PD wars! (no monkeys allowed)

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

Forcing the purchase of PD instead of units can mess with carefully laid out timelines.

Buying PD > kills black hawks (generally <=5) is rarely worth it, except in very specific circumstances. (ie, You need an instant meat shield where your army of mages is moving to this turn). And the reason for that is specifically because its far too easy to build a raiding thug which will blow through arbitrary PD like it was wet tissue paper. At which point PD really is wasted money.

[HoneyBadger]

PD is a really neat idea.

An idea that, on the face of things, is pretty powerful.

It's simple to use and understand, with zero micromanagement. It gives you dirt-cheap, instantly built, maintenance free troops and commanders that are basically "fire and forget", and protection from spies.

It's even got separate slots for modders to add units the Nation in question might not otherwise gain access to.

As a concept, it's got a lot going for it, and it really should do more than it does, and be a larger part of the game, and overall strategy.

I wouldn't say that it's useless, but, as an aspect of the game that's been promoted as one of the better things about Dom3, it's leaning heavily towards the shallow/ignoreable side.

I always put a few points into PD, if I have any leftover gold lying around. At worst, it functions as an "early alarm system", and lets me atleast get one good look at an attacker, before it's defeated.

If someone wanted to go to the trouble, it would be great if the PD for the vanilla Nations could be upgraded (and maybe balanced across the board) to a point where you'd get more meaningful results out of it. Even though it's maintenance-free, you should still be getting close to an even trade for what you could have bought with it, in terms of units, due to the PD's immovability and "hands off" nature.

I kind of wish Kristoffer and Johan might still look at this someday, atleast to give us some more modding tools/options, since the way PD currently works is really a genius idea. It's just not fully harnessed yet, being just a little underdeveloped, and strategically weak as an option.

I don't think it deserves to remain in it's current form. There's lots of ways it could be turned into a more useful and integral part of the game, without making it into something negative (without encouraging extreme turtling, without slowing down the game, etc.).

[fantasma]

I don't know, what's wrong about PD? It is local militia, you would not expect elite there. And at the reasonable levels it is cheap for what you get, and, more importantly, upkeep free. I like it as it is.

There is huge variation of the strength of PD, which should be seen as a strength/weakness of a given nation and not balanced by itself, as I see things.

And raiding is an extremely important strategy, maybe just not so much using stealth.

[Radio_Star]

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

PD is a really neat idea.

An idea that, on the face of things, is pretty powerful.

It's simple to use and understand, with zero micromanagement. It gives you dirt-cheap, instantly built, maintenance free troops and commanders that are basically "fire and forget", and protection from spies.

It's even got separate slots for modders to add units the Nation in question might not otherwise gain access to.

As a concept, it's got a lot going for it, and it really should do more than it does, and be a larger part of the game, and overall strategy.

I wouldn't say that it's useless, but, as an aspect of the game that's been promoted as one of the better things about Dom3, it's leaning heavily towards the shallow/ignoreable side.

I always put a few points into PD, if I have any leftover gold lying around. At worst, it functions as an "early alarm system", and lets me atleast get one good look at an attacker, before it's defeated.

If someone wanted to go to the trouble, it would be great if the PD for the vanilla Nations could be upgraded (and maybe balanced across the board) to a point where you'd get more meaningful results out of it. Even though it's maintenance-free, you should still be getting close to an even trade for what you could have bought with it, in terms of units, due to the PD's immovability and "hands off" nature.

I kind of wish Kristoffer and Johan might still look at this someday, atleast to give us some more modding tools/options, since the way PD currently works is really a genius idea. It's just not fully harnessed yet, being just a little underdeveloped, and strategically weak as an option.

I don't think it deserves to remain in it's current form. There's lots of ways it could be turned into a more useful and integral part of the game, without making it into something negative (without encouraging extreme turtling, without slowing down the game, etc.).

Or, option 2, you could learn to use armies. Just a thought.

