Rating PD
 

What race would you consider having the best and worst pd?

I think some of the top PD nations:
Abyssia, Ulm, Sauromatia (pretty much all archers),

Some of the worst:
Machakata, all the monkey nations, Caelum and Arco (the light infantry runs ahead of all the myrmidons, gets killed, then the myrmidons break)

What are your favorites?

Re: Rating PD
 

the monkeys actually get the pretty decent bandar infantry at higher levels, those are brutal. Especially in EA when they are even armored http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: Rating PD
 

I'm still learning the various races, but so far I'm really unimpressed with Niefelheim's PD (low attack + large size = never hits anything) and I remember being favorably impressed with EA Ermor. Helheim's PD is good in the sense that for 1 point you get a Vanherse who's sacred and a spellcaster, and will occasionally get lucky and stop a medium-strength attack by killing the commander with a Lightning Bolt or something. Other than that, Helheim's PD is good troops with poor morale. I like Marverni PD. Lots of missile troops, decent attack/defense, good quantity.

-Max Wilson

Re: Rating PD
 

yeah, i was surprised with the performance of Marveni as well. And I also found the Giants PD pretty poor.

Problem with the monkey PD is the same as Arco. All those light monkeys run ahead and get slaughtered then they route. The heavy bandar infantry are ususally routing before they get into it.

Re: Rating PD
 

What's really horrible about Caelum's PD is how the flyers immediately get shot down by their own archers - a problem with any mixed archer/infantry PD, but with them, you don't even get one or two rounds of open shooting before friendly fire becomes an issue...

Re: Rating PD
 

Jotunheim has by far the worst PD. I had my pd of 13 defeated by 8 medium infantry.

Monkey nation have fair to weak pd. The fast monkeys have size 1 and 13-14 defence. Against most armies they will get defeated pretty quickly, but if you have other units as well, they will keep the enemy busy for a couple of turns. Also against giants they work great. Giants can only stack one in each square so it will take a long time before they have killed enough to make them break.

I think LA Then Chi have the best PD. lots of archer and some heavy cavalry archer that will fight well in close combat as well.

Ulm do not have that good pd. Only 1.5 unit a point. 2.5 over 20.

I also consider Caelum to have fair pd. The flyers will attack on round 1 before any raider will be able to buff. Also they have fair chances against barbarian hordes and other random attacks.

Re: Rating PD
 

Mictlan has also a weak PD below 20, they get just light armored warriors that are wiped out very easily

At a value of PD 20 onwards things change because they get a Mictlan Priest as a second commander plus Jaguar Warriors. This conforms a very strong setup taking into account the insane blesses that Mictlan uses...

Re: Rating PD
 

In Dom2 I considered Neifelheim to be above average, and Pangaea's to be weak. With Dom3 they seem to be reversed.

But this is a good conversation to have. Especially if people will give hard numbers. Not so much on the tactics (Im not sure how flexible that is).

But I know that the game maintains a seperate table for each nation as far as PD at each purchase level. It came up in a discussion with the devs and kindof shot down a suggestion I had. So dont try to max out the performance of PD (I think that would imbalance things further and possibly be ignored). But suggestions of a mix of units which might work better might be accepted by the devs.

Saying "just use archers" or something to that effect would probably not work either. I think the image of PD tends to include a mix of the nations units.

Re: Rating PD
 

Ulm is among the best of the MA races. The arbalests can sometimes kill a commander with the opening salvo. But it is by no means great.

Giants and manchaka(MA) are both laughably poor.

Man is ok, especially above 20 with longbows and tower guards, and after protection is researched the bard casts that on all the defense. I think Maragon(MA)is decent with crossbows and footmen.

Re: Rating PD
 

I have felt Pangaea's to be among the more useful, both in Dom2 and Dom3. Those satyrs rout and die easily, but their strength and attack values make them capable of doing some actual damage before they run. Harpies kill nothing, but they keep the archers busy and prevent them from slaughtering the satyrs as quickly. They aren't great at "holding the province" but they are great at "wearing down enemy armies", and the latter is all you're looking for in most circumstances.

