The problem of low hit points on humans

[UninspiredName]

Graeme Dice said:
They are ulmish heroes, so there's no ring of tamed lightning until you've bought a huge amount of master smiths. The copper plate just means that they'll die to a couple of smites, or a fireball instead.

Ah, so what you want is humans to survive three-meter radius (give or take) orbs of fire. Besides, they rarely hit their intended square anyways.

At any rate, between 'assassin' spells and combat magic, magic is pretty much the bane of heroes. I don't deny that, it's just the way Dominions works.

Heroes cost you a good portion of the 120 design points you'd otherwise get if you took misfortune 3.

I get enough crappy events with Order 3 Luck 0, thank you. I haven't even dared try a misfortune scale.

As I expected, you sound like one of the players who are happy with the dumbing down of Dominions 3 compared to Dom2 and the general reduction in the power of magic.

First-off, I fail to see how Dominions 3 was 'dumbed down' compared to 2. All I can think of off the top of my head is the inability to choose a Pretender's castle, (I'll admit, that was a neat feature, but I find it restricted the flow of the game. You shouldn't have to build an ultra-expensive citadel as a defensive precaution on the frontlines that will be abandoned soon enough, or a low-admin Mausoleum where you want to crank out former Independent Knights.) special dominions being replaced with ritual spells and new ages, (I'm sort of indifferent on this one, honestly) and auto-setting the taxes (Which I'll assume you weren't referring to).

If magic was weakened any between Dominions 2 and 3, it's still pretty damned tough. You cite it as pretty much the #1 way of killing generals, summons are the real 'heroes' of Dominions, national spells shape nations, and six E3 mages and a small team of heavilly armored men can fend back 120 somewhat skilled and decently armored troops (Happened to me once, my Nagarishis and Bandars vs. Jomon's samurai. I ended up losing, but only due to sucky morale checks. Jomon had no more than 10 units left, which were commanders, by battle's end. They massacared my sleeping mages). I'll admit the researching is a hit, but I don't see how it was weakened aside from that.

You sound like one of the players that would rather be playing Dominions 2 if it had an active modding community.

I want the elite commanders with no added equipment to be able to survive nearly any battle that their side wins. These are supposed to be experienced frontline soldiers, not rank and file cannon fodder.

That's sort of ridiculous to my way of thinking. Many times you'll be fighting elite, possibly F9-blessed men, combat mages, (which are many times the price equivelant of 'elite commanders' themselves, despite having no commander talents) and summoned monsters that are simply more powerful than humans. The kind your 'rank and file cannon fodder' would be torn to shreds by, even outnumbered 3 to 1. Expecting one elite soldier to fend off groups of three somewhat less elite soldiers for an entire battle might be asking too much.

The commander would see no change in cost at all, since that's the bare minimum to make them anywhere as useful as a battle mage.

But you forget one thing, that commanders command. Commanders may be elite warriors, yes, but that's not what most people recruit them as. Most people just prefer recruiting elite warriors to serve as elite warriors. One can recruit battle mages instead of commanders, but then battle mages would be all you have. Maybe a few men as well, but it would be a small enough amount that it wouldn't be able to hold off a commander or two with any respectable amount of men. Commanders will always have that talent, which Battle Mages can never take.

When it comes down to it, this entire argument is a matter of taste. The way I see it, human commanders aren't meant to be on the frontlines. One doesn't recruit a Myrmidon Commander instead of a Myrmidon to put it on the frontlines and expect it to somehow fare better than warriors of equal skill, but worse commanding ability.

[Graeme Dice]

UninspiredName said:
Ah, so what you want is humans to survive three-meter radius (give or take) orbs of fire. Besides, they rarely hit their intended square anyways.

I have little problem with somebody who's survived decades of combat against armies that routinely lob fireballs around being able to survive those hits.

At any rate, between 'assassin' spells and combat magic, magic is pretty much the bane of heroes. I don't deny that, it's just the way Dominions works.

The way that the system works though is that human combat mages can gather a couple of doezen kills over their career without any gem investment and with fairly minimal danger. A human commander is virtually never going to reach that goal.

First-off, I fail to see how Dominions 3 was 'dumbed down' compared to 2.

There are a number of reasons. The morale system is still broken and still autorouts commanders when their troops die, and still kills troops that don't have a province to retreat to, yet now it even affects beings that aren't even hurt by the attacks they are experiencing. Quickness no longer affects spells, so all those mages (and there are a lot of them) that cost extra gold for W1 no longer see any benefit from that extra path. Research is at the very difficult setting by default, so that pushing armies around the map, especially armies composed of undercosted sacred troops is the best strategy for the majority of the important turns of the game.

