Fixing PD?

[The Panther]

Any good Dominions MP player knows how mostly useless PD happens to be. Even a smallish army can roll through 20 PD quite easily. I mean, one sauromancer spamming undead can frequently kill 20 PD (without archers) all by himself! How much PD can a single High Seraph spamming false horrors plus 1 archer kill? And what about Ghost Riders? I recently had a fight where my 35 Machaka PD lost to one single lesser horror! Bah! That should never happen...

So, how to fix the PD problem.

One idea suggested to me by my son is to add mages to the mix. Give each nation the obligatory commander at 1 PD. Then, every 5 PD, add the national lesser mage. Each 10 PD, add a national priest instead of the mage. On the even 20s, use the nations greater mage instead. Let them use whatever spells the nation has researched to that point.

This means at 40 PD, you have the 40 (minimum) national troops, 1 commander, 2 greater mages (at 20 and 40), 2 priests (at 10 and 30), and 4 lesser mages (at 5, 15, 25, and 35). This means a player can't just attack any old province with a tiny strike force anymore.

Also, you can improve the national troop selection every 10 (or so) levels of PD. I can see having a top-notch, high-protection infantry force supported by archers (if available to the nation) or spearmen plus many mages at 50 PD. This would take a real army to kill, not a wimpy raiding force with a lone mage. So much for players needing to take watch towers and spamming them all over their lands.

Is this enough? Is it too much? Is PD even mod-able?

What do you think?

[sushiboat]

I like the suggestions for mages.

I would like to see troops drawn from the recruitable troops in the province. If you originally battled indie barabarians to take the province, then PD would consist of recruiting barbarians. This would make up for the differences in the strengths of national troops across nations without making PD completely homogeneous (e.g., only human infantry and archers). Each province retains its original local "flavor." Just as in the beginning, some provinces are tougher than others because the locals are tougher.

[Verjigorm]

PD is moddable. PD is weak, but it's also cheap. I think it should have more value tiers. You shouldn't get 60 gold knights for 20 or so gold apiece, and on the flip-side, you shouldn't get slingers for a similar cost. The cost scale is a little bit odd in that it has an increasing cost with a linear return creating an "optimum" point for each nation. Some of the better optimum points are for Atlantis and Jotunheim. Some of the worst are for Pythium and Machaka--at some point it becomes more cost-effective to hire or summon (preferably) units for defense as the cost of slingers and militia escalate into the stratusphere.

[BigDaddy]

I'd say giving PD double Morale in a friendly dominions is both thematically correct and effective. I would also like to see another commander every 20 points, but leave the mix to each nation, but at least 1 mage, commander, and priest by 60pts.

[Jurri]

One Sauromancer costs 180g plus one province's (with castle and lab) allotment of commanders per turn, 20 PD costs 210g... The sauromancer will lose against many nations' PDs and beat some others, so it sounds about right cost-wise. Unless for some reason one wanted to emphasize defense over offense.

What use should Ghost Riders/Lesser Horrors have if not beating PD? Or false horror for that matter; what is the niche you see these spells fill? Defeating moderate amounts of infantry sounds about right to me. I haven't tried but I think 35 points of Machaka PD can beat a lesser horror more often than not, so that may have been a fluke. (At least to me it appeared that your dudes routed pretty easily compared to the normal performance of lesser horrors.)

I think it would help much if one could script PD. To not get bogged in micro there could be a nationwide PD-script to be applied to every province. Of course to retain balance some PD commanders should be re-evaluated, to not give f. ex. Vanheim too big an advantage.

[Endoperez]

Pythium with improved prov. defence:

#modname "Pythium Defence"
#description "This mod improves the provincial defence of the nation Pythium. This mod might work.




