in which occasion will you raise taxes

[PvK]

I can see heavy mercenaries being more expensive than light, and they generally are in the game.

With a fantasy/god-mage medieval economy, though, I don't quite see why better equipped men would necessarily be more expensive to maintain. I suppose you might tend to need a little more "amorer time" to do occasional maintenance. Maybe you'd need more beasts of burden to carry their gear around when on the march. Better trained men might cost more (or take more time...) to produce.

I find it interesting (in a good way) playing Ulm and having extremely heavy infantry available for the same gold cost as other infantry, but a high resource cost. The high resource cost means that it takes a long time to build up a large army of them, during which you need to avoid casualties. In my long stalemated game against the AI, I built up a lot of good men, and then something with a gas attack (or soul vortex, etc) would come along and severely deplete my ranks, and I would be overrun if I didn't have a province with super-low-resource tribal militia to recruit quickly.

I think my suggestion would be perhaps to tweak down the resource costs of some militia, and to add (if not already in Doms II) a "disband" command. This would mean that large armies of militia could be even more easily raised (like you can with tribal militia in Doms I), but also gotten rid of later without sending them on suicide missions. That would be rather more like real ancient/medieval warfare, too; usually there were only a few trained and well-equipped men in a standing army, and then mobs of peasants would be pressed into service to fight major battles, and released afterwards.

I assume too (haven't tried to test) that there are already other factors too such as:

* Raising troops should reduce the province population
* The more men on patrol in a province, the greater the chance of catching spies and scouts

It would be interesting if when men were disbanded, the program remembered some of them, and gave them a chance to show up as part of an independant army, mercenary band, or independant uprising in the future. Or, they might even be available for re-hire later by the same player.

PvK

[ October 29, 2003, 18:52: Message edited by: PvK ]

[st.patrik]

Originally posted by licker:
IT doesn't bother me that much either, but there are two places where it is an issue.

#1 the AI... The AI doesn't understand the worthlessness of LI apparently, so it is disadvantaged against humans, disadvantaged in a fixable way though.

#2 Astetics... Well why have 10+ units per nation if 5 of them are used less than 1% of the time? Call it balance, call it what you will, the fact is that LI are not cheap enough to use over other units. The problem is two fold, supply and upkeep, there is simply no advantage to ever having LI (strategic movement, but if they suck so much the extra speed isn't worth that much since they just die anyway).

It doesn't bother me greatly for MP, but for SP I'd like to see the AI less handicapped.

I completely agree that those considerations are good.

1. The AI thing should be fixed so that the AI recruits the highest resource troops it can, while exhausting its gold supply for the turn. [maybe this isn't clear - what I mean is that if you on a certain turn have (after buying a commander) 200 gold and 200 resources, the AI should buy troops with that ratio of gold to resources, etc. - try to exhaust both gold and resources]

2. While I'm ok with LI being used less, I agree with you that they shouldn't be in there if they're not going to be used at all, ever, as you say, for aesthetic reasons. So for example for Man I can't imagine ever wanting to buy slingers when I can buy longbows. Similarly for most all militia I think.

[Pocus]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
I don't think resources need to be factored into the upkeep system explicitly - that would be a bit confusing. Factoring it into cost, instead, and just using cost for upkeep, seems simpler.

the interest of changing the upkeep formula to take the average of gold+res value, is that you achieve the result of giving added value to LI, without having to browse one thousand units and reevaluate their cost.

PVK:

I don't quite see why better equipped men would necessarily be more expensive to maintain.

I strongly disagree with you. Think of two extremes, a foot knight and a peasant. In dominions it can translate to a Ulmish infantry (say 10-34 gold/res) compared to a milicia (7-2).
Now to think that you need only 30% more gold to maintain a foot knight compared to a milicia is ridiculous (no offence intended against you, I just feel I need to use a strong adjective).

A drafted slinger would get a food ration, and some copper coins each month. A foot knight will ask for at least 2 men to service him (keeping an armor and quality steel weapons fit for battle ask for much time and effort), and I'm not even speaking of his wage.

This would translate in dominions by taking into account the resource cost into the maintenance one. Believe me, it would be a boon to the lighter units, which are very often discarded.

In the pbems I saw (multiplayer environment being the epitome of optimisation), I never saw a single velite, peltast, light infantry, etc. used in war. I think this is quite the proof that something must be done.

Your concern about your Ulmish infantry is right on the other hand. We should not level all units to the same ground. But even if the upkeep would rise, you would still pay the upfront cost of 10 gp, same as a light infantry. But in the long run, you would pay more to maintain them. Seem quite balanced when you compare their armaments.

