[Jasper]

Originally posted by licker:
First of all I didn't say to lower their costs, just the cost to maintain them. If they are still inferior to HI they still won't be used in mass, but there will be a sweet point where a certain amount of LI and HI will be more effective than just all of one or the other. Obviously we are on the all HI side of this curve right now.

I understood what you meant, and I still disagree.

In order to accurately portray the value of LI in Domintions you would have to make many changes to the combat system. In fact we had this arguement before when Saber suggested the addition of different damage catagories. Anyway, it comes down to the same thing, adding more complexity to an already complex game. What does it gain you to better modle the effects of terrain, or formations, or what have you, *just to make LI more viable*? Well that question answered itself right? My point is that adding this complexity is unneeded, and from the results of the Last thread, also unwanted (not by all, but by many).

Perhaps, but I don't think this is a good analogy. Adding the weapon types was simply a bad idea, which increased micromanagement, IMHO didn't add anything interesting, and had only a dubious connection to "realism". It would also have been alot of work, both to implement, and to play with.

On the other hand, you get get along way towards making LI viable with simple changes, that really do increase variety, have a basis in history, aren't a pain to play with, and require a ton of memorization.

1st: Allow light troops to deploy on the flanks.

2nd: Make light troops less susceptiple to missile hits, and increase missile accuracy and damage. One way is to make spread out so 2/3rds of all missiles miss them.

3rd: Allow an order for light troops to retire before being contacted by heavy troops.

4th: decrease the cost of light troops uniformly by 1 or 2 gold.

It would also be nice if troops got some sort of advantage flanking, but the dominions battle engine really doesn't allow this.

The simple fix is usually the best anyway, once you have a more balanced system you can continue to improve upon it, but to go for broke from the get go often has unintended consequences.

True. IMHO however a simple cost change is not a fix at all.

History may have more "interesting gameplay", but that in and of itself doesn't mean that it makes a good model for a game. More often than not the games that try to model their gameplay off of history wind up so complex, and with so many niggling omisions that the grand effect intended is completly lost. No I'd rather have Dominions write its own history rather than try to force feed concepts of our history into it. Granted many units are borrowed directly from ancient cultures, but if you want a game trying to model Roman or Greek battles pick up the Great Battles series, don't try to make Dominions something that it isn't.

The fact that some games do a bad job of emulating history doesn't prevent there being games that do a good job.

To put it bluntly, the dominions battle system is over complex, but not very interesting. There are systems that do a decent job of emulating reality, have less complexity, and more viable variety, take less micromanagement, and are just more fun. I would far rather see something emulate history, than emulate D&D.