Mictlan

[Sandman]

Just make national troops better. Give them more cool abilities. The best national troops (Vans, Jotuns, Pangaeans) all have multiple great abilities, whilst human troops only have a few stat increments here and there.

For example, why not give all mundane humans doubled experience to represent their flexibility? And yes, they can get ten stars.

[NTJedi]

Sandman said:
Just make national troops better. Give them more cool abilities. The best national troops (Vans, Jotuns, Pangaeans) all have multiple great abilities, whilst human troops only have a few stat increments here and there.

For example, why not give all mundane humans doubled experience to represent their flexibility? And yes, they can get ten stars.

excellent suggestions I will add those to the list:

Most summoned units have multiple advantages over national troops. Some of these include:
Never flee in battle
Never needs food
No gold upkeep
More powerful

Ways national troops can be improved:
1) Allow most nations to have their national troops increase population for whatever province they reside.
2) Allow national troops to be upgraded making their gold/food upkeep more acceptable. one example listed by: DominionsFAN
3) Allow some method for national troops to be upgraded with gems.
4) Allow national troops to provide increased morale, defense and attack for province defense... seems logical their presence within the province would have this effect. Perhaps for this bonus to work the national troops would have to be equal to the province defense, thus 10 PD would need 10 national troops for the bonus.
5) Providing national troops with increased statistics by receiving faster experience upgrades and the ability to receive higher experience thus 10 stars instead of 5 stars. as suggested by Sandman

[DominionsFan]

Guys, that wont work. Basic national troops cant be much better, that would imbalance the early-mid game summons. Minor basic national troop upgrades wont help, so its not necessary at all. Like I said, imho the only way to "play" with national troops in mid/late game is to add mid [call it level 2] / high [call it level 3] national troop summons. That way the basic "vanilla" [level 1] national troops would be obsolete in mid game, and the mid game national troops coming from summons [level 2] would be obsolete in the end game, when the player would be able to summon level 3 national troops. I think this is the best way, in fact Im gonna try to do this in my mod. I am pretty sure that this is doable somehow with modding.

[Sandman]

It depends on the nature of the improvement. Some abilities don't matter in the early game, but become good later on.

For example, if you were to give magical weapons to all Ulmish troops, it wouldn't really affect the early game, but it would make Ulm perform far better in the late game, with a lot of ethereal creatures in play.

[Nerfix]

How about adding some of the features the summoned units are called for the national units?

Light infantries could have some terrain survival traits and elite units could have minor resistance to elements or magic, and some of the units could have magic weapons. Say, a Knight of the Chalice might have a magic sword that has an AoE 1 attack that damages undead and demons as an addition, and 25% fire resistance.

Maybe all sacred 'knightly' units could have weapons that do anti-undead/demon damage. A KotC or Black Templar could take on a Devil and actually whoop it's barb-tailed rear.

Temple Guards, who are admitedly good now, could have a 25% shock resistance slightly stronger weapons than regular caelian weapons.

Same goes for other nations. Saber Cherry (IIRC) had a mod which gave the heavier Ulmish unit a 25% Fire/Shock/Cold resistance and slightly improved MR along with other tweaks. If I remember correctly their weapons were also considered magical which propably helped a lot against ethereal units.

And so on. These are just some minor suggestions, and shouldn't be by any mean restricted to just the nations I mentioned.

[VedalkenBear]

Hey, guys. This is Scott Hebert. I can't remember my old account at all, so I made a new one.

I can say, though, that this discrepancy between 'normal' and summoned creatures is _the_ reason I stopped playing Dominions II, and the main reason I am not preordering Dominions 3. I do not like the idea of having the mid- to late-game be nothing but 'Hmm, what do I want my 50 bajillion mages to do this turn?'

As for ways to 'improve' normal troops?

1) Remove upkeep entirely from the game. As others have (rightly) pointed out, until Summons and Normals are playing in the same ballpark, Summons will be superior. This is one way to fix that issue.

