in which occasion will you raise taxes

[PvK]

I have used tribal militia to very good effect because of their low cost and very low resource cost. I could buy a half-dozen HI, or dozens of militia. So I bought them when I needed to quickly raise a large force, and provide cannon fodder for attacking castles and Users of deadly non-physical weapons like poison gas and Soul Vortex, where armor is useless. Having some in the front ranks also keeps the better men alive longer.

I've had some good results from slingers in a few cases too, in areas where I had little else I could raise, and when the enemies had little or no armor.

If units, especially militia, could be disbanded, this would mean you could raise them quickly and disband them when not needed, lowering their cost to use.

I agree though that some of the costs could be tweaked anyway, making some of the lighter units cheaper, and especially reducing their maintenance cost so you could make many appear quickly.

PvK

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
...
PvK - as it stands now, why would you ever buy slingers or militias? Even if they cost zero resources, I wouldn't buy them. I was playing Machaka, and realized that their primary infantry units are a waste of money... so I only bought archers and hoplites. And even with the archers, I would prefer to have an indy province with actual armored archers. There's just no use for 10gp light infantry, and their low resource cost does not make them viable, as gold is so limited in Dom II.

[licker]

Hehe, stop trying to bring reality into this argument

We have a concern, that LI are underpowered, and *overused* by the AI. In order to fix this you can either play with the costs/stats of the LI (won't fix it really) or change some mechanics to make LI more useful in general.

The problem with tweeking LI values, is that since the controling factor at some point is going to be supply you will never want alot of LI consuming the supply for your better troops. Ok you can raise supply with artifacts and nature mages, but that's an artifical solution and one that not every nation can easilly attain. Upkeep is seemingly secondary, but it is also a problem, especailly when you combine it with supply.

If LI and HI have the same supply and upkeep needs its obvious that unless HI is soooo grossly overpriced that you can't afford them you will eventually not use LI at all. As it stands now from what I can tell, there isn't even an early period where LI are useful, you go for HI (or MI) right off the bat, you never use LI.

Now if LI got some boost (free upkeep and supply for 10 LI for every province you control) then you'd be a fool not to use that free amount. Getting back to reality for a sec... this is what usually happened anyway! The LI were cheap to raise, and cheap to maintain, remember that the concept of supply in Dom is abstracted (or can be) to account for a variety of supplies, not just food. Any army with a significant amount of armor or better weapons required craftsmen to maintain and repair those weapons, the supply use in dom then could be higher for the HI to account for these craftsmen (or lower for the LI since they don't need them).

This should be first and foremost an issue of game balance and whats the best game mechanic though, not one of what's more realistic, how much food does a guy with plate mail need compared to a naked farmer...

[Saber Cherry]

Originally by PvK:
I'd rather see more variety by allowing maintenance and purchase cost to be independent.

I've wanted this for a while. In fact, I wanted it in AOW / AOW2 / AOW2SM but it never got put in...

-Cherry

P.S.

This should be first and foremost an issue of game balance and whats the best game mechanic though, not one of what's more realistic, how much food does a guy with plate mail need compared to a naked farmer...

Naw, realism is most important, not gameplay! =) But you forget, I think, that naked farmes can burn quite a lot of calories...

[ October 29, 2003, 21:34: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]

[licker]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:

quote:

---

Originally by PvK:
I'd rather see more variety by allowing maintenance and purchase cost to be independent.

I've wanted this for a while. In fact, I wanted it in AOW / AOW2 / AOW2SM but it never got put in...

-Cherry

P.S.

This should be first and foremost an issue of game balance and whats the best game mechanic though, not one of what's more realistic, how much food does a guy with plate mail need compared to a naked farmer...

Naw, realism is most important, not gameplay! =) But you forget, I think, that naked farmes can burn quite a lot of calories...

---

Bah you were one of the anti-surrender people weren't you? Come on admit it! I know you were

You probably joined that rediculose anti teleporter society too

Death to Realism!!!!

[Taqwus]

Non-uniform training time might well have a big impact, and seems reasonable -- untrained, generally lightly-equipped irregulars could be recruited and mobilized much faster than those who need to be trained to fight in armor and in close formation, and it'll take even longer if horsemanship or archery plays a part. Even if you have plentiful material resources, training will still take time unless your society's so militarized that your recruiting pool is already trained as a part of their upbringing.
And yeah, demobilizing makes sense. They may be irregular conscripts rather than professional soldiers, and once the threat's over they'd rather go home. Conversely, if there's a nearby threat loyal citizens might even volunteer to protect their homes (e.g. higher chance of militia event).
Combining the above with high maintenance cost for maintaining a standing army would increase the incentive to keep a smaller army followed by rapid raising of militia.

Edited: Incoherent and dropping words today.

[ October 29, 2003, 21:54: Message edited by: Taqwus ]

[PhilD]

Originally posted by Jasper:
What bothers me is that light troops aren't usefull in battle, while they clearly were usefull throughout history. Light troops were not "poorly equipped" troops, but troops used in a different manner -- a manner that simply doesn't exist in Dominions (or any similar computer game for that matter).

One simple way to address this would be to have a battle deployment area that was broader than deep, but with the flank areas marked so that only light/fast troops could be deployed there.

Another would be to allow lighter troops to deploy one man per "square" rather than 3, so that they would be an effective missile screen. Combine this with a slight increase in the accuracy and damage of missiles, and you'd have very good reason to screen with light troops.

These sound like good ideas; I'd widen the area where only light troops were allowed (frontmost area as well as the flanks). But, what's going to be missing from the role of light troops is the disorganizing factor of light troop missile fire - with no formations to maintain, this will be hard to take into account...

But, the real problem is the supplies. The "supplies" abstraction in Dom is only about food, but I think it should reflect more than that; it should be near impossible to raise and maintain a standing army of only heavy troops. These heavy troops should be a backbone that your army is build around - better morale and durability, but too expensive to have them make up more than a quarter of your army. I like the idea of some number of "light" troops in each Province not requiring supplies.

[Jasper]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
As for LI being historically useful, that's correct. But my impression is that is less due to their mobility, and more because they were so darn cheap compared to HI. Untrained, give'em a spear and point'em at the battle milita should never cost 70% of a well trained broadsword-shield-platemail HI unit in any respect (supply needs, wages, maintenance, initial deployment cost). For similar reasons, despite having more training and being better armed than militia, an LI shouldn't cost the same amount as an HI.

I entirely disagree. Light Troops were tactically very usefull, for example in rough terrain, against elephants, or for the mobility and speed. Light Cavalry in particular were always usefull unless the terrain was just too rough for horses.

Costs were obviously an issue as well, but I don't think they were the defining issue. It certainly wasn't true that light troops were only used because one couldn't instead field more heavy troops.