Who likes national armies? (an idea for dom3)

[Turin]

Well I do like large armies. A lot. Armies clashing with 100s of troops each are fun to watch.
I like national troops too, they give each nation a unique feeling.
One thing I don�t like is recruiting national troops. It�s tedious. Mindlessly clicking 100+ times to get your army is not fun.

So here is my idea: make every nation work like ae/sg ermor. Every turn you get some freespawn militia/slingers other crap indie troops in unfortified provinces depending on your resource rating. In your fortified provinces you get your national troops, again depending on your resource rating. Some basic leaders should spawn as well.

Of course you would not get as many troops as SG/AE ermor gets.
Of course you would have to rework how upkeep works, free troops should not cost upkeep. Perhaps you should get rid of upkeep for all troops.
Then there could be the problem of hoarding and getting unsiegeable forts due to your masses of troops, but dom3s aging system in addition to limited supplies should keep the hoarding in check.

Hopefully with free troops you will see some diversity and national identity later in the game and not always pure masses of devils/fiends of darkness/mech men/vineogres/vampires against each other with a few scs/thugs inbetween.

[Oversway]

I don't really like it so much.

For me, the micromanagement of sending commanders to scoop up the autogen troops is as bad or worse than clicking a bunch of time.

Reworking troop upkeep is such a big change. I'd rather they just made it easier to select troops. Perhaps a shortcut to recruit 5x of a troop type or something like that?

I agree with you that big armies are fun, though

[Saber Cherry]

Turin said:
One thing I don�t like is recruiting national troops. It�s tedious. Mindlessly clicking 100+ times to get your army is not fun.

Shift-click to queue 5 units, or "repeat build this queue" could both solve this problem.

I rather like the idea of volunteers, though. If the game was altered so that troops (not leaders) cost no upkeep when garrisoned in their home province, this wouldn't really cause any drawbacks, either. Each nation could have one or two volunteer types; for Marignon it might be Flagellants, for Pythium it might be Velites, and for Man it might be Longbows, Slingers, and Axemen.

[Turin]

Well the main problem I have is not the micromanagement.

My main problem is that regular troops are not cost effective later in the game. This is by design.
You can always choose whether you should spend your gold on mages as damage dealers or regular troops.
In the beginning troops are the better choice, because research is low.
Later troops have less damage power than mages, because research levels are high and you get efficient spells.
So mages will always be a better investment.

This could be changed, if there were more offensive troop buffs, but almost all are defensive(army of lead/gold, fog warriors, arrow fend,will of the fates etc) , only rush of strength, blood lust, flaming arrows and aim are offensive as far as I know.

If troops are free, you avoid this whole research problematic.

And it�s much more fun ripping a horde of 1000+ undead to shreds than having your SC win against the enemy SC, because he failed a MR roll. I want to have that massive army feeling with all nations.

[quantum_mechani]

You forgot one of the best ones: Weapons of Sharpness.

[Oversway]

Wind Guide, Touch of Madness, there are probably others.

Many of the best mass troop buffs (offensive or defensive) require gems. Perhaps if the AI was better at judging when to use gems for these spells it might be better.

[Chazar]

Maybe "Strength of Giants" and "Haste" could be considered as offensive as well...?

[Turin]

yeah well I forgot about some offensive buffs, but which would you rather cast:
fog warriors, will of the fates, mass regeneration and army of lead, or all the offensive buffs mentioned?

[sushiboat]

I have recently been using Mass Flight, which is awesome for storming castles with a large army. However, the gem use problem is there. Often another battle in the same province in the same turn will drain the caster's gem box before the castle storming.