Agreed that Man is good at higher levels, but utter crap at low levels.

Re: Rating PD
 

Marignon's got my vote for the best, at least against a variety of opponents. Decently armored pikes up front and crossbows in back...pretty much guaranteed to do some damage, and they synergize well with real troops.

Re: Rating PD
 

I found Arco's PD to be pretty good, it saved me in one of my early single player games.

I agree with everyone else about Niefelheim, simply the worst PD I have found so far.

Re: Rating PD
 

My vote for worst PD is Jotunheim. Are they better or worse than Niefel (or about the same)?

Re: Rating PD
 

The giants PD is terrible, its only worth putting to 1 really, looks like both Niefel/Jotumheim are as bad as each another.

I have found Marverni PD to be surprisingly good. At 10 PD, 55gps you get 10 slingers, 20 javelineers. They seem to inflict alot of damge in the first 3 rounds or so. I have had Marverni PD of 10, 20 and 30 swing a battle or two. In MP other nations fail to take it into account and some of there attacks get replused.

Re: Rating PD
 

Argatha's PD is awefull, Marignon and Ermor both have good PD.

Re: Rating PD
 

Actually throw-away front-line infantry shouldnt be a minus as long as they are used well. If the province wins, they are recreated so they arent really a loss if they serve well.

I think that the battle of armies, natural or magical, is meant to be an emphasis of the game. So Im not sure that PD is meant to withstand armies. To me, if it can withstand MOST random events and the cheaper spell attacks such as "call of xxxxx", then that should be considered average for PD.

Maybe some tests for what purchase-price of PD it takes to do that for each nation would be helpful. If one can do at 6 what another has to have 11 to do then we have a barometer to measure by.

Of course, pumping A LOT of money into PD can be effective against armies but Im not sure if we will ever measure that to a useful decision.
IMHO

Gandalf Parker

Re: Rating PD
 

Throw-away infantry are a minus if they throw their lives away so quickly that the real armies rout. I haven't experienced this personally but Caelum's behavior sounds pretty bad.

-Max

Re: Rating PD
 

My top 3:
3. Mictlan (well, if you play heavy bless, but then again why should you NOT play heavy bless with them?)
2. Man
1. Marignon

Re: Rating PD
 

Abysia is pretty good with a fireball casting mage at pd 20.

Re: Rating PD
 

Lanka's PD is pretty good once you cast Haunted Forest...

Re: Rating PD
 

My vote is for MA Ermor. Jvelin heavy infantry, plus a nether darting H2 priest? Pure sex.

More dynamic/progressive PD
 

I'd just like to add that I'd really like to see a progressively stronger PD rather than just a numerical increase.
What I mean is, at PD 1-19 you get a few weak-type troops and a basic commander, and then when you hit 20 you get another commander and some better troop-types, and then...that's it-for the rest of the game, PD is just a small hole you toss money into, to make the hole a little deeper, hoping your enemy will fall in and not be able to climb out again before you shovel dirt over him.

That's how things stand now.

I think it would be a lot better-especially for nations that start out with weak PD-if they continued to get additional commanders and better troop types as PD increased.
One way to do this-and keep it balanced-is to push the second commander/better troops back to 30 PD, and then add another commander/better troop type at 60pd, 90pd, 120pd, and 150pd (increasing max PD in the process, in case you didn't notice, for those who might want to focus on it, and would now have a reason to.)

This means that, at the maximum 150PD, you'd be fielding 5 commanders and atleast 5 different types of troops, making the act of building strong PD a solid and interesting strategic choice (whereas now it's just a place to dump extra gold until someone comes along and wipes your province out anyway).

It would make castles and core-provinces more important, longer games more interesting, and also blunt the edge of sneaky-quick nations like Helheim. You could even design interesting infrastructure-nations specifically around their PD.

Re: More dynamic/progressive PD
 

150pd.... what's that... 10k gold?

Re: More dynamic/progressive PD
 

11325.

