Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and more..

[alexti]

baruk said:
What do you think, forum people? Sensible ideas or frivolous junk?

Well, it would help if you mentioned what you're trying to achieve by those changes. How the game would benefit from proposed changes?

I'm guessing you are trying to improve games on huge maps (400+ provinces), but in my opinion the major problem in those game is amount of micro-management.

[baruk]

alexti said:

Well, it would help if you mentioned what you're trying to achieve by those changes. How the game would benefit from proposed changes?

I'm guessing you are trying to improve games on huge maps (400+ provinces), but in my opinion the major problem in those game is amount of micro-management.

I'm trying to slay a number of percieved game bugbears at a stroke (some are mine, others are ones raised on the forum I at least partly agree with or have some sympathy for). I think the game could be improved if these concerns are dealt with. The worst is probably micro-management, to which my changes would only add, or make no difference, however.


The bugbears:

- Defending unfortified provinces from raids is too hard.
Solution: Initiative system for movement.

- Defending from raids using castles is too easy.
Solution: Castle speedbump effect removed.

- The spell AI ignores my orders.
Solution: Change AI, and the way gems are used in battle.

- Gem generators, used every game, by everybody, yawn.
Solution: Add a dominion based per-province limit.

- Sphinx lost teleport. Effectiveness of magical movement over standard movement for defence and offence.
Solution: Planar sickness.

It is arguable whether these concerns are necessarily valid or important. Its likely the solutions would provoke as much outrage and gnashing of teeth as the problems they are supposed to fix.

[Cainehill]

baruk said:
The bugbears:

- Defending unfortified provinces from raids is too hard.
Solution: Initiative system for movement.

- Defending from raids using castles is too easy.
Solution: Castle speedbump effect removed.

These two contradict one another. On the one hand, you imply raiding is too powerful, and on the other hand, you want to make it more powerful.

The first one I think could use some improvement - random movement sequence would fix this.

The second one is insane. Fortifications are _supposed_ to provide defense from raids, that's one reason they were built all over most of the world. The idea of an army being able to come zooming right in, and in less than a month travel, siege, and storm is .... Well, I already used the word insane. Albeit it might be acceptable for mausoleums / watchtowers, which really aren't proper fortifications.

- Sphinx lost teleport. Effectiveness of magical movement over standard movement for defence and offence.
Solution: Planar sickness.

Your "solution" simply makes combat teleportation unusable for many units, while once again allowing the Sphinx to plop right down on an enemy capital, easily surviving the couple of turns it takes to regain consciousness before casting fire shield, astral shield, etc, and winning. You also don't mention why cloud trapeze should have "planar sickness", since it doesn't involve plane shifting. Or why flying units shouldn't have "air sickness".

[baruk]

Cainehill said:

These two contradict one another. On the one hand, you imply raiding is too powerful, and on the other hand, you want to make it more powerful.

The first one I think could use some improvement - random movement sequence would fix this.

The second one is insane. Fortifications are _supposed_ to provide defense from raids, that's one reason they were built all over most of the world. The idea of an army being able to come zooming right in, and in less than a month travel, siege, and storm is .... Well, I already used the word insane. Albeit it might be acceptable for mausoleums / watchtowers, which really aren't proper fortifications.

Firstly, I don't find my changes contradictory. My aim is not to hamstring raiding or fortifications. I just want to iron out a few kinks in the system.

I think armies should be able to travel, seige and storm a castle in the same turn. It doesn't make sense to me that they would seige a castle down to zero defences... and then stop abruptly, waiting a turn for new orders to storm the castle.

It does not strike me as unreasonable that a weak fortification, or one left undefended should not be vulnerable to capture in a single turn by a large force. Note that I have suggested a one half seiging penalty for armies that have moved in the same turn, effectively doubling the size of force needed to achieve a single turn capture. Fort defence values could perhaps be increased 10 or 20% across the board as some compensation.

Note that armies using magical movement would not get the move & storm option. It would be a bonus available to the conventional army, and thus may be easier for a defender to anticipate/intercept.

baruk said:- Sphinx lost teleport. Effectiveness of magical movement over standard movement for defence and offence.
Solution: Planar sickness.

