Upkeep for summoned units
 

I'd always assumed that summons were upkeep-free, and was cheerfully summoning lots of trolls, while bemoaning my inexplicably low net income. Then I saw on one of the far-too-fast-to-read hints that trolls demand lots of gold, so I did a test, and indeed they do (around 80 gold a turn for a sea king court - eek!). But I assumed it was just trolls. But I just read somewhere (Sunray's Dom2 page, in fact) that other summons, like black hawks, also cost upkeep. This is very bad news, as I'm pretty much King of the Black Hawks in one MP game at the moment.

So - is there any way to find out which units cost upkeep, and how much? Is there a list anywhere? Or do I have to keep on loading up a test game, summoning a unit and seeing how much my upkeep changes?

Thanks!

llamabeast

Re: Upkeep for summoned units
 

Upkeep is based on a unit's recruitment cost, which isn't immediately obvious for summoned units. Trolls can be recruited from a site and cost 50 gold each IIRC.

Any summonable unit that is also a recruitable one will have the same upkeep no matter how you get it.

Some summonable units that can't be recruited normally also cost upkeep, but I don't think there's an easy way of finding out how much. There might be a list somewhere, but I don't know of one.

I believe that undead, demons, constructs and the like usually (always?) don't cost upkeep - except for Oni, of course, as they're recruitable for Yomi.

Re: Upkeep for summoned units
 

I don't know of any non-recruitable units that cost upkeep.

Very few regular summons cost upkeep. I wouldn't worry too much about it.
Some of the national summons are recruitable in other eras, I believe, so watch out for those.

People are working on various unit lists. Hopefully upkeep will be included?

Re: Upkeep for summoned units
 

From Dominions_2 the summons I remember which cost upkeep were:
1: Sea Trolls... about 3 gold per turn
2: hawks from "call of the winds" ... about 0.25 gold per turn
3: foul spawns from "cross breeding" spells... about 0.30 gold per turn


These amounts may not be 100% accurate, but they are close and these amounts may have changed with Dominions_3.

Re: Upkeep for summoned units
 

Known recruitment prices for summoned units so far:

Trolls: 60 gold --> 4 upkeep per troll per turn.
Troll Kings: 150 gold --> upkeep 10
Sea Kings: 150 gold --> upkeep 10
Sea Trolls: 50 gold --> upkeep 3.33

Foul spawns: Average recruitment cost 1 gold --> upkeep 0.07. To make it simple, every 15 fould spawns cost 1 gold to upkeep. The more powerful ones like Ettin and Chimaera are 0 recruitment cost, it's the man-sized almost useless chaff that costs money. One of them had a cost of 2, the rest are 1 and one was 0.

More news as the DB progresses.

Edi

Re: Upkeep for summoned units
 

This explains why, when playing Atlantis, I cast 3 Troll kings court and 2 Sea Kings court in a single turn and went bankrupt. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Upkeep for summoned units
 

bah... i just KNEW my agarthan troll-spam/utterdark scheme was too good to be true.

That also explains why my upkeep is higher than I thought it should be in my current game. Poor trolls are just too darn greedy for their own good.

Re: Upkeep for summoned units
 

Correction to my above post:

Ettins cost 20 --> 1.33 upkeep.
The four-clawed big humanoid foul spawn costs 15 --> upkeep 1. The rest are as stated.

Edi

Re: Upkeep for summoned units
 

Yeah, not having the upkeep cost appear anywhere in-game is really a stupid oversight.

Re: Upkeep for summoned units
 

Perhaps the gold upkeep information will be added in the units character information window for an upcoming patch... there's plenty of room.

Re: Upkeep for summoned units
 

I definitely second the call for upkeep for each unit to be visible on the unit info screen. I mean why not?

So I've been summoning wolves as LA Ulm, you know for fun, and I went looking for some info on upkeep, and here's this thread. My wolves don't seem to cost any upkeep, by the way, but I wouldn't swear to that.

So what it's looking like based on my reading is that SOME summons have upkeep, and some don't. Maybe. And while our first understanding was that the list of summoned units with upkeeps was quite short, there are actually quite a few summons that'll cost you gold. And there's no easy way to tell, because if things like foul spawn and Call of the Winds birdies have costs, then it isn't just a matter of recruitable = upkeep cost, is it? Or are those things recruitable?

Yeppers, I think being able to see the upkeep per unit in game would be fantastic.

Re: Upkeep for summoned units
 

Please grab Edi's spreadsheet from the Units, Weapons, Armor link in his sig.

