Poll: morale and routing

[Arryn]

The_Tauren13 said:
hmmm... if you lose the battle, dont you think you deserve to lose half your mages?

No.


Any military commander who's not brain-dead knows when a battle is lost and when to retreat to save his forces for another day. Only a fool or a madman (not that there's a difference) wastes valuable lives.

[Cheezeninja]

Arryn said:

No.


Any military commander who's not brain-dead knows when a battle is lost and when to retreat to save his forces for another day. Only a fool or a madman (not that there's a difference) wastes valuable lives.

Arryn i believe you meant any commander who's not undead

I finally beat everybody to the cheezy Ermor pun, and boy do i feel clever. =)

[The_Tauren13]

Arryn said:

No.


Any military commander who's not brain-dead knows when a battle is lost and when to retreat to save his forces for another day. Only a fool or a madman (not that there's a difference) wastes valuable lives.

ive heard people say many times on this forum that they dont go into battle unless they can win

[Arryn]

The_Tauren13 said:
ive heard people say many times on this forum that they dont go into battle unless they can win

I've said that myself. However, be that as it may, none of us are perfect, and thus we can (and do) make mistakes such as misjudging an enemy's strength. And, if one does get themselves into a situation that is hopeless, the smart thing to do is retreat, as quickly as possible, so as to conserve as much of your force as you can so that you can try again later. Some call it a learning experience, and one needn't suffer a slaughter in order to realize one has made a mistake. As for deserving punishment for mistakes, only masochists enjoy and desire them. Which is why certain games (like Doom 3) exist, to fulfill the needs of such folk.

[The_Tauren13]

Arryn said:

I've said that myself. However, be that as it may, none of us are perfect, and thus we can (and do) make mistakes such as misjudging an enemy's strength. And, if one does get themselves into a situation that is hopeless, the smart thing to do is retreat, as quickly as possible, so as to conserve as much of your force as you can so that you can try again later. Some call it a learning experience, and one needn't suffer a slaughter in order to realize one has made a mistake. As for deserving punishment for mistakes, only masochists enjoy and desire them. Which is why certain games (like Doom 3) exist, to fulfill the needs of such folk.

since battlemages are far stronger and more useful than troops, losing half of them when you lose a battle would be a good thing; it would help balance that out. i mean, would you rather buy 20 militia or a mage? about the same cost, but the mage is far more useful.

[Cainehill]

The_Tauren13 said:
since battlemages are far stronger and more useful than troops, losing half of them when you lose a battle would be a good thing; it would help balance that out. i mean, would you rather buy 20 militia or a mage? about the same cost,
but the mage is far more useful.

You really just don't get it, do you? The militia, when you buy them, are bought because they're disposable. It's the same reason the peasants were rounded up and levied historically : so they do do the dying, instead of the expensive, hard-to-equip-and-train archers, knights, halberdiers, etc.

And then battle plans are made, historically and in Dominions, to ensure that the peasants are the ones dying and not the commanders, knights, mages, etc.

If you think losing half your mages when you lose is a good thing, put them in front of your infantry and militia. Then you can lose your mages, which you think is a good thing, and the rest of us, who don't think losing our mages is a good thing, can continue to try and avoid having that happen.

Also note: Battle mages can and _do_ get wiped out in Dominions, if the opposing commander out-battles and out-thinks them. Try 11 out of 12, and 5 out of 6, mages and commanders killed in a battle between roughly equal forces.

But then, all you're concerned with is the fact that you think SCs and battle mages are over-powered and that the game is more fun for you without them.

To quote the US Army: Suck it up and drive on.

[Arryn]

Cainehill said:
To quote the US Army: Suck it up and drive on.

To also quote the Army: F***ing-A!

[Boron]

Cainehill said:

But then, all you're concerned with is the fact that you think SCs and battle mages are over-powered and that the game is more fun for you without them.

no tauren is true .
and you don't get his point here i think .

tauren says just that almost no national troop is worth being produced .

if you are honest you will admit that with most nations you replace the national troops as quick as you can by better summoned troops .
if leaders alone woudn't rout once the first 1 dies would you build troops at all anymore ?


marignon , ulm , pangenea , vanheim and perhaps jotunheim are somehow exeptions here since they have special national troops which are worth being built over a longer timespan with the right bless effect .
or with flaming arrows + wind guide for marignon x-bows .


but i think you will admit that in general you only use as many troops as you think you need to avoid routing. the rest of your gold goes in commanders instead .
you basically said that in your post . at least i understanded it this way .