You sound like one of the players that would rather be playing Dominions 2 if it had an active modding community.

I would. Other than the obvious interface improvements and additional nations, I think that Dom2 was a better game than Dom3.

Many times you'll be fighting elite, possibly F9-blessed men,

Commanders are not just slightly more elite than your normal troops. They have such supposedly impressive abilities that you can only recruit a single one per month.

Expecting one elite soldier to fend off groups of three somewhat less elite soldiers for an entire battle might be asking too much.

If he can't, then there's no point in his existing in the first place. That's why people use independent commanders who are cheaper and just as good at standing behind the troops.

But you forget one thing, that commanders command. Commanders may be elite warriors, yes, but that's not what most people recruit them as.

That's a game mechanic convention, nothing else.

One can recruit battle mages instead of commanders, but then battle mages would be all you have.

I wasn't aware that recruiting battle mages prevented you from recruiting independent commanders to move your troops around, becaue that's what you're arguing here.

When it comes down to it, this entire argument is a matter of taste. The way I see it, human commanders aren't meant to be on the frontlines.

Then the elite versions might as well not exist for all the gameplay effect that they have. You get more survivability and more utility out of three independent commanders than a single black lord, and they both have the same cost.

[curtadams]

There seem to be some straw man arguments going on. Has ANYBODY suggested human melee commanders should be able to take on dragons, high-end summons, or real giants (not Jotunheim chaff) with a nontrivial chance of success? I can't find anybody who's said that but there seems to be a lot of people arguing human heros shouldn't get another 5-10 hp because they'd be able to trash dragons.

On a side note, it's an overdone fear anyway. My last effort at human melee commanders was with EA Ulm. With a forge bonus, earth, and 16 hp commanders, they are as good for human melee commanders as you'll ever see. And, against the human nations, scripted to fight along with the troops, with about 4 items each, they were acceptable and didn't die too much, although still distinctly inferior to commanders with artillery gear in terms of bang for the buck and the PITA factor of setting them up. However, even against Jotumheim chaff, they started getting squished in droves.

Based on my experience, 16 hp human melee commanders is about right - not 10. They survive well against human-level troops, and poorly against superhuman troops, which is about what a top fighter should do. I actually think they should be a sniff better than that, to make meleeing commanders more competitive with artillery commanders. 10 hp is way too little.

Part of the problem is that, in spite of some claims here the Dom melee system is not realistic. In particular, humans are far tougher than the game gives them credit for. A single dagger blow by an ordinary person on an unarmored man will usually kill in Dom - and that's way too easy. Even a sword blow will not usually really kill somebody although it will probably result in a nasty wound (i.e., an affliction). There are legit game reasons for this variation, mostly that fights don't take so long, and with disposable units the inaccuracies are pretty ignorable. But when we're talking about a kitted out melee commander, the inaccuracies are pretty noticeable. 15 to 20 hp would much better model how much punishment it takes to kill somebody - a single weapon blow, unreduced by armor, can, but usually won't.

[GwyrgynBlood]

UninspiredName said:
First-off, I fail to see how Dominions 3 was 'dumbed down' compared to 2. All I can think of off the top of my head is the inability to choose a Pretender's castle, (I'll admit, that was a neat feature, but I find it restricted the flow of the game. You shouldn't have to build an ultra-expensive citadel as a defensive precaution on the frontlines that will be abandoned soon enough, or a low-admin Mausoleum where you want to crank out former Independent Knights.) special dominions being replaced with ritual spells and new ages, (I'm sort of indifferent on this one, honestly) and auto-setting the taxes (Which I'll assume you weren't referring to).

I think the intension was to replace the castle choice with the awakening choice. I always thought having a 'national castle type' was pretty weird. I like the way Dom3 does it better personally, and I like the idea behind the choice of awakening. I think there's a big problem here due to balance though ... with Dormant being overpowered in a lot of cases.

In general, when one (or a few) simple strategies are the most effective, a game has a lot less depth and interest to it. But much of this is just balance issues right now, which can be fixed over time.

But you forget one thing, that commanders command. Commanders may be elite warriors, yes, but that's not what most people recruit them as. Most people just prefer recruiting elite warriors to serve as elite warriors. One can recruit battle mages instead of commanders, but then battle mages would be all you have. Maybe a few men as well, but it would be a small enough amount that it wouldn't be able to hold off a commander or two with any respectable amount of men. Commanders will always have that talent, which Battle Mages can never take.

