Poll: morale and routing

[Cainehill]

The_Tauren13 said:
ok i worded things poorly

i dont think useless troops should be *removed* from the game, i think they should be made, well, usefull. have you ever seen anyone recruit e.g. a salamander?

Let's see - I've had them used against me, so yes.

And when I play Abysia, I've recruited them, so yes.

Perhaps you have another totally "useless" troop in mind?

Well, actually, I can think of one, maybe. Man's Slinger unit, useless because of the Longbowmen, albeit I'd have to check and see if the slinger is substantially cheaper, in which case I can think of a use for it also.

And then I believe C'tis has a commander that's worse than the stock independent commander, which begs the question of why anyone would recruit one of those instead of the readily obtained independent.

But these are basically anomalies, imo.

[Stossel]

Well, I think Tauren has a point.

When I was in IRC, everyone I talked to about playing Vanheim said sloth-3 was good to take. Now, Vanheim troops are not that cheap resource-wise. I was blown away at the thought of sloth 3, but everyone in the chat seemed to think it was no big deal. Now, I think any negative-3 should hurt, badly, but with mostly commander-armies, it's no big deal.

I don't think national troops are useless, but at this point, they seem highly cost inefficient.

I'm determined to find a decent strategy that fields me armies as well as mages and fighting commmanders, but it doesn't look promising.

[Graeme Dice]

FM_Surrigon said:
When I was in IRC, everyone I talked to about playing Vanheim said sloth-3 was good to take. Now, Vanheim troops are not that cheap resource-wise.

Van and Valkyries do not cost lots of resources. If you plan on paying for a decent bless effect, then they can be quite effective. Einheres on the other hand, do require a large number of resources, and they are very useful in most situations.

[Stossel]

Graeme Dice said:
Van and Valkyries do not cost lots of resources. If you plan on paying for a decent bless effect, then they can be quite effective. Einheres on the other hand, do require a large number of resources, and they are very useful in most situations.

This is just what Tauren was talking about. Going sloth-3, which most of the people I've talked to seem to think is no big deal, makes everything besides vans and valkries cost inefficient before the game even begins.

[Kel]

On SCs: SC's add an element to the game. To make them less powerful, as a whole, is to reduce the impact of what I consider an essential, and intentional, element of the game. I wouldn't even play a limited magic game as a change of pace, I would play another game that was balanced specifically for low magic.

On useless national troops:
Technically there are few that are utterly, in all situations, useless...but let's be honest, there are *many* that serve the same function and, if they had never been introduced to the game, noone would care. Yes, there are situations where I might recruit a halberdier instead of a pikeneer but if I didn't have one or the other, it would not make any significant difference in the long run. So yes, a lot of units are kind of 'filler' units (which are still nice for flavor and all).

However, that said, there is only so much you can do with them and still maintain the nation's strengths and weaknesses. If you take a nation that has 3 kinds of medium infantry and make one a little lighter and one a little heavier, to make them 'useful', you just expanded that nations' power by giving it flexible infantry. Now you have to balance that...and somehow maintain the nation next door who was known for his heavy infantry and is now competing with your HI, MI and LI. So what now, give him some MI maybe to keep up ? Now everyone starts to look the same...

Summary: Yes, there are some units that are redundant in the roles they play...but expanding their roles would bite into the balance or individuality of nations. So, to me, you either have some extra units that are somewhat redundant or you don't have them at all. Having the choice doesn't hurt.

- Kel

[Pickles]

Kel said:
On useless national troops:
Technically there are few that are utterly, in all situations, useless...but let's be honest, there are *many* that serve the same function and, if they had never been introduced to the game, noone would care. Yes, there are situations where I might recruit a halberdier instead of a pikeneer but if I didn't have one or the other, it would not make any significant difference in the long run. So yes, a lot of units are kind of 'filler' units (which are still nice for flavor and all).

