Improving National troops ?!?

[Cohen]

Since in late game national troops become very very useless (ghost rider, 5 death gems, tartarian gate, 10 death gems, bane/wraith lord 10/40 death gems, and similar summons that vanquish them all) I've some proposes to do:

1- Improve their experience!
Only for national troops you've a different experience table ... far more better than the existing one, that should be used for Indies, pretenders, summons.

2- Giving them new skills:
Always gaining experience, national troops could gain some new skills:
Those with weapon lenght of 5 or 6 could fight like a true phalanx, considering the weapon range 2 (so they fight in 2 line of squares).
The troops with tower shield can or make a shield wall while advancing (protecting more from arrows) or having a training to bash the enemy with the shield before attaking (it's another usual attack, with no damage, but if it hits, the guy gets +X attack with the weapon usual attack since he unbalance the enemy).
Knights could fight in a wedge formation instead of the infantry line ... and this formation can penetrate the enemy ranks (for every enemy slain the knights advance taking his place ... bringing more knights in contact with the enemy).

3- Swarming!
I believe there should be more advantages in surrounding an enemy attaking it by everywhere (and dunno why not always troops surround an enemy all alone, but 2 or 3 fight and all the other idling behind waiting for their turn).
The -1 defence is very low ... I'd add an extra amount of fatigue for every enemy over the 2nd you've to defend from ... and raise too the defence malus.

4- War engines.
Allow some nations to recruit as commander ballistas, catapults and so on ... (ie a ballista can do a only damage effect like the fireball, 1 area effect, X damage), a ballista can pierce ranks, a trebuchet can do something like a flying shard and so on.

5- A lvl 4 priestly spell that bless weapons, making them more effective against undead and perhaps ignoring etherealness. This should be however fatigue costing and covering a small area.

6- Allow mages casting troop buff to choose target, at least the squad ... (not very useful to see your army of steel cast on militia men while perhaps you've knights).

Scales on long term game aren't very balanced, since Productivity gets owned by summons ... since you don't need troops anymore if not as sword fodder (siege ... uh ... gate cleaver or wall shaker works well and don't cost unkeep).
Growth is too slow too ... and this affect mainly troops ... small gold (20 gold on a 1000 income for scale point), pop growth too small, and supply is needed only if you play with (worhtless in mid late game) big armies.

Other stuff:
1- Battle Tactics, Engeneering:

Many armies built up defences before engaging enemies. Usually they were stakes (pointed staves put at 45 degrees in the earth) to stop cavalry charges, digs, fire arrows to make fields burning, and similar tricks.
I believe regular armies like Ulm, Pythium, Marignon, Man can use them with appropriate/specific leader (Ancient Rome was famous for this).

2- Battle Tactics, out of Battle Map movement.

Possibility to give orders to troops fo Flank or get the enemy rear. These are orders given in Army Setup.
Flank Up/Down: troops comes in Battle Map with 1d4+1 combat turns later but appears from high or low border later, and have attack closer order. To Flank troops should have a minimum AP Value of XX (I suppose only Cavalry can do it)
Encircle: troops doesn't join battle at all but they reach enemy behind line in 1d4 +2 combat turns and wait to catch routing units inflicting more (depending on movement speed) damage to them when they leave battle. Only light cavalry can do this. If the enemy flees before this maneuver is useless.

-- if both armies have flanking or encircling troops a secondary battle occurs, and is calculated mathematically without displaying it in replay. Each round of battle will delay the maneuver by 1 combat turn. The routed units won't accomplish the maneuver.

3- Battle Tactics, Fire and Flee

Modify this, Fleeing troops always scatter in around provinces. It is assumed each army has a battlecamp behind the teather of action. So fleeing units will regroup there. In case of loss, they scatter as usual, but if you win, you find your troops in your army normally because they were "retrating" and not routing.

4- Battle Tactics, Land.

Have a modifier for Province Type. I know it is assumed to seek the best battle terrain for own armies but usually defender find it. It's assumed a forest or mountain province could have some plains and so on but defender should have preferred terrain.

*Plains, Farmland - No problems.
*Forests and Mountains - Heavy armored troops should have problems to fight and move there, and perhaps heavy knights should dismount (you've to add smonted knights troops for each knight type). Forests should hamper long ranged weapons.
*Swamps - Only light and medium infantry should fight, heavy armored ones will be catched by swamps.
However something similar ... so on I make an example:

Ulm is attacking Pangea, in a forest province:
the battle will be in forest territory cause Pangea is defending and chooses where to fight.
Ulm is defening from Pangea in a forest province.
Ulm will defend on a plain or a big grove, so his infantry and knights haven't problems maneuvering.

This could be balanced by improving a little armours, cause having too heavy armors prevent you fighting well in many provinces.

