Heavy Infantry, Light Infantry, and Mundane AP Weapons

[Nerfix]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:

19) Allow LI/LC to attack non-adjacent enemy territories (move across a friendly province and attack);
20) Add strategic "Raid" orders for LI/LC (skirmish and retreat);
21) Add "Move-Pillage" orders for LI/LC (e.g. Mongols, Vikings, German barbarians);
22) Increase armor encumbrance in deserts (dehydration), swamps (footing), and mountains (elevation)

-Cherry

I would like to see these. Fixing the ordered retreat-issue (units scatter even when ordered to retreat) could also be good solution, but Raid/Skirmish/whatever would be good also. Move-Pillage would make enemy province pillaging much easier(since you could just move out of the province when you have conquered & pillaged it instead of figthing with the enemy quick response forces).

And didn't LI(Spearmen) have some kind of a tactic(other than poking them with the spears) to slow down/hurt/kill cavalry with their spears? I don't remember the specifics, but i remember that in CoE Cavalry units attacking Spearmen take damage.

[ November 01, 2003, 09:25: Message edited by: Nerfix ]

[DominionsFan]

Originally posted by Alneyan:

quote:

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Originally posted by DominionsFAN:
Ummmmmm, if you will be able to change the stats & abilities & equipment of the units, you can balance them. IMHO.

Not quite. You will only be able to either reduce the price of LI to make it cost-effective, or you could make LI almost HI by increasing its hitpoints, protection and so on. Most of the other suggestions aims at giving LI different abilities than HL, and that needs to change the code I believe.

I second (or I third rather, as Apoger already exprimed his support for this) the suggestion about "strategic moves that end in enemy territory". It would give LI and Light Cavalry abilities other than what can do their heavier counterparts, and make them a worthwhile unit if you are planning to use such strategies. (Or if you are facing an opponent who refuses to engage your heavy-elite-impossible-to-defeat army. )

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Well, don't tell me that we won't be able to add special abilities for the units with the mod tools. IE. wasteland survival, fire resistant etc. etc.

I think that adjusting stats/equipment/abilities will be enough, however these additions, what Saber had mentioned would be very good of course.
BUT don't forget, the devs are already flooded with work, and this is not that important IMHO.

[Keir Maxwell]

One of the things which struck me as odd in my first game was how the strategic movement worked - HI and LI move 1 in the rough and HI move one in the open while LI move two. So this means HI move the same speed as LI in the rough but LI move faster in the open - seems a bit odd really.

I would suggest returning to all infantry moving 2 stategically but HI pay 2 for a rough province while LI pay 1 so that LI move faster than HI in the rough and the same in the open. This would encourage you to use lighter armed troops in mountainous area's whereas at present LI are more suited to open terrain.

Cheers

Keir

[Patrik]

Originally posted by apoger:
>allow strategic moves that end in enemy territory

This would be a good way to model light troops.

Light troops do poorly in straight up battle with heavily armored troops. The reason they are great is their strategic mobility.

Outstanding suggestion Mr. Byler.

I made this suggestion in beta about half a year ago - for the very same reasons. IIRC, JK and KO had already tried it out but found that it was to hard to block an attacking army - with the result that major battles almost never took place. I would really like for them to take another look at it though.

[NTJedi]

Light Infanty and Militia would be more valuable if they could move faster plus have less fatique.

[Calanor]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
Second, almost none of the suggestions could be added through mods.

Surely, that would depend on what kind of modding support they implement. In Unreal, you can create Pac Man or whatever. While I am quite aware of that the chances for such an extremely flexible modding support being added for Dom2 are slim (understatement), I don't think any of us fans really know what will be possible to mod or not. To be frank though, I personally expect that it will be limited to, at best, tweaking some stats and perhaps abilities - but I won't know til the full game is released

I agree with your other points, though.

[Calanor]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
[HI supply upkeep..]

Hmm, well, I still dunno if I feel that messing around with supply costs would be the most preferable approach, but at least I can following your reasoning now

Looks like SOMEBODY needs to go back and play Master of Magic. Hello, do you think I just pull this stuff out of my ***?

Embarassingly enough, I never played MoM.
Anyway, I would expect a pike to be used to counter cavalry - not to counter a bunch of guys strolling about in chain mail or whatever. There is nothing about a pike that suggests that it should excel versus heavy armour - it certainly should not be more efficient at it than, say, your standard spear. Instead, its main advantage is reach (which is taken into account in Dom2) and defensive capabilities vs - in particular but not excluded to - a cavalry charge. In all cases, you would want to horde pikemen in order to allow them to be efficient - a lone pikeman would probably be rather useless.

Bonuses versus cavalry is oddly enough not included in Dom 2 - this might be another sensible ability to add to some mundane weapons.

[Edit: Typos..]

[ November 01, 2003, 15:42: Message edited by: Calanor ]