Questions about PD and other
 

1) Increasing PD gets you free troops right? Do they appear on the normal army setup screen or are they invisible? I don't seem to see them anywhere.

2) If I have a province with no troops except PD set to say 100, and the enemy attacks, the PD generated troops defend the province and if they win, they will be restored without losses the next turn. But what happens if the province has some of my normal troops? Do the PD generated troop help defend the province too?

3) When watching battles, what are the hotkeys? I know of page up/ page down, quit, pause

is there a hot key to speed things up?

Thank you

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

Hi Crafty.

1) PD troops appear in the center of the battlefield and cannot be placed by the player.

2) Yep. But 100 PD seems very costly. Make sure you have bought troops instead. Soldiers at 10 gold each is more worth it than two or three at a cost of 100. It is rarely worth it to go above 25 or 30 in PD (a bit depending on nation)

3) I think there is a hot-key-list somewhere in the manual, but I couldn't find it on a quick inspection. 'f' is fast forward.

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

3) F turns on fast mode, which about doubles or triples the speed. N takes you to the next turn of the battle skipping everything on that turn.

Jazzepi

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

Thanks.

One more question, when scouting, do they report correctly the PD troops as well? How does PD work with fortresses? Do they work like normal troops? Do PD troops gain experience?

I just started playing with PD in SP using Arcoscephale (with very very good scales + imprisoned so I had tons of cash)
against T'ien Ch'i. It's pretty funny, the AI pretty much wipes out itself trying to invade provinces with PDs 30+. Turn after turn they try and try and they get killed over and over again.

At first I didn't understand what was happening, it's like he had a 100+ army in one province, suddently he had only 10+ the next, and I was like huh??...

Once I figured out I built walls of high PD and the AI promptly wastes his troops trying to break through... Meanwhile I conquer the rest of his provinces.. What an idiot!

I figure the PD troops have killed more of the enemy than my own controlled troops lol.

Towards the end I hemmed in his capital with a PD 100 provinces, and he couldn't break through the poor sap... Fun to watch his God get killed over and over again just by PD.

I've noticed the AI seems to have this weakness of trying to bang his head against a brick wall (heavily defended province with super troops) over and over again, but using PD to exploit this is really evil, cos the troops regenerate and it doesn't tie up your elite attacking troops...

PD is really great man!!!

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

1. One more question, when scouting, do they report correctly the PD troops as well?

Sort of, I don't have a ton of experience with this, but I can tell that there are difference description of the "organization of the local defense" that change based on the amount of PD. In multiplayer people usually only get 1, 10, or 20 because of the double commander at 20, the ability to detect scouts at 10, and the ability to keep a scout from taking a province by himself at 1. Though there are rare times when you put up 30-40 points of PD into a province when you are trying to lay a trap for someone, or if you have a particular choke point.

How does PD work with fortresses?

It works outside the fortress. PD in a province with a fortress will only defend the province itself. If you have units inside of a fortress set to "defend" they will NOT assist the PD in defending the province. Instead they will hide inside of the castle while the province is conquered. If you want them to be able to defend with the PD, outside of the castle, they must be set to "patrol".

Do they work like normal troops?

PD troops gain no XP, come back 100% healed/restocked if the battle is won. They also cost no upkeep. The manual lists what troops you get for how many points of PD in every nation listing. Some nations have far better PD then others.

Do PD troops gain experience?

AFAIK, nope.

PD is a useful tool, but it is a million times less effective against a player then it is against the computer.

Jazzepi

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

Yeah the AI is seriously retarded vs PD - when I play against the computer I limit myself to no more than 25 or so PD. 60 PD may be technically inefficient and a bad move, but VS the AI the fact that it comes back every time it wins (which is every time, since the AI has no concept of building up forces before invading) and that it costs no upkeep+supplies,... well against the AI high levels of PD do make sense. Not 100 though, that's just nuts.

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

There is a hot key pdf file at Shrapnel's dom3 site


BATTLE VIEW
q quit out of battle view
Space pause
w toggle map grid
f fast-forward the battle movie
n advance battle movie to next round

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

It's not always a bad idea though, PD has it's own advantages that a normal army doesn't. For example, it's unaffected by sites which spread disease, thus if you're unlucky enough to find Inkwell End or similar in a key chokepoint then it's cheaper in the longterm to invest in high PD rather than constantly be replacing defenders, especially if you're a resource heavy nation.

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

I never seem to get this invincible wall of PD vs the AI effect.

