Fixing PD?

[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.

[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.

[Jurri]

Verjigorm said:
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....

How come Lesser Horrors are cast so seldom if it is only moderately difficult and very cheap? At least in my experience it is very rare too see send lesser horror except from a gift of kurgi, and not that, even, too often. ('Cause the Gift is so damn expensive!) Abysia can utilize them but to others B2S3 is quite a lot; giving two or three boosters for a mage to cast a lesser horror is far too much usually. And 9 slaves is a third of a Horde from Hell. I'd go so far as to say that a single HfH is better for the purpose than three send lesser horrors, especially if mage/booster time is taken into account.

Ghost Riders has been discussed to death earlier, I think, but in my opinion defeating PD is exactly the niche for it. A single GR can't beat even that if there's proper mage/priest support available. It's not like one must leave PD to cope on its own, is it?

[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.

[FrankTrollman]

Province defence costs N*(N+1)/2 gold, where N is the total PD you want.

As things currently stand, PD is variably good for different groups. I'm quite fond of Atlantis PD under water (and even above water if I have magic troops like Mindless Ones lying around that I want to participate in battles), an I'm quite fond of Caelum PD.

Some nations, notably Machaka and Man get PD that even in large numbers is only vaguely capable of defending itself from Scouts. I'm not sure if that's a balance point or just dumb. Remember though, capitols start with 25 PD for free, and there are events that will raise that by five or ten.

If you make PD too good, it will be really hard to siege people and Wind Ride will become even more awesome than it already is.

PD Costs:
1 - 1
2 - 3
3 - 6
4 - 10
5 - 15
6 - 21
7 - 28
8 - 36
9 - 45
10 - 55
11 - 66
12 - 78
13 - 91
14 - 105
15 - 120
16 - 136
17 - 153
18 - 171
19 - 190
20 - 210

Very generally, the first 10 costs 55, the second ten costs an additional 155, the third 10 costs an additional 255, and so on and so on.

-Frank

[Jurri]

Agrajag said:

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!

Ummm, I just wanted to comment on Panther's gripe about sauromancers beating PDs on their own. In fact the exact opposite you read me to mean That is to say, I don't think it's too terrible that a 180g sauromancer can beat a 210g Province Defense by himself, so perhaps no radical changes are necessary.

[The Panther]

Ah, but the sauromancer can move around, haul armies, cast rituals, research and is quite versatile. The PD just sits there doing nothing, waiting to be slaughtered by practically anything. Doesn't every single C'tis player build another sauromancer rather than 20 PD in most situations? The only true benefit of PD is to catch enemy spies if it can and help stop the hawk or wolf spell.


That is definitely a good point above made by Frank about making it hard to seige people if PD got too good. I once attacked an enemy who had 116 PD in a province, unbeknownst to me. My meager army of a couple of mages with maybe 20 devils and some random vine ogres and other Abysian infantry killed well over half of that huge PD before I lost everything. Had the enemy routed, I even could have won the battle with my smallish army. And that was over 8K gold he invested in that much PD.

PD certainly cannot slow invaders like watch towers can, which is why people usually spam towers and not PD.