i love dominions but i think the upkeep issue has to be fixed to result in a fairer and more balanced dominions .

the reason why some nations/themes are so unpopular ( atlantis , tien chi base + barb kings , golden arge arco , new age pan , iron faith ulm to mention a few ) are my above mentioned arguments .
if they have equal conditions and take all the same pretender they will rarely win because their troops + mages are not good alone .


you surely can take paths on your pretender but your enemy can take another nation and doesn't need that much because he can do more with his troops / mages .
so he has better scales and again an advantage against you .

[Boron]

Arryn said:

Graeme Dice said:
I think Cainehill said exactly what needed to be said in this case.

Agreed.


Graeme Dice said:
I don't know why people have such a liking for this idea, as the very thing that makes the game worthwhile is that magic is actually powerful, unlike the vast majority of fantasy games.

Because a very vocal minority of players, whose names we're quite familiar with, want to turn Dominions into just another in that vast sea of mediocre games. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/Sick.gif

Furthermore, Johan has already categorically stated IW's official view on the subject, yet this same vocal (dense/oblivious) minority continue to beat their drum hoping to either deafen or tire the rest of us into submission to their whims. Newsflash: won't happen. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/yawn.gif



arryn how can exactly you say this ?
you play mainly sp and you like jotunheim which is one of the few nations which has half useful national troops .


i remember that norfleet always wanted to invite you to mp-games and he seemed to never succeed .
so unless you played now many mp-games of dominions 2 since the about 3 weeks since norfleet is gone for you such statings are sorry to say that almost unqualified .

in sp you can win by almost everything so there the balance issue doesn't become obvious .

edit : furthermore i think it was you who always said dominions 2 is a worthy successor to master of magic .
since in master of magic you had upkeep for your summons so why do you like this in dominions then that there is no upkeep ?

[Arryn]

The odds of the 76mm M1A1 gun to penetrate Tiger II frontal armor at even point-blank range (far shorter than 500m) was virtually nil. True, the gun could kill at side or rear aspects, but you first had to survive to get such a shot, and that was problematic at best, given the lethality and range of the Tiger's gun. The Tiger II's main weakness (besides an appalling lack of mobility) is that you never found them in sufficient numbers that they couldn't (eventually and at great cost) be surrounded and thus expose their less-defendable aspects. The Germans, being no fools on the battlefield, understood this and tended to compensate by turning their tanks into semi-mobile pillboxes, forcing the allies to attack from the front. The allies typically responded by just pounding them flat from the air. The best way to get rid of any tank.

The M26 and M36 arrived too late in the war to be significant in any battles, same as for the soviet 'stalin' tanks (the design forerunner to all modern russian tanks).

The $ figures you cite for the German and Soviet war economy are meaningless, and ludicrous. They fail to account for real national production. Worse yet, the soviets were notorious for "cooking the books" to hide the true cost of their military. Also, the Germans extensively used slave labor, which lowered their costs significantly. A much better way to gauge economic strength is to measure the quantities of raw materials consumed into the production of armaments, or to simply measure the output (not in units, but in tons). The Germans did not even remotely match Soviet military production of small arms, artillery, and tanks. To claim that by the Germans spending as much as the Soviets (a dubious claim by itself) they had similar industrial capacities is absurd.

American submachineguns were markedly inferior to their German counterparts. So much so that GIs made a habit of picking up and using captured German weapons, despite having ample supplies of their own arms. The US bazooka was also distinctly inferior to the panzerfaust and panzerschrek. The only thing the bazooka was better than was the even crappier british PIAT. Of course, for the GI, a bazooka was better than having no bazooka at all, and trying to face a tank.

The Sherman (75mm models) were by no means superior to the Mark IV F-J models (and not even remorely close to the Panther), combatwise. The german tank had a far better gun and a lower profile, making it harder to hit. The Sherman's claim to fame (besides sheer numbers of them) was it's mechanical reliability compared to the german tanks, and it's superior mobility. Countering this was the Sherman's noted tendency to explode when hit, and the ease of hitting it.

The M26/M36 could defeat all German tanks, but that's meaningless because the same could be said about any German tank mounting a long 75mm or any 88mm gun versus any American tank. What mattered was how many tanks were available. It's that which heavily disfavored the Germans. Losing through being overwhelmed by sheer numbers. OTOH, the numerical superiority of the allies would not have mattered as much had just one of two things been different: had they not had total air supremacy, or had Hitler not been running the war. (In Dominions terms, it doesn't matter how good your units are if the player wielding them is a fool/idiot/moron.)

Can we please stop discussing WW2? It's irrelevent to Dominions, as Johan has already pointed out.

[Arryn]

Boron said:
you play mainly sp and you like jotunheim which is one of the few nations which has half useful national troops .

There you go again assuming things. First, while I do like Jotuns, I also play Ulm and R'leyh quite often. And Marignon. I've also played quite a bit in MP. Perhaps even more than you have, given the sort of nonsense I keep seeing you spout regarding balance issues. I think it was Zen who pointed out to you a while ago that you should theorize less and actually play the game more. Perhaps if you did you'd have a better appreciation of things as they really are, and of the ramifications of some of the half-baked ideas that are being floated.


Boron said:
i remember that norfleet always wanted to invite you to mp-games and he seemed to never succeed .

And that proves what? Did it ever occur to you that I might not have wanted to play in games against him, for any one of several different reasons? And that perhaps I was being polite in turning him down? Or that I might (and do) join games under other aliases? (However, unlike Norfleet, I don't do so with the intent to pump people for secrets. I simply prefer people I play against to not know who it is they are facing.)


Boron said:
so unless you played now many mp-games of dominions 2 since the about 3 weeks since norfleet is gone for you such statings are sorry to say that almost unqualified .

Gee, an unsolicited personal attack. Thank you.

The idea that you are an expert in judging the qualifications of anyone else is not only insulting, but it's laughable. I also do not suppose that it ever occured to you that there are many players of Dominions that have been very active in playing the game, yet never (or rarely) post on the forum? Would you call these players "unqualified" as well, simply because you're totally ignorant of them?

