[Saber Cherry]

Arralen said:
Barbarians

What about making all Barbs berserkers?
(Thinking about it - AFAICR they where berserkers in DOM1, wheren't they?)

I'm pretty sure they weren't. Regardless, that's a good idea... I've been thinking about it a bit, and the only troublesome thing is that Barbarian leader descriptions say, "All barbarian leaders can berserk," implying that non-leaders cannot. However, I might just go ahead and modify the description=) If leaders retain their +3 berserk and normal barbarians get +1 berserk, it should all be ok, and Illwinter won't get mad, right?

Arralen said:
Arrows do more damager per shot, especially against troops with light armor and without shields. Slingers are actually better against troops with shields than archers, as they still cause full shock damage even if the projectile is caught with the shield, because of it's greater mass. Furthermore the volume of fire from slingers is considerably higher due to the easier availability of ammo ... .

The problems with slingers in Dom2 is actually their abysmal accuracy (-3 IIRC), which is IMHO not supported by ancient sources.

Longbowmen are an entirely different matter. In Dom, either their damage is too low or they should have "armor piercing" qualities.

More damage for longbows sounds reasonable, since historically they defeated fully-armored knights. How about reducing longbow damage to 4 and making strength additive? Then with longbowman strength 11 they'd end up at 15 damage, able to hurt heavy infantry regularly. I don't want to make them AP simply because that edges in on Crossbow turf.

As for slings, I could modify them to fire twice per round (I think)... were slings CERTAINLY much faster firing than bows? Are you (or anyone else) fairly sure about this?

Boron said:
A few suggestions :
You should make the ryleh freespawns upkeepfree.

Excellent idea, I didn't realize they had upkeep=)

Militia could be need not eat to reflect that they only get surplus food but in times of need they don't get food and can starve. 1 Gold Militia would also make the "good" free militia events less troublesome.

Another good idea, although I'll have to give it some thought. 1 gold AND need-not-eat would be too much, though. The problem is... if militia are need-not-eat, they will NEVER starve and get diseased... and what fun is Dominions 2 without starving, diseased militia? But I want to set militia pricing so that free militia events are, at worst, neutral.

Maenads could also be need not eat because it is ridicoulous after 10 turns with 5 Pans you have like 500 Maenads . Their combat value is still almost zero but with need not eat they would at least be a nice "fodder horde" .

I gave them forest survival, which will hopefully help somewhat... At any rate, I generally find a use for them. Pangaea should have a high growth scale and plentiful nature magic, anyway. I think that "need not eat" is an extremely powerful ability, and while it does solve the problem that Doms 2 has no "food priority system", it would introduce its own problems and mess with realism as well. Maenads may not be good against mechanical men, but they are very good against super-heavy-infantry, for example. 500 maenads against 50 Ulm black plate infantry... in order to kill the maenads, even at an impossible 1-hit-per-kill, the infantry would generate 100 fatigue each and fall asleep.

Do you intend to reduce resource costs also or will they be unchanged ?

I don't plan to change resource costs unless I change a unit's equipment (like Ghoul Guardian) or find an error.

I am anyways looking forward to your mod.

Thanks, me too


P.S. I just combat-simulated harpies (which are similar to but even worse than maenads) versus Ulm heavy infantry, and found a roughly 5-to-1 equivalance:

Code:

---

'50*Pan Harpy' versus '10*Ulm Inf Hammer 1'  in 40000 bouts.



 ~ Attacker's Deathmatch Statistics ~



Score: ----------------------  587

Wins: -----------------------   58.73%

Losses: ---------------------   41.28%

Kills per battle: -----------    6.96

Kills per round: ------------     .52

Deaths per battle: ----------   42.16

Life expectancy (rounds): ---   32.11

Life expectancy (battles): --    2.39

Avg. Rounds Elapsed: --------   13.46

Avg. Rounds to Win: ---------   13.61

Avg. Rounds to Lose: --------   13.25

Hit Rate: -------------------   71.29%

Evade Rate: -----------------   56.54%

Damage done per swing: ------     .26

Damage done per hit: --------     .36

Damage taken per hit: -------   17.02

Hit damage taken per life: --   17.46

Total damage taken per life:    18.41

---

The Ulm troops are dying from fatigue. Please note that the difference between the last two numbers is due to repel damage (I think).