Wishlist: Multi-Tier PD.

[Loren]

I definitely like it. Some more thoughts:

If there is a temple in the province you should get a priest for every units of PD, assuming there is some sort of priest that you can recruit there.

Likewise, a lab produces mages.

Without the buildings you get neither priests nor mages unless your standard commander (say Himmon) is one.

I'm not too happy with the notion of the elite units at higher PD levels. Instead, how about two PD scales, normal and elite. Obviously, elite PD costs more to buy.

I'm not at all sure there should be any cap on how high PD can go. Super high PD can always be bypassed or taken out with battlefield nukes. (Guy A buys 500 points of PD. B sends in a communion that gets off a few master enslaves. Who got the better deal??)

PD should always consist only of troops that could be recruited there with the exception of LA Ermor's capital, they should get undead. Thus you get only indie PD unless you have a fort there--but on the flip side I think you should be able to get it underwater.

I'm also inclined to think that PD should slowly grow over time, say 1 point per season in any province with 10? 20? or above and a friendly dominion. It would shrink at the same rate in a hostile dominion.

[HoneyBadger]

PD does work fine the way it is, I totally agree with that-it's a great idea, one that inspires me to argue that it could be even greater-If it sucked, we'd have a lot more threads about it. I'm just saying that it could be somewhat cooler

If nothing else, I'm just hoping that the Devs will allow it to be modded more dynamically, sometime in the future.

I don't know that there needs to be an arbitrary limit on it, either, except that I'm guessing at some point it would start to drain processor speed. Even if your 5000 PD just consisted of 50 Jotun Jarls armed with artifacts, the computer still has to keep track of all those stages and transformations. 2 stages, in my opinion, are a little low, but more than 6 or 7 would be a bit much, even for me. I'm only saying that it makes sense to allow fortresses to give you a bigger upper limit on it. It doesn't add to micromanagement or take away from balance that way, since you'd still have to pay for it (and even reaching PD 125 is quite expensive, let alone PD 150.).

And having unlimited PD scales not only means more processing, but more micromanagement, and a more crowded screen. PD shouldn't be precise, you should still need to recruit units and support it-and understand what you have, and conform your tactics to it-to really make it shine. It should never do the work for you, if you want to get the most out of it.

And national PD units should never be elite, they should just get better, in a limited way, over time. Having elite units added to your PD-the Draconian example for instance-would be a rare and special bonus. It should happen occasionally (in my opinion), but it shouldn't be something your enemy will always expect.

For one thing, this is another way that those units we never recruit could show up in the game. You wouldn't spend money on them, but integrate them into your PD, and suddenly they're nice to have when you need them.

As far as a self-growing/shrinking PD, that would be nice, but it would also be difficult for the player to manage, and a headache to program-and for that matter, again probably a big drain on processor speed.

I'm not in favor of turning PD into some all-consuming beast, just that it have some of the variation and surprises that other aspects of the game currently have, and that it be complexly modifiable.

[Loren]

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

And having unlimited PD scales not only means more processing, but more micromanagement, and a more crowded screen. PD shouldn't be precise, you should still need to recruit units and support it-and understand what you have, and conform your tactics to it-to really make it shine. It should never do the work for you, if you want to get the most out of it.

Other than extreme chokepoints I can't see any reason for really high PD to be used. Allowing it wouldn't mean it would show up in most cases and wouldn't be a CPU drag. Remember that it doesn't need to actually be calculated except when there is a battle.

As far as a self-growing/shrinking PD, that would be nice, but it would also be difficult for the player to manage, and a headache to program-and for that matter, again probably a big drain on processor speed.

CPU time = infinitesimal.

The following code runs (not that it's truly executable as is) once per turn calculation. If the first test fails it's not going to use even a microsecond. If it passes I doubt this is a millisecond.

It is quite possible that the dominion isn't stored this way and that test becomes slightly more complex but it's still hard to reach even a millisecond.

