in which occasion will you raise taxes

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by st.patrik:

quote:

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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.

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But they are too expensive to be used as dragon fodder (no cannons in Dom II ).

The only use I've found for LI so far is their javelins - they do as much damage as longbows, and because of their shorter range, they have better accuracy. A squad of LI behind a squad of HI can be fairly effective against moderately armored troops. Against Ulm you still need crossbows or magic though.

Some people on this thread seem to be claiming that it shouldn't take any more money to maintain a company of fifty men with Full Plate of Ulm, a full helmet, tower shield and warhammer (say) than spears, leather hauberks, javelins and maybe hard leather caps. I don't see how you can support this view - if nothing else, war gear wears out or breaks and has to be replaced. That costs something.

It wouldn't be inappropriate to the way the gold/resource model works in Dom II to have heavy units' maintenance cost resources instead of gold - but it would probably be very hard to implement effectively. (It might require implementation of a second supply system - and what happens to the troops who aren't properly supplied with equipment?) Adding a gold upkeep cost for high resource units would be simple and possibly solve some of the heavy vs. light troop problems that have been around since Dom I.

Of course I worry about weakening Ulm too much; maybe they could have as one of their national abilities that they pay only half the extra upkeep cost due to resources. Or troops that are currently in a friendly productivity dominion could pay less upkeep due to resources. Both would be appropriate IMO.


On the other hand, I also think that a large part of the heavy vs. light problem stems from light troops' ineffectiveness on the battlefield, and that this is a very "deep" problem because it ties into the defense vs. protection issue and combats resolving in too few rounds for fatigue to be a major problem for nonmages.

Both problems could perhaps be solved (or at least ameliorated) by an across-the-board +1-2 to all defense skills (perhaps excepting units that already have very high defense). LI would still die faster to shortbow fire, but wouldn't necessarily die faster in melee (except perhaps compared to Ulm) because they would get hit less often and because the heavy troops would get tired before they had killed 3x their own numbers.

Another possible fix (to the over-effectiveness of protection vs. most attacks) would be to make any hit do at least 1 point of damage, regardless of the str+weapon vs. prot roll. Then units that get hit a lot but often take 0 damage would be getting hit for 1 damage, which could make quite a bit of difference to a 10 hp unit.

Finally, historically there were melee weapons specifically designed to pierce armor - pikes, for instance. Why aren't they armor piercing in Dom (I or II)? Armor negating should be reserved for magic items, beings and spells only, but I don't see why armor piercing shouldn't be allowed on ordinary melee weapons. Not all nations have access to crossbows, and missile weapons have several known counters anyway.

[Sammual]

I'm jumping in to express my opinion on the LI vs HI discusion.
I think there needs to be a reason for LI, there isn't one right now.
I like the 'Each provence can support 10 LI for free' idea.
I also like the wider spacing for LI to lower missile losses.

Sammual

[Jasper]

Originally posted by licker:
So lower the supply usage for LI, lower their upkeep, and bang, now they can be competative again. People will still gravitate toward the better units, but there will be a bigger place for LI in the game.

I disagree here as well. If you merely lower their costs they will still be inferior to HI and be underused -- up to the point where they are more efficient, and then HI will be rarely seen.

It is far more intersting to model the real world reasons that people used such forces, than speculative economics. It especially makes sense when you're trying to get results similar to history, e.g. a variety of viable unit types.

I agree that gameplay is the most important thing, but IMHO in this case history has much more interesting "gameplay" than Dominions, and serves as a very good model.

[Saber Cherry]

by Chris Byler:
Another possible fix (to the over-effectiveness of protection vs. most attacks) would be to make any hit do at least 1 point of damage, regardless of the str+weapon vs. prot roll. Then units that get hit a lot but often take 0 damage would be getting hit for 1 damage, which could make quite a bit of difference to a 10 hp unit.

I like this! Too powerful, though, IMO. Instead, I think non-penetrating attacks could cause 1 damage 20% of the time, or (fatigue/2)% of the time, or perhaps they could cause no damage, but do 4 points of fatigue damage.

Even with this change, though, I think LI should become cheaper, HI costlier, and Ulm be semi-exempt from this. By cheaper/costlier I mean both gold and "support".

-Cherry

[ October 29, 2003, 23:08: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]

[licker]

Originally posted by Jasper:

quote:

---

Originally posted by licker:
So lower the supply usage for LI, lower their upkeep, and bang, now they can be competative again. People will still gravitate toward the better units, but there will be a bigger place for LI in the game.

I disagree here as well. If you merely lower their costs they will still be inferior to HI and be underused -- up to the point where they are more efficient, and then HI will be rarely seen.

It is far more intersting to model the real world reasons that people used such forces, than speculative economics. It especially makes sense when you're trying to get results similar to history, e.g. a variety of viable unit types.

I agree that gameplay is the most important thing, but IMHO in this case history has much more interesting "gameplay" than Dominions, and serves as a very good model.

