in which occasion will you raise taxes

[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.