Recruitable Unit Rebalance Version 7.51 Released.

[Oversway]

So what is the overall idea of this? You are making sure that all recruitables have a fairly even gold cost? I think that is great for independants, but I thought that for some nations, they were supposed to have cheaper troops to make up for some other deficit (weak and/or expensive mages)?

Anyways, I think its very cool to make some of the troops more interesting.

[Pocus]

good mod, tell us when it is finished so we can pbem with it!

[Saber Cherry]

Oversway said:

So what is the overall idea of this? You are making sure that all recruitables have a fairly even gold cost? I think that is great for independants, but I thought that for some nations, they were supposed to have cheaper troops to make up for some other deficit (weak and/or expensive mages).

Hmm, it probably would have been a good idea for me to mention the idea behind it... =)

In dominions 2, there are some troops that I just never recruit, or only recruit as a last resort. Some of them have inexplicably high costs. For example, why would you pay 7 gold for and unarmored, untrained, shieldless militia... and why should it cost 70% as much as a well-trained, well-equipped professional soldier? Historically (AFAIK), peasants were just sent out to fight alongside professional soldiers without being paid anything.

So, my goal is to change unit pricing or stats MODERATELY and THEMATICALLY such that units that I would previously never consider recruiting... or were inconsistant with their descriptions... are better. Jaguar warriors? They're terrible for their price, and inexplicably weak. Shamblers? Unarmed and unarmored, they die in droves yet eat huge amounts of food, cost a fortune, and have very low morale considering their description says they "do not fear smaller opponents." Ryleh hybrids? Without ambidextrity, they have an attack of 6! That won't even hit a militia. Barbarians and barbarian leaders? Both way too expensive considering the leaders have 10 leadership, the barbarians have 9 morale, and with little armor, they all break rather instantaneously - and also, their combat skills are too low considering barbarian society is focused on fighting, raiding, and chest-beating rather than building, farming, and learning. Slingers? Wow... no sane person would recruit these guys if there was any alternative, and it's hard for me to imagine recruiting them even if there was no other ranged unit availible. They're just too terrible - for the price. And again, with no training and no inclination to participate in dangerous melee combat, why should they get paid nearly as much as regular troops, anyway?

This preliminary version doesn't make any huge changes. For example, even though I feel (unarmored) militia and slingers are worth about 3 gold, I only dropped them 30% to 5 gold. Furthermore, any changes I made to independants were generally made to national troops as well - for example, I made the baseline cost of minimally-equipped indy light infantry (shield, spear, leather cuirass) 8 gold (to reflect how undesirable they are), and propogated that across national units as well, unless they had special advantages (amphibious, natural protection, stats over 10, javelins, flight, and so forth). Well-equipped light infantry was dropped to 9. I'm planning on bumping up the price of some heavy and super-heavy infantries (to maybe 11g) and give them an accompanying boost in stats (like +1 HP and str) to reflect the fact that the soldiers recruited to wear the heaviest armor and equipment would probably be amongst the largest and strongest in the province, as there is always natural variation within a population. Some countries, like Ulm, will keep all their troops at 10g as a national advantage, though I've boosted all Ulm's troops with +1 HP, +1 str, and -1 enc. Furthermore, I gave Ulm's newer units (sappers, wolfherds, and etc) stats commensurate with Ulm's older units, since they share the same penalty (-1 mr).


In summary... I'm trying to make troop choices less blatantly obvious, and give purpose to to units that previously had none, while always reflecting the flavor of the unit (or nation) descriptions.

[PvK]

I think Militia could be as low as 0 or 1 gold.

If magic summons and stuff are keeping their low unmodded costs, then you might halve the gold costs of most other mundane troops.

PvK

[Saber Cherry]

PvK said:
I think Militia could be as low as 0 or 1 gold.

If magic summons and stuff are keeping their low unmodded costs, then you might halve the gold costs of most other mundane troops.

PvK

Mmmm.... I'm also doing a separate magic mod, based on Zen's, that would work well in conjunction with the infantry mod. I don't want to drastically change all infantry costs, which would necessitate changing every other mundane unit in the game as well. As long as I change them relative to each other (and keep the mean near 10g) I hope to be able to rebalance infantry without changing the balance of anything else... and then mod the overpowered summons (of which there are far fewer than mundane units) independantly.

As for militia costing 0 or 1 gold - keep in mind that some nations (e.g. man) can recruit these from the start. A choice between recruiting 6 heavy infantry or 120 militia on turn one is... already unbalanced, IMO. But there are not many militia types in the game, so I can quickly adjust them downward if they still seem utterly worthless at 5 g (which will probably be the case, though they can still be used absorb spells and lances, patrol, siege and defend castles at that price).

[Alneyan]

Am I the only one who actually likes militia and slingers for specific purposes? They seem the best deal to me whenever I only need fodder, and more specifically, some troops for sieges. Slingers in particular can be raised in most provinces very quickly, and they are as good as any other kind of infantry for this purpose.

They are, of course, very weak for anything else, but they seem decent enough for "giving some muscle to those mages in siege", and they are the cheapest mundane troops for this purpose (though Call of the Wind is very good for the same thing).

[Alneyan]

On a side note, you can only recruit fifty units per province every turn, so you would be unable to get 120 militia per turn; how impressive 50 militia per turn is would be another matter.

[Saber Cherry]

Alneyan said:
Am I the only one who actually likes militia and slingers for specific purposes? They seem the best deal to me whenever I only need fodder, and more specifically, some troops for sieges. Slingers in particular can be raised in most provinces very quickly, and they are as good as any other kind of infantry for this purpose.

Archers - which seem overpriced to me, considering their effectiveness - are about the same price as slingers, and vastly superior in every way. Militia with shields or LI are much more effective per unit gold as a meat shield / fodder than spear-only militia... do you ever buy unshielded militia?

I might run a little simulation to demonstrate how utterly crappy unshielded unts are. I'll post the results soon =)

[Alneyan]

I should have been clearer: I did not mean fodder in battle, but fodder outside battle, for spells like Flames from Afar and the like, or simply to repair walls. Actually buying militia for battle-duty would be another matter altogether.

[Saber Cherry]

Alneyan said:
I should have been clearer: I did not mean fodder in battle, but fodder outside battle, for spells like Flames from Afar and the like, or simply to repair walls. Actually buying militia for battle-duty would be another matter altogether.

Ahh, I understand now. In real life, though, untrained and under-equipped peasants were used in hordes in battle, not just as bait for "Murdering Winter" =) I want to make them viable for tactical military use in Doms 2 - as useful as vine men, claymen, wolves, hawks, imps, dragonflies, and soulless, considering price, survivability, and food consumption. Too bad there is no "food priority flag" that would allow an army to have 1000 militia and 30 knights, such that the 1000 militia are starving and diseased while the 30 knights are well-fed and happy.