PD wars! (no monkeys allowed)
 

Buying PD > kills black hawks (generally <=5) is rarely worth it, except in very specific circumstances. (ie, You need an instant meat shield where your army of mages is moving to this turn). And the reason for that is specifically because its far too easy to build a raiding thug which will blow through arbitrary PD like it was wet tissue paper. At which point PD really is wasted money.

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Green Dragon
 

PD is a really neat idea.

An idea that, on the face of things, is pretty powerful.

It's simple to use and understand, with zero micromanagement. It gives you dirt-cheap, instantly built, maintenance free troops and commanders that are basically "fire and forget", and protection from spies.

It's even got separate slots for modders to add units the Nation in question might not otherwise gain access to.

As a concept, it's got a lot going for it, and it really should do more than it does, and be a larger part of the game, and overall strategy.

I wouldn't say that it's useless, but, as an aspect of the game that's been promoted as one of the better things about Dom3, it's leaning heavily towards the shallow/ignoreable side.

I always put a few points into PD, if I have any leftover gold lying around. At worst, it functions as an "early alarm system", and lets me atleast get one good look at an attacker, before it's defeated.

If someone wanted to go to the trouble, it would be great if the PD for the vanilla Nations could be upgraded (and maybe balanced across the board) to a point where you'd get more meaningful results out of it. Even though it's maintenance-free, you should still be getting close to an even trade for what you could have bought with it, in terms of units, due to the PD's immovability and "hands off" nature.

I kind of wish Kristoffer and Johan might still look at this someday, atleast to give us some more modding tools/options, since the way PD currently works is really a genius idea. It's just not fully harnessed yet, being just a little underdeveloped, and strategically weak as an option.

I don't think it deserves to remain in it's current form. There's lots of ways it could be turned into a more useful and integral part of the game, without making it into something negative (without encouraging extreme turtling, without slowing down the game, etc.).

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Green Dragon
 

I don't know, what's wrong about PD? It is local militia, you would not expect elite there. And at the reasonable levels it is cheap for what you get, and, more importantly, upkeep free. I like it as it is.

There is huge variation of the strength of PD, which should be seen as a strength/weakness of a given nation and not balanced by itself, as I see things.

And raiding is an extremely important strategy, maybe just not so much using stealth.

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Green Dragon
 

Or, option 2, you could learn to use armies. Just a thought.

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Green Dragon
 

There's an interesting feedback loop with PD.

You can build thug raiders that will take out pretty much any amount of PD. Therefore, PD is a bad investment past a minimal level. Therefore, since you only have to raid low levels of PD, you can get away with using cheaper thugs or mages to raid with. And since any thug or SC can be killed by the appropriate counter you need to make them as cheap as possible.


I've noticed playing SP that I can't make a lot of the cheaper thug builds work. The AI tends to buy more PD and have random armies wandering around its backfield. Low-end thugs get overwhelmed. You can counter that by buffing the thugs up to almost SC level so they can deal with the larger numbers of troops. Since the AI doesn't know how to design a counter, it's worth investing more heavily.

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Green Dragon
 

Im afraid that PD will not get balanced.

Every once in awhile people ask that PD be balanced, or magic be more balanced, or priest levels, or elites. But the balance of the game is setup around one nation having good PD, one having strong magic, one having good priests, one having kickass elites.

It would be handy I suppose if every nation was balanced against each other in each category. It would allow people to know better how to play each nation. But it would cut down the games rarity of having such unique nations that involve actually learning how each one plays. :target:

On the other hand, that was cool for about the first year. Now it feels limiting. Only being able to play one or two nations really well because I can use them the way I think. But I am still impressed that they took the hard road far far away from chess-piece nations.

And before the response teams arrive... Im not saying there are not balance problems that need fixed. I am very aware that this was all much better done in Dom2. With Dom3 it got more and more.. "careless"? And the later a nation was added, the less it seems to properly fit in to the old balance concept. Nations added in patches after Dom3 was released particularly seem more-for-fun without the same level of careful balancing.