Cainehill may have been wrong to actually flame you, but I cannot fault his reasons why he wanted to. It's taking a major effort of willpower for me to not do so as well.

What's amusing to me is despite my having been accused on various occasions of arrogance, in the various flamefests that GD (and others) have had with me, neither they nor I have ever accused the other of "being unqualified". The sheer arrogance you have just shown is astounding.


Boron said:
edit : furthermore i think it was you who always said dominions 2 is a worthy successor to master of magic .


Wrong. Wasn't me. As a matter of fact, I got chewed on for having compared the two games, because they are quite different in some respects. Also, I think that Dom 2 is by far better than MoM ever was, and I've been semi-flamed for that opinion.

[Boron]

arryn : try steel panthers world at war .
they have every model included and used the REAL penetration values and armors of all tanks of ww 2 .

btw the "panzerschreck" and the "panzerfaust" were built AFTER the bazooka from the germans .
they developed them after captured bazookas from africa !

same with the panther . it was intended as a copy of the t34 tank .


the germans were good at target optics e.g.
and their cannons were a bit better than the american and soviet ones .
but not the british 17 pounder gun .
both the panther gun and the 17 pounder gun were 75mm / 76,2 mm so the same caliber .

until the firefly and the quite unsuccessful challenger the brits just couldn't build their 17 pounder gun into a tank .




ok lets stopp ww 2 discussion .
i just took it as a real life history example that in world war 2 every single soldier did his part for victory .

if you say that was world war 2 .
now in iraq some iraquis/terrorists who have old russian anti tank weapons etc. still defeat abrahams main battle tanks with special guerillia tactics .


in dominions 2 this would be the militia / light inf .
but in dominions 2 you can't make them a decent weapon in endgame no matter how hard you try .


the problem is just that a FOOL doesn't win against a experienced player in dominions .
but so he doesn't in CHESS OR STARCRAFT TOO .


in chess or starcraft though all units are useful during the whole game for something .
in dominions e.g. militia is always useless , most national troops are quick useless and lategame it is only who can field higher amounts of scs / battlemages .




heck dominions is great but i am more and more convinced that i have a point with my upkeep demanding .
hopefully johan or kristoffer will realize this and at least consider it for dominions 3 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Gandalf Parker]

Not to kill an OT thread (really, its not a problem, there are so few) but if you REALLY want to discuss this there are some other game here at Shrapnel which make extensive use of tanks. The developers and players in those Groups have extensive researching/opinion backgrounds in that area. If you do a "search" in all forums for some of the units you feel familiar with you will get an idea of what forums will flock to the topic.

Just a thought. If not then please carry on.

[Huzurdaddi]

The penalty for being surrounded by size 2 units is currently a minimum of 18 defense points by the end of each turn. That's not small.




And in practice it turns out to be totally insufficient. There is a reason why there is a mad dash for the powerful SC's and it is not becuase people like to use 4 or 5 of them in a battle to cover each other's backs.

I was playing a newbie game with Cohen where he was mopping up the floor with everyone by using an army which was backed by mages. It was really fun to watch those battles and it was far more interesting than watching SC's take on whole armies.

But to each their own. It's a matter of taste. If people prefer rushing to the special summons and equipping them and using them as their main attacking force who am I to judge.

[Gandalf Parker]

Huzurdaddi said:


The penalty for being surrounded by size 2 units is currently a minimum of 18 defense points by the end of each turn. That's not small.




And in practice it turns out to be totally insufficient. There is a reason why there is a mad dash for the powerful SC's and it is not becuase people like to use 4 or 5 of them in a battle to cover each other's backs.



As far as I can see the mad dash for SC's is done by the same people thinking the same way. Or some more experienced people who know they are playing with people who will try to fight fire with fire). The fix for SC's is often in the units that those people consider "worthless"

If a persons idea of a super combatant is based on damage it can do, and the only acceptable "fix" in their minds is something else based on damage, then you are looking at a spiral which is self defeating and game destroying.

[Arryn]

Boron said:
arryn : try steel panthers world at war .
they have every model included and used the REAL penetration values and armors of all tanks of ww 2 .

I have this game already, but have not played it in several years. BTW, I cite historical behavior of arms, not game behavior. Even the best of games sometimes fail to get things right. Games use theoretical (ideal), or proving-ground data, not real-world (statistical) data. Even SPWAW. Real-world performance is never as good.


Boron said:
btw the "panzerschreck" and the "panzerfaust" were built AFTER the bazooka from the germans .
they developed them after captured bazookas from africa !

The panzerfaust predates the bazooka. They were developed independently by the two nations, with the Germans starting development several months ahead of the US. The Germans did, however, copy the bazooka to create the panzerschreck.

The issue with the brit 17pdr wasn't so much a case of not being able to build a tank around this good gun (which was, indeed, a problem due to its recoil), but more a question of the allies failing to see the need for a high-velocity cannon to counter the latest German tanks. Pretty much a case of the allies repeating the mistakes the Germans made a couple of years earlier in underestimating the Soviets.

[Reverend Zombie]

To all who have contributed to the WWII discussion here:

tank you very much!

[Thufir]

Reverend Zombie said:
tank you very much!



<groan>

[Arryn]

Thufir said:

Reverend Zombie said:
tank you very much!



<groan>

Actually, he's quite ingenious. The best way to end an undesired topic is to throw a monster pun into the gears. He's scored a mobility kill as we're too busy coughing, wheezing, and/or clutching our sides to drive on (continue posting). http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/skull.gif

[Boron]

sorry arryn i didn't want to attack you personally .
i play as many games as i can .
i am in in 8 games on mosehansen + on sheaps server http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif


i never said i am an expert but i just wanted to share what i thought i discovered . cohen though is an expert and he comes to my mind he always claimed about similiar things than i did .