[thejeff]

There's an interesting feedback loop with PD.

You can build thug raiders that will take out pretty much any amount of PD. Therefore, PD is a bad investment past a minimal level. Therefore, since you only have to raid low levels of PD, you can get away with using cheaper thugs or mages to raid with. And since any thug or SC can be killed by the appropriate counter you need to make them as cheap as possible.


I've noticed playing SP that I can't make a lot of the cheaper thug builds work. The AI tends to buy more PD and have random armies wandering around its backfield. Low-end thugs get overwhelmed. You can counter that by buffing the thugs up to almost SC level so they can deal with the larger numbers of troops. Since the AI doesn't know how to design a counter, it's worth investing more heavily.

[Gandalf Parker]

Im afraid that PD will not get balanced.

Every once in awhile people ask that PD be balanced, or magic be more balanced, or priest levels, or elites. But the balance of the game is setup around one nation having good PD, one having strong magic, one having good priests, one having kickass elites.

It would be handy I suppose if every nation was balanced against each other in each category. It would allow people to know better how to play each nation. But it would cut down the games rarity of having such unique nations that involve actually learning how each one plays.

On the other hand, that was cool for about the first year. Now it feels limiting. Only being able to play one or two nations really well because I can use them the way I think. But I am still impressed that they took the hard road far far away from chess-piece nations.

And before the response teams arrive... Im not saying there are not balance problems that need fixed. I am very aware that this was all much better done in Dom2. With Dom3 it got more and more.. "careless"? And the later a nation was added, the less it seems to properly fit in to the old balance concept. Nations added in patches after Dom3 was released particularly seem more-for-fun without the same level of careful balancing.

[LDiCesare]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

Nations added in patches after Dom3 was released particularly seem more-for-fun without the same level of careful balancing.

Noooo. Ashdod is the most balanced nation out there

[thejeff]

I don't see that as the problem with PD. At least in MP.

It's not that some nations have really good PD and some really bad PD, compensating for other strengths and weaknesses. It's that spme nations have mostly useless PD and some have completely useless PD. To the point that the common advice in MP games is not to waste money on more than a couple points of PD. Enough to stop the weakest raiders, Call of the Winds or the like.

More than that, even for the good PD nations, and it still just gets killed by a raiding thug and your investment is lost.
So PD, which is a theoretically cool feature, really isn't used.

If anything an overall boost in PD is needed, not a better balancing of the different nations PD.

That would be problematic for SP though, where it's already fairly common to buy a ton of PD in chokepoints for the AI to beat itself against.

[LDiCesare]

PD can be really useful in high turmoil though. An Abysian PD can get rid of most barbarians for a relatively cheap investment. Monkey PD, on the other hand...

[HoneyBadger]

[quote=Radio_Star;758349]

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

Or, option 2, you could learn to use armies. Just a thought.

The two have little to do with each other. You might as well suggest we all learn to navigate our aircraft carriers better, instead of maintaining roads.

PD is separate from mobile armies. That should be obvious to everyone. There's no reason that it can't be made more useful and interesting, without somehow taking away from "using armies". People didn't stop "using armies" once they learned to build castles or create an effective police force. That doesn't make fortifications or military police any less important.

The way I see PD working is akin to adding infrastructure: You build it up from nothing, and as you do, more people settle there, more business is done, your workshops are more productive, your smiths and craftsmen more skilled. You attract the richer merchants and the famous bards. You also probably attract more crime.

The end result is a functioning defensive force, created by your people living there, out of a desire to protect themselves and maintain the peace, but it comes about from a lot of hidden factors that might be represented by 20+ buildings in a Civilization-type game, but that in Dom3 is refined and distilled down to a single number.

Gandalf: I don't mean that it should be made equal across all Nations, only that it could be improved across the board, while still maintaining what balance there exists between Nations. In other words, Niefelheim = bad PD, while Abyssia = good PD.

thejeff said it better than I did, actually