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ArithmeticSeries.html
http://www.pen.k12.va.us/Div/Winches...gebra/sum.html

But the maximum PD is 125, not 150. Rest is left as an exercise to the reader... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: More dynamic/progressive PD
 

11325 gold? that sounds about right to me.

Re: More dynamic/progressive PD
 

Before anyone starts ranting and crying about how that's too much gold, too much PD, boo hoo hoo, I *like* playing big games with big limits and big objectives-that's one reason I don't post here very often anymore, aside from Gandalf Parker, too many people thinking small.

So, if you're going to reply along those lines, now you don't have to bother. I get it. It's not "practical". It would never work in multi-player, etc. etc. etc.

There, that saves you time and me a depressing read.

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

Re: More dynamic/progressive PD
 

What I would really find interesting is if PD was more of a "budget" than a set grouping of types of troops - it wouldn't exactly be a small change to the engine, but imagine being able to choose your PD leaders and chaff from your purchaseable national troops, each point of PD translates to a particular amount of gold/recources for the army, you set up a troop purchase order, and formation priority, and script them like you would an army. With, of course, some kind of translation for whenever a nation doesn't have any actual national troops.

Re: More dynamic/progressive PD
 

I'd like that too-and it's a great idea-but I have a feeling it would be a nightmare not only to code, but in terms of computing/memory resources. Especially in multi-player.

Re: More dynamic/progressive PD
 

My programming experience leads me to believe the computing/memory resources required would be low. The game already has to generate PD for the defending side for each battle, and once they're generated they play just like any other units. If the troop purchase order is a build queue, it's trivial (computationally) to calculate which units get generated for each nation/battle. I'm not saying it would be trivial to code, because I have no idea how Dom3 is written internally, but CPU/memory resources aren't any kind of a bottleneck.

How would you "purchase" the second commander, Jack? Would it still happen at a set PD, or what?

-Max

Re: More dynamic/progressive PD
 

Honeybadger: I did say it wouldn't exactly be a small change.

MaxWilson:
I was honestly figuring on doing this at the national, not province, level - you have a purchase que much like normal for buying regular troops, but in this case, Commanders go in there too. Attached, you've got a battle map similar to the normal one for troop positioning; you hit the set/reset button, and start placing troops into the formations (in order - so Commander 1 (AKA "Unit 0" you must purchase at least 1 commander!) goes at the top, you assign units 1 through X to group 1, X+1 to Y to Group 2, and so on, then when you hit the next commander (position Z) in your que, units start being assigned to that commander based on your selection; so Z+1 through A are assigned to group 1, A+1 through B assigned to group 2, and so forth. And you get to script commanders, and such.

When you buy points of PD, it tracks how far along on the setup that puts you - so at the national level, Abyssa may have it set so that 50 PD is a Warlock (Cast Spells) with ten lava warrior bodyguards, and a Demonbred (Pheonix Power, Fire Shield, Cast Spells) with thirty humanbreds set to Hold and Attack (then it repeats itself completely if you have 100 PD, and halfway through again if you're up to 125 in a province - a looping purchase algorythm). If you only buy 30 PD in the province, you might end up with a Warlock with 10 lava warrior bodyguards and a demonbred with a single humanbred (they ran out of funds; you of course wouldn't set it up quite that way, because in the 30 PD province, one humanbred's death means everyone routes....). In a province with only 1 PD, you don't get anything (the Warlock might effectively cost 5 PD - they don't have the budget for him).

You don't set it up on a pure cash basis - recources need to come into play at some conversion factor; for nations with national summons, you'll need some kind of gem conversion - but essentially translate the amount of PD into a "budget" that's used to fill a national Province Defense template.

That's how I envision it working, anyway - you set your PD up once at the start of the game (possibly coming with a default), change it whenever your situation changes, and all your provinces where you assign province defense fill it out as they are able from their budget. Balance the PD the same way purchased troops balance.

Re: More dynamic/progressive PD
 

I don't know if everyone has noticed this or not, but I thought I'd point it out anyway. Concerning PD: One type of PD is applied to ALL eras of atleast some nations. Example: Abyssia even in Early Age gets humanbred PD. That doesn't make too much sense to me, since humanbreds supposedly haven't even been *bred* at this point.

