Disbanding Units ?
 

Hello,

After having played Dom2 a bit a long while ago at a friends home, I decided to buy Dom3 when I finally noticed that a new version was released a few days ago *grins*

I wondered, is there a way to get ride of units that you don't really want ? Hmmm I mean to disband them, instead of sending them to there death in a meaningless battle ?

I'm playing a game where I cast Utterdark, but those tons of militia, flagellants and other zealots who joined me during the game are killing my income ...

Thanks,

Julien

Re: Disbanding Units ?
 

Nope, you just have to kill them or live with them.

Re: Disbanding Units ?
 

If they kill your income it's time to kill them back.

Re: Disbanding Units ?
 

It'd be really nice if you could permanently add specific units to your province defence-rather than sending those old war-horses to the glue factory.

Re: Disbanding Units ?
 

You're probably the Ashen Empire, right? Send them into battle accompanied by an undead commander carrying Woundflame. :p

Re: Disbanding Units ?
 

If possible, give a commander an item that lets him lead troops underwater, give him as many militia as possible, send him to an underwater province, have him leave the province with the militia still there, enjoy as they drown.

If you can pull it off, it is a much easier way to kill, since there's no need to gather all the militiamen that fled the battle in which you were trying to get them killed.

Re: Disbanding Units ?
 

Great idea Agrajag !!!
Gotta try that ... Well I am also a bit relieved cause I checked everywhere if there was a mean to disband unit and couldn't find it ... glad that it wasn't an oversight from my part *grins*

Re: Disbanding Units ?
 

I think there really should be a disband button to let the soldiers go back to their home province. They could just be added (back?) to the population. Summoned units should of course disappear and undead turn back into corpses.

Re: Disbanding Units ?
 

LA Ermor has got a lot of options for dealing with such undesirables. Wind of Death, Burden of Time, Harvester of Sorrows, etc.

If you don't have stuff to get your people underwater, you can also find a crap province with low supply and low pop (swamp, wastleland) and send your crap units there to pillage it to death. Then abandon them there - no people, no supply, they'll starve. It's slow, but everyone can do it.

Re: Disbanding Units ?
 

I'd be for this if it bumped unrest in the province they were in on dismissal.

unemployed soldiers tend to make naughty citizens.

It really WOULD be nice for the softer-hearted pretenders out there to have a way to stand down forces short of mass murder )

Re: Disbanding Units ?
 

Agreed! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Disbanding Units ?
 

Really good suggestions here, i hope they will be implemented once in a dom game. Disbanding units in a province, that increase unrest and slightly population seems a good idea, cause pillaging provinces is too powerful anyways.

10K province that is pillaged to some few hundred, can hardly ever repopulate back.

Re: Disbanding Units ?
 

Well, that kind of makes sense to me. 95% of the villagers have been slaughtered, and there's no guarantee that it won't happen again in the near future. It's not likely that anyone is going to want to move there.

Re: Disbanding Units ?
 

Makes no sense, cause those pillagers probably want to life there now? Attack in the near future?

Re: Disbanding Units ?
 

Over the timescale of a dominions game, it doesn't make sense for devastated provinces to substantially recover, unless magic is involved.
Of course, it's true that pillaging can kill an awful lot of people very quickly indeed. Whether this is a good thing or not is a different question.

Re: Disbanding Units ?
 

It sure makes games shorter

Re: Disbanding Units ?
 

Sorry if my post was confusing.

What I mean is, the province just got pillaged so badly that nearly everyone is dead. It's going to take more than a year for any villagers left in that province to do whatever it is that increases population http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif. And there's 12 turns in a year.

If I was a villager in a neighboring province, I wouldn't want to relocate to the pillaged province. Too many stinky dead bodies rotting in the streets. Plus I'd be worried that the hordes would be back the next year, and I'd end as one of those rotten stinky dead bodies.

Re: Disbanding Units ?
 

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Take a necromancer with you and reanimate the rotting corpses and move them away or cast ravenfeast.

As for the topic i am ok if just the option to disband units exists, no matter if those units will be added to a population in a province or not.(I see that might get complex)

Re: Disbanding Units ?
 

The lack of a "disband" command should be in the FAQ.

Re: Disbanding Units ?
 

It's going to get added there, believe me. I just haven't paid much attention to the FAQ lately as I've been busy formulating province borders for maps and with other things. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

Re: Disbanding Units ?
 

I very, very much want to see a disband troops ability.

However, at least for me, the whole purpose of the disband troops ability would be lost (or at least reduced) if it also increased unrest in a province. The whole point of a disband troops feature (to me) is to reduce mm. Since it is always feasible to get your useless troops killed off, and since doing so always involves some trivial/tedious work to do so, it matches the very definition of micromanagement. If unrest were increased, then whenever I disbanded troops I would then have to micromanage the province back to 0 unrest (since I don't use autotax).

So, I would certainly be for a disband troops feature with no side effects.

Adding pop back to the province sounds nice, but it does allow you to recruit lots of militia in one province (which you don't pay for in population) then add pop to that province or some other province. The net effect is that you can pay cash in order to grow population. Could be an unbalancing result.

Re: Disbanding Units ?
 

Disbanding units would certainly help the annyoing freespawn problem some nations like panagea and LE Ryleh do have as well.

Or LE Ermor when you get the "Zealot" Event. No hassle to think about strategies to kill your own troops anymore.

Re: Disbanding Units ?
 

I think disbanding units may become independant and attack the province where they are disband

Re: Disbanding Units ?
 

As far as I'm concerned all that is needed is disbanding for all troops with no other consequences. They just disappear, for good. No need to make it more complicated than that.

