Problems in demo exist in regular game?

[Endoperez]

I agree that it would be nice addition. I'm just trying to explain why I think it's not necessary.

The main thing that varies is Protection. If they have shields, high shield Parry value helps.

Unshielded Ulmish infantry has protection of 17. Unshielded Marignonese infantry has protection 14. Crossbows cause 10 (armor-piercing) damage, so they deal about 1.5 [20 - 17/2] points of damage against Ulmish and about 3 [20 - 14/2] points of damage against Marignonese infantries. Flaming arrows adds another armor-piercing attack with 8 damage. Thanks to the random rolls, the damage varies quite a lot; just stacking enough armor-piercing attacks against heavy infantry will ensure that damage gets through and afflictions happen even if the armor is a bit better (prot 20 of Black Plate infantry of Ulm) or if a Shield gives a chance of parry.

Satyr Hoplites have protection 16 and Shield, Arcoscephale hoplites have protection 17 and Shield, Machaka Hoplites have protection 16 and Great Hide Shield, Agarthan Heavy Infantry has protection 17 and Kite Shield, Ulm has access to troops with protection 17 and protection 20, both varieties with and without tower shields, Pale Ones Soldiers of Agartha have protection 13, 18 hp and Buckler.

Normal crossbows work against all of these. Armor-piercing and -negating spells work against all of these. All have rather high encumberance.

[TruePurple]

Lets say your facing a "markatas" Is it a shooter, foot soldier of low or high grade defense/offense? How about a "peltest"? I know a markatas is a real low grade shooter and a peltest is a javelin thrower (bonus against riders?) But their names do not tell me this.

What would you build against a markatas or a peltest army if you didn't know what they were?

Do certain other weapons give bonus against riders? If you were facing a enemy that had such weapon but you didn't know they did, do you build riders or not?

Lets say you have a army of slingers (low grade shooters) or are considering building them since at 2 resource you can make alot quickly. But your facing a foe you don't know whether they have high def shield protection.. what ever.. where the slingers shots might be almost completely ignored... or low def where their large numbers can do alot of damage?

You could be facing "Marignonian infantry" or "Machaka's Hoplites" but if you don't know the difference...

Normal crossbows work against all of these.

So you don't need to know what kind of units your facing because crossbows can be used against everything? Or just maybe everything except riders & fast units which are always riders?

Lets say you want to try to seduce a commander with that 400 gold magic user whos name I forget. You want to equip her with something to defeat the commander if the seduction fails (and its never succeeded yet against commanders weak or strong, I'm starting to wonder if its broken)
and you have to have that one unit battle enemy commander and guards together. Is it a air mage with air rocks and good items that can cast lightning that you should build the item that makes a unit immune to lightning for her? A archer that you need a good shield even if that means more incumbrance?

Lets say your facing same commanders in a regular battle. Lightning can pass by troops and injure enemy commanders directly unless their properly equipped.

Lets say you have a army of wyvrm spawn which have foul vapor ability. Its nice to know if the enemy is protected against poison or weak against it. Or your facing a army of wyvrm spawns. Or if you have or are facing those units that give off heat verses something cold themed or fire protected.(or you need to know to make item to make commanders fire or poison immune)

I still see it as a must to be able to see unit stats. What you said has convinced me of this more. It would also be nice to be able to scout out enemy commanders and see their stats & equipment.

[TruePurple]

Between turns it sometimes gives game play tips, but this usually passes by too fast to read. Is there a way to read these without taking up speed reading and staring hard at the screen between turns?

[Agrajag]

TruePurple said:
Theres definitely no downside at least other then programming time. Since theres already a unit stat screen its a matter of making a new access point system for it. It doesn't sound that hard to program.

Then I'm guessing you don't have that much experience in programming
(It might be easy to program, but it just might be really really hard)

[TruePurple]

What does higher dominion in your land do for you? How does enemy dominion in your land hurt you?

Does dominion give you a chance to flip enemy lands? How much is required for what kind of chances? Does preaching in a area ever increase the dominion around that land?

[RonD]

Dominion is pretty complicated, though the manual has a decent explanation. (by the way, I don't think anyone has yet pointed out to you that the game comes with a 292 page manual. It does not include stats for the basic national troops, but it does include full stats for every kind of maigically summoned troop - which is far more important).

The short answer is that all troops gain morale in + dominion and lose morale in enemy dominion. Your pretender and prophet gain/lose hitpoints based on dominion. A few pretenders and troops are immortal - but only if they are killed in friendly dominion.

Dominion is spread to surrounding provinces by temples, your prophet, and your pretender. Preaching can raise dominion, but only in that province.

There is an indirect chance to 'flip' - high enemy dominion increases unrest, high unrest can possibly lead to a revolt, which would flip the province to independent - but don't expect to ever see it happen in a game.

A province of yours under enemy dominion will suffer from any negative scale effects, but will not benefit from any positive scale effects.

Like I said - that's the short answer

[Endoperez]

TruePurple said:
Lets say your facing a "markatas" Is it a shooter, foot soldier of low or high grade defense/offense? How about a "peltest"? I know a markatas is a real low grade shooter and a peltest is a javelin thrower (bonus against riders?) But their names do not tell me this.