I think part of the issue here is people not distinguishing between 'Troop Commanders' and 'Heroes' and 'Melee Commanders' enough. Being able to command a large number of troops doesn't necessarily mean you are any tougher than the troops you command. In the real world, troop commanders tend to stay out of the way of harm when possible so that they can keep the troops organized and issue orders.

Perhaps these 'troop commanders' who aren't anything special physically could stand to be improved in the commanding department. More commanders with the Standard ability, and perhaps increase the effect of the Standard (or otherwise increase the morale effect of 'troop commanders' as compared to other commanders, like mages or SCs).

Mages can make for powerful and effective battle mages. Troop commanders can lead large numbers of troops and inspire them. But there is no real melee commander unit to recruit.

I would see this as a difference in the races though ... humans would need to use other strategies because they couldn't use normal recruitable commanders as super melee units. They could rely more on summons or avoid using super melee units in general.

Differences in the races are a good thing, as long as it works. You have to consider Balance first of all... if a race performs poorly, then they need improvements. You also have to consider depth and width of strategy... a race that does exactly 1 thing from start to finish is boring, even if it is effective. A race who only has 1 potential game plan is limited, and probably will have a lot of bad matchups too.

'Heroes' are a different story, they are supposed to be heroic in some way. For them, they SHOULD be substantially better/stronger or more able to survive, depending on what makes them special.

curtadams said:
There seem to be some straw man arguments going on. Has ANYBODY suggested human melee commanders should be able to take on dragons, high-end summons, or real giants (not Jotunheim chaff) with a nontrivial chance of success? I can't find anybody who's said that but there seems to be a lot of people arguing human heroes shouldn't get another 5-10 hp because they'd be able to trash dragons.

Yes, I agree with this. Like I said, humans don't (and shouldn't) have recruitable melee commanders of considerable strength. But a hero should be someone who has been through a lot and is a lot more experience than an ordinary commander. You could, for example, think of a hero as a commander who already has 5+ stars of experience, and thus would already have his stat bonuses from those.

[curtadams]

UninspiredName said:
If magic was weakened any between Dominions 2 and 3, it's still pretty damned tough. You cite it as pretty much the #1 way of killing generals, summons are the real 'heroes' of Dominions, national spells shape nations, and six E3 mages and a small team of heavilly armored men can fend back 120 somewhat skilled and decently armored troops (Happened to me once, my Nagarishis and Bandars vs. Jomon's samurai. I ended up losing, but only due to sucky morale checks. Jomon had no more than 10 units left, which were commanders, by battle's end. They massacared my sleeping mages). I'll admit the researching is a hit, but I don't see how it was weakened aside from that.

I have to agree with GD that magic is considerably less important than before. Because resources were roughly doubled but the number of castle lab complexes wasn't you can recruit many more troops per mage and because of the supply increases (which are huge) you can field them too. Finally, the morale check changes seem to have made it harder to break troops. Before low-level artillery was useful because you could make and field enough to break a supply-limited army. Now it's pretty much hopeless until you've got a half-dozen castles because you've got twice as much to fight and you've got to dish out more per unit on top of that.

The best artillery strategy I've found so far is Pythium Communioned Smite. It was fun, sure, but even 4 communioned Theurg acolytes pitching Smite just didn't make a big difference with 200+ troops on the field. Only AOE or strong summons make a big difference now and prior to level 6, that's pretty much Strength of Giants, Bladewind, Wind Guide, Flaming Arrows, and a couple of level 4 summons like Fall Bears. Those mostly require gems, which mean you need to be searching too and in any case most nations can't generate a good supply of mages for any of those spells without path boosters, which means Con 4 or 6 too.

On top of that, your cost-benefit wasn't too good there. You lost 6 mages at about 180 = 1080 to kill 100 troops at, say, 15 = 1500. That's ahead, but not by much. Even if you can get some of the stronger early magic going it's possible to be overwhelmed by sheer force of numbers, as you experienced.

I play SP, against 10 or so computer opponents, and by the time I can start using the magic that really makes a difference the game is effectively over. Either I'm on the exponential growth curve with mostly vanilla armies or there are huge AI armies rampaging through my heartland and I've given up.

[UninspiredName]

The way that the system works though is that human combat mages can gather a couple of doezen kills over their career without any gem investment and with fairly minimal danger. A human commander is virtually never going to reach that goal.

