What it will take for me to purchase Dom III

[Ygorl]

I'm on the side saying that national troops shouldn't be competetive with summons (with the obvious exceptions), except for the cheapest crappiest summons, with which they are already competetive. If someone else has spent years of dedicated research to be able to summon serious nasties, why should I be able to match such an army from turn 1 just by clicking "Recruit"? Vice-versa, why would anyone research summons when they can do just as well hiring dudes, and divert their precious research, gems, etc. towards magic items to make their hired guys even more powerful, or combat spells to kill off the enemy's summoned guys even more effectively... No, summoned troops should be more powerful than those you hire. Hired troops are for growing in the early game, and depending on what you research and how you play, they can still be useful mid-game. One of the neat things about Dominions is that the power level grows so astronomically as time progresses and yet things still stay reasonably balanced. Proposals that would allow for the power of hired troops to increase as the game progressed are interesting, as long as that increase in power requires effort to be spent developing it, but making them much more powerful right off the bat would throw the balance way off, I think.

[jeffr]

I like how the Conceptual Balance mod handles things. It's the result of a lot of playtesting. National troop costs have been lowered and no brainer, devastating spell combos (Staff of Storms/Wrathful Skies) have been made more difficult to achieve. Unit enhancing spells have been made less expensive, allowing buffed national units to be more effective later in the game. Items, in particular, have been modded to try and eliminate the "there is always a best choice" problem. The Super Combatant remains very powerful but is no longer all powerful and different unit/summons/item mixes are more viable. There is room for both summons and national troops.

At least that's the idea, and I think it's working pretty well.

[Agrajag]

I think the problem lies in the fact that summons get stronger as the game progresses, while regular national troops do not.
If it was possible to divert magical research to technological research to improve your troops, it might contribute towards making national troops viable later in the game.
Maybe you can add a "techonology" tab to research, where you can choose to spend RP on technological advances, so in that tab, instead of "Enchantment" and "Conjuration" you would have "Infantry Weapons" and "Cavalry Shields", and instead of spells you would have upgrades, such as "Sharpening Stone" which increases damage for all weapons by 1 or "Combat Training" which gives all newly produced units an expirience star etc...

[Endoperez]

Many of the suggestions here would shoot micromanagement through the roof. While it would be nice to be able to enchance units magically, quickly choosing the most experienced, least wounded units of most useful types from hundred or so soldiers would take time. Another research tree would also be a nuisance, and I imagine most nations already know of the "Sharpening Stones", and that the more non-militia have already undergone "Combat Training" (just compare a Militia to a generic Light infantry).

I still think I'd like to see a way to have national units play a big(ger) role in DomIII, but Jeff, Ygorl and Vicious Love make good points about the absurdness of mere humans standing against unnatural, supernatural, or even b]big[/b] enemies.

[shovah]

i think being able to research upgrades for items is a good idea and after reading a litttle of what everything does i doubt it would add much micromanegement

[Endoperez]

If better armors can be researched, and mages will research those, doesn't that screw Ulm with its "better steel but less magic" policy? And why play Ulm if the only thing you get is a head-start on others on the arms war, when you can't get as far in the magic war?

[B0rsuk]

I think I have an idea how to make nationals scalable without increasing micromanagement.
--------------
National troops would get predefined bonuses for each additional fortification you control. Makes sense, as you need them to produce national anyway.
Flavor-wise it would be something along the line "The garrison of Blahuageuawraarhsaark made some improvements to heavy crossbow design and we can now use it nation-wide" or " new forging techniques, or news of national hero/propaganda (inspiration;see soviet Russia for reference), source of better ore...

To stop Watch Tower abuse, it would be NumberOfForts*FortAdminValue (no I have no idea of Dominions variables).
--------------------
Edit

For those of you who think that "you can just start producing nationals for free - therefore they should suck"
- nationals require forts (say 300-450 gold, 3-5 turns to build, and a commander)
- Process of building a fort can be interrupted.
- forts need adjacent provinces to work properly
- resources, unlike gems, don't carry over to next month (seems like, doesn't it ?)
- there's a hard limit on how much you can recruit in one turn. On the other hand, you can burn LOTS of gems in a single turns.
- you can get gems from another player, not true with resources. Technically you can get away without magic sites for some time.
- you can keep all summoners in one spot, forts force you to expand.
- many national units require temples (usually 200 and a priest to build it) or labs (200 and a mage). Combined with 450 fort, this means 850 gold, multiple turns of building and commanders.
- I'd say population killing spells are quite effective. Growth scale is slow. Your ability to buy conventional troops is affected by cold, heat, unrest, productivity, order..

[shovah]

Endoperez said:
If better armors can be researched, and mages will research those, doesn't that screw Ulm with its "better steel but less magic" policy? And why play Ulm if the only thing you get is a head-start on others on the arms war, when you can't get as far in the magic war?

i was thinking more like you just get x points of tech research per turn that dosnt require commanders research

[Chazar]

Huh, things are pretty hot here... [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Cold.gif[/img]

...nevertheless I'd like to comment that the AI is also important for MP games, since most of my MP games ended with someone sadly suddenly turning into AI. It would be furthermore more nice if players could set a basic AI guidline (including "do nothing") for themselevs in case of an unexpected stale turn. Cheers!