Poll: morale and routing

[Endoperez]

Boron, do you mean that if given the choice of having 50 Winter Wolves or 40 Winter Wolves and 40 Coral Guards you choose the 50 w-wolves? What if the choices are 100 Lamias / 70 Lamias, 20 Knights and 30 Longbowmen set to Fire Archers?

If you can only choose between all-summoned and all-mundane armies you should choose the summons to be competitive in lategame. But DomII isn't HoMM4*, and you don't have to. You can use both mundane and magical units in a nice, joyful and often colourful mix that is stronger and more varied than either of the one-sided armies. You might have a mage or two less, but you don't have the gems to use all of them for summoning if you only recruit mages and build fortresses/labs to make more of them, not recruiting any national units. And besides Mictlan every nation has something useful. If nothing else, archers that can be Wind Guided and/or given Flaming Arrows.


Endoperez
* I never played it, but I have heard that it forced you to choose between good in beginning/bad in the end, bad in the beginning/good in the end and mediocre at all stages. And AI had access to the best units from beginning to the end. If this is not the case, .

[Cainehill]

Boron said:

no tauren is true .
and you don't get his point here i think .

tauren says just that almost no national troop is worth being produced .

if you are honest you will admit that with most nations you replace the national troops as quick as you can by better summoned troops .

Duh. You do ... research in order to get better weapons, troops, spells.

Once the semi-automatic rifle was ... researched the nations that didn't have them tended to get chewed up and spit out. No intelligent leader said, "Hey! We can't replace our breech loaders! It wouldn't be right!"

As better units, weapons, spells, are researched, the earlier, less effective ones tend not to be produced or used as much any more. If the newly researched ones _weren't_ significantly improved and better, there wouldn't be much point in doing research.

"Hmm - I think I'll research conjured units - they may suck compare to my regular troops, but they're _so_ neat!"

if leaders alone woudn't rout once the first 1 dies would you build troops at all anymore ?

*smile* Considering that in general, leaders alone get killed, yes, I think I'd tend to still build and use troops. This remains true at least into the mid-game, and even after that, some troops tend to be used. They may not be the recruitable national troops - but again, there's a reason people did research into conjuration, construction, and enchantment - to get better things to use.

marignon , ulm , pangenea , vanheim and perhaps jotunheim are somehow exeptions here since they have special national troops which are worth being built over a longer timespan with the right bless effect .
or with flaming arrows + wind guide for marignon x-bows .

Let's see - you leave out Man, R'lyeh, Caelum, Pythium, and I expect there are other nations that I'm not thinking of. All these nations have national troops that remain useful into the late game, at least as part of a mixed army that includes conjured and constructed troops as well.

but i think you will admit that in general you only use as many troops as you think you need to avoid routing. the rest of your gold goes in commanders instead .
you basically said that in your post . at least i understanded it this way .

No, I use as many troops as I think I need in order to _win_. Leaders by themselves can rarely do it on their own, although there are some exceptions (Vanheim, Man, Caelum, etc) and even those function better with some troops - some disposable, some not.

And you need to reread my previous post - Tauren used 20 militia vice battlemages as the example in his post. I made a rebuttal using that same example. _Militia_ are disposable - they're used to keep your mages from getting killed, and also to keep your more valuable national troops from getting killed. Good cavalry, archers, even heavy infantry are all valuable and useful, and the screen of militia is used to try and keep the casualties of good troops low.

Frankly, it seems that you and Tauren (and let's not forget Cohen) want a game that has more emphasis on troops, and less on powerful combatants, summonings, spells, and magic items.

I'd suggest you find another game, because Dominions is designed around those things. We're talking beings that are trying to become God here - not beings that are trying to become King or Pope. If the powerful SCs and magic were removed or nerfed, as y'all want, the majority of the players would be upset.

Now, I have posted before that it would be nice if Illwinter would include a command line or game creation switch that would allow some things like magic research to be limitted. After all - it's already limitted to research level 4 in the demo, it shouldn't be hard to implement that as an option in the full game.

That way, people like you could have a game that played more like the game you want to play, without screwing everyone else's game over. For that matter, even some of us who _like_ the powerful magics and SCs and such might enjoy the odd low-research game as a refreshing change of pace.

