Poll: morale and routing

[Boron]

The Panther said:
Actually, it would make great sense to have the summoned troops cost 1/15 of the initial gem cost per turn. That way, it matches the troops. And when you run out of the proper gems, they desert just like troops!


You would see more troops being built for sure.

yeah i say that too panther and esben

actually dominions is the only game i know where you pay upkeep for some things while you pay no upkeep for other things .

have you ever played age of wonders 2 shadow magic cainehill ?

i played it seriously for about 1/2 year and enjoyed it .
the only problem is that you have only about 200 units and 200 spells and know all too quick .
but it was really well balanced .
and with each patch the developers made much fine tuning.
as with starcraft.

if you say small developers can't do that i point at paradox entertainment .
they make awesome patches !


i just wonder why you are so reluctant against small changes cainehill where the majority agrees that they would strengthen the dominion experience even more .
esben agreed to me , panther agreed , cohen will agree .

something like 1/10 gem upkeep of summon cost on scs and 1/50 on summons would make national troops more useful and balance it at least a bit .

to be at least somehow competetive against mages national troops would need to have less upkeep then mages too .

until turn 30 normal upkeep . turn 30-60 halfed upkeep .
turn 60 - end 1/4 upkeep for normal national troops .

this way it would then be e.g. about 12 knights vs 1 mage which would the choice not make the absolute nobrainer between mage + knight as it was before .
and with limiting the use of summons a bit too it would be all more balanced .

the aow / MoM approach here is just more righteous .

[Thufir]

Boron said:
if you say small developers can't do that i point at paradox entertainment .
they make awesome patches !

And man, do they need 'em!!! Well, couldn't help that one - but I've said elsewhere how much I like Paradox games. Their first releases do leave something to be desired, however.

[Boron]

i think all these suggestions take only 30-60 minutes for illwinter to implement into dominions .

so they could bring out a big evaluation patch with the new rules and make a survey after 2-4 weeks .
then everybody votes and the majority gets right .



from a balance aspect though can you name me ANY REASON why a summon should not need upkeep costs ?

especially with the blood summons this is very THEMATIC too :
do you think such a powerful being as a arch devil / arch demon doesn't demand permanent tribute in form of e.g. 10 blood slaves / day ( = turn in dominions ) ?


in any pen&paper rpg / fantasy novel normally the necromancers / demoniacs who summon demons need to satisfy them every day otherwise they will kill them and go away again to their plane .

[Graeme Dice]

Boron said:
from a balance aspect though can you name me ANY REASON why a summon should not need upkeep costs ?

Can you name me any reason from a balance point why they should?

[Graeme Dice]

Boron said:
i played it seriously for about 1/2 year and enjoyed it .
the only problem is that you have only about 200 units and 200 spells and know all too quick .

The balance isn't that great. Summoned creatures are pretty much a waste of resources, and are far too expensive for the small amount of power they give you. Battlefield magic is weak and unimpressive in general. The only spells that are worthwhile are those that boost your individual units and even then you can't cast very many of them. The experience granting system has the standard problem where only killing the unit grants experience, so you have to do silly things like save weakened attackers for your heroes. Spellcasting heroes don't gain experience anywhere near as fast as melee ones, since the spells that they can cast are extremely unlikely to actually kill more than one unit in a battle. It might be a game with magic, but the magic doesn't have nearly enough effect.

[Huzurdaddi]

Can you name me any reason from a balance point why they should?

Let me say again: this would only PROMOTE SC usage.

BLEEEEECH.

