[Graeme Dice]

Arker said:
Nice backpedalling there.

Who's backpedalling? It's not my fault that you were the one who started this entire argument by telling me that "I can't believe you can say that with a straight face." I mean, you're the one who posted "Actually, that's the point, they DON'T just do what they're ordered to do." Now you're claiming that they _do_ act as ordered.

So it turns out, contrary to your past flames, we *agree* that the behaviour I'm seeing is the behaviour that's programmed into the game, you just want to try and make a big deal out of the fact you don't like how I phrase it.

I suggest that you might want to go back and re-read page 3. You'll note that you wrote "I don't see how you could say that with a straight face, knowing that there are several final orders that can be given, yet as discussed in this thread the AI always uses 'stay behind troops' even when it's not the order given?" And you might also want to go re-read page 2, where you state that "Actually, that's the point, they DON'T just do what they're ordered to do."

I don't believe I ever said it was a bug, although you keep attributing that to me. I said it was annoying.

"Actually, that's the point, they DON'T just do what they're ordered to do." If that's not calling something a bug, then nothing is.

Not at all. Pangaea has much heavier troops than the centaur warriors. Do you ever play them?

Yes, I've played Pangaea several times. Their only troops that could be called "heavy" are satyr hoplites, minotaurs, and centaur cataphracts. Hoplites are mediocre compared to centaur warriors. The same gold cost in centaurs would win easily. Cataphracts require huge numbers of resources, as do minotaur warriors.

I have.

Then you haven't run very many test games. I certainly hope you're not using Saber Cherry's combat simulator.

Pangaea, for your information, has Minotaurs. And War Minotaurs. The latter may well be the heaviest infantry in the game.

Both are useless for their gold and resource cost compared to centaur warriors.

So you do realise they exist after all!

I realize that they exist, I also realize that they aren't worth their cost. They might be worth it if they didn't have trample so that they would actually use their equipped weapons instead of fatiguing themselves after a half dozen turns.

Well, yeah, if you send one out alone that'll happen. Twenty five or thirty of the suckers, with some cheap support, cut through enemy armies numbering into the hundreds like a hot knife through butter.

In order to field 25-30 minotaurs in a reasonable amount of time, you'll need an order 3 scale, and probably a fortress or a castle. That puts your pretender at a 240 - 320 point disadvantage compared to the person who takes sloth 3, a watchtower, and recruits centaur warriors instead. Those minotaurs will be taken out very easily by any kind of battlefield magic.

Light infantry are less effective than they should be, which is why I suggested a modification to the AI that would improve the situation, yes, but if you think they're useless you're just not using them right.

If you spend 1000 gold on light infantry, and I spend 1000 gold on heavy infantry, you will end up losing, since I'll have about 75% as many troops as you, yet each one can kill two or three (or more) of yours.

IF you set them up on the battlefield right, right for Dominions that is, not right in any realistic sense, then yes, you can get that out of them. If they're foot troops, at least.

It's not hard to set them up right. You put them in a single block in the middle of the field on "fire closest".

If they had retrograde movement, they could be used more realistically, and more effectively. Since it's possible to fudge it with foot troops, it's not such a big deal there - but horse archers are another matter.

Since foot archers can reach across nearly the entire battlefield, what possible advantage do you hope to gain by using mounted archers? You aren't going to do significantly more damage by having them move closer, the combat model isn't detailed enough for that.