Rating PD

[olaf73]

Its been said before but, Jotunheim has horrible PD. The worst IMO. Why was this done?

They used to have awesome PD in Dom2.

[Foodstamp]

Gandalf Parker said:
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.

If you were wanting to do the PD according to the local pop type, instead of doing 1500 arrays for a 1500 province map, you could do one array with 1500 entries, or an even more efficient way would be to do an array containing each pop type.

Have the game access the array according to the poptype. The parameters would be stored in the array according to the poptype, then sent to a method/function that would process the PD according to the parameters stored in the array and the amount of PD the player/AI has bought. I think this method would be very light on extra processing and achieve the effect of having truly local passive defense.

[MaxWilson]

Hmmm. I'll probably mod Niefelheim's PD in my SP games, then. I suppose fewer-but-slightly-better troops would be fair, say 1/3 Jotun Spearman per point, 1/3 Jotun Javelinist at 20+. That still sounds weak to me but I think the morale would at least be better.

-Max

[mivayan]

olaf73 said:
Its been said before but, Jotunheim has horrible PD. The worst IMO. Why was this done?

They used to have awesome PD in Dom2.

dom2, 25 pd: 1x Jotun Jarl, 1x Jotun Herse, 25x militia, 3x Jotun hurler (boulders).
Dom3, 25 pd: 1x Jotun Jarl, 1x Jotun Herse, 12x militia, 3x javelinist.

It's been almost halved, which I dont think would be *that* noticable... has everyone else gained better PD?

[Gandalf Parker]

Thats too bad. To me, Jotuns balancing purpose was that they were excellent for the player who played defensively.

[MaxWilson]

mivayan said:
It's been almost halved, which I dont think would be *that* noticable... has everyone else gained better PD?

Could it be the changes to the morale system? Jotun PD usually routs instead of dying. Has it always been like that?

-Max

[mivayan]

MaxWilson said:
Has it always been like that?

Yup.

- Jotun's PD sucks, they always run away!!
- That's because by the time they run away, most other pd would be DEAD.

[Meglobob]

Gandalf Parker said:
Thats too bad. To me, Jotuns balancing purpose was that they were excellent for the player who played defensively.

This has changed in Dom3, the giant nations are major offensive nations, Niefelheim sacreds with a E9N8 bless are awesome and incredibly hard to stop. Add to this the huge number of thugs and SC's all the giant nations can churn out.

The giants PD is very weak but put 1 or 2 Jotun Herse or Jotun Jarl tooled up thugs in your critical provinces and its no problem.

[Digress]

Gandalf Parker said:
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.

You could add dominion effects to that process to further compicate things (and I am not suggesting complicated isn't good). As dominion grows in strength the equipment of the PD would slowly shift to more closely resemble that of the nation controlling the province.

Arms and armour would change slowly over time as the locals try to copy their new lords equipment - sometimes this effect might be desirable and other times less so.

This would require alot of new PD units for each poptype so wouldn't score high in the practical stakes but would be thematic.

[normalphil]

Gandalf Parker said:
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.

You know, that's what I thought the existing system was. Which is to say, who amoung us ever built an Alae Legionaire? All mine show up as province defense points. And there's a /lot/ of them.

To the best I can see this is how it is for most nations, there's units that while they fit in simply aren't optimal to build. They exist mainly because they're the kind of units that belong on a provincal defense force, and you've just got the option to recruit them overtly if you want to. Not that you would.