This mod was put together by Janne Joensuu, known in Shrapnel Games' forum by the name of Endoperez"
#version 001

#selectnation 2 -nation number, with abysia 0, atlantis 1... machaka 16
#defcom1 "Theurg" -base def commander
#defunit1 685 -first def unit, Alae Legionnaire
#defmult1 10 -defmult1 / 10 * pd = number of defunit1
#defcom2 "Arch Theurg" -commander on pd 20
#defunit2 688 -units gotten from pd 20 upwards, Triarius
#defmult2 20 -defmult2 / 10 * (pd-19) = number of defunit2
#end

They get 2 triarii for each point of prov. def. after 20 as it costs lots of gold. The second unit is triarii, because I think they are troops that have already retired and are given land in conquered provinces. If you wanted them to be units recruited and paid just for provincial defence, they could be hastati or principes.

ANYONE can easily mod the province defence. However, the modder should remember to try to follow the general guidelines - Pythium should have weaker prov. def., so maybe only Velites and Alae Legionaires & Theurg Initiates and Theurgs, while Jotunheim might have defmult1 15 Jotun Militia and Jotun Javelinists as second troops.

The problems:

Themes' pd cannot be modded to differ from that of base nation (Ulm/Black Forest, Broken Empire/Ashen Empire, Pangaea/New Era...)

Beating prov.def. of weak Astral nations would be easy with an S3+Skullcap mage teleporting around and scripted to [Magic Duel, Magic Duel, Magic Duel, Cast Spells].

[Verjigorm]

Certain nations like Pythium have very nice groups of castle hirables, but extraordinarily crappy province defense. One has to consider a nation's individual propensity toward offense or defense when assigning province defense. I think that GR/Horror/etc should be useful in beating province defense, but that certain (expensive) levels of province defense should not be so easily dispatched. 40 province defense costs 820 gold. Should such an alottment of resources be susceptible to a cheap (5 gem) attack? OF COURSE, GR isn't really "cheap" considering the amount of research that must be done to acquire it AND the investment in wizards who can cast it. Lesser Horrors on the other hand are from a LEVEL 5 spell costing only 9 slaves (with moderately difficult paths) can scare away sizable PD. 9 slaves is very cheap....

Drawing units from those available in the province would be neat--perhaps each tier could "hire" an appropriate number of a certain valuation of troop e.g. Militia at 1-10, Archers at 11-20, Light Infantry at 21-30, Heavy at 31-40, Cavalry at 41-50, etc... I especially like the idea of adding more commanders--having few commanders makes PD susceptible to flying unit attacks (imps/horrors). Mages (in provinces with labs) and priests (in those with temples) would also be very nice to see.

[Verjigorm]

Does Pythium really need 20 gold Arch Theurgs in their province defense? Since an Arch Theurg is Capitol only, however, i feel it's a poor commander choice thematically. IF that's the way it goes though, you could give Man Tuatha/Crones/Knights of Avalon, Abysia could have Demonbred (although with blood nations, they'd be less useful without blood slaves). How much is too much though? Upping all of the province defenses makes bigger castles viable, but at some point the cost-efficiency optimization makes them so useful that it's more important to max out PD than to make a castle there or station mobile forces in the province's vicinity for additional protection and it reduces the value of ranged summons. Adjusting DOM-2 appears to me as a similar conundrum to passing laws in a real nation -- everytime you "fix" one thing, you "break" something else.

[Agrajag]

Jurri said:
One Sauromancer costs 180g plus one province's (with castle and lab) allotment of commanders per turn, 20 PD costs 210g... The sauromancer will lose against many nations' PDs and beat some others, so it sounds about right cost-wise. Unless for some reason one wanted to emphasize defense over offense.

But when you buy 20 PD you will get much more than only one sauromancer, you get 20 units and two priests and a commander, which together cost much less than 210 gold, and the PD version doesnt cost upkeep or requires supplies!
You could also look at it from another angle, it only costs 20g to increase PD from 19 to 20, and that little increase is what you need to get that sauromancer.

While I'd really like to see PD made better, your ideas go a bit too far.
Maybe they should only follow the "tiers" idea, where PD 1-10 are crappy units, PD 11-20 are slightly better etc.

[Endoperez]

I have no idea about balance. However, that would be no 20gp Arch Theurg. It would be costly, but I don't have that handy Provincial Defence Cost Calculator so I can't tell how much more expensive it would be.

I posted that example in the hopes of someone doing a mod to correct or "correct" the provincial defences. Both would help the discussion.