Maybe because I tend to play against Impossible level AIs? At least the initial attacks tend to have 4-500 troops. Even 100 PD isn't going to stop that for most nations.

Sure, once I've slaughtered most of those troops with mages and elite units, high PD would probably stop the AI's attacks, but by that time I'm advancing and most of that PD winds up in the backfield, where it's useless.

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

PD seems to be useful as a wall to protect artillery. Playing as ulm allowed me to hammer with arbalests and earth mages while the PD held them in place.

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

The best thing about PD is the morale consideration. More troops = better morale, which can literally be a life-saver.

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

Oh, and if you're playing Niefelheim, you're going to want to aim for a PD of 50. That's 25 militia-jotuns and 15 spear-jotuns, which is decent, but not massive, PD, believe it or not.

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

Uh,.. I don't think you ever want to /aim/ for a PD of 50. Especially for the Jotunhiems, whose PD is actually one of the worst.

And PD doesn't always help with morale either, since there are often crappy militia troops in there that just run off and get killed en masse causing your casualty percentage to be higher in total and risky a rout.

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

I disagree. Yes, they have crappy PD, but that crappy PD consists of a handful of very tough troops-the problem with their PD is that you can't rely on it by itself, you have to augment it. Slap a Niefel Jarl and maybe a handful of support-troops, and it's really, really hard to beat.

It's almost 1200 gold in troops that never need to eat, never need a leader, and never get afflictions. It's not something you want in every single province, but having 50 PD and harnessing it in a few key provinces can be really powerful.

You don't have much to worry about the Jarl routing because of the PD, with his high morale and ability to bless himself.

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

Depends on the nation and their PD troops, and also whether the AI has decided to be sensible or not. A good PD force (Abyssia for example) can be lethal, especially if backed up with a mage or two. Of course, like I said it depends on the AI, It tends to put forward useless armies as often as it does credible ones.
To be honest, I'd be surprised if the AI managed to beat the high PD when it's fielding that many troops. Generally it's had them starving for a couple of turns first, and what takes the field looks more like your local hospital's casualty ward than it does an army.

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

I like to use alot of PD in chokepoints. Or if its far away from my castle and I need a quick fix to stop a sudden attack.

I usually try to pad out my PD with something helpful. Adding a captain or two can really help its morale. If it has no archers then adding archers or crossbowmen or even slinger can help. If no mounted then knights help.

The PD of course is mindlessly scattered in the middle of the map and charge forward. So a purchased group set off to the flanks with smart scripting can make use of the distraction that the PD provides.

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

Please tell me if I'm interpreting this correctly...

50 points of PD for MA Agartha costs
(1+50)/2*50= 1275 gold
And for that I get
1st point: 1 Cave Captain 1 Agarthan Light Infantry, 1 Agarthan Infantry.
19 points: 1 Cave Captain, 19 LI, 19 I
20 points: 1 Cave Captain, 20 LI, 20 I, 1 Pale One Captain, 1 Pale One Soldier
50 points 1 Cave Captain, 50 LI, 50 I, 1 Pale One Captain, 30 Pale One Soldiers.

Regularly, 50 light infantry are 500 resources, 500 gold. Regular infantry are 1100 resources, 500 gold.
Thirty Pale One Soldiers are 600 resources, 300 gold.
Total regular cost, disregarding captains, is 2200 resources, 1300 gold. Not a bad deal... Throw in a mage who can cast darkness, four Earth Readers with Earth Boots scripted to cast Earth Power and various E4/E3 spells... Or Iron Bane. And its still way too much money invested, but a lot of precious resources saved for my sloth 1 Agartha. At that point, I'd probably go with another fortress instead, but I'd like to know if I have the math right before thinking too hard.

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

You probably have it right but remember that you cant script, place or move the troops.

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

Certainly. But its not like I want them to hold while my nonexistent archers fire. If I can properly guess their position and action, I've got the necessary wall of meat for Curse of Stones to have a very nice effect. Or various other spells. Throw in Darkness and I might be tough to take out, barring assassination. Or the ever common undead.

Problem is, with my current scales, I can barely recruit 5 infantry a turn from my capital, depending on the map. Given the scarcity of my troops, even 10 PD is a godsend. I don't have low resource troops outside of summons. So, agartha and 1 sloth... ooh, gotta love PD. At 19, I get about 40 units at 190 gold, zero resources. And they'd normally cost me about 400 gold, 500 resources.