There you go again assuming things. First, while I do like Jotuns, I also play Ulm and R'leyh quite often. And Marignon.



these nations you have to admit though have all gotten rather good national troops .



i am just trying to share my viewpoint that the dominion experience would become even stronger with my suggested small modifications .

it is just unfair as it is that you have to pay no upkeep for your summons .

since especially starcraft is such a good example how attractive (almost) perfect balance is and i don't see any point which would make scs useless when they cost upkeep i wonder why my ideas meet so much dislike .


my theory is though since it takes you some time to realize how overpowered scs currently are and this is an unique feature of dominions so i think most ppl just complain because they have developed perfect strats to rush at e.g. air queens + equip them .

with my proposed upkeep this would still be true but they would have to pay something for this too .

but so the variety of dominions would greatly increase and it would be more fair .




name me 2 players who have about the same experience .
then let 1 of them play atlantis and one of them any other nation .


if anyone thinks he could win playing atlantis against any other nation against a player with about the same skill level in a standard 50% magic sites / normal research game then i will be (perhaps) quiet .


but since scs are overpowered and mainly the air queens and the ice devils are particular attractive caelum , abysia and jotunheim and vanheim are taken all very quickly in a new game always .
these nations have furthermore in common that they have lots of free extra points by scales since they have cold/heat and most of them can take sloth scale + watchtower easy too .


in starcraft i can play either zerg or toss or terra just the nation i like but i know that i have the same chance to win with every of them .

if i would like e.g. atlantis or tien chi ( base + barbarian kings ) i am forced to play them in sp only .
if i want to play them in mp it is like i voluntary handicap myself .

[Boron]

i have made so many arguments now why there should be upkeep cost for summons .

can anyone of you give me 1 conclusive argument why summons + national troops should be treated different upkeep wise or why the current upkeep system of dominions is fair ?

[archaeolept]

its boring and makes no sense to charge summons upkeep.

neither is it necessary, nor would it solve any fundamental problems, as conventionaly troops would still be as underpowered (when they are, which is usually).


cohen though is an expert

quoted for emphasis, or perhaps hilarity ;-)

I do generally agree that conventional troops lose their potency too quickly and too easily. Making SC's somewhat less efficient would be the route I would take - for instance, lowering the lifestealing effect for items/spells.

[Arryn]

Boron said:
cohen though is an expert

Most assuredly NOT! There's about a half-dozen names that come to my mind, and he's not only not on that short list, but not even in the top 20. My advice is to find better role-models than you've been quoting for the past few days.


Boron said:
it is just unfair as it is that you have to pay no upkeep for your summons .

Unfair? How?


Boron said:
since especially starcraft is such a good example how attractive (almost) perfect balance is

If ever there's a case for a meaningless comparison between vastly dissimilar things, this is one of them. You cannot draw any sort of valid comparison between Dom 2 and Starcraft, other than that they are both computer games, and that they both involve some element of strategy in playing. The similarities end there.


Boron said:
and i don't see any point which would make scs useless when they cost upkeep i wonder why my ideas meet so much dislike .

Several people have tried, repeatedly, to explain this to you -- including one of the game developers -- to no avail. You just are not listening to what they are saying. You are too busy arguing your own point.



Boron said:
but since scs are overpowered

Not true. And this has been hashed out and beaten to death in quite a few threads. But you (and others) refuse to be swayed from your firm beliefs, in spite of the detailed explanations you've been given by various people as to why you're mistaken. Yet you continue to harp on this, and then some folks take offense when I use the term "whine" to describe such irrational behavior.



Boron said:
in starcraft i can play

Would you please, please quit comparing Dom 2 to SC? It's not only a bogus comparison, it's also getting quite annoying. Dom 2 isn't SC. Get over it. Or go play SC.


Boron said:
if i would like e.g. atlantis or tien chi ( base + barbarian kings ) i am forced to play them in sp only .
if i want to play them in mp it is like i voluntary handicap myself .

That's your own lack of experience showing. Zen had no such problems. I know this firsthand. Please don't cite your own shortcomings as any sort of reason to change the game.

[Gandalf Parker]

Boron said:
i have made so many arguments now why there should be upkeep cost for summons .

can anyone of you give me 1 conclusive argument why summons + national troops should be treated different upkeep wise or why the current upkeep system of dominions is fair ?



Summons and national troops are different.
Much of your discussion is based on personal opinion.
As in many threads Ive seen, Illwinter made a response early on. No matter how much discussion has followed, I would consider that to be the response until you hear otherwise.
How many responses do you need?

[Arryn]

Gandalf Parker said:
As in many threads Ive seen, Illwinter made a response early on. No matter how much discussion has followed, I would consider that to be the response until you hear otherwise.
How many responses do you need?

Thank you.

[Boron]

and you are to busy to see the obvious i could say too arryn .

zen as an example for he had no problems with atlantis is a brilliant idea too .

first zen is gone from dominions probably forever .
second zen and norfleet were always handled as the most experienced dominions 2 players .
since norfleet cheated probably zen was .


and why can't i compare starcraft with dominions ?
starcraft is the best example that comes to my mind to show how really good balance should work expect chess .



a big factor maybe since i am still quite new to the community as panther e.g. is too you just say i am still to inexperienced .

if zen would have said what i said probably not as many ppl would have argued against me i guess .

and zen always said water is too weak .



but how can't you find it unfair that a summon costs no upkeep while a national unit does ?
furthermore the rule no upkeep for summons is not strict :
trolls cost upkeep .


so if you were an arch demon wouldn't you complain to have to work for no MONTHLY WAGE at all while a lousy knight gets a quite high wage of several gold ?!?
in most fantasy worlds like dsa or ad&d especially the evil mighty creatures ( monsters like dragons , demons ) demand continious new tributes to keep them working for you .
in dominions a poor arch demon doesn't get even a lousy blood slave / turn as payment .

this is nothing but unfair !

[Gandalf Parker]

Well I think there are some experts there. They are experts in one style of play. I dont mind that discussion as long as they arent trying to change the entire game based on one style.

I think StarCraft is a very bad comparison for balance. Its a unit-to-unit balance which is fair and supports tournament ladders nicely. Id much rather that Dom2 maintain a paper-rock-scissors balance at national level. Yes it makes tournament ladders difficult but there are plenty of those games out there already.

[Boron]

Gandalf Parker said:

Boron said:
i have made so many arguments now why there should be upkeep cost for summons .

can anyone of you give me 1 conclusive argument why summons + national troops should be treated different upkeep wise or why the current upkeep system of dominions is fair ?