At bare minimum, I'd like to see every appropriate nation recieving a tailored-to-age PD. Even in a mod. I think that's only reasonable if we don't get anything better.

I'd also like to see nations have some "PD only" troop-types. I'm thinking something along the lines of Highland Scots and National Guardsmen-they're only coming out and fighting if the nation itself is invaded. You can't recruit them (but maybe you could set them up as a "standing guard" which gives me another idea...)

Maybe nations have the standard PD they do now, but in provinces you can set up units as a "standing guard" (or National Guard if you prefer). The way this would work is: you could "purchase" national summons in your capital-province only as "standing guards" for an appropriately high price in gold and resources, as well as gems. They serve and act *only* as PD, otherwise. In any castle, you can purchase capital-only national troops as PD-only standing guards. In any province *without* a castle, you can purchase regular national troops as standing guards. This would sortof represent equipping the local militia, adding experienced officers, magical defenses and guardian-creatures. In addition, PD-only troops would then be available as National Guards, atleast to specific nations.

Standing guards/National Guards would cost atleast some upkeep, but not as much as regular army.

Re: More dynamic/progressive PD
 

An interesting thing about this idea is that it gets around a thematic problem. PD should be made from local units, not national ones. But the problem was that the way PD is done, you have to develop huge arrays of what shows up for each level of PD. As it is now, thats done for each nation. To do it for each type of population would also be huge. But if PD was shifted to a queue as if you were purchasing new units then it would make PD more thematic. (It might also allow a new map command for setting the defence level of a province that is held by independents and Im always eager for more map commands).

It would involve dupicating the queue for a PD one, and maybe duplicating the formation/scripting screen (Im considering that optional). That might add to the games size but probably not cpu needs. Im not sure if it would involve 1500 arrays (max number of provinces). And Im not sure how much this system would involve processing thru all 1500 provinces each turn which extends hosting time.

Re: More dynamic/progressive PD
 

PD only troop types is also a good thought. The type of units and the equipment that would be provided if that nation (and that era) were to recruit locally. Kindof roman-like. Local people but with roman equipment.

Re: More dynamic/progressive PD
 

Maybe the more you spend, at a certain point, means the troops are better trained. Better trained means higher morale,
better attack and defense.

So maybe with pd 20, giants suck, but at pd 40, the militia are "well trained" and their attack defense and morale are raised by 2.

My original point, was that you only got improved pd if you spent points on it at set up. If your pretender did not buy improved pd, you are stuck with what you have now.

Re: More dynamic/progressive PD
 

The major hindrance I see to better and better PD (atleast at this point) is the way graphics are made-and that's something that may be nigh-impossible to get around. The ideal way to have the kind of PD I think we're talking about would be to draw units as separate from items(weapons and armor), and then item-types themselves, separate from size and quality. So, you could have Ermor invading a Hoburg province and equipping the little buggers with hoburg-sized iron cesti, etc. without having to draw 12 different types of hoburg/ermor units and then having to convince Johan K to raise the limit of units allowed in the game to 10 million http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/Sick.gif which, admittedly, is where I'd like it to be http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

Re: Rating PD
 

I will say something I said a while back about a feature that would improve Dominions 4, and that is a "default AI" feature. In other words, the player can alter the default AI scripts for each unit in the game.

If there were something similar for PD, it would just be plain awesome.

Even if this were something that has to be edited from outside the game, I'm sure an enterprising modder could create software that a player could run alongside Dominions to set up his unit script defaults to his liking.

=$= Big J Money =$=

Re: Rating PD
 

Well with a little modding you can sort out the strange happenings amongst the vanilla nations PD settings, maybe make PD vary more in effectiveness, give the 'weaker' nations a bit more of it. It also wouldn't be hard to make some new units to be used as PD only ones.

Honeybadger, I'm sure making a mod along these lines wouldn't be beyond you. You can fix the Abysian PD, maybe make the giant PD a bit less sucky etc.

