Multi-Tier PD.
 

This was originally posted to the wishlist in the maps/mods forum. With Ballbarian's permission and help, I'm reposting this thread in the main forum to hopefully get more eyes on it, since it's been a while since we've had a good discussion of PD:

PD is a part of the game that many people have pointed to as being a great reducer of micromanagement, and a feature that really ought to be in more strategic games, a feature that other strategy games should envy!-and yet the way it's currently integrated into the game barely harnesses it's fantastic potential, to the point where people hardly bother using it at all, by the start of mid-game.

I'd like to request the ability to set up Province Defense (PD) in such a way that you could have new types of units/commanders added to a province's PD at any point value (1-125), instead of the current two-stage, 1-20, 21-125 setup. This would allow for a much more interesting, dynamic, and relevant application of a--very innovative and useful!--part of the game (namely PD), that is usually barely looked at, if not outright ignored, past 30 points or so in the average game.

This would allow PD to keep it's functionality up to and into the early Late Game, making it a much richer part of overall strategy.

Furthermore, to increase it's application, and to add to the overall continuity and relevance of PD in the game, here are some more thoughts on improving it:

1: PD should be influenced by the Pop-type of the province it's built upon, for the first 20 points. EG: If you build PD on a province containing Lizardmen, you should get Lizardmen troops for the first 20 points, commanded by whatever commander your nation usually gets. Past 20, PD functions as normal, since you'd be adding your more elite units to support the province's basic militia. This makes capturing certain provinces more strategically relevant, since they may be more or less immediately defendable, depending on the province's Pop-type (Hoburgs vs. Jotuns). It also makes for more interesting tactics, since you will then be forced to integrate your forces with native forces, to your betterment or detriment.

This might be further improved upon by adding 1 more elite PD unit of that Poptype (Lizardman poison-slingers instead of militia, for example) for every 5 points of PD you put on that province. Example: Buying 25 points of PD on the Lizardman poptype would gain you 21 points of Lizardman PD (20 militias and 1 regular), 4 points of your own PD (which would be what you'd normally get for PD 21-24), and your own normal PD commanders. It might not seem like a lot to just have 1 unit per 5 PD, but if each poptype had a useful unit, they might really make a difference with higher PD-giving, again, more impetus to build higher PD. (Hoburgs could start coming into their own at this level, by giving you tough hoburg knights armed with crossbows, while Jotuns might just give you a Jotun infantry armed with a spear)

This would also make the Poptypes themselves more interesting, particularly to mod, since each would have it's more elite, interesting unit(s), making some Poptypes-if they're located in provinces of strategic relevance-almost as good as a magic site, especially if that particular Province happens to actually hold a valuable magic site or two.

2: PD should be influenced by whether or not there's a fortress built on the Province, what type of fortress/castle is built there, and whether or not it's your home Province.

Firstly, Provinces with fortresses on them should allow up to 150 PD instead of 125. Fortresses and PD are both elements of infrastructure, and building a fortress should affect the potential PD as well.

Secondly, PD build on your home Province should always start (better units/commanders at PD 1 instead of PD 21) off better than PD in other Provinces. It's the home of your people, filled with veterans, loyalists, people devoted to your cause. Your PD should always be of a better quality here than anywhere else, and if it's destroyed, you should be able to rebuild it at that same level of quality. This will also help deflect early rushes and early barbarian/vampire/etc. events.

Thirdly, in your home Province, and in any Province in which you've built a fortress, you should gain access to an improved PD structure. This represents a fortress's more efficient ability to train troops, arm them, and defend the area. Your home Province would gain this ability whether there's a Fortress or not, simply as a home-court advantage (your people know the area well, know what it can do, and how to defend it. The fortress on your home Province still adds the ability to withstand a seige, all it's administrative and building abilities, etc.)

EG: In a regular (no fortress) province, you might (as currently) recieve militia-quality units at PD 1-20, and infantry units at 21-125. In a Province with a fortress, you would then have access to PD which gave you militia-quality units at PD 1-20, infantry units at PD 21-125, with the *addition* of an archer unit at PD 31-125.

A multi-tier PD would still function well, with the addition of fortress PD. EG: Normal PD gives you militias at PD 1-125, infantry at 21-125, and let's say a light calvalry unit at PD 41-125. Building a fortress, you now gain the militias, the infantry, and the light calvalry, but you also gain a unit of archers at PD 31-125. So by the time you've got a PD of 50, you've got a tidy force of 50 militias, 30 infantry, 20 archers, and 10 light calvalry. Not overbalanced for mid-game, but not insignificant either, especially if you're supporting them with regular troops.

To improve upon this, it might also be possible to "switch off" unit types, past a certain point-build your PD to 60, and you no longer get any militia units after that point. This would keep the numbers down to a more manageable level (more manageable than is currently in the game, since PD units don't currently "switch off" in this manner), while allowing those militias to be replaced by better quality, more relevant troops-you stop building militias at PD 60, but you start building heavy infantries.

PD could be affected by other factors, as well: A Lord of War Pretender chassis might give your PD units better commanders, a Forge Lord might give them better equipment, a Freaklord might give you freakish units instead of militia, a Vampire Queen might replace a portion of your PD with Thralls and Vampires, and a Mother of Monsters might add monstrous allies at higher levels.