Cainehill said:Your "solution" simply makes combat teleportation unusable for many units, while once again allowing the Sphinx to plop right down on an enemy capital, easily surviving the couple of turns it takes to regain consciousness before casting fire shield, astral shield, etc, and winning. You also don't mention why cloud trapeze should have "planar sickness", since it doesn't involve plane shifting. Or why flying units shouldn't have "air sickness".

In game balance terms, if I'm going to penalise teleport, then the same has to go for cloud trapeze, as its just as accessible and effective, a sphinx-type SC can use either spell quite easily. If you allow some fantasy license, you can imagine a powerful spell such as cloud trapeze would involve traversing the elemental plane of air (not in the spell blurb as such, but not something that has to be regarded as gospel). Flying units, and others with large strategic move would be fine, as they simply use natural, "earthly" abilities.

Regarding the Sphinx example, its possible it will still be successfully used to hit capitals, and I'm not against such a use in principle. It will be considerably less effective with 120 starting fatigue, however. If it is tested and still considered too powerful, the fatigue penalty could be exaggerated for the larger creatures, eg. 5, 15, 30, 50, 90, 150 for sizes 1 to 6. Another tweak could be to scale fatigue according to enemy dominion strength, perhaps an additional hit of 5 or 10 fatigue per enemy candle. Alternatively, you could give an extra vulnerability to the Sphinx: dominion dependence. This would work by depriving a pretender (by some combination)of his magical powers and protection when in enemy dominion (and perhaps increase the penalty to hit points substantially).

My original thoughts about gateway were that a fatigue penalty could be a tradeoff in allowing it to target any province, as it did in dominions 1. This is really not needed, as that ability is covered by astral travel. The fatigue penalty, however, keeps it in theme with teleport and cloud trapeze, the trio forming an "economy class" of movement spells. For symmetry, under my fatigue system, at level 8 or 9 research non-fatiguing Versions of teleport and cloud trapeze would be available.

[alexti]

baruk said:
The bugbears:

- Defending unfortified provinces from raids is too hard.
Solution: Initiative system for movement.

- Defending from raids using castles is too easy.
Solution: Castle speedbump effect removed.

I'm not sure if making defending unfortified provinces from raids easier is a positive thing. Some strategies rely on raiding rather than taking on the clash of armies. And I'm on receiving end of such strategy in one of my MP games. I keep winning major battles with minimal losses and a good loot from the enemy, but I'm still losing the game, because of massive raids. That's an interesting experience, and one thing that makes Dominions 2 great is the variety of different strategies that can lead to success.

In any case, this kind of change would affect the game a lot and it wouldn't be easy to rebalance other things to keep everything in balance.

baruk said:
- The spell AI ignores my orders.
Solution: Change AI, and the way gems are used in battle.

Actually, it was changed in one of the patches (was it in 2.12?) Before, AI tended to waste gems without a reason. Now it is much smarter and uses the gems sensibly (in most cases). The one problem that I see is that sometimes the mages won't use extra gems to bring their fatigue lower. But this is one is not easy to resolve. Sometimes I'd give the mage extra gems, so that he can lower his fatigue and in another situation I'd give more gems because I expect to fight 2 battles in the same turn. Making it configurable would add even more micromanagement, but if AI would just use spare gems only in the castle battles (storming or defending vs storm), which are bound to be the Last I'd be glad.

Generally, spell-casting AI is not that bad if you brought right mages and gems. Several times I was surprised by AI switching to his own plan (better than mine) after running through my scripts.

baruk said:
- Gem generators, used every game, by everybody, yawn.
Solution: Add a dominion based per-province limit.

Is there actually a problem here? I highly doubt that there's a problem with bloodstones, fever fetishes is not likely to be a problem either, so only clams are candidates, but there's no agreement on that issue. Maybe the latest change (non-stacking gem generators) will be sufficient to close the whole issue.

baruk said:
- Sphinx lost teleport. Effectiveness of magical movement over standard movement for defence and offence.
Solution: Planar sickness.