[Jasper]

Originally posted by st.patrik:
I'm not so bothered by the 'less useful light infantry' thing as I think the rest of you are. It makes sense to me that you're really only going to make poorly equipped troops if you don't have the resources to make well-equipped troops. This seems realistic to me. I guess it's possible that in general there are too many resources available... do people have this opinion?

What bothers me is that light troops aren't usefull in battle, while they clearly were usefull throughout history. Light troops were not "poorly equipped" troops, but troops used in a different manner -- a manner that simply doesn't exist in Dominions (or any similar computer game for that matter).

One simple way to address this would be to have a battle deployment area that was broader than deep, but with the flank areas marked so that only light/fast troops could be deployed there.

Another would be to allow lighter troops to deploy one man per "square" rather than 3, so that they would be an effective missile screen. Combine this with a slight increase in the accuracy and damage of missiles, and you'd have very good reason to screen with light troops.

Both of these would help allow light troops to be usefull for their traditional roles. I suspect you'd still need to tweak their gold cost down a point or two to make them viable however.

These changes are perhaps too dramatic to actually have a chance at implementation, but IMHO they would greatly improve the variety of viable troops, and the number of interesting battle tactics.

[Saber Cherry]

Traditionally, heavy troops, with their expensive armor and weapons, were also better trained. I mean, a lot better. So, in general, light units were cheaply levied, poorly paid, poorly trained, and used as cannon fodder. In Dominions II they are as expensive as HI...

I kind of think that milita should also have -1 HP and -1 strength, and maybe even drop to a price of 4gp, to reflect the fact that they're not really soldier-types, just unfit peasants forced into the army.

PvK - as it stands now, why would you ever buy slingers or militias? Even if they cost zero resources, I wouldn't buy them. I was playing Machaka, and realized that their primary infantry units are a waste of money... so I only bought archers and hoplites. And even with the archers, I would prefer to have an indy province with actual armored archers. There's just no use for 10gp light infantry, and their low resource cost does not make them viable, as gold is so limited in Dom II.

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by Jasper:

quote:

---

Originally posted by st.patrik:
I'm not so bothered by the 'less useful light infantry' thing as I think the rest of you are. It makes sense to me that you're really only going to make poorly equipped troops if you don't have the resources to make well-equipped troops. This seems realistic to me. I guess it's possible that in general there are too many resources available... do people have this opinion?

What bothers me is that light troops aren't usefull in battle, while they clearly were usefull throughout history. Light troops were not "poorly equipped" troops, but troops used in a different manner -- a manner that simply doesn't exist in Dominions (or any similar computer game for that matter).

One simple way to address this would be to have a battle deployment area that was broader than deep, but with the flank areas marked so that only light/fast troops could be deployed there.

Another would be to allow lighter troops to deploy one man per "square" rather than 3, so that they would be an effective missile screen. Combine this with a slight increase in the accuracy and damage of missiles, and you'd have very good reason to screen with light troops.

Both of these would help allow light troops to be usefull for their traditional roles. I suspect you'd still need to tweak their gold cost down a point or two to make them viable however.

These changes are perhaps too dramatic to actually have a chance at implementation, but IMHO they would greatly improve the variety of viable troops, and the number of interesting battle tactics.

---

Yeah, I suggested the "loose" and "wide" formation toggles a while back, but I'm keeping mum now because it will be lost in the clutter, what with all the demo-polishing I hope is going on=)

As for LI being historically useful, that's correct. But my impression is that is less due to their mobility, and more because they were so darn cheap compared to HI. Untrained, give'em a spear and point'em at the battle milita should never cost 70% of a well trained broadsword-shield-platemail HI unit in any respect (supply needs, wages, maintenance, initial deployment cost). For similar reasons, despite having more training and being better armed than militia, an LI shouldn't cost the same amount as an HI.

[PvK]

I just meant that having better equipment doesn't necessarily mean a unit should cost more gold to maintain.

Your "foot knight" example makes sense for knights versus peasants, but those seem like mainly social causes rather than physical causes. In Doms, there are knights as well, and they are more expensive than regular infantry.

It seems to me that an Ulm heavy infantry in plate armor isn't a knight demanding servants, he's just a very well-equipped infantryman. He might need more wagon space to transport his gear when on the march, but isn't necessarily signifigantly more expensive to maintain that a soldier in leather armor. I do think though that it would make sense if they cost more to raise (because if the armorers aren't making fancy equipment for them, they could be doing something useful for trade), though I wouldn't have them cost more to maintain (because once you have the equipment, it doesn't require much to maintain it).