[Endoperez]

Boron, do you mean that if given the choice of having 50 Winter Wolves or 40 Winter Wolves and 40 Coral Guards you choose the 50 w-wolves? What if the choices are 100 Lamias / 70 Lamias, 20 Knights and 30 Longbowmen set to Fire Archers?

If you can only choose between all-summoned and all-mundane armies you should choose the summons to be competitive in lategame. But DomII isn't HoMM4*, and you don't have to. You can use both mundane and magical units in a nice, joyful and often colourful mix that is stronger and more varied than either of the one-sided armies. You might have a mage or two less, but you don't have the gems to use all of them for summoning if you only recruit mages and build fortresses/labs to make more of them, not recruiting any national units. And besides Mictlan every nation has something useful. If nothing else, archers that can be Wind Guided and/or given Flaming Arrows.


Endoperez
* I never played it, but I have heard that it forced you to choose between good in beginning/bad in the end, bad in the beginning/good in the end and mediocre at all stages. And AI had access to the best units from beginning to the end. If this is not the case, .

[Cainehill]

Boron said:

no tauren is true .
and you don't get his point here i think .

tauren says just that almost no national troop is worth being produced .

if you are honest you will admit that with most nations you replace the national troops as quick as you can by better summoned troops .

Duh. You do ... research in order to get better weapons, troops, spells.

Once the semi-automatic rifle was ... researched the nations that didn't have them tended to get chewed up and spit out. No intelligent leader said, "Hey! We can't replace our breech loaders! It wouldn't be right!"

As better units, weapons, spells, are researched, the earlier, less effective ones tend not to be produced or used as much any more. If the newly researched ones _weren't_ significantly improved and better, there wouldn't be much point in doing research.

"Hmm - I think I'll research conjured units - they may suck compare to my regular troops, but they're _so_ neat!"

if leaders alone woudn't rout once the first 1 dies would you build troops at all anymore ?

*smile* Considering that in general, leaders alone get killed, yes, I think I'd tend to still build and use troops. This remains true at least into the mid-game, and even after that, some troops tend to be used. They may not be the recruitable national troops - but again, there's a reason people did research into conjuration, construction, and enchantment - to get better things to use.

marignon , ulm , pangenea , vanheim and perhaps jotunheim are somehow exeptions here since they have special national troops which are worth being built over a longer timespan with the right bless effect .
or with flaming arrows + wind guide for marignon x-bows .

Let's see - you leave out Man, R'lyeh, Caelum, Pythium, and I expect there are other nations that I'm not thinking of. All these nations have national troops that remain useful into the late game, at least as part of a mixed army that includes conjured and constructed troops as well.

but i think you will admit that in general you only use as many troops as you think you need to avoid routing. the rest of your gold goes in commanders instead .
you basically said that in your post . at least i understanded it this way .

No, I use as many troops as I think I need in order to _win_. Leaders by themselves can rarely do it on their own, although there are some exceptions (Vanheim, Man, Caelum, etc) and even those function better with some troops - some disposable, some not.

And you need to reread my previous post - Tauren used 20 militia vice battlemages as the example in his post. I made a rebuttal using that same example. _Militia_ are disposable - they're used to keep your mages from getting killed, and also to keep your more valuable national troops from getting killed. Good cavalry, archers, even heavy infantry are all valuable and useful, and the screen of militia is used to try and keep the casualties of good troops low.

Frankly, it seems that you and Tauren (and let's not forget Cohen) want a game that has more emphasis on troops, and less on powerful combatants, summonings, spells, and magic items.

I'd suggest you find another game, because Dominions is designed around those things. We're talking beings that are trying to become God here - not beings that are trying to become King or Pope. If the powerful SCs and magic were removed or nerfed, as y'all want, the majority of the players would be upset.

Now, I have posted before that it would be nice if Illwinter would include a command line or game creation switch that would allow some things like magic research to be limitted. After all - it's already limitted to research level 4 in the demo, it shouldn't be hard to implement that as an option in the full game.

That way, people like you could have a game that played more like the game you want to play, without screwing everyone else's game over. For that matter, even some of us who _like_ the powerful magics and SCs and such might enjoy the odd low-research game as a refreshing change of pace.

But again - if you don't want a game that's geared and designed around powerful magics, supremely powerful beings and combatants, I'd suggest finding another game. There are _plenty_ of games that don't put such emphasis on mages, SCs, etc. It's hard to think of any that put the emphasis on them the way Dominions2 does though - not HoMM (which is a game for simpletons who like rote solutions in comparison), not the original MoM, not Disciples, Age of Wizards.