However, that said, there is only so much you can do with them and still maintain the nation's strengths and weaknesses. If you take a nation that has 3 kinds of medium infantry and make one a little lighter and one a little heavier, to make them 'useful', you just expanded that nations' power by giving it flexible infantry. Now you have to balance that...and somehow maintain the nation next door who was known for his heavy infantry and is now competing with your HI, MI and LI. So what now, give him some MI maybe to keep up ? Now everyone starts to look the same...

Summary: Yes, there are some units that are redundant in the roles they play...but expanding their roles would bite into the balance or individuality of nations. So, to me, you either have some extra units that are somewhat redundant or you don't have them at all. Having the choice doesn't hurt.

- Kel

I would agree with idea there are too many troop types particuarly for eg ulm with 4 types of identikit infantry. They are however subltly differentiated in the way you describe due to differing weapons. However the subtleties are too subtle for it to make an interesting choices between them. I dispute the fact that the variety of troops adds character in fact I think it reduces it. Ulm for example could be famous for its armies of Knights backed up by pikeneers & crossbows rather than its hodge-podge of miscellaneous heavy infantry. Warhammer the miniatures game did this in its latest edition - by reducing the choices you increase the character of the armies. Same with abysia - every abysian could have a weapon with a spikey ball on a chain for example.

This is of course a different issue from troops being too weak and is a massive none-priority (more the Dom3 wish list - rather than making up 1000 units we could have 500 and a better messaging system)

There are lots of understrength units too of course but picking them out is harder. (Salamanders go on my list BTW as they die just too much for 70 gp & I cannot find a way to pad them should be maybe 50 gp or tougher - double HP.)

Pickles

[The Panther]

The sloth 3 thing is normal for many pretenders. That is because you can overcome it with high admin castle or use low resource troops like mages and some of the sacreds.

Turmoil 3, on the other hand, is a killer. Even with luck 3, you still get those horrible bad luck events far too often. Finding 5 air gems in a mirror 3 times, erecting an extra 10 PD in a random province, and getting a bunch of free militia somewhere does not even come close to making up for losing 1/4 population in your home province early on. Plus turmoil 3 kills your income and you can barely afford mages at the crucial begining of the game.

The scales are not all that well balanced, but this has been discussed in the forum before. Order and magic are, in general, worth more than the other scales.

[Sheap]

The Panther said:
The sloth 3 thing is normal for many pretenders. That is because you can overcome it with high admin castle or use low resource troops like mages and some of the sacreds.

Sloth is unique in that it becomes less important over time. It's the only scale that works this way. Order and Luck remain constant, Growth/Death becomes more important later on (especially Death), and Magic remains important as long as there is research to do. But the effect of sloth is not very significant in the late game. It matters at the start - only if you need to build high resource units to do initial expansion.

The thing is, by taking negative scales (sloth+misfortune) you can make your pretender strong enough to overcome the economic disadvantage. By the time your pretender is ready to retire from indy-busting, you're ready to convert your nation over to summoned units.

This doesn't have anything to do with how strong/weak national units are or how they are priced. It's fundamental to the game design: All national troops are available from the start of the game. For summons to be relevant at all, eventually the summons have to become more powerful than the national troops.

Part of the "problem," if such exists, is that resources are fairly abundant, relative to gold. Gold is needed for castles, temples, mages, troops, and upkeep. Resources are only needed for troops, and there are few troops that require more resources than gold (both in absolute terms, or in terms of relative abundance).

My suggestions for improvements would be address this Last issue. Instead of castles and temples taking fixed time to build, they require resources, and live in the build queue just like units. Sloth doesn't seem quite so appealing with this change - and this would also make the long build time castles more tolerable.

I should also point out that many people play in games with more spacious maps than the developers intended, and higher site frequency than the default. This amplifies the conditions that make sloth-3 so tolerable.

Turmoil 3, on the other hand, is a killer. Even with luck 3, you still get those horrible bad luck events far too often.

I don't really have a problem with Turmoil-3 being viable only for Ermor, or maybe Carrion Woods. Drain-3 is viable only for Ulm, Heat-3 is viable only for Abysia and Machaka. But Sloth-3 is viable for almost everyone.