2) Make summoned units have a gem upkeep. This is the other side of the coin. If all summoned units had, say, an upkeep of 1/5 their cost in gems, you wouldn't see nearly as many of them. At that point, they would be used as a supplement to existing forces, not the sole source of a troop base.

Personally, I'm all for the second option. This fits with the current conventions of this game type, as well as the literature. (Devils want continuous sacrifices!) This also would help even the field with combat summons, who could be costed appropriately so as to offer trade-offs with 'permanent' summons.

About the only 'issue' this might have is to push the game further towards SCdom, which could be mitigated in other ways.

But really. Please, do something about this.

[Nerfix]

A gem upkeep could work. Some weaker creatures could have vastly lesser gem cost though. Like 1/10. Or 1/15.

Some creatures could of course have a very high gem cost...

[NTJedi]

excellent suggestions I will add to the list... not sure if Illwinter has time, but hopefully the list will help:

Most summoned units have multiple advantages over national troops. Some of these include:
Never flee in battle
Never needs food
No gold upkeep
More powerful

Ways national troops can be improved:
1) Allow most nations to have their national troops increase population for whatever province they reside. suggested by NTJedi
2) Allow national troops to be upgraded making their gold/food upkeep more acceptable. suggested by: DominionsFAN
3) Allow some method for national troops to be upgraded with gems. suggested by NTJedi
4) Allow national troops to provide increased morale, defense and attack for province defense... seems logical their presence within the province would have this effect. Perhaps for this bonus to work the national troops would have to be equal to the province defense, thus 10 PD would need 10 national troops for the bonus. suggested by NTJedi
5) Providing national troops with increased statistics by receiving faster experience upgrades and the ability to receive higher experience thus 10 stars instead of 5 stars. suggested by Sandman
6) Providing summoned troops with a gem upkeep making national troops more feasible. suggested by VedalkenBear
7) Add additional national troops which can be summoned from spells specific for each nation. suggested by: DominionsFAN
8) Remove gold upkeep which helps balance cost between the summoned and national units. suggested by VedalkenBear
9) Provide improved/unique bonuses for national troops such as 25% resistances or other traits. suggested by Nerfix

[Cainehill]

Other possibilities:

Another line of research, along the lines of Construction only affecting the recruited troops. "Armament" perhaps? It could work in any number of ways, including:

Allowing new buildings : Example, at Armament 2 Ulm could build a "Mithril Forge" that gave +1 attack + damage plus affects ethereal units. Some buildings might be cheap, some expensive, perhaps on a nation by nation basis.

Allowing the choice of a new ability for nationals : Armament 2, Ulm gets to choose between Enhanced Black Steel Weaponry or EBS Armor. Weaponry gives an effect as per above, Armor gives a 25% resistance to elements.

Give a new category of spells, "National" like Global, only each nation can only have say, 2 national spells up, each giving a certain effect to the recruited troops.

Sadly, these certainly can't be fit into Dom3. It's a shame really - most suggestions are either bandaids, or wouldn't fit Dom2/3 (though perhaps IllWinter has been doing things none of us has thought of to remedy the situation).

One thing that allowed games like MoM to have national troops that remained viable against high powered summonings was the unit enchantments - but you'd need a stack / unit mechanism that Dominions, with individual troops, doesn't have, whereas certain MoM enchantments were quite effective with differing troops. Halflings sucked - but having the most individual troops possible in the unit meant a few enchantments got extra oomph on them. Berserkers similarly were candidates for enchantments, being tough and having a thrown weapon in addition to melee, so they could attack flyers.

Ah well - have to wait and see.

[Graeme Dice]

VedalkenBear said:
I do not like the idea of having the mid- to late-game be nothing but 'Hmm, what do I want my 50 bajillion mages to do this turn?'

And I do like that. Dominions is one of the very few games where magic can actually decide the outcome of a battle. If you take the Age of Wonders games, magic is absolutely useless without troops to work with. I much prefer the Dominions model.

Personally, I'm all for the second option.

I hate the second option. I'd go for the first long before the second, which only manages to reduce the number of viable tactics. Of course, the best choice is to simply increase the amount of gold in the world to the point where you can buy both mages and troops in the same turn.