Recruits and Summons: the "Cost Gold" column determines maintenance, at (Cost Gold)/15

Mercenaries: the maintenance is zero

Pretender: I have no idea if you have to pay maintenance on your pretender

I think it would be nice if "Cost" and "Maintenance" could be added to the "Hit Points" window so that it looks like this:

Hit Points: 10
Size: 2
Cost: 24
Maintenance: 24 / 15
...

Re: Upkeep for summoned units
 

How bout just having the program do the math for us, so it reads:

Hit Points: 10
Size: 2
Cost: 24
Maintenance (per turn): 1.6

Because fractions are hard.

But what would also be really awesome were if Upkeep #### on the main GUI were clickable, and then you saw a list of your unit types, row by row, each row containing the unit icon, how many you have, how much they each cost per turn, and then the total you're paying per turn for that type of unit. I'm looking at you, loremasters.

I know it's a lot to ask for, but this type of game does have a certain appeal to us imperial accountant types.

I'm finally and begrudgingly downloading OpenOffice. I like Dominions, but do I download-and-install-100MB-program-just-to-read-one-spreadsheet like it? I can finally answer yes.

Re: Upkeep for summoned units
 

That sounds like a nice idea!

But I was thinking of something that would take minimal effort from the developers. I don't like opening the spreadsheet too much myself, because it eats all my RAM and makes my system start swapping.

If they're going to code an Upkeep anyway interface though, that would be a pretty good place to put a Dismiss button.

Re: Upkeep for summoned units
 

lol. I had the same problem with Open Office. Ok it's free and it works on all platforms and blah blah blah but seriously I'd much, much rather have had the spreadsheet in excel. Oh well. I have no clue how to use open office which rather limits the usefulness of the db for me, as does the fact that my computer throws a hissy fit for ten minutes every time I open it :]

Still useful though. Appreciated. And I second, or third or seventh or whatever the request for an upkeep breakdown, or an upkeep display for each unit. It seems like an oversight that it's not in the game already.

Re: Upkeep for summoned units
 

we don't feel sympathy for people who aren't computer literate enough to figure out open office, which, incidently is as easy to use as microsoft office.

Re: Upkeep for summoned units
 

Open Office works very much like the Microsoft Office suite. Obviously there are some differences, but the basic functions are the same, especially in the spreadsheet application.

I'm aware of the problem with the spreadsheet bringing most computers to a screeching halt when it loads, it does the same for my own machine, which is a fairly top of the line rig bought just last September. That's an unfortunate side effect of the heavy use of VLOOKUP on the display page, but I don't know of anything else that will keep the data sorted correctly under all circumstances (given how the functions have been entered). It also allows me to pay minimal attention to maintaining the display, unlike with the Dom2DB where I screwed up with design and had to do five times the amount of work to get results only half as good as the Dom3DB. It loaded faster, true. It was also a nightmare to maintain.

Converting the thing to Excel, while possible, would have been more work than it was worth at the time when there was so much else to do.

There will be a DB update after the next patch because of the new nations and there would be one regardless of such additions merely on account of the huge number of stat fixes we're going to see.

It's possible I'll provide an Excel version at that point, and it will also have fixed formulas for age and possibly for prot as well. The problem with an Excel file would be, aside from data format conversion (which is rather trivial now that I know some of the OO peculiarities regarding Booleans) its size. The current Unit DB in Excel could run over 10 MB easily if past comparisons of Excel vs Open Office file size for the same data are anything to go by.

For people who are currently having problems with the DB, save a new copy and delete everything on the unit display page from the columns that have text entries (the undead/demon/magicbeing/animal and the survival columns onward and leave just the numerical data and random masks. That will cut out a huge amount of array references, reduce file size and reduce load times significantly. You're going to have to look that data up on the BaseU page, though.

Re: Upkeep for summoned units
 

Much though I am a fan of Excel, and sceptical about Open Office, I don't think that providing this in Excel format needs to be a high priority. It's pretty easy to open it up and export to Excel, for any one that really want's to work in Excel (and in fact I do that sometimes).

Just my two cents, but Edi if you're more efficient working in Open Office, I think you should continue to do that. Now, if you were one of those rich IW developer guys, just raking in the cash like they do, I'd feel entirely different about the question http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Upkeep for summoned units
 

Actually, an Excel export is fairly easy to do from the finished file. I'll still be working in OpenOffice. I'm not touching Excel with a ten-foot pole if I can help it, so a conversion is the most I would be willing to do. But not before the next patch version.

Re: Upkeep for summoned units
 

Open Office might be as easy to learn as microsoft office, but since I've already learned office, it's annoying having to adjust. I'm sure other people feel the same way. Not your problem I know, but don't act like people are ignorant for not liking/wanting to use Open Office.

