LA Ermor's Dominion Change in 3.15... - Page 6

otthegreat · #51 March 9th, 2008, 11:39 AM

Quote:

B0rsuk said:
Hey, correct me if I'm wrong.

Growth scale gives +0.2% population per turn. This means +0.6% at Growth3 . I'm not sure, but I think there's no upper cap for province, no environment capacity. Some terrains just tend to start with more people than others, for example Swamp or Wasteland seems to have lower initial population. But from that point it's only affected by Death/Growth scale.

Apparently some nations (or their dominion) kills civilian population at alarming rate. There's pretty much no way of restoring that population reliably. That +0.6% from growth will take you nowhere. This is, I believe, consistent with the theme of the game (the end days, god wars, mortals die by thousands...). But there seems to be a consensus that Growth scale is unusually bad. There's an opportunity to make it better by simulating (simplified) laws of ecology.
How about this: Growth scale effect is 5x higher (or fixed at certain number) for provinces having population of 2000 or less. For provinces 2000-4000 , the multiplier would be 3x instead (3x of usual 0.6%). This is to simulate the fact that, in ecology (especially for animals, which are almost exlusively hunters and gatherers) population growth booms initially, and slows down as it reaches environment capacity.

What do you think about it ? This way, Growth scale could be used to at least partially regrow provinces devastated by Ermor dominion. It's not like Growth scale is very useful at the moment...

I know this was mentioned a while back but I think it should get more attention. I agree that there should be a way to partially regrow devastated provinces and growth scale is probably the best choice. I believe that in nature, populations grow in a kind of "S" curve - the growth rate increasing exponentially before slowing down again and finally stopping when it reaches a ceiling determined by the environment. It would be interesting if there was a way to include this in dominions.

Now that I think of it though, games don't last very long, only a few years, so a model of long term growth like this might not be realistic after all. Just some thoughts.

Agrajag · #52 March 9th, 2008, 12:32 PM

Growth in dominions is exponential.
It's just that even with growth-3 it's just 1.006^n

B0rsuk · #53 March 9th, 2008, 12:55 PM

Quote:

otthegreat said:
I believe that in nature, populations grow in a kind of "S" curve - the growth rate increasing exponentially before slowing down again and finally stopping when it reaches a ceiling determined by the environment. It would be interesting if there was a way to include this in dominions.

Now that I think of it though, games don't last very long, only a few years, so a model of long term growth like this might not be realistic after all. Just some thoughts.

It's called 'bell curve' .
Why not realistic ? It's a matter of massaging the numbers until it's playable. Currently Growth scale is pretty much unplayable. Supply was nicely balanced in Dom2, I had to actually look before stepping into a mountain or wasteland. Now I rarely bother.

vfb · #54 March 9th, 2008, 12:58 PM

It would be cool if different nations had different base growth. Humans would be pretty high, Heims would be bad, Abysia and Fomoria and Agartha would be dismal. Caelum and C'tis could get a surge of growth only in the spring.

Agrajag · #55 March 9th, 2008, 02:09 PM

Quote:

B0rsuk said:

Quote:

otthegreat said:
I believe that in nature, populations grow in a kind of "S" curve - the growth rate increasing exponentially before slowing down again and finally stopping when it reaches a ceiling determined by the environment. It would be interesting if there was a way to include this in dominions.

Now that I think of it though, games don't last very long, only a few years, so a model of long term growth like this might not be realistic after all. Just some thoughts.

It's called 'bell curve' .

The "S" curve he mentioned was regarding the total population. Obviously, total population over time does not follow a bell curve.
The case he described does "contain" a bell curve, with "growth rate over time" following a bell-like curve.

llamabeast · #56 March 9th, 2008, 02:15 PM

Yep, the bell curve is the differential (gradient) of the s-curve. The s-curve is often called a sigmoidal curve, sigma being the greek s.

WraithLord · #57 March 9th, 2008, 05:32 PM

Wow, Your ideas (Saulot, llamabeast and Endoperez) sound promising. Maybe we can spawn a dedicated thread to brain storm a new *different* (probably modded) nation for dominions along the lines of one of the ideas you've suggested.

Saulot · #58 March 9th, 2008, 08:08 PM

Undeath discussion:
That sounds fine WraithLord. I guess that would go in the mod forum. I confess I have no time to contribute actual work (outside of thinking/speculation) for a long while.

Oh, also as a suggestion to just improve undead overall (which would also slightly tweak up Ermor), soulless should probably have a secondaryeffect disease on their weapon (fist / claw usually?). They are after all, a walking corpse.

About the population discussion:
Well, it's certainly true that the games don't last long enough to really show population changes into a different generation, and so vast differences in the populations doesn't make much sense.

Furthermore, during a game of Dominions is the 'time of the Chaos War' as I like to call it, when a pretender rises to dominance, and there should be much turmoil, death, and destruction of the peoples.

However, this is a game of magic, in a land with magic, and magic should provide an answer. There should probably be some sort of province enchantment which produces, let's say 50 to 500 more people per turn (probably a nature spell). As a province enchantment, this should prevent abuse or inbalance, and if priced correctly would likely only be used in situations which really warrant it.

Xavier · #59 March 9th, 2008, 08:38 PM

What about a nation of dragons? Ranging from humanoid dragon-kin (I'm thinking AD&D Dragonlance draconions) all the way to full on ancient dragons (which would be SCs at or above the level of Niefel Jarls). In between you have the most powerful of the dragon-kin and the very youngest of the dragons, which can be your stock mages and your non-mage commanders. The whole thing can be summonable (x gems for 5 to 15 of the regular dragon-kin, which are your troops, x gems for 1 dragon-kin mage, and then LOTS of gems, and some research, for the full-on dragons). You can even make it multiple path based, and allow summoning of different kinds of dragons (like the dragon pretenders).

That'd be a non-gold based nation that I think would be pretty interesting, and different from anything out there.

Endoperez · #60 March 9th, 2008, 08:49 PM

Conquest of Elysiun uses the form of "few gems for troops, more gems for good commanders/special units, lots of gems for very good commander" extensively. The problem is that one good commander or small group of very good units is much better than lots of weak units.

Making gold-independent nation also has the problem that all nations will have money, and if they won't use it elsewhere they'll use independents a lot, castles a lot, can build temples everywhere and probably won't suffer from upkeep nearly as much as common nations.