Re: Rating PD
 

Yep, I'll just add it to the 12 or so nation-mods I'm making now. Should have it out to you by, say, the year 3005

Re: Rating PD
 

I think that Niefelheim PD being sucky is great, it gives an otherwise extremely strong nation a nice weak point. It seems thematic, too - you might not be able to beat the giants head-on (their armies will stomp you), but you can at least run around their backs and cause havoc.

Re: Rating PD
 

I don't so much mind Niefel having a weak PD as I do the inability to strong it up with a lot of investment. That's the rub for me-I don't expect the "average" Jotun to be able to count to two using both hands, but they've got some *really* clever bastards at the top-they were able to trick the Aesir on many occasions, and Odhinn (Wotan or however we're spelling his name this year) went to them for wisdom. They even intermarry *with* the Aesir on a regular basis.

They've traditionally got access to a lot of deep powers (like shapeshifting and illusion) and strong allies (like dragons, trolls, dwarves, mountain, fire, and sea giants, Hel, and Loki and his kids).

So yes, I can see the bottom-rung Jotuns being as weak as they are, but the top end should be appropriately gigantic.

Re: Rating PD
 

Its been said before but, Jotunheim has horrible PD. The worst IMO. Why was this done?

They used to have awesome PD in Dom2.

Re: More dynamic/progressive PD
 

If you were wanting to do the PD according to the local pop type, instead of doing 1500 arrays for a 1500 province map, you could do one array with 1500 entries, or an even more efficient way would be to do an array containing each pop type.

Have the game access the array according to the poptype. The parameters would be stored in the array according to the poptype, then sent to a method/function that would process the PD according to the parameters stored in the array and the amount of PD the player/AI has bought. I think this method would be very light on extra processing and achieve the effect of having truly local passive defense.

Re: Rating PD
 

Hmmm. I'll probably mod Niefelheim's PD in my SP games, then. I suppose fewer-but-slightly-better troops would be fair, say 1/3 Jotun Spearman per point, 1/3 Jotun Javelinist at 20+. That still sounds weak to me but I think the morale would at least be better.

-Max

Re: Rating PD
 

dom2, 25 pd: 1x Jotun Jarl, 1x Jotun Herse, 25x militia, 3x Jotun hurler (boulders).
Dom3, 25 pd: 1x Jotun Jarl, 1x Jotun Herse, 12x militia, 3x javelinist.

It's been almost halved, which I dont think would be *that* noticable... has everyone else gained better PD?

Re: Rating PD
 

Thats too bad. To me, Jotuns balancing purpose was that they were excellent for the player who played defensively.

Re: Rating PD
 

Could it be the changes to the morale system? Jotun PD usually routs instead of dying. Has it always been like that?

-Max

Re: Rating PD
 

Yup.

- Jotun's PD sucks, they always run away!!
- That's because by the time they run away, most other pd would be DEAD.

Re: Rating PD
 

This has changed in Dom3, the giant nations are major offensive nations, Niefelheim sacreds with a E9N8 bless are awesome and incredibly hard to stop. Add to this the huge number of thugs and SC's all the giant nations can churn out.

The giants PD is very weak but put 1 or 2 Jotun Herse or Jotun Jarl tooled up thugs in your critical provinces and its no problem.

Re: More dynamic/progressive PD
 

You could add dominion effects to that process to further compicate things (and I am not suggesting complicated isn't good). As dominion grows in strength the equipment of the PD would slowly shift to more closely resemble that of the nation controlling the province.

Arms and armour would change slowly over time as the locals try to copy their new lords equipment - sometimes this effect might be desirable and other times less so.

This would require alot of new PD units for each poptype so wouldn't score high in the practical stakes but would be thematic.

Re: More dynamic/progressive PD
 

You know, that's what I thought the existing system was. Which is to say, who amoung us ever built an Alae Legionaire? All mine show up as province defense points. And there's a /lot/ of them.

To the best I can see this is how it is for most nations, there's units that while they fit in simply aren't optimal to build. They exist mainly because they're the kind of units that belong on a provincal defense force, and you've just got the option to recruit them overtly if you want to. Not that you would.