Personally, I like Sphinx being non-teleportable, it makes him a unique pretender. Magical movement really helps in the late large games. Just imaging dragging that large army of yours across of 15 provinces just to get anywhere close to the enemy. And then the enemy can avoid you infinitively. So in the end it may become just a matter of filling all provinces with a large armies (sooner or later one will have enough gems to do it). But this will cause "army-size-inflataion". Those "large" army will be considered a small forces, while the real "now large" armies will have to be dragged across the map again. So the magic movement is needed at least to avoid horrible micromanagement. If there're too many penalties for teleporting (stands for any kind of magic movement) armies, nobody will use them to engage in a serious battle, which will result in all that extra micromanagement.

Suggested 20 fatigue per size is too much of a penalty, in my opinion. Though just 20 fatigue (or some similar number) can be an interesting option. Another option would be to make teleporting defenders lose initiative, meaning that in this case the turn sequence would be: defending garrison - attacking army - teleported defenders. Dom2 engine probably doesn't support such a sequence, but it can be emulated by making teleporting defenders skip their first round. Attackers (whether they move magically or not) are already at disadvantage, so I'm not sure that any extra penalties would be good.

baruk said:
It is arguable whether these concerns are necessarily valid or important. Its likely the solutions would provoke as much outrage and gnashing of teeth as the problems they are supposed to fix.

[baruk]

alexti said:

I'm not sure if making defending unfortified provinces from raids easier is a positive thing. Some strategies rely on raiding rather than taking on the clash of armies. And I'm on receiving end of such strategy in one of my MP games. I keep winning major battles with minimal losses and a good loot from the enemy, but I'm still losing the game, because of massive raids. That's an interesting experience, and one thing that makes Dominions 2 great is the variety of different strategies that can lead to success.

In any case, this kind of change would affect the game a lot and it wouldn't be easy to rebalance other things to keep everything in balance.

My suggestion is more of a tweak to the movement system, than an attempt to hurt raiding.

An example: a raiding party is attacking Nation A. It can attack one of 5 provinces. The defenders have one army trying to intercept the raiders. Under the current system, to force a fight, the defenders have to move into the correct province being raided, a 1 in 5 chance of success. Using my suggestion, and assuming both forces are equal, the defenders can attempt to force a fight by moving into the province currently occupied by the raiders. They would have an almost 50/50 chance of moving first, and striking the raiders before they move. Note that in the case of the raiders winning the battle, they would still carry out their movement order and raid their target province.

I think a change to the movement system would be a step forward. At the moment the simultaneous movement system gives the advantage to raiders. With an initiative system, players would have to plan raids more carefully to be successful. They would gain initiative advantages from using faster troops, which would add variety to the game.

baruk said:
- The spell AI ignores my orders.
Solution: Change AI, and the way gems are used in battle.

alexti said:Actually, it was changed in one of the patches (was it in 2.12?) Before, AI tended to waste gems without a reason. Now it is much smarter and uses the gems sensibly (in most cases). The one problem that I see is that sometimes the mages won't use extra gems to bring their fatigue lower. But this is one is not easy to resolve. Sometimes I'd give the mage extra gems, so that he can lower his fatigue and in another situation I'd give more gems because I expect to fight 2 battles in the same turn. Making it configurable would add even more micromanagement, but if AI would just use spare gems only in the castle battles (storming or defending vs storm), which are bound to be the Last I'd be glad.

Generally, spell-casting AI is not that bad if you brought right mages and gems. Several times I was surprised by AI switching to his own plan (better than mine) after running through my scripts.

Fair enough. I would agree that making spell AI more configurable would help. I just sense that Illwinter want to keep the system as simple as possible.

My argument is basically that players cannot adequately control gem usage of their mages over several battles in one turn. Ideally there would only be one battle a turn for each mage to be prepared for, or fresh orders could be given in between battles. Consider a mage in a lab province, with a stack of gems. He gets involved in a fight, and uses all his gems. He will have no gems for the next fight that turn, as I can't give him the gems until the turn is finished processing, even though he has a lab available. Either a super-AI, more configurable orders, or battle-usage-friendly gems are needed to resolve this.

baruk said:
- Gem generators, used every game, by everybody, yawn.
Solution: Add a dominion based per-province limit.

alexti said:
Is there actually a problem here? I highly doubt that there's a problem with bloodstones, fever fetishes is not likely to be a problem either, so only clams are candidates, but there's no agreement on that issue. Maybe the latest change (non-stacking gem generators) will be sufficient to close the whole issue.