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

Personally, I'd really like to see PD expanded considerably. It's a great idea-a real milestone in strategic tooling-and it should be utilized to it's full capability.

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

Maybe It'd be a better idea to get rid of a little sloth and add some productivity perhaps?

Even though you're theoretically saving resources, in the long run you're wasting gold. If you were to hire a couple armies to act as PD, you'd save a lot of gold and have a better force.
You could...
place them and script them as you please
move them to wherever they're needed to defend
push forward with them so that your front lines are always defended
etc...
Their biggest plus over PD is their mobility.

You got a nice idea for working with what you got, but why settle when you can change what you got to start with?

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

People talked about a PD mod before - just using mod commands you could alter PD quite a bit. It wouldn't make it any more complicated, but it could be more useful/subtle.

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

Still, BigDisAwesome... I see no reason not to go with a mobile army, except that even with prod+1 my forces would be limited. By going with a little sloth and misfortune, I've got a huge research strat planned out. We'll see how it works, but even headed in the opposite direction its been rough expanding as Agartha. I've had a couple good situations... but with my current build I can afford 190 gold at a key province a LOT easier than forty troops. Doesn't mean I won't put some support there- but I don't even get archers or cavalary.

So, I have the option of a). Building no pd, and building forty lackluster troops in a turn, or b). Buying 20 pd, and building 20 lackluster troops who will support my superior golems. As a point of perspective, CTIS heavy infantry costs 15 resources. Agartha heavy infantry 27. Admittedly, some nations rival Agartha in resource cost for HI, but most nations also have chaff outside of indies. I don't.

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

I don't see where you're saving gold, since you're not paying to maintain those PD troops. They're maintenance free, so that has to be a factor in the long run, right?

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

Does the AI use PD?

Obviously, you *must* win against PD otherwise it is a waterloo!!!

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

Put me in the PD crowd. I like to have at least 11 PD in each province and prefer at least 21 in key provinces. At chokepoints, I'll go even higher.

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

I think that "the long run" is definetly a factor. In a small-map blitz game PD is a very different consideration than a long game, and different yet for a large map.

It also has a relaxing factor for the people who always complain about micro-management of every little thing in the game.

I think that everyone agrees that you really need to get at least ONE PD in every province. Then, depending on the nation and how good its PD is, for some reason I tend to go 6, 11, 21, 35. Factors are defense against attacks such as Call of the Winds, nearness to my castle, important provinces such as high population or important recruits, and finally having a castle there.

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

All right, stupid question here I suspect, but why 11 and 21 (mentioned by both Warhammer and Gandalf), and not 10 and 20?

10 gets your PD doing at least minimal patrolling (what's 11 get you but one more of each?), and 20 nets you the second commander and first "elite" unit, unless you're playing one of those x1/2 races like giants. Why the extra '1'?

Re:
 

There are 2 reasons to buy PD. One is to fight with any other troops to defend the province, and for this purpose 11 is just 10+1. The other is to provide deterrence to prevent attacks, and for this purpose 11 is the same as 20.

If you look at the scouting report messages for how well a province is defended, the messsages like "undefended", "one commander and a few...", "extremely well..." correspond to ranges of PD numbers. I don't know that is has been confirmed by dev comments, but in Dom2 conventional wisdom was that the ranges evaluating strength of PD were 0, 1-10, 11-20, 21-30, etc.

So if you plan to fight 11 is just 10+1. But if you are trying to get the AI to not attack a province, buying one more from 10 moves you from the 1-10 to 11-20 category, which is often enough to make the enemy not attack, or prefer a different province.

Sill

Re:
 

Exactly. In any game I play I ALWAYS try to take 1 more than an even number. On stats, or level settings, or armor, whatever. It often saves you when the program makes comparisons.

I think in Dom3 it also matters when its comparing PD to the stealth number on a unit for catching it. Since they have stealths like 10, 20, 30 then I figure 11, 21, 31 might be good PDs. (not tested)

Re:
 

Or scare off casual raiders and whatnot. Sure factors into whether I drop that lone Call of the Winds or not! Damn interesting and very useful if accurate. Thanks Silhouette!

Anyone else care to confirm this highly important tidbit?

Re:
 

And thanks to you too, Gandalf (you got in there split seconds before I posted http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif.

