Fixing PD?
 

Any good Dominions MP player knows how mostly useless PD happens to be. Even a smallish army can roll through 20 PD quite easily. I mean, one sauromancer spamming undead can frequently kill 20 PD (without archers) all by himself! How much PD can a single High Seraph spamming false horrors plus 1 archer kill? And what about Ghost Riders? I recently had a fight where my 35 Machaka PD lost to one single lesser horror! Bah! That should never happen...

So, how to fix the PD problem.

One idea suggested to me by my son is to add mages to the mix. Give each nation the obligatory commander at 1 PD. Then, every 5 PD, add the national lesser mage. Each 10 PD, add a national priest instead of the mage. On the even 20s, use the nations greater mage instead. Let them use whatever spells the nation has researched to that point.

This means at 40 PD, you have the 40 (minimum) national troops, 1 commander, 2 greater mages (at 20 and 40), 2 priests (at 10 and 30), and 4 lesser mages (at 5, 15, 25, and 35). This means a player can't just attack any old province with a tiny strike force anymore.

Also, you can improve the national troop selection every 10 (or so) levels of PD. I can see having a top-notch, high-protection infantry force supported by archers (if available to the nation) or spearmen plus many mages at 50 PD. This would take a real army to kill, not a wimpy raiding force with a lone mage. So much for players needing to take watch towers and spamming them all over their lands.

Is this enough? Is it too much? Is PD even mod-able?

What do you think?

Re: Fixing PD?
 

I like the suggestions for mages.

I would like to see troops drawn from the recruitable troops in the province. If you originally battled indie barabarians to take the province, then PD would consist of recruiting barbarians. This would make up for the differences in the strengths of national troops across nations without making PD completely homogeneous (e.g., only human infantry and archers). Each province retains its original local "flavor." Just as in the beginning, some provinces are tougher than others because the locals are tougher.

Re: Fixing PD?
 

PD is moddable. PD is weak, but it's also cheap. I think it should have more value tiers. You shouldn't get 60 gold knights for 20 or so gold apiece, and on the flip-side, you shouldn't get slingers for a similar cost. The cost scale is a little bit odd in that it has an increasing cost with a linear return creating an "optimum" point for each nation. Some of the better optimum points are for Atlantis and Jotunheim. Some of the worst are for Pythium and Machaka--at some point it becomes more cost-effective to hire or summon (preferably) units for defense as the cost of slingers and militia escalate into the stratusphere.

Re: Fixing PD?
 

I'd say giving PD double Morale in a friendly dominions is both thematically correct and effective. I would also like to see another commander every 20 points, but leave the mix to each nation, but at least 1 mage, commander, and priest by 60pts.

Re: Fixing PD?
 

One Sauromancer costs 180g plus one province's (with castle and lab) allotment of commanders per turn, 20 PD costs 210g... The sauromancer will lose against many nations' PDs and beat some others, so it sounds about right cost-wise. Unless for some reason one wanted to emphasize defense over offense.

What use should Ghost Riders/Lesser Horrors have if not beating PD? Or false horror for that matter; what is the niche you see these spells fill? Defeating moderate amounts of infantry sounds about right to me. I haven't tried but I think 35 points of Machaka PD can beat a lesser horror more often than not, so that may have been a fluke. (At least to me it appeared that your dudes routed pretty easily compared to the normal performance of lesser horrors.)

I think it would help much if one could script PD. To not get bogged in micro there could be a nationwide PD-script to be applied to every province. Of course to retain balance some PD commanders should be re-evaluated, to not give f. ex. Vanheim too big an advantage.

Re: Fixing PD?
 

Pythium with improved prov. defence:

#modname "Pythium Defence"
#description "This mod improves the provincial defence of the nation Pythium. This mod might work.