Summons and national troops are different.
Much of your discussion is based on personal opinion.
As in many threads Ive seen, Illwinter made a response early on. No matter how much discussion has followed, I would consider that to be the response until you hear otherwise.
How many responses do you need?



when johan posted i haven't posted my best / most convincing arguments myself .

and so far illwinter has fixed balance issues like the vq .

so i do my continious posting with the hope to convince johan or kristoffer that my idea is good and at least considerable for dominions 3 .

[Arryn]

Boron said:
this is nothing but unfair !

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rant.gif Continued whining isn't going to change anything http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rant.gif

BTW, Zen and Norfleet may both be gone, but I'm confident that they *both* would have disagreed with you, however much they tended to disagree with each other. Regardless, since they're not here, and you need someone to listen to, why not Johan, the ultimate arbiter of the game? And he has already spoken. You just aren't listening. As Gandalf has politely pointed out in his carefully-phrased post.

[Arryn]

Boron said:
when johan posted i haven't posted my best / most convincing arguments myself .

And you still haven't, since you've yet to effectively counter any of the Posts that various people have made explaining to you why you're mistaken in your opinions.


Boron said:
so i do my continious posting with the hope to convince johan or kristoffer that my idea is good and at least considerable for dominions 3 .

Johan has already stated that they disagree with you. All that continued posting will do is annoy them (and waste their time). The game has other, important issues to be addressed. Let them do so, and cease badgering them about something that isn't broken.

[Huzurdaddi]

i have made so many arguments now why there should be upkeep cost for summons .




As I have said before: your "fix" would simply reduce the number of summoned troops and those gems would go into heavily equpped SC's.

Summoned troops are not a problem in dominions2. Heck you don't see that many of them going around ( other than a notable few ).



As far as I can see the mad dash for SC's is done by the same people thinking the same way. Or some more experienced people who know they are playing with people who will try to fight fire with fire). The fix for SC's is often in the units that those people consider "worthless"




I really doubt that the direct solution to SC's is with units that are considered "worthless". I would love to hear of an example.

I have seen lower end SC's killed by normal units ( Banelords in particular can often be killed by elite units 'en mass). However higher end SC's ( ice devils for example ) simply can not be killed by normal units. One equipped ice devil using no artifacts can kill an unlimited number of devils. I can't think of any more combat capable unit than devils.

Heck one specifically equipped Wraith Lord ( again with tech 6 and below items ) can also take on any number of devils number of devils.

I have no problem with an SC with a couple of artifacts taking a nigh-infinite number of units, that is very thematic. But one powerful summon equipped with "run of the mill" ( ie: not the types of items that books are about ) taking on any number of troops is not thematic.

[Boron]

so far only you continue arguing against me though .

2 possible explanations :
-either all others got bored or just think i tell nonsense and gave up because they think it is impossible to convince me .

-or most start to see that my argument about upkeep is good and they see that there are no things that speak against .


probably it is explantion 1 but hope dies always Last http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

the closest game to dominions which is of the same genre and about the same age is age of wonders 2 shadow magic .

1 months ago i would have rated dominions clearly better than aow 2 sm . but that is perhaps because i overplayed aow 2 sm .
now i would say they are about equal . dominions is overall better but aow 2 is a bit more balanced .


this is still a big praise on johan and kristoffer . aow 2 had most likely a far bigger budget and at least 20 ppl working at it .

no matter which system is included in dominions 3 i buy it anyways 100% sure .
i just hoped to at least show that upkeep for all would have advantages too compared to the current system .


i hear almost everybody complaining that lategame is boring . perhaps this is because of the upkeep issue .


but since i like playing a game with 8-10 players most this forces you to go to a map with at least 200 provinces to have a nice game imo http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif
with 200 provinces if i survive until lategame though it is reduced to who has a bigger gem income and who uses them better .

but since variety is always good and i know no other game with a upkeep approach as dominions i stop this now and thank illwinter once again for making one of the best games i know http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
that i put so much effort in my postings shows only how i concern about this game and how much i like it already.
my suggestion was still just a minor detail change imo http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

[Thufir]

Boron said:
probably it is explantion 1 but hope dies always Last http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif




And you, Boron, are a very hopeful man! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Cainehill]

Boron said:
second zen and norfleet were always handled as the most experienced dominions 2 players .
since norfleet cheated probably zen was .




And here I was thinking I should express regret for the way I expressed myself, if not for the content of my previous post.

You're now say that Zen probably cheated, because Norfleet did. I really didn't express myself emphatically enough, in retrospect.



and why can't i compare starcraft with dominions ?
starcraft is the best example that comes to my mind to show how really good balance should work expect chess .




You really just don't get it. Starcraft had a _very_ limitted number of troops, for each of 3 sides. That made it possible for Blizzard to balance each unit against the other units. It also made for a totally different game, in that there _aren't_ any particularly clever, ingenious tactics and strategies for the game - no one spends hours dreaming up neat things to try in Starcraft.

It's a great RTS - but it isn't in any way possible to compare the two, except for that "Well, they're both computer games". RTS vice turn-based, limitted units vice over 1000 unit types, not to mention that fact that the random nature of magic sites, "special" independents, and the like mean that no two games of Dom2 play alike.

And to bring up chess as an example of balanced illustrates your cluelessness even more.


if zen would have said what i said probably not as many ppl would have argued against me i guess .



If Zen had made stupid statements and arguments, people would have argued against him just as much. But Zen didn't tend to write idiocy.



but how can't you find it unfair that a summon costs no upkeep while a national unit does ?
furthermore the rule no upkeep for summons is not strict :
trolls cost upkeep .




I don't think this word 'unfair' means what you think it does. If one player didn't have to pay upkeep, while another player _did_ have to pay upkeep, this would be 'unfair'. Since everyone has the same conditions, it's perfectly fair, except for when someone _cheats_.



so if you were an arch demon wouldn't you complain to have to work for no MONTHLY WAGE at all while a lousy knight gets a quite high wage of several gold ?!?
in most fantasy worlds like dsa or ad&d especially the evil mighty creatures ( monsters like dragons , demons ) demand continious new tributes to keep them working for you .
in dominions a poor arch demon doesn't get even a lousy blood slave / turn as payment .

this is nothing but unfair !



