Re: Fixing PD?
That would lead to some pretty nasty trips through PD. In Guerilla warfare, provinces are changing hands rapidly. Every time the defender throws down 15 gold, he'd get a mage - mages that are things like Seraphs (throwing one or more lightning bolts before she goes down), Witch Doctors (throwing one or more Fire Darts before going down), and so on and so forth. If every time you attacked a province, people could spend very tiny amounts of money (15 gold) to cause you 1+ casualties of real troops, that would favor the defense a lot.
Already it's a pretty ugly experience trying to get a force into the dominion of someone who has Lure of the Deep or Wrath of God going - I don't think that everyone needs to be able to shoot lazers at interlopers for pocket lint.
What I would like to see is a better return on investment for PD of more than 10. As is, 1 gold gets you a look-see at exactly what just came in and took your province (so you can decide whether to Mind Hunt it or not), and 55 gold gets you a net that catches the occassional spy. Since it doesn't cost any upkeep, that's cheaper than a lone indep commander doing the same thing after 13 turns. And it works more and is more likely to win when it finds one and can't be assasinated and is invisible to enemies on the main map most of the time.
So 1 PD and 10 PD are worth it in the abstract - without actually taking into account whatever military worth they may have (which is usually nothing if you are talking Machaka, but quite substantial if you are talking Atlantis, Ulm, or Caelum). But PDs in excess of that are not. They generally suck, even for groups who in general have very nice PD - I wouldn't buy 17 points of Caelum PD under any circumstances.
So what I'd like to see is a breakpoint or three in the 11-19 range. I could deal with having wizards show up, for example. If Atlantis got a Deep Seer or Sea King at some intermediate point, we'd ever see those intermediate PD levels, which would be good.
-Frank
|