a very small suggestion for the next patch for ryhleh ( devs plz read )

[Boron]

i noticed today that the hybrid's which spawn in your coastal land provinces are not upkeepfree .
in small maps with less than 100 provinces they are a very nice idea .
but on big maps like faerun / orania the hybrids are annoying .
in my game i played i owned ~15 coastal provinces and through the spawned hybrids i had to pay each turn ~10-20 upkeep more .

this really hurts since it is a very time consuming + boring task to get rid of all your hybrids by letting make them suicide attacks on enemies . + once you control all costs and need to travel 3-4 provinces inland to the next enemy it is really a pain .

now comes the worst part :
a hybrid has a basic morale of 11 while your starspawns have a morale of 9 and your star childs a morale of 10.

so once either your upkeep gets higher than your income or someone casts utterdark not the hybrids but your valuable mages will desert first !

in general even if you sacrifice most of your hybrids each turn through suicide attacks you will still have many of them and pay 200-300 upkeep for them although you would never have recruited them .

so i would suggest to make them upkeepfree in the next patch because they are a serious disadvantage for ryhleh on a map like faerun and i don't think this was intended .

[ July 11, 2004, 15:45: Message edited by: Boron ]

[Boron]

they spawn "only" at coastal provinces with a fort .
you get at least one per turn , on average you get 2 / turn .
i guess they have a cost of 10 gold , so an upkeep of 0,67 .
if you control 10 coastal provinces you get around 20 / turn , that's ~ +13 upkeep / turn for something you don't want . this is huge .

a solution would be to not castle your coastal provinces but that would be very unfair since castling is a very loved play strategy

so plz either make them upkeepfree in the next patch or don't let them respawn anymore and make them recrutable or leave them out completely .

thnx in advance

[tinkthank]

Build fewer coastal forts!

[Norfleet]

Use Gateway. R'lyeh can easily move large quantities of troops from the interior to the front via Gateway.

[Boron]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
Use Gateway. R'lyeh can easily move large quantities of troops from the interior to the front via Gateway.

bah each gateway costs 10 astralgems.
+ it's a lot of unneeded micromanagement.
+ some hybrids might unfortunately survive the suicide attack and spread on the neighboring provinces
if i gateway into territority where they can't retreat i loose each time an astral 4 mage .
so very funny but not serious suggestion

@tinkthank

that's a solution but i don't like it very much because i think it's unfair for ryhleh because of the following reasons :
1. the coastal provinces are your beachhead so you most likely fortify them
2. ryhleh is designed for the watchtower and so for castling because it's troops cost so little resources
so you have either the disadvantage that you may not build castles in coastal provinces or you have to deal with the hybridproblem .
both choices are evil ihmo

[Norfleet]

You could cast Murdering Winter on yourself. That'll get rid of them, especially if you also took some Cold, as it does not affect you underwater. You probably have a ton of water gems somewhere.

[Boron]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
You could cast Murdering Winter on yourself. That'll get rid of them, especially if you also took some Cold, as it does not affect you underwater. You probably have a ton of water gems somewhere.

they're all clams
again a funny bud bad idea . at least if you have 20+ coastal provinces in faerun

do you play sometimes ryhleh norfleet ?
since you like castling and ryhleh is just designed for the watchtowers do you castle your coastal provinces then or not ?

what do other serious ryhlehplayers do to minimize the harm done by the stupid hybrids ?

[Stormbinder]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
You could cast Murdering Winter on yourself. That'll get rid of them, especially if you also took some Cold, as it does not affect you underwater. You probably have a ton of water gems somewhere.

Actually the simple and effective solution to this problem, as well as to all other similar problem, is just to add a small button "Dismiss unit" to Dom2's GUI.

I mean - why can't you have ability to dismiss unit when you don't need (or can't afford) it anymore?? It's not that it would break the mood or be thematically incompatible with the Dominion2 vision AFAICT.


If devs would want to add a bit more flavor (as well as realism) to this option, perhaps they could make province's unrest increase by 2% for each dismissed unit. (when you fire a large number of trained soldiers you are very often looking for trouble, since some of the disgrunted soldiers can join bandits or just stir unrest in the civilian population of the province).

[ July 11, 2004, 21:45: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Boron:
do you play sometimes ryhleh norfleet ?
since you like castling and ryhleh is just designed for the watchtowers do you castle your coastal provinces then or not ?

what do other serious ryhlehplayers do to minimize the harm done by the stupid hybrids ?

I do, but I've never encountered a problem with huge numbers of hybrids. R'lyeh has the easy ability to move them into battles via Gateway, and if you run them into nearly anything, they tend to die rather quickly. If their constant running bothers you, try communing up for a nice casting of Growing Fury, which should helpfully make sure they fight to the death. All in all, I've never had so many hybrids that they've actually caused a noticeable upkeep drain. Maybe I just abuse them more than you do.

[Boron]

yep that's what i wonder always too stormbinder
it's one of the few features dominions is missing .

in aow 2 shadow magic this worked very well for me once i was strong enough i disbanded my quite useless cheaper units
it would perhaps enchance national units a bit even because you can buy them in the beginning to expand and don't need to bother if you sacrifice them later .
and another similiar problem is the sucky militia you get as a "good" luck event