---

First of all I didn't say to lower their costs, just the cost to maintain them. If they are still inferior to HI they still won't be used in mass, but there will be a sweet point where a certain amount of LI and HI will be more effective than just all of one or the other. Obviously we are on the all HI side of this curve right now.

In order to accurately portray the value of LI in Domintions you would have to make many changes to the combat system. In fact we had this arguement before when Saber suggested the addition of different damage catagories. Anyway, it comes down to the same thing, adding more complexity to an already complex game. What does it gain you to better modle the effects of terrain, or formations, or what have you, *just to make LI more viable*? Well that question answered itself right? My point is that adding this complexity is unneeded, and from the results of the Last thread, also unwanted (not by all, but by many).

The simple fix is usually the best anyway, once you have a more balanced system you can continue to improve upon it, but to go for broke from the get go often has unintended consequences.

History may have more "interesting gameplay", but that in and of itself doesn't mean that it makes a good model for a game. More often than not the games that try to model their gameplay off of history wind up so complex, and with so many niggling omisions that the grand effect intended is completly lost. No I'd rather have Dominions write its own history rather than try to force feed concepts of our history into it. Granted many units are borrowed directly from ancient cultures, but if you want a game trying to model Roman or Greek battles pick up the Great Battles series, don't try to make Dominions something that it isn't.

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Jasper:

quote:

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Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
I don't mean to imply that cost was the only advantage, as there were many examples of light, mobile units slaughtering sluggish armored ones (the Crusades come to mind). But I think it was a huge factor, and that if the cost had been equal (like in Doms II), heavy units would have made up the bulk of historic armies, rather than light units.

I don't see that being so clear cut. For an easy example, take the Mongols. Probably the best pre-gunpowder army, and mostly comprised of Light Cavalry.

Even the Romans, quite fond of heavy infantry, still kept some lighter troops around for tactical flexibility -- even though they could have fielded armies of purely of heavy infantry.

What it really came down to is that a certain amount of light troops will increased the effectiveness of heavy troops.

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Mainly this because historically armor, while useful, wasn't nearly as useful as it is in Dom I/II. To anyone who disputes this, I offer the following test: put on a suit of full plate armor, helm and shield, then ask a friend to hit you with half a dozen sling bullets and shoot you three or four times with a shortbow. See if you are seriously injured or not (in Dom II, you probably wouldn't be - and that's with nonmagical, non-Black Plate of Ulm armors).

In Dom II it's common for a heavy unit to be hit three or four times without taking any damage, and then when he is hit it's only a scratch. Meanwhile the light units are getting killed or maimed with every second attack (or so). Which usually causes them to break around the time the heavy units are reaching 20 or so fatigue (-1 attack, -2 defense they don't use anyway, and a few percent chance of an armor piercing hit).

This is primarily because losing your defense roll by 1 point can kill you instantly, while losing your protection roll by 1 point will only cause 1 point of damage. There is far greater likelihood of quickly killing a high-defense, low-protection unit with a lucky hit than of quickly killing a low-defense, high-protection unit - and that's not even taking into account missile fire, where defense is completely worthless. (There's at least as much magic that ignores defense as there is magic that ignores protection, too.)

I'd like to see a critical hit rule: for each 5 points the attacker beats the defender's defense by, he gets 1 extra d6 for the damage vs. protection roll. (Open-ended, of course: the entire point of critical hits is that they hurt.) This still wouldn't make it too easy to kill an invulnerable Great Mother (for example), but heavy infantry would run a risk of being hurt even by humans with spears (although still not as much of a risk as unarmored troops). And it would make high attack skill more useful: currently it doesn't do all that much unless you're going against something with a high defense skill.

[Jasper]

Originally posted by Chris Byler:
The only use I've found for LI so far is their javelins - they do as much damage as longbows, and because of their shorter range, they have better accuracy. A squad of LI behind a squad of HI can be fairly effective against moderately armored troops. Against Ulm you still need crossbows or magic though.

I got alot of mileage out of my starting 25 LI with Machaka by using similar tactics, although not enough I built any more.

Some people on this thread seem to be claiming that it shouldn't take any more money to maintain a company of fifty men with Full Plate of Ulm, a full helmet, tower shield and warhammer (say) than spears, leather hauberks, javelins and maybe hard leather caps. I don't see how you can support this view - if nothing else, war gear wears out or breaks and has to be replaced. That costs something.

[Further stuff suggest gold maintenance cost for high resource troops snipped]

My main arguement here is simply game complexity. I would only support giving them more maintenance in a uniform manner, e.g. by increasing their cost, or by calculating resources in the gold maintenance cost.

On the other hand, I also think that a large part of the heavy vs. light problem stems from light troops' ineffectiveness on the battlefield, and that this is a very "deep" problem because it ties into the defense vs. protection issue and combats resolving in too few rounds for fatigue to be a major problem for nonmages.

Both problems could perhaps be solved (or at least ameliorated) by an across-the-board +1-2 to all defense skills (perhaps excepting units that already have very high defense). LI would still die faster to shortbow fire, but wouldn't necessarily die faster in melee (except perhaps compared to Ulm) because they would get hit less often and because the heavy troops would get tired before they had killed 3x their own numbers.

