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Huzurdaddi said:
In dominions there is only one real investment: research. And research only benifits summons (snip)
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Castles, temples, troop experience, province defense, site-searching, scout-placement, and resource-intensive units are very real investments. It can take a long, long time to build a full army of high-resource units; if they are obselete by the time you build enough for them to be a threat, then they are pointless.
Fortunately, research does not only benefit summons, it just leads to very potent (and sometimes underpriced) summons. There are also spells such as Army of Lead, Mass Protection, Antimagic, and Flaming Arrows that selectively boost recruitable units (who generally have lower MR and zero natural protection, compared to summons); spells such as Wither Bones, Curse, and Paralyze that selectively damage supercombattants or and summons; and so forth.
There are also spells that selectively help summons and supercombattants, and a lot of spells the equally hurt or help both recruits and summons. I'm not trying to start an argument or attack you, but what you just said is a widespread fallacy people have about Dominions, and I want to lay it to rest so it won't cause problems. Let's say... "Research is the only investment with progress bars and sliders" and "Some paths of research lead to powerful summons," which are both true
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Now the question in my mind is: how badly should summons beat national troops? Currently national troops get pretty spanked.
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But I certainly agree with that. A summon that had to be researched before being used should have advantages over troops available on day one, just as high-resource troops like heavy cavalry should have advantages over light cavalry. Assuming 15g per gem equivalence, and examining (say) Legion of Wights:
In melee combat, a wight is roughly equivalent to 15 chainmail indy heavy infantry, according to my simulation (which does not factor the cold aura).
A Legion of Wights costs 30 gems (or 450 gold).
300 indy chainmail infantry cost 3000 gold.
Wights cost 0 upkeep.
Infantry costs 200 upkeep.
Unlimited hordes of Wights can be made at a lab in a turn (assuming unlimited gems and mages).
A castle pulling 150 resources needs 20 turns to pump out one set of infantry, over which time they pull 2000 gold in salary.
Wights eat 0 food (0 leaders with 0 winebags).
Infantry eat 200 food (8 leaders with 8 winebags, or 40 gems).
Wights need 20 undead leadership (Mound King, 3 gems, 1 turn).
Infantry need 300 leadership (12 indy leaders, 12 turns, 360 gold, 168 resources, 12 food, 24 upkeep)
Wights don't rout.
Infantry do.
Wights have high MR.
Infantry have low MR.
Wights are immune to cold (murdering winter) and poison.
Infantry have no natural immunities.
Wights have 3 strat moves.
Infantry have 1.
Wights have magical weapons that can hit ethereals and cause decay, to which they are immune.
Infantry... don't, can't, and aren't.
Wights get no fatigue, and thus can fight forever, against undead hordes, or dragonflies, or other cheap chaff.
Infantry have encumbrance, stop fighting effectively after about 7 rounds, and fall asleep after 17 rounds... unless their are fatigue spells, heat and cold auras, abnormal province temperatures, or so forth.
Wights can be killed by Dust to Dust and Holy Pyre.
Infantry can be killed by Falling Frost and Foul Vapors.
Wights are vulnerable to Purgatory (Fire 6, Level 7, 60 gems, Dominion only, unlikely to kill a Wight even when hit).
Infantry are vulnerable to Burden of Time (Death 5, Level 5, 70 gems, worldwide, assured kill when hit).
... and the list goes on.
Considering that other spells can be used to selectively help or hurt either one one (though IMO they favor wights), we'll pretend that sort of balances out.
But regardless, as Huzurdaddi said, recruitables get pretty badly spanked. By a huge factor in most categories, and I tried to make the catagories fair. Is that a good thing? I'd prefer to have SOME category when recruitables have SOME clear advantage... but you can't even say availability from turn one is a clear advantage. I might get 300 HI before 1 legion of wights, but I can easily get 4 legions of wights before 4 armies of 300 HI (depending on game settings).
Anyway - I don't like that. I think a lot of summons have costs off by more than a factor of 2, and some might be too strong to have a reasonable price (Devils, IMO, are too strong for cheap low-level summons, and I think the 'too strong' and 'too cheap' parts both need slight changes).