Problems in demo exist in regular game?

[Endoperez]

TruePurple said:
Lets say your facing a "markatas" Is it a shooter, foot soldier of low or high grade defense/offense? How about a "peltest"? I know a markatas is a real low grade shooter and a peltest is a javelin thrower (bonus against riders?) But their names do not tell me this.

What would you build against a markatas or a peltest army if you didn't know what they were?

Do certain other weapons give bonus against riders? If you were facing a enemy that had such weapon but you didn't know they did, do you build riders or not?

Lets say you have a army of slingers (low grade shooters) or are considering building them since at 2 resource you can make alot quickly. But your facing a foe you don't know whether they have high def shield protection.. what ever.. where the slingers shots might be almost completely ignored... or low def where their large numbers can do alot of damage?

You could be facing "Marignonian infantry" or "Machaka's Hoplites" but if you don't know the difference...

Markata and Peltasts are cheap, weak units. Slingers are handled just like arrows, mechanically; Shields help against them (Parry), but high defense doesn't. Javelins don't have bonus against cavalry.

I still see it as a must to be able to see unit stats. What you said has convinced me of this more. It would also be nice to be able to scout out enemy commanders and see their stats & equipment.

It seems I'm not good at arguing for my point, so I'll just drop it. IMO, the one thing that you should know is an approximation about how much protection the enemy troops have, and that alone is enough in most cases.

There are few problems with letting scouts see the amount of enemy commanders, and especially the details of enemy mages. Knowing the numbers and types of the commanders would already be quite powerful, because then you would know how much magic you should expect the opposition to have. Knowing the gems and items of the mages would let you guess at their strategies, as well as script for spells that work against them especially well. If you know what that Gorgon pretender is vulnerable to, your mages can easily kill her.

[TruePurple]

Of temples prophets and pretenders, which raise dominion in provinces they aren't in .. All of them?

Endoperez said:
Markata and Peltasts are cheap, weak units.

I know that, the point is that if one didn't know that.. or what kind of unit they were.. range.. melee.. etc Its helpful to know

Endoperez said:
Javelins don't have bonus against cavalry.

I also asked if there were any weapons at all that had bonus against riders? If there wasn't it would be skipping out a important aspect of medieval warfare as well as paper rock scissors game mechanics.

Endoperez said:
IMO, the one thing that you should know is an approximation about how much protection the enemy troops have,

Don't want to memorize that either.

Markato for example only do 2 damage range. It doesn't take much protection to reduce that to zero. Though I don't know that its such a linear subtraction (2 damage verses 2 protection=zero damage?)but still probably pretty important to know if your enemy has high protection with them.

Parry subtracts from a units missile accuracy right? Markata & slingers have only 6 & 8 precision. So you'll want to know about that too. Gave a few other examples where unit stats would be real helpful to be able to know.

[Endoperez]

Manual lists the formula for if a missile strikes a target or not. Precision affects where the missile lands, but this formula is used to see whether or not it hits a unit in the square, and precision doesn't affect it.


Temples, prophet and pretender all increase dominion outside their province. Priests preaching increase dominion only in the province they are in.

Protection is reduced from damage, but a random number is added to both sides. Because the "dice-roll" is open-ended, there's always a chance of dealing some damage. It's often very small chance, but it exists any way.

I don't think there are any weapons with a bonus against any types of units (infantry, archer, cavalry). However, cavalry are fewer in numbers (because they cost more than infantry), and thus the enemy can usually swarm them. Every attack against a unit lowers it's defence by 2, so if it's a three-on-one the third attacker get to attack against defence reduced by 4. This has already eliminated the +3 defence bonus cavalry gets.

Some weapons are better against cavalry than others, even if they don't have a bonus:
Battleaxes have base damage of 9, and with str 10 they can deal damage through even the heaviest of armors. Against the best armors it might be just a point of damage here and there, though, and shields are enough to block them. Halberds, mauls, glaives etc have similar uses.
Flails have damage rating of just 3, but they have two attacks and ignore shields. Flailmen won't deal lots of damage but because their attacks can't be parried, they effectively reduce the knight's defense by at least 4 points, often more, before you count in the malus from multiple attacks. Flails are very good against light to medium cavalry, but won't deal damage to heavy cavalry.
Morningstars have better damage (6) but only one attack/round, which makes them better against heavy cavalry but worse against units that have high defense even without shield (medium cavalry like Royal Guards of Marignon).
Pikes have base damage of 5, so they aren't that good at piercing heavy armor. Most cavalry units have rather high morale, so repel doesn't keep them from attacking, but as long as the pikeman can hit the knight he deals 1 point of repel damage. IIRC, shield parry doesn't affect repel, so it's usually attack 10+1(pike) against defense of 9 to 11 defense (heavy cavalry) or 11-13 (light/medium cavalry). Pikes can also parry lances and light lances.

[TruePurple]

Not a specific reason not to buy but..

