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in which occasion will you raise taxes
with the massive kills on population, when will you raise your taxes?
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Re: in which occasion will you raise taxes
edit : trashed my post (comparison burn out / doing nothing) there was a flaw in my computations.
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif will post again later [ October 29, 2003, 13:34: Message edited by: Pocus ] |
Re: in which occasion will you raise taxes
No more 200% taxes is no more 50 men patrols in your provinces, as everyone observed.
But now this in turn renders militia et al nearly totally useless in Dom2 ! I'll only build very few of them in order to decrease unrest from time to time ... In the end the light troops that already weren't good in Dom1 for combat are now useless for everything http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif |
Re: in which occasion will you raise taxes
That would be a pity. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif
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Re: in which occasion will you raise taxes
quite true, light troops are even less desirable now (and I'm not sure the strat move advantage will weight much in the decision making, but time will tell).
a part of the problem which is in doms II and was in I, is that the upkeep is only based on gold. This lead to a situation where a cardace in leather armor cost as much to maintain than a Ulm pikeneer in maximilian armor (thats the non realistic aspect). And this lead to player favoring again the troop heaviness compared to other advantages. I for one would really like to see Cardaces which cost as much as before, but with half the upkeep of an hoplite (if you do (gold + res)/ 30 foe exemple as upkeep formula). Then I'm sure we would find a use for them (mass of javelins to back up a phalanx). |
Re: in which occasion will you raise taxes
Yes the light troops are seriously useless now (well other than the AI seems to be enamored with them). Either changes to upkeep, or to the combat efficiency of masses needs to be looked at. Supply is another killer, maybe make the light troops much more supply efficient, or give a certain amount of free supply to troops with less than, oh say 15 production cost?
There's ways to tweek it, just have to make it somewhat realistic http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif |
Re: in which occasion will you raise taxes
It makes sense for light troops to have supply advantages, since they would be able to carry more stuff. Hmmm.
But I think a large part of the problem is that light troops are too expensive. Militia costs 7? While well-trained, expensively equipped Marginon greatswordsmen cost 10? That makes little sense to me. Were I to mod the game, I'd drop all light infantries under 10gp (maybe 8gp), militias to around 5gp, keep medium infantry at 10gp, move heavy infantries to 12gp, and push elite heavy infantry (currently 12-15) up 2 or 3gp. So: Militia: 5-6gp LI: 7-8gp (8 if they have javelins) MI: 9-11gp HI: 12-13gp Elite HI: 14-17gp Super-elites: are pretty unique, so change as needed. This change, plus giving light infantries a supply bonus, or having them use less supplies... or making HI eat more, since they use more energy... would probably rebalance the system. I don't think resources need to be factored into the upkeep system explicitly - that would be a bit confusing. Factoring it into cost, instead, and just using cost for upkeep, seems simpler. However, factoring encumbrance into supply usage might be a worthwhile prospect. Supply might have to change, though - say, an increase by a factor of 10 in supply and consumption, to reduce granularity. By the way... an army eats more when moving and fighting. But that might be a little too much added complexity http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif -Cherry P.S. I hope these cost changes make it into the official game. But if not, you can look forward to them in "Cherry Mod 0.1" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif The Japanese theme (not for Tien Chi, because I want a China/Japan conflict) will probably be in 0.2 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif [ October 29, 2003, 18:40: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ] |
Re: in which occasion will you raise taxes
I'm not so bothered by the 'less useful light infantry' thing as I think the rest of you are. It makes sense to me that you're really only going to make poorly equipped troops if you don't have the resources to make well-equipped troops. This seems realistic to me. I guess it's possible that in general there are too many resources available... do people have this opinion?
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Re: in which occasion will you raise taxes
Light infantry are cheaper to deploy, maintain, and support than HI. But this is not reflected in Dominions I or II, making LI mostly useless.
