PD wars! (no monkeys allowed)

[Squirrelloid]

sorry, yes, 210g. 155 is from 10 to 20.

I routinely buy enough PD to foil Call of the Wind. Generally that will handle arouse hunger too. (Its 5 monkey PD, less for most other nations).

And 3000 gold is 3-4 forts, which is confidence you won't be stripped of that gem income in a turn, and a place to hire units and mages.

All I'm saying is, PD is a pretty weak investment by comparison, because large amounts of PD are too expensive.

[Foodstamp]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

I routinely buy enough PD to foil Call of the Wind. Generally that will handle arouse hunger too. (Its 5 monkey PD, less for most other nations).

Yup. Nothing more annoying than Call of wind/wild spam.

Sometimes I also buy enough PD to stop random event barbarians if I want to build a fort that turn and cannot get some protection for my scout/indy commander.

[thejeff]

3000 gold is 3-4 forts without temples or labs.
More likely 2 forts that you can actually recruit from.
With the exception of nations that have cheap labs/temples and/or mages that don't need labs.

[OmikronWarrior]

The key to understanding PD is diversification. At the right level, PD is a great investment. Most nations get between 20 and 30 gold worth of units for every PD point. So, buy 11 points for 66 gold and get at least 220 worth of units. Units that pay no upkeep. Units that can come back to life. Units that can be produced on demand without resources or a fort present. Now, imagine spending that PD money on troops. Congrats, you now have a 14 gold per turn obligation. Every turn. After 20 turns, that is 280 gold, unless they die.

Of course, all the other objections people raised are still in full effect. PD doesn't move, can't attack, Definitely, make sure you have money to buy forts, labs, and temples as needed. However, you never entirely know what is going to happen any given turn. So, diversify your gold investments. Setting aside some gold for PD can have great returns. Also, leaving a few "holes" with 1 or 3 PD is a lot more acceptable if other provinces are covered at the 11+ or 25+ levels.

[HoneyBadger]

PD is a really neat idea.

An idea that, on the face of things, is pretty powerful.

It's simple to use and understand, with zero micromanagement. It gives you dirt-cheap, instantly built, maintenance free troops and commanders that are basically "fire and forget", and protection from spies.

It's even got separate slots for modders to add units the Nation in question might not otherwise gain access to.

As a concept, it's got a lot going for it, and it really should do more than it does, and be a larger part of the game, and overall strategy.

I wouldn't say that it's useless, but, as an aspect of the game that's been promoted as one of the better things about Dom3, it's leaning heavily towards the shallow/ignoreable side.

I always put a few points into PD, if I have any leftover gold lying around. At worst, it functions as an "early alarm system", and lets me atleast get one good look at an attacker, before it's defeated.

If someone wanted to go to the trouble, it would be great if the PD for the vanilla Nations could be upgraded (and maybe balanced across the board) to a point where you'd get more meaningful results out of it. Even though it's maintenance-free, you should still be getting close to an even trade for what you could have bought with it, in terms of units, due to the PD's immovability and "hands off" nature.

I kind of wish Kristoffer and Johan might still look at this someday, atleast to give us some more modding tools/options, since the way PD currently works is really a genius idea. It's just not fully harnessed yet, being just a little underdeveloped, and strategically weak as an option.

I don't think it deserves to remain in it's current form. There's lots of ways it could be turned into a more useful and integral part of the game, without making it into something negative (without encouraging extreme turtling, without slowing down the game, etc.).

[Radio_Star]

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

PD is a really neat idea.

An idea that, on the face of things, is pretty powerful.

It's simple to use and understand, with zero micromanagement. It gives you dirt-cheap, instantly built, maintenance free troops and commanders that are basically "fire and forget", and protection from spies.

It's even got separate slots for modders to add units the Nation in question might not otherwise gain access to.

As a concept, it's got a lot going for it, and it really should do more than it does, and be a larger part of the game, and overall strategy.

I wouldn't say that it's useless, but, as an aspect of the game that's been promoted as one of the better things about Dom3, it's leaning heavily towards the shallow/ignoreable side.

I always put a few points into PD, if I have any leftover gold lying around. At worst, it functions as an "early alarm system", and lets me atleast get one good look at an attacker, before it's defeated.

If someone wanted to go to the trouble, it would be great if the PD for the vanilla Nations could be upgraded (and maybe balanced across the board) to a point where you'd get more meaningful results out of it. Even though it's maintenance-free, you should still be getting close to an even trade for what you could have bought with it, in terms of units, due to the PD's immovability and "hands off" nature.

I kind of wish Kristoffer and Johan might still look at this someday, atleast to give us some more modding tools/options, since the way PD currently works is really a genius idea. It's just not fully harnessed yet, being just a little underdeveloped, and strategically weak as an option.

I don't think it deserves to remain in it's current form. There's lots of ways it could be turned into a more useful and integral part of the game, without making it into something negative (without encouraging extreme turtling, without slowing down the game, etc.).

Or, option 2, you could learn to use armies. Just a thought.

[HoneyBadger]

[quote=Radio_Star;758349]

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

Or, option 2, you could learn to use armies. Just a thought.

