Questions about PD and other

[TwoBits]

Or scare off casual raiders and whatnot. Sure factors into whether I drop that lone Call of the Winds or not! Damn interesting and very useful if accurate. Thanks Silhouette!

Anyone else care to confirm this highly important tidbit?

[TwoBits]

And thanks to you too, Gandalf (you got in there split seconds before I posted .

[Archonsod]

BigDisAwesome said:
Even though you're theoretically saving resources, in the long run you're wasting gold. If you were to hire a couple armies to act as PD, you'd save a lot of gold and have a better force.

Not much use if your a resource heavy nation and happen to have a lack of resources though, plus you end up with troops sat away from the frontline doing nothing but taking upkeep if nobody attacks. PD can do the same job without the upkeep.
Then of course there's the problem of attrition. Troops can be affected by spells, dominion and the like while PD is not. They can also be ground down by mages, archers or similar on fire and flee orders. Against PD such a tactic is completely useless.
As for wasting gold, if the troops you buy are killed that's it, you need to buy a whole new unit to replace them. PD on the other hand will continue to provide the same units without further expenditure until the province is taken. Technically, the cost to keep a group of 10 troops defending a province could end up being much higher than the equivilent PD over the long term through casualty replacement alone (before upkeep is even taken into consideration)

As for improving PD, it would be nice to see some actual defences rather than simply troops. Or has the Dominions world not heard of ditches, redoubts and the like?

[HoneyBadger]

I second the fieldworks PD argument. And how about continuing to get better troops as you raise your PD?

[Gandalf Parker]

Changes to PD involves alot of work. Ive recommended having the PD be local units instead of nationals. But the problem is that each level of PD has to be spelled out. So increased PD or fieldworks would have to at least involve a load of rewrite for each nation. It might happen if Kristoffer gets an interest in it but there is alot of other nation theme stuff that still needs filled in also.

[HoneyBadger]

I'd just like mod commands that allow PD to be reset on a point-basis. Like if you have a PD of 1-9 you get light militia, but 10-20 gives you heavy militia, and 21-30 gives you knights, etc. instead of being stuck to the 1-19, 20-125 system we have now. That way I could mod PD for the various nations that evolves and continues to be useful throughout a long game.

[Archonsod]

Gandalf Parker said:
Changes to PD involves alot of work.

Sounds like the coding for it is messy :

Mind you, something like fieldworks could probably be fudged into the battlefield generation rather than the PD itself (simply check the PD and if it's > x, add X fieldworks to the battlefield)

Given that PD has remained pretty much unchanged since Dom 1 it would make a nice target for an overhaul should Dom 4 ever be in the works. Would certainly cause some rethinking of the traditional strategies at least.

[MaxWilson]

Crafty said:
I've noticed the AI seems to have this weakness of trying to bang his head against a brick wall (heavily defended province with super troops) over and over again, but using PD to exploit this is really evil, cos the troops regenerate and it doesn't tie up your elite attacking troops...

PD is really great man!!!

On the other hand, if you defend w/ real troops they'll get a ton of experience from winning all those battles, and it will be a lot cheaper to set up and/or move the defense around. Although you still want a bit of PD for arrow/mage chaff.

-Max

[MaxWilson]

thejeff said:
I never seem to get this invincible wall of PD vs the AI effect.

Maybe because I tend to play against Impossible level AIs? At least the initial attacks tend to have 4-500 troops. Even 100 PD isn't going to stop that for most nations.

Sure, once I've slaughtered most of those troops with mages and elite units, high PD would probably stop the AI's attacks, but by that time I'm advancing and most of that PD winds up in the backfield, where it's useless.

I play against many impossible AIs (sometimes a random mix of difficult/mighty/impossible) and I have found that the invincible-wall effect is rare for me too. Or rather, while the AI does tend to bang its head repeatedly on well-defended provinces, it does so with a large enough army that PD by itself is rarely enough, even in the early midgame. Maybe I'm just stingy--I rarely raise PD above 21, and almost never past 30--but I find PD is most useful when stiffened with some actual troops, at minimum an H2 caster and ideally a bunch of missile troops too.

-Max

[sector24]

The lowest levels of PD are far more efficient than hiring troops. This is assuming that you expect to get attacked imminently, and are not just building them for the patrol or extra commander.

I'm playing as Atlantis EA, so let's use an indy province with Atlantean Spearmen as an example. These guys are 8 gold and 2 resources. Everyone puts 1 PD in their province to avoid getting taken by a scout. After that, think about what the best use of your gold is. For 2 gold, you can get two units, or you can spend 8 gold on that one spearman. So obviously, you're getting a better deal for your gold by bringing your PD up to 15. At 16, presumably you could buy two Atlantean Spearmen for the same price as the 2 guys you get from PD, so it depends on the stats of the units.

That's the basic idea I use to determine a good level of PD. I compare the gold spent on the local units to the quality and number of units I would get from PD. It definitely matters what the local units are and what nation you are playing to determine where PD becomes less useful than recruiting units.

Of course this changes if you expect to pick them with a commander somewhere down the road. But there's no advantage to having 5-15 units sitting in one of your provinces eating your food month after month.