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Re: in which occasion will you raise taxes
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#1 the AI... The AI doesn't understand the worthlessness of LI apparently, so it is disadvantaged against humans, disadvantaged in a fixable way though. #2 Astetics... Well why have 10+ units per nation if 5 of them are used less than 1% of the time? Call it balance, call it what you will, the fact is that LI are not cheap enough to use over other units. The problem is two fold, supply and upkeep, there is simply no advantage to ever having LI (strategic movement, but if they suck so much the extra speed isn't worth that much since they just die anyway). It doesn't bother me greatly for MP, but for SP I'd like to see the AI less handicapped. |
Re: in which occasion will you raise taxes
I can see heavy mercenaries being more expensive than light, and they generally are in the game.
With a fantasy/god-mage medieval economy, though, I don't quite see why better equipped men would necessarily be more expensive to maintain. I suppose you might tend to need a little more "amorer time" to do occasional maintenance. Maybe you'd need more beasts of burden to carry their gear around when on the march. Better trained men might cost more (or take more time...) to produce. I find it interesting (in a good way) playing Ulm and having extremely heavy infantry available for the same gold cost as other infantry, but a high resource cost. The high resource cost means that it takes a long time to build up a large army of them, during which you need to avoid casualties. In my long stalemated game against the AI, I built up a lot of good men, and then something with a gas attack (or soul vortex, etc) would come along and severely deplete my ranks, and I would be overrun if I didn't have a province with super-low-resource tribal militia to recruit quickly. I think my suggestion would be perhaps to tweak down the resource costs of some militia, and to add (if not already in Doms II) a "disband" command. This would mean that large armies of militia could be even more easily raised (like you can with tribal militia in Doms I), but also gotten rid of later without sending them on suicide missions. That would be rather more like real ancient/medieval warfare, too; usually there were only a few trained and well-equipped men in a standing army, and then mobs of peasants would be pressed into service to fight major battles, and released afterwards. I assume too (haven't tried to test) that there are already other factors too such as: * Raising troops should reduce the province population * The more men on patrol in a province, the greater the chance of catching spies and scouts It would be interesting if when men were disbanded, the program remembered some of them, and gave them a chance to show up as part of an independant army, mercenary band, or independant uprising in the future. Or, they might even be available for re-hire later by the same player. PvK [ October 29, 2003, 18:52: Message edited by: PvK ] |
Re: in which occasion will you raise taxes
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1. The AI thing should be fixed so that the AI recruits the highest resource troops it can, while exhausting its gold supply for the turn. [maybe this isn't clear - what I mean is that if you on a certain turn have (after buying a commander) 200 gold and 200 resources, the AI should buy troops with that ratio of gold to resources, etc. - try to exhaust both gold and resources] 2. While I'm ok with LI being used less, I agree with you that they shouldn't be in there if they're not going to be used at all, ever, as you say, for aesthetic reasons. So for example for Man I can't imagine ever wanting to buy slingers when I can buy longbows. Similarly for most all militia I think. |
Re: in which occasion will you raise taxes
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PVK: Quote:
Now to think that you need only 30% more gold to maintain a foot knight compared to a milicia is ridiculous (no offence intended against you, I just feel I need to use a strong adjective). A drafted slinger would get a food ration, and some copper coins each month. A foot knight will ask for at least 2 men to service him (keeping an armor and quality steel weapons fit for battle ask for much time and effort), and I'm not even speaking of his wage. This would translate in dominions by taking into account the resource cost into the maintenance one. Believe me, it would be a boon to the lighter units, which are very often discarded. In the pbems I saw (multiplayer environment being the epitome of optimisation), I never saw a single velite, peltast, light infantry, etc. used in war. I think this is quite the proof that something must be done. Your concern about your Ulmish infantry is right on the other hand. We should not level all units to the same ground. But even if the upkeep would rise, you would still pay the upfront cost of 10 gp, same as a light infantry. But in the long run, you would pay more to maintain them. Seem quite balanced when you compare their armaments. |
Re: in which occasion will you raise taxes
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One simple way to address this would be to have a battle deployment area that was broader than deep, but with the flank areas marked so that only light/fast troops could be deployed there. Another would be to allow lighter troops to deploy one man per "square" rather than 3, so that they would be an effective missile screen. Combine this with a slight increase in the accuracy and damage of missiles, and you'd have very good reason to screen with light troops. Both of these would help allow light troops to be usefull for their traditional roles. I suspect you'd still need to tweak their gold cost down a point or two to make them viable however. These changes are perhaps too dramatic to actually have a chance at implementation, but IMHO they would greatly improve the variety of viable troops, and the number of interesting battle tactics. |
Re: in which occasion will you raise taxes
Traditionally, heavy troops, with their expensive armor and weapons, were also better trained. I mean, a lot better. So, in general, light units were cheaply levied, poorly paid, poorly trained, and used as cannon fodder. In Dominions II they are as expensive as HI...
