Light Infantry... what the ****

[Jasper]

Originally posted by Wauthan:
Light Infantery would be more useful if the battleground itself varied a bit more. On a dry flat ground it's pretty obvious that a man with heavy plate armour will have an advantage over a man in a leather cuirass. But if there was a penalty to encumberance in muddy, uneven, snowy, elevated or vegetation covered battlefields then the light infantery would have the upper hand.

[snip]

Being able to choose your battleground if you have the faster army would be a nice addition to Dominions III.

Very true! Unfortunately Dominions 2 isn't really setup to handle this.

[Jasper]

Originally posted by Wendigo:
I actually like the hirdmen for default Vanheim. They are my 'center of the line' troop of choice when facing Ermorian hordes for example, and they specifically shine for default Van when combined with the supberb Dwarf support mages.

Yah, it's good to look at the full picture. Easy access to buffing spells helps vanheim immensely; it'd also help other factions, but they often don't have such easy access. I'm still not so fond of the Hirdmen though, as these things can also be done for other factions (e.g. Ulm, Machaka, Arcoscephale), if not as easily.

Vanheim has one of my favorite troop selections as well, in sharp contrast to many factions which have a wide swath of marginal troops. Both the Van and Valkyrie are a nice option (especially with blessing + Strength of Giants), and the Einheres really pack a bite once berserk.

[ April 14, 2004, 11:04: Message edited by: Jasper ]

[Jasper]

Originally posted by Firebreath:
Is there a place to suggest improvements to the appropriate people somewhere in this forum? Something like heavy inf. get a heavy encumberance penalty (+100%) when fighting in mountains, 50% in forests, etc. A 'attack and swarm enemy flank, then run away before the center has time to react' command might be interesting for fast LI.

The place for suggestions is pretty much here. The developers skim through, and sometimes pick up things without commenting.

My first thought was that a general battle effect from a province's terrain doesn't make any sense, as the battle will be fought in some open area. But your suggest could represent the effect of carrying heavy equipment through rough terrain and showing up to a battle tired, which is quite reasonable!

Perhaps heavily encumbered troops could start with some fatigue in "heavy" terrain provinces?

[Wendigo]

Perhaps heavily encumbered troops could start with some fatigue in "heavy" terrain provinces?

This is a pretty interesting idea, and the type of flavour thing IW favours adopting.

Maybe also easy to implement, same as we have extreme cold/heat penalties to encumbrance depending on province weather scales, we could have some penalties depending on province terrain.

Just should be careful not to make 0-encumbrance troops too powerful from such change.

[Jasper]

Indeed. Plausible, simple to implement, and doesn't require extending the user interface.

I have my doubts on how it might affect 0-encumberance troops as well, and no trick comes to mind to alleviate them. Perhaps it's not so bad if such troops get a bonus in rough terrain? It's certainly thematic.

Not applying this penalty to commanders might help, so as not to penalize mages which often an effective counter to 0-enc units.

[Pocus]

in the same trend, perhaps heavy terrains can give added fatigues to troops, each round. This added fatigue is moreover not given linearly, but is derivated from the encumberance, so that light troops get only +1 penalty in the heaviest terrains, while HI get an added +2 to +4:

unit encumberance; added fatigue:
1-3 : +1 in swamp or mountain
4-5 : +1 in forest, +2 swamp or mountain
6-7: +2 in forest, +3 swamp or mountain ...

modify this by -1 if terrain survival ability is presents.

[Jasper]

Faster fatigue during the battle gives me mental dissonance, as there is no terrain on the battlefield. If the field _were_ uniformly covered in rough terrain, then units like HI, cavalry, and archers should be useless.

Partially covering terrain would be ok, but is just too complex for the dominions battle engine to handle (and is perhaps better handled in another game...).

[Wauthan]

Good idea Pocus. It's all about whom chooses the field of battle. Surely an C'Tis general would try to corner his oppponents in a murky swamp since his units got the edge. Then again undead would be even more scary since they would be immune to any fatigue increase. A further possibility for LI is to increase the size of the unit one step, to reflect an open formation. It's a bit of work but plausible enough for a mod. Might be a tad bit hard to figure out just what a "light" unit is considering the fantasy element though.

[ April 14, 2004, 11:35: Message edited by: Wauthan ]

[Firebreath]

I should add, that I have rarely seen a game with such an active and positive post release developer involvement.

Keep it up, whoever you are

[Arralen]

Originally posted by Jasper:
IMHO, rather than reducing their cost and making them better fodder, they should instead be improved in a manner similar to how they were used Historically.

For example, what if they were dispersed and so took fewer missile/spell casualties?

Suggested this some times ago (insert link to old thread here):
LI shouldn't move into a square where another unit from the same squad is present. Thus LI will show up with 1/3 the normal density to cover a bigger front line, which will let more units escape area spells and missile fire.
Best of all - it could use the same code that prevents units from running into poisioned/burning/whatever squares.
Oh, wait, that code still doesn't exist. Maybe that's why the dev's liked this suggestion, but we don't have it put into practice with 2.11

What if they could fallback before contract, or fire for 2 rounds then backup? What if a victor's fleeing units didn't leave the province? etc.

"Fire and flee" will do exactly that. The first part, that is ...
Wasn't there some talk about units orderd to retreat shouldn't spread out over neighbouring provinces any more but should stay with your army if you actually win the fight?

Another thing which hasn't materialized with the latest patch ...

[ April 15, 2004, 02:39: Message edited by: Arralen ]