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Green Dragon
 

Noooo. Ashdod is the most balanced nation out there ;)

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Green Dragon
 

I don't see that as the problem with PD. At least in MP.

It's not that some nations have really good PD and some really bad PD, compensating for other strengths and weaknesses. It's that spme nations have mostly useless PD and some have completely useless PD. To the point that the common advice in MP games is not to waste money on more than a couple points of PD. Enough to stop the weakest raiders, Call of the Winds or the like.

More than that, even for the good PD nations, and it still just gets killed by a raiding thug and your investment is lost.
So PD, which is a theoretically cool feature, really isn't used.

If anything an overall boost in PD is needed, not a better balancing of the different nations PD.

That would be problematic for SP though, where it's already fairly common to buy a ton of PD in chokepoints for the AI to beat itself against.

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Green Dragon
 

PD can be really useful in high turmoil though. An Abysian PD can get rid of most barbarians for a relatively cheap investment. Monkey PD, on the other hand...

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Green Dragon
 

[quote=Radio_Star;758349]The two have little to do with each other. You might as well suggest we all learn to navigate our aircraft carriers better, instead of maintaining roads.

PD is separate from mobile armies. That should be obvious to everyone. There's no reason that it can't be made more useful and interesting, without somehow taking away from "using armies". People didn't stop "using armies" once they learned to build castles or create an effective police force. That doesn't make fortifications or military police any less important.

The way I see PD working is akin to adding infrastructure: You build it up from nothing, and as you do, more people settle there, more business is done, your workshops are more productive, your smiths and craftsmen more skilled. You attract the richer merchants and the famous bards. You also probably attract more crime.

The end result is a functioning defensive force, created by your people living there, out of a desire to protect themselves and maintain the peace, but it comes about from a lot of hidden factors that might be represented by 20+ buildings in a Civilization-type game, but that in Dom3 is refined and distilled down to a single number.

Gandalf: I don't mean that it should be made equal across all Nations, only that it could be improved across the board, while still maintaining what balance there exists between Nations. In other words, Niefelheim = bad PD, while Abyssia = good PD.

thejeff said it better than I did, actually

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Green Dragon
 

But this is just a symptom of the magic system being critical, and rending magic as less powerful removes some of the draw from the game. SCs can do what they do because of spells and magic items, raw stats only go so far, and while Fear, Awe, Blood Vengeance, and natural regeneration extend it dramatically, it is the spells that truly make it powerful.

Take the Harbinger. It is a respectable SC in the mid game, and relies heavily on a few spells. Mistform is by far the most important, but Blessing usually helps quite a bit as well, and there are methods of Harbinger use that also take advantage of Shock Wave.

Then there are the big battlefield spells. Flaming Arrows, Wind Guide, and Darkness are probably the biggest ones here, and they turn a fight to a huge extent, then there are counters to them. Giving PD access to these would make things much less strategic, and allocating gems to PD is more micromanagement nobody wants to deal with.

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Green Dragon
 

Sure, PD's never going to stand up to a determined attack. Big battlefield spells aren't in question.
Even Harbingers are pretty high-end thugs. Close to SCs if geared right. As they should be. They're a 6th level summon that costs 25 gems + gear. Though I've lost them to regular troops. If the mistform goes, they're dead. With enough troops someone will land that lucky shot.

But I'm really talking about the cheap thugs. Black Servants, Sleepers, Banes. Black Knights or similar mounted commanders. Sacred mages who can teleport and cast a few buffs. All with not much more than a Brand and a shield.
Any of these will take low level PD with little trouble, but might have trouble with larger numbers. Even without specific magic counters.

But since PD gets dramatically more expensive and can still be beaten by a mid-level thug: Harbinger, Bane Lord, sacred thugs etc, there's little incentive to buy more than the bare minimum.

Maybe enough to stop random events, if you've got good PD units.

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Green Dragon
 

While we're daydreaming, the idea of adding gems to PD is a rather intriguing one. You could set it up as straightforwardly as current PD = 10 gems of a given single type give you 10x units for that Nation, with maybe 2 gem types allowed per Nation.

