My take on rebalancing depop dominions...

[love crime]

Depop dominions (a la ermor) are sometimes a contentious issue, and a unique challenge. I tried out ermor (I sort of shied away from it for a while), and noticed 1) just how rapidly population could plummet , and 2) that corpse could was nowhere near the depopulation count.

Sensible, but I thought: where do all the other damn people go? Then: anywhere but ermor! (Wouldn't you, if you were in the middle of the raising of the army of the dead?)

Seems people would beat the devil to get away from ermor... maybe half (or whatever fraction seems best) of their depopulated people could emigrate as refugees to nearby lands. Refugees could increase population, as well as disorder in their new lands... and a migration effect would make sense for a number of random events.

Anyway, just thought I'd throw that out there, have fun ascending all.

[JaydedOne]

I love depop themes in general, as I find them to be an awesome fantasy staple. Heck, I want to use at least three in my mod project. But there does seem to be an advantage for Ermor that doesn't appear for C'tis - DT or Pangaea - CW. Namely, the fact that both of those, aside from costing more than Ermor themes (when you balance them out) also still rely heavily on gold-based troops in order to balance out their forces. Losing gold really ends up hurting their military economy more than it does Ermor which gets its full selection of units regardless.

How does this balance out in other peoples' eyes? It seems especially bad for Pangaea - CW as you have to -pay- more in scales (Growth and Magic, IIRC) in order to increase your undead production whereas you get paid if you're playing Ermor to do the same. Any suggestions on how that might be further balanced? Obviously it's an issue for the devs as the Last patch gave more oomph to CW. But it still seems a bit lacking after giving them another test spin post-2.11...

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Miguel Duran:
But there does seem to be an advantage for Ermor that doesn't appear for C'tis - DT or Pangaea - CW.

Desert Tombs isn't a depopulating dominion any more than Abysia, Black Forest or Helheim. It's just a theme that requires a death scale. +2 in this case, which kills 0.4% of the population per turn.

[Thilock_Dominus]

The DT is to expensive in my opinion to be worth playing. The 200 point isn't worth it for some cool leaders and some undead armies. it should be reduced massively before it's on the other race theme standard. Not saying that DT is bad theme I would love to go MP with them, but only if DT get lowered in points.


The immigration/migrattion thoughts is cool I think. Also a good event like: 'Baby boom' to increase population would be nice.


Thilock

[ April 15, 2004, 15:49: Message edited by: Thilock_Dominus ]

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Thilock_Dominus:
The immigration thoughts is cool I think. Also a good event like: 'Baby boom' to increase population would be nice.

It would have to be more along the lines of "A baby boom happened 15 years ago, and was only just noticed".

[Thilock_Dominus]

Or : 'Your people are in the love mood and many babies will be born the next few years'.

[Jondifool]

just a question.

whats the real problem? too strong kill population themes or the general mayheim caused from devasting spells in a mp game killing population and buy that spoiling all good gold producing lands, deriving players from large income?
and no means to counter it, only joining the menacing fun!

I am asking , because i yet don't have mp experience in dom2 ( and therefore don't know if the following is a problem or a blessing ), but to me it looks like the issue is there is no real way of rebuilding land. Growth is to slow to get anywhere after a few spell induced disasters, wish takes population from somewhere else(I read that somewhere), And thats about the posibilitys i know there is!

A lot of thing could be done to change that.
I must admit that letting population wander off to other provinces is one of the better one.
Not only as a result of death scale, but dramatic climate changes ,a lot off bad random events, spells, battles, high taxes, pillaging all these qualify for a population moving out and not comming back.

another thought
a random event where a tribe moves in and settle down in a province would be nice, depending on tribe type and right scales this could besides populations boost/or losses means that a province could get new army production!

by the way i would like to see routing indies getting refuge in nighbourung indi provinces.
( someone must have suggested this before!)

[Endoperez]

Originally posted by Thilock_Dominus:
Or : 'Your people are in the love mood and many babies will be born the next few years'.

Year is 12 turns (months), and you can't really put the kiddies out on the field... Nor give them a scythe! For them to grow up enough to be of help would take atleast (5*12=) 60 game turns... Not what I would call a good event.

[Vynd]

Interesting thread...

Jondifool has a good point: It is easy to kill off province population, and pretty much impossible (so far as I know) to restore it. If it was easier to restore population in lands retaken from, say, Ermor, then that would lessen the impact of the depop dominions somewhat.

But then Endoperez also raises the good point that this isn't supposed to be a long-scale game. Turns are one month a piece. There's no way the population should rise dramatically through natural means over the course of the game. But maybe we could get some high-end spells that would plop a few thousand people down at the cost of a hundred gems. Then again, maybe there are such spells and I just haven't gotten around to noticing them yet.

I also really like love crime's migration idea. But it sounds like it would be harder to actually put into the game.

[ April 16, 2004, 19:36: Message edited by: Vynd ]

[Inigo Montoya]

Originally posted by Vynd:
Then again, maybe there are such spells and I just haven't gotten around to noticing them yet.

You can wish for population, but it appears randomly. My wish for wish would be that you could select which province gets the population boost.