People keep telling me to use Photoshop or GIMP instead of Paint Shop Pro, but I know Pro well and I have no interest in switching. If people put out graphics which you needed to use GIMP or Photoshop to even look at I'd feel annoyed about that too.

Re: Upkeep for summoned units
 

Not a very good comparison, since the different graphics formats have been standardized. No such standardization in office document file formats. Further, Dom3 requires specific sort of graphics of a standardized format, so choice of the tool you use is irrelevant as long as it can do the job.

The only thing I commented was that MS Office and Open Office are similar, especially if you stick to the basics. Ease and comfort of use vs what you are used to if you switch was not addressed at all. Obviously switching is going to require adjustment, which is awkward and less productive.

I do not fault people for using Excel or wanting to use it, their preferences just differ from mine. PReviously, I did not know how to accommodate Excel users with the DB files regarding some of the data formats, now I do. But I'll not go to extra trouble with a new patch just around the corner. When I've got the DB up to date vs the new patch, THEN I will have incentive to do so.

Re: Upkeep for summoned units
 

I'm not comparing them in terms of what /you/ could have done in creating a database because I'm not annoyed /at you/. I'm just annoyed by the problems I have with the unit db. Similarly, if someone wants to make graphics or whatever available in GIMP only format then I'm not going to be annoyed at them, even if they could have released them in .bmp or .jpg. I'd just be generally annoyed that I had to use some new program just to get use out of them.

Re: Upkeep for summoned units
 

On this old computer that I use, Excel is markedly faster than OpenOffice (probably because OpenOffice is written in Java, as I understand it), so I exported it. It wasn't that much trouble. I think it does make sense to have this kind of important documentation for a multi-platform game in OpenOffice instead of a Window-only format, but at the same time it took me several weeks to decide that it was worth the hassle of downloading the 100MB install for OpenOffice to view the spreadsheet. I think providing an .xls export of the official .ods spreadsheet would be a courtesy much appreciated by casual players (even if .xls files are huge in comparison to .ods).

Anyway, thanks a lot for maintaining that list. It's very handy. In passing, I've been wondering whether there is any flag to show whether a unit is recruitable and/or capital-only? I can't find a column that seems to indicate that; I'm trying to find a new favorite nation and good recruitable-anywhere mages is my top criterion.

-Max

P.S. By "it wasn't that much trouble," I wasn't criticizing Edi for not already having done it. On the contrary, I meant that even if Edi didn't provide .xls it wouldn't be a tremendously big deal, although obviously it's very nice if it is provided.

Re: Upkeep for summoned units
 

Don't forget sacred units are divide by 30 instead of 15.

Re: Upkeep for summoned units
 

You should have a page named ArmyList in the DB (last page, iirc), which lists pretender selection, recruitable unit selection and recruitable commander selection by unit number for each nation and that has mentions of capital only. The main display page does not, because it is intended only to list the units (all of them), not make any distinction between national recruitments. It would be further complicated by some units being available to more than one nation (e.g. all non-sacred EA Van infantry are both Vanheim and Helheim units).

It would be possible to make display pages for all the different nations (too much work, really) or for all the different eras and only include the unit numbers for units that are in. If something belongs to multiple nations, have it there several times. Then add a nation column and enter that data there by hardcoding. The downside would be another large number of data retrieval from arrays, which increases file size and number of calculations and slows things down even more. So I'd rather not do it. At least not the whole display. Maybe unit ID, name and nation + capital only status and do it per era, then sort by nation.

I was figuring on doing everything in OO for the next version and then doing an export to Excel when that was ready.

Re: Upkeep for summoned units
 

If all you want to know is the upkeep, I made a little text file with unit number, name, gold cost, resource cost, sacred-or-not, upkeep.

I copied some columns from Dom3_DB_WeaponsArmorUnits_RC-1_0.ods, added the upkeep formula, and saved as a .csv file. Hope Edi doesn't mind.

Re: Upkeep for summoned units
 

Interesting. I had thought I recalled someone saying that Davana's were 20 gold a turn upkeep. But the text file lists it as 0 upkeep. Anyone know for sure which is correct ?

Re: Upkeep for summoned units
 

No, I don't mind. After all, I did not have direct upkeep info in the DB. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Davanas are 0 upkeep, Mandaha's are 20 (would be 40 if they were not sacred).

Re: Upkeep for summoned units
 

Thanks for the file! Very helpful.

Re: Upkeep for summoned units
 

Edi's DB states black hawks and great hawks cost no gold (and therefore no upkeep) now. Did a recent patch change the hawks and if not how much is the upkeep for both?

Re: Upkeep for summoned units
 

And the necromancers strike back! Devious basterds eh?

Re: Upkeep for summoned units
 

They used to cost money in Dom2. Not in Dom3 anymore.