Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and more..

[Soapyfrog]

If everyone hoards then "great". However NOT hoarding is not a viable strategy. That's bad.

You might maybe get away with it on a small, crowded map... games that don't Last much past (or get called at) 40-50 turns will probably not see hoarding as a serious problem.

Large maps are fun becuase they are large, there is more opportunity for give and take, the game is more epic, more sweeping. But it loses most of it's allure as you are forced into a few narrowly defined strategies revolving around hoarding. So as you can see the things I find fun about large maps are mostly cancelled out by the devolution of the game caused by hoarding strategies.

It's like any game that has a shortcoming. You fix that shortcoming and you have a better game. It's not complicated.

[Endoperez]

I am on the same boat with Chazar. I don't understand why a hoarder should be able to win someone who has not hoarded but instead conquered twice or thrice as much provinces AND searched them for sites. Sure, if the hoarder is left to be for 30+ turns he will have beter income, but if he is attacked *now* with armies almost twice as large as his he is in great trouble.

Has this been tried, has it worked? If not, why? I don't see any reason for it to *not* to work... ...with all my experience I got solely by reading this forum and playing SP games.

[baruk]

Graeme Dice said:

If I've spent several hundred gold on a castle, why should I not be able to use it for defense?

You still get the defence value of the castle. All that has changed is the attacker gets the option to storm in the same turn defences drop to zero. The storm castle part of the order is ignored if defences are not yet down to zero (probably need to mention this for more clarity).

baruk said:Commanders and units that have travelled using gateway, teleport or cloud trapeze will now suffer from planar sickness. If said troops fight a battle the same turn as their "jump", they start with a fatigue penalty: 20 fatigue times the size class of the unit.

Graeme Dice said:Again, what's the point of this change?

The teleport spell was taken away from the Sphinx, as it was considered unbalanced being able to port one's Sphinx onto an enemy capital in the early game. I wanted to find a way to give teleport back to the Sphinx, whilst making teleporting it onto a capital a more risky prospect.
The planar sickness idea is basically a paratrooper combat penalty transplanted from another game. It just seems to make sense to me to give teleported troops some kind of fatigue penalty.

baruk said: There is nothing worse in the game than when the AI wrongly chooses to ignore my orders. I would rather it followed my orders, and suffer the consequences. I can always change my orders, but I can't easily compensate for what the AI might do.

Graeme Dice said:No, it's far worse to have all your gems wasted when a person sends a single casting of arouse hunger at your armies before they attack.

Yep, thats annoying too, my change to gem usage takes care of that, however. The idea is to render gem depletion sorties a turn to turn concern, rather than a cheap disruption tactic.

baruk said:My solution: mages start each battle in the same turn with the number of gems they started the turn with. For example, if I give my mage 3 gems, he will start each battle in the following turn with 3 gems.

Graeme Dice said:Do you have any idea how overpowered this is? You've just tripled the number of gems that any mage will have.

It would only be tripled were the mage in that example to fight in 3 battles that turn, and use all his gems in each battle.
The gem usage boost would be the same for everybody, in the same way as gem producing items can be made by everyone. For a potential exploiter, the trick would be to have your gem carrying mage engage in multiple battles a turn (which is why I wouldn't have it apply to death matches). Arranging things so that your mage fights several battles in a turn may be tricky, even with potentially 11 battle rounds a turn.

baruk said:Limit the total gem output from each type of item on a per province basis.

Graeme Dice said:I've got a better idea. People should stop whining about gem generating items and play on smaller maps. I'm starting to get really frustrated with the people who want to change the game to make it yet another fantasy strategy game where magic doesn't have any significant effects.

I've never whined about gem producers, they are probably fine the way they are. A change is as good as a rest, they say. My suggestion is to make life for the hoarder a little more interesting, by having to spread his generators out a bit among his provinces, or push dominion a bit more. I like to try and think of ways to link important game mechanics to dominion strength, its nice for it to have a little more impact on the game.
With such a change to gem producers, I don't think that they would be rendered insignificant, many hoarders would barely notice any difference in gem output.


Good questions nonetheless, my original post could probably be somewhat clearer.

[Graeme Dice]

baruk said:
The planar sickness idea is basically a paratrooper combat penalty transplanted from another game. It just seems to make sense to me to give teleported troops some kind of fatigue penalty.

A turn represents an entire month. I'm not sure why stepping through a gateway would make you more tired than a month long march into enemy territory.

Arranging things so that your mage fights several battles in a turn may be tricky, even with potentially 11 battle rounds a turn.

You can expect to see at least two battles a turn on average for major armies. More if there are multiple opponents all attacking you at once.

[baruk]

Graeme Dice said:

A turn represents an entire month. I'm not sure why stepping through a gateway would make you more tired than a month long march into enemy territory.

<Thinks on feet> According to my dominions medical textbook of dimensional diseases, Planar Sickness Lasts exactly one month of game time. Fancy that!
Who knows what horrors lurk between worlds? It would give me the heebie-jeebies, at any rate.

baruk said:Arranging things so that your mage fights several battles in a turn may be tricky, even with potentially 11 battle rounds a turn.