This mod was put together by Janne Joensuu, known in Shrapnel Games' forum by the name of Endoperez"
#version 001

#selectnation 2 -nation number, with abysia 0, atlantis 1... machaka 16
#defcom1 "Theurg" -base def commander
#defunit1 685 -first def unit, Alae Legionnaire
#defmult1 10 -defmult1 / 10 * pd = number of defunit1
#defcom2 "Arch Theurg" -commander on pd 20
#defunit2 688 -units gotten from pd 20 upwards, Triarius
#defmult2 20 -defmult2 / 10 * (pd-19) = number of defunit2
#end

They get 2 triarii for each point of prov. def. after 20 as it costs lots of gold. The second unit is triarii, because I think they are troops that have already retired and are given land in conquered provinces. If you wanted them to be units recruited and paid just for provincial defence, they could be hastati or principes.

ANYONE can easily mod the province defence. However, the modder should remember to try to follow the general guidelines - Pythium should have weaker prov. def., so maybe only Velites and Alae Legionaires & Theurg Initiates and Theurgs, while Jotunheim might have defmult1 15 Jotun Militia and Jotun Javelinists as second troops.

The problems:

Themes' pd cannot be modded to differ from that of base nation (Ulm/Black Forest, Broken Empire/Ashen Empire, Pangaea/New Era...)

Beating prov.def. of weak Astral nations would be easy with an S3+Skullcap mage teleporting around and scripted to [Magic Duel, Magic Duel, Magic Duel, Cast Spells].

Re: Fixing PD?
 

Certain nations like Pythium have very nice groups of castle hirables, but extraordinarily crappy province defense. One has to consider a nation's individual propensity toward offense or defense when assigning province defense. I think that GR/Horror/etc should be useful in beating province defense, but that certain (expensive) levels of province defense should not be so easily dispatched. 40 province defense costs 820 gold. Should such an alottment of resources be susceptible to a cheap (5 gem) attack? OF COURSE, GR isn't really "cheap" considering the amount of research that must be done to acquire it AND the investment in wizards who can cast it. Lesser Horrors on the other hand are from a LEVEL 5 spell costing only 9 slaves (with moderately difficult paths) can scare away sizable PD. 9 slaves is very cheap....

Drawing units from those available in the province would be neat--perhaps each tier could "hire" an appropriate number of a certain valuation of troop e.g. Militia at 1-10, Archers at 11-20, Light Infantry at 21-30, Heavy at 31-40, Cavalry at 41-50, etc... I especially like the idea of adding more commanders--having few commanders makes PD susceptible to flying unit attacks (imps/horrors). Mages (in provinces with labs) and priests (in those with temples) would also be very nice to see.

Re: Fixing PD?
 

Does Pythium really need 20 gold Arch Theurgs in their province defense? Since an Arch Theurg is Capitol only, however, i feel it's a poor commander choice thematically. IF that's the way it goes though, you could give Man Tuatha/Crones/Knights of Avalon, Abysia could have Demonbred (although with blood nations, they'd be less useful without blood slaves). How much is too much though? Upping all of the province defenses makes bigger castles viable, but at some point the cost-efficiency optimization makes them so useful that it's more important to max out PD than to make a castle there or station mobile forces in the province's vicinity for additional protection and it reduces the value of ranged summons. Adjusting DOM-2 appears to me as a similar conundrum to passing laws in a real nation -- everytime you "fix" one thing, you "break" something else.

Re: Fixing PD?
 

But when you buy 20 PD you will get much more than only one sauromancer, you get 20 units and two priests and a commander, which together cost much less than 210 gold, and the PD version doesnt cost upkeep or requires supplies!
You could also look at it from another angle, it only costs 20g to increase PD from 19 to 20, and that little increase is what you need to get that sauromancer.

While I'd really like to see PD made better, your ideas go a bit too far.
Maybe they should only follow the "tiers" idea, where PD 1-10 are crappy units, PD 11-20 are slightly better etc.

Re: Fixing PD?
 

I have no idea about balance. However, that would be no 20gp Arch Theurg. It would be costly, but I don't have that handy Provincial Defence Cost Calculator so I can't tell how much more expensive it would be.

