Poll: morale and routing

[Arryn]

Graeme Dice said:
I think Cainehill said exactly what needed to be said in this case.

Agreed.

Graeme Dice said:
I don't know why people have such a liking for this idea, as the very thing that makes the game worthwhile is that magic is actually powerful, unlike the vast majority of fantasy games.

Because a very vocal minority of players, whose names we're quite familiar with, want to turn Dominions into just another in that vast sea of mediocre games.

Furthermore, Johan has already categorically stated IW's official view on the subject, yet this same vocal (dense/oblivious) minority continue to beat their drum hoping to either deafen or tire the rest of us into submission to their whims. Newsflash: won't happen.

[johan osterman]

Boron said:
...
can anyone of you name me a game where an upkeep mechanism is included but about 50% of your troops ( nationals) cost upkeep and about 50% (summons) are upkeep free ?
...

This does not constitute an argument. It is just an observation, and perhaps not even an interesting one.

Boron said:
and a few REAL LIFE history examples which show that new tech is not always better :

world war 2 :
surely in a 1on1 comparison a king tiger was much better than the german mark 4 tank .
costwise the ratio though was something like 1 tiger to 5 mark 4 tanks though or 3 panther tanks .


the soviet union had about the same capazities than germany .
germany focused on their ultrahuge tanks like tiger , king tiger , jagdtiger , elefant ... and wasted lots of resources .

the soviet union concentrated on the very good t 34/85 .
while in a 1on1 clearly inferior to a tiger tank it was so cheap to produce that it normally fought in a 10:1 ratio against the tiger and won easily .

furthermore 1 infantry with a bazooka could defeat any tank when it came close enough .
a tiger was as vulnerable to an airattack than a t 34/85 e.g.


so though the tiger series was technically far superior than e.g. the t 34/85 or the sherman they could be beat still by them .

What bearing does this have upon dom2 upkeep?

[atul]

deccan said:
On the one side, we have Graeme Dice and Cainehill whose idea of fantasy is fantastic, high fantasy, the stuff of legends, like Middle Earth in the First Age,...[snip]

On the other side, we have people like Panther and FM_Surrigon whose idea of fantasy is a more subdued, subtle kind, where ordinary joes can and do play a part in the great scheme of things. Sort of like Middle Earth in the Third or Fourth Ages.

And since thinking along only one axis is so boring, there are as many interpretations as there are players. I for one like the feeling of advancement in Dominions. I mean, sure, the game starts with these pretenders thinking too much of themselves leading few faithfuls into battle, relying on the strength of their followers. But as the war goes on, more and more [censored] hits the fan and the pretenders in their pride become more and more detached from the real world. Men who first fought with their kind are first sided with some monsters, later to notice that their God has very little use for common rabble bar taxing them to death. A bit like WW2, starting with Polish cavalry and ending with the two bombs.

And yeah, big spells are just cool, special thanks to IW for including them in the game. Can't think of too many games that have anything comparable.

And in respect to items to boost normal troops. I'd say there's a very good way to make normal troops useful in late game: while alone hoplites are no match for say, Mechanical Men, try casting Army of Lead, Mass Regeneration, Weapons of Sharpness and Mist Warriors and watch 'em sweep the floor. Of course there's little reason to recruit troops just to have them sit in the garrisons, but garrison duty isn't the thing to have soldiers do anyway.

[Boron]

Arryn said:
OT discussion on tanks ...

Boron,

First, the USSR had a larger industrial base than Germany, and one that wasn't being bombed day and night. The T34/85 wasn't 10 times cheaper to produce than a tiger (as you imply), though it was significantly cheaper. (Perhaps 1/2 or so.) What allowed the soviets to build vast numbers of them was a combination of a much larger manufacturing base, coupled with ample raw materials -- materials Germany was always short of, and an armaments industry that wasn't wasting valuable time and people in designing a plethora of different tanks (like Germany's absurd assortment of models). During the war, the soviets would design one model of medium tank, and one model of heavy, and then build just those. If they found a shortcoming to the design, they'd modify the base design. The Germans, OTOH, designed multiple different medium and heavy tanks, and preferred to design entirely new models to correct perceived shortcomings in their forces (though they also modified old designs too). The net result for Germany is that while their industry suffered from incessant attack and materials shortages, they were also heavily dividing their attention and failing to focus on any one design. The soviets, second only to the U.S., fully understood the concepts of economies of scale.

