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Re: Poll: morale and routing
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I have to agree that the moral system is a little wacky and probably should be changed I seriosuly doubt it was designed this way. Also I seriously doubt that the game was designed with the idea that it would revolve around SC's *by themselves* in the end game. I'm sure that they wanted some units to be very powerful and for these well equiped units to be the center pieces of the massive armies but not to be the whole army. I still think that Esben Mose Hansen 1st post ( the 1st post on the whole thread!) fixes basically everything by itself. Heck the human pretenders start to become better with his change as well ( however the ghost king is still probably a better choice for almost all nations ). |
Re: Poll: morale and routing
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Re: Poll: morale and routing
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You should make up your mind about what kind of equipment your banelord has. If it has fire and lightning immunity, then it's MR will be low enough to kill it with the instant kill spells. If it isn't fire and lightning immune, then you can kill it with incinerate or thunderstrike. 20 Lamias can also often hold off a completely equipped bane lord for more than 50 turns. Quote:
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Re: Poll: morale and routing
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You point out that you only played it for 1/2 a year, because you know it all too quick. So - why do you want to dumb down Dominions2? Yes, it gets frustrating seeing your carefully crafted army get toasted by an SC or a couple of mages. So _LEARN_ from it. I'd like to think that at this point I'm a solid intermediate Dom2 player; there's still a lot of things I _know_ I don't do well enough, and personally, I like that. My SCs don't match up well against the really good players yet - I don't forge enough items. Oh well - solution, forge more. I didn't scout enough - solution, build more scouts. I didn't use summoned troops well enough - solved. Proper use of summoned troops, of SCs, of powerful spells (not counting Wish (half-joke) , is a huge part of being a good Dominions2 player. I've been playing _very_ steadily for over half a year, and there's still a lot to learn and improve on. So, again - why do you want to cripple the parts of the game that give it such a long lifespan? Quote:
My reason for this is: "The majority agrees"???? You gave three names - Tauren is certainly a 4th. This is a bleeding majority? Second - you're an idiot if you think that what you, Tauren, and even Panther (no moron there) propose are "small changes". You obviously aren't a programmer, aren't a grognard, aren't an analyst or anything close. "Small" changes have big ripples, especially in a game with such widely varying factions as Dom2 has. And what y'all propose aren't small changes. You propose having reduced upkeep for national troops. Why? I've served in my nations military. They don't get paid any _less_ as the years go on. Why do you think knights would take 1/4 salary as they got better at their trade? And you want _upkeep_ for all summoned troops? Where in Dog's name is this justified? If I summon ... undead, I slit a throat, and I have zombies. Why would they cost upkeep? If I conjure sea monkeys, I enticed them with the gems I offered in the casting. Demons, I offer some souls up front - I don't offer them "20 souls, plus 5 souls a month amortized and averaged over the per diem cost per soul in Ulm." Quote:
( Note : I just spent 3 hours on the phone before I completed this message, so it might not have the overall coherency I usually prefer. Then again, I'm not debating coherent people. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif ) |
Re: Poll: morale and routing
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He's not attempting to "dumb down" the game, his intention is to make the game a richer experience by not making national units completely obsolete in the late game. It just seems to me there's something wrong with how things are working. However, like many people have already pointed out, the game setup migh have a huge part to do with it. Easy research, lots of magic sites, over-sized maps for how many people are playing, etc. contribute to an SC/mage-heavy type of setup. Even so, I'd like to see research and gems, items, etc. be able to benefit troops as well. Create a series of flag standards that would be forgeable and give bonuses to the units under the bearers command. Strengthen troop-bonusing spells, or give bonuses to the national troops when they get buffed. These troops are after all your loyal subjects. Trolls and Ice devils are all fine and dandy, but they aren't building your temples and worshipping you day to day. |
Re: Poll: morale and routing
Whoa, a flame-fest. This kind of reminds me of the debate I ran across on the White Wolf forums. Basically there was one group going: werewolves are slice 'em and dice 'em killing machines, vampires are pale-skinned effetes who drink blood, an average werewolf should kill an average vampire in, like, two seconds tops.