Mythologically speaking, there's plenty of references to draw from this. Various warding spells, guardian creatures. Gargoyles, Terra-cotta armies. All sorts of things, from all sorts of myths, worldwide. So, it should fit into the game without much disruption of flavour.

It's a little more micro, but not a devastating amount (2 easy-to-use systems, rather than one easy-to-use system), and would give you a much broader spectrum of options.

PD itself, in it's current "gold = PD" form, could be made more interesting simply by expanding the existing system of adding additional commanders and unit types, once milestones (1+, 20+) are met. Perhaps 2 new unit types and 1 new commander every 20 points past the first 20? That wouldn't be too complicated to understand, wouldn't require too much of a change in gameplay, and wouldn't require any more micro than we've already got.

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Green Dragon
 

Your ability to utilize your armies (one of two forms of defense) and your use of PD (your other form of defense) are of course related. The more effective one is in your hands, the less reliant you are on the other.

To say that your two forms of defense, being inextricably linked in their dualistic nature (big words, booyakasha!) "have little to do with each other" is ... well, wrong. You should add sophistry to your study list.

Let's see what other gifts of silliness you're giving to us inexperienced players. It's like Christmas every day!

Uh huh.

(Screeching tires and accident noises. Maybe DJ-style record scratch/needle jump) Hm. Let's talk about this with some numbers. I like numbers. In addition to adding numbers, we're going to stop using the word "army". In this context it's incredibly misleading as what you really mean is 'mobile force'. Let's create a scale of strength and label it 1-10. 1 will be a single indie commander, and 10 will be a nearly mythical late game army comprised of hundreds of battle mages, thousands of troops, supporting thugs/scs/ etc. PD in its current form can, with a reasonable degree of economy, stop force levels 1 to, let's say 3. If you make PD more effective, it'll be able to stop, with a reasonable degree of economy, up to let's say 5.

If you eliminate the viability of certain force levels, you "[take] away" from the depth of mobile forces, necessarily limiting strategic options.

The way you see PD working is immaterial to the argument. 'nuff said.

Straw man. Again, back to sophistry school with you.

Please remember to phrase your arguments with relation to the competitive game we're discussing. Your pseudo-historical references and theorizing about the nature of PD just don't matter in this context. Cease and desist, yo.


In the end, here's what's going on: as humans, we like win. As such, we like to modify the rules of competition to better suit us as individuals. This is fine and natural. Howeva. You're attempting to pull the balance away from the diversity and complexity that gives rise to strategic options, which then in turn serves to delineate skill levels. Every competitive MP community I've ever been in has people like you. People who want the game to be simpler and easier so that they don't suck quite as hard. These people are called 'scrubs'.

To summarize your response:

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Green Dragon
 

Of course by that argument, having PD at all eliminates the viability of certain force levels, levels 1-3, thus limiting strategic options.
Therefore PD should be removed from the game. Anyone who doesn't agree just wants the game to be simpler and easier so that they don't suck as hard.

One could also argue that PD is itself a strategic option and thus increases the the diversity and complexity of the game. Making it more viable would then add to to your options. You would have to choose between building static defenses and mobile forces rather than just putting a point into PD to stop scouts and investing everything else in "mobile forces"

Or to put it even more simply, mobile forces are not the only thing that gives rise to strategic options. Static defenses, represented in this game by forts and PD, can also increase your strategic options.

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Green Dragon
 

Radio Star has a point though. The stronger you make PD, the weaker you make standard troops. And since PD is cheaper than armies, up to a certain point, that makes it a no brainer buy to impede armies. Personally, I think if you make PD too much stronger it will make attacking people much too difficult in a resources/province taken ratio to make attacking worthwhile, and makes huge amounts of PD not only likely, but your best course of action.

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Green Dragon
 

I like PD pretty much as it is. I actually don't agree with it being useless. I often buy high PD to combine with mage support at chokepoints for example. Or to force my enemy to spend more gems on his thugs before I kill them. Etc.