I kind of think that milita should also have -1 HP and -1 strength, and maybe even drop to a price of 4gp, to reflect the fact that they're not really soldier-types, just unfit peasants forced into the army. PvK - as it stands now, why would you ever buy slingers or militias? Even if they cost zero resources, I wouldn't buy them. I was playing Machaka, and realized that their primary infantry units are a waste of money... so I only bought archers and hoplites. And even with the archers, I would prefer to have an indy province with actual armored archers. There's just no use for 10gp light infantry, and their low resource cost does not make them viable, as gold is so limited in Dom II. |
Re: in which occasion will you raise taxes
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One simple way to address this would be to have a battle deployment area that was broader than deep, but with the flank areas marked so that only light/fast troops could be deployed there. Another would be to allow lighter troops to deploy one man per "square" rather than 3, so that they would be an effective missile screen. Combine this with a slight increase in the accuracy and damage of missiles, and you'd have very good reason to screen with light troops. Both of these would help allow light troops to be usefull for their traditional roles. I suspect you'd still need to tweak their gold cost down a point or two to make them viable however. These changes are perhaps too dramatic to actually have a chance at implementation, but IMHO they would greatly improve the variety of viable troops, and the number of interesting battle tactics. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yeah, I suggested the "loose" and "wide" formation toggles a while back, but I'm keeping mum now because it will be lost in the clutter, what with all the demo-polishing I hope is going on=) As for LI being historically useful, that's correct. But my impression is that is less due to their mobility, and more because they were so darn cheap compared to HI. Untrained, give'em a spear and point'em at the battle milita should never cost 70% of a well trained broadsword-shield-platemail HI unit in any respect (supply needs, wages, maintenance, initial deployment cost). For similar reasons, despite having more training and being better armed than militia, an LI shouldn't cost the same amount as an HI. |
Re: in which occasion will you raise taxes
I just meant that having better equipment doesn't necessarily mean a unit should cost more gold to maintain.
Your "foot knight" example makes sense for knights versus peasants, but those seem like mainly social causes rather than physical causes. In Doms, there are knights as well, and they are more expensive than regular infantry. It seems to me that an Ulm heavy infantry in plate armor isn't a knight demanding servants, he's just a very well-equipped infantryman. He might need more wagon space to transport his gear when on the march, but isn't necessarily signifigantly more expensive to maintain that a soldier in leather armor. I do think though that it would make sense if they cost more to raise (because if the armorers aren't making fancy equipment for them, they could be doing something useful for trade), though I wouldn't have them cost more to maintain (because once you have the equipment, it doesn't require much to maintain it). For the knight example, staying with Ulm, they do have knights, commanders, and Guardians, who all have higher training than the common infantry, and higher social status, and therefore they cost more to raise and to maintain in Ulmish society, which follows you example and does make sense. My point in the line you quoted was simply that some societies could maintain very well-equipped regular troops without more maintenance cost than lesser-equipped troops. The equipment doesn't determine the maintenance and wages of each type of troop - the culture does. In some cultures, the best paid men also have the best equipment, but not in all cultures. So, if you hard-coded an increase in gold expense based on resource cost, I think you'd end up with a less interesting set of possible trade-offs, which wouldn't necessarily make any sense. Instead of reducing the variety in unit costs by linking maintenance to resource cost, I'd rather see more variety by allowing maintenance and purchase cost to be independent. That is, I'd increase the cost to raise heavy Ulm infantry (representing reduced trade goods) but keep their maintenance cost the same. And again, I think light infantry could be made much more attractive if they simply had an even lower resource cost, and it were possible to release units (or maybe make that a special ability of militia and light infantry). If they could be raised very quickly and dismissed when not needed, that would also greatly reduce their total cost, because of the savings on maintenance. PvK |
Re: in which occasion will you raise taxes
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Re: in which occasion will you raise taxes
I have used tribal militia to very good effect because of their low cost and very low resource cost. I could buy a half-dozen HI, or dozens of militia. So I bought them when I needed to quickly raise a large force, and provide cannon fodder for attacking castles and Users of deadly non-physical weapons like poison gas and Soul Vortex, where armor is useless. Having some in the front ranks also keeps the better men alive longer.