Magic Sites might also affect PD. You might come across a site which allowed you to gain Draconians at PD 51-125, or replace your militia units with ghouls, or your starting commander with a Jotun Jarl or a lich, or replaced your entire PD structure with demonic troops.

You might even forge an artifact that affected PD-by forging Excalibur, you might have your PD in any Province where Excalibur is located, replaced by Knights of the Chalice.

Re: Multi-Tier PD.
 

Excellent post. I'd be content if even a tenth of it would ever be realized.

If I might add, some magery in PD would be a nice touch as well. Currently only limited nation get that so it would be nice where it broadened to more nations.

Re: Multi-Tier PD.
 

To add another layer of complexity, dominion could also play a role. The equipment/appearance of the pop-type PD troops could be modified by dominion (and perhaps time) - Mictlan PD would ditch, say, their trusty broadswords for obsidian club thingies etc.

Re: Multi-Tier PD.
 

Excellant post. Chock full of good ideas.

Re: Multi-Tier PD.
 

Thank you, Wraithlord.

I agree about the magery, although I think it should be kept on a tight leash, since too much would take something away from those fun, last-ditch efforts my researcher mages always seem to get in, where I'm forced into using them to break seiges... I imagine them a bit like a good 80's movie, something of the bastard love-child of the 'Goonies', the mages from 'Dragonslayer', 'Revenge of the Nerds', and the kids from 'Red Dawn'.

Fortress PD might be extended to Temple and Lab PD too, though, I suppose, with their existence in the province-or lack of it-influencing things slightly...After all, where would medieval/mythical China and Japan be without some Shaolin monastery defending the province? Ars Magica has some Coven imagery that goes along similar lines.

Re: Multi-Tier PD.
 

Interesting idea. It would be a nightmare to balance though.

Re: Multi-Tier PD.
 

Might not be that bad, if you consider that you're still paying more and more for each point you raise it. It would take time and patience, and a lot of trial to get it right, like anything else, but I don't think it would be much worse than trying to balance various mod nations into the vanilla game. Maybe better, because it would ultimately involve less units-and units that already exist-per nation or pop type.

Re: Multi-Tier PD.
 

Would it be worth putting PD in to your pretender build?

Such that you can spend some points to improve it in maybe some of the ways mentioned above?

Re: Multi-Tier PD.
 

What an interesting idea!:up::up::up:

Re: Multi-Tier PD.
 

Actually I must admit I pretty much like the way PD works now and how it is balanced into the game - anyway your ideas are well put. maybe something for dom4? ^_^

Re: Multi-Tier PD.
 

I definitely like it. Some more thoughts:

If there is a temple in the province you should get a priest for every <x> units of PD, assuming there is some sort of priest that you can recruit there.

Likewise, a lab produces mages.

Without the buildings you get neither priests nor mages unless your standard commander (say Himmon) is one.

I'm not too happy with the notion of the elite units at higher PD levels. Instead, how about two PD scales, normal and elite. Obviously, elite PD costs more to buy.

I'm not at all sure there should be any cap on how high PD can go. Super high PD can always be bypassed or taken out with battlefield nukes. (Guy A buys 500 points of PD. B sends in a communion that gets off a few master enslaves. Who got the better deal??)

PD should always consist only of troops that could be recruited there with the exception of LA Ermor's capital, they should get undead. Thus you get only indie PD unless you have a fort there--but on the flip side I think you should be able to get it underwater.

I'm also inclined to think that PD should slowly grow over time, say 1 point per season in any province with 10? 20? or above and a friendly dominion. It would shrink at the same rate in a hostile dominion.

Re: Multi-Tier PD.
 

PD does work fine the way it is, I totally agree with that-it's a great idea, one that inspires me to argue that it could be even greater-If it sucked, we'd have a lot more threads about it. I'm just saying that it could be somewhat cooler :)

If nothing else, I'm just hoping that the Devs will allow it to be modded more dynamically, sometime in the future.

I don't know that there needs to be an arbitrary limit on it, either, except that I'm guessing at some point it would start to drain processor speed. Even if your 5000 PD just consisted of 50 Jotun Jarls armed with artifacts, the computer still has to keep track of all those stages and transformations. 2 stages, in my opinion, are a little low, but more than 6 or 7 would be a bit much, even for me. I'm only saying that it makes sense to allow fortresses to give you a bigger upper limit on it. It doesn't add to micromanagement or take away from balance that way, since you'd still have to pay for it (and even reaching PD 125 is quite expensive, let alone PD 150.).

And having unlimited PD scales not only means more processing, but more micromanagement, and a more crowded screen. PD shouldn't be precise, you should still need to recruit units and support it-and understand what you have, and conform your tactics to it-to really make it shine. It should never do the work for you, if you want to get the most out of it.

And national PD units should never be elite, they should just get better, in a limited way, over time. Having elite units added to your PD-the Draconian example for instance-would be a rare and special bonus. It should happen occasionally (in my opinion), but it shouldn't be something your enemy will always expect.