But a human commander shouldn't be trying to reach that goal. They're an entirely different breed of unit. Asking for them to kill enemies in melee combat while being in minimal danger seems, again, ridiculous. Once, I had a skinshifter commander on the frontlines who racked up a large number of kills unequipped, but as I was playing as Patala it technically cost me 10 nature gems for the Lycanthropos Amulet, and either way it was certainly not safe for him. He even turned the tide (or so it seemed from the video) of a few 20-30 men per side skirmishes.

The morale system is still broken and still autorouts commanders when their troops die,

I'll go back to the Patala vs. Jomon battle from before, in which the enemy definitely fled. I even got the 'The armies of Jomon are routing' message up top, and the battle continued for maybe ten turns after that up until his commanders destroyed me. Of course, I wouldn't be surprised if it was a glitch in that case, but I'm sure I've seen non-mage commanders linger while the entire remaining army flees.

yet now it even affects beings that aren't even hurt by the attacks they are experiencing.

I'll give you that one, as I haven't had any Dom2 experience with that sort of situation.

Quickness no longer affects spells, so all those mages (and there are a lot of them) that cost extra gold for W1 no longer see any benefit from that extra path.

It allows searching for water sites, which shouldn't be underestimated, as well as limited item forging and easier empowerment, which you can take for what you will.

Research is at the very difficult setting by default, so that pushing armies around the map, especially armies composed of undercosted sacred troops is the best strategy for the majority of the important turns of the game.

The ever-so-popular F9/W9 bless only really helps for melee combat. (and reaching ranged combatants, I suppose) They still wither under attack spells, most outstandingly Blade Wind, and projectiles, and other blesses have similar weaknesses. Still, I'll admit it can cut through independents like butter.

Commanders are not just slightly more elite than your normal troops. They have such supposedly impressive abilities that you can only recruit a single one per month.

It's not that they have such impressive abilities, just look at the many relatively crappy level-one priests that also take up that precious slot. I don't know about you, but I'd usually take a commander over one of them. It's that they're not run-of-the-mill military that stops mass-recruiting.

If he can't, then there's no point in his existing in the first place. That's why people use independent commanders who are cheaper and just as good at standing behind the troops.

Whether they have a point in existing or not depends on the commander in question. Some have standards, a couple are stealthy, some are priests, some have limited magic capability, and many have a much higher Leadership score than the generic human Commander.

That's a game mechanic convention, nothing else.

Perhaps, but it's a cruicial one. Unless you're suggesting they remove the Leadership mechanic from the game altogether, Leadership is at least somewhat valuable.

I wasn't aware that recruiting battle mages prevented you from recruiting independent commanders to move your troops around, becaue that's what you're arguing here.

Your arguments sort of suggested that battlemages were solidly 'better' than commanders. I'm simply saying that's not the case. I apologize if I read between the lines too much.

Then the elite versions might as well not exist for all the gameplay effect that they have. You get more survivability and more utility out of three independent commanders than a single black lord, and they both have the same cost.

I'm not familiar with the Black Lord unit, and you could very well be right. Still, there are plenty of other cases where human commanders can be more worthwhile than their independent counterparts.

EDIT:

On top of that, your cost-benefit wasn't too good there. You lost 6 mages at about 180 = 1080 to kill 100 troops at, say, 15 = 1500. That's ahead, but not by much. Even if you can get some of the stronger early magic going it's possible to be overwhelmed by sheer force of numbers, as you experienced.

I didn't plan on them dying.
I was actually against another human in that game, and we had agreed for various reasons to call the game once we defeated CPU Abysia (Down to one province and outnumbered), so I decided to go out with a bang.

[Taqwus]