I've had some good results from slingers in a few cases too, in areas where I had little else I could raise, and when the enemies had little or no armor. If units, especially militia, could be disbanded, this would mean you could raise them quickly and disband them when not needed, lowering their cost to use. I agree though that some of the costs could be tweaked anyway, making some of the lighter units cheaper, and especially reducing their maintenance cost so you could make many appear quickly. PvK Quote:
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Re: in which occasion will you raise taxes
Hehe, stop trying to bring reality into this argument http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif
We have a concern, that LI are underpowered, and *overused* by the AI. In order to fix this you can either play with the costs/stats of the LI (won't fix it really) or change some mechanics to make LI more useful in general. The problem with tweeking LI values, is that since the controling factor at some point is going to be supply you will never want alot of LI consuming the supply for your better troops. Ok you can raise supply with artifacts and nature mages, but that's an artifical solution and one that not every nation can easilly attain. Upkeep is seemingly secondary, but it is also a problem, especailly when you combine it with supply. If LI and HI have the same supply and upkeep needs its obvious that unless HI is soooo grossly overpriced that you can't afford them you will eventually not use LI at all. As it stands now from what I can tell, there isn't even an early period where LI are useful, you go for HI (or MI) right off the bat, you never use LI. Now if LI got some boost (free upkeep and supply for 10 LI for every province you control) then you'd be a fool not to use that free amount. Getting back to reality for a sec... this is what usually happened anyway! The LI were cheap to raise, and cheap to maintain, remember that the concept of supply in Dom is abstracted (or can be) to account for a variety of supplies, not just food. Any army with a significant amount of armor or better weapons required craftsmen to maintain and repair those weapons, the supply use in dom then could be higher for the HI to account for these craftsmen (or lower for the LI since they don't need them). This should be first and foremost an issue of game balance and whats the best game mechanic though, not one of what's more realistic, how much food does a guy with plate mail need compared to a naked farmer... |
Re: in which occasion will you raise taxes
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-Cherry P.S. Quote:
[ October 29, 2003, 21:34: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ] |
Re: in which occasion will you raise taxes
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-Cherry P.S. Quote:
You probably joined that rediculose anti teleporter society too http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Death to Realism!!!! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif |
Re: in which occasion will you raise taxes
Non-uniform training time might well have a big impact, and seems reasonable -- untrained, generally lightly-equipped irregulars could be recruited and mobilized much faster than those who need to be trained to fight in armor and in close formation, and it'll take even longer if horsemanship or archery plays a part. Even if you have plentiful material resources, training will still take time unless your society's so militarized that your recruiting pool is already trained as a part of their upbringing.