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

Not much use if your a resource heavy nation and happen to have a lack of resources though, plus you end up with troops sat away from the frontline doing nothing but taking upkeep if nobody attacks. PD can do the same job without the upkeep.
Then of course there's the problem of attrition. Troops can be affected by spells, dominion and the like while PD is not. They can also be ground down by mages, archers or similar on fire and flee orders. Against PD such a tactic is completely useless.
As for wasting gold, if the troops you buy are killed that's it, you need to buy a whole new unit to replace them. PD on the other hand will continue to provide the same units without further expenditure until the province is taken. Technically, the cost to keep a group of 10 troops defending a province could end up being much higher than the equivilent PD over the long term through casualty replacement alone (before upkeep is even taken into consideration)

As for improving PD, it would be nice to see some actual defences rather than simply troops. Or has the Dominions world not heard of ditches, redoubts and the like?

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

I second the fieldworks PD argument. And how about continuing to get better troops as you raise your PD?

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

Changes to PD involves alot of work. Ive recommended having the PD be local units instead of nationals. But the problem is that each level of PD has to be spelled out. So increased PD or fieldworks would have to at least involve a load of rewrite for each nation. It might happen if Kristoffer gets an interest in it but there is alot of other nation theme stuff that still needs filled in also.

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

I'd just like mod commands that allow PD to be reset on a point-basis. Like if you have a PD of 1-9 you get light militia, but 10-20 gives you heavy militia, and 21-30 gives you knights, etc. instead of being stuck to the 1-19, 20-125 system we have now. That way I could mod PD for the various nations that evolves and continues to be useful throughout a long game.

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

Sounds like the coding for it is messy :lol:

Mind you, something like fieldworks could probably be fudged into the battlefield generation rather than the PD itself (simply check the PD and if it's > x, add X fieldworks to the battlefield)

Given that PD has remained pretty much unchanged since Dom 1 it would make a nice target for an overhaul should Dom 4 ever be in the works. Would certainly cause some rethinking of the traditional strategies at least.

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

On the other hand, if you defend w/ real troops they'll get a ton of experience from winning all those battles, and it will be a lot cheaper to set up and/or move the defense around. Although you still want a bit of PD for arrow/mage chaff.

-Max

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

I play against many impossible AIs (sometimes a random mix of difficult/mighty/impossible) and I have found that the invincible-wall effect is rare for me too. Or rather, while the AI does tend to bang its head repeatedly on well-defended provinces, it does so with a large enough army that PD by itself is rarely enough, even in the early midgame. Maybe I'm just stingy--I rarely raise PD above 21, and almost never past 30--but I find PD is most useful when stiffened with some actual troops, at minimum an H2 caster and ideally a bunch of missile troops too.

-Max

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

The lowest levels of PD are far more efficient than hiring troops. This is assuming that you expect to get attacked imminently, and are not just building them for the patrol or extra commander.

I'm playing as Atlantis EA, so let's use an indy province with Atlantean Spearmen as an example. These guys are 8 gold and 2 resources. Everyone puts 1 PD in their province to avoid getting taken by a scout. After that, think about what the best use of your gold is. For 2 gold, you can get two units, or you can spend 8 gold on that one spearman. So obviously, you're getting a better deal for your gold by bringing your PD up to 15. At 16, presumably you could buy two Atlantean Spearmen for the same price as the 2 guys you get from PD, so it depends on the stats of the units.

That's the basic idea I use to determine a good level of PD. I compare the gold spent on the local units to the quality and number of units I would get from PD. It definitely matters what the local units are and what nation you are playing to determine where PD becomes less useful than recruiting units.

Of course this changes if you expect to pick them with a commander somewhere down the road. But there's no advantage to having 5-15 units sitting in one of your provinces eating your food month after month.

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

I agree with sector24's analysis.

"Do the Math"

In the Dom1, you got a straight one unit per PD, so I didn't usually go much higher than 10 or so. Unless I was playing Jotenheim -- 15 gold for a jotenheim militia? Yeeha!

In Dom3 PD seems stronger but more balanced, total gold value of a PD point is about the same between nations. So 10-20 is usually efficient. At the start of the game when I'm broke I only put 5 in, I push it up to 10 once I have some income, and 20 on any border provinces where I don't yet have a war.

I don't usually go over 20 because now you're approaching breakeven, and I'd rather have a troop that can advance than a stuck PD.

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

It's not really a straight math comparison, though.

Regular troops die and will need to be replaced if you're being hit with even small attacks. They also cost upkeep.

PD can't be moved and if you're expanding will be left behind the front useless except for raids.

And it's not generally a choice between building up PD or buying a few of the local troops to boost that provinces defenses. (Though adding some local archers to PD is often a good plan if you PD doesn't come with ranged troops.) It's a choice between PD and troops that can actually be part of an army that can fight an enemies main force.