But again - if you don't want a game that's geared and designed around powerful magics, supremely powerful beings and combatants, I'd suggest finding another game. There are _plenty_ of games that don't put such emphasis on mages, SCs, etc. It's hard to think of any that put the emphasis on them the way Dominions2 does though - not HoMM (which is a game for simpletons who like rote solutions in comparison), not the original MoM, not Disciples, Age of Wizards.

[Cainehill]

Endoperez said:
Re HoMM4 : I never played it, but I have heard that it forced you to choose between good in beginning/bad in the end, bad in the beginning/good in the end and mediocre at all stages. And AI had access to the best units from beginning to the end. If this is not the case, .

HoMM also tends to have maps and situations that favor, and sometimes require, one exact sequence of actions in order to win a scenario. "Build these units first; attack this stack of monsters in order to get this resource; use that resource to build / upgrade a building to recruit stronger units; build these units; attack that stack to get this resource / castle, etc."

This isn't an exaggeration - the maps often channel you towards only a few specific routes, and the AI competes by having huge amounts of creatures and resources in comparison to the human player. If the human doesn't follow the optimum sequence of actions, the AI rolls over him.

That's why you can find step by step instructions for winning various HoMM maps/scenarios - a totally different scenario from Dom2 (or the old MoM).

[Boron]

caine i say this because i extremely enjoy the lategame when i have ultrascs , vampirehordes etc. en masse and 500+ gem income from sites + clams etc. etc. etc.

i just think that a few things are too overprized ( national troops ) and a few special units are severely underprized . so it needs only a bit finetuning i think .
basically like it was with the vq pre 2.12 .

tartarians were nerfed because of this too a bit .
they are still extremely useful .


but dominions is a game not real life . and dominions is extremely well balanced and there are uses for lots of units .

but as it is it is the following :
most national troops are only good until you get summons .

but since national troops and national mages both need gold and mages result in a much higher RoI as soon as you have your first summons like e.g. vine ogres you start replacing your troops with them .
later you chose stronger summons .

but even on turn 10 it is already a hard decision if 1 mage is already worth more than 10 troops which have the same cost / upkeep .
and after earlygame this decision is so clear as nothing else .

so as it is almost EVERY leader / summonable leader is really useful .
lots of summoned units are really useful too .

but from the national troops 9/10th are already almost useless and only needed to prevent routing after turn 20-40 .

this is what cohen and tauren dislike . i just replace most of my national troops by summons but i feel too that this is just not right that there are about 500 national units which all have flair but only about 50 have still some value midgame and about 0! have value lategame .


if upkeep/resourcecosts of national units would be 1/2 after turn 30 and 1/4 after turn 60 until end of the game then the choice recruit 1 battlemage / priest or 5-10 national units would not be the nobrainer as it is atm anymore while it would not make SCs etc. useless .

[Boron]

Endoperez said:
Boron, do you mean that if given the choice of having 50 Winter Wolves or 40 Winter Wolves and 40 Coral Guards you choose the 50 w-wolves? What if the choices are 100 Lamias / 70 Lamias, 20 Knights and 30 Longbowmen set to Fire Archers?

If you can only choose between all-summoned and all-mundane armies you should choose the summons to be competitive in lategame. But DomII isn't HoMM4*, and you don't have to. You can use both mundane and magical units in a nice, joyful and often colourful mix that is stronger and more varied than either of the one-sided armies. You might have a mage or two less, but you don't have the gems to use all of them for summoning if you only recruit mages and build fortresses/labs to make more of them, not recruiting any national units. And besides Mictlan every nation has something useful. If nothing else, archers that can be Wind Guided and/or given Flaming Arrows.


Endoperez
* I never played it, but I have heard that it forced you to choose between good in beginning/bad in the end, bad in the beginning/good in the end and mediocre at all stages. And AI had access to the best units from beginning to the end. If this is not the case, .

you just neglect that it is not 100 devils or 70 devils and e.g. 50 lava warriors because they use different resources , gold vs mana .

it is rather 100 devils and 50 lava warriors or 100 devils and 10 demonbred e.g. .

so i always chose the mage option once i can replace national troops with summons .


so i make a workaround as everybody but i , tauren and cohen think that this is a bit bad .

i really love dominion and i love the huge variation of strategies .
but it is only true for mages + summons that there are really few no-brainers .


after early game the choice mage vs 5-10 units is normally a nobrainer .