And yeah, demobilizing makes sense. They may be irregular conscripts rather than professional soldiers, and once the threat's over they'd rather go home. Conversely, if there's a nearby threat loyal citizens might even volunteer to protect their homes (e.g. higher chance of militia event). Combining the above with high maintenance cost for maintaining a standing army would increase the incentive to keep a smaller army followed by rapid raising of militia. Edited: Incoherent and dropping words today. [ October 29, 2003, 21:54: Message edited by: Taqwus ] |
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But, the real problem is the supplies. The "supplies" abstraction in Dom is only about food, but I think it should reflect more than that; it should be near impossible to raise and maintain a standing army of only heavy troops. These heavy troops should be a backbone that your army is build around - better morale and durability, but too expensive to have them make up more than a quarter of your army. I like the idea of some number of "light" troops in each Province not requiring supplies. |
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Costs were obviously an issue as well, but I don't think they were the defining issue. It certainly wasn't true that light troops were only used because one couldn't instead field more heavy troops. |
Re: in which occasion will you raise taxes
I don't mean to imply that cost was the only advantage, as there were many examples of light, mobile units slaughtering sluggish armored ones (the Crusades come to mind). But I think it was a huge factor, and that if the cost had been equal (like in Doms II), heavy units would have made up the bulk of historic armies, rather than light units.
There's also a possibility of assigning heavy units penalties in certain terrain types (swamp, mountain, forest). [ October 29, 2003, 22:38: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ] |
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In Dom 2 this is also the case -- they make very good heavy infantry. Their stats now seem clearly superior to hoplites. |
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Also, you wouldn't mind the supply cost of light troops if they were actually effective in battle. |
Re: in which occasion will you raise taxes
"Also, you wouldn't mind the supply cost of light troops if they were actually effective in battle. "
True, that is why I suggest lowering their supply (and proably upkeep) to make them more viable than they are. All the historical evidence is fine and dandy, but it has jack all to do with Dominions and the underlying game mechanics. What it boils down to (aside from the AIs inability to select the most effective troops) is that there is virtually no use for LI in the game. That's probably like 15-20% of the units in the game that simply will never be built becasue there is always a better alternative. Now of course there can be instances where you need a quick dose of LI, but for the most part their cost/benefit is out of whack with the higher cost units. This situation only gets worse the longer the game progresses as nations gain better economies and begin to fill their key provinces with important armies. There simply is not room for the LI since they have no combat advantage over HI once you saturate your provinces with units (i.e. the supply limit is hit). So lower the supply usage for LI, lower their upkeep, and bang, now they can be competative again. People will still gravitate toward the better units, but there will be a bigger place for LI in the game. An alternative is to make HI take up more command points from commanders as well, or make LI count as 1/2 or something. That doesn't get around supply and upkeep issues, but it does make swarming more viable, especially with low command rated commanders. |
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Even the Romans, quite fond of heavy infantry, still kept some lighter troops around for tactical flexibility -- even though they could have fielded armies of purely of heavy infantry. What it really came down to is that a certain amount of light troops will increased the effectiveness of heavy troops. |
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The only use I've found for LI so far is their javelins - they do as much damage as longbows, and because of their shorter range, they have better accuracy. A squad of LI behind a squad of HI can be fairly effective against moderately armored troops. Against Ulm you still need crossbows or magic though. Some people on this thread seem to be claiming that it shouldn't take any more money to maintain a company of fifty men with Full Plate of Ulm, a full helmet, tower shield and warhammer (say) than spears, leather hauberks, javelins and maybe hard leather caps. I don't see how you can support this view - if nothing else, war gear wears out or breaks and has to be replaced. That costs something. It wouldn't be inappropriate to the way the gold/resource model works in Dom II to have heavy units' maintenance cost resources instead of gold - but it would probably be very hard to implement effectively. (It might require implementation of a second supply system - and what happens to the troops who aren't properly supplied with equipment?) Adding a gold upkeep cost for high resource units would be simple and possibly solve some of the heavy vs. light troop problems that have been around since Dom I. Of course I worry about weakening Ulm too much; maybe they could have as one of their national abilities that they pay only half the extra upkeep cost due to resources. Or troops that are currently in a friendly productivity dominion could pay less upkeep due to resources. Both would be appropriate IMO. On the other hand, I also think that a large part of the heavy vs. light problem stems from light troops' ineffectiveness on the battlefield, and that this is a very "deep" problem because it ties into the defense vs. protection issue and combats resolving in too few rounds for fatigue to be a major problem for nonmages. Both problems could perhaps be solved (or at least ameliorated) by an across-the-board +1-2 to all defense skills (perhaps excepting units that already have very high defense). LI would still die faster to shortbow fire, but wouldn't necessarily die faster in melee (except perhaps compared to Ulm) because they would get hit less often and because the heavy troops would get tired before they had killed 3x their own numbers. Another possible fix (to the over-effectiveness of protection vs. most attacks) would be to make any hit do at least 1 point of damage, regardless of the str+weapon vs. prot roll. Then units that get hit a lot but often take 0 damage would be getting hit for 1 damage, which could make quite a bit of difference to a 10 hp unit. Finally, historically there were melee weapons specifically designed to pierce armor - pikes, for instance. Why aren't they armor piercing in Dom (I or II)? Armor negating should be reserved for magic items, beings and spells only, but I don't see why armor piercing shouldn't be allowed on ordinary melee weapons. Not all nations have access to crossbows, and missile weapons have several known counters anyway. |
Re: in which occasion will you raise taxes
I'm jumping in to express my opinion on the LI vs HI discusion.
