Useless or redundant units?

[Zen]

Corwin said:
Not really.

Considering that most plaayers who take level 9 bless and double lvl 9 bless will choose dormant or imprisoned pretender, and considering that role of single SC in the mid-late game is much less in Dom3 than it was in Dom2, and finally considering that defence attribute in Dom3 in general got a very large nerf from Illwinter (esp. so for SCs), +1 def per water level for your pretender is certainly not a major factor when evaluating water bless.

Oh really? Well actually it's a huge factor if you want to go single bless. While double bless is a rusher's dream, you can't play that with every nation since they don't have usable sacreds.

Also the W9 Blue Dragon or Father of Winters is nearly as effective as the Cyclops after 2 Research (depending on your nation initial gem income) and can be crucial for some nations to hammer through HCav provinces quickly turn >5.

Maybe this is not something that you consider, but I consider initial expansion and Awakened Pretenders for early expansion for non sacred-heavy nations at least as important as double blessings with heavy sacred nations.

[Corwin]

Zen said:

Oh really? Well actually it's a huge factor if you want to go single bless. While double bless is a rusher's dream, you can't play that with every nation since they don't have usable sacreds.

Also the W9 Blue Dragon or Father of Winters is nearly as effective as the Cyclops after 2 Research (depending on your nation initial gem income) and can be crucial for some nations to hammer through HCav provinces quickly turn >5.

Maybe this is not something that you consider, but I consider initial expansion and Awakened Pretenders for early expansion for non sacred-heavy nations at least as important as double blessings with heavy sacred nations.

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.

+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.


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.

[Corwin]

Turin said:
Heh those yakashas are one of my favourite blessable units. I tried air10 w9 n4 dom9 lady of rivers and it mops up indies and most AI troops. The usual 9 guys + priest you get per turn can beat any indie 5 province with very few losses.

in addition to combat the low protection you have e3 mages, which can easily cast legions of steel once you get const 3, but I haven´t tried that strat yet.

Yeap, Air bless is very good for yakashas, since it take care of one of their critical weaknesses. Prot 1 is still going to hurt vs humans, if your opponent has high morale troops who won't mind smacking units with "awe". But at least the archers and most indep provinces won't be much of a problem.

[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.

[KissBlade]

Zen said:

Oh really? Well actually it's a huge factor if you want to go single bless. While double bless is a rusher's dream, you can't play that with every nation since they don't have usable sacreds.

Also the W9 Blue Dragon or Father of Winters is nearly as effective as the Cyclops after 2 Research (depending on your nation initial gem income) and can be crucial for some nations to hammer through HCav provinces quickly turn >5.

Maybe this is not something that you consider, but I consider initial expansion and Awakened Pretenders for early expansion for non sacred-heavy nations at least as important as double blessings with heavy sacred nations.

I'll have to agree with this point entirely. If I'm not going a bless strat, an Awakened Pretender is almost always my decision just forthe quick jump boost in expansion ability. A dragon is still very adept at fending off indie 6 and the dom 9/10 cyclops/medusa build are both very effective. I do like to goof off a bit occasionally with VQ or GK chassis still though for the old time SC sake.

[Gandalf Parker]

Epaminondas said:

Dear Gandalf Parker,

We have some serious philosophical differences. Taken to extremes, what you seem to be suggesting is that the game is perfectly balanced, and there are no units that are extremely powerful or extremely weak or redundant per cost. Do you really believe this? It would assume that the game designers have infinite resources and infinite powers of judgment. Even game makers with far greater resources tinkering games with far fewer variables and aspects like Blizzard take years to get the balance right.

I afraid of people who feel that balance should move closer to each nation getting equal pieces which wear different colored uniforms like in some games. And actually, I havent seen worthless units yet. Only worthless units to me. Most of the units people dont like are cheaper and less armored so they feel that they are worthless compared to the "better" units. To me thats a play style choice.

My personal preference (Pangaea) tends to get "improvement" suggestions which remove all of my favorite pieces, and replace them with more Ulmish pieces. Less stealth, more armor, and in my opinion.. less Pangaean.

By the way, regarding your implication/accusation that I am singling out units that do not fit my playing style, well, I tend to be an extreme experimenter. I am not the type of person that finds the "right" tactic and play it to death. So while I can appreciate a specific analysis of where I have gone, to make a quasi-ad hominem argument along the lines of "You are too stupid to have figured out how to use the unit" isn't really helpful for anyone.

I dont think I commented on any particular persons choices. I talked generally based on many conversations Ive seen. If you feel I was talking about you in particular then I apologize for that.

And Im not trying to imply that any one is too stupid to figure out a style different than their own. If I did then I would have to include myself since obviously I could never master the use of certain nations and their units on the level of some of the players whose strategy stresses large armored armies built with formulas so efficient as to make an accountant dizzy. But I am leary of declaring such strategies as the ultimate winner of everything. Nor do I consider them the ultimate decider of what is good or not good to have in the game.

[Graeme Dice]

Gandalf Parker said:
Most of the units people dont like are cheaper and less armored so they feel that they are worthless compared to the "better" units. To me thats a play style choice.

To be frank Gandalf, people feel that the unarmored versions of units that have the same gold cost as armoured versions are useless because they _are_ useless compared to the other choices. Battles between equal gold costs of hysapists and cardaces will end in an overwhelming victory for the hysapists. Equal resource cost battles are closer, but gold, and not resources, is almost always the limiting factor on troop production beyond the first dozen turns. If you have the ability to choose between slingers and shortbows, the contest comes out overwhelmingly in favour of the short bows. There are some nations where the basic troops have natural protection values that make light infantry more effective, such as Atlantis or C'Tis, but on the whole, light infantry are to be entirely avoided. The same can be said of unarmoured horse archers, who cost more gold than regular archers, yet do not provide any kind of battlefield or strategic advantage over foot archers.

My personal preference (Pangaea) tends to get "improvement" suggestions which remove all of my favorite pieces, and replace them with more Ulmish pieces. Less stealth, more armor, and in my opinion.. less Pangaean.

As it currently stands, most of Pangaea's units serve little useful function. Pangaea's best stealthy raiding units are also their most effective fighters in a pitched battle. You could remove both generic Satyr units, both minotaurs, and centaurs archers without having any serious effect on the nation.

Satyr sneaks at least have a strategic use, hoplites have the armour to not be slaughtered by arrows, and revelers go berserk so they can be an effective meat shield. The two generic satyrs have almost no armour, and a morale score of 8 that virtually guarantees that they will run at the first sign of trouble. The minotaurs would be decent if trampling units would also attack smaller units with their weapons, and if they had attack and defense skills at least as good as a normal human. Currently, they are size 3, and meaning that they they don't cause sufficient damage to size 2 troops to be worthwhile. Centaur longbows cost almost three times as much gold as Man's longbows, giving them only a third of the offensive punch. Then there's centaur warriors, which completely overshadow any other Pangaean unit other than the Cataphracts and white centaurs. If given the choice between purchasing one centaur warrior, or four satyrs with javelins and spears, the correct choice is almost always going to be the single centaur warrior.

[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.

[Gandalf Parker]

Graeme Dice said:

To be frank Gandalf, people feel that the unarmored versions of units that have the same gold cost as armoured versions are useless because they _are_ useless compared to the other choices.

Thank you Graeme.
You have always been one of my best examples. Lets both hope that neither of us ever have anything to say in the games development.