[Boron]

Graeme Dice said:

The balance isn't that great. Summoned creatures are pretty much a waste of resources, and are far too expensive for the small amount of power they give you. Battlefield magic is weak and unimpressive in general. The only spells that are worthwhile are those that boost your individual units and even then you can't cast very many of them. The experience granting system has the standard problem where only killing the unit grants experience, so you have to do silly things like save weakened attackers for your heroes. Spellcasting heroes don't gain experience anywhere near as fast as melee ones, since the spells that they can cast are extremely unlikely to actually kill more than one unit in a battle. It might be a game with magic, but the magic doesn't have nearly enough effect.

are you serious with this ?
gold dragons , dark angels , angels , the dark dragons etc. were a waste of resources ?

most battlespells were great like fireball , the armageddon like spell , cosmic spray etc. etc.

heros which are SCS in dominions 2-3 lvl 4 units were normally enough to kill any hero no matter how highlevel he was .
2-3 kharags , dragons , etc. killed normally every hero .
even 10 black spiders with web or 3-4 druids with entangle had good chances.


you seem to have not played aow 2 sm much right ?


magic was great but not that overpowered .
it was basically 50/50 over the whole game with magic + gold .

[The Panther]

Huzurdaddi said:

Let me say again: this would only PROMOTE SC usage.

BLEEEEECH.

Hmm.. this does not make sense at all. If your ice devil costs you blood slaves every turn it is alive, how does that promote SC use? And your air queen would cost like 5 air gems PER TURN at 1/10 and just over 3 gems per turn at 1/15! If you buy too many devils, they would desert or you have to blood hunt even more to pay for them, thus hurting your economy.

A single player would not be able to easily buy all the ice devils or air queens anymore. I think the ice and arch devils would be more spread out this way to the races that can't get blood as fast as Abysia can.

Artifacts would be more important for your gems since they would not incur a recurring cost.

So this would dissuade SC use, not help it. Heaven forbid that an SC just MIGHT cost something close to their true value in the game!

[Boron]

Graeme Dice said:

Can you name me any reason from a balance point why they should?

panthers Last post is again great .
i would like something like this too .

if magic troops / scs would need gem upkeep too it would just be fair .
this way the choice : summons or national troops would not be the nobrainer anymore .

it would force you to use all 4 elments :
scs , national leaders , national troops and summons .

and not as it is completely neglecting national troops , building mostly mages / priests with all your gold and with your gems mainly build scs and only summon as many summons as you need to prevent autorout .


the only thing that can kill scs half reliable are battle mages or other scs .
even summoned troops normally can't kill scs at all ( expect maybe vampires / ghosts with lucky drain life attacks ) .
a regen + reinvigoration sc is almost impossible to kill by lifeless hordes like living statues too .


as it is investing gems in scs and gold in mages is just too good .


a well balanced system should always be like rock , paper & scissisor .


battlemages just defeat too easy national troops .
summon troops are defeated almost as easy by battlemages .

scs beat national troops + summoned troops quite well too but not as easy as battlemages .

battlemages can kill scs too but only a few , either with death or earth or astral magic .
99% reliable are only death + earth magic .


so as it is you try to just summon as many troops you need to prevent routing .



if the routing system that commanders rout without troops wouldn't exist most players wouldn't buy troops + summoned troops at all probably and only build battlemages + scs .



magic imbalance is another chapter too .
as it is expect for clams + quickness water magic is almost useless .

if you want good scs you should either take blood or air .
blood gives you lots of super scs : ice devils , arch devils , heliophagi , arch demons .

if you want infinite quite good scs/thugs you should take death for bane lords + wraith lords + later tartarians ( they need much effort though thnx to the patch removing healing by fairy queens ) or nature for firbolgs .


if you encounter a bane lord standard sc if you don't have blessed troops which many nations lack with national troops only you already almost can't beat him .
if you have only firemages since he will be fire resistent they don#t work too .
air mages may only work with false horrors but against scs with fireshield this is not reliable too .



really lategame with wish you can get the best scs unlimited but it is rather expensive and pretty lategame .


since normal mages can be killed by assasins / flames from the sky etc. relative easy too and you can't move them around via magic move since they would lose their army scs are overall even better then battlemages probably .


there is teleport to move around but this is always difficult because of mind duel .
so bringing astral mages to battle is always risky .
fairy trod + stygian path work but compared to cloud trapeze they are rather expensive .



as it is proper used scs and battlemages are too strong .
given that some scs have good magic paths and are a synergie of both these are the strongest overall units at all .
they are your pretender of course and e.g. airqueens , arch devils etc.

