Heavy Infantry, Light Infantry, and Mundane AP Weapons

[Keir Maxwell]

One of the things which struck me as odd in my first game was how the strategic movement worked - HI and LI move 1 in the rough and HI move one in the open while LI move two. So this means HI move the same speed as LI in the rough but LI move faster in the open - seems a bit odd really.

I would suggest returning to all infantry moving 2 stategically but HI pay 2 for a rough province while LI pay 1 so that LI move faster than HI in the rough and the same in the open. This would encourage you to use lighter armed troops in mountainous area's whereas at present LI are more suited to open terrain.

Cheers

Keir

[NTJedi]

Light Infanty and Militia would be more valuable if they could move faster plus have less fatique.

[Calanor]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
Second, almost none of the suggestions could be added through mods.

Surely, that would depend on what kind of modding support they implement. In Unreal, you can create Pac Man or whatever. While I am quite aware of that the chances for such an extremely flexible modding support being added for Dom2 are slim (understatement), I don't think any of us fans really know what will be possible to mod or not. To be frank though, I personally expect that it will be limited to, at best, tweaking some stats and perhaps abilities - but I won't know til the full game is released

I agree with your other points, though.

[Calanor]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
[HI supply upkeep..]

Hmm, well, I still dunno if I feel that messing around with supply costs would be the most preferable approach, but at least I can following your reasoning now

Looks like SOMEBODY needs to go back and play Master of Magic. Hello, do you think I just pull this stuff out of my ***?

Embarassingly enough, I never played MoM.
Anyway, I would expect a pike to be used to counter cavalry - not to counter a bunch of guys strolling about in chain mail or whatever. There is nothing about a pike that suggests that it should excel versus heavy armour - it certainly should not be more efficient at it than, say, your standard spear. Instead, its main advantage is reach (which is taken into account in Dom2) and defensive capabilities vs - in particular but not excluded to - a cavalry charge. In all cases, you would want to horde pikemen in order to allow them to be efficient - a lone pikeman would probably be rather useless.

Bonuses versus cavalry is oddly enough not included in Dom 2 - this might be another sensible ability to add to some mundane weapons.

[Edit: Typos..]

[ November 01, 2003, 15:42: Message edited by: Calanor ]

[Mortifer]

Originally posted by Calanor:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
Second, almost none of the suggestions could be added through mods.

Surely, that would depend on what kind of modding support they implement. In Unreal, you can create Pac Man or whatever. While I am quite aware of that the chances for such an extremely flexible modding support being added for Dom2 are slim (understatement), I don't think any of us fans really know what will be possible to mod or not. To be frank though, I personally expect that it will be limited to, at best, tweaking some stats and perhaps abilities - but I won't know til the full game is released

I agree with your other points, though.

---

Ok, it would be nice to see a balanced vanilla game. Very true. Especially this would be the best for MP.

As for SP...
I agree about the mods. IF we can do certain things, IE modifying stats, weapons & armors, adding / removing special abilities, we can make perfect mods. That will help a lot.


However, just like someone has said, the SEIV. balance mods are awesome, the ppl love to use those in MP, instead of the vanilla game. Just think about that.

[Calanor]

By the way, I thought of a way to make Saber Cherry's pikes more special Add a new ability that increases the efficiency of repel attempts if there are more than one unit wielding the same type of weapon in that same square (and when pikes are concerned, perhaps even adjacent squares). However, a lone unit might get a penalty to his repel attempts. "Efficiency" here means a modifier similar to what you see when Awe and Fear is concerned. So, three jolly pikemen holding the line together are more efficient than one poor fellow fightning on his own.

You could also make things so that the pikeman would have to use a close-combat weapon if the repel fails (say, a shortsword) - but that might require some changes to the current combat system, so it might not be worth the effort.

[Edit: Clarifications etc]

[ November 01, 2003, 15:58: Message edited by: Calanor ]

[Saber Cherry]

Calanor:

quote:

---

Cherry:
Looks like SOMEBODY needs to go back and play Master of Magic. Hello, do you think I just pull this stuff out of my ***?

Embarassingly enough, I never played MoM.

---

I'm not kidding at all here - you need to play it. MoM and Xcom1 continue to be 2 of the best strategic games of all time. It's worth all the trouble of getting them to run in XP. Well, MoM is, anyway; Xcom is much harder to run correctly.

By Kier Maxwell
I would suggest returning to all infantry moving 2 stategically but HI pay 2 for a rough province while LI pay 1 so that LI move faster than HI in the rough and the same in the open. This would encourage you to use lighter armed troops in mountainous area's whereas at present LI are more suited to open terrain.

Sounds good.

-Cherry

[Dekent]

Running MoM in windows XP is quite easy...all you have to do is allocate the memory it wants to it manually and run it in comp. mode.

(Good luck if you want sound though)

You can also get it easily at http://www.the-underdogs.org/

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by Dekent:
Running MoM in windows XP is quite easy...all you have to do is allocate the memory it wants to it manually and run it in comp. mode.

(Good luck if you want sound though)

You can also get it easily at http://www.the-underdogs.org/

Hey, the sound is awesome! The music, anyway=) Try VDMS.

[Saber Cherry]

But back to the topic=)

(repost)

There seems to be a consensus, amongst most players, that light infantry and militia are fairly worthless. And specifically, that they are worthless because everything light infantry and militia do, heavy infantry does better. Plus, HI Lasts much longer.

Note:

LI=Light Infantry
MI=Medium Infantry
HI=Heavy Infantry
LC=Light Cavalry
HC=Heavy Cavalry
AP=Armor Piercing, not Action Points

Suggestions to rebalance light and heavy troops include:

1) Allow variable unit upkeep (not always 1/15 of cost);
2) Include resource cost in unit upkeep;
3) Allow light units to disband;
4) Decrease the gold cost of light units;
5) Increase the gold cost of heavy units;
6) Give additional tactical commands to light units (e.g. "skirmish" - avoid melee);
7) Change the tac AI to allow effective skirmishing;
8) Add additional formations (like "wide" and "loose");
9) Give light units free supplies, or making them consume less;
10) Make HI consume more supplies;
11) Rescale supply points by a factor of 10, to reduce granularity (average consumption => size*5);
12) Increase light unit defense stats;
13) Let blows that do not penetrate armor still do some minor HP damage (say, .25 average);
14) Make blows that do not penetrate armor do some minor fatigue damage (say, 1d6/size);
15) Add mundane armor piercing weapons (like making pikes AP);
16) Give bonuses/penalties to light/heavy units in various terrains;
17) Add "Critical Strike" which deals 2x or AP damage for very high attack rolls;
18) Make heavy armor reduce attack rating;
19) Allow LI/LC to attack non-adjacent enemy territories (move across a friendly province and attack);
20) Add strategic "Raid" orders for LI/LC (skirmish and retreat);
21) Add "Move-Pillage" orders for LI/LC (e.g. Mongols, Vikings, German barbarians);
22) Increase armor encumbrance in deserts (dehydration), swamps (footing), and mountains (elevation);
23) Introduce variable armor-piercing levels: X% AP, or 50% AP for the first X protection;
24) Give both LI and HI 2 strategic moves, but allow LI to move through rough terrain at a cost of 1 move point.

So, if you have more suggestions, or want to praise or slam an extant one, comment here.

-Cherry

[ November 01, 2003, 16:26: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]