Recruitable Unit Rebalance Version 7.51 Released.

[Alneyan]

I should have been clearer: I did not mean fodder in battle, but fodder outside battle, for spells like Flames from Afar and the like, or simply to repair walls. Actually buying militia for battle-duty would be another matter altogether.

[Saber Cherry]

Alneyan said:
I should have been clearer: I did not mean fodder in battle, but fodder outside battle, for spells like Flames from Afar and the like, or simply to repair walls. Actually buying militia for battle-duty would be another matter altogether.

Ahh, I understand now. In real life, though, untrained and under-equipped peasants were used in hordes in battle, not just as bait for "Murdering Winter" =) I want to make them viable for tactical military use in Doms 2 - as useful as vine men, claymen, wolves, hawks, imps, dragonflies, and soulless, considering price, survivability, and food consumption. Too bad there is no "food priority flag" that would allow an army to have 1000 militia and 30 knights, such that the 1000 militia are starving and diseased while the 30 knights are well-fed and happy.

[PDF]

PvK said:
I think Militia could be as low as 0 or 1 gold.

If magic summons and stuff are keeping their low unmodded costs, then you might halve the gold costs of most other mundane troops.

PvK

I'd rather see Militia boosted somewhat and kept to "normal" price (5-15 gp) rather than a free crappy Militia that will soon be abused (by having tons of them boosted with enchantments. Ever thought of effect of Haunted Forest on a 1000-militia pack o ? )

[PvK]

PDF said:

I'd rather see Militia boosted somewhat and kept to "normal" price (5-15 gp) rather than a free crappy Militia that will soon be abused (by having tons of them boosted with enchantments. Ever thought of effect of Haunted Forest on a 1000-militia pack o ? )

Sounds ok to me, actually, except that battlefield resurrection spells might want some reconsideration. Medieval armies usually had a whole bunch of untrained fodder, mainly because conscripted peasants certainly cost much less than skilled warriors.

PvK

[PvK]

I think 1 to 4 gold is about right for a militia.

On reflection, 0 is too low and would be used for Lobo Guards and Slaves.

I don't think being able to recruit a ton of them is too great an advantage - it's the advantage they're supposed to offer.

When I have excess gold (e.g., as Ulm) I will use Tribal Warriors and especially Tribal Archers for this, if I have them.

I almost never use slingers, but I will use shortbows.

I think there is a general error though in the accuracy ratings of units. It generally doesn't matter though, because only leaders can change equipment. Historically, archers or even slingers tended to be specialists, implying special training. So I would expect archers to have higher accuracy than regular troops. Generally, I think archers should be about as expensive as professional troops. I'd just lower the accuracy of non-missile troops (and most commanders) to about 8, leaving archers as is.

Unskilled or low-skilled troops would generally be rather less expensive than professionals. I'd think there would be about five tiers:

Slaves, lobo guards, summons - 0 gold
Militia, conscripts, unskilled fodder (skills 8) - 1-4 gold
Low-skilled troops (skills 9) - 4-8 gold
Professional troops, but not elite (skills 10) - 8-10 gold
Elite troops (skills over 10) - 11+ gold

Then I'd either jack up the costs of the powerful summons, or halve the costs of infantry as listed above.

Edit: Also, until Light Infantry gets the AI smarts to use their speed to avoid pitched battle with Heavy Infantry, I might lower their skills to 9's to justify charging 50-60% their cost, for balance purposes.

PvK

[Saber Cherry]

Those tiers and values sound about right, except for a couple things:

1) Conscription does not reduce province population in Dominions 2... therefore, fodder troops have to be a little more expensive to compensate for this "lack of a downside."

2) Archers seem fairly weak in Dominions 2. Possibly weaker than in real life? I'm not sure... obviously, real life has no "Staff of Storms", "Air Shield", and so forth. If Dom II archers are weaker than reality, the cost should reflect this (or something else should be changed). However, it certainly makes sense for someone trained as an archer to have higher precision than a militia, which is not presently the case.

But generally, they sound like good guidelines. Thanks!

[quantum_mechani]

I don't know about the rest of the ideas, but 0 gold lobo guards sound really scary. I already considered them a bargain...

[Saber Cherry]

quantum_mechani said:
I don't know about the rest of the ideas, but 0 gold lobo guards sound really scary. I already considered them a bargain...

They would still require 1 resource=) And I think Dom2 has a fundamental limitation of 1 gold per troop minimum. Not to mention that lobo guards are already amphibious and higher HP than a normal human.

Anyway, I'm modelling their effectiveness relative to other light units right now, and I don't plan to undervalue them =)

[Zen]

The easiest way to evaluate the gold cost of troops is to place Gold per pop 200%, then you can identify the discrepencies in gold/resource usefulness.

I don't think it's a fair accessment to base the value of archers on the effectiveness of Staff of Storms, Arrow Fend, etc, because of the overeffectiveness of these spells globally against one entire type of unit (archers).

It's obvious (at least to me) that these spells/magic items have to be toned down to provide a very real advantage but not totally negate the entire unit class.

Even with that argument, I don't think having more precision is a bad thing at all.

[PvK]

Maenads are worth their cost in food. They tend to stay to the death when berserk. They won't be your only unit, but having a mob of them to deal with in addition to other forces, makes them effective.

Same observation for Ulm vs. Maenads. Put shortbows behind the infantry of Ulm block, and the bows can take care of the maenads and let the infantry hold up longer.

As for the comments on slingers... I would like to see the sources which claim they are just as effective as shortbows. Maybe nearly as good, but I think they would rate somewhat lower damage, range, and accuracy than shortbows. There may be some factors to favor slingers (lighter, cheaper equipment), and yes they might supplant their ammo with rocks more readily than archers might replenish their arrows. However, military slingers would I think generally use sling bullets rather than just any rock. I don't think they had a better rate of fire than archers in general. I'm also extremely suspicious of the claim that a sling shot hitting a shield was likely to have a very useful effect.

PvK