especially the airqueens are outstanding too :
they have in storm the highest base att / def rating .
they are lighting resistent already .
they have all slots expect feet .
they can move cheaply by cloud trapezing .
(lategame they are massproduceable by wish .)


so you normally play this way :
build a few national units at the beginning for expansion against indies .
replace them as quick as you can with a few summons .
invest almost all your gold in mages ( rest in temples + castles and a few preists , scouts as item mules ).

start producing scs as quick as possible .
just exchange them with better ones like first : banelord , then airqueen .

try to catch almost all unique ( until wish ! ) scs .
abysia e.g. if everything goes right can catch most of the ice devils and normally all arch devils .

invest your rather useless gems ( mainly water ) in clams .



there are some nations that brilliance lategame but are not weak early-midgame too , mainly :
abysia
arco
mictlan
caelum
pytium

as it is if some players of equal skill play against each other if one takes caelum , one abysia , one atlantis and one pan cw normally the pan cw and the atlantis player have no chance to win at all and only caelum + abysia fight for who is winning .



making summons cost magic upkeep ( gems , slaves ) , reducing upkeep for national troops after early game and improving the water school a bit would be not too difficult.
expect improving water school the other 2 mentioned things should take 30-60 minutes to implement i think.

if it is done with a constant balance within the summons / national units themselves is not much affected at all since all cost the same factor less / more .


but balance between national troops , national leaders , summoned troops and summoned SCS would be greatly improved .



just look at starcraft . it is the almost perfect example for a really well balanced game where each unit has a use .
it is like chess but with 3 completely different nations .

for a more dominonlike game i recommened a closer look at the age of wonders series , especially age of wonders 2 sm .
with the newest patches balance there is really good .

age of wonders 2 has about 300 units and 200 spells or something like this , so about 1/5 of dominions units / spells .

in age of wonders 2 though at least 250 units and 150 spells are useful during the whole game .


in dominions unfortunately though from the 1000 units about 200 are useful only ( most mages , most scs , some summons , a few national troops ( mainly those with bless / archers with flaming arrows ) ) .
with spells it is similiar .


example : with ulm : at the beginning your master smith cast probably flying shards / fire flies .
then it is replaced by magma bolts .
then by blade wind.
then by magma eruoption .

once you have magma eruption there is no better mass damage spell available for ulm mastersmith against units .

against scs you have petrify .


with the ulmish master smiths this is most obvious .

damagewise magma eruption is so much more effective then the before mentioned spells against all troops .

so why would you ever cast anything else with them against other troops ?



once you have the choice between banes and bane lords :
you always take bane lords .

once you have the choice then between bane lords and tartarians you always take tartaians .




i just begin to realize how much potential is left in dominions 2 .
it is a really great game but i think as it is it is balancewise still far away from near perfect .


but the improvement from dominions 1 to dominoins 2 is just great .

i have full trust in you illwinter that with a few relative quick to do patches though dominoins 2 could be further balanced .

and dominions 3 i will buy blind anyways for sure .


i just complain so much because dominions 2 is already so great but with fixing these issues i mentioned and where esben e.g. often agrees , cohen would agree etc. i am not the only one .
even zen always said the water school needs improvement .

balancing takes time .

for starcraft + age of wonders 2 it took for both an expansion and about 10-12 patches .

fortunately you hear at resonable complains ( like the vq nerf ) so i hope i may be successful too if the changes i suggest are not too big

[Sheap]

The Panther said:
Hmm.. this does not make sense at all. If your ice devil costs you blood slaves every turn it is alive, how does that promote SC use?

By making all troops require upkeep, the pressure would be to focus on the troops that are most efficient relative to their cost. Since most of the value in SCs is in their equipment, not their summoning cost, they are comparatively more efficient than non-SC summons. If summoned troops cost upkeep probably no one would cast Vine Critters, undead, etc any more.

I should also point out that the summon-requires-upkeep is totally incompatible with Ermor, which would rapidly find itself with a hundreds of gems upkeep