What would you build against a markatas or a peltest army if you didn't know what they were?

Do certain other weapons give bonus against riders? If you were facing a enemy that had such weapon but you didn't know they did, do you build riders or not?

Lets say you have a army of slingers (low grade shooters) or are considering building them since at 2 resource you can make alot quickly. But your facing a foe you don't know whether they have high def shield protection.. what ever.. where the slingers shots might be almost completely ignored... or low def where their large numbers can do alot of damage?

You could be facing "Marignonian infantry" or "Machaka's Hoplites" but if you don't know the difference...

Markata and Peltasts are cheap, weak units. Slingers are handled just like arrows, mechanically; Shields help against them (Parry), but high defense doesn't. Javelins don't have bonus against cavalry.

I still see it as a must to be able to see unit stats. What you said has convinced me of this more. It would also be nice to be able to scout out enemy commanders and see their stats & equipment.

It seems I'm not good at arguing for my point, so I'll just drop it. IMO, the one thing that you should know is an approximation about how much protection the enemy troops have, and that alone is enough in most cases.

There are few problems with letting scouts see the amount of enemy commanders, and especially the details of enemy mages. Knowing the numbers and types of the commanders would already be quite powerful, because then you would know how much magic you should expect the opposition to have. Knowing the gems and items of the mages would let you guess at their strategies, as well as script for spells that work against them especially well. If you know what that Gorgon pretender is vulnerable to, your mages can easily kill her.

[TruePurple]

Of temples prophets and pretenders, which raise dominion in provinces they aren't in .. All of them?

Endoperez said:
Markata and Peltasts are cheap, weak units.

I know that, the point is that if one didn't know that.. or what kind of unit they were.. range.. melee.. etc Its helpful to know

Endoperez said:
Javelins don't have bonus against cavalry.

I also asked if there were any weapons at all that had bonus against riders? If there wasn't it would be skipping out a important aspect of medieval warfare as well as paper rock scissors game mechanics.

Endoperez said:
IMO, the one thing that you should know is an approximation about how much protection the enemy troops have,

Don't want to memorize that either.

Markato for example only do 2 damage range. It doesn't take much protection to reduce that to zero. Though I don't know that its such a linear subtraction (2 damage verses 2 protection=zero damage?)but still probably pretty important to know if your enemy has high protection with them.

Parry subtracts from a units missile accuracy right? Markata & slingers have only 6 & 8 precision. So you'll want to know about that too. Gave a few other examples where unit stats would be real helpful to be able to know.

[Endoperez]

Manual lists the formula for if a missile strikes a target or not. Precision affects where the missile lands, but this formula is used to see whether or not it hits a unit in the square, and precision doesn't affect it.


Temples, prophet and pretender all increase dominion outside their province. Priests preaching increase dominion only in the province they are in.

Protection is reduced from damage, but a random number is added to both sides. Because the "dice-roll" is open-ended, there's always a chance of dealing some damage. It's often very small chance, but it exists any way.

I don't think there are any weapons with a bonus against any types of units (infantry, archer, cavalry). However, cavalry are fewer in numbers (because they cost more than infantry), and thus the enemy can usually swarm them. Every attack against a unit lowers it's defence by 2, so if it's a three-on-one the third attacker get to attack against defence reduced by 4. This has already eliminated the +3 defence bonus cavalry gets.

Some weapons are better against cavalry than others, even if they don't have a bonus:
Battleaxes have base damage of 9, and with str 10 they can deal damage through even the heaviest of armors. Against the best armors it might be just a point of damage here and there, though, and shields are enough to block them. Halberds, mauls, glaives etc have similar uses.
Flails have damage rating of just 3, but they have two attacks and ignore shields. Flailmen won't deal lots of damage but because their attacks can't be parried, they effectively reduce the knight's defense by at least 4 points, often more, before you count in the malus from multiple attacks. Flails are very good against light to medium cavalry, but won't deal damage to heavy cavalry.
Morningstars have better damage (6) but only one attack/round, which makes them better against heavy cavalry but worse against units that have high defense even without shield (medium cavalry like Royal Guards of Marignon).
Pikes have base damage of 5, so they aren't that good at piercing heavy armor. Most cavalry units have rather high morale, so repel doesn't keep them from attacking, but as long as the pikeman can hit the knight he deals 1 point of repel damage. IIRC, shield parry doesn't affect repel, so it's usually attack 10+1(pike) against defense of 9 to 11 defense (heavy cavalry) or 11-13 (light/medium cavalry). Pikes can also parry lances and light lances.

[TruePurple]

Not a specific reason not to buy but..

Sucks that you can't simply save when you want. I know, that nethack mentality of the challenge.. and thats great and all... But if you simply want to explore game mechanics or made a stupid mistake last turn with the countless settings.(like forgeting to renew bid on mercenaries) and want to reset to a earlier turn.. One should be able to.

If its a matter of comparing scores or something.. simply have a ironman setting players can set that shows in scores.