The two have little to do with each other. You might as well suggest we all learn to navigate our aircraft carriers better, instead of maintaining roads.

PD is separate from mobile armies. That should be obvious to everyone. There's no reason that it can't be made more useful and interesting, without somehow taking away from "using armies". People didn't stop "using armies" once they learned to build castles or create an effective police force. That doesn't make fortifications or military police any less important.

The way I see PD working is akin to adding infrastructure: You build it up from nothing, and as you do, more people settle there, more business is done, your workshops are more productive, your smiths and craftsmen more skilled. You attract the richer merchants and the famous bards. You also probably attract more crime.

The end result is a functioning defensive force, created by your people living there, out of a desire to protect themselves and maintain the peace, but it comes about from a lot of hidden factors that might be represented by 20+ buildings in a Civilization-type game, but that in Dom3 is refined and distilled down to a single number.

Gandalf: I don't mean that it should be made equal across all Nations, only that it could be improved across the board, while still maintaining what balance there exists between Nations. In other words, Niefelheim = bad PD, while Abyssia = good PD.

thejeff said it better than I did, actually

[Radio_Star]

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

The two have little to do with each other. You might as well suggest we all learn to navigate our aircraft carriers better, instead of maintaining roads.

Your ability to utilize your armies (one of two forms of defense) and your use of PD (your other form of defense) are of course related. The more effective one is in your hands, the less reliant you are on the other.

To say that your two forms of defense, being inextricably linked in their dualistic nature (big words, booyakasha!) "have little to do with each other" is ... well, wrong. You should add sophistry to your study list.

Let's see what other gifts of silliness you're giving to us inexperienced players. It's like Christmas every day!

PD is separate from mobile armies. That should be obvious to everyone.

Uh huh.

There's no reason that it can't be made more useful and interesting, without somehow taking away from "using armies".

(Screeching tires and accident noises. Maybe DJ-style record scratch/needle jump) Hm. Let's talk about this with some numbers. I like numbers. In addition to adding numbers, we're going to stop using the word "army". In this context it's incredibly misleading as what you really mean is 'mobile force'. Let's create a scale of strength and label it 1-10. 1 will be a single indie commander, and 10 will be a nearly mythical late game army comprised of hundreds of battle mages, thousands of troops, supporting thugs/scs/ etc. PD in its current form can, with a reasonable degree of economy, stop force levels 1 to, let's say 3. If you make PD more effective, it'll be able to stop, with a reasonable degree of economy, up to let's say 5.

If you eliminate the viability of certain force levels, you "[take] away" from the depth of mobile forces, necessarily limiting strategic options.

The way I see PD working is akin to adding infrastructure: You build it up from nothing, and as you do, more people settle there, more business is done, your workshops are more productive, your smiths and craftsmen more skilled. You attract the richer merchants and the famous bards. You also probably attract more crime.

The end result is a functioning defensive force, created by your people living there, out of a desire to protect themselves and maintain the peace, but it comes about from a lot of hidden factors that might be represented by 20+ buildings in a Civilization-type game, but that in Dom3 is refined and distilled down to a single number.

The way you see PD working is immaterial to the argument. 'nuff said.

People didn't stop "using armies" once they learned to build castles or create an effective police force. That doesn't make fortifications or military police any less important.

Straw man. Again, back to sophistry school with you.

Please remember to phrase your arguments with relation to the competitive game we're discussing. Your pseudo-historical references and theorizing about the nature of PD just don't matter in this context. Cease and desist, yo.


In the end, here's what's going on: as humans, we like win. As such, we like to modify the rules of competition to better suit us as individuals. This is fine and natural. Howeva. You're attempting to pull the balance away from the diversity and complexity that gives rise to strategic options, which then in turn serves to delineate skill levels. Every competitive MP community I've ever been in has people like you. People who want the game to be simpler and easier so that they don't suck quite as hard. These people are called 'scrubs'.

To summarize your response:

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

My name in Inigo Montoya. You killed my argument. Prepare to die.

[fantasma]

I don't know, what's wrong about PD? It is local militia, you would not expect elite there. And at the reasonable levels it is cheap for what you get, and, more importantly, upkeep free. I like it as it is.

There is huge variation of the strength of PD, which should be seen as a strength/weakness of a given nation and not balanced by itself, as I see things.

And raiding is an extremely important strategy, maybe just not so much using stealth.

[thejeff]

There's an interesting feedback loop with PD.

You can build thug raiders that will take out pretty much any amount of PD. Therefore, PD is a bad investment past a minimal level. Therefore, since you only have to raid low levels of PD, you can get away with using cheaper thugs or mages to raid with. And since any thug or SC can be killed by the appropriate counter you need to make them as cheap as possible.


I've noticed playing SP that I can't make a lot of the cheaper thug builds work. The AI tends to buy more PD and have random armies wandering around its backfield. Low-end thugs get overwhelmed. You can counter that by buffing the thugs up to almost SC level so they can deal with the larger numbers of troops. Since the AI doesn't know how to design a counter, it's worth investing more heavily.