This is nothing but drivel, actually. Dom2 isn't AD&D, it isn't Starcraft, it isn't chess.

And even _IN_ AD&D, demons worked for squat, didly, nada, nothing. Or perhaps you've forgotten all those monster summoning spells, that conjured forth goblins, imps, even cacodemons, to fight and die for the mage for NO PAY AT ALL. They're compelled by the magic.

Oh - you want unfair, in Dom2? How about the fact that you can have blind units with no arms, and you still have to PAY them.

Feh. I'm so glad you think you've put forth some of your "best and most convincing arguments"; you're truly casting pearls before swine. I'm sure that it's just that many of us, including the developers, simply can't comprehend your brilliance, unlike the 'experts' like Cohen and Tauren. Thank you for attempting to enlighten us, but we're not worthy.

[Arryn]

Boron said:
so far only you continue arguing against me though .

I'm more stubborn than most. My greater age just makes it worse. If there was truly wisdom with age, I'd've given up trying to make you see reason long ago.


Boron said:
-either all others got bored or just think i tell nonsense and gave up because they think it is impossible to convince me .

The slice from Occam's Razor yields this cut.

[Boron]

Thufir said:

Boron said:
probably it is explantion 1 but hope dies always Last http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif




And you, Boron, are a very hopeful man! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif



its still the innocence of being young i guess http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif

[Arryn]

Boron said:
its still the innocence of being young i guess http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif

Too bad he won't listen to his elders, only his age-mates. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/beerglass.gif

[Boron]

Cainehill said:

Boron said:
second zen and norfleet were always handled as the most experienced dominions 2 players .
since norfleet cheated probably zen was .




And here I was thinking I should express regret for the way I expressed myself, if not for the content of my previous post.

You're now say that Zen probably cheated, because Norfleet did. I really didn't express myself emphatically enough, in retrospect.





thnx for quoting out of context and doing misinformation .

i said since norfleet was cheating probably zen was the best dominions player present here on the board by public opinion .


really good way to cut the rest of my post out and giving my praise for zen by this way a totally other context .

[Arryn]

Cainehill said:

Boron said:
second zen and norfleet were always handled as the most experienced dominions 2 players .
since norfleet cheated probably zen was .



You're now say that Zen probably cheated, because Norfleet did. I really didn't express myself emphatically enough, in retrospect.

You've misread what he said, although that's not surprising since Boron habitually excludes punctuation and capitalization, plus you're more than a bit peeved at him and thus prone to jumping a tad too quick. What he said was that both were considered "experts", but since Norfy cheated, Norfy being an expert is called into question, leaving Zen as the true expert.

Of course, there are various others here that I consider experts, all of whom have disagreed with Boron, but he's chosen to ignore their Posts and reply just to yours and mine. Odd behavior, but not entirely unexpected.

[Gandalf Parker]

Boron said:
so far only you continue arguing against me though .

2 possible explanations :
-either all others got bored or just think i tell nonsense and gave up because they think it is impossible to convince me .

-or most start to see that my argument about upkeep is good and they see that there are no things that speak against .


probably it is explantion 1 but hope dies always Last



I think it was more #1 than #2. From the other threads here I think people are more than willing to post "I agree" Posts.

As far as I can see you base this whole thing on opinions of the game as a head-to-head player competition with strength units. Thats far from my preferred type of playing style. You seem to have sparked the interest of some people who do tend to do well with that style but dont be too surprised if people who play solo, stealth, magically, diplomatically, or swarm (just to name a few) have wandered off to other threads.

You also appear to have a fondness for "balanced units" games (which by the way tend to bore me to death). The rock-paper-scissor balance (nothing is too strong as long as SOMETHING can beat it) which DOm2 does at national level (not that a unit can be beat, but only that a nation can outpower a nation as long as there is another nation which can beat it)

As far as the summons thing, your search for balanced logic is fine. But there isnt alot of agreement that its a problem. And the fix would affect other points of balance.

[Stossel]

The rock-paper-scissor balance (nothing is too strong as long as SOMETHING can beat it) which DOm2 does at national level (not that a unit can be beat, but only that a nation can outpower a nation as long as there is another nation which can beat it)

As far as the summons thing, your search for balanced logic is fine. But there isnt alot of agreement that its a problem. And the fix would affect other points of balance.




I agree with this balance idea but it has a small caveat. The counter to a possibly unbalanced strategy has to be as easy or easier to do accomplish than the strategy in question. If not, then it is unbalanced because the questioned strategy will win through attrition.

There's no doubt in my mind that there are some strategies/nations that are in this unbalanced Category. They don't need a complete nerf, but they need to be checked properly. This is what all games struggle with, not just starcraft, or steel panthers or whatever, all strategic games of all types deal with it. Given time players will always migrate to the strongest strategies, and then once the optimal strategies are found, the information hunting (scouting, scrying, etc.), and the rock-paper-scissoresque play begins.

[Boron]

steel panthers is different it should be as realistic as possible so that there the germans are sligthly stronger doesn't hurt the game .

FM_Surrigon in starcraft are no stronger strategies .
as you pointed out intelligence is important .

a zealot/ling rush kills a teching terra . but if the terra has only a few flamethrowers he will beat this .
if you don't scout and play blind a e.g. zealot rush it is dangerous because you put all eggs in one basket .


gandalf one question because i am curious :
do you like chess ?


edit : one other question : do you like the random events in dominions or hate them ?



i took luck 3 !! and lost on turn 3 my lab . since my treasure is exactly 186 this way i have 2 turns without researching which throws me back just toooo much .

[Mark the Merciful]

boron wrote

i have made so many arguments now why there should be upkeep cost for summons .

can anyone of you give me 1 conclusive argument why summons + national troops should be treated different upkeep wise or why the current upkeep system of dominions is fair ?



1. It's not a question of "fair". It's a question of achieving the overal thematic feel that the developers want, while retaining overall game balance.

2. Walking trees can't do anything with gold, so why would they want to be paid with it?

3. Powerful magics and monsters are cool. That's why mahy of us play Dominions. I don't want to play a game that's focused on national troops, because that would be too much like World War II with funny names.