If (Month Mod 3) = 1 then
For Province in Provinces do
With Data[Province] do
If (PD > 10) then
Case Dominion of
1..MaxInt : Inc(Pd);
-1..-MaxInt : Dec(Pd);
End;

[HoneyBadger]

It's possible that it would work as you say, and not make turns noticeably longer (although turns do take quite a bit of time for the computer to process, and I've been using reasonably fast computers in the past), but I still don't quite see the point of it fluctuating.

Even if it were based on Dominion levels, you're still talking about military assignment (midieval though it may be). I'd personally get frustrated pretty fast by a PD that was noticeably weaker than I expected, after investing quite a bit of gold in them. Battle itself is chaotic enough-why have stationing of guards be yet another variable factor?

As far as the "viability of extremely high PD" argument, it really doesn't matter, because it's possible to have extremely high PD in the game, already. The difference between 125 and 150 is pretty minimal (25 more infantry by late game? Compared to what you could have done with the gold you spent on them?), unless a lot of the other suggestions I've made were also added.

[Wrana]

Good idea!
Personally, I would restrict it to province population determining early PD and castle effect, though. It would also be easier to implement...

[Edratman]

I tiered the PD in the Gem Valley mod. There are only two levels, which is the allowable limit, so there is probably a little too much of a jump from 19PD to 20PD, but it is an example of tiered PD.

[Adept]

I like keeping it simple. This would make things more fiddly.

[HoneyBadger]

It doesn't really make things much more complicated on the player's end, though. Most people that I've heard from don't invest a great deal in PD anyway, and if they do, they usually end up regretting it. This would just ease that regret somewhat. It only becomes fiddly if you altered your strategies to take advantage of it, but there's no real reason to do so, unless you're already playing defensively.

PD would remain PD. It would still be simple and straightforward, just deeper and more intuitive.

[Coldshard]

Having pop-type troops seems pretty straightforward and interesting.

Getting a holy caster when there is a temple built in the province just makes sense. Getting a caster type and/or magical creature when there is a lab in the province also makes sense.

It would mean that the few small changes that can be made to a province actually matter for something.

Personally, I'd like to go a little further and be able to designate some basic commands for the province defense. I've played a few nations where the defense default configuration is so bad it nearly kills itself. Being able to set where each troop type will start (even if you cant form groups on command, just the defaults) would be a huge improvement in how useful the PD is without increasing the amount of power it should have based on the troops it is using.

I have literally seen a province defense do enough damage to itself to route itself before the enemies could do hardly any damage at all. That was incredibly pointless.



Several tiers of troops seems pretty easy, it should only be a slight modification to what is already in place.

A single screen to adjust starting positions of each unit type and their basic orders should be easy as well. It could be as simple as the normal battle interface and a button to click on like research. Move the bits around and that is how all of the PD work. Being able to give a 'hold and attack' order to fliers would be nice, 'fire enemy cavalry' to crossbowmen would be handy, and being able to guide the casters a little is practically a must. On the last point it gets kindof frustrating again to know that you shouldnt research above a certain level in a certain path because it will cause the PD caster to use a fairly worthless spell, sometimes all the way to unconsciousness.

Using pop-types would be a larger, and more complicated change. It probably isnt worth the programming time it would take to implement, but it is definitely interesting


I do like the thought of putting some extra options in with pretender creation. But then I also like the idea of doing something similar with castle building and troop features (such as: 100 pts - the rage within your pretender is felt by even the lowliest of his/her disciples, all of your sacred troops have berserk 2 and the rest have berserk 1 (this stacks with any berserk they already possess) ). But then that kindof stuff could also go under a whole new research category and be something of a 'national buff' with each nation being able to only have a certain number of them active but possibly being secret. Lots of potential there


I definitely like the idea though. Province defense can be kept pretty simple even with changes like this. Mostly it just increases a fairly important part of the game to much more interesting levels. For those who dont wish to bother with it they can still just put some points into it and ignore it without extra consequence.