Re: Light Infantry... what the ****
 

I'm sure more tactical options like "Fire for X turns and flee", and "Fire For X turns then stay behind troops" would make them good at softening up the opposition for your core forces to take on. "Advance and Fire" would possibly make Light Cavalry something more than just weak,expensive archers. They would advance and fire until they fight melee.

Edit: I don't think having the fastest army choose terrain would be a good idea. I mean, where could you find a marsh in the desert of "You're screwed, there's no supplies here [203]"?

[ April 15, 2004, 20:40: Message edited by: HotNifeThruButr ]

Re: Light Infantry... what the ****
 

I think Pocus meant that the fastest army gets the choose an battlefield appropriate to the province, not any possible terrain. If that was the case I would stock up on Triton Leaders with amulets of the fish and continually choose "Underwater Plateu" for all landbound conflicts. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

I had one idea to make subdivisions of the battlefield were each square held a bonus or a penalty. Would allowed for terrain altering spells and abilities. But I figure that medieval battles were hardly that spontaneous. Perhaps a "Prefered Battlefield" setting could be worked into a battle with the speed of the army, experience of the commanders, stealthiness and random luck worked into getting your choice. A number of Satyrs ambushing a force of heavy cavalery as they travel along a forestroad means that the ordinarily outclassed Satyrs get a huge edge since cavalery can not move into "Dense Vegetation" squares.

Dominions V material perhaps but Fantasy General style battlesquares would be a real thrill. But it makes for a very different game I guess. Still would be neat to be able to draw up a quick battleplan, on a topdown representation of the battlefield, before the battle starts (or just press "Use preselected formation" and hope for the best). Since you don't know your opponents battleplan until the battle actually starts you can get quite a suprise. No unit can be deployed more than one full move from starting position. Flying ability is not considered in deployment.

Perhaps the simplest way to get more usage of light infantery and cavalery is to simply make the battlefield, and deployment screen, larger than it is now. Since we can speed up battles now it's more of an option. Bigger field means higher AP has a real impact since you can outmanouver your enemy.

Re: Light Infantry... what the ****
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Woo, my phrase "drive-by priesting" is catching on. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yeah, options to fight in anything other than a head-on engagement would be nice. That's the fundamental weakness of LI/LC right now: They're forced into fighting in a manner that is entirely contrary to how they should be used.

"Pursue Routers" would definitely be a nice combat option for LC: They hang back on the side until an enemy unit starts routing, then they ride in and KILL THEM ALL! That's what I used Light Cavalry for in MTW: To chase down and slaughter the people trying to flee. NO SURVIVORS!

Re: Light Infantry... what the ****
 

There was indeed another thread about LC. The main suggestions that haven't already been mentioned for LI:

* Allow strategic moves where the Last move is into enemy territory (i.e. LC army starts in province A, province B is plains, province C is plains and enemy controlled, A-B-C is a legal move.)

* Make difficult terrain cost 2 strategic move points so that an all-LC army can cross (say) one plain and one forest. Many maps have hardly any plains.

* Move and pillage strategic order. Attack current province and pillage for currently stealthed armies.

* Orderly retreat: Units that are ordered to retreat don't take the routing penalty. If the army wins, units that retreated due to orders don't leave the province at all - they rejoin the army after the battle. If the army loses, all units that retreated due to orders retreat to the same place (assuming there is one available).

Historically there was (and still is) an enormous difference between an orderly retreat and a rout.

Note that if you combine the move and pillage order with fire and flee battlefield orders (and preferably the suggested "orderly retreat") you get a force that is dangerous, hard to pin down and in general very annoying - unless you cut off its lines of supply and/or retreat.

A large, rapidly raised, expendable force is good for performing, or defending against, this kind of raiding.

Re: Light Infantry... what the ****
 

[quote]Originally posted by Chris Byler:
Provinces with terrain should place obstacles on the battlefield. Bogs, underbrush, rocks, etc. (Farmland isn't much of an obstruction unless it's rice fields - or maybe in late summer/early autumn.)

IMHO this just doesn't work with Dominions style of plotted orders, as you can't see how the terrain is laid out when making your orders. Short of a major restructuring of the turn order I don't see anyway to handle this.

Jasper, if I have an army of C'tissian light infantry against your Ulmish heavy infantry, the battlefield damned well *will* be entirely swampy if I have anything to do with it.

I disagree. It's difficult to force someone to fight in bad terrain, asland worth holding is on good terrain. Even for historical kingdoms that benefited from dense terrain battles in general still had more open than rough terrain.

I can see C'tis being able to work _some_ swamp into a battle on it's home terrain. Of course, were it possible to make good tactical use of terrain, even a small amount would be enough to gain a substantial advantage. Unfortunately dominions just doesn't handle this.

And if light infantry had 1-2 points more defense, average heavy infantry might start to tire before they had already killed 3 times their own numbers and routed the rest (elite or experienced heavy infantry would still do well against average LI, but elites are expensive and experience takes time to acquire).

Giving LI in general more defense makes no sense to me. IMHO attempts to give LI an edge in melee against HI are just wrong (well, outside of rough terrain).

Re: Light Infantry... what the ****
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">LC is harder to make work, as the dynamic tactics that make them worthwhile aren't in dominions, e.g. flanking. Plus, the single player AI doesn't tend to build hordes of LC...

It also doesn't hurt to fix one thing at a time. I suspect that improving the usefullness of LI could make LC more usefull as well.

Re: Light Infantry... what the ****
 

Methinks the LI of such nations as Machaka and Mictlan would be made a lot more cost effective if the "fire and stay behind troops" or "fire and flee to one region/the same region if victorious" suggestions were implemented.
Couple that with skirmishing, and you've got a troop type every bit as a viable as heavy infantry, but with substantially different capabilities and tactical/strategic roles. You might not even have to tweak the AI's propensity for stocking up on the little bastards.

Update: Besides, it's about time we had some guerilla tactics beyond driveby priestings, strikes behind enemy lines, and funky mage combos. And consistent use of these tactics/their countertactics could add a whole new meaning to battlefield mobility, maybe give light cavalry another two of their RL roles back(Either fire and flee or mow down whoever tries to flee).

C'mon, this game isn't nearly complex enough at the moment. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

[ April 15, 2004, 12:13: Message edited by: Vicious Love ]

Re: Light Infantry... what the ****
 

[quote]Originally posted by Daynarr:

Quote:

The problem with castles was already discussed and the main problem seems to be that its hard to make rules on how would AI decide to build his castles. I would suggest discussing this in another thread since its pretty large topic and it wouldn't be good if this one loses focus on current issue.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I think a simple heuristic would go a long way: If the AI doesn't have enough resources to acheive a force mix dominated by heavy units, it should build castles instead of an army of LI. Or put another way, limit the percentage of available gold that will be spent on light units, and spend left over money on things other than troops.

This relatively closely approximates what I do. Some work would be involved in marking a factions units into appropriate catagories, but that should be straight forward.

Re: Light Infantry... what the ****
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I disagree, IMHO of course. Accruing fatigue faster during a battle implies that the field is covered in rough terrain -- which rare if ever happened.

On the other hand, marching troops for long distances was exhausting -- even without rough terrain. Ancient military strategists describe the danger of fighting with already exhausted troops, and apparently took it seriously.

Re: Light Infantry... what the ****
 

Ooooh, feel the realism.
Next patch, let's implement camp followers!

Update: Or at least pneumonia. Throw me a bone here.

[ April 15, 2004, 12:17: Message edited by: Vicious Love ]