I think there needs to be a reason for LI, there isn't one right now. I like the 'Each provence can support 10 LI for free' idea. I also like the wider spacing for LI to lower missile losses. Sammual |
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It is far more intersting to model the real world reasons that people used such forces, than speculative economics. It especially makes sense when you're trying to get results similar to history, e.g. a variety of viable unit types. I agree that gameplay is the most important thing, but IMHO in this case history has much more interesting "gameplay" than Dominions, and serves as a very good model. |
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Even with this change, though, I think LI should become cheaper, HI costlier, and Ulm be semi-exempt from this. By cheaper/costlier I mean both gold and "support". -Cherry [ October 29, 2003, 23:08: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ] |
Re: in which occasion will you raise taxes
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It is far more intersting to model the real world reasons that people used such forces, than speculative economics. It especially makes sense when you're trying to get results similar to history, e.g. a variety of viable unit types. I agree that gameplay is the most important thing, but IMHO in this case history has much more interesting "gameplay" than Dominions, and serves as a very good model. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">First of all I didn't say to lower their costs, just the cost to maintain them. If they are still inferior to HI they still won't be used in mass, but there will be a sweet point where a certain amount of LI and HI will be more effective than just all of one or the other. Obviously we are on the all HI side of this curve right now. In order to accurately portray the value of LI in Domintions you would have to make many changes to the combat system. In fact we had this arguement before when Saber suggested the addition of different damage catagories. Anyway, it comes down to the same thing, adding more complexity to an already complex game. What does it gain you to better modle the effects of terrain, or formations, or what have you, *just to make LI more viable*? Well that question answered itself right? My point is that adding this complexity is unneeded, and from the results of the Last thread, also unwanted (not by all, but by many). The simple fix is usually the best anyway, once you have a more balanced system you can continue to improve upon it, but to go for broke from the get go often has unintended consequences. History may have more "interesting gameplay", but that in and of itself doesn't mean that it makes a good model for a game. More often than not the games that try to model their gameplay off of history wind up so complex, and with so many niggling omisions that the grand effect intended is completly lost. No I'd rather have Dominions write its own history rather than try to force feed concepts of our history into it. Granted many units are borrowed directly from ancient cultures, but if you want a game trying to model Roman or Greek battles pick up the Great Battles series, don't try to make Dominions something that it isn't. |
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Even the Romans, quite fond of heavy infantry, still kept some lighter troops around for tactical flexibility -- even though they could have fielded armies of purely of heavy infantry. What it really came down to is that a certain amount of light troops will increased the effectiveness of heavy troops. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Mainly this because historically armor, while useful, wasn't nearly as useful as it is in Dom I/II. To anyone who disputes this, I offer the following test: put on a suit of full plate armor, helm and shield, then ask a friend to hit you with half a dozen sling bullets and shoot you three or four times with a shortbow. See if you are seriously injured or not (in Dom II, you probably wouldn't be - and that's with nonmagical, non-Black Plate of Ulm armors). In Dom II it's common for a heavy unit to be hit three or four times without taking any damage, and then when he is hit it's only a scratch. Meanwhile the light units are getting killed or maimed with every second attack (or so). Which usually causes them to break around the time the heavy units are reaching 20 or so fatigue (-1 attack, -2 defense they don't use anyway, and a few percent chance of an armor piercing hit). This is primarily because losing your defense roll by 1 point can kill you instantly, while