Starting Providence
 

When you conquer someone Else's starting providence, why can't you create their unique units?

Re: Starting Providence
 

Do you mean their basic units or the special units available from the magic sites?

Basic units, something slightly more powerful than similar independents, wouldn't be overpowered even if other nations got access to them. It would give slight advantage to aggressive nation, though, which meant that a nation that conquered an enemy capital early could get access to types of units he couldn't normally get easily. Say, MA Mictlan getting Marignonese crossbowmen and infantry. A new poptype recruitment array would have to be created for most nations, but the idea is sound. There probably isn't particular reason for not including it.

The units from magic sites are special, often powerful, and clearly not something that other nations should get.

Re: Starting Providence
 

The idea behind this is IMHO that devs want you to play -your nation- , with an according strategy, and not a mix. Armies as a mix of many factions' units almost always worked badly in games, in my experience... Players just start to create the maximum - cost efficient army and when one is determined, everyone tries to get to that one and the game becomes standardized and boring.
I really like this as it works in Dom3 - you are the god of /this/ nation and /those/ are your followers - except of course if you brainwash and (master) enslave your enemies ;)

Re: Starting Providence
 

many nations have some questionably powerful non magic site units. Shinuyama comes to mind, especially if in this scenario, non-site commanders could be recruited too.

Re: Starting Providence
 

The way it is done is actually also pretty realistic, in that even when one conquers new territory, it is not possible to simply co-opt native militaries with acompletely different training and organizational structure into your own with some Borg-like assimilation.

It's a design decision and a sound one.

Re: Starting Providence
 

Although you could pick up the other nation's equipment and tools to make it, and/or make the 'civillian' craftsmen forge it for you. So, it could be possible to use at least (or, rather, at most) part of the unique national units.

Or, even, enable the recruitment of 'hybrid' units - that is, when a member of one nation picks up the equipment of another (Ashdod's giant wearing Ulm's black plate armor, or something?).

But yes, as it is, balance and natio uniqueness is preserved, and it is, probably, the way it should stay.

Re: Starting Providence
 

Before we started on development of dominions we played some VGA-planets. IIRC it was possible to capture and reproduce other players ships, which led allied players to combine their best ships making them way more powerful and less diverse than we were comfortable with. HOMM suffered from a similar problem. After a while you didnt have your own best troop as best troop, but some other players best troop.

We wanted to avoid that to keep nations diverse. In dom-ppp and dom2 there weren't national summons to the same extent and mages had more random paths breadth so eventually every player had access to every spell and the most powerful units anyway. We wanted to limit this in dom3 keep the unique feel of nations longer in the game. In the late stages of the game differences are less obvious, but I think we have succeded in making the nations different enough not to be a bother anymore.

I am generally in disfavor of symmetry and equal opportunities :)

If it is possible to aquire someone else's traits, the game quicky devolves into a boring game where everyone just plays the same nation and it will be possible to find an optimal strategy. Diversification makes optimal strategies tied to each nation and is thereby varied and you will need creativity and clever thinking to adapt to the current situation. You strength will depend on who you face on the battlefield.

Hmm, wonder how that came out :) I think I was a bit unstructured.

Re: Starting Providence
 

What if the Home Provinces would hava a special poptype, that would let you some units of the passed by nations, not the strong ones but solely for flavour?

stupid question: could this be done with a mod?

Re: Starting Providence
 

There are however many ways within the game to pick up individual commanders from another nation. Ways to capture and transport another nations commander snatching them away from their army or even their home capital, ways to convert them to your side. Often my goal in doing it is just to double-damage their army. Gain a commander or mage for me, and force them to leve troops behind on their march for lack of leader. But I also tend to like to choose targets based on which nation has units I can get the most use out of.

Gandalf Parker

Re: Starting Providence
 

It can be done in maps, but not modded. Map-commands allow you to set where a nation starts, and changing of a poptype of a spesific province. Together, this gets the result you want. If someone (it could be you!) combined a list of nations and fitting poptypes, it shouldn't be hard to do a script to automate it.

These poptypes can NOT be recruited by the nation that starts on top of them, of course.

New poptypes can't be created, but the existing poptypes can be used for many nations. E.g.:

Abysia - Garnet Amazons
C'tis - independent lizards
Man - knights/longbowmen
Ulm - there's probably some poptype with both armored infantry and armored crossbowmen
Marignon - light infantry and light crossbows
Machaka - Lion Tribe
Mictlan - Jaguar Tribe

Some nations don't have appopriate poptypes (all giant races, R'lyeh, Pythium), and the balance change could be problematic, especially for giving out mages.