Hm. It's a valid point that, in terms of pure leadership, plain vanilla independent commanders may be significantly better deals than national ones.

~~~

Some ideas which would shift various balances:

Making most mages absolutely lousy commanders of normal troops -- perhaps only able to have a few bodyguards. Most have studied magic, not men.

For the same reason, giving troops led by mages less free staying-alive experience than troops led by more military-minded commanders. This could be made dependent on the normal leadership value. Better leaders drill more effectively. One might argue for similar effects on siege and patrol efficiency, or even supply usage; a great military leader would do more with the same army and logistical support, where one accustomed to alchemy and moldy tomes might be hamper the army with poor decisions (resulting in waste, confusion, et al).

A morale bonus for national troops (normal or capital site) being commanded by a national commander (normal, pretender, hero, or capital site); a morale penalty for national troops commanded by a non-national commander. This would reflect different confidence, pride, loyalty, et al.

As a side note, this could be further augmented by a bonus for being commanded by a national commander from the same home province.

[Cainehill]

Graeme Dice said:
I would. Other than the obvious interface improvements and additional nations, I think that Dom2 was a better game than Dom3.

Have to say I agree - Dom3 took a number of steps backwards, gameplay-wise. I (and others) have ranted enough about the age system, but some people like it. But the new shield mechanic is essentially broken (as per the mathematical analysis of shields vice air shield against missiles), the old flawed morale system was replaced with a new morale system that's bug-ridden as well as flawed (1), the removal of themes _diminished_ variety (2), and improvements to balance (such as the CB mods) were ignored, while long standing bugs and issues still haven't been addressed.

Instead, we got a bit more content that in _theory_ increased variety, but effectively reduced it by restricting each nation to a different age. (3)

Some of these things may be fixed in patches (or more likely, things that can be fixed will be fixed in mods), but given past history, the bugs and core issues seem unlikely to be fixed. (4)

1) Admittedly, the old morale system had its bugs too, as _sometimes_ troops kept fighting when all commanders had died and vice versa.

2) For instance, in Dom2, knowing that Marignon or Ermor was in a game didn't help you know _which_ Marignon/Ermor you'd be up against, as each has themes that drastically change the nation. Even without the major themes (Machaka, etc), a player could take Water Cult or some other theme that had an impact on how they'd play. So, instead of letting us finally choose those minor themes in conjunction with major themes (ie, Niefelheim or Carrion Woods with Water Cult, etc), the themes were eradicated.

3) Yes, it's possible to get nations from other eras into the same game, but it requires _map_ commands - hardly something that allows you to sneak in an unlikely variation like Return of the Raptors, since the game-host has to do it for you.

4) Supporting evidence, problems that have been around for _ages_ have never been addressed, such as the bug that sometimes kills immortals dead in friendly dominion, or the lack of _any_ battle summary for castle stormings.

[mivayan]

Graeme Dice said:
Then the elite versions might as well not exist for all the gameplay effect that they have. You get more survivability and more utility out of three independent commanders than a single black lord, and they both have the same cost.

Oh. *that* is a point. Perhaps something like +1 morale and attack for units under a commander with 100+ leadership? (80 base + one or two experience stars) would be neat?

Edit, in stead of doublepost:

curtadams said:
I have to agree with GD that magic is considerably less important than before. Because resources were roughly doubled but the number of castle lab complexes wasn't you can recruit many more troops per mage and because of the supply increases (which are huge) you can field them too.

Oh... that's right. Double gold income isn't *nearly* double amount of mages compared to dom2, at least for the first two dozen turns.

[PvK]

* I play Ulm frequently, and if my pretnender lacks Air-1, I typically find someone with Air-1 by the time I need to worry about lots of lightning.

* Heroes are not the only thing gained with Luck. Having heroes is not (or at most, not merely) an investment of 120 points I would otherwise have gained by taking Misfortune-3.

* I don't see how Dominions 3 is a "dumbing down" of Dominions 2, unless you mean the reduced magic skill levels. And yes, I am happy with the somewhat reduced access to overpowered magical effects. The mods I'm working on for my own tastes further "weaken" magic by making it cost appropriate amounts relative to other elements such as mortal armies, etc.

* You seem to be still missing my point. Commanders generally do survive battles when their side wins, as long as they deploy sensibly so that they don't fight alone against a mob of foes.

* If you mod commanders to be as effective as battle mages without changing their costs, then what about the foot soldiers, as especially the common troops, who will now be even less cost-effective? Divide most of those by 5 or so?

PvK

Graeme Dice said:

They are ulmish heroes, so there's no ring of tamed lightning until you've bought a huge amount of master smiths. The copper plate just means that they'll die to a couple of smites, or a fireball instead.

Heroes cost you a good portion of the 120 design points you'd otherwise get if you took misfortune 3.

As I expected, you sound like one of the players who are happy with the dumbing down of Dominions 3 compared to Dom2 and the general reduction in the power of magic.

I want the elite commanders with no added equipment to be able to survive nearly any battle that their side wins. These are supposed to be experienced frontline soldiers, not rank and file cannon fodder.

The commander would see no change in cost at all, since that's the bare minimum to make them anywhere as useful as a battle mage.