Graeme Dice said:You can expect to see at least two battles a turn on average for major armies. More if there are multiple opponents all attacking you at once.

An army will still have to be cut off from its gem supply when on offensive maneuvers eg. when seiging castles, or taking unlabbed enemy provinces. This means there is some scope for turn to turn gem attrition.
I think my proposed change wouldn't be too unbalanced. The potential horror could be a pretender SC with many gems, using them to cast battlefield spells, annhilating a succession of small armies in the same turn. A willing or unwary set of opponents and some luck would still be required. I would guess that it'd be difficult for an attacker to actively arrange multiple battles. It doesn't worry me because people can and will adapt to the new tactical environment.

[alexti]

baruk said:
What do you think, forum people? Sensible ideas or frivolous junk?

Well, it would help if you mentioned what you're trying to achieve by those changes. How the game would benefit from proposed changes?

I'm guessing you are trying to improve games on huge maps (400+ provinces), but in my opinion the major problem in those game is amount of micro-management.

[baruk]

alexti said:

Well, it would help if you mentioned what you're trying to achieve by those changes. How the game would benefit from proposed changes?

I'm guessing you are trying to improve games on huge maps (400+ provinces), but in my opinion the major problem in those game is amount of micro-management.

I'm trying to slay a number of percieved game bugbears at a stroke (some are mine, others are ones raised on the forum I at least partly agree with or have some sympathy for). I think the game could be improved if these concerns are dealt with. The worst is probably micro-management, to which my changes would only add, or make no difference, however.


The bugbears:

- Defending unfortified provinces from raids is too hard.
Solution: Initiative system for movement.

- Defending from raids using castles is too easy.
Solution: Castle speedbump effect removed.

- The spell AI ignores my orders.
Solution: Change AI, and the way gems are used in battle.

- Gem generators, used every game, by everybody, yawn.
Solution: Add a dominion based per-province limit.

- Sphinx lost teleport. Effectiveness of magical movement over standard movement for defence and offence.
Solution: Planar sickness.

It is arguable whether these concerns are necessarily valid or important. Its likely the solutions would provoke as much outrage and gnashing of teeth as the problems they are supposed to fix.

[Cainehill]

baruk said:
The bugbears:

- Defending unfortified provinces from raids is too hard.
Solution: Initiative system for movement.

- Defending from raids using castles is too easy.
Solution: Castle speedbump effect removed.

These two contradict one another. On the one hand, you imply raiding is too powerful, and on the other hand, you want to make it more powerful.

The first one I think could use some improvement - random movement sequence would fix this.

The second one is insane. Fortifications are _supposed_ to provide defense from raids, that's one reason they were built all over most of the world. The idea of an army being able to come zooming right in, and in less than a month travel, siege, and storm is .... Well, I already used the word insane. Albeit it might be acceptable for mausoleums / watchtowers, which really aren't proper fortifications.

- Sphinx lost teleport. Effectiveness of magical movement over standard movement for defence and offence.
Solution: Planar sickness.

Your "solution" simply makes combat teleportation unusable for many units, while once again allowing the Sphinx to plop right down on an enemy capital, easily surviving the couple of turns it takes to regain consciousness before casting fire shield, astral shield, etc, and winning. You also don't mention why cloud trapeze should have "planar sickness", since it doesn't involve plane shifting. Or why flying units shouldn't have "air sickness".

[baruk]

Cainehill said:

These two contradict one another. On the one hand, you imply raiding is too powerful, and on the other hand, you want to make it more powerful.

The first one I think could use some improvement - random movement sequence would fix this.

The second one is insane. Fortifications are _supposed_ to provide defense from raids, that's one reason they were built all over most of the world. The idea of an army being able to come zooming right in, and in less than a month travel, siege, and storm is .... Well, I already used the word insane. Albeit it might be acceptable for mausoleums / watchtowers, which really aren't proper fortifications.

Firstly, I don't find my changes contradictory. My aim is not to hamstring raiding or fortifications. I just want to iron out a few kinks in the system.

I think armies should be able to travel, seige and storm a castle in the same turn. It doesn't make sense to me that they would seige a castle down to zero defences... and then stop abruptly, waiting a turn for new orders to storm the castle.

It does not strike me as unreasonable that a weak fortification, or one left undefended should not be vulnerable to capture in a single turn by a large force. Note that I have suggested a one half seiging penalty for armies that have moved in the same turn, effectively doubling the size of force needed to achieve a single turn capture. Fort defence values could perhaps be increased 10 or 20% across the board as some compensation.

Note that armies using magical movement would not get the move & storm option. It would be a bonus available to the conventional army, and thus may be easier for a defender to anticipate/intercept.

baruk said:- Sphinx lost teleport. Effectiveness of magical movement over standard movement for defence and offence.
Solution: Planar sickness.

Cainehill said:Your "solution" simply makes combat teleportation unusable for many units, while once again allowing the Sphinx to plop right down on an enemy capital, easily surviving the couple of turns it takes to regain consciousness before casting fire shield, astral shield, etc, and winning. You also don't mention why cloud trapeze should have "planar sickness", since it doesn't involve plane shifting. Or why flying units shouldn't have "air sickness".