My only beef is with the nations that has broken PD that literally kills itself, archers shooting militia in the back etc. Machaka and Caelum come to mind. Those should be tweaked so they at least fight properly, by just having militia OR archers, or by giving them shielded infantry.

And MA tien chi should have stronger PD just for thematic reasons.

Other than that I think it's pretty much fine as it is.

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Green Dragon
 

don't forget Marignon's PD, having crossbows behind various shieldless infantries :(

but why the sudden discussion on PD? this thread is about the Dragon pretenders, especially the Green Dragon. has nothing to do with PD whatsoever...

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Green Dragon
 

Yup!

And one would be arguing a straw man again! You could place mobile forces in every province just as you can PD. Here's the deal: PD sacrifices complexity for lower micromanagement. There does come a point of limited returns in that equation. To put it simply for people like Honey Badger, the small amount of skill differentiation (again, that's what competitive gaming is all about) gained by lessening the effectiveness of PD, or simply removing it altogether, would not be worth the resulting headache of small defensive force micromanagement. Those are the terms of debate; the balance of increased micromanagement vs. loss of complexity for the express purpose of creating a competitive environment. Please and I think the balance is just peachy where it's at.

What's that? You want more evidence that PD is perfect where it's at? Okay, consider this: Reasonable amount of PD have trouble stopping any sort of offensive. This makes for complexity. On the other hand, it's just effective enough to make for an interesting tool when combined with intelligently placed mobile forces. PD at its current power level eliminates only the most micro-heavy offensive options while being potent enough to supplement true engagements.

If that aint balance, folks, I don't know what is.




Edit: Let's move this over yonder!http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?p=758580

PD wars! (no monkeys allowed)
 

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?p=758579

Let's move this debate over here.

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Green Dragon
 

Radio_Star is quite the fan of sensationalism, but it however seems to be a verbose attempt to ridicule what amounts to be a useful suggestion:

"Make PD more complex."

Even the simple feature available to mobile armies, a squad positioning and orders interface, would be rather helpful.
I can surmise that the developers may have shied away from such in an effort not to overload the player with micromanagement; with perhaps a more intuitive interface, it may be a plausible improvement.

As it stands now, I personally have no great displeasure over the PD system--it has a niche to fill, the wooden picket against roving bands of mystical slaughter.
Ostensibly stationary chaff, perhaps its greatest use is to assist mages lying in wait for an ambush: A good Fog Warriors, or even a behind-the-lines Paralyze caster can multiply the effectiveness of PD manyfold.


As a side note: As 13lackGu4rd indicates, it may be best to create a thread on 'PD Use and Improvement,' giving this thread back to the Dragons.

Re: PD wars! (no monkeys allowed)
 

[This is a repost from the linked thread, for the sake of clarity.]

Radio_Star is quite the fan of sensationalism, but it however seems to be a verbose attempt to ridicule what amounts to be a useful suggestion:

"Make PD more complex."

Even the simple feature available to mobile armies, a squad positioning and orders interface, would be rather helpful.
I can surmise that the developers may have shied away from such in an effort not to overload the player with micromanagement; with perhaps a more intuitive interface, it may be a plausible improvement.

As it stands now, I personally have no great displeasure over the PD system--it has a niche to fill, the wooden picket against roving bands of mystical slaughter.
Ostensibly stationary chaff, perhaps its greatest use is to assist mages lying in wait for an ambush: A good Fog Warriors, or even a behind-the-lines Paralyze caster can multiply the effectiveness of PD manyfold.

Re: PD wars! (no monkeys allowed)
 

I will try to dig up some of the original discussions, but Id like to lay out something...

Thematically the Province Defence is supposed to be a local militia. They dont appear as an army because they dont exist as one until the province is attacked. Its simply farmers and merchants coming to the rescue of their local area. They are basically untrained and do not do formations.

The impression I got was that the PD was meant to handle the types of things that went on in the world without the pretenders (like events) but not meant to actually be able to handle the things done by the national powers in the world (players). PD protects against natural events, and the reason than an independent province would "join" under a power was to protect them from other powers.

