Re: Infantry Balance Mod
 

I did use some Sappers, yes. They are too expensive to perform in the traditional role. But their effectiveness lies in that they are a walking seige engine AND a decent missle unit. Buy 20 of them and your army just got +100 siege points with no significant loss of firepower - hello!!!

While Arbalests may seem attractive because of thier high damage potential, its really just wasted by thier low ROF. If they get 3 shots off in an entire battle it is a miracle. On top of this, they are actually even worse when used in combination with Ulmish units since they can actually kill a BP or BK unit!! Better to have Sappers or even better (for indys) shortbowmen, who can fire willy-nilly right into your heavy Ulmish troops formations and not hurt any of your own men.

There is a possibility that Arbalests could have some kind of niche role as a heavy-armor killer type missle. But in my experience, I would rather be putting those resources to BP Morningstars or BKs which I know will be effective and combine them with long/short/xbow & battle magic.

Re: Infantry Balance Mod
 

In general, I think you went way overboard on giving out the #flail tag to weapons. I mean, lances?! That's why mounted people carry shields in the first place.

Yeah, rather than making every weapon and its mom kick shields in the jinglies, you should just make weapons generically and actually useful. The Arbalest should be #ratt -2, that's all it really needs to be a powerful incentive to play Ulm.

All of those changes really just made shielded units basically not worth it, and perversely therefore made Greatsword Barbarians overpowered. Since there's no incentive to have an army composed of anything but two handed weapon users, moderately decent THW guys became astoundingly the top of the heap. Standard heavy infantry has no survivability in this mod, so there's no real reason to employ it.

-Frank

Re: Infantry Balance Mod
 

While I do agree that lances don't need any help, I dont see it as that big of problem. I mean if someone hits you with a lance as it currently stands... its not going to matter if you have a shield or not, since its going to do like 25+ damage anyway.

What does #ratt -2 do?

What other weapons got ignore-shield?

Re: Infantry Balance Mod
 

"#ratt -2" makes the weapon attack every other turn instead of every three turns.

Cherry has made the following weapons ignore shields:

Arbalests
Boulders
Blow Pipes
Lances

The following weapons have been made armor piercing:

Jaguar Bites
Niefel Axe Explosions
Niefel Swords
Mauls
Boulders
Alicorns

I honestly don't understand why any of this happens. The more you make weapons ignore the defenses of your opponent, the more you encourage people to run around naked with a big sword. In general, armor piercing should be extremely rare - as it's a specialized damge bonus against Ulm (and those losers need all the help they can get).

Remember, AP just means it bypasses half your armor. It doesn't mean it bypasses half your protection. If you want unicorns to be able to threaten dragons, just have them do more damage, do not give them a specialized bonus against Ulm.

-Frank

Re: Infantry Balance Mod
 

Whaaa? This does not jive with what the dev's have stated else where wrt. AP. Is this correct?

Re: Infantry Balance Mod
 

These weapons are not often used. Boulders should ignore shields, period. Lances should arguably ignore shields and are NOT the reason shields are used... Shields protect from light projectiles like arrows and slings stones, and melee weapons. Cavalry lances will go right through most shields, as I understand it.

The questionable ones are Blow Pipes and Arbalests. My rationale is that blow pipes are exceptionally accurate and used at very close range on tiny game like songbirds. So, ignoring the shield (and, say, hitting a unit's neck) should not be difficult, but it does not matter anyway as nobody ever uses them. Arbalests ignore shields experimentally to see if that makes them useful and balanced... the rationale being that the projectile has enough energy per unit area to rip through a standard wooden or leather shield. This may or may not be realistic, but I like it, and it was the majority choice in the ranged-weapons poll.

You can hardly claim that those changes make shields noticably weaker, let alone irrelevant! Blow Pipes and Hurlers are never used in the default game. Arbalestiers are very rarely used (you mainly encounter them as province defence). Lances are nice but only used once per battle, by very expensive and hungry units, or by Tien Chi cavalry which is still hungry but less expensive, and belong to a weak nation. Shields are no less vital than before, and Barbarian Swordsmen are still just as vulnerable to arrows, slings, blade wind, and melee units as before those changes.