Second, the German tiger was so superior to the American Sherman that it was all but impervious to the latter. Shermans did NOT win against the tigers at 10:1 odds. Far from it. The single biggest killer of tigers was allied air attack, followed by allied artillery attack. Very few tigers were ever disabled, much less killed, by allied tanks (or even allied tank destroyers). Allied tanks (except the Sherman Firefly 7.6cm and Pershing 9.0cm models) were simply not good enough to get the job done. Sherman armor was pathetically thin and their 7.5cm gun was 2-3 years obsolete compared to what the Germans and soviets were using.

Finally, even had the Germans been able to concentrate on just one cheap-to-produce model of tank they'd've still lost, though the war would have been much bloodier than it already was for Germany's opponents.

In summation, Germany's problem wasn't their new tech, it was that they never had enough of it. I think this is the point you were really trying to make. However, the way you went about saying it implies that had they focused on building older models or just one new model things might have been different. The analogy between Germany and Dominions isn't valid because Germany's reasons for losing the war are much more complex than that.

i was unfortunately hindered by a heavy storm to finish my tank posting

so i continue now :

first with your shermans :
a sherman m4a3e8 hvss , one of the late war models , had the new 76 mm m1a1 gun as main weapon .

he had ap and apcr ammunition .

in close combat ( about 500 metres ) he had even good chances to penetrate a king tigers front armor with apcr ammunition .

on side + rear the king tiger had only about 90 / 80 mm of armour , on front about 220 mm for the turret and 160 for the front .

if a sherman could face a tiger on the side / rear he could kill the tiger at almost any range with his ap ammunition even .


perhaps you know the MAUS panzer .
the germans built 2 prototypes .
he would have had armour of 200-250 mm everywhere .

this tank would have had a weight of 150-200 tons .

the king tiger had already a weight of 70 tons but only about 1/3 of the engine power of a modern 70 ton tank like the leopard 2 / abrahams .

so the tiger was very immobile and strategic movement ( bridges ) was a huge problem .

since the germans built only about 450 of this monsters and most were used in the east front in a normal battle you normally never saw more than about at maximum 20 king tigers .
it is easy to flank them .

furthermore your m26 pershing tank / m 36 jackson tank hunter had with their 90 mm cannons good enough equipment to kill even a king tiger with some luck .


now to your industrial base of the soviet union :

according to a statistic from the "Kriegstagebuch of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht" 1941 the sovietunion invested 8,5 billions of $ in prices of 1944 in total in their total war production of war material in 1941 .
1941 the germans invested 6,5 billions $ in prices of 1944 in their production of war material .

1943 the figures were :
13,8 billions $ for germany
13,9 billions $ for soviet union


so their industrial base was about even and the german one would have been far bigger but you all know how insane hitler was and how many resources he wasted .
in 1944 when the war was already lost germany produced about 40% of its total war production !


in total from 1940-1943 the industrial total production of japan / italy / germany vs great britain and soviet union was about 0,9 : 1 .

until 1943 britain had good air force but bad tanks .
the sovietunion had bad airforce but good tanks .


the huge difference made the us :
in 1943 they produced war material worth 37,5 billion dollars !!!
that is about 2,7 times more than germany produced in total 1943 and about 1,5 times more than the soviet union + great britain produced 1943 in total !!!!!


combined with given how superior the us weapons were already in world war 2 if the usa would have been no democracy but a dictature like germany / soviet union the usa would have been able to conquer the whole world .

luckily that was not their intention



but in general :
the british army was far inferior to the german army during the whole war .
the british air force was equal to the german air force .

the russian army was equal to the german army .
the russian air force was clearly inferior to the german air force .

germany had almost no navy so this section is irrelevant at all .



the us air force was even equal to the late war german planes . since germany couldn't build them in large enough numbers anymore the us air force was clearly superior .

the us army was absoulutely equal to the german army .
you had better rifles , sub machine guns etc.
you had the bazooka as really good anti tank weapon .
your shermans were better than the german main battle tank mark IV F2-J series .
they were almost even to the panther .
the pershing / general jackson could defeat all german tanks .


add to this that you had ALWAYS air superiority and with e.g. the thunderbolt excellent ground attack planes the us military of world war 2 was far superior to all participants of world war 2 .



but what i wanted to say there in analogies to dominions 2 :
lets say a knight is a mark IV / sherman / t 34 tank .

