Fixing PD?

[FrankTrollman]

Province defence costs N*(N+1)/2 gold, where N is the total PD you want.

As things currently stand, PD is variably good for different groups. I'm quite fond of Atlantis PD under water (and even above water if I have magic troops like Mindless Ones lying around that I want to participate in battles), an I'm quite fond of Caelum PD.

Some nations, notably Machaka and Man get PD that even in large numbers is only vaguely capable of defending itself from Scouts. I'm not sure if that's a balance point or just dumb. Remember though, capitols start with 25 PD for free, and there are events that will raise that by five or ten.

If you make PD too good, it will be really hard to siege people and Wind Ride will become even more awesome than it already is.

PD Costs:
1 - 1
2 - 3
3 - 6
4 - 10
5 - 15
6 - 21
7 - 28
8 - 36
9 - 45
10 - 55
11 - 66
12 - 78
13 - 91
14 - 105
15 - 120
16 - 136
17 - 153
18 - 171
19 - 190
20 - 210

Very generally, the first 10 costs 55, the second ten costs an additional 155, the third 10 costs an additional 255, and so on and so on.

-Frank

[Jurri]

Agrajag said:

But when you buy 20 PD you will get much more than only one sauromancer, you get 20 units and two priests and a commander, which together cost much less than 210 gold, and the PD version doesnt cost upkeep or requires supplies!

Ummm, I just wanted to comment on Panther's gripe about sauromancers beating PDs on their own. In fact the exact opposite you read me to mean That is to say, I don't think it's too terrible that a 180g sauromancer can beat a 210g Province Defense by himself, so perhaps no radical changes are necessary.

[The Panther]

Ah, but the sauromancer can move around, haul armies, cast rituals, research and is quite versatile. The PD just sits there doing nothing, waiting to be slaughtered by practically anything. Doesn't every single C'tis player build another sauromancer rather than 20 PD in most situations? The only true benefit of PD is to catch enemy spies if it can and help stop the hawk or wolf spell.


That is definitely a good point above made by Frank about making it hard to seige people if PD got too good. I once attacked an enemy who had 116 PD in a province, unbeknownst to me. My meager army of a couple of mages with maybe 20 devils and some random vine ogres and other Abysian infantry killed well over half of that huge PD before I lost everything. Had the enemy routed, I even could have won the battle with my smallish army. And that was over 8K gold he invested in that much PD.

PD certainly cannot slow invaders like watch towers can, which is why people usually spam towers and not PD.

[Jurri]

Verjigorm said:
I think that GR/Horror/etc should be useful in beating province defense, but that certain (expensive) levels of province defense should not be so easily dispatched. 40 province defense costs 820 gold. Should such an alottment of resources be susceptible to a cheap (5 gem) attack? OF COURSE, GR isn't really "cheap" considering the amount of research that must be done to acquire it AND the investment in wizards who can cast it. Lesser Horrors on the other hand are from a LEVEL 5 spell costing only 9 slaves (with moderately difficult paths) can scare away sizable PD. 9 slaves is very cheap....

How come Lesser Horrors are cast so seldom if it is only moderately difficult and very cheap? At least in my experience it is very rare too see send lesser horror except from a gift of kurgi, and not that, even, too often. ('Cause the Gift is so damn expensive!) Abysia can utilize them but to others B2S3 is quite a lot; giving two or three boosters for a mage to cast a lesser horror is far too much usually. And 9 slaves is a third of a Horde from Hell. I'd go so far as to say that a single HfH is better for the purpose than three send lesser horrors, especially if mage/booster time is taken into account.

Ghost Riders has been discussed to death earlier, I think, but in my opinion defeating PD is exactly the niche for it. A single GR can't beat even that if there's proper mage/priest support available. It's not like one must leave PD to cope on its own, is it?

[Arralen]

Endoperez said:
This mod might work.
..
#selectnation 2 -nation number, with abysia 0, atlantis 1... machaka 16
#defcom1 "Theurg" -base def commander
#defunit1 685 -first def unit, Alae Legionnaire
#defmult1 10 -defmult1 / 10 * pd = number of defunit1
#defcom2 "Arch Theurg" -commander on pd 20
#defunit2 688 -units gotten from pd 20 upwards, Triarius
#defmult2 20 -defmult2 / 10 * (pd-19) = number of defunit2

Does this actually work?

Last time I tried to mod the PD of a nation, it turned out that it wouldn't work unless I used the (how is it called?) .. commmand that erases all nations buildable troops, so I had to put the whole lot in again "by hand".
And IIRC there was some issue with the defmult as well, can't remember exactly what it was. something about the numbers/level, of which only some worked, and others not...

[Boron]

I completely agree with Panther on this issue .

Especially nations like Machaka are pathethic . You get only Militia as PD-Troops . Even if you buy 50 Pd you then have something like 120 militia which can't even beat 1 sauromancer or 1 false horror spammer normally .

The 2 Main issues with PD are Caelum Raiders and later Ghost Riders .

Another good idea imo would be to cap the costs at 20 Pd . Every additional Point then costs only 20 Gold also .
But this can't be modded Illwinter would have to do that by themselves .
Another idea would be that all nations have the same PD , hired mercenaries .

Cause PD can differ a lot . While Marignon PD is quite good Machaka PD just sucks .

[Endoperez]

I tried it, could recruit troops as Pythium and my home was defended by Alae L. and Triarius. I changed them to be from Pythian, nor Ermorian, legions but that shouldn't have broken anything. I haven't tested if the numbers of defmult1/2 actually work.

Besides, I have a bunch of mods in which the national troops have already been put in by hand... So if you want to mod PD, you can mod it through my Nation Replacement mods.

[Oversway]

I think it would help much if one could script PD. To not get bogged in micro there could be a nationwide PD-script to be applied to every province.

I like this idea.

It would be nice if the unit ids for PD were seperate from recruitables (I think they are the same now, right?). That way people could play around with modding the pd levels to balance to their taste.

[Endoperez]

Oversway, please look my post on the earlier page. I modded Pythium's provincial defence. It is not balanced, but it CAN be balanced doing what I did.

[Oversway]

Yeah, I saw what you did, that is cool. Although there was another post that claimed it was only working if you rebuild the entire nation?