For one thing, this is another way that those units we never recruit could show up in the game. You wouldn't spend money on them, but integrate them into your PD, and suddenly they're nice to have when you need them.

As far as a self-growing/shrinking PD, that would be nice, but it would also be difficult for the player to manage, and a headache to program-and for that matter, again probably a big drain on processor speed.

I'm not in favor of turning PD into some all-consuming beast, just that it have some of the variation and surprises that other aspects of the game currently have, and that it be complexly modifiable.

Re: Multi-Tier PD.
 

Other than extreme chokepoints I can't see any reason for really high PD to be used. Allowing it wouldn't mean it would show up in most cases and wouldn't be a CPU drag. Remember that it doesn't need to actually be calculated except when there is a battle.

CPU time = infinitesimal.

The following code runs (not that it's truly executable as is) once per turn calculation. If the first test fails it's not going to use even a microsecond. If it passes I doubt this is a millisecond.

It is quite possible that the dominion isn't stored this way and that test becomes slightly more complex but it's still hard to reach even a millisecond.

If (Month Mod 3) = 1 then
For Province in Provinces do
With Data[Province] do
If (PD > 10) then
Case Dominion of
1..MaxInt : Inc(Pd);
-1..-MaxInt : Dec(Pd);
End;

Re: Multi-Tier PD.
 

It's possible that it would work as you say, and not make turns noticeably longer (although turns do take quite a bit of time for the computer to process, and I've been using reasonably fast computers in the past), but I still don't quite see the point of it fluctuating.

Even if it were based on Dominion levels, you're still talking about military assignment (midieval though it may be). I'd personally get frustrated pretty fast by a PD that was noticeably weaker than I expected, after investing quite a bit of gold in them. Battle itself is chaotic enough-why have stationing of guards be yet another variable factor?

As far as the "viability of extremely high PD" argument, it really doesn't matter, because it's possible to have extremely high PD in the game, already. The difference between 125 and 150 is pretty minimal (25 more infantry by late game? Compared to what you could have done with the gold you spent on them?), unless a lot of the other suggestions I've made were also added.

Re: Multi-Tier PD.
 

Good idea!
Personally, I would restrict it to province population determining early PD and castle effect, though. It would also be easier to implement... ;)

Re: Multi-Tier PD.
 

I tiered the PD in the Gem Valley mod. There are only two levels, which is the allowable limit, so there is probably a little too much of a jump from 19PD to 20PD, but it is an example of tiered PD.

Re: Multi-Tier PD.
 

I like keeping it simple. This would make things more fiddly.

Re: Multi-Tier PD.
 

It doesn't really make things much more complicated on the player's end, though. Most people that I've heard from don't invest a great deal in PD anyway, and if they do, they usually end up regretting it. This would just ease that regret somewhat. It only becomes fiddly if you altered your strategies to take advantage of it, but there's no real reason to do so, unless you're already playing defensively.

PD would remain PD. It would still be simple and straightforward, just deeper and more intuitive.

Re: Multi-Tier PD.
 

Having pop-type troops seems pretty straightforward and interesting.

Getting a holy caster when there is a temple built in the province just makes sense. Getting a caster type and/or magical creature when there is a lab in the province also makes sense.

It would mean that the few small changes that can be made to a province actually matter for something.

Personally, I'd like to go a little further and be able to designate some basic commands for the province defense. I've played a few nations where the defense default configuration is so bad it nearly kills itself. Being able to set where each troop type will start (even if you cant form groups on command, just the defaults) would be a huge improvement in how useful the PD is without increasing the amount of power it should have based on the troops it is using.

I have literally seen a province defense do enough damage to itself to route itself before the enemies could do hardly any damage at all. That was incredibly pointless.



Several tiers of troops seems pretty easy, it should only be a slight modification to what is already in place.

A single screen to adjust starting positions of each unit type and their basic orders should be easy as well. It could be as simple as the normal battle interface and a button to click on like research. Move the bits around and that is how all of the PD work. Being able to give a 'hold and attack' order to fliers would be nice, 'fire enemy cavalry' to crossbowmen would be handy, and being able to guide the casters a little is practically a must. On the last point it gets kindof frustrating again to know that you shouldnt research above a certain level in a certain path because it will cause the PD caster to use a fairly worthless spell, sometimes all the way to unconsciousness.

Using pop-types would be a larger, and more complicated change. It probably isnt worth the programming time it would take to implement, but it is definitely interesting ;)


I do like the thought of putting some extra options in with pretender creation. But then I also like the idea of doing something similar with castle building and troop features (such as: 100 pts - the rage within your pretender is felt by even the lowliest of his/her disciples, all of your sacred troops have berserk 2 and the rest have berserk 1 (this stacks with any berserk they already possess) ). But then that kindof stuff could also go under a whole new research category and be something of a 'national buff' with each nation being able to only have a certain number of them active but possibly being secret. Lots of potential there ;)


I definitely like the idea though. Province defense can be kept pretty simple even with changes like this. Mostly it just increases a fairly important part of the game to much more interesting levels. For those who dont wish to bother with it they can still just put some points into it and ignore it without extra consequence.