in which occasion will you raise taxes

[licker]

"Also, you wouldn't mind the supply cost of light troops if they were actually effective in battle. "

True, that is why I suggest lowering their supply (and proably upkeep) to make them more viable than they are. All the historical evidence is fine and dandy, but it has jack all to do with Dominions and the underlying game mechanics.

What it boils down to (aside from the AIs inability to select the most effective troops) is that there is virtually no use for LI in the game. That's probably like 15-20% of the units in the game that simply will never be built becasue there is always a better alternative. Now of course there can be instances where you need a quick dose of LI, but for the most part their cost/benefit is out of whack with the higher cost units. This situation only gets worse the longer the game progresses as nations gain better economies and begin to fill their key provinces with important armies. There simply is not room for the LI since they have no combat advantage over HI once you saturate your provinces with units (i.e. the supply limit is hit).

So lower the supply usage for LI, lower their upkeep, and bang, now they can be competative again. People will still gravitate toward the better units, but there will be a bigger place for LI in the game.

An alternative is to make HI take up more command points from commanders as well, or make LI count as 1/2 or something. That doesn't get around supply and upkeep issues, but it does make swarming more viable, especially with low command rated commanders.

[Jasper]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
I don't mean to imply that cost was the only advantage, as there were many examples of light, mobile units slaughtering sluggish armored ones (the Crusades come to mind). But I think it was a huge factor, and that if the cost had been equal (like in Doms II), heavy units would have made up the bulk of historic armies, rather than light units.

I don't see that being so clear cut. For an easy example, take the Mongols. Probably the best pre-gunpowder army, and mostly comprised of Light Cavalry.

Even the Romans, quite fond of heavy infantry, still kept some lighter troops around for tactical flexibility -- even though they could have fielded armies of purely of heavy infantry.

What it really came down to is that a certain amount of light troops will increased the effectiveness of heavy troops.

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by st.patrik:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jasper:
What bothers me is that light troops aren't usefull in battle, while they clearly were usefull throughout history. Light troops were not "poorly equipped" troops, but troops used in a different manner -- a manner that simply doesn't exist in Dominions (or any similar computer game for that matter).

It seems to me that Hypasists (sp?) function in this way to an extent. They are cheaper than hoplites (resources at least), but they definitely have a role. On the other hand, Militia are poorly trained conscripts which I suppose were mainly used as cannon fodder in RL.

---

But they are too expensive to be used as dragon fodder (no cannons in Dom II ).

The only use I've found for LI so far is their javelins - they do as much damage as longbows, and because of their shorter range, they have better accuracy. A squad of LI behind a squad of HI can be fairly effective against moderately armored troops. Against Ulm you still need crossbows or magic though.

Some people on this thread seem to be claiming that it shouldn't take any more money to maintain a company of fifty men with Full Plate of Ulm, a full helmet, tower shield and warhammer (say) than spears, leather hauberks, javelins and maybe hard leather caps. I don't see how you can support this view - if nothing else, war gear wears out or breaks and has to be replaced. That costs something.

It wouldn't be inappropriate to the way the gold/resource model works in Dom II to have heavy units' maintenance cost resources instead of gold - but it would probably be very hard to implement effectively. (It might require implementation of a second supply system - and what happens to the troops who aren't properly supplied with equipment?) Adding a gold upkeep cost for high resource units would be simple and possibly solve some of the heavy vs. light troop problems that have been around since Dom I.

Of course I worry about weakening Ulm too much; maybe they could have as one of their national abilities that they pay only half the extra upkeep cost due to resources. Or troops that are currently in a friendly productivity dominion could pay less upkeep due to resources. Both would be appropriate IMO.


On the other hand, I also think that a large part of the heavy vs. light problem stems from light troops' ineffectiveness on the battlefield, and that this is a very "deep" problem because it ties into the defense vs. protection issue and combats resolving in too few rounds for fatigue to be a major problem for nonmages.

Both problems could perhaps be solved (or at least ameliorated) by an across-the-board +1-2 to all defense skills (perhaps excepting units that already have very high defense). LI would still die faster to shortbow fire, but wouldn't necessarily die faster in melee (except perhaps compared to Ulm) because they would get hit less often and because the heavy troops would get tired before they had killed 3x their own numbers.