Perhaps.

Gem generators are not much of a problem to me. However, some dominions players like to limit their use in games. I have (hopefully) suggested a fun, creative, in-theme way to do this.

The non-clam of pearls gem generators are less of a problem, but it makes sense to put the same limits on them, as otherwise the "problem" simply moves to another item. In any case, if they are not produced in large numbers, they are not affected by my limitation, which affects the total number of productive generators in each province, rather than the ability to produce them. Only the wild-eyed, frothing-at-the-mouth horde fetishists should be hurt by my proposed change.

baruk said:
- Sphinx lost teleport. Effectiveness of magical movement over standard movement for defence and offence.
Solution: Planar sickness.

alexti said:
Personally, I like Sphinx being non-teleportable, it makes him a unique pretender. Magical movement really helps in the late large games. Just imaging dragging that large army of yours across of 15 provinces just to get anywhere close to the enemy. And then the enemy can avoid you infinitively. So in the end it may become just a matter of filling all provinces with a large armies (sooner or later one will have enough gems to do it). But this will cause "army-size-inflataion". Those "large" army will be considered a small forces, while the real "now large" armies will have to be dragged across the map again. So the magic movement is needed at least to avoid horrible micromanagement. If there're too many penalties for teleporting (stands for any kind of magic movement) armies, nobody will use them to engage in a serious battle, which will result in all that extra micromanagement.

Suggested 20 fatigue per size is too much of a penalty, in my opinion. Though just 20 fatigue (or some similar number) can be an interesting option. Another option would be to make teleporting defenders lose initiative, meaning that in this case the turn sequence would be: defending garrison - attacking army - teleported defenders. Dom2 engine probably doesn't support such a sequence, but it can be emulated by making teleporting defenders skip their first round. Attackers (whether they move magically or not) are already at disadvantage, so I'm not sure that any extra penalties would be good.

Good suggestions.

Late game army movement would not be affected by my changes, just the offensive use of some of the magical movement spells would be curtailed. The late game, research level 8 and 9 spells would not have a fatigue penalty. And I suggested in another post that level 8 or 9 fatigue-free Versions of teleport and cloud trapeze would be available.

[alexti]

baruk said:
- The spell AI ignores my orders.
Solution: Change AI, and the way gems are used in battle.

alexti said:Actually, it was changed in one of the patches (was it in 2.12?) Before, AI tended to waste gems without a reason. Now it is much smarter and uses the gems sensibly (in most cases). The one problem that I see is that sometimes the mages won't use extra gems to bring their fatigue lower. But this is one is not easy to resolve. Sometimes I'd give the mage extra gems, so that he can lower his fatigue and in another situation I'd give more gems because I expect to fight 2 battles in the same turn. Making it configurable would add even more micromanagement, but if AI would just use spare gems only in the castle battles (storming or defending vs storm), which are bound to be the Last I'd be glad.

Generally, spell-casting AI is not that bad if you brought right mages and gems. Several times I was surprised by AI switching to his own plan (better than mine) after running through my scripts.

baruk said:
Fair enough. I would agree that making spell AI more configurable would help. I just sense that Illwinter want to keep the system as simple as possible.

My argument is basically that players cannot adequately control gem usage of their mages over several battles in one turn. Ideally there would only be one battle a turn for each mage to be prepared for, or fresh orders could be given in between battles. Consider a mage in a lab province, with a stack of gems. He gets involved in a fight, and uses all his gems. He will have no gems for the next fight that turn, as I can't give him the gems until the turn is finished processing, even though he has a lab available. Either a super-AI, more configurable orders, or battle-usage-friendly gems are needed to resolve this.