Sucks that you can't simply save when you want. I know, that nethack mentality of the challenge.. and thats great and all... But if you simply want to explore game mechanics or made a stupid mistake last turn with the countless settings.(like forgeting to renew bid on mercenaries) and want to reset to a earlier turn.. One should be able to.

If its a matter of comparing scores or something.. simply have a ironman setting players can set that shows in scores.

[Jack_Trowell]

... cavalry are fewer in numbers (because they cost more than infantry), and thus the enemy can usually swarm them.

It's not only that they cost more : normal cavalry units are size 3, versus size 2 for normal (human-sized) infantry.

A a cas can only contain up to a total of 6 point of size, it means that you can only have 2 cavalry per cases, versus 3 infantry. So even in equal numbers, infantry will have the advantage in number of units fighting.

Of course, heavy cavalry have one advantage : the hoof/bite attack of the mount means that 2 units of cavalry make in fact 4 attacks, versus the 3 attacks of a normal infantry.

But those secondary atacks usually don't do mch damage (10 damage for a heavy cavalry), and are most used to decimate light and medium infantry (a cavalry charge on a squad of archer is not a pretty thing to see - if the archers are yours -).

[TruePurple]

I see what you mean jake, still interesting/nice to have things like pikes do extra damage to riders. You could make riders a little nicer to compensate. Of course that would obligate enemy troop information access even more... What do you mean by "case"?

Please don't miss my "Saving when you want to" post bottom of last page.

Along the line of providing stats for enemy units.. providing stats of summons when you middle click or left/right click.. what ever.. summon spells as well a number showing how many you will get.(or put that information in spell description)

You could then cut out a number of pages of manual with that information.. which would save money and tree resources..and make things easier for players not to have to look it up thumbing through a manual. And make it more mod friendly since if someone wants to mod different stats for summons the manual becomes worthless.

Granted then you can't "brag" about having 300 pages (or 292, the demo and web site pages say 300) manual. But other then that silly bit and if it were taken out of the manual one couldn't browse said info outside of the game..and the manuals alteration would require existing copies to run out and enough reason to change the print. Otherwise its a win win for everyone.

How often do those two read the forum? It would be nice to hear directly from them what they think of this stuff.

Do blessed units cost half upkeep like sacred troops?

[Jack_Trowell]

TruePurple said:
I see what you mean jake, still interesting/nice to have things like pikes do extra damage to riders. You could make riders a little nicer to compensate. Of course that would obligate enemy troop information access even more... What do you mean by "case"?

Sorry, english is not my first langage, i didn't use the correct word.

I was writing about the combat grid (you can show it in combat by pressing 'g' I think) : one box/zone can only have up to 6 size of unit (yes, it means that jotuns, having size 4, have lost space, unless you mix them with smaller units)

Please don't miss my "Saving when you want to" post bottom of last page.

Along the line of providing stats for enemy units.. providing stats of summons when you middle click or left/right click.. what ever.. summon spells as well a number showing how many you will get.(or put that information in spell description)

The number of units summonded is already shown : see the "number of effets" value in the spell description.

If there's a "+" after the number, extra levels in the spell main magic will summon additionnal units.

(...)

Do blessed units cost half upkeep like sacred troops?

???

a blessed unit is just a sacred unit under the effect of one of the blessing spells, so I don't understand the question.

The prophet is special, being always blessed, but as the prophet he doesn't cost *any* upkeep at all.

You're maybe wondering about the items that give blessed status to the weared (their are 2 : the shroud of the battle saint, and an artifact armor).

I was thinking of using it to halve the upkeep of some non sacred national mages, but equiping it doesn't show any change in the total upkeep cost (unless you have to wait for a turn first before the change show ? I didn't check yet)

[mivayan]

TruePurple said:
Please don't miss my "Saving when you want to" post bottom of last page.

It's been talked about: Would be very nice for new players. Would cause some to quit because they couldn't resist the temptation to reload when things to wrong. Since it's still first of all a game for one turn per day multiplayer, the devs prefer to focus on other features. You can mimic it by backing up your save directory.

Along the line of providing stats for enemy units.. providing stats of summons when you middle click or left/right click.. what ever.. summon spells as well a number showing how many you will get.(or put that information in spell description)

Would be nice if clicking on the text 'The army consists of mainly emerald guards' in a province description, showed the info a pythium player gets when right clicking on a unit on the recrutment screen. And for 'heavy infantry' it shows one of the many heavy infantry, randome one every time. Same for spells, show the stats for one of the 3 air queens from a link in the spell description.

You could then cut out a number of pages of manual with that information..

Nah... I like having stuff in the manual.

[PDF]

And another thing : with Sunray we've just updated the Dom3 Unit List Excel spreadsheet which is now complete for 3.04 !

It only include standard units, as all summoned creatures are in the manual (except the Lanka national summons that would be in but are not finished yet).

Go get it there :
http://www.freewebs.com/dominions2/