4. Small changes can have massive and hard-to-predict effects. So the default position should be, IMO, that the only reason to introduce a change is to fix something that's broken. The game works. Until you can demonstrate such broken-ness based on actual MP experience, the conservatives such as myselft are not going to agree that changes should be made.

Mark

[Esben Mose Hansen]

Boron said:
so far only you continue arguing against me though .

2 possible explanations :
-either all others got bored or just think i tell nonsense and gave up because they think it is impossible to convince me .



Bingo for bold!

I must admit, I read this thread in a sort of puzzled disbelief. The thread started off with discussing the routing rules, which has been up and about before without any real resolution. Then a suggestion to a fix had a "side comment" that this fix would slightly lower the value of SC, which turned the thread to a "how-to-limit-SC", while another "side comment" concerning the effects of the same fix on immortals unit started a "how-to-limit-powerful" summons. While these two items were discussed, the proponents for the powerful effects in the game chimed in and stated that they hated anyone and anything that would change this http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif Meanwhile, Gandalf was humming his "Every unit has a use, you just can't figure out how"-tune, Cainehill decided to go personal and somebody for the lack of nether fiends decided to start a thread-inside-the-thread about tthe merits and WWII tanks!

Now the thread has degenerated into people repeating what they already said, without listening. So let me write the rest of this thread for you http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Boron: Why don't you see the brilliance in taxing summons?
Arryn: That would destroy the game, which is so good.
Cainehill: Why are you so stupid, Boron?
Arryn: WWII tanks are the best
Gandalf: If people would just use the units nobody use, they would easily counter [insert-strategy]!

while true goto Boron:

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[Gandalf Parker]

Boron said:
gandalf one question because i am curious :
do you like chess ?

edit : one other question : do you like the random events in dominions or hate them ?




No I dont like chess. And I do like the random events in Dom. Im quite the advocate of solo play and increased "unfair" its such as randoms. My site at www.dom2minions.com (http://www.dom2minions.com) is full of things designed to increase that in the game.

Ive been made very aware that Dom2 is created as a multiplayer game and hence is unlikely to ever get many of the things I would like to see in the game. But I am not eager to see it move farther in that direction either. Toward each single nation/unit/spell/map-feature/event being completely fair and equal. The balance in Dom2 is there for the game play but its deep and hard for some to grasp. Ive seen people give up and leave because Ulm was so out of balance with Ermor. They never realized that its more like Ulm beats Marignon which beats Ermor which beats Ulm. Thats overly simplified but its a workable example. Ulm doesnt have to beat Ermor if Marignon can. Or, Ulm doesnt have to beat Ermor as easily as Marignon does.

[Gandalf Parker]

Esben Mose Hansen said:
Now the thread has degenerated into people repeating what they already said, without listening. So let me write the rest of this thread for you http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Boron: Why don't you see the brilliance in taxing summons?
Arryn: That would destroy the game, which is so good.
Cainehill: Why are you so stupid, Boron?
Arryn: WWII tanks are the best
Gandalf: If people would just use the units nobody use, they would easily counter [insert-strategy]!

while true goto Boron:

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif



LOL. Cute. Very cute. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[Kel]

Esben Mose Hansen said:
Boron: Why don't you see the brilliance in taxing summons?
Arryn: That would destroy the game, which is so good.
Cainehill: Why are you so stupid, Boron?
Arryn: WWII tanks are the best
Gandalf: If people would just use the units nobody use, they would easily counter [insert-strategy]!
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif



Hehe.

- Kel

[The_Tauren13]

lemme throw something new into the mix...

what if a scaled upkeep was used for troops... for example:
a unit costs x^(1.8)/1000 upkeep where x is the unit cost

so a cheap militia will have .005 upkeep... a knight perhaps 1.3 upkeep... and a good mage about 15 upkeep

then of course high resource troops would be way better.. but at least then sloth 3 wouldnt be mandatory

in fact.. why not factor in resource cost?

[Gandalf Parker]

The_Tauren13 said:
lemme throw something new into the mix...

what if a scaled upkeep was used for troops... for example:
a unit costs x^(1.8)/1000 upkeep where x is the unit cost

so a cheap militia will have .005 upkeep... a knight perhaps 1.3 upkeep... and a good mage about 15 upkeep

then of course high resource troops would be way better.. but at least then sloth 3 wouldnt be mandatory

in fact.. why not factor in resource cost?



There is sense to what you say BUT....
it would still be a balance affecting situation. This would impact nations such as Ulm much more than Pangaea and even Pangaea would have more impact from it than Ermor.

In mentioning Pangaea, I rarely purchase any of the high resource units at all. They serve me no purpose in the way I play. Im sure that is quite oppossite from the way some of the people in this thread would play Pangaea.

[Cainehill]

The_Tauren13 said:
what if a scaled upkeep was used for troops... for example:
a unit costs x^(1.8)/1000 upkeep where x is the unit cost

so a cheap militia will have .005 upkeep... a knight perhaps 1.3 upkeep... and a good mage about 15 upkeep

then of course high resource troops would be way better.. but at least then sloth 3 wouldnt be mandatory

in fact.. why not factor in resource cost?



Sloth 3 is mandatory? That's news to me. Sloth 3 is _doable_ and possibly even desirable with certain nations, (C'tis comes to mind), but it's hardly mandatory. Quite a few nations would cripple themselves if they took Sloth 3.

And high resource troops generally are already better than low resource troops, because their armor (the usual basis for high resource cost) keeps them alive a lot longer than, say, LI, while their heavier weapons do more damage to the foe.

But now you want to make upkeep more expensive for high resource units??? (That's how I read that Last line of yours.)

[deccan]

Arryn said:

Graeme Dice said:
I don't know why people have such a liking for this idea, as the very thing that makes the game worthwhile is that magic is actually powerful, unlike the vast majority of fantasy games.

Because a very vocal minority of players, whose names we're quite familiar with, want to turn Dominions into just another in that vast sea of mediocre games. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/Sick.gif




*Shrug* It's just a matter of personal taste and preference. I might as well complain why so many people buy David Eddings crap when they could be reading George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire".