I posted that example in the hopes of someone doing a mod to correct or "correct" the provincial defences. Both would help the discussion.

Re: Fixing PD?
 

Province defence costs N*(N+1)/2 gold, where N is the total PD you want.

As things currently stand, PD is variably good for different groups. I'm quite fond of Atlantis PD under water (and even above water if I have magic troops like Mindless Ones lying around that I want to participate in battles), an I'm quite fond of Caelum PD.

Some nations, notably Machaka and Man get PD that even in large numbers is only vaguely capable of defending itself from Scouts. I'm not sure if that's a balance point or just dumb. Remember though, capitols start with 25 PD for free, and there are events that will raise that by five or ten.

If you make PD too good, it will be really hard to siege people and Wind Ride will become even more awesome than it already is.

PD Costs:
1 - 1
2 - 3
3 - 6
4 - 10
5 - 15
6 - 21
7 - 28
8 - 36
9 - 45
10 - 55
11 - 66
12 - 78
13 - 91
14 - 105
15 - 120
16 - 136
17 - 153
18 - 171
19 - 190
20 - 210

Very generally, the first 10 costs 55, the second ten costs an additional 155, the third 10 costs an additional 255, and so on and so on.

-Frank

Re: Fixing PD?
 

Ummm, I just wanted to comment on Panther's gripe about sauromancers beating PDs on their own. In fact the exact opposite you read me to mean http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif That is to say, I don't think it's too terrible that a 180g sauromancer can beat a 210g Province Defense by himself, so perhaps no radical changes are necessary.

Re: Fixing PD?
 

Ah, but the sauromancer can move around, haul armies, cast rituals, research and is quite versatile. The PD just sits there doing nothing, waiting to be slaughtered by practically anything. Doesn't every single C'tis player build another sauromancer rather than 20 PD in most situations? The only true benefit of PD is to catch enemy spies if it can and help stop the hawk or wolf spell.


That is definitely a good point above made by Frank about making it hard to seige people if PD got too good. I once attacked an enemy who had 116 PD in a province, unbeknownst to me. My meager army of a couple of mages with maybe 20 devils and some random vine ogres and other Abysian infantry killed well over half of that huge PD before I lost everything. Had the enemy routed, I even could have won the battle with my smallish army. And that was over 8K gold he invested in that much PD.

PD certainly cannot slow invaders like watch towers can, which is why people usually spam towers and not PD.

Re: Fixing PD?
 

How come Lesser Horrors are cast so seldom if it is only moderately difficult and very cheap? At least in my experience it is very rare too see send lesser horror except from a gift of kurgi, and not that, even, too often. ('Cause the Gift is so damn expensive!) Abysia can utilize them but to others B2S3 is quite a lot; giving two or three boosters for a mage to cast a lesser horror is far too much usually. And 9 slaves is a third of a Horde from Hell. I'd go so far as to say that a single HfH is better for the purpose than three send lesser horrors, especially if mage/booster time is taken into account.

Ghost Riders has been discussed to death earlier, I think, but in my opinion defeating PD is exactly the niche for it. A single GR can't beat even that if there's proper mage/priest support available. It's not like one must leave PD to cope on its own, is it?

Re: Fixing PD?
 

Does this actually work?

Last time I tried to mod the PD of a nation, it turned out that it wouldn't work unless I used the (how is it called?) .. commmand that erases all nations buildable troops, so I had to put the whole lot in again "by hand".
And IIRC there was some issue with the defmult as well, can't remember exactly what it was. something about the numbers/level, of which only some worked, and others not...

Re: Fixing PD?
 

I completely agree with Panther on this issue .

Especially nations like Machaka are pathethic . You get only Militia as PD-Troops . Even if you buy 50 Pd you then have something like 120 militia which can't even beat 1 sauromancer or 1 false horror spammer normally .

The 2 Main issues with PD are Caelum Raiders and later Ghost Riders .

