Poll: morale and routing

[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.

[The_Tauren13]

Arryn said:

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.

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, .

[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, .

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]

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, .

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?

[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.