in which occasion will you raise taxes

[Pocus]

with the massive kills on population, when will you raise your taxes?

[Pocus]

edit : trashed my post (comparison burn out / doing nothing) there was a flaw in my computations.



will post again later

[ October 29, 2003, 13:34: Message edited by: Pocus ]

[PDF]

No more 200% taxes is no more 50 men patrols in your provinces, as everyone observed.
But now this in turn renders militia et al nearly totally useless in Dom2 !
I'll only build very few of them in order to decrease unrest from time to time ... In the end the light troops that already weren't good in Dom1 for combat are now useless for everything

[Kristoffer O]

That would be a pity.

[Pocus]

quite true, light troops are even less desirable now (and I'm not sure the strat move advantage will weight much in the decision making, but time will tell).

a part of the problem which is in doms II and was in I, is that the upkeep is only based on gold. This lead to a situation where a cardace in leather armor cost as much to maintain than a Ulm pikeneer in maximilian armor (thats the non realistic aspect). And this lead to player favoring again the troop heaviness compared to other advantages.

I for one would really like to see Cardaces which cost as much as before, but with half the upkeep of an hoplite (if you do (gold + res)/ 30 foe exemple as upkeep formula). Then I'm sure we would find a use for them (mass of javelins to back up a phalanx).

[licker]

Yes the light troops are seriously useless now (well other than the AI seems to be enamored with them). Either changes to upkeep, or to the combat efficiency of masses needs to be looked at. Supply is another killer, maybe make the light troops much more supply efficient, or give a certain amount of free supply to troops with less than, oh say 15 production cost?

There's ways to tweek it, just have to make it somewhat realistic

[Saber Cherry]

It makes sense for light troops to have supply advantages, since they would be able to carry more stuff. Hmmm.

But I think a large part of the problem is that light troops are too expensive. Militia costs 7? While well-trained, expensively equipped Marginon greatswordsmen cost 10? That makes little sense to me. Were I to mod the game, I'd drop all light infantries under 10gp (maybe 8gp), militias to around 5gp, keep medium infantry at 10gp, move heavy infantries to 12gp, and push elite heavy infantry (currently 12-15) up 2 or 3gp.

So:

Militia: 5-6gp
LI: 7-8gp (8 if they have javelins)
MI: 9-11gp
HI: 12-13gp
Elite HI: 14-17gp
Super-elites: are pretty unique, so change as needed.

This change, plus giving light infantries a supply bonus, or having them use less supplies... or making HI eat more, since they use more energy... would probably rebalance the system. I don't think resources need to be factored into the upkeep system explicitly - that would be a bit confusing. Factoring it into cost, instead, and just using cost for upkeep, seems simpler. However, factoring encumbrance into supply usage might be a worthwhile prospect. Supply might have to change, though - say, an increase by a factor of 10 in supply and consumption, to reduce granularity.

By the way... an army eats more when moving and fighting. But that might be a little too much added complexity

-Cherry

P.S. I hope these cost changes make it into the official game. But if not, you can look forward to them in "Cherry Mod 0.1" The Japanese theme (not for Tien Chi, because I want a China/Japan conflict) will probably be in 0.2

[ October 29, 2003, 18:40: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]

[st.patrik]

I'm not so bothered by the 'less useful light infantry' thing as I think the rest of you are. It makes sense to me that you're really only going to make poorly equipped troops if you don't have the resources to make well-equipped troops. This seems realistic to me. I guess it's possible that in general there are too many resources available... do people have this opinion?

[Saber Cherry]

Light infantry are cheaper to deploy, maintain, and support than HI. But this is not reflected in Dominions I or II, making LI mostly useless.

[licker]

Originally posted by st.patrik:
I'm not so bothered by the 'less useful light infantry' thing as I think the rest of you are. It makes sense to me that you're really only going to make poorly equipped troops if you don't have the resources to make well-equipped troops. This seems realistic to me. I guess it's possible that in general there are too many resources available... do people have this opinion?

IT doesn't bother me that much either, but there are two places where it is an issue.

#1 the AI... The AI doesn't understand the worthlessness of LI apparently, so it is disadvantaged against humans, disadvantaged in a fixable way though.

#2 Astetics... Well why have 10+ units per nation if 5 of them are used less than 1% of the time? Call it balance, call it what you will, the fact is that LI are not cheap enough to use over other units. The problem is two fold, supply and upkeep, there is simply no advantage to ever having LI (strategic movement, but if they suck so much the extra speed isn't worth that much since they just die anyway).

It doesn't bother me greatly for MP, but for SP I'd like to see the AI less handicapped.