Another possible fix (to the over-effectiveness of protection vs. most attacks) would be to make any hit do at least 1 point of damage, regardless of the str+weapon vs. prot roll. Then units that get hit a lot but often take 0 damage would be getting hit for 1 damage, which could make quite a bit of difference to a 10 hp unit.

Finally, historically there were melee weapons specifically designed to pierce armor - pikes, for instance. Why aren't they armor piercing in Dom (I or II)? Armor negating should be reserved for magic items, beings and spells only, but I don't see why armor piercing shouldn't be allowed on ordinary melee weapons. Not all nations have access to crossbows, and missile weapons have several known counters anyway.

[Sammual]

I'm jumping in to express my opinion on the LI vs HI discusion.
I think there needs to be a reason for LI, there isn't one right now.
I like the 'Each provence can support 10 LI for free' idea.
I also like the wider spacing for LI to lower missile losses.

Sammual

[Jasper]

Originally posted by licker:
So lower the supply usage for LI, lower their upkeep, and bang, now they can be competative again. People will still gravitate toward the better units, but there will be a bigger place for LI in the game.

I disagree here as well. If you merely lower their costs they will still be inferior to HI and be underused -- up to the point where they are more efficient, and then HI will be rarely seen.

It is far more intersting to model the real world reasons that people used such forces, than speculative economics. It especially makes sense when you're trying to get results similar to history, e.g. a variety of viable unit types.

I agree that gameplay is the most important thing, but IMHO in this case history has much more interesting "gameplay" than Dominions, and serves as a very good model.

[Saber Cherry]

by Chris Byler:
Another possible fix (to the over-effectiveness of protection vs. most attacks) would be to make any hit do at least 1 point of damage, regardless of the str+weapon vs. prot roll. Then units that get hit a lot but often take 0 damage would be getting hit for 1 damage, which could make quite a bit of difference to a 10 hp unit.

I like this! Too powerful, though, IMO. Instead, I think non-penetrating attacks could cause 1 damage 20% of the time, or (fatigue/2)% of the time, or perhaps they could cause no damage, but do 4 points of fatigue damage.

Even with this change, though, I think LI should become cheaper, HI costlier, and Ulm be semi-exempt from this. By cheaper/costlier I mean both gold and "support".

-Cherry

[ October 29, 2003, 23:08: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]

[licker]

Originally posted by Jasper:

quote:

---

Originally posted by licker:
So lower the supply usage for LI, lower their upkeep, and bang, now they can be competative again. People will still gravitate toward the better units, but there will be a bigger place for LI in the game.

I disagree here as well. If you merely lower their costs they will still be inferior to HI and be underused -- up to the point where they are more efficient, and then HI will be rarely seen.

It is far more intersting to model the real world reasons that people used such forces, than speculative economics. It especially makes sense when you're trying to get results similar to history, e.g. a variety of viable unit types.

I agree that gameplay is the most important thing, but IMHO in this case history has much more interesting "gameplay" than Dominions, and serves as a very good model.

---

First of all I didn't say to lower their costs, just the cost to maintain them. If they are still inferior to HI they still won't be used in mass, but there will be a sweet point where a certain amount of LI and HI will be more effective than just all of one or the other. Obviously we are on the all HI side of this curve right now.

In order to accurately portray the value of LI in Domintions you would have to make many changes to the combat system. In fact we had this arguement before when Saber suggested the addition of different damage catagories. Anyway, it comes down to the same thing, adding more complexity to an already complex game. What does it gain you to better modle the effects of terrain, or formations, or what have you, *just to make LI more viable*? Well that question answered itself right? My point is that adding this complexity is unneeded, and from the results of the Last thread, also unwanted (not by all, but by many).

The simple fix is usually the best anyway, once you have a more balanced system you can continue to improve upon it, but to go for broke from the get go often has unintended consequences.

History may have more "interesting gameplay", but that in and of itself doesn't mean that it makes a good model for a game. More often than not the games that try to model their gameplay off of history wind up so complex, and with so many niggling omisions that the grand effect intended is completly lost. No I'd rather have Dominions write its own history rather than try to force feed concepts of our history into it. Granted many units are borrowed directly from ancient cultures, but if you want a game trying to model Roman or Greek battles pick up the Great Battles series, don't try to make Dominions something that it isn't.