About caves and darkness

[konming]

Maybe half darkness, so attack and defense are reduced by 1/4, not 1/2, and precision reduced by 3/8.

Another way is to assume that everyone carries torches in caves. This would replace shield and give penalty to those who use two hand weapons. Precision is reduced as usual.

[Sombre]

Well it isn't like there are a lot of maps with cave provinces and those that do have them the designer might not have even been aware that caves don't cast darkness.

I really hope caves/cave forts/possibly deep seas too get autocast darkness in the future. To me it makes perfect sense and most of the nations with darkvision (Atlantis, Agartha, Abysia) are pretty underpowered anyway.

[Twan]

I think some other nations would become underpowered on maps with caves if darkness is total/without more counters (human nations without death especially if their force is archers). And they are already weak on maps with many seas. IMO it may lead to caves map not considered good for MP, or nations like Man or Tien Chi not played on them.

For dark cave forts, I think it's a good national advantage for Agartha, and would find magical darkness normal for them even if an half-dark effect is added (but don't think other darkvision nations really need the same effect - are Atlantis and Abysia really underpowered ? always seen them having good results).

[Agrajag]

Cave like they were meant to be shouldn't be too different from sea provinces, just dedicated to other races, and a bit harder to infiltrate.
EDIT: (Which is why I'll be happy if they will just work as intended.)
[Not that I've seen many/any cave provinces, afaik they are rarely used (maybe because they don't work properly?)]

[Twan]

Sea nations can't build all their units out of seas and often may not even use all, so it can't be the same.

Agartha (with att < 10 units weaker than others out of darkness) may be designed to be the cave nation in maps with some dark caves but I see no other darkvision nation having this weakness in light lands, and all may build all units under the sun...

[Agrajag]

What you are saying is that the advantage sea nations receive in their exclusivity of provinces is balanced by their hardships in taking land provinces, while cave nations have no disadvantage to balance their exclusivity on cave provinces, except for Agartha.
Well, I say that since cave provinces are so few, the advantage isn't that big. Its only considerable where there are "landmasses" of caves, and those would tend to be for thematic purposes (like underground passages), in which case balance isn't a consideration. Furthermore, a disadvantage in "light" lands would make these nations much weaker, since they still rely mostly on land provinces. (again, except for thematic maps.)
This would make underground units more of a perk (like free scrying) than anything to really base a strategy around.
The last argument I have for now is that darkvision is only useful under darkness, which currently is a D4 spell costing 4 death gems, which makes it a rarely used skill. And even Agartha which is a darkvision race, has a hard time casting darkness (one in 2 400 gold mages requires two boosting items to be able to cast it.)

Finally, which nations do you consider as cave nations?

[Twan]

No nation as IMO caves shouldn't be treated like seas (reserved lands for nations starting there) but as swamps are (provinces with something like a quagmire effect advantaging a little some creatures/nations -also able live/start elsewhere- but not needing exceptionnal magic/pretender build to win with any nation against them).

Only two nations have full darkvision on all units (EA Abysia and Agartha) but many have units with half vision (the fey nations Tir Na Nog, Eriu ; EA Jomon, Fomoria... ; and all sea nations iirc). But death nations would be more advantaged than them by dark caves I think (if maps use them in numbers comparable with say forest or swamp).

Another option may be to simply give darkvision/blindness to more summons out of death/earth paths (ie : mindless monsters even if not undeads/statues) or create some massable summons with darkvision (cave animals) in low level nature , so as it is teh ultra-common path all nations would be able to invade caves with say giant ants or other summoned molebeast).

But anyway I think something should be done to balance the effect if darkness is added to caves (if the bug is fixed someday).