I find it good to have mroe than one battle per turn. It gives more interesting options. Concerning the mage near the lab, it maybe reasonable to replenish gems between the battles, but what is supposed to happen if there isn't enough gems? And in any case 2 battles in the province where you control the lab is really uncommon.

baruk said:
- Gem generators, used every game, by everybody, yawn.
Solution: Add a dominion based per-province limit.

alexti said:
Is there actually a problem here? I highly doubt that there's a problem with bloodstones, fever fetishes is not likely to be a problem either, so only clams are candidates, but there's no agreement on that issue. Maybe the latest change (non-stacking gem generators) will be sufficient to close the whole issue.

baruk said:
Perhaps.

Gem generators are not much of a problem to me. However, some dominions players like to limit their use in games. I have (hopefully) suggested a fun, creative, in-theme way to do this.

The non-clam of pearls gem generators are less of a problem, but it makes sense to put the same limits on them, as otherwise the "problem" simply moves to another item. In any case, if they are not produced in large numbers, they are not affected by my limitation, which affects the total number of productive generators in each province, rather than the ability to produce them. Only the wild-eyed, frothing-at-the-mouth horde fetishists should be hurt by my proposed change.

What I don't like about your idea is not the limitation, but "per-province" basis. If now you can just slap clam on the third from the left researher, with your idea you'd have to count how many clams are already in this province (meaning scanning all mages there) and then to take into account possible dominion change. And all these efforts don't really add anything to the game experience. With overall limit, you'd typically know that you're well below the limit, so no worries and counting. I'm still not sure if the overall limit would be a good idea or not.

[Cheezeninja]

Regarding Doom Horrors, I just encountered them for the first time in a MP game, playing against Zapmeisters R'yleh using Jotunheim. While they ate everything (including many Jarls) that I threw at them for awhile I was eventually able to make huge headway against them to the tune of massed vampires and counts (free immortal chaff/disintigrate or drain life or skeleton casters) along with Jade amazons and Gyjas fitted with rune smashers, thistle maces, spell foci, flying boots, and AMA's set to mass cast charm. I was able to pay for my own gear with my own stockpile of clams and fetishes, which gave me enough gem capital to completely create the charm strategy in ~3 turns, which was quick enough to allow me to survive. While its quite likely I will still eventually lose, right now i've killed 3 horrors and brought one over to my own side, complete with ring of regen and AMA of his own.

Doom Horrors are far from invincible, if I was going to spend a hundred astrals on something it would probably be wishing for bloodslaves and mass-casting Vampire Counts.

[baruk]

alexti said:
I find it good to have mroe than one battle per turn. It gives more interesting options. Concerning the mage near the lab, it maybe reasonable to replenish gems between the battles, but what is supposed to happen if there isn't enough gems? And in any case 2 battles in the province where you control the lab is really uncommon.

Multiple battles (per army) in a turn are not bad in themselves. It seems a little easy to me for a knowledgable player to use the system against gem-wielding mages. Players can always use their familiarity with the AI against others.

Labs may usually be in fortified provinces, but also consider the more common situation when people use scouts as gem carriers for large armies. It doesn't make sense to me that a mage wouldn't try to replenish his gem supply mid-turn before a major battle (having spent his gems in a magical battle). I doubt that an AI would accomplish this satisfactorily, though (but maybe worth a try). With a limited gem supply, gems may go to the wrong mages, or be distributed in insufficient numbers.

alexti said:
What I don't like about your idea is not the limitation, but "per-province" basis. If now you can just slap clam on the third from the left researher, with your idea you'd have to count how many clams are already in this province (meaning scanning all mages there) and then to take into account possible dominion change. And all these efforts don't really add anything to the game experience. With overall limit, you'd typically know that you're well below the limit, so no worries and counting. I'm still not sure if the overall limit would be a good idea or not.

Its true that it would add a lot of micro-management. Being a veteran of dominions-PPP, I have built up quite a tolerance.

Gem generation would happen before dominion change under my system (not sure what the turn order is currently), so your number of active generators would be predictable from turn-to-turn.

An overall limit may be better in terms of micro-managing. It would, however, allow more of an all-eggs-in-one-basket type approach for the hoarder, made effective by use of domes. A simpler limit could be that any null or enemy-dominion province has a limit of one active generator.

Dominion pushing as a tool against hoarders could be interesting, might add something to the game.