One of the more extensive (and reasonable IMHO) discussions was whether or not PD should be national or represent the recruitables of that province. If the PD were fixed, Id like to see it go to recruitables which would be thematic and fair. BUT we dont have an option there.

We CAN fix national PD if someone decides to. Nations which are able to be duped by mods can have their PD reset (yes, bringing back my wish for more duped nations for more Civil War and Chess style games). So a future game might allow use of the NewImproved Kailasa mod. But it would only be able to change what units show up, not change their actions. Still though, a discussion along those lines could at least lead to a change that we can see sometime soon

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Green Dragon
 

I'm glad that's clear, so I don't have to bother wading through the above.

Disregarding the rest, moving the post was a good idea.

Re: PD wars! (no monkeys allowed)
 

I'm a fan of National PD too. Ideally, it could somehow be tied to poptypes, giving you combined forces (human/hoburg/icthyd dirt farmers with pitchforks, supported by a handful of legionnaires). More work for modders, but not for the player (except maybe in the brains department, strategywise).

Gandalf makes a good argument for why PD can reasonably be kept formationless.

And, considering that this is a game very heavily influenced by real world history and mythology (lest anyone forget!), I feel it's very important to the nature of the game, and the *fun* of the game, to attempt to tie as many aspects of the game as reasonably possible, to the real world.

Re: PD wars! (no monkeys allowed)
 

I still want to hear how having PD that's much more effective than it is currently doesn't turn the game into a giant turtle fest for the first 3 years. If PD was efficient, it would not be economically viable to attack other players until you had advanced magic (and even then, with terracotta warriors and such, it would probably start to take insane amounts of military to defeat cheap, inexpensive and potentially self-replacing PD). Personally, I don't think I would like to move very far in that direction. PD can already quite useful when used correctly to add bodies to your armies. But if you want MP games to ever end, powerful PD is a bad idea.

Re: PD wars! (no monkeys allowed)
 

@rdonj I can agree with that.
But that would be more of an argument vs changing it in the game. Which is unlikely anyway.

The subject does keep coming up over and over and over. So if people want to discuss it AS A MOD (the only way Id prefer it be pursued) then its not a problem. It will be like any other mod. To be used if you want, or not. There is no reason to control that.

Re: PD wars! (no monkeys allowed)
 

Yeah, I'm all for it being optional. If an idea works well, it will be adopted. If it doesn't, it won't be. The rest is simply speculation.

I'm always in favor of all aspects of the game becoming more interesting, however.

Whether it's the best format for "competitive" play or not, Dom3 is a game, and it's there to entertain (while educating). If you just wanted pure competition, you could get the same thrill by running a marathon, and probably do your body a favor in the process.

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Green Dragon
 

This is pretty OT from a discussion re: Green Dragon pretender....

However, I'd point you to the Globals that add to PD, such as Mechanical Militia, Fata Morgana, Enchanted Forest, etc. The mechanics are different, but the effect is similar to what you're daydreaming of.

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Green Dragon
 

Sure, but they aren't any good as a rule. Mechanical Militia is pretty much worthless, and the other two only marginally better.

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Green Dragon
 

Why aren't the PD helper spells any good, and why Mechanical Militia in particular? I've never got around to casting any of them, just curious.

Re: PD wars! (no monkeys allowed)
 

PD posts from the Green Dragon Pretender thread moved to this thread.

Re: PD wars! (no monkeys allowed)
 

Radio_Star, kindly dial down the insulting tone. It doesn't really serve much of purpose. If HoneyBadger's ideas are really as bad you seem to think, it should not be much trouble to show them up as such.

The points in favor and against retaining the PD mechanics as they are are interesting enough. Personally I've found PD as it currently is suitable for what I need, though some nations definitely get more bang for buck than others. Changing PD mechanics in any deep manner is not going to happen, though. You'd probably need to break a lot more things than it's worth to get there.