losing your protection roll by 1 point will only cause 1 point of damage. There is far greater likelihood of quickly killing a high-defense, low-protection unit with a lucky hit than of quickly killing a low-defense, high-protection unit - and that's not even taking into account missile fire, where defense is completely worthless. (There's at least as much magic that ignores defense as there is magic that ignores protection, too.) I'd like to see a critical hit rule: for each 5 points the attacker beats the defender's defense by, he gets 1 extra d6 for the damage vs. protection roll. (Open-ended, of course: the entire point of critical hits is that they hurt.) This still wouldn't make it too easy to kill an invulnerable Great Mother (for example), but heavy infantry would run a risk of being hurt even by humans with spears (although still not as much of a risk as unarmored troops). And it would make high attack skill more useful: currently it doesn't do all that much unless you're going against something with a high defense skill. |
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My main arguement here is simply game complexity. I would only support giving them more maintenance in a uniform manner, e.g. by increasing their cost, or by calculating resources in the gold maintenance cost. Quote:
Making Light Troops more powerfull in Melee is not a good solution, IMHO. They _should_ get demolished in melee. Quote:
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I still think that all you really need to address the light infantry weakness is to make them require fewer resources (and probably less gold to raise). The idea of allowing disbandment would also help. Other things that would help, without adding nonsensical mechanics, would be tactical AI tweaks such as adding a "skirmish" tactic which would have the unit engage from range but not in unfavorable melee - this would allow light troops, as well as light cavalry, to use their speed and range to stay away from mobs of slower heavy infantry, and perhaps attack less armored enemies such as rear troops. PvK |
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On the other hand, you get get along way towards making LI viable with simple changes, that really do increase variety, have a basis in history, aren't a pain to play with, and require a ton of memorization. 1st: Allow light troops to deploy on the flanks. 2nd: Make light troops less susceptiple to missile hits, and increase missile accuracy and damage. One way is to make spread out so 2/3rds of all missiles miss them. 3rd: Allow an order for light troops to retire before being contacted by heavy troops. 4th: decrease the cost of light troops uniformly by 1 or 2 gold. It would also be nice if troops got some sort of advantage flanking, but the dominions battle engine really doesn't allow this. Quote:
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To put it bluntly, the dominions battle system is over complex, but not very interesting. There are systems that do a decent job of emulating reality, have less complexity, and more viable variety, take less micromanagement, and are just more fun. I would far rather see something emulate history, than emulate D&D. |
Re: in which occasion will you raise taxes
Hmm, I'm looking at my Doms II Arco home province, and noticing I have a choice to build either:
3 Hoplites for 33 gold 4 Hypaspists for 60 gold 14 Cardaces for 140 gold At the moment, I have over 400 gold stored, so it's definitely going to be 14 Cardaces - they'll probably do much better capturing neutral provinces than 3 or 4 better troops. If they didn't cost quite as much gold to build and maintain, I'd say they were a reasonable choice on other occasions besides quickly raising many men. PvK |
Re: in which occasion will you raise taxes
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If I'm overlooking something obvious in one of your Posts, please point me to it. -Cherry |
Re: in which occasion will you raise taxes
Possibly at the start of the game, during a moment of desperation, or when I know I can't hold a province. It might also be usefull for those nations that need corpses.
I find this much improved over the constant 200% taxation in Dom 1. |
Re: in which occasion will you raise taxes
>4 Hypaspists for 60 gold
>14 Cardaces for 140 gold The resource costs of Hypaspists have doubled! This now makes the Cardaces much more attractive and the Hypaspists near worthless. |
Re: in which occasion will you raise taxes
1- I am experimenting with 200% "burn out" strategies. I suspect that we will see some of this in multiplayer. Possibly more than some.