Another possible fix (to the over-effectiveness of protection vs. most attacks) would be to make any hit do at least 1 point of damage, regardless of the str+weapon vs. prot roll. Then units that get hit a lot but often take 0 damage would be getting hit for 1 damage, which could make quite a bit of difference to a 10 hp unit.

Historically Light troops got demolished by heavy troops in frontal melee. Furthermore, massed heavy infantry had more staying power, despite what one might guess from heavy armor.

Making Light Troops more powerfull in Melee is not a good solution, IMHO. They _should_ get demolished in melee.

Finally, historically there were melee weapons specifically designed to pierce armor - pikes, for instance. Why aren't they armor piercing in Dom (I or II)?[snip]

I see no basis for this in history at all. Pikes were used because they were long, that's it.

[PvK]

Originally posted by Chris Byler:
...
Some people on this thread seem to be claiming that it shouldn't take any more money to maintain a company of fifty men with Full Plate of Ulm, a full helmet, tower shield and warhammer (say) than spears, leather hauberks, javelins and maybe hard leather caps. I don't see how you can support this view - if nothing else, war gear wears out or breaks and has to be replaced. That costs something.
...

Because a turn is a month, not a decade or even a year. A metal weapon or suit of armor does not wear out at all on a monthly scale. It does wear out in battle, but then, battles also usually produce lots of weapons and armor as loot (something else that would be fun to model beyond the current magic item scrounging).

I still think that all you really need to address the light infantry weakness is to make them require fewer resources (and probably less gold to raise). The idea of allowing disbandment would also help.

Other things that would help, without adding nonsensical mechanics, would be tactical AI tweaks such as adding a "skirmish" tactic which would have the unit engage from range but not in unfavorable melee - this would allow light troops, as well as light cavalry, to use their speed and range to stay away from mobs of slower heavy infantry, and perhaps attack less armored enemies such as rear troops.

PvK

[Jasper]

Originally posted by licker:
First of all I didn't say to lower their costs, just the cost to maintain them. If they are still inferior to HI they still won't be used in mass, but there will be a sweet point where a certain amount of LI and HI will be more effective than just all of one or the other. Obviously we are on the all HI side of this curve right now.

I understood what you meant, and I still disagree.

In order to accurately portray the value of LI in Domintions you would have to make many changes to the combat system. In fact we had this arguement before when Saber suggested the addition of different damage catagories. Anyway, it comes down to the same thing, adding more complexity to an already complex game. What does it gain you to better modle the effects of terrain, or formations, or what have you, *just to make LI more viable*? Well that question answered itself right? My point is that adding this complexity is unneeded, and from the results of the Last thread, also unwanted (not by all, but by many).

Perhaps, but I don't think this is a good analogy. Adding the weapon types was simply a bad idea, which increased micromanagement, IMHO didn't add anything interesting, and had only a dubious connection to "realism". It would also have been alot of work, both to implement, and to play with.

On the other hand, you get get along way towards making LI viable with simple changes, that really do increase variety, have a basis in history, aren't a pain to play with, and require a ton of memorization.

1st: Allow light troops to deploy on the flanks.

2nd: Make light troops less susceptiple to missile hits, and increase missile accuracy and damage. One way is to make spread out so 2/3rds of all missiles miss them.

3rd: Allow an order for light troops to retire before being contacted by heavy troops.

4th: decrease the cost of light troops uniformly by 1 or 2 gold.

It would also be nice if troops got some sort of advantage flanking, but the dominions battle engine really doesn't allow this.

The simple fix is usually the best anyway, once you have a more balanced system you can continue to improve upon it, but to go for broke from the get go often has unintended consequences.

True. IMHO however a simple cost change is not a fix at all.

History may have more "interesting gameplay", but that in and of itself doesn't mean that it makes a good model for a game. More often than not the games that try to model their gameplay off of history wind up so complex, and with so many niggling omisions that the grand effect intended is completly lost. No I'd rather have Dominions write its own history rather than try to force feed concepts of our history into it. Granted many units are borrowed directly from ancient cultures, but if you want a game trying to model Roman or Greek battles pick up the Great Battles series, don't try to make Dominions something that it isn't.

The fact that some games do a bad job of emulating history doesn't prevent there being games that do a good job.

To put it bluntly, the dominions battle system is over complex, but not very interesting. There are systems that do a decent job of emulating reality, have less complexity, and more viable variety, take less micromanagement, and are just more fun. I would far rather see something emulate history, than emulate D&D.

[PvK]

Hmm, I'm looking at my Doms II Arco home province, and noticing I have a choice to build either:

3 Hoplites for 33 gold
4 Hypaspists for 60 gold
14 Cardaces for 140 gold

At the moment, I have over 400 gold stored, so it's definitely going to be 14 Cardaces - they'll probably do much better capturing neutral provinces than 3 or 4 better troops. If they didn't cost quite as much gold to build and maintain, I'd say they were a reasonable choice on other occasions besides quickly raising many men.

PvK