As a final note, I do not wish to need to moderate this thread again. Anyone who makes it necessary does so at his or her own peril.

Re: PD wars! (no monkeys allowed)
 

If you just want stronger PD for SP, I suppose that's fine. I'm not sure that would make for a particularly fun game (hordes of AI chaff+huge AI PD... ugh) but you could certainly do it. I'm not sure who would be interested in doing such a mod, but it wouldn't be terribly difficult to do if one was so inclined. It's just a matter of selecting a few nations and switching a few numbers around. It shouldn't take more than ~an hour per era, if you have a good plan for what units you want to use. You could even add in typically summoned units in small numbers at 20+ PD if you were so inclined.

The PD helper spells aren't THAT bad... they probably aren't that good in the bang per buck department, though.

Re: PD wars! (no monkeys allowed)
 

Arent the PD helper spells dependent on domain strength and sometimes terrain?
It becomes not a question of whether its good or not, but how good can it be. A little bit of help is good. But with Domain 10 and 125 PD you wouldnt want it to make a castle impossible to take.

Re: PD wars! (no monkeys allowed)
 

Whether the "PD helper" spells are worth it depends on the number of provinces you own and if your opponent is a raiding nation that could be hampered by that type of summon. Situational but certainly useful.

I've found mechanical militia very nice when fighting light cloud trapezing thugs, both as a deterrent and actual defence. It makes those vanjarls, early eagle kings, siddhe lords etc. just a bit too fragile to risk with minor equipment. That's worth it in itself sometimes.

I just wish they scaled with PD, that would be cool.

Re: PD wars! (no monkeys allowed)
 

In my current game, mechanical militia paid for itself in the first turn in terms of the number of raiding groups it surprised and killed. It's also great as an offensive raiding tool, since each province you take now requires a medium size force in order to retake.

Re: PD wars! (no monkeys allowed)
 

I've been Shrap'd!

Re: PD wars! (no monkeys allowed)
 

PD is far from useless, it's just situational.

It is good for:

Beefing up a province for an impending attack where you have no other way to ferry units there next turn.

PD make great arrow catchers.

Buying 1 PD at least gives you a scouting report of the army that just trashed your province.

Some nations have pretty great PD. If I remember right, Mictlan gets Jag Warriors > 20 PD. LA Pythium has some pretty tough units in their PD as well.


PD becomes useless when someone tries to use it in place of mobile troops.

I should say I don't play games with binding NAPs, so my vision of PD significance might differ from point of view of people who play such games.

Usually, when I plan to attack another nation I expect to take a decent number of provinces in a surprise attack during first turn of war, when opponent isn’t ready. I consider information about enemy PD to be one of the most important ones while planning.

Let’s suppose I have 4 poorly equipped flying thugs and 2 well equipped ones. And let’s suppose enemy has PD of one or such in all his provinces. Small squads of mine take 3 bordering provinces, 6 flying thugs take provinces within flight reach, and 5 provinces beyond their reach I take with ‘Arouse hunger’. Result: If nothing extraordinary happens enemy loses to me 14 provinces in single turn.

Now let’s suppose enemy has 20 PD in all his provinces. I need far larger squads in order to take border provinces, poorly equipped thugs have small chances against PD 20, and ghouls from arouse hunger have none. Result: I can confidently take only 2 provinces with 2 well equipped thugs, so I’d rather find another target.

Re: PD wars! (no monkeys allowed)
 

WingedDog, that's a flawed analysis. Every 20PD province is 155g. If we assume a modest empire of 15 provinces (capital aside), that's 2325g vs. 15g for 1PD in every province. 2325g is almost 3 more forts! Or a lot of mages/troops.

If I saw someone with 20 PD everywhere, he'd be near the top of my to hit list. Sure, raiding might be harder, but it means i can just walk over him because he either skimped on infrastructure or army to get that PD.

Re: PD wars! (no monkeys allowed)
 

Squirrelloid
20 PD is actually about 200 gold, so for a 15 province empire 20 PD for every province costs like 3000 gold. Assuming we have an income of 1500 gold - it's a two turns investement for confidence you are not striped of all your provinces in a single turn and thus of all gold and gem income. At least until late game. Worth it or not everyone decides for himself.