a midlevel sc ( bane lord / firbolg ) is a panther tank ( no real equivalents on us / soviet side there )


a lategame sc ( tartarian , airqueen etc. ) is a king tiger / pershing / josef stalin III tank .


finally fodder in dominions ( militia , light inf etc. ) is infantry in WW 2 .


in WW 2 something like 10 medium tanks could still defeat a lategame tank .
something like 5 improved medium tanks ( panther ) could still defeat a lategame tank .

in right terrain ( city , wood etc. ) 100 infantry could defeat any tank with an ambush + a panzerfaust / bazooka .


in dominions though even 500 light inf can't defeat a sc .
all they can perhaps achieve is reach the 50 turns battle limit but then the sc just lost 1 turn , is still alive and killed about 400 of the 500 light inf at least and kills the rest next turn .

even 100 knights can't beat a sc .



as it is once you reach midgame phase the war is just mainly between scs and antisc mage squads .

you need to either build anti sc mages or scs to have a chance .

since scs normally have better strat move overall fully equipped scs are just the best choice .
furthermore lategame your gold base can be damaged indirect ( plague , instill uprisings , utterdark to mention a few ) while your gem income from sites can only be damaged by conquering the province and your itemgemincome ( clams , fetishes , bloodstones ) can only be killed by complete defeat .

combined with that all summons don't cost upkeep at all scs / summonable mages / freespawn creatures ( ghosts , vampires , devils mainly ) make just what you aim at .
given that you have 1 sc from turn 1 with your pretender and can get e.g. equipped banelords at turn 20-25 easy this game mechanism is sorry to say that in my opinion unfortunately really almost "broken" .

you start playing and know that at least after turn 20 most national troops are already useless and after turn 40-50 even blessed ones etc. are only cannon fodder and should be avoided too cause the money you invest in them is better invested in castles , temples , mages and priests .


if you rush earlygame if you don't have fliers no national troop can defeat a single vq on turn 10 even .
even with many mages as support you have problems , e.g. water mages , lightning/fire mages ( a copper plate is damn cheap , so is a burning pearl ) .


while in a real life war it is the following :
infantry can defeat tanks alone . they take heavy casualities but they win .

with artillery support ( bombers , artillery ( e.g. panzerhaubite 2000 , paladin ) you just minimize your casualities .

in dominons 2 though the "only" weapon that comes close to an anti tank weapon for invantry is the fire 9 bless .
against protection 30 this is not reliable though at all .
even with mage artillery support you normally don't win at turn 10-30 at all if the sc is not undead .
so against a properly played nataraja e.g. until you can field a really expensive drain life mage squad you have normally even with mages + troops not the touch of a chance at all .

[Boron]

johan i was unfortunately hindered to finish my world war 2 excursion to make a comparision with dominions because of a heavy storm

now i finished my arguments .

please don't misunderstand me . i am so critical because i love dominions so much .
you made such a damn great game .



i am just convinced that the upkeep mechanism is a bit "broken" . once you have to pay upkeep for your summons , especially scs dominions is just even greater .



as it is i just get the sad feeling though that the only strategy you do is to try to get your overpowered things quicker than your enemy .

upkeep would balance that definetely though in my opinion .

johan have you or kristoffer ever played either starcraft or age of wonders 2 shadow magic with the latest patch ?

to make a Last starcraft example :

in starcraft if you rush to carriers e.g. which noobs often think are overpowered even if the experienced player doesn't rush you but just builds 120 marines with 30 medics or 150 hydraliks which cost about the same like carriers worth 150 supply and about equal in material costs too the lategame carriers get defeated by the earlygame marines / hydralisks .

in dominions though all kinds of national troops don't win against the lategame troops once you have them .
so they are useless after a few turns .

but it is only because of the different treatment of upkeep .
the few summons who cost upkeep ( though gold , the trolls + water trolls ) are not very popular .


maenads e.g. since they cost no upkeep as one of the few national troops at all though are because of this always useful as fodder .


so the different treatment of upkeep is afaik quite unique in dominions i know no other strategy game where an upkeep mechanism is included and about half of the troops cost upkeep and the other half doesn't .



so finally again i think just the different treatment of upkeep is the point .
as it is dominions is very entertaining and fun but unfortunately not well balanced .

with this change though i am sure it would become well balanced .


perhaps this is a reason why so many noobs are deterred from dominions .
it is so complex but a few things , mainly the routing system without army as panther said in the beginning and what was the topic of the thread before AND the upkeep are both just :
non-intuitive and they ruin the balance .