Jaguar bites can (and do) crush turtle shells; they have the strongest (in pressure) bite of any animal, I believe. Mauls are designed for crushing stone (and so forth) rather than harming flesh, like normal weapons, and as such should do massive armor damage on rigid armors and easily cause fatal damage through (for example) heavy chain mail, without actually piercing it. Boulders have immense momentum that ignores armor, and a similar effect to mauls. And Alicorns are magical, armor-melting organic rods of spiraling death that are quoted in the definitive book "The Last Unicorn" as being used to kill Dragons. This is not possible with a non-AP Alicorn, as dragons have thick armor.

Again, these are pretty rare weapons, except for the Maul, which had no reason for existance. Mauls have a quite low attack now, and are essentially a great weapon for cracking Ulmish armor and Hoplites; reducing Living Statues and Gargoyle to dust; defrocking Monoliths and Sphynxes; mobbing protection-30 SC's; and possibly nothing else. So now they have some great specialty uses instead of no uses at all.

It's possible Niefels are overpowered (and if so, I'll change something) but I did raise the price, and they're a lot cooler now http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

I do want to encourage people to run around naked. Unmodded Dominions makes naked or low-armor units generally worthless, and mid-armor units quite bad. 2-handed weapons are usually a terrible idea, giving a small damage or length increase at the expense of 2 defense and 3 protection; the Greatsword is the main exception (though many people like the Flail and Pike). However, I accomplished this encouragement through stat and pricing changes, not through the shield-piercing and armor-piercing changes, since those only affect rare weapons. Except the Maul, which was not rare (only useless) but now has been given a niche.

AP halves all protection, not just armor protection. There is never a distinction between protection sources after the final value has been calculated. Unicorn horns are very special in that they melt through the offending obstacle, like a lightsaber. I don't want Alicorns slaying a Queen of Elemental Air in two hits, but I certainly do want them to damage a Dragon in accordance with history and physics.

Re: Infantry Balance Mod
 

Thinking about missile weapons "bypassing shields" : I'm not sure it would have any effects if the bypassing apply to the shield defense bonus. AFAIK missile weapons ignore defense altogether, they are aimed at squares and happen (or not) to hit stg in the square.
And I'm not sure the bypassing apply to the shield protection.
Lastly I don't find shield-bypassing missiles much rationalizable, unless they are rationalized as guided precision ammo http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif !

Re: Infantry Balance Mod
 

################################################## ######

RANGED ATTACKS
A unit's defense does not matter when being attacked by an arrow.
Precision just determines which square the projectile will hit.

The attack roll on the projectile is 10+2d6,
while the victim's roll is 10+shield defense modifier+2d6.

A tower shield for example has a defense modifier of 4.
################################################## #######

Re: Infantry Balance Mod
 

The shield-negating projectiles I added (arbalest, boulder, and blowgun) are not "smart missiles," of course http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Boulder: If a giant throws a boulder at you and you block it with a shield, you'll still die. Hence they negate shields.
Blowgun: Used from very close range, with a flat trajectory and short travel time, a blowgun user should be able to shoot at an exposed body part.
Arbalest: A thin wooden or leather shield might be pierced by an exceptionally powerful hand-held crossbow. So if you extrapolate to bigger, stronger Ulmians, and realize that it takes even them 3 turns to wind the crossbow, and maybe their weapons are forged by the clever magical Master Smiths who can get much more than the normal crossbow energy efficiency, and perhaps the bolts are tipped with Black Steel with superior density and penetration ability, it is reasonable to assume Ulmian arbalest bolts could pierce non-metallic shields and still do damage.

Certainly, none of the projectiles are laser-guided or anything http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Infantry Balance Mod
 

How about making blowguns deal 1d2-1 points of an armor-negating damage + mild (or weak, or fatiquing) poison?
Historically, blowguns were only used with poisoned darts, otherwise they were as useless as... well, as they are in Dominions 2 now, maybe even worse.
Though I must say, I'm not impressed by poison in Dominions 2 (I've not been able to put it to good use, so I'm not even sure how it works).