Re: PD wars! (no monkeys allowed)
 

It is 210, to be exact. I think it really depends on what your nation's PD is able to stop. But would I trade that for another two forts? Any day (almost). But I think Squirreloid subtracted the 10 PD he used to buy, which makes the difference between the positions somewhat relative.

Re: PD wars! (no monkeys allowed)
 

The formula for PD costs is...

(X * X+1) / 2

So plugging 20 PD in gives you...

(20 * 21) / 2 = 210gp

Re: PD wars! (no monkeys allowed)
 

A quick formula is on the wiki: http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Province_defence.

"The total cost of Province defence starting from 0 to n can be calculated by using the formula (n*(n+1))/2."

Edit:
Soy "slower than Calahan" Weiser

Re: PD wars! (no monkeys allowed)
 

20 is higher than I'd usually go. But even 10 or 15 can force your enemy to invest more in his raiders and thus have less available. That'll usually stop things like Arouse Hunger or Call of the Winds and even cheaper thugs.

While you could do the same by recruiting troops and stationing them everywhere, at those levels PD is often as good as the same gold cost in troops and doesn't use upkeep. Sure, you could buy more Forts/labs/temples or more mages, but the potential loss of all the income and gem producing provinces on the first turn of a war is devastating.

Re: PD wars! (no monkeys allowed)
 

No upkeep, and automatically replenished if you win. That has allowed PD to wear down some sizable armies in my games. Also less micromanagement. And can help insure that at least one province remains yours in a troubled area without having to post an army there. Chokepoints, a newly taken province next to an enemy capital, a newly taken capital, a province with a surprisingly useful recruit list such as from a magic site.

But no spreadsheet logic is going to completely settle it. Some people just dont play that way. There is some RPGness to PD which doesnt quite have it left out of the game. Maybe if its some quick little king-of-the-hill game.

Re: PD wars! (no monkeys allowed)
 

I can see both sides of the argument. On one hand 20 PD in every province seems like a waste of money later on, when more powerful armies and thugs can take it out pretty easy, but in early to mid mid-game it does make an empire gank more or less impossible to pull off on a grand scale.

In a game I'm in now one player had mostly token PD everywhere (like 1PD, occasionally 10, but monkey PD is always token PD, right? :) ), so I was able to sneak a bunch of guys in there and take like 18 provinces in one turn, combined with some remote attack spells (but not Arouse Hunger, that blows against monkey PD). If he had had 20 PD everywhere (or even 10), I would've run the risk of having some of my guys discovered. They still would've won their individual battle, but then of course my opponent can start reacting instead of being taken completely by surprise, and losing 3/4 of his provinces in a single turn. And naturally the supplementary remote attack spells wouldn't have been possible.

That's one important value of higher PD early on (though i can't imagine putting 20 PD anywhere much ever). It's value fades as the game progresses, but then so do a lot of things.

Edit: also there was another major player in the game who had put in higher PD, which was the deciding factor in my decision of who to attack, so it has that value too.

Re: PD wars! (no monkeys allowed)
 

And like many recommendations in the game, map size can matter (or actually prov-to-player ratio). If you have areas that you own which would take you a few turns to get an army to, then local defense becomes more important.

For Dom3 all answers can be considered to be followed automatically with "which of course is only usually true depending on your nation, solo or mp play, the size of the map, how late in the game, which mods are in use, game settings, and who you are presently worried about".

Re: PD wars! (no monkeys allowed)
 

sorry, yes, 210g. 155 is from 10 to 20.

I routinely buy enough PD to foil Call of the Wind. Generally that will handle arouse hunger too. (Its 5 monkey PD, less for most other nations).

And 3000 gold is 3-4 forts, which is confidence you won't be stripped of that gem income in a turn, and a place to hire units and mages.

All I'm saying is, PD is a pretty weak investment by comparison, because large amounts of PD are too expensive.