you say that nations are balanced within each other this is quite true but :
if you take for 2 nations a pretender like a oracle and the same scales .

most nations would be then :
they win easy against 3-4 nations , lose easy against 3-4 nations and are about equal to the rest .
this is a sign of good balance i admit .


but now take e.g. atlantis :
they will win against no other nation in this test i am SURE as long as they are not very lucky with their found sites .


i put this effort into this because i love dominions but i think the upkeep issue has to be fixed to result in a fairer and more balanced dominions .

the reason why some nations/themes are so unpopular ( atlantis , tien chi base + barb kings , golden arge arco , new age pan , iron faith ulm to mention a few ) are my above mentioned arguments .
if they have equal conditions and take all the same pretender they will rarely win because their troops + mages are not good alone .


you surely can take paths on your pretender but your enemy can take another nation and doesn't need that much because he can do more with his troops / mages .
so he has better scales and again an advantage against you .

[Boron]

Arryn said:

Agreed.

Because a very vocal minority of players, whose names we're quite familiar with, want to turn Dominions into just another in that vast sea of mediocre games.

Furthermore, Johan has already categorically stated IW's official view on the subject, yet this same vocal (dense/oblivious) minority continue to beat their drum hoping to either deafen or tire the rest of us into submission to their whims. Newsflash: won't happen.

arryn how can exactly you say this ?
you play mainly sp and you like jotunheim which is one of the few nations which has half useful national troops .


i remember that norfleet always wanted to invite you to mp-games and he seemed to never succeed .
so unless you played now many mp-games of dominions 2 since the about 3 weeks since norfleet is gone for you such statings are sorry to say that almost unqualified .

in sp you can win by almost everything so there the balance issue doesn't become obvious .

edit : furthermore i think it was you who always said dominions 2 is a worthy successor to master of magic .
since in master of magic you had upkeep for your summons so why do you like this in dominions then that there is no upkeep ?

[Arryn]

The odds of the 76mm M1A1 gun to penetrate Tiger II frontal armor at even point-blank range (far shorter than 500m) was virtually nil. True, the gun could kill at side or rear aspects, but you first had to survive to get such a shot, and that was problematic at best, given the lethality and range of the Tiger's gun. The Tiger II's main weakness (besides an appalling lack of mobility) is that you never found them in sufficient numbers that they couldn't (eventually and at great cost) be surrounded and thus expose their less-defendable aspects. The Germans, being no fools on the battlefield, understood this and tended to compensate by turning their tanks into semi-mobile pillboxes, forcing the allies to attack from the front. The allies typically responded by just pounding them flat from the air. The best way to get rid of any tank.

The M26 and M36 arrived too late in the war to be significant in any battles, same as for the soviet 'stalin' tanks (the design forerunner to all modern russian tanks).

The $ figures you cite for the German and Soviet war economy are meaningless, and ludicrous. They fail to account for real national production. Worse yet, the soviets were notorious for "cooking the books" to hide the true cost of their military. Also, the Germans extensively used slave labor, which lowered their costs significantly. A much better way to gauge economic strength is to measure the quantities of raw materials consumed into the production of armaments, or to simply measure the output (not in units, but in tons). The Germans did not even remotely match Soviet military production of small arms, artillery, and tanks. To claim that by the Germans spending as much as the Soviets (a dubious claim by itself) they had similar industrial capacities is absurd.

American submachineguns were markedly inferior to their German counterparts. So much so that GIs made a habit of picking up and using captured German weapons, despite having ample supplies of their own arms. The US bazooka was also distinctly inferior to the panzerfaust and panzerschrek. The only thing the bazooka was better than was the even crappier british PIAT. Of course, for the GI, a bazooka was better than having no bazooka at all, and trying to face a tank.

The Sherman (75mm models) were by no means superior to the Mark IV F-J models (and not even remorely close to the Panther), combatwise. The german tank had a far better gun and a lower profile, making it harder to hit. The Sherman's claim to fame (besides sheer numbers of them) was it's mechanical reliability compared to the german tanks, and it's superior mobility. Countering this was the Sherman's noted tendency to explode when hit, and the ease of hitting it.

The M26/M36 could defeat all German tanks, but that's meaningless because the same could be said about any German tank mounting a long 75mm or any 88mm gun versus any American tank. What mattered was how many tanks were available. It's that which heavily disfavored the Germans. Losing through being overwhelmed by sheer numbers. OTOH, the numerical superiority of the allies would not have mattered as much had just one of two things been different: had they not had total air supremacy, or had Hitler not been running the war. (In Dominions terms, it doesn't matter how good your units are if the player wielding them is a fool/idiot/moron.)