Another good idea imo would be to cap the costs at 20 Pd . Every additional Point then costs only 20 Gold also .
But this can't be modded Illwinter would have to do that by themselves .
Another idea would be that all nations have the same PD , hired mercenaries .

Cause PD can differ a lot . While Marignon PD is quite good Machaka PD just sucks .

Re: Fixing PD?
 

I tried it, could recruit troops as Pythium and my home was defended by Alae L. and Triarius. I changed them to be from Pythian, nor Ermorian, legions but that shouldn't have broken anything. I haven't tested if the numbers of defmult1/2 actually work.

Besides, I have a bunch of mods in which the national troops have already been put in by hand... So if you want to mod PD, you can mod it through my Nation Replacement mods. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Fixing PD?
 

I like this idea.

It would be nice if the unit ids for PD were seperate from recruitables (I think they are the same now, right?). That way people could play around with modding the pd levels to balance to their taste.

Re: Fixing PD?
 

Oversway, please look my post on the earlier page. I modded Pythium's provincial defence. It is not balanced, but it CAN be balanced doing what I did.

Re: Fixing PD?
 

Yeah, I saw what you did, that is cool. Although there was another post that claimed it was only working if you rebuild the entire nation?

Re: Fixing PD?
 

It works for me. PD has changed, and the recruitable units are still there.

Re: Fixing PD?
 

This a fabulous idea, especially given the ongoing controversy about SC's with life drain.

The complete lack of defense after the early game is an enormous issue for me. Even "good" PD (Jotun Marignon etc) isn't cost effective.

The castling strat is a direct response to the futility of defense.

This would go a long way torward making the game more perilous for the SC weenieness that dominates MP.

Let's Overdo it, and then scale back to balanced? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I dont trust the SC-mongers to stay cowed. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

PD would need to be scriptable to make this truly formidable though. (Good idea anyway)

Yeah, Panther!

Rabe

Re: Fixing PD?
 

I've included the list below for the WishList of Dom_3... however the developers might be able to use one or two of these for Dominions_2.

-----------------------------------
Improving Province Defense

One or more of these ideas can be used for improving province defense:

A) Provinces adjacent to the main capital and including the main capital have very powerful defenders for its province defense. These units should have much higher morale, defense, magic resist, and protection.

B) More unique and stronger defenders as provinces defense increases. Province defense(1_thru_10) basic units, Province defense(11_thru_20)average units added with basic units, Province defense(21_thru_30)strong units added with basic and average units, and so on...

C) For province defense beyond 20... adding a commander with a standard(+8) and additional commanders with standards for every additional 10pts of province defense.

D) Some unique powerful unit(depending on the race) added for any location with province defense of 50 or more.

E) Increase resources in a province when the province defense goes beyond 25, yet doesn't work on capital. This would give province defense a second value. Province defense beyond 25 is an investment of over 350 gold.

Re: Fixing PD?
 

or
F) What Panther and I suggested:
Perhaps you should put all that into the dom III wishlist thread...

Re: Fixing PD?
 

I am damn sure I do not want to play a game in which 250 golds worth of province
defence rout 500 golds worth of troops or mages.

It is beyond me why anyone would ask for province defence that is relevant after
turn 20 or so. Without utterly changing the game balance or improving the
tactical AI beyond belief, no amount of unscripted national troops and mages
will be more than a speed bump to well designed turn 40 thug, let alone SC.
In my current game, I teleported, more or less accidentally, my pretender on
top of what I think was one of another player's three main armies, complete
with prophet and life drain/raise dead sauromancer. Five of his two hundred
units escaped. Are you suggesting that one should be able to buy PD that would
have made a difference?

I repeat, my pretender was scripted for dealing with AI resistance, and I am
sure that the army was as well (the original province owner went AI)

I have said it dozens of times before. Play the game you have - tunning it is
one thing, but trying to transform it into a different game is silly. Dominions
is a game of godlike beings, world-altering enchantments and powerful wizards.
If you want to lead legions of infantry, cavalry, and archers, there are plenty
of other games out there. There are even games for those who like a smattering
of magic - I recommend the mods for Shadow of the Horned Rat/Dark Omen. Of
course, I do not know whether anyone outside of Eastern Europe still plays these.

