Rating PD

[Ewierl]

I have felt Pangaea's to be among the more useful, both in Dom2 and Dom3. Those satyrs rout and die easily, but their strength and attack values make them capable of doing some actual damage before they run. Harpies kill nothing, but they keep the archers busy and prevent them from slaughtering the satyrs as quickly. They aren't great at "holding the province" but they are great at "wearing down enemy armies", and the latter is all you're looking for in most circumstances.

Agreed that Man is good at higher levels, but utter crap at low levels.

[Micah]

Marignon's got my vote for the best, at least against a variety of opponents. Decently armored pikes up front and crossbows in back...pretty much guaranteed to do some damage, and they synergize well with real troops.

[Foodstamp]

I found Arco's PD to be pretty good, it saved me in one of my early single player games.

I agree with everyone else about Niefelheim, simply the worst PD I have found so far.

[Reverend Zombie]

Foodstamp said:
I agree with everyone else about Niefelheim, simply the worst PD I have found so far.

My vote for worst PD is Jotunheim. Are they better or worse than Niefel (or about the same)?

[Meglobob]

The giants PD is terrible, its only worth putting to 1 really, looks like both Niefel/Jotumheim are as bad as each another.

I have found Marverni PD to be surprisingly good. At 10 PD, 55gps you get 10 slingers, 20 javelineers. They seem to inflict alot of damge in the first 3 rounds or so. I have had Marverni PD of 10, 20 and 30 swing a battle or two. In MP other nations fail to take it into account and some of there attacks get replused.

[Tyrant]

Argatha's PD is awefull, Marignon and Ermor both have good PD.

[Gandalf Parker]

Actually throw-away front-line infantry shouldnt be a minus as long as they are used well. If the province wins, they are recreated so they arent really a loss if they serve well.

I think that the battle of armies, natural or magical, is meant to be an emphasis of the game. So Im not sure that PD is meant to withstand armies. To me, if it can withstand MOST random events and the cheaper spell attacks such as "call of xxxxx", then that should be considered average for PD.

Maybe some tests for what purchase-price of PD it takes to do that for each nation would be helpful. If one can do at 6 what another has to have 11 to do then we have a barometer to measure by.

Of course, pumping A LOT of money into PD can be effective against armies but Im not sure if we will ever measure that to a useful decision.
IMHO

Gandalf Parker

[BigJMoney]

I will say something I said a while back about a feature that would improve Dominions 4, and that is a "default AI" feature. In other words, the player can alter the default AI scripts for each unit in the game.

If there were something similar for PD, it would just be plain awesome.

Even if this were something that has to be edited from outside the game, I'm sure an enterprising modder could create software that a player could run alongside Dominions to set up his unit script defaults to his liking.

=$= Big J Money =$=

[olaf73]

Its been said before but, Jotunheim has horrible PD. The worst IMO. Why was this done?

They used to have awesome PD in Dom2.