Turmoil+Luck has bad events significantly less often than Order+Misfortune. The problem isn't the random events, it's the income loss. Turmoil-1 has about 75% as much money as Order-3. Turmoil-3 would have about 65% as much money as order-3. That's a big, big, big difference. Part of the difference is upkeep. Upkeep accumulates over time, resulting in a constrained growth situation; if you've studied differential equations (or ecology), you know that a 35% loss of income translates into much more than a 35% loss of population. Where the population, in this case, is mages. And mages are critically important. It's fair to say that order scale is almost important to research as magic scale is.

[Graeme Dice]

FM_Surrigon said:
This is just what Tauren was talking about. Going sloth-3, which most of the people I've talked to seem to think is no big deal, makes everything besides vans and valkries cost inefficient before the game even begins.

Even prod 0 and a castle allows you to recruit enough einheres to significantly increase your offensive punch over what you would have with only Vans and Valkyries. They are, after all, extremely expensive and vulnerable to elemental magic.

[Boron]

one problem that makes national troops which you could use in large numbers so bad :

SUPPLY .

as vanheim e.g. i could use hordes of skinshifters or everyone hordes of barbarians .
they are not bad units in theory .
but given the fact that they require low resources why shouldn't you take a watchtower / mausoleum ?!?

vanheim e.g. can't forge supplyitems early on .
so even if you build only e.g. 60-80 skinshifters you run soon into supply issues .
if you take a castle it is a shortly later time but when you are 3 provinces away from your capitol it is the same and you can build castles not as easy as a watchtower .


for ryleh this is very severe too : if you have enough gold you can produce hordes of illithids which are quite useful .
but they are size 4 so they eat a lot .

caelum could produce hordes of their cheap archers .
they would be really useful for their prize but supply is again the limiting factor .



so the supply system is just too harsh at the moment .
without supplyitems in any province 2-3 provinces away from the nearest castle with 2-4k pop and those are quite common in mountain/swampland you just have about 20-50 supply .
rarely you have over 100 supply when only 2 provinces away from your next castle .





overall earlygame at least 30 slingers / archers = cost 210/300 would beat 1 mage probably .

but supply prohibits you to use more than about 50-100 troops anyways for most nations .
midgame the archers aren't useful anymore because they have little chances damaging most mages at all .
e.g. 1 ulm mastersmith casting invulnerability + magma eruption would defeat about 50 archers very likely .


there are several severe problems :
- most national troops have 8-14 hp which kills them with 1 single hit by almost any spell most likely .
- scs get easy lightning + fire resistence . with 20-30 protection + lifedrain even 50 knights ( e.g. ulm ) lose probably . if the sc has fire shield this is just absurd .
with f9 blessing you have some chances but if the sc has fire shield + high protection etc. you defeat him perhaps but at least lose lots of your troops .

i think you all admit that any national unit without f9 bless or n9 berserk bless ( only true for jotunheim + pangenea ) can't even defeat a standard banelord cheap sc .


it is just national troops suck against most mages after the first 10-20 turns .
most have no chance against scs .
summoned creatures are upkeepfree + have often a really good morale so you don't need that many to prevent routing .


so you always buy only as much as you think is enough to avoid routing and replace them soon by summons .
not that most summons are directly that stronger than national units but most summons have high morale , need not eat and cost no upkeep .

as panther said that approach was good in age of wonders .
there the summoned units costed mana as upkeep .
so though they were the strongest units you couldn't field too many of them .
and for national units there was a techtree .
so your armies were about 2/3 national troops 1/3 summons .
the lvl 4 national units were almost as good as the lvl 4 summons and the lvl 5 summons were the most powerful units but 2 lvl 4 summons / 3 lvl 4 national units were normally enough to kill a lvl 5 summon .
since you had about doubled gold income compared to manaincome normally this was really fun + well balanced .

with the combat system that each definding unit has only 4/5 retals cheap lvl 1 units to steal defending strikes to let the lvl 4 units kill the enemy lvl 4 units without having the risk of being killed too made the lvl 1 units quite useful too .

with heroes of might and magic series this was true too .
there lvl 1 / 2 units could kill lvl 7 units too .
so they all served a purpose .