For the knight example, staying with Ulm, they do have knights, commanders, and Guardians, who all have higher training than the common infantry, and higher social status, and therefore they cost more to raise and to maintain in Ulmish society, which follows you example and does make sense.

My point in the line you quoted was simply that some societies could maintain very well-equipped regular troops without more maintenance cost than lesser-equipped troops. The equipment doesn't determine the maintenance and wages of each type of troop - the culture does. In some cultures, the best paid men also have the best equipment, but not in all cultures.

So, if you hard-coded an increase in gold expense based on resource cost, I think you'd end up with a less interesting set of possible trade-offs, which wouldn't necessarily make any sense. Instead of reducing the variety in unit costs by linking maintenance to resource cost, I'd rather see more variety by allowing maintenance and purchase cost to be independent. That is, I'd increase the cost to raise heavy Ulm infantry (representing reduced trade goods) but keep their maintenance cost the same.

And again, I think light infantry could be made much more attractive if they simply had an even lower resource cost, and it were possible to release units (or maybe make that a special ability of militia and light infantry). If they could be raised very quickly and dismissed when not needed, that would also greatly reduce their total cost, because of the savings on maintenance.

PvK

[st.patrik]

Originally posted by Jasper:
What bothers me is that light troops aren't usefull in battle, while they clearly were usefull throughout history. Light troops were not "poorly equipped" troops, but troops used in a different manner -- a manner that simply doesn't exist in Dominions (or any similar computer game for that matter).

It seems to me that Hypasists (sp?) function in this way to an extent. They are cheaper than hoplites (resources at least), but they definitely have a role. On the other hand, Militia are poorly trained conscripts which I suppose were mainly used as cannon fodder in RL.

[PvK]

I have used tribal militia to very good effect because of their low cost and very low resource cost. I could buy a half-dozen HI, or dozens of militia. So I bought them when I needed to quickly raise a large force, and provide cannon fodder for attacking castles and Users of deadly non-physical weapons like poison gas and Soul Vortex, where armor is useless. Having some in the front ranks also keeps the better men alive longer.

I've had some good results from slingers in a few cases too, in areas where I had little else I could raise, and when the enemies had little or no armor.

If units, especially militia, could be disbanded, this would mean you could raise them quickly and disband them when not needed, lowering their cost to use.

I agree though that some of the costs could be tweaked anyway, making some of the lighter units cheaper, and especially reducing their maintenance cost so you could make many appear quickly.

PvK

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
...
PvK - as it stands now, why would you ever buy slingers or militias? Even if they cost zero resources, I wouldn't buy them. I was playing Machaka, and realized that their primary infantry units are a waste of money... so I only bought archers and hoplites. And even with the archers, I would prefer to have an indy province with actual armored archers. There's just no use for 10gp light infantry, and their low resource cost does not make them viable, as gold is so limited in Dom II.

[licker]

Hehe, stop trying to bring reality into this argument

We have a concern, that LI are underpowered, and *overused* by the AI. In order to fix this you can either play with the costs/stats of the LI (won't fix it really) or change some mechanics to make LI more useful in general.

The problem with tweeking LI values, is that since the controling factor at some point is going to be supply you will never want alot of LI consuming the supply for your better troops. Ok you can raise supply with artifacts and nature mages, but that's an artifical solution and one that not every nation can easilly attain. Upkeep is seemingly secondary, but it is also a problem, especailly when you combine it with supply.

If LI and HI have the same supply and upkeep needs its obvious that unless HI is soooo grossly overpriced that you can't afford them you will eventually not use LI at all. As it stands now from what I can tell, there isn't even an early period where LI are useful, you go for HI (or MI) right off the bat, you never use LI.

Now if LI got some boost (free upkeep and supply for 10 LI for every province you control) then you'd be a fool not to use that free amount. Getting back to reality for a sec... this is what usually happened anyway! The LI were cheap to raise, and cheap to maintain, remember that the concept of supply in Dom is abstracted (or can be) to account for a variety of supplies, not just food. Any army with a significant amount of armor or better weapons required craftsmen to maintain and repair those weapons, the supply use in dom then could be higher for the HI to account for these craftsmen (or lower for the LI since they don't need them).

This should be first and foremost an issue of game balance and whats the best game mechanic though, not one of what's more realistic, how much food does a guy with plate mail need compared to a naked farmer...