If people then don't want to use it, well they can play the game as before. It would solve some other problems, such as too many freespawn to manage, militia mobs which are effectively useless etc. If people don't want to be able to disband sacreds or nationals or summons or whatever, they can just not do it - no need to limit a potentially useful option for everyone else.

I'm convinced that this should be in the game and while it's not of the very highest priority, it's a pretty basic feature that almost every other strategy game has.

Re: Disbanding Units ?
 

Id be willing to see disappearing disbanding.

I could see it also turn into PD or population. Probably better as population since it will vastly affect the game with certain nations that get free units. Tien chi, Pangaea, Ermor. Of course the game might have to treat undead and magical differently.

I think it might also be interesting, and less imbalancing, if it was an event. If you have too many troops in a province and they are starving or commanderless then maybe they should revolt.

Another fun thing to get rid of excess troops would be to have it that you must assign them to a commmander, and then give the commander an order "release from service". That would put them into the mercenary queue (if there is room for it). It would become another strategy thing to the game. Like discards in a card game. Not only would you have to decide that you dont need it but you would have to consider if the other players might make good use of it. It also would fit well with the fact that both the need to get rid of such units, and the lack of mercs, occur in late game.

Re: Disbanding Units ?
 

Minimally -- disbanded troops should have a chance of increasing unrest proportional to existing unrest and distance from home, and inversely proportional to the rest of the garrison.

You don't suddenly employ a band of soldiers far from home, where banditry and so forth is rife, and without other soldiers to keep them in line, during a war, and expect everything to be hunky-dory. That's the sort of thing that contributes to brigandage if not outright rebellion.

Re: Disbanding Units ?
 

If disbanding sends people back to the province as "population", recruiting should "take" them from the "population". This is not in the game though.

Re: Disbanding Units ?
 

Or have disbanding cost 1/5 of their recruit price, equal to 3 turns of upkeep.

Re: Disbanding Units ?
 

Why do people want to complicate it? It's purely a gameplay option; it doesn't need to be entirely realistic or cause some potentially abusable or newbie-confusing side effects.

Needing a commander to do it, or having to spend money to do it,... that's just going to encourage people to kill them off in inventive ways instead of disbanding (which is rather ridiculous) or increase the level of micromanaging, which is partly what a disband button would be there to reduce.

Re: Disbanding Units ?
 

I agree completely!

I appreciate all the detail that exists in Dominions, but this is not the place to add yet more detail, that will only result in keeping the micromanagement at the same level, or actually in increasing the micromanagement.

To paraphrase: "Microomanagement? just say no!"

Re: Disbanding Units ?
 

I think there is some blindness here. Just my opinion.

I dont have a problem with your specific ideas but your description of why you are putting them out. Do you really not understand "why do people want to complicate it"? [censored] I have no problem understanding why you want to simplify it. To you its a strategy game only and decreasing micromanagement is enough reason for a change.

Seriously, if you really WANT to understand why some people post the way they do then you might want to accept that the game has role playing elements in it which a number of us find enjoyable. Coming up with inventive theme-based features are as enjoyable to us as some people coming up with many little .5% balancing nitpicks. I certainly try very hard not to belittle such extreme formula-based dismantling of a perfectly enjoyable mythology based game. Please try to do the same for others viewpoints of the game.

Gandalf Parker

Re: Disbanding Units ?
 

I disagree of course. I feel that it would turn an irritation to yet another element of strategy. As I said, I see no problem with "just make them disappear". But it feels like a rather sterile tabletop way of handling it.

Re: Disbanding Units ?
 

Actually Gandalf you're making some fairly major assumptions about why I would prefer a disband button to be straightforward. I'm not a 'powergamer' looking for a super efficient strategy. If that was my attitude in the slightest I wouldn't even play Dominions.

I agree with Hellboy - Dom3 is a game of details. But this feature isn't the place to add more. I mean there can be too much of a 'good thing' you know. If population were broken down by gender, age, profession, faith, race etc the game would be more 'realistic' and detailed but do most people playing it actually /want/ that level of detail?

And yes, reducing micromanagement is enough of a reason to make some changes to the game. A major criticism of Dominions, and rightly so, has been the level of micromanaging. It doesn't just bog down gameplay, it messes up roleplaying too.

Edited to avoid sounding rude.

Re: Disbanding Units ?
 

I would like to see the highest level of detail possible. It is Dominions, and this game is known for its focus on details like no other TBS game. So, i am not for simple solutions. Those can be found in other TBS games.

Re: Disbanding Units ?
 

Highest level of detail possible? What you want to have to individually address every single soldier and give them their papers of dismissal, written up by yourself, manage the return of the arms and armour granted to them when they joined the army, reimburse them with land and titles if they are of veteran status etc etc.

Personally I'd rather play a game than go through the paperwork of running a national army ;]

And no, Dom3 isn't really that much more detailed than other 'hardcore' strategy games. It has rather simplistic combat, economic, religious, political and diplomatic systems compared with many of them. These are just examples, I could go on. It's a game of variety and overwhelming content, not insane levels of pointless and obscure detail. This isn't shenmue.

Re: Disbanding Units ?
 

Later dom versions could add even more detail, cause its rather a game for veterans and expierenced TBS gamers. If i want a more straightforward and simple TBS, i'll play something else.

Re: Disbanding Units ?
 

And if you want more complicated, you'll play ASL (Advanced Squad Leader), right? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

-Max
Who is very glad that Dom3's rules are computer-managed. In ASL it's actually in the rules that if you forget to apply a rule it can't be corrected after the fact, so knowing the rules well is a tactical advantage for the skilled commander. Wow.