5- Battle Tactics, Special Orders (Army Setup)

Skirmish - This is a command for light cavalry with bows and light infantry with javelins or axes, who're not very well suited for close combat. They're a bit more spread to avoid arrows. Skirmish is a "Fire closest and avoid to be engaged til the end of ammos". They get closed to enemy, fire, and escape firing if they're too close the enemy, so they keep moving, perhaps encircling or spreading too to leave ground to the incoming heavier infantry. Historically this was most used, Ancient Rome Velites did it, but were too weak to engage battle. To see what to do after having ended ammos, you've to tell them a second order (Skirmish Attack, Skirmish Flee, Skirmish Guard Commander)

Wedge - This is an order to heavy cavalry/infantry only. They'ven't a line formation but a wedge one and is supposed to be used to divide enemy ranks. The knights will go straight opening a breach in the line trying to reach the rearmost enemies. Instead of flanking, this a force brute way to reach rear lines with a bulk of iron and men. This should work so each fallen enemy is a place to advance with the formation cause it should enter the enemy ranks. Seek for Cannae Roman vs Carthago battle or Lake Peipus battle (Teutonic Order vs Novgorod) to have historical tactical issues about this.

Hold the ground - This should an Hold command troops stay there until enemy comes into a small range of few hexes. This is suited for army with a great number of archers and so on, when general want infantry to protect them lessening the casualty of friendly fire. (he only delay the turn of hand to hand engagement)


Retreat - Units with the retreat order won't rout and spread but retreat BEFORE being engaged! Each leader will retreat in a neighbouring province. Leader spread (if more than 1 are present in the province, not troops). This works for regular armies. Scout are assumed to be catched and encircled by superior enemy forces and slain mercilessly, without having the possibility of not engaging enemy.


Some other ideas?

[PvK]

* Try playing with slow research, so magic takes longer to get very powerful.

* Try bringing enough priests with your armies so that people using those undead summons you mentioned, get banished to bits.

* If there were an increased penalty for being attacked by many foes, I would not make it a fatigue penalty, and perhaps not an increased defense penalty, but perhaps instead an offense penalty. A skilled defender could then still have some chance of staying alive for a while, but would have a harder time killing enemies while fighting several at once. It would also increase the value of high attack skill.

PvK

[Huzurdaddi]

Since in late game national troops become very very useless (ghost rider, 5 death gems, tartarian gate, 10 death gems, bane/wraith lord 10/40 death gems, and similar summons that vanquish them all) I've some proposes to do:

I have an idea. Let's look at what all of the summons you have pointed out have in common: death magic!

Let's talk about the early summons that people use that are really good: Banes, Wrights. The later on Bane Lords, Wraith Lords and then the summons that you list.

The only other path which comes close is Blood ( demons are simply *really* inexpensive compared to what you get ).

Were it not for those two paths national troops would be effective for far longer. Sure national troops would be dominated by mages in the end, but isn't that what we expect?

[Cohen]

Slow research probably force you to take a strong pretenders, an SC chassis ... because if you don't take and enemy has, in early game you get bashed.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Cohen:
Slow research probably force you to take a strong pretenders, an SC chassis ... because if you don't take and enemy has, in early game you get bashed.

If you aren't taking a strong pretender, then the reason you are getting defeated is probably not due to your national troops, but instead due to a poor choice in pretenders.

[Cohen]

If you go for a scale or bless pretender ... you're beaten by a fighting one.

[Stormbinder]

I like several ideas listed by Cohen. And it is true, that by the end of the competitive MP game the main difference between nations are their national mages, since nobody (with few rare exceptions) using national troops anymore, because summons and SC outclass them, even if nations have decent bless effects.

Unfortunately I don't think most of the Cohen's suggestions could be implemented by devs at this point, because it would require too much changes and rebalancing.

But perhaps some of the more simple ones from his list have a chance of being implemented. Like for example allowing national units to gain exp on different table (or just 2 times faster) than summoned troops. Not a big change, and it could be applied to all nations, improving each national troops a little without massive efforts of rebalancing 1000+ units.

Other equally simple and easly implemented changes could be added as well. The goal would be to give all national soldiers a slight boost, to make tham somewhat usable at the mid/end game, but without nerfing any of 100s of summons and without massive rebalancing efforts between 17 nations.


Perhaps some of more complicated suggestions would find its way to Dom3. For example, some "champion level" (lvl3 or 4 in current dom2 system) that can unlock special abilities in veteran troops would be very nice. Such system was implemented in AOW2 and AOW2:SM, worked marvelliosly. It would make you really care about some of your veteran soldiers.

[ May 31, 2004, 20:52: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Cohen:
If you go for a scale or bless pretender ... you're beaten by a fighting one.

That's not my experience. Many of the bless pretenders can qualify as SCs. An air 9 titan, for example, can work very well. So can an earth mother, or any other unit with a large amount of hitpoints. The equipment that you choose to put on them can make a huge amount of difference in their effectiveness.

As for the scales, they are extremely useful throughout much of the game. National troops only become less useful when they aren't that impressive to begin with. Ulm, for example, has only middle-range troops, and therefore needs to develop magical abilities to overcome this weakness.