Re: Fixing PD?
 

That would lead to some pretty nasty trips through PD. In Guerilla warfare, provinces are changing hands rapidly. Every time the defender throws down 15 gold, he'd get a mage - mages that are things like Seraphs (throwing one or more lightning bolts before she goes down), Witch Doctors (throwing one or more Fire Darts before going down), and so on and so forth. If every time you attacked a province, people could spend very tiny amounts of money (15 gold) to cause you 1+ casualties of real troops, that would favor the defense a lot.

Already it's a pretty ugly experience trying to get a force into the dominion of someone who has Lure of the Deep or Wrath of God going - I don't think that everyone needs to be able to shoot lazers at interlopers for pocket lint.

What I would like to see is a better return on investment for PD of more than 10. As is, 1 gold gets you a look-see at exactly what just came in and took your province (so you can decide whether to Mind Hunt it or not), and 55 gold gets you a net that catches the occassional spy. Since it doesn't cost any upkeep, that's cheaper than a lone indep commander doing the same thing after 13 turns. And it works more and is more likely to win when it finds one and can't be assasinated and is invisible to enemies on the main map most of the time.

So 1 PD and 10 PD are worth it in the abstract - without actually taking into account whatever military worth they may have (which is usually nothing if you are talking Machaka, but quite substantial if you are talking Atlantis, Ulm, or Caelum). But PDs in excess of that are not. They generally suck, even for groups who in general have very nice PD - I wouldn't buy 17 points of Caelum PD under any circumstances.

So what I'd like to see is a breakpoint or three in the 11-19 range. I could deal with having wizards show up, for example. If Atlantis got a Deep Seer or Sea King at some intermediate point, we'd ever see those intermediate PD levels, which would be good.

-Frank

Re: Fixing PD?
 

If you invest in PD, I suggest protecting the investment with some troops you don't consider useless.

PD by themselves may be weak, but a defense force plus a mob of PD can be quite strong. Especially since if the province is not lost, all the PD reappear. PD is magically regenerating fodder, and it's much more useful when combined with at least a few other units.

For example, I had an Ulmish province with 20PD and a few troops get attacked recently by an army of over a hundred men. On the same turn, my provincial commander apprehended the attack (random event - I have luck scales) and added 20 more PD - suddenly I have 20 Arbalests, 20 Infantry of Ulm, a priest, and Ulm commander, and my troops. All of the PD were tough but expendable. It was a Phyrric victory - both sides lost lots of men, especially the enemy. Almost all of my men however, were PD, and so magically reappeared for the next attack. I've crushed several attacks into that province, so my 20 PD has let me take probably over 100 casualties so far, and has inflicted hundreds.

If I didn't have any other troops or mages stacked in the province, though, it's pretty likely they would have routed at some point, and thus have been lost.

PvK

Re: Fixing PD?
 

Lots of good things said here. Still, like PvK sez, we cant make PD such that it makes recruiting troops obsolete or makes Turtling even more appealing.

True!
Good to see you back here, Rabe! (Where were you?)

Re: Fixing PD?
 

Actually, some second thoughts upon testing:

To sum it up in an oversimplified way: I dont think PD is too weak; it is false horrors, send horror and ghost riders which are too strong.

Yes, PD is not strong enough to defend against halfway serious threats -- but I think that is intentional. I sort of like it like that, too, since it encourages keeping "patrolling" forces in provinces to mix it up with PD.
This is not to say that most of the suggestions are not good ones here; but beefing PD up too much may also result in players purchasing less and less troops and more and more mages and artillary spells.

