Useless or redundant units?

[Zen]

Corwin said:
Initial expansion with pretender is still a valuable (and old) tactic, just like it was in Dom2.


However since now each attacker reduces defence attribute by 2, as an opposite to -1 as it used to be in Dom2, even 4 attackers will reduce your effective defence almost back to its original level. And you are usually attacked by much more than 4-5 units when you are fighing indpes with your pretender. Unless you prefer to play on indep strength 1.

Or you don't have your pretender attacked by more than 3 or 4 units at a time and your pretender has fear and you can make your opponents rout effectively.

It's rare in Dom3 that I expand with just a pretender, since it's more useful to use a half-strength army and a pretender to hammer those HCav and Xbow provinces.

+def is a nice little bonus when you take W9, however it certainly not as important factor as the effect of w9 bless on your sacred troops. And if you don't have good sacred troops, it doesn't make much sense to take W9 bless just for your pretender for inital expansion. You would be much better taking few magic paths for the same money, and buffing your pretender with low-level buffs, than with +9 def from water.

I don't know about that, with the introduction of sacred summons and some few support sacred units (not hardcore sacreds) I don't think it's neccessary to not consider a bless for them. Especially since good summons especially in the early/mid game are few and far between unless you happen to like Vine Ogres.

In other words - for your Dom3 pretender beneficial effect of W9 bless is smaller than beneficial effect of W4 bless was in Dom2, in vast majority of situations.

I do not agree in a MP setting and don't agree with your assessment as far as bless situations. However, I do agree that in Dom2 water was more effective, if only for the fact that quickness affected spellcasting. I doubt anyone can say that water, as a whole path, has not gotten weaker overall from Dom2 to Dom3. If you look at their summon line, battlefield line, and evocation/thamu line, they are nearly all have a lesser impact than water did in Dom2.

[Corwin]

Zen said:

I do not agree in a MP setting and don't agree with your assessment as far as bless situations. However, I do agree that in Dom2 water was more effective, if only for the fact that quickness affected spellcasting. I doubt anyone can say that water, as a whole path, has not gotten weaker overall from Dom2 to Dom3. If you look at their summon line, battlefield line, and evocation/thamu line, they are nearly all have a lesser impact than water did in Dom2.

I think you misunderstood the part of my post as far as water bless concerned. My initial post was objection to your statement that having +9 def on a single unit (your pretender) is such a big deal in Dom3 when evaluating the merit of W9 bless.

You said (quote): "it is by far the best universal bless because not only does it give +4 Def/Quickness but your pretender recieves +1 Def for each point of Watermagic it recieves. "

I've pointed to several reasons why it is not the case anymore in Dom3, due to several changes in game mechanics.

I do agree that water school in general, as well as W9 effect on sacred troops are weaker in Dom3.

[B0rsuk]

In theory, swarms of lightly armored units should be able to overwhelm heavily armored enemies. In practice, it's often better to just use heavy armor instead. It's not just initial gold cost. If my understanding of rules is correct, you pay much higher gold upkeep costs for light infantry, because it's based only on initial price which is the same as heavy's and sometimes holiness. In addition, you need more supplies, and growth scale was never considered very strong. Population growth is next to zero, and Order gets you bigger income bonus.

A new mod command could be useful: #lowupkeepcost . Or just decrease prices of low infantry, but that would break with the convention of resource cost for equipment and gold for body. So I prefer #lowupkeepcost, to keep things nice and tidy.