What it will take for me to purchase Dom III

[B0rsuk]

Unless you use some mods.
E.g. you may mod the scales and the production settings so you get more growth, more supplies and more gold - all this will strengthen the conventional units somewhat.

I don't like this solution at all. Why should I have to pay additional costs to have halfway decent conventional army ? I already pay in gold and food - and now design points ? Scales aren't free.
I think that base income should be increased, not effectiveness of scales. Of course, if base amount of gold/resources was higher, scales would get you more, too. But I don't like the concept of scales being a requirement for decent conventional army.

[Arralen]

B0rsuk said:

I don't like this solution at all. Why should I have to pay additional costs to have halfway decent conventional army ? I already pay in gold and food - and now design points ? Scales aren't free.
I think that base income should be increased, not effectiveness of scales. Of course, if base amount of gold/resources was higher, scales would get you more, too. But I don't like the concept of scales being a requirement for decent conventional army.

It was "scales and production settings". Means you get more gold, ress and supplies with the same scales. Similar to choosing the "rich" setting.
And I don't see where I suggest you would have to pay additionally in scales if you want to build a conventional army. After all, you have use decent scales to do that with the basic settings already ...

On the other hand, it's not so much about making positiv scales better, but make negative scales more costly. Atm, lots of people go for negative growth and negative productivity to feed the points into high magic / double bless strategies. IMHO, death scale should really hurt.

And as there are only random events to kill pop but no to give free pop, having real high growth-%tage with positive scale wouldn't hurt either.


concerning troop cost
With troops costing only 10 gold, there's only so much you can do about the pricing ... qm already made lots of troops 20% cheaper in his complete balance mod, and I like the changes. But there's not much room if you want to differentiate between milita, light, heavy infantry and special elite troops ... .

[Sandman]

National troops should be upgradeable. At the moment they derive rather less benefit from magic research than mages, summons and SCs.

Suggestion: Castable perma-upgrades: These are a set of spells which confer a permanent bonus on mundane humans or similar. Fire resistance, demon blood, lycanthropy, undeath, etc. The key feature? Only one upgrade per unit - they don't stack. Even so, it gives you a lot of options to play with when it comes to national troops.

[Ironhawk]

Sandman said:
Suggestion: Castable perma-upgrades: These are a set of spells which confer a permanent bonus on mundane humans or similar. Fire resistance, demon blood, lycanthropy, undeath, etc. The key feature? Only one upgrade per unit - they don't stack. Even so, it gives you a lot of options to play with when it comes to national troops.

I like your suggestion. Have it with a moderate gem cost so that you have interesting decisions b/w summons and mortal troops: Should I spend these 5 nature gems to give these 25 elite troops the perma +10-15hp? Or should I summon 10 vine ogres? And before people start picking that example apart - I'm not promoting that as a specific spell im just trying to point out a concept.

And I still like the idea of a buildable site which allows access to even more elite national troops. Like say only your Prophet is allowed to build a single site which has some profound cost... Maybe you need to have so many points of total dominion before you can build it. Or it costs an absolute fortune in gold or time? But when this unique nation-specific site was built, you could then produce your nation's uber-elite units.

[Vicious Love]

Sandman said:
National troops should be upgradeable. At the moment they derive rather less benefit from magic research than mages, summons and SCs.

Suggestion: Castable perma-upgrades: These are a set of spells which confer a permanent bonus on mundane humans or similar. Fire resistance, demon blood, lycanthropy, undeath, etc. The key feature? Only one upgrade per unit - they don't stack. Even so, it gives you a lot of options to play with when it comes to national troops.

I like, I like. Though it would be nice if national troops were still useful without magical support. Mages are crucial enough already.

[Ygorl]

I'm on the side saying that national troops shouldn't be competetive with summons (with the obvious exceptions), except for the cheapest crappiest summons, with which they are already competetive. If someone else has spent years of dedicated research to be able to summon serious nasties, why should I be able to match such an army from turn 1 just by clicking "Recruit"? Vice-versa, why would anyone research summons when they can do just as well hiring dudes, and divert their precious research, gems, etc. towards magic items to make their hired guys even more powerful, or combat spells to kill off the enemy's summoned guys even more effectively... No, summoned troops should be more powerful than those you hire. Hired troops are for growing in the early game, and depending on what you research and how you play, they can still be useful mid-game. One of the neat things about Dominions is that the power level grows so astronomically as time progresses and yet things still stay reasonably balanced. Proposals that would allow for the power of hired troops to increase as the game progressed are interesting, as long as that increase in power requires effort to be spent developing it, but making them much more powerful right off the bat would throw the balance way off, I think.

[jeffr]

I like how the Conceptual Balance mod handles things. It's the result of a lot of playtesting. National troop costs have been lowered and no brainer, devastating spell combos (Staff of Storms/Wrathful Skies) have been made more difficult to achieve. Unit enhancing spells have been made less expensive, allowing buffed national units to be more effective later in the game. Items, in particular, have been modded to try and eliminate the "there is always a best choice" problem. The Super Combatant remains very powerful but is no longer all powerful and different unit/summons/item mixes are more viable. There is room for both summons and national troops.

At least that's the idea, and I think it's working pretty well.

[Agrajag]

I think the problem lies in the fact that summons get stronger as the game progresses, while regular national troops do not.
If it was possible to divert magical research to technological research to improve your troops, it might contribute towards making national troops viable later in the game.
Maybe you can add a "techonology" tab to research, where you can choose to spend RP on technological advances, so in that tab, instead of "Enchantment" and "Conjuration" you would have "Infantry Weapons" and "Cavalry Shields", and instead of spells you would have upgrades, such as "Sharpening Stone" which increases damage for all weapons by 1 or "Combat Training" which gives all newly produced units an expirience star etc...

[Endoperez]

Many of the suggestions here would shoot micromanagement through the roof. While it would be nice to be able to enchance units magically, quickly choosing the most experienced, least wounded units of most useful types from hundred or so soldiers would take time. Another research tree would also be a nuisance, and I imagine most nations already know of the "Sharpening Stones", and that the more non-militia have already undergone "Combat Training" (just compare a Militia to a generic Light infantry).

I still think I'd like to see a way to have national units play a big(ger) role in DomIII, but Jeff, Ygorl and Vicious Love make good points about the absurdness of mere humans standing against unnatural, supernatural, or even b]big[/b] enemies.