Then the other group was going: no, no, no vampires are "IMMORTAL LORDS OF THE NIGHT" and werewolves are mortals who can shapeshift into wolves, werewolves should be pet *****es for vampires etc. What was amusing of course is that neither vampires nor werewolves exist in reality, everything lies in how the individual wants to conceive them as being. In the same way, there's no universal, end all, be all, fantasy strategy game. Inevitably, different players will conceive of what is for them the ultimate fantasy strategy game in different ways. On the one side, we have Graeme Dice and Cainehill whose idea of fantasy is fantastic, high fantasy, the stuff of legends, like Middle Earth in the First Age, when there were lots of dragons and balrogs about, when Morgorth walked the earth in physical form, when the Ents were awake and the power of gods like Tom Bombadil were in full bloom, and mortal humans could do no more than stare at them in open-mouthed awe. On the other side, we have people like Panther and FM_Surrigon whose idea of fantasy is a more subdued, subtle kind, where ordinary joes can and do play a part in the great scheme of things. Sort of like Middle Earth in the Third or Fourth Ages. This is the age of mortals, where force of arms determine the fate of the world. Magic is rare but when found, always prized. I have to say that I tend to lean towards this camp. But that doesn't mean that we can't agree to disagree. This is simply a matter of taste. I agree that at this point Dom leans heavily in the direction of high fantasy and it may well be that this is what the developers prefer themselves. But surely, we of the latter camp can make suggestions and say what kind of game we'd like to have. After all, not everyone has the time, inclination, dedication or talent to make a game as good as Dom2. |
Re: Poll: morale and routing
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However, I agree that changes of this magnitude will be impossible in Dom2. These are all things for a future Version of the game or some other game entirely. |
Re: Poll: morale and routing
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Re: Poll: morale and routing
Boron:
If summoned troops start to cost upkeep it will skew the game in favour of items and gem guzzling spells. This will, if items are not made upkeep dependent as well, amongst other things make SC's more prevalent, render far summons and army killing spells relatively more effective etc, in short result in a number of balance changes whose merit is debateable. Besides the balance changes upkeep would also introduce gameplay changes. For example it would render early summons with bad gem for punch ratio that much less interesting. It would also make you very reluctant to cast summoning spells with gems from which you do not have a reliable income, if as was suggested units without the gems to keep upkeep were to depart. There are more problems of this sort. Besides balance and gameplay changes there are implementation problems that are quite a bit more demanding than what you seem to imagine. First of all there is no hardcoded gem cost for a unit like there is for the gold. This means that each summonable unit would have to be assigned a gem cost induvidually. If this was derived from the summoning spells most commonly used to summon the unit it would mean that units that are summonable in different quantities dependent on outside factors would have to be subjected to some consideration, take a troll for example, part of the cost for the troll is that it requires a lvl 3 mage to spend a whole turn sommong it, should it still cost just 1/15 gem in upkeep? or should it be calculated based on the troll court? While these problems are not insurmountable the gains of the change is not readily apperent either, especially since part of what you appear to desire can be achieved by fíddling with starting parameters. In other words, upkeep for summoned units is not going to happen in dom2. |
Re: Poll: morale and routing
written without seeing johans posting ..
supplies: One big problem with standard troops is the lack of supplies in most provinces. (As someone stated above) This not only makes it impossible to use more than, say, 100 human troops in one army, it almost 100% assures that the AI will attack you with an army of starving and diseased units, if it ever gathers a strong enough hord of its medium inf to do so. (That it doesn't build castles isn't that much of a help, either) This supply issue stems from the fact that units in Dom2 eat at least as much as in Dom1, but provinces have noticeable less pop, and therefore less supplies, too. Furthermore, on most of the popular maps you'll notice a overuse of the terrain feature. But anything else than grass land and plains has poor pop, and modifiers from terrain plainly add up, so you can "ruin" a grassland prov by marking it as forest .. . upkeep-free troops There are, obviously, 3 types of upkeep-free troops: At first the auto-summons which are rather week and sometimes cause more problems than they help. Charging a, however small, fee for them will simply kill some themes. (Pan CW, Pan w. turmoil, Ermors etc.) Then there's the second type: Troops/commanders you can summon using gems. Some of them are quite costly for their stats etc., some are one-shots-only as they don't heal etc. Those aren't that much of a concern, balancing-wise. The problem is with those which are better than all buyable commanders/troops and don't have a glaring weekness within the area of their "intended use" - as soon as you have the gems and the path level, there's few reason to buy any regular commanders/troops any more. But worst of all are those commanders/items which can summon upkeep-free units .. so you basically all you pay for commanders and units is the starting gems .. speak of deminishing cost, exponential returns here. excursus: Midnight Games ruined their Module "Realm of Immortals" for their PBEM "Legends" that way: Every unit had a race and a magical status. Some stati where able to inflict lesser ones from their "chain" onto soldiers for free - and on commanders, which in turn could inflict lower stati themselves, than. Units were upkeep-free in general. Game ended up after 100 turns with armies of tens of thousands "Vampire Lord Elven Guards of xy" - soldiers or similar crap. Each of them as strong as the avareage fighting commanders where - but the game was designed with a clear emphasis on those commanders/characters, which where only useful as troops trainers in the end. (And mages, using a handful of critical spells). Been there, tried it, suffered horribly .. why should we repeat this in Dom2? suggestions for solutions Temporary solution to fix (and test) the suppliy issue is to use a scale mod that ups supply production by 200..300%. I'm running 150% at the moment, and it seems it could use more. Creates an interesting strategical effect: Because it's a %-tage, mountains and swamp don't get that much improvement, so there's the choice to take a smaller force through the mountain and/or make a detour with the big horde. (ATM, you'll either forge supply items en masse or use non-eating summons) Maybe one wants to beef up gold income, too .. would tip the scale in favour of buyable units as well. Using max. 40% magic sites and very difficult research will let players test how the game plays without über-magic and -summons. To really fix the problem, making those summons limited in number definitly isn't a solution. Quite the contrary: this does encourage rushing for "tech". Upkeep in gems most likely poses too much programming problems. One possible solution would be that the summons simply leave after a while (this mechanism is already there). "Secondary summons" shoudl be either very weak, or completly removed, imho. |
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