What it will take for me to purchase Dom III

[Cainehill]

Hmm. Is it possible to mod upkeep down to 0 for national troops? Then, the only real difference between national and summoned troops would be that some summons don't eat food.

(And also, that one has to invest in forts for troops, vice mages for summonses. Given that a fort can only recruit in one spot, where a mage can move to summon elsewhere, a slight advantage to mages over forts. A bigger imbalance, imo, is that mages summoning can be concentrated in the safety of a fort, in a single province. Think : To go to an extreme, Clash of the Titans has what - 40 provinces? That means at most 40 forts to recruit, limitted by resources and gold. But with a single province, 50 or more mages can summon. Big advantage mages, _especially_ as resources doesn't carry over turn to turn.)

Here's a thought : something like 1/2 all resources from a fort only carry over to successive turns. IE : If someone has 1 province with a fort, but isn't buying troops, 1/2 the resources piles up from turn to turn, only for that fort.

This balances things a little bit with the mages, and also has an OOC justification : the troops are hired with gold, but the smiths can be forging weapons and armor for months or years before the troops are recruited.

Another thing that might help balance things : allow a fort to recruit troops the first turn after it's besieged. Gameplay-wise, this helps balance things against instant-army attacks ( Tree Lord popping in with 200 troops ) and is also justifiable in roleplaying / thematic terms : when a walled city is besieged by invaders (especially those of a different religion, ie all besiegements in Dom2), a certain amount of the locals inside are going to volunteer to serve their city/nation/god.

Again - this merely helps to balance another of the huge, major, issues favoring summons over national troops. Right now, if your province is invaded, 0 troops can be recruited, no matter how many commanders you have there. But if you had 20 researchers, that's 20 summoning spells that might be cast. Huge advantage, mages. ( Mind you : I happen to think that summons should be better than your average national troops. But right now, 0 upkeep, ability to gain while besieged, etc, give summonings too many overwhelming non-combat advantages.)

I've taken advantage of this a number of times : playing nations like Man, Pangaea, Arco, you wind up with boatloads of researchers with nature magic. With a mere conjuration 1, construction 2, every bard / dryad can be shifted to summoning very cost efficient quantities of vine men every turn. With enough nature income, I've held for ages. There is nothing comparable for national troops. If cities (forts) could recruit while besieged, I think it would be more balanced.

There'd still be starvation for troops inside the city; there'd still be a limit on how many troops could be marshalled, compared to the invader recruiting everywhere. But it would give a little balance, a little more of a chance to the defenders, in a situation where, well, all the women (or men) capable of wielding a weapon would be joining the military to protect their men and children from looting, rape, pillage, plunder, etc.

[quantum_mechani]

Cainehill said:
Hmm. Is it possible to mod upkeep down to 0 for national troops? Then, the only real difference between national and summoned troops would be that some summons don't eat food.

Upkeep cost is hard-linked to gold cost.

[Cainehill]

quantum_mechani said:

Upkeep cost is hard-linked to gold cost.

Yeah, I know. But asking a question seemed like it might generate more consideration than saying, "Upkeep is bad!"

[Zen]

I agree that summons should have an upkeep associated with their pathcosts as well as some national troops having upkeep possibly in gems but goldcosts as well.

The game can be better balanced with more options for upkeep, however this does not change the imbalance in combat vs cost vs magetime vs mobility. Any of those can be addressed many ways.

Though, like I said, I agree.

[Arameyan]

Hi everyone, it's my very first post on this forum.

I play Dominions for the last 2 months. I think that its one of the best strategy game ever.

I'm only concerned by what I'm reading here: It seems that national non-mage and non-priest troops become useless in late game, were summonning rules.

I think it's obvious that even trained Velites can't beat an Uber Arch Devil summoned directly from hell, but I also think that players shouldn't have to rely on summonning to win. To preserve diversity in term of strategy, I think many strategies have to be viable (by strategy, I dont mean just choosing a different path of magic to summon another NNE summon). A solution can be like this: in some other games, national Super-Elite troops (Devils, Dragons, etc...) can't be recruited at the beginning, you have to build expensives structures while having a strong economy.

I agree that this game is based heaily on magic (and I approve it), but I don't think that high level summoning should be the only viable option for very long games.

[Sandman]

What if experience was made more powerful (ten levels, say) and also restricted to national troops and other recruitables?

[ioticus]

Yeah, winning strategy seems to be too dependent on getting a SC (Air Queen, Ice Devil, etc.) or mass summoning certain things like Vine Ogres.

[Agrajag]

Sandman said:
What if experience was made more powerful (ten levels, say) and also restricted to national troops and other recruitables?

And how would you expect to get those national troops more expirience when they are constantly fighting superior enemies (=summons)?

[Cainehill]

As far as weapon tech research screwing Ulm and a few others : what if it didn't improve the weapons and armor? If there were researchable things that .... could increase morale, or give better troops formations in battle, 6 scriptable mage spells vice 5, give a 20% increase in attack speed to troops, a little extra armor, a little extra chance to avoid an arrow, those seem like they might #1, fit more with Dominions - the average game ends within 40-100 turns, less than 10 years. Huge increases in weapons and armor don't tend to come in that span of time. Mmm, arguably magic might not progress as rapidly either - but tactics change rapidly enough to change the face of war. The hedgehog, the flanking maneuver, blitzkrieg, etc : tactics can transform the face of war.

All of these would be worth researching : but nations whose strength is in their troops to begin with would get greater benefits than would nations whose strength was mages. Ulm, Abysia, Jotuns, with solid troops, benefit more from incremental improvements to the troops than others do. But everyone would still want the improvements, especially if researching "tech" was separate from researching magic.

Maybe every fort generates weapons research; every military (non-mage, non-stealth) commander does as well. Maybe it's tied to Productivity (said scale needing some boosts, especially in the base game), or luck, or the inverse of the magic scale. Just some thoughts - but they do require changes in the base game, not just mods.