Can we please stop discussing WW2? It's irrelevent to Dominions, as Johan has already pointed out.

[Arryn]

Boron said:
you play mainly sp and you like jotunheim which is one of the few nations which has half useful national troops .

There you go again assuming things. First, while I do like Jotuns, I also play Ulm and R'leyh quite often. And Marignon. I've also played quite a bit in MP. Perhaps even more than you have, given the sort of nonsense I keep seeing you spout regarding balance issues. I think it was Zen who pointed out to you a while ago that you should theorize less and actually play the game more. Perhaps if you did you'd have a better appreciation of things as they really are, and of the ramifications of some of the half-baked ideas that are being floated.

Boron said:
i remember that norfleet always wanted to invite you to mp-games and he seemed to never succeed .

And that proves what? Did it ever occur to you that I might not have wanted to play in games against him, for any one of several different reasons? And that perhaps I was being polite in turning him down? Or that I might (and do) join games under other aliases? (However, unlike Norfleet, I don't do so with the intent to pump people for secrets. I simply prefer people I play against to not know who it is they are facing.)

Boron said:
so unless you played now many mp-games of dominions 2 since the about 3 weeks since norfleet is gone for you such statings are sorry to say that almost unqualified .

Gee, an unsolicited personal attack. Thank you.

The idea that you are an expert in judging the qualifications of anyone else is not only insulting, but it's laughable. I also do not suppose that it ever occured to you that there are many players of Dominions that have been very active in playing the game, yet never (or rarely) post on the forum? Would you call these players "unqualified" as well, simply because you're totally ignorant of them?

Cainehill may have been wrong to actually flame you, but I cannot fault his reasons why he wanted to. It's taking a major effort of willpower for me to not do so as well.

What's amusing to me is despite my having been accused on various occasions of arrogance, in the various flamefests that GD (and others) have had with me, neither they nor I have ever accused the other of "being unqualified". The sheer arrogance you have just shown is astounding.

Boron said:
edit : furthermore i think it was you who always said dominions 2 is a worthy successor to master of magic .

Wrong. Wasn't me. As a matter of fact, I got chewed on for having compared the two games, because they are quite different in some respects. Also, I think that Dom 2 is by far better than MoM ever was, and I've been semi-flamed for that opinion.

[Boron]

arryn : try steel panthers world at war .
they have every model included and used the REAL penetration values and armors of all tanks of ww 2 .

btw the "panzerschreck" and the "panzerfaust" were built AFTER the bazooka from the germans .
they developed them after captured bazookas from africa !

same with the panther . it was intended as a copy of the t34 tank .


the germans were good at target optics e.g.
and their cannons were a bit better than the american and soviet ones .
but not the british 17 pounder gun .
both the panther gun and the 17 pounder gun were 75mm / 76,2 mm so the same caliber .

until the firefly and the quite unsuccessful challenger the brits just couldn't build their 17 pounder gun into a tank .




ok lets stopp ww 2 discussion .
i just took it as a real life history example that in world war 2 every single soldier did his part for victory .

if you say that was world war 2 .
now in iraq some iraquis/terrorists who have old russian anti tank weapons etc. still defeat abrahams main battle tanks with special guerillia tactics .


in dominions 2 this would be the militia / light inf .
but in dominions 2 you can't make them a decent weapon in endgame no matter how hard you try .


the problem is just that a FOOL doesn't win against a experienced player in dominions .
but so he doesn't in CHESS OR STARCRAFT TOO .


in chess or starcraft though all units are useful during the whole game for something .
in dominions e.g. militia is always useless , most national troops are quick useless and lategame it is only who can field higher amounts of scs / battlemages .




heck dominions is great but i am more and more convinced that i have a point with my upkeep demanding .
hopefully johan or kristoffer will realize this and at least consider it for dominions 3

[Gandalf Parker]

Not to kill an OT thread (really, its not a problem, there are so few) but if you REALLY want to discuss this there are some other game here at Shrapnel which make extensive use of tanks. The developers and players in those Groups have extensive researching/opinion backgrounds in that area. If you do a "search" in all forums for some of the units you feel familiar with you will get an idea of what forums will flock to the topic.

Just a thought. If not then please carry on.