So I think that making FH and WrSkies and similar types of speels on the one hand, SH and GR and similar types of spells on the other hand less potent for their price, while making PD more interesting (like Indy-Flavored troops in PD as bonuses in conquered territories) might result in a nicely balanced mix. At least the first part of this suggestion could be done for dom2, the rest for dom3.

Re: Fixing PD?
 

"Any good Dominions MP player knows how mostly useless PD happens to be. Even a smallish army can roll through 20 PD quite easily. I mean, one sauromancer spamming undead can frequently kill 20 PD (without archers) all by himself! How much PD can a single High Seraph spamming false horrors plus 1 archer kill? And what about Ghost Riders? I recently had a fight where my 35 Machaka PD lost to one single lesser horror! Bah! That should never happen..."


I agree that PD could stand to be tweaked, but I don't buy this argument at all. I see PD as local-yokel conscripts. These guys *should* be totally freaked out (and destroyed) by any thing named "horror". And by ghost riders. If you want to stop high-end magical attacks, you should have to use reasonably high-end counters.


Now, the fact that ghost riders can wipe out a lot of high-end counters is a different matter. 2 castings of GR is about a 50/50 proposition to beat an equipped, Zen-spell-mod-enhanced ArchAngel *plus* mechanical militia. Without the mech militia the ArchAngel loses every time to 2GRs. But that is a matter for a different thread and has nothing to do with PD.

Re: Fixing PD?
 

I wish it were so, but it's not. In an Amazon province, PD is ... not Amazon, but your national troops.

And/or put a fort in every province. Which means that almost everyone gets fast-and-cheap watch towers. Add in a flying SC or other flying army to retake provinces before the watch towers are breached. It's all connected. These recurring patterns are not by chance.

Re: Fixing PD?
 

Exactly. Madcastling is a result of the uselessness of PD. If you could hold your provinces better with PD, you wouldnt see such blanket castling.

Re: Fixing PD?
 

Yeah . Then strategically placed Castles/Fortified cities would actually be good . With the extra Resources you could build much more national troops then also .

As it is atm you can do this only in sp though .
In MP the Order 3 , Sloth 3 , Death 3 , Misfortune 2 and Magic 0-3 Scale is much much to common .

Re: Fixing PD?
 

I'm with tinkthank on this one. I originally thought PD was too weak but after reading this thread and seeing everyone's opinions I think they are ok for the price. All that needs to be done is some compromising. Bring up strength of PD 10+ a little bit. Strengthen the extremely weak PDs (man, machaka, etc) so they are somewhat servicable. And tone down the really powerful province attacks just a bit (maybe just tag a few gems on?).

Re: Fixing PD?
 

Actually, I'm even OK with some nations just having weak PD. It's still big enough to stop scouts from taking over your lands. What it should really have is a tag right on the create nations set-up:
If it actually told you up-front that your PD wasn't any good when you started up a Machaka faction, it would go a long way towards not screwing over newbies. The big problem I see here is not that Machaka gets weak province defense, but that it doesn't actually tell you that they get weak province defense anywhere.

That's a nasty surprise that new players do not need to have sprung on them. Also, it should give you the read-outs of your nation by actual theme and not by base theme. If you are playing Return of the Raptors, it shouldn't tell you that you specialize in Air and Water - because you don't.

-Frank

Re: Fixing PD?
 

The manual was missing lots of important details for spells and artifacts as well. I recall reading the description for many items thinking... nice history, but what the heck does this thing do! I have faith Dominions_3 will place facts first and history last.

Some nations have province defense which is way too weak. Also for better gameplay value I highly recommend much stronger units for province defense within territories next to the capital you own. This gives the underdog a better chance for recovery.

Re: Fixing PD?
 

I dunno, I like some mystery. If I really want to know what an artifact or whatever does, it isn't that difficult to find out...

Re: Fixing PD?
 

If you want to weaken Ghost Riders, perhaps it might be thematic and sufficient to require the presence of ghosts -- or, more precisely, corpses. Zen's Conceptual Balance mod also offers another route, bumping up the skill requirement.