Poll: morale and routing

[Arryn]

Esben Mose Hansen said:
Another, simple idea that would fix this problem: Make armies without troops rout always, without exception. Would make SC use so much more ... interesting. And summoned troops, single point of PD etc. would no longer be a liability, which I agree makes little sense.

An exception should be made, if IW were to do this, for lone pretenders. Gods should not be subject to the same rules as mortals.

[magnate]

Arryn said:

Apparently so. In the real world, having a spat risks *seeing* stars.

Hmm. Down to two stars this morning. What's going on?? I thought it was like the ranks, in that they accumulated over time or something, but obviously not. Is somebody rating my Posts somewhere?

Anyway, good morning Arryn - how are you today?

CC

[Esben Mose Hansen]

Arryn said:An exception should be made, if IW were to do this, for lone pretenders. Gods should not be subject to the same rules as mortals.

Why not? How can the god do battle without the support of his believers? Without belief the god is nothing Besides, making it so for everybody makes it more even, and SC (including Gods) will still be important... they just need to lug around an army of sufficient size, instead of being one-man-armies.

[Arryn]

Esben Mose Hansen said:
Why not? How can the god do battle without the support of his believers?

It worked well enough for Thor.

A SC pretender *is* a one-"man" army. He/she/it shouldn't require help from mere mortals to crush small numbers of those opposed to his/her/its aims. It's a truly weak deity that cannot strike down even a single mortal without the need for there to be some friendly witness to the event. Such a pathetic deity wouldn't deserve to continue to exist. How laughable would be "Fear me, for I am all-powerful ... um, wait, where's my adoring audience?"

You are using the Dominions game mechanic that a pretender must have dominion to continue to exist as a justification for battlefield behavior (namely routing). The two (need for dominion and a god's morale/routing behavior) do not, of necessity, need to be connected.

Last, but not least, exempting SC deities from rules changes that would affect lesser SCs would preserve the thematic aspects of mighty Titans, Wyrms, and Dragons able to lay waste to most opponents, as is seen in myth and legend. From a thematic standpoint, it's absurd that a demi-divine dragon couldn't face down some impudent human knight-wannabe and his entourage of swordsmen without help. "I'm sorry, I cannot roast all of you to cinders now because my lackey is missing. Come back later."

[The_Tauren13]

i agree with everything esben has said here. either of his suggestions sound good to me ( the less SC use, the more fun the game is for me. but thats just me )

[Boron]

Esben Mose Hansen said:
Another, simple idea that would fix this problem: Make armies without troops rout always, without exception. Would make SC use so much more ... interesting. And summoned troops, single point of PD etc. would no longer be a liability, which I agree makes little sense.

and what would you do with immortality ?

it would strengthen the vq again to what she was pre 2.12 .

and wraith lords + vampire lords would be even more liked scs too .
furthermore sg ermor with their summonable immortal wraith centurion etc. leaders would get an unfair edge too .


if you would remove the fight to death with immortality rule it would be bad too because this would be very strange and not logic .

immortality is though a bit too strong perhaps .
i think it is not possible but perhaps you could add the following mechanism :
each time an immortal leader dies he has to pay 10 blood slaves or he dies .
immortal units get counters .
when they accumulate 5 counters they are too weak to revive again .

[The Panther]

Or even better yet, each time an immortal dies, it loses say 20 random points of strength/attack/defense/MR/HP/etc, thus making it weaker and weaker each time it spawns after death. Vampires themselves should also be subject to this weakening effect. By the time your VQ has died 5 times or so, it would thus become permanenty weak and die even faster, just like the mortal pretender who has lost all its magic and is covered with afflictions from too many battles. As for the vampires, when they drop to 0 hit points in the next spawn, they would be permanantly dead.

I agree that immortality is too strong, especially given the self healing of afflictions.

And I must say that I REALLY like the Moses Hansen idea that any commander automatically routes with no troops. This would be a piece of cake for the devs to implement also, by just simply removing the artifical construct where a lone commander is treated diferently than commanders with troops.

But immortality would be the exception to this auto-rout rule, just as it is now. Though this might make immortality even MORE stronger, which would be a very bad side effect.

[Esben Mose Hansen]

I briefly considered the immortal problem. But since immortals CAN be fought effectively, since it is limited to positive dominions, I didn't find it too problematic. Also, the immortal looses all those items when they die, which also helps. If it is still a problem, make the immortal gain a few afflictions when they die. Yes, they will heal, but it takes time, and that is enough in my opinion --- If the SC have to sit around and wait for 5 or 10 turns before being usable again, plus having to pay 50+ gems in items, a price has been paid. If we're going to play REALLY tough immortals could use a magic path point or two, but I think this is going over the top. And more work to develop.

To Arryns comment I can only say: My idea is consistent with existing design, it makes sort of sense, and it will weaken those SC pretenders, so that we may actually see human pretenders again. I mean, when did you Last encounter one in MP? I have never seen one --- except in games where human pretenders were forced.

Plus, the idea is simple to implemented, right devs?

[Sheap]

This seems like it is turning into "I want immortality nerfed because it annoys me." If it were really that strong, everyone would play immortal pretenders, but in reality other than Abysia, Caelum and Ermor, it is rare.

Immortal pretenders pay, on average, roughly 70 points for the privilege. The fact that Abysia, Caelum and Ermor have more points to spend and can afford it is certainly not a coincidence. Immortal non-pretender units cost 50-100% more than comparable non-immortals. Not to mention that immortals that die still lose all their equipment (except for pretenders, this is often more valuable than the unit itself), can still get afflictions (whether they die or not), which don't heal right away, still lose the battle, and get sent back to the home province, which may or may not be conveniently located. And if you're not fighting in friendly dominion, immortality doesn't do anything except raise your price.

In reality, Esben's proposal doesn't fix anything, it just creates another problem that obscures the current one by forcing it on everyone. Instead of having strange routing behavior, we will have problems of "my SC should be able to fight this force by himself, but he can't because he hasn't brought his militia with him." And then anti-SC combat tactics, instead of revolving around defeating the SC, will instead revolve around killing his scrubs so he has to flee. This is not an improvement.

Edit: On the subject of human pretenders, the reason we don't see them in MP is because the Ghost King is too good. For a seven path rainbow mage, the GK costs you about 90-110 points over a human in chassis and path costs, has 2 points more dominion, and starts with death magic. The dominion and death magic alone nearly make up for this increased cost, and you've then basically got the GK's exceptional fighting skills for free, instead of legendary human wimpiness. From a pure power standpoint the only "human" that competes with the GK is the Skratti. For humans to be viable in MP, their "secondary skills" (gem generation, research bonus, whatever) need to be a LOT stronger, or they need to get significantly more starting magic (I'm talking 3-4 points in a single path here), or the GK needs to get worse, or some combination of these. Strong starting magic in particular paths could also help distinguish humans from each other.

With the GK out of the equation, humans become the only way to gain magical diversity, and become a lot more interesting. Although whether their searching/forging ability makes up for the lack of a good starting (titan/undead) SC, is debatable.

[Huzurdaddi]

This seems like it is turning into "I want immortality nerfed because it annoys me." If it were really that strong, everyone would play immortal pretenders, but in reality other than Abysia, Caelum and Ermor, it is rare.

That's not how I read it. I don't know how you could read it that way.

It's clearly a thread about nerfing SC's and the way some people want to do that is by changing the moral system slighty. The problem that follows is immortal units do not flee and so they may have to be special cased.

The people who want to nerf SC's via this method should also figure out what they are going to do about the beserk ability since the clear workaround to the SC retreating is to manufacture a suituation in which he goes beserk ASAP.