Rating PD

[HoneyBadger]

I don't know if everyone has noticed this or not, but I thought I'd point it out anyway. Concerning PD: One type of PD is applied to ALL eras of atleast some nations. Example: Abyssia even in Early Age gets humanbred PD. That doesn't make too much sense to me, since humanbreds supposedly haven't even been *bred* at this point.

At bare minimum, I'd like to see every appropriate nation recieving a tailored-to-age PD. Even in a mod. I think that's only reasonable if we don't get anything better.

I'd also like to see nations have some "PD only" troop-types. I'm thinking something along the lines of Highland Scots and National Guardsmen-they're only coming out and fighting if the nation itself is invaded. You can't recruit them (but maybe you could set them up as a "standing guard" which gives me another idea...)

Maybe nations have the standard PD they do now, but in provinces you can set up units as a "standing guard" (or National Guard if you prefer). The way this would work is: you could "purchase" national summons in your capital-province only as "standing guards" for an appropriately high price in gold and resources, as well as gems. They serve and act *only* as PD, otherwise. In any castle, you can purchase capital-only national troops as PD-only standing guards. In any province *without* a castle, you can purchase regular national troops as standing guards. This would sortof represent equipping the local militia, adding experienced officers, magical defenses and guardian-creatures. In addition, PD-only troops would then be available as National Guards, atleast to specific nations.

Standing guards/National Guards would cost atleast some upkeep, but not as much as regular army.

[Gandalf Parker]

An interesting thing about this idea is that it gets around a thematic problem. PD should be made from local units, not national ones. But the problem was that the way PD is done, you have to develop huge arrays of what shows up for each level of PD. As it is now, thats done for each nation. To do it for each type of population would also be huge. But if PD was shifted to a queue as if you were purchasing new units then it would make PD more thematic. (It might also allow a new map command for setting the defence level of a province that is held by independents and Im always eager for more map commands).

It would involve dupicating the queue for a PD one, and maybe duplicating the formation/scripting screen (Im considering that optional). That might add to the games size but probably not cpu needs. Im not sure if it would involve 1500 arrays (max number of provinces). And Im not sure how much this system would involve processing thru all 1500 provinces each turn which extends hosting time.

[Gandalf Parker]

PD only troop types is also a good thought. The type of units and the equipment that would be provided if that nation (and that era) were to recruit locally. Kindof roman-like. Local people but with roman equipment.

[Xietor]

Maybe the more you spend, at a certain point, means the troops are better trained. Better trained means higher morale,
better attack and defense.

So maybe with pd 20, giants suck, but at pd 40, the militia are "well trained" and their attack defense and morale are raised by 2.

My original point, was that you only got improved pd if you spent points on it at set up. If your pretender did not buy improved pd, you are stuck with what you have now.

[HoneyBadger]

The major hindrance I see to better and better PD (atleast at this point) is the way graphics are made-and that's something that may be nigh-impossible to get around. The ideal way to have the kind of PD I think we're talking about would be to draw units as separate from items(weapons and armor), and then item-types themselves, separate from size and quality. So, you could have Ermor invading a Hoburg province and equipping the little buggers with hoburg-sized iron cesti, etc. without having to draw 12 different types of hoburg/ermor units and then having to convince Johan K to raise the limit of units allowed in the game to 10 million which, admittedly, is where I'd like it to be

[BigJMoney]

I will say something I said a while back about a feature that would improve Dominions 4, and that is a "default AI" feature. In other words, the player can alter the default AI scripts for each unit in the game.

If there were something similar for PD, it would just be plain awesome.

Even if this were something that has to be edited from outside the game, I'm sure an enterprising modder could create software that a player could run alongside Dominions to set up his unit script defaults to his liking.

=$= Big J Money =$=

[Sombre]

Well with a little modding you can sort out the strange happenings amongst the vanilla nations PD settings, maybe make PD vary more in effectiveness, give the 'weaker' nations a bit more of it. It also wouldn't be hard to make some new units to be used as PD only ones.

Honeybadger, I'm sure making a mod along these lines wouldn't be beyond you. You can fix the Abysian PD, maybe make the giant PD a bit less sucky etc.

[HoneyBadger]

Yep, I'll just add it to the 12 or so nation-mods I'm making now. Should have it out to you by, say, the year 3005

[llamabeast]

I think that Niefelheim PD being sucky is great, it gives an otherwise extremely strong nation a nice weak point. It seems thematic, too - you might not be able to beat the giants head-on (their armies will stomp you), but you can at least run around their backs and cause havoc.

[HoneyBadger]

I don't so much mind Niefel having a weak PD as I do the inability to strong it up with a lot of investment. That's the rub for me-I don't expect the "average" Jotun to be able to count to two using both hands, but they've got some *really* clever bastards at the top-they were able to trick the Aesir on many occasions, and Odhinn (Wotan or however we're spelling his name this year) went to them for wisdom. They even intermarry *with* the Aesir on a regular basis.

They've traditionally got access to a lot of deep powers (like shapeshifting and illusion) and strong allies (like dragons, trolls, dwarves, mountain, fire, and sea giants, Hel, and Loki and his kids).

So yes, I can see the bottom-rung Jotuns being as weak as they are, but the top end should be appropriately gigantic.