Province Defense: too powerful?

[Tecnócrata]

Greetings, gentlemen. Received the order yesterday, and played 2 games so far. But... My impression is that Province Defense is too cheap and gives too many troops.

What do you think? Once I build 50 or so, my provinces become pretty much unconquerable.

Not liking to play by house rules, I've made a mod that roughly cuts first tier amounts in half, and second tier by 1/3, for ALL nations depending on their original numbers. That way you cannot rely on PD to secure conquests, particularly when bordering enemy nations. With PD 50 you have around 70 defending units, not enough to stop a serious attack. When on 75, 100 defending units are not enough either, since on Difficult the AI is able to assemble armies of 200 with relative ease.

If anyone is interested, please let me know and I post it.

Thanks, gentlemen.

[grimogre]

Teleport and gate can get you past the big defense.Endless wine can keep up a big army.

[Korwin]

Don't try a PD 50 Strategy in MP...

Generally PD is considered a waste (beside tiny amounts).

[thejeff]

This is a common impression among beginners. Huge amounts of PD can be very effective against the AI, but there are more effective tactics even there and PD is at best situationally useful in MP.

Remember that 50 PD is 1275 gold. That can build a lot of army or mages or a fort. Generally it's more effective to put the money into troops for expansion, mages for research and expansion and forts to make more of the first two.

[Squirrelloid]

yes, you can beat the AI building PD. The heart of the game is MP though, and PD is mostly useless in MP. (You build 1 so you get to see the invading army, and that's it).

[DeadlyShoe]

the thing is, the AI doesnt tend to transition to mage-oriented armies later on, or build supercombatants; those can both efficiently destroy even large amounts of PD. PD's not too effective, it's in fact very expensive in the final analysis, to stop an AI army of decent size you need lots of it in lots of provinces so...

the effectiveness of PD against AI is more the effectiveness of turtling against the AI. i.e. the AIs will beat eachother up and attack the player indifferently while the player eco-rushes. And even the Impossible AI is pretty bad at expanding compared to a player. Plus, the AI's tendency to recruit lots of indies works against it - PD is usually pretty good against indies.

[thejeff]

Plus the AI uses PD strength as one of the gauges for attacking in the first place. So high PD will help let you choose your enemies while low PD means you're likely to be at war with every AI you border.