[The Panther]

Actually, what I think Boron was saying was that the best troops are the summons in general. That does not mean Vans are inferior to Vine Men. Just in the aggregate. And you are still better off using your gold to build mages and gems to get summoned troops. And this is not even counting the fact that your troops cost a heck of a lot more in upkeep than the summons do. If anything, summons ought to cost more since they are superior.

National troops are much too weak in general late game. They are mostly used only as fodder from mid-game on.


Also, Cainehill missed the point above. He said that if the rule was that commanders could not stay on the battlefield without troops, the battles would be all about killing the chaff. But nobody except a weak player would play that way. No, it would be all about getting STRONG troops to accompany STRONG leaders, which is much more logical than the current system. If you send in a leader with chaff only and lose, too bad for you.

Arryn, on the other hand, made an excellent point above about berserk. That would be a good strategy if you didn't want your commander to retreat. However, berserk is a double-edged sword. Your defense drops and you get hit easier. And maybe some aflictions to. Also, you would want to be DARN sure you will win since the berserked guy will fight to the death. If you miscalculate, then poof, your SC is gone for good. But it sure is a nice tool to have in the toolkit.


I want to make another point on this subject. In Karan game, where I am subbing for Cohen, Vyelina is playing Ulm. She attacked a Cohen castle with a superb army, which included her VQ, 2 ice devils, an arch devil, a bunch of nice summons, and some national troops. She had it backed up with lots of mages casting all kinds of nasyy things. It was almost a pleasure losing to that army, for it was well constructed and excellently scripted.

On the other hand, Cohen had a super-powerful SC arch devil as his prophet. The devil simply cast fire shield and then attack. Pangaea hit it with over 100 troops and lost everything to a single SC. It was almost ridiculous watching that battle. It did leave a sour taste in my mouth for sure, totally unlike losing to the Ulm army.

Needless to say, I definitely admired the Vyelina approach far better. She certainly avoided the chaff problem with her SCs, like Cainehill was suggesting above would become the norm.

Now why do I feel like Yvelina was playing the game the way it was intended to be played and Cohen was taking advantage of a rule glitch?

Of course, I know that the developers are not going to put out a patch to fix the routing inconsistency. It would be a huge change to everything we are all doing now. It will have to wait for Dom 3.

On the other hand, fixing the routing inconsistency in a patch would make everybody come up with a new strategy and just might increase the longevity of the game. Who knows?

[Arryn]

Actually the true point I was trying to make wasn't so much about folks overlooking berserking, but that in Dominions, every problem has a solution, and all solutions are "double-edged". The true beauty of Dominions is that, unlike in all other strategy computer games, there is NO one single strategy that will always win. No perfect strategies, no perfect counterstrategies. As in real life, matters are reduced to luck and who's the more flexible strategist/commander (player).

Folks who refuse to accept this are ... pissing into the wind.

[The_Tauren13]

i just dont understand why nations can recruit so many troops if all but 1 or 2 are useless. there just isnt any good argument for including something useless in a game

[Gandalf Parker]

The_Tauren13 said:
i just dont understand why nations can recruit so many troops if all but 1 or 2 are useless. there just isnt any good argument for including something useless in a game

Hmmm that would seem to clearly say that you missed Arryns point. The game is designed so that you can develop your own tactics. If all of the units except 1 or 2 are useless then Im guessing that they are useless to you in playing the way you play. One person plays a nation and only uses the highest armored units. Another uses the cheapest in bulk. Another makes huge use of the sneak units. And yet another buys all mages except for the minimum needed army.

Personally, I love to explore the "useless" pieces of the game. The pretenders that people wonder why they are there. The nations people think have no winning strategy. The units no one uses. The spells that seem worthless. Very few end up having NO tactic although there are a good number of them that tend to be only useful to some people in some situations.

PLEASE dont make an effort to "tidy up" the game of worthless pieces. One of the things I love about this game is that its full of things that even the developers didnt realize how we would use them when they were put in.

[The_Tauren13]

ok i worded things poorly

i dont think useless troops should be *removed* from the game, i think they should be made, well, usefull. have you ever seen anyone recruit e.g. a salamander?