Arryn said:
Furthermore, Johan has already categorically stated IW's official view on the subject, yet this same vocal (dense/oblivious) minority continue to beat their drum hoping to either deafen or tire the rest of us into submission to their whims. Newsflash: won't happen. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/yawn.gif



Yes, it won't happen. Not for this game. But I wouldn't want it to either. I happen to like Dom2 the way it is now, but occasionally, I'd like to play another fantasy strategy game that puts more emphasis on regular soldiers and less emphasis on all-out magic as well. I want that other game not as a replacement to Dom2 but as an addition to it.

[Boron]

deccan said:
Yes, it won't happen. Not for this game. But I wouldn't want it to either. I happen to like Dom2 the way it is now, but occasionally, I'd like to play another fantasy strategy game that puts more emphasis on regular soldiers and less emphasis on all-out magic as well. I want that other game not as a replacement to Dom2 but as an addition to it.



hint : this other game is really age of wonders 2 shadow magic http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
give it a try http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
it is about the opposite of dominions though it has fantasy theme in common .

i have yet not decided which one i like more . i like both about the same .

oh and on x-mas hopefully battle for middle-earth will be another great fantasy game mainly for the eye . but who knows perhaps the gameplay behind it isn't that bad too http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

[Boron]

Cainehill said:

The_Tauren13 said:
what if a scaled upkeep was used for troops... for example:
a unit costs x^(1.8)/1000 upkeep where x is the unit cost

so a cheap militia will have .005 upkeep... a knight perhaps 1.3 upkeep... and a good mage about 15 upkeep

then of course high resource troops would be way better.. but at least then sloth 3 wouldnt be mandatory

in fact.. why not factor in resource cost?



Sloth 3 is mandatory? That's news to me. Sloth 3 is _doable_ and possibly even desirable with certain nations, (C'tis comes to mind), but it's hardly mandatory. Quite a few nations would cripple themselves if they took Sloth 3.

And high resource troops generally are already better than low resource troops, because their armor (the usual basis for high resource cost) keeps them alive a lot longer than, say, LI, while their heavier weapons do more damage to the foe.

But now you want to make upkeep more expensive for high resource units??? (That's how I read that Last line of yours.)



just 2 anti-examples :

high protection is for all 8-12 hp units not enough to survive 1 single lightning bolt .

a vanheim van / skinshifter is a really good troop but very resource cheap .
since the skinshifter has a bit regeneration and better hp then an ulmish knight he has way better surviving chances against battlemagic then the ulmish knight .



perhaps my suggestions could be added though as modding command ?
that i can e.g. make militia cost only 1/200 upkeep while a knight costs 1/50 upkeep and a mage costs his normal 1/15 upkeep .

or a scaled upkeep as tauren suggested as a modding command . this way we could start such a modding game which would find enough players while nobody who doesn't like this wouldn't need to care .

[Arryn]

deccan said:
*Shrug* It's just a matter of personal taste and preference. I might as well complain why so many people buy David Eddings crap when they could be reading George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire".

I have all the books by both authors. Eddings is, for the most part, boring, but he's not a *bad* author, unlike some I could mention. But, given a choice, I'd much rather read Martin. I sincerely doubt you'll find anyone that rates Eddings better than Martin, except perhaps an ignorant child somewhere. But if you're waiting on Martin's next work, there's nothing wrong with some mindless entertainment by Eddings. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/yawn.gif

[Graeme Dice]

Huzurdaddi said:
And in practice it turns out to be totally insufficient. There is a reason why there is a mad dash for the powerful SC's and it is not becuase people like to use 4 or 5 of them in a battle to cover each other's backs.



That's how I use them. I've had several battles where I only won against the opponent's national troops and mages because I had 5 ice devils, a heliophagi, and a moloch all present, along with 80 or so devils and 50 lava warriors. Put that up against 3 Tuatha, 40-50 Daoine Sidhe, two sea kings with robes of the sea and water bracelets, plus about 10 elementals. Without my normal troops, that battle would have been a walkover for Man, as SCs with heavy armour can't deal with large numbers of elementals.

[Graeme Dice]

Boron said:
if anyone thinks he could win playing atlantis against any other nation against a player with about the same skill level in a standard 50% magic sites / normal research game then i will be (perhaps) quiet.



I'd be quite happy to play such a game. Atlantis isn't a weak nation, since kings of the deep give them incredible flexibility.

[Kel]

Hehe, seems like it wasn't that long ago when everyone thought clamming was over-powered and Atlantis was a prime clamming candidate...

- Kel

[Huzurdaddi]

as SCs with heavy armour can't deal with large numbers of elementals.




Note that elementals are one of the few ( only ? ) troops that can take on SC's. If you take them out of the battle the rest of his impressive army would have been destroyed by one of your ice devils ( assuming it was well equipped, and assuming no artifacts).

I've actually never tried to make an SC which is specifically tailored to take on elementals. I would figure that I would have to emphasize defence over prot. Perhaps an ice devil with a blood thorn, a shield of the accursed, a flame helmet or perhaps a starshine, Chainmail of displacement, a lucky coin and something for resistances could take them out. He would have a very high defence value. Sadly I don't have a save game handy to test this out. But I would figure that with a decent starting icedevil, let's say Oriax, he could slaughter the whole bunch. Of course the problem is that he would have elemental resistance problems, but you can't have everything. But with ice devils and many others you can come close.

It hurts me to say that the normal troops are a total non-factor since Daoine Sidhe are perhaps the best recruitable troop in the game on a cost adjusted basis. I really like those guys. I wish that they would be a factor in this battle.

[Graeme Dice]

Huzurdaddi said:
If you take them out of the battle the rest of his impressive army would have been destroyed by one of your ice devils ( assuming it was well equipped, and assuming no artifacts).



One ice devil would not have taken out that army. The only survivors were the commanders, and the ice devils had a great deal of trouble even hitting the sidhe.

[Huzurdaddi]

The only survivors




Makes sense. We all know that SC's rule the day and *sadly* troops ( including summoned troops ) become chaff.



and the ice devils had a great deal of trouble even hitting the sidhe.




