Rating PD

[MaxWilson]

My programming experience leads me to believe the computing/memory resources required would be low. The game already has to generate PD for the defending side for each battle, and once they're generated they play just like any other units. If the troop purchase order is a build queue, it's trivial (computationally) to calculate which units get generated for each nation/battle. I'm not saying it would be trivial to code, because I have no idea how Dom3 is written internally, but CPU/memory resources aren't any kind of a bottleneck.

How would you "purchase" the second commander, Jack? Would it still happen at a set PD, or what?

-Max

[Jack Simth]

Honeybadger: I did say it wouldn't exactly be a small change.

MaxWilson:
I was honestly figuring on doing this at the national, not province, level - you have a purchase que much like normal for buying regular troops, but in this case, Commanders go in there too. Attached, you've got a battle map similar to the normal one for troop positioning; you hit the set/reset button, and start placing troops into the formations (in order - so Commander 1 (AKA "Unit 0" you must purchase at least 1 commander!) goes at the top, you assign units 1 through X to group 1, X+1 to Y to Group 2, and so on, then when you hit the next commander (position Z) in your que, units start being assigned to that commander based on your selection; so Z+1 through A are assigned to group 1, A+1 through B assigned to group 2, and so forth. And you get to script commanders, and such.

When you buy points of PD, it tracks how far along on the setup that puts you - so at the national level, Abyssa may have it set so that 50 PD is a Warlock (Cast Spells) with ten lava warrior bodyguards, and a Demonbred (Pheonix Power, Fire Shield, Cast Spells) with thirty humanbreds set to Hold and Attack (then it repeats itself completely if you have 100 PD, and halfway through again if you're up to 125 in a province - a looping purchase algorythm). If you only buy 30 PD in the province, you might end up with a Warlock with 10 lava warrior bodyguards and a demonbred with a single humanbred (they ran out of funds; you of course wouldn't set it up quite that way, because in the 30 PD province, one humanbred's death means everyone routes....). In a province with only 1 PD, you don't get anything (the Warlock might effectively cost 5 PD - they don't have the budget for him).

You don't set it up on a pure cash basis - recources need to come into play at some conversion factor; for nations with national summons, you'll need some kind of gem conversion - but essentially translate the amount of PD into a "budget" that's used to fill a national Province Defense template.

That's how I envision it working, anyway - you set your PD up once at the start of the game (possibly coming with a default), change it whenever your situation changes, and all your provinces where you assign province defense fill it out as they are able from their budget. Balance the PD the same way purchased troops balance.

[HoneyBadger]

I don't know if everyone has noticed this or not, but I thought I'd point it out anyway. Concerning PD: One type of PD is applied to ALL eras of atleast some nations. Example: Abyssia even in Early Age gets humanbred PD. That doesn't make too much sense to me, since humanbreds supposedly haven't even been *bred* at this point.

At bare minimum, I'd like to see every appropriate nation recieving a tailored-to-age PD. Even in a mod. I think that's only reasonable if we don't get anything better.

I'd also like to see nations have some "PD only" troop-types. I'm thinking something along the lines of Highland Scots and National Guardsmen-they're only coming out and fighting if the nation itself is invaded. You can't recruit them (but maybe you could set them up as a "standing guard" which gives me another idea...)

Maybe nations have the standard PD they do now, but in provinces you can set up units as a "standing guard" (or National Guard if you prefer). The way this would work is: you could "purchase" national summons in your capital-province only as "standing guards" for an appropriately high price in gold and resources, as well as gems. They serve and act *only* as PD, otherwise. In any castle, you can purchase capital-only national troops as PD-only standing guards. In any province *without* a castle, you can purchase regular national troops as standing guards. This would sortof represent equipping the local militia, adding experienced officers, magical defenses and guardian-creatures. In addition, PD-only troops would then be available as National Guards, atleast to specific nations.

Standing guards/National Guards would cost atleast some upkeep, but not as much as regular army.

[Gandalf Parker]

An interesting thing about this idea is that it gets around a thematic problem. PD should be made from local units, not national ones. But the problem was that the way PD is done, you have to develop huge arrays of what shows up for each level of PD. As it is now, thats done for each nation. To do it for each type of population would also be huge. But if PD was shifted to a queue as if you were purchasing new units then it would make PD more thematic. (It might also allow a new map command for setting the defence level of a province that is held by independents and Im always eager for more map commands).

It would involve dupicating the queue for a PD one, and maybe duplicating the formation/scripting screen (Im considering that optional). That might add to the games size but probably not cpu needs. Im not sure if it would involve 1500 arrays (max number of provinces). And Im not sure how much this system would involve processing thru all 1500 provinces each turn which extends hosting time.

[Gandalf Parker]

PD only troop types is also a good thought. The type of units and the equipment that would be provided if that nation (and that era) were to recruit locally. Kindof roman-like. Local people but with roman equipment.

[Xietor]

Maybe the more you spend, at a certain point, means the troops are better trained. Better trained means higher morale,
better attack and defense.

So maybe with pd 20, giants suck, but at pd 40, the militia are "well trained" and their attack defense and morale are raised by 2.

My original point, was that you only got improved pd if you spent points on it at set up. If your pretender did not buy improved pd, you are stuck with what you have now.

[HoneyBadger]

The major hindrance I see to better and better PD (atleast at this point) is the way graphics are made-and that's something that may be nigh-impossible to get around. The ideal way to have the kind of PD I think we're talking about would be to draw units as separate from items(weapons and armor), and then item-types themselves, separate from size and quality. So, you could have Ermor invading a Hoburg province and equipping the little buggers with hoburg-sized iron cesti, etc. without having to draw 12 different types of hoburg/ermor units and then having to convince Johan K to raise the limit of units allowed in the game to 10 million which, admittedly, is where I'd like it to be

[Digress]

Gandalf Parker said:
PD only troop types is also a good thought. The type of units and the equipment that would be provided if that nation (and that era) were to recruit locally. Kindof roman-like. Local people but with roman equipment.

You could add dominion effects to that process to further compicate things (and I am not suggesting complicated isn't good). As dominion grows in strength the equipment of the PD would slowly shift to more closely resemble that of the nation controlling the province.

Arms and armour would change slowly over time as the locals try to copy their new lords equipment - sometimes this effect might be desirable and other times less so.

This would require alot of new PD units for each poptype so wouldn't score high in the practical stakes but would be thematic.

[normalphil]

Gandalf Parker said:
PD only troop types is also a good thought. The type of units and the equipment that would be provided if that nation (and that era) were to recruit locally. Kindof roman-like. Local people but with roman equipment.

You know, that's what I thought the existing system was. Which is to say, who amoung us ever built an Alae Legionaire? All mine show up as province defense points. And there's a /lot/ of them.

To the best I can see this is how it is for most nations, there's units that while they fit in simply aren't optimal to build. They exist mainly because they're the kind of units that belong on a provincal defense force, and you've just got the option to recruit them overtly if you want to. Not that you would.

[Xietor]

A pet peeve i have with Pangaea's Province defense, is tying the centaur longbows to other troops, making them rout even if they suffer no damage.

They should, as ranged troops, be a separate group.