In game balance terms, if I'm going to penalise teleport, then the same has to go for cloud trapeze, as its just as accessible and effective, a sphinx-type SC can use either spell quite easily. If you allow some fantasy license, you can imagine a powerful spell such as cloud trapeze would involve traversing the elemental plane of air (not in the spell blurb as such, but not something that has to be regarded as gospel). Flying units, and others with large strategic move would be fine, as they simply use natural, "earthly" abilities.

Regarding the Sphinx example, its possible it will still be successfully used to hit capitals, and I'm not against such a use in principle. It will be considerably less effective with 120 starting fatigue, however. If it is tested and still considered too powerful, the fatigue penalty could be exaggerated for the larger creatures, eg. 5, 15, 30, 50, 90, 150 for sizes 1 to 6. Another tweak could be to scale fatigue according to enemy dominion strength, perhaps an additional hit of 5 or 10 fatigue per enemy candle. Alternatively, you could give an extra vulnerability to the Sphinx: dominion dependence. This would work by depriving a pretender (by some combination)of his magical powers and protection when in enemy dominion (and perhaps increase the penalty to hit points substantially).

My original thoughts about gateway were that a fatigue penalty could be a tradeoff in allowing it to target any province, as it did in dominions 1. This is really not needed, as that ability is covered by astral travel. The fatigue penalty, however, keeps it in theme with teleport and cloud trapeze, the trio forming an "economy class" of movement spells. For symmetry, under my fatigue system, at level 8 or 9 research non-fatiguing Versions of teleport and cloud trapeze would be available.

[alexti]

baruk said:
The bugbears:

- Defending unfortified provinces from raids is too hard.
Solution: Initiative system for movement.

- Defending from raids using castles is too easy.
Solution: Castle speedbump effect removed.

I'm not sure if making defending unfortified provinces from raids easier is a positive thing. Some strategies rely on raiding rather than taking on the clash of armies. And I'm on receiving end of such strategy in one of my MP games. I keep winning major battles with minimal losses and a good loot from the enemy, but I'm still losing the game, because of massive raids. That's an interesting experience, and one thing that makes Dominions 2 great is the variety of different strategies that can lead to success.

In any case, this kind of change would affect the game a lot and it wouldn't be easy to rebalance other things to keep everything in balance.

baruk said:
- The spell AI ignores my orders.
Solution: Change AI, and the way gems are used in battle.

Actually, it was changed in one of the patches (was it in 2.12?) Before, AI tended to waste gems without a reason. Now it is much smarter and uses the gems sensibly (in most cases). The one problem that I see is that sometimes the mages won't use extra gems to bring their fatigue lower. But this is one is not easy to resolve. Sometimes I'd give the mage extra gems, so that he can lower his fatigue and in another situation I'd give more gems because I expect to fight 2 battles in the same turn. Making it configurable would add even more micromanagement, but if AI would just use spare gems only in the castle battles (storming or defending vs storm), which are bound to be the Last I'd be glad.

Generally, spell-casting AI is not that bad if you brought right mages and gems. Several times I was surprised by AI switching to his own plan (better than mine) after running through my scripts.

baruk said:
- Gem generators, used every game, by everybody, yawn.
Solution: Add a dominion based per-province limit.

Is there actually a problem here? I highly doubt that there's a problem with bloodstones, fever fetishes is not likely to be a problem either, so only clams are candidates, but there's no agreement on that issue. Maybe the latest change (non-stacking gem generators) will be sufficient to close the whole issue.

baruk said:
- Sphinx lost teleport. Effectiveness of magical movement over standard movement for defence and offence.
Solution: Planar sickness.

Personally, I like Sphinx being non-teleportable, it makes him a unique pretender. Magical movement really helps in the late large games. Just imaging dragging that large army of yours across of 15 provinces just to get anywhere close to the enemy. And then the enemy can avoid you infinitively. So in the end it may become just a matter of filling all provinces with a large armies (sooner or later one will have enough gems to do it). But this will cause "army-size-inflataion". Those "large" army will be considered a small forces, while the real "now large" armies will have to be dragged across the map again. So the magic movement is needed at least to avoid horrible micromanagement. If there're too many penalties for teleporting (stands for any kind of magic movement) armies, nobody will use them to engage in a serious battle, which will result in all that extra micromanagement.

Suggested 20 fatigue per size is too much of a penalty, in my opinion. Though just 20 fatigue (or some similar number) can be an interesting option. Another option would be to make teleporting defenders lose initiative, meaning that in this case the turn sequence would be: defending garrison - attacking army - teleported defenders. Dom2 engine probably doesn't support such a sequence, but it can be emulated by making teleporting defenders skip their first round. Attackers (whether they move magically or not) are already at disadvantage, so I'm not sure that any extra penalties would be good.

baruk said:
It is arguable whether these concerns are necessarily valid or important. Its likely the solutions would provoke as much outrage and gnashing of teeth as the problems they are supposed to fix.