[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
It is for me. I like having realistic armies with combined arms. Having missile weapons so deadly to your own units greatly reduces the strategic options of the game.

I've never found them to be that much of a problem unless you are using completely unarmored troops, or you have your archers a long ways away from the front lines. Archers are very good for dealing with high defense units like Van, knights and such, as they are much easier to hit this way.

Here is an example: Jotun Spearman compared to Jotun Huskarl with spear: 18 prot. vs. 15 prot.; 10 def. vs. 11 def.; 6 fatigue vs. 5 fatigue; 12 combat move vs. 13 combat move. Now for cost: 30 gold/32 res vs. 35 gold/23 resources.

That 5 gold extra has rarely been a determining factor; it is the 9 fewer resources that often allow more of the Huskarls to be built, which are roughly as strong as the Spearmen indivually. Not very balanced here it would seem.

I woud disagree with you here. The spearmen are usually better than the huskarls as they don't get hurt nearly as often. 18 protection is much better than 15 protection as there are very few weapons with a damage greater than 9, but there are a quite a few weapons with a damage of 5. As the protection value becomes equal to and exceeds the damage from a weapon your chance of ignoring most hits increases dramatically. A 15 prot huskarl has a 45% chance of taking damage from a shortsword (damage 5) in the hands of a strength 10 human. The 18 prot spearman has a 23.7% chance of taking at least a point of damage from the same attacker.

You should try out Saber Cherry's combat simulator, overall, the JO spearmen are just slightly ahead of most of their other units

The Hirdman are not that much stronger than the other melee units, save their longswords being slightly better than axes. And yet they cost a lot more, as they have high gold and resource costs.

Their longswords are considerably better than axes, because they do not cause a defense reduction. Their defense is also much better at 13 than at 11, because it means that they can be attacked by three units per round without their defense dropping below 10, unlike the 1 of other giants. Giants are most vulnerable to mobs of troops wearing their defense down and thereby allowing them to be hit often.

I have not noticed the Woodsman or Neifel Giants being that much more effective when lead by a Gode or a Herse. Maybe those blessings just need much better priests or some such to be effective.

Blessings are entirely dependant on the magic you choose at pretender creation. If you don't pick high magic scales of some type, then you won't see much use out of sacred troops other than their reduced maintenance. Nature 9 or 10 works very well with giants, as they can take a single hit and then regenerate it.

Now as for the other part... I have most certainly considered hte myriad of possibilities, and the bizarreness of how the unit costs work limits them.

I think it's more a matter that you don't fully understand how much difference a single point can make in a unit's combat performance when averaged over many units and many dice rolls.

I never said that a morale system was bad. It is a good thing for games to have. I have just said that the way the morale system works in Dominions 2 is a bit strange (or more than a bit in some cases).

The casualties that a unit can take without routing are often almost too high. After all, most ancient battles ended with a rout long before even 10% of a side might be killed. After all, that's a decimated force. It's only when you have extremely elite troops that people will stand and fight in the face of appreciable casualties.