Archery poll

[Saber Cherry]

BigDaddy said:
Saber Cherry,

It seems everyone has their own idea about how to balance archers/slingers. So, to make the responses more useful, it would be good to understand the spirit of your mod. Is it to make the units realistic, balanced per current cost, or balanced cost at current strength?

Tell us your vision, and we can help you achieve it!

Basically...

1) Make units more balanced by adjusting their cost, stats, and weapon stats.
2) Changes should not decrease realism or thematicism, and should increase them when possible.

Nothing can be perfectly balanced in a game as complex as Dominions. But when something is near-useless (like slingers or light cavalry), unrealistically bad (much less effective than history indicates), and unthematically bad (races with national light cavalry or slingers ignore them), the intent is to improve or cheapen them, whichever makes more thematic sense. So for militia, it is cheapening them... for light cavalry, strengthening and cheapening them... and for slingers, probably an increase in accuracy and range is best, while remaining clearly inferior to (and cheaper than) archers, to avoid any fundamental changes. Since many of the real world dynamics are not modeled by Dominions - like the difference in momentum between sling and bow projectiles, which results in better chances of breaking bones and damaging armor for slings, greater resistance to drift caused by the wind, and greater additional damage when slung from high castle walls, and the difference in "supplies" allocated to elite versus conscripted units - these factor have to be rolled into the price, resource cost, weapon and unit stats.

So you can't really make units both realistic and balanced, as not enough systems are modeled, and perfect balance is impossible to estimate. But in any case where a change will move a unit more toward "balanced" or more toward "realistic," without disrupting game mechanics (like suddenly making slingers better than archers), I think it's a good change.

[PDF]

SC,
I agree on your views
As for slingers they need a boost in Morale IMHO (from "awful" to just "not good" ). Sling damage at 9 would be ok if their range and prec were at least decent and the slingers didn't run before shooting ..

Supply : you can mod a unit to consume additional supplies, command is #supplybonus with a negative number to increase consumption. It could be a way to represent the higher standard of supplies (food but also housing, repairs...) needed by elite units? Just an idea, maybe bad ..