2- Other than the burn out, the only time I would change taxes is either to devalue my assets when an enemy is beating me or to devalue enemy territory while I'm raiding. Frankly I'm not happy with the economics of Dom II. The issues above combined with Ermor type dominion and a suspected player base that will be using much death scale, leads me to think that population shrinkage is going to be staggering in multiplay. This (and many other things) is going to lead to hardcore super combatants. I don't see this as a balanced nor preferable outcome. I continue my tests, and hope that there is some mitigating factor that I haven't gleened yet. |
Re: in which occasion will you raise taxes
The Hypaspists are still the most skilled of the three melee infantry types, so when gold is low, or when you're trying to get the best strength per supply use, they make sense to use.
PvK [ October 30, 2003, 00:39: Message edited by: PvK ] |
Re: in which occasion will you raise taxes
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[I am not a multiplayer, but since the singleplayer AI is annoyed me -it is too weak-, maybe I will play some mp games, if I will have time. I mean TCP games, I don't like Pbem] |
Re: in which occasion will you raise taxes
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</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yes - but if there were a heavy infantry with javelins, wouldn't they be even better at it? Come to think of it, Pythium legionnaires do have javelins. Aren't they better at this sort of thing than LI? Quote:
My main arguement here is simply game complexity. I would only support giving them more maintenance in a uniform manner, e.g. by increasing their cost, or by calculating resources in the gold maintenance cost. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Ok, I agree. And I also think that if their ineffectiveness on the battlefield could be solved, it might not be necessary to make them cheaper - but as it is, they definitely need an advantage of some sort, and being quick to raise isn't enough when they are also so much quicker to die. Quote:
Making Light Troops more powerfull in Melee is not a good solution, IMHO. They _should_ get demolished in melee. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Then what do you suggest? Hit and run isn't very effective if you can only hit once a month. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif Their strategic movement is often blocked by terrain, and even when it isn't, raiding in the enemy's rear doesn't produce enough effect to justify the risk of defeat in detail, even for a quick-to-raise force. (At least in my experience - has anyone tried a serious campaign of pillaging all over the place (possibly with a bunch of Implementor Axes) faster than the enemy's army can pin you down? It seems likely they'd just respond by sieging - but then, heavy troops are no better than light at breaching walls, Ulmish Sappers excepted.) Quote:
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Re: in which occasion will you raise taxes
I think a distinction has to be made here between Light Infantry and conscripted crappy infantry. That's the point I was trying to make with the hypaspists - they (in Dom I, which is what was my frame of reference) are a light infantry, but still very useful. Whereas on the other hand militia aren't very useful, and I think that's appropriate.
So there are 3 classes of troops (very roughly): • Heavy Infantry [well-trained, thick armour, poor defense, slow-moving] • Light Infantry [well-trained, light armour, high defense, fast-moving] • Conscripts [poorly trained, light armour, low defense, average movement] You would expect quality LI to have lesser PROT than HI, but greater DEF and AP, and that's exactly the difference between Hypaspists and Hoplites in Dom I [Hypaspists' stats are quite a bit different in Dom II]. It's easy to see the advantages of both, under this paradigm: when fighting slow but strong troops you'd want LI, because their higher DEF score should avoid the attacks altogether. In the same situation HI would do alot worse, because they wouldn't dodge any of the attacks, and therefore get damaged a lot. Militia would be pathetic in this (and pretty much every other) situation. In other words: I'm just fine with militia-like troops not being used much - conscripted troops with little training have always been best as cannon (or dragon) fodder, and not much good at anything else. On the other hand, well-trained light infantry should be useful, and if this means a DEF boost, so be it. |
Re: in which occasion will you raise taxes
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[ October 30, 2003, 01:58: Message edited by: Kristoffer O ] |
Re: in which occasion will you raise taxes
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And apoger, they more than doubled since Dom I: 8 -> 18 |
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