Poll: morale and routing

[Boron]

Graeme Dice said:

You can't build anywhere near enough of them to make up any significant part of your army.

uhm : normally 1 city gave you about 60-70 gold and between 30-50 mana ( depending on nation ) and about 20 research points .
since once you have researched all spells research points were converted in mana too it was normally the following :
while researching gold to mana ratio was 2:1 .
at the end it was about 1,5 : 1 .

normally i had about 60% of my army composed of national troops and 40% of summons lategame .
if they would have fought each other they would have given a very close fight .


[quote]
Graeme Dice said:

Boron said:

They can kill one or two units at most, like I said. They have very little real effect on the battlefield. Fireball for example, would have to have about a fifth to a tenth of the cost to be really worthwhile.

you have missed the main point of spells in aow :
e.g. a chain lightning normally always hitted 5 enemies .
the purpose was not to kill the enemy totally but to weaken it that much that you can kill it with the first blow .
thanks to the good dice roll system in aow 2 too if e.g. a karrag ( goblin lvl 4 unit ) fought against a dredd reaper ( the undead lvl 4 unit ) in about 50% of the cases the karrag won and in 50% the dredd reaper .
if you used battle tactics / spells better than your enemy you changed the odds to 90% vs 10% for you .



[quote]
Graeme Dice said:

Boron said:

I've played AOW2 enough to know what the major problems with its design are. Unless the game rules have been completely overhauled from the ground up in Shadow Magic, the basic problems are still going to remain.

you played only aow 2 ?
with what patch ?
in aow 2 shadow magic with the latest patch the game was really overhauled .
most strong attacks like a fire breath of a dragon were reduced to 3/battle , same with the making immobile attacks like entangle from druid , grasp from rock bird , web from spiders etc. etc.

spells were fine tuned etc.

[Thufir]

deccan said:

I second that. Cainehill's remarks were totally uncalled for.

I third that. This forum is the worse for such immaturity.

On the subject at hand, I think Esben has made a number of excellent (if provocative) suggestions in this thread. The two that I like the most I think are impractical to implement in Dom2, but well worth consideration in Dom3. Those being:

1) Increase the penalty for being surrounded.
2) Add maintenance cost for summons. I'd also like to see a maintenance cost for Ritual spells with continuing affects.


Both of these changes would make for an underlying mechanic that "feels" more realistic. I believe that while both really require a ground up rewrite for balance to be achieved (especially #2), I think that both of these changes would provide a basis that is cleaner, and if anything easier to balance. While Johan's comments are undoubtedly correct if this change is made to the current system, there's no reason why magic maintenance cost can't be incorporated without unduly favoring SCs or items, if this is considered from the ground up.

So, that said, I don't think either of these changes are a good idea for Dom2. Dom2 as it stands is a wonderful game. Otherwise we wouldn't all be spending such time and energy in this forum. And, to me, the best thing about Dom2 is it's extraordinary richness and complexity, measured against the fact that despite all that complexity, it is still a very well balanced game. Maintaining balance in a game as complex as Dom2 is no easy feat, and it goes to the credit of the designers/devs for Dom2 and no doubt to the Dominions community as well. These changes are dramatic, and I think will be problematic to accomodate, in terms of game balance.

[Boron]

well cainehill since you started name calling me again as you did cohen before once you need to use such things and can't keep it rational you proof with this that you have run out of arguments and it lets luck you just bad .



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 ?

since you state you know so many games caine :

a nearly perfect balanced game is starcraft broodwar :

there the troops with the lowest tech levels can beat some high tech troops .
to win you have to mix your troops but all troops have a role in the whole game .

example : a terran marine is tech wise the cheapest troop , it is your first one .
a proton scout who is very lategame tech wise and has huge costs is easily defeated by marines for the same cost .

the protoss base unit , the berserker wins against 2 marines , the same costs .
terra can advance then to flamethrower infantry .
they win against berserkers .
they lose against the next toss unit , the dragoon .

the dragoon though loses against marines again .


if you combine marines with medics they are rather horrible . then you need e.g. reavers to properly beat them .

reavers beat everything on ground expect good managed terran siege tanks .

both of this units have no anti air capazities .

so against a few fliers they lose .


most fliers again lose against Medics + Marines .

the medics + marines lose though against a reaver .




so it is well balanced and depending what your opponent uses you need to build a counter but normally your cheapest troops techwise : marines , berserks and zerglings are useful in the whole game .


in dominions this is simply not the case .


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 .

[deccan]

Boron said:
the protoss base unit , the berserker wins against 2 marines , the same costs .

Actually it was a Protoss Zealot. But yeah, SC is great game. I wish Blizzard had seen it fit to make an SC 2 instead of a WC 3.

Boron said:
so it is well balanced and depending what your opponent uses you need to build a counter but normally your cheapest troops techwise : marines , berserks and zerglings are useful in the whole game .

Yeah, that's my personal preference as well, emphasis on personal. One of the interesting card-design policies that Wizards of the Coast devised (but didn't really put into practice consistently) for Magic: The Gathering was that cards should be balanced, so that rare cards should not be more powerful per resource (mana, card in hand whatever) than common cards, but instead should be more complex. That is, rare cards should have wide-ranging, game-changing effects that are really powerful but limited in application to very specific niches (combos, specific strategies used by an opponent, vulnerable to a prepared opponent etc). Common cards however should be versatile and good just about any time.

But of course, that's something that's easy to idealize after, but very hard (impossible?) to put into practice.

[Kel]

Graeme Dice said:
I think you need to play more games and spend less time theorizing. You might also want to avoid playing games on huge maps, and not put magic site frequency above 50%.

AMEN !

- Kel

[Arryn]

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.

[Graeme Dice]

Boron said:
normally i had about 60% of my army composed of national troops and 40% of summons lategame .
if they would have fought each other they would have given a very close fight .

And you'd probably have a more effective army if you ignored those summoned units and instead boosted your level 3 and 4 units with various magic spells.

Boron said:
you have missed the main point of spells in aow :
e.g. a chain lightning normally always hitted 5 enemies .
the purpose was not to kill the enemy totally but to weaken it that much that you can kill it with the first blow .

Which is, like I said, the problem with the battlefield spells in that game. They can't actually be used to kill troops, which renders spellcasting heroes rather useless.

Boron said:
you played only aow 2 ?
with what patch ?

That wouldn't matter much, since the basic issues are ones dealing with the economic nature of the game. Take level 1 units for example, where the upkeep costs are ridiculously high.

[Graeme Dice]

Thufir said:
I third that. This forum is the worse for such immaturity.

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

1) Increase the penalty for being surrounded.

The penalty for being surrounded by size 2 units is currently a minimum of 18 defense points by the end of each turn. That's not small.

2) Add maintenance cost for summons. I'd also like to see a maintenance cost for Ritual spells with continuing affects.

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.

[Graeme Dice]

Boron said:
a nearly perfect balanced game is starcraft broodwar :

Why should we be dumbing down this game to make it more like Starcraft, where your options are artificially limited?

in dominions this is simply not the case .

Like I've said before. You need to spend more time playing the game, and less time making up theories about how it works.

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

An argument from realism has no place in determining what would make a game more fun.

[Gandalf Parker]

Thufir said:

I third that. This forum is the worse for such immaturity.

I am glad to see the community seek to police itself. Especially anyone who will take offense at the alternative.

So let me again point out that flames force us to examine a post for any real content. Allowing such flames to get out of hand endangers useful threads with the possibility of editing, locking, or disappearing. One person regularly coming to mind for such actions endangers their login.