Production queue limit problems

[MaxWilson]

Jazzepi said:

Between Edi and Gandalf it's surprising that anyone bothers to raise any issue with Dominions 3. This is a legitimate complaint, but every time someone tries to bring up something that could be improved or has been giving them issues, sooner rather than later one of you two posts about how people should stop whining about Dom 3 and just worship it in all it's semi-perfect glory.

Hey, ease up on the ad hominem attacks. Edi took a substantive position on why the issue is not a serious concern (100k units in a game is rare); apparently you disagree about the seriousness ("legitimate complaint") but instead of e.g. arguing that the limit is often hit in 1000-province games you're attacking Edi. That's not cool.

The computational resources probably does constrain the maximum number of units (probably the same reason why we're limited to 1500 provinces maximum), but if this were an important issue it could probably be set in preferences and/or with command-line flag. The question is whether this issue is important enough to merit special attention that way. Looking at all the other things on the short list should put this issue into perspective.

Incidentally, keeping on the good side of the short list maintainer (i.e., Edi) is probably a good idea for a number of reasons.

-Max

[Edi]

Jazzepi said:

Between Edi and Gandalf it's surprising that anyone bothers to raise any issue with Dominions 3. This is a legitimate complaint, but every time someone tries to bring up something that could be improved or has been giving them issues, sooner rather than later one of you two posts about how people should stop whining about Dom 3 and just worship it in all it's semi-perfect glory.

Jazzepi

You go right ahead and point to a post where I have ignored things that are legitimate bugs. What I take exception to is when people dig up some really obscure thing that can only happen under highly specific circumstances and bring it up as if it were a serious bug with the game.

Take this one: It is highly specific, it is largely dependent on what nation you play AND a matter of preferences as to what units you want to recruit. Yet it was made to sound as if the 100-unit recruit limit was about to bring the game crashing down around our ears.

I have my issues with certain things in the game (quite a few things, actually), but I also consider priorities and what things can realistically be expected to be addressed. I have to, given my task with the bugs and other issues.

By all means, discuss this and suggest improvements and express what you wish changes, but keep in mind that these are matters of preference and they also have a demonstrated downside, with the existence of the unit ceiling (which seems to be closer to 150k than 100k). Whether that downside manifests is highly dependent, number of nations, the nations included, size of map and length of game, but remember that increase in the limit will also increase it for the AI, which could exacerbate the problem.

[Loren]

Edi said:
You go right ahead and point to a post where I have ignored things that are legitimate bugs. What I take exception to is when people dig up some really obscure thing that can only happen under highly specific circumstances and bring it up as if it were a serious bug with the game.

What's so exotic about my case? Good scales + some good globals. That's it.

Take this one: It is highly specific, it is largely dependent on what nation you play AND a matter of preferences as to what units you want to recruit. Yet it was made to sound as if the 100-unit recruit limit was about to bring the game crashing down around our ears.

I went through the units. There is *ONE* usable unit that costs more resources than what I'm buying. The other has an indie unit that's more expensive but it doesn't like moving--and the province is now several places behind the front line.

[Loren]

Edi said:
Seems to me that the complaints about the 100 unit limit in the queue and not using up all resources under highly specific circumstances is little more than bellyaching. For the vast majority of cases, it is not an issue at all and rare enough to not warrant changes.

And as Saxon points out, it's a choice between the lesser of two evils. Increasing the unit ceiling is not an option due to performance issues even on high end systems.

I think there's an answer to the unit limit problem.

Make some more units. They would be basically squads. If you have a bunch of something in a province they would sometimes combine into the squad units. Squad units would cost the same in support, leadership & food as what they were made out of, but they would function as a single unit for the rest of the game.

[Loren]

Saxon said:
If you are pulling in this many units a turn, it is likely that your opponents are as well. Given the gold you must have, you must have a decent sized empire and so do they. Let us assume 500 units are being added to the game a turn, if not more. You are buying top quality troops, others may be buying chaff.

Actually, there's no way that anyone else is building anything like as many.

I've got probably 40% of the map, an AI has another 40% and there are two little empires left that, we are each munching on one of the little ones. Obviously we will have a big fight when the two little ones are munched up.

So far, equal. However I have up Gift of Nature's Bounty, Fata Morgana and Riches from the Deep. This gives me gobs of cash he doesn't have and gobs of production to use it with. It's impossible to actually compare our armies as his has been at the max line for a long time now.

[MaxWilson]

Loren said:
I've got probably 40% of the map, an AI has another 40% and there are two little empires left that, we are each munching on one of the little ones. Obviously we will have a big fight when the two little ones are munched up.

So far, equal. However I have up Gift of Nature's Bounty, Fata Morgana and Riches from the Deep. This gives me gobs of cash he doesn't have and gobs of production to use it with. It's impossible to actually compare our armies as his has been at the max line for a long time now.

That's a long way to get into the game without building any forts. I can only assume that not building forts is a self-imposed constraint to make it more challenging, or for crazy Gandalf-like roleplaying reasons.

-Max

[Loren]

MaxWilson said:

That's a long way to get into the game without building any forts. I can only assume that not building forts is a self-imposed constraint to make it more challenging, or for crazy Gandalf-like roleplaying reasons.

-Max

I've got other forts, I can do my recruiting elsewhere. It's not a showstopper but it is annoying. Buying troops at the best provinces cuts down on the micromanagement needed.

[MaxWilson]

Loren said:
I've got other forts, I can do my recruiting elsewhere. It's not a showstopper but it is annoying. Buying troops at the best provinces cuts down on the micromanagement needed.

I see. I misunderstood your "I didn't build either castle" comment to mean that you only had two castles, your capital and one that you captured. That *would* be an interesting way to play, especially on a no-indy map. Not crippling but maybe thematic.

-Max

[PvK]

The mega-high resources would I think still be an advantage even if you only want a certain unit type, except for capital-only units, since you could build more castles even where there are fewer resources, and be able to recruit more than you otherwise could.

Again, ideally I agree it'd probably be best not to have a limit. I just don't see it as a major problem that there is one (especially since I've never had a problem with it, and frankly it has seemed a bit silly when I can recruit so many when there is some unit I can afford to recruit 100 of in one province, while other provinces can only recruit a few of some other unit type), and of course there are many suggestions I'd be happier to see before that one. Another thought is that opponents of players who have a great capital-only unit may be in favor of a limit...