Come now. Perhaps you should define "a great deal" perhaps with a top flight bless effect and 2 stars of xp an ice devil should be hitting right around 50% of the time, depending upon item loadout. Given what you are saying ( that they commanders stayed behind after all of the troops were dead ) I have to assume that the ice devils went beserk so I'm going to guess that they had hellswords if which case they should hit more in the 80% range ( could even be greater, but there are so many variables I'll leave it up to the reader to figure out the exact percentage ).

[deccan]

Boron said:
hint : this other game is really age of wonders 2 shadow magic http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
give it a try http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif



Perhaps I will the next time I get out of the Solomons. The thing is that when Dom2 came out, everyone was saying like it was everything AoW should have been but wasn't so I gave it a miss.

It occurs to me that I buy games a lot based on recommendations on forums like this one. I bought Dom2 because PvK plugged it on the SEIV forum. I bought SEIV because someone (I forgot who, someone who used to be a regular of the SEIV forum) plugged it on Infogrammes' MOO3 forum. And I bought MOO3 on the strength of MOO1 and MOO2 alone. What a mistake that was.

[deccan]

Boron said:
no matter which system is included in dominions 3 i buy it anyways 100% sure .




When Dom3 comes around, I really hope that the developers refrain from a more of the same approach. Personally, I'd to see the developers tinker around with some more interesting mechanics, of which upkeep for summons and continual rituals, is only one example.

The idea is that Dom3 ought to be separate game and that even once Dom3 is out, people will still continue to enjoy playing Dom2.

[Boron]

deccan said:

Boron said:
hint : this other game is really age of wonders 2 shadow magic http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
give it a try http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif



Perhaps I will the next time I get out of the Solomons. The thing is that when Dom2 came out, everyone was saying like it was everything AoW should have been but wasn't so I gave it a miss.

It occurs to me that I buy games a lot based on recommendations on forums like this one. I bought Dom2 because PvK plugged it on the SEIV forum. I bought SEIV because someone (I forgot who, someone who used to be a regular of the SEIV forum) plugged it on Infogrammes' MOO3 forum. And I bought MOO3 on the strength of MOO1 and MOO2 alone. What a mistake that was.



yeah i bought dominions 2 because someone on the eu 2 board told me and i just downloaded demo and was addicted http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
i don't trust any pc testing magazines or softcore gamers anymore http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

age of wonders is like a more balanced but a less deep dominions with upkeep for everything (expect heroes but you can only have 0-5 of them depending which setting you chose in options when starting a new game ).

dominions is not imbalanced mages + scs are quite well balanced within each other and most nations / themes have a fair chance to win .
of the about 30 themes/nations 20 have fair chances but about 10 are sligthly inferior .
in sp you can play all but in mp you shouldn't chose the inferior ones http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

i did what you described with warcraft 3 because of my liking for starcraft .
but warcraft 3 is such a bad game .
until warcraft 3 i loved blizzard . it was my favourite game developer company .
since warcraft 3 i hate them lol .
i won't buy anything with warcraft in its name in future .

[Graeme Dice]

Huzurdaddi said:
Makes sense. We all know that SC's rule the day and *sadly* troops ( including summoned troops ) become chaff.[/quote

If you're going to ignore my explanations of what happened in a battle that you didn't witness, then we aren't going to get very far here.

[quote]
Come now. Perhaps you should define "a great deal" perhaps with a top flight bless effect and 2 stars of xp an ice devil should be hitting right around 50% of the time, depending upon item loadout.



Which is less than 1 kill per turn on average, thanks to glamour, which means that they certainly can't kill many enemy troops at all.

[Pickles]

Graeme Dice said:

Which is less than 1 kill per turn on average, thanks to glamour, which means that they certainly can't kill many enemy troops at all.



While I agree with you about troops being useful this does not really support your case as 1/turn is still 40 say each.

I just defeated 2 airqueens with a 30 illithids & 15 mages army by paralysing them & enslaveing them. So troops here were good. But I think SCS are powerful in 2 aspects

1) they provide a massive boost in combat power to a conventional army - if the 2 above queens had had along 40 troops the troops would have soaked a lot of fire allowing the AQS to cause mahem.

2) They are great as very mobile raiders. This is my main complaint against them not raw combat power. They are just so much more easy to turn into flyers & fliers are so strong operationally. It is like the German Panzer Divisions/Corps/Armies in WWII (to get back to the tanks we all love) that as well as being the most powerful units used their mobility to do most of the fighting, at least in the mobile phases.

While I have not played enough yet to see if it is a problem I have given & received blitzkriegs facilitated by massed fliers.

Pickles

[Zapmeister]

I'd like to see the rule for army routing become: Army routs when all non-commander troops are dead or routed and one commander is dead or routed.

This becomes the existing rule when there are no non-commander troops to start with and would also improve mixed battles, IMHO.

The other thing I'd like to see is forces that perform an organized retreat as a result of the retreat order, or fire and flee, going to the same adjacent province. Routing troops should still scatter to the four winds, of course.

[magnate]

Zapmeister said:
I'd like to see the rule for army routing become: Army routs when all non-commander troops are dead or routed and one commander is dead or routed.

This becomes the existing rule when there are no non-commander troops to start with and would also improve mixed battles, IMHO.

The other thing I'd like to see is forces that perform an organized retreat as a result of the retreat order, or fire and flee, going to the same adjacent province. Routing troops should still scatter to the four winds, of course.



Now that's an interesting idea. It avoids the complicated issue of morale checking for commanders, which I don't fully understand but doesn't seem to be compatible with Panther's original suggestion. It avoids the ludicrous routing of Moloch (or whoever) when the free summons (or other chaff) get killed. It even seems to avoid the slaughtering of the mages once you've lost the battle - you'd only lose one at most.

I guess the people who thought the original suggestions would make SCs even more powerful will still think so. I also guess that people who actually want their single commander to rout (without failing a morale check) when his troops have gone will not want this change. It's an interesting one to explore though (and, er, it makes a change from AoW and tanks).

CC
P.S. I like the orderly retreat suggestion as well.

[msew]

la la la

I love when an SC can beat the an army by himself. But you send him in with an army of his own they are defeated due to routing.


so silly