In MP, it seems that PD should be high enough that your enemy has to use an expensive force to raid. PD will be almost useless against any humans real assault, but if he has to consolidate his raiding forces he'll raid fewer provinces.

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

PD isn't quite as good as the math would make it appear because it gets distributed across different squads. Because of PD's generally poor morale (plus the fact that it doesn't get the home province bonus to morale), small squads generally break up under fire early on. 2 squads of 10 low-morale infantry are worth less than 1 squad of 20; it might be equivalent to 14 or 15.

-Max

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

Also you cannot place PD in any meaningful manner, and might get a routed hydra mixed up in the setup.

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

If a raiding player forces you to buy enough PD in all your vulnerable provinces to stop his small raiding actions, then they have been wildly successful in denying you gold already - without even having to fight. He can then consolidate and once more all the PD becomes worthless.

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

That's only a fair assumption to make if your opponent isn't relying on relatively small numbers of resource-heavy troops in their armies. for that type of player, they've spent a bit of cash that they don't especially need, fortified their border against opportunistic raids and freed up their armies to do something useful.

never mind the fact that for most nations it is presumably even less desirable to be forced into creating a substantial army just to leave it sitting in striking distance of a border they don't particularly want to attack in the hope of deterring a raiding party.

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

Any assumptions are actually correct. The problem is that they are correct for the map and game types that the player is used to playing. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

And for little things like Call of the Wilds/Winds and maybe even Hordes.

So Sombre, if PD is wasting money against raiding parties, do you use it for anything? Beyond 1PD to defend against scouts, which is really only the extreme case of what I suggested. Against someone with minimal PD, if you have flying/stealthy troops it's possible to take practically all his uncastled provinces at once. That's devastating.

Probably also depends on the phase of the game. There comes a time when the standard raiding party is a flying/stealthy thug capable of killing almost any PD. Then PD may be worthless but so are most armies.

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

I start the game with only 1 pd per province to save money. Then I like to give it all a bump to 10 to catch stealthers and for Call of the Winds attacks.
If I have a hostile border I'll try to get about 20 pd and hire some deer tribe archers and maybe drop a mage there for good measure. I generally don't do that very often though, as I like to have NAP's with people.

The only time I ever go above 10 is if I have some extra money and no army where I'm expecting to get attacked next turn. This generally only works if the army attacking you is a small raiding force though. But if your pd gets slingers or archers they can be devastating against a small force of troops not expecting much.

Re: Questions about PD and other
 

I'm using PD to great effect in one of my multiplayer games, in a province that hasn't even seen any raiding parties. Now the issue of whether its cost-effective will require a bit of thinking on my part.

The map is Parganos. I'm playing MA Agartha in the North West, in behind a mountain range with only three single-province chokepoints.

I'm highly troubled by the idea of R'lyeh's Starchildren assassins killing off all my researchers. At ten points, I get one measly destealth point. At twenty, 11. My infantry are slow, imprecise, and resource expensive- in short, bad patrollers. I've started recruiting a few spare indie woodsman archers each turn as part of a patrol force, ferrying them to that province. I've now got about forty archers and 20 pd there.

The basic stealth strength of a scout is 40, a Starchild 45. Hmm... Thanks to the PD I was able to redirect troops elsewhere. My light infantry was .9 destealth apiece.
My PD cost around 200 gold, no upkeep for 11 destealth. It would have taken 13 LI (@10 g, 10r apiece) to match that. 130 gold, ~9 upkeep. Not a gold bargain by any means, even if throwing in the cost of a commander. Still it allowed me to dedicate my limited supply of resources in more important directions. On the equivalent amount (in destealth, not units) of militia, I would have spent 77 gold. In woodsman archers (1.15 desealth), 100 gold.

So gold effective for patrolling? By no means. In resources, its a bit of a godsend- all those indie commanders I didn't have to recruit, ferrying units all over the place- it also saved me some valuable time and probably mages.

To match the stealth of a scout, I needed ~40 patrollers- about the limits of an independent commander, and not too hard to manage. But throw in the star children's stealth bonus and the 2d25 rolls on each side, and things are getting a bit iffy. I'm pretty certain quite a few more would have made it through if I hadn't backed them up with 20 PD. On the plus side, it made for a little bit of a fallback point or a rear-line if my forward force wasn't going to move from the siege. On the downside, it was by all formulae, a waste of money, though not resources.