Does Troop Weapon Variation Matter That Much?

[David McMurdo]

Nations often have multiple very similar troops in their rosters—early age Ulm are a good example of this. I'm just wondering how specific other players are in choosing their troops. Even though I know there is a functional difference between a sword and an axe that is represented by game mechanics, is anyone really deliberately choosing one over the other when the two units are otherwise identical? It just doesn't seem like such a choice can be all that significant in the grand scheme of things, given the sheer variety of opponents said unit will quickly be facing.

[Mormacil]

Axes have higher damage on average making it a superior option versus giant enemies. Pierce damage is reduced to skeletons so versus Ermor of a skelespam nation like Ctis focusing on something else would obviously be a superior default choice.

However Dominions also has a bunch of units purely for flavor because it makes sense lorewise that they exist and I love the series for that.

[SaD-82]

Choosing the right weapons for a certain type of enemy is important - the length for repelling, armor penetration bonus, additional damage, to circumvent certain resistances, etc.
That's one of the reasons why units with multiple attacks due to having more than two arms, being ambidextrous, etc are highly valuable as they, most often, offer different damage outputs due to fielding different kind of weapons.

[Sombre]

It makes a difference for sure. If you test 50 pikemen against 50 flailmen against 50 hammer and shield guys and so on, you can quickly see massively different battle results.

[Dezzmont]

This is part of what is unintuitive about dom stats. All the troops are only a few points apart, so what does it matter?

Firstly, a lot of Ulm's variation comes from regular infantry vs black plate infantry. The difference there is 4 protection points.

This is not at all intuitive, but 22 protection is more than twice as good as 18 protection, due to the DRN system. If your eating a strength 19 attack as Ulm, the infantry get injured 46% of the time they get hit, while black plate infantry get hurt only 18% of the time. If your eating a more realistic 13 damage attack, from say... a militia's spear, before any penalties or defense apply, the regular infantry is hurt only 11% of the time... while the black plate infantry is hurt 5% of the time.

So in a sense, the difference of 4 points in that case is they will in most circumstances, when facing pure damage, take 50% less damage, which due to the Lanchester square law and the fact that Ulm has troops that hit like trucks, allows black plate troops to dominate the battlefield.

Once you understand how big a 4 protection swing is, the reason weapons matter makes sense too: A hammer or morningstar is 18 or 17 damage, so you probably hurt most humanoid targets that aren't Ulm themselves... but if you want to crack harder targets like armored giants or certain monsters, the maul or even hailberd lets you not just do more damage (probably killing most lightly armored humans in a single blow pretty much every time) but damaging stuff like heavy cavalry consistently, and damaging buffed armored giants at all. A lot of things that are not at all threatened by humans with one handed weapons face an extreme risk vs Ulm with hammers.

Spears and shields have their own unique offensive and defensive bonuses.

Shields are a form of layered defense as they allow Ulm infantry to both have high defense values (effectively 17, which compared to an average soldier's attack skill of 10 is very poor odds of beating, based on DRN, even with an attack bonus weapon like a sword), which lets them parry most blows. The opponent then needs to do damage through the 17 protection of the shield and then through the 23 protection of the black plate. Suffice to say, nothing is getting through that that isn't something that ignores protection entirely, or is an very specialized tool, meaning that this layered defense makes Ulm infantry with shields extremely hard to kill by humans unless they are very fatigued. Even giants can struggle to hurt them, so while they give up the terrifying lethality of hammer troops, they hold the line extremely well. Combined with the fact that this allows defense against ranged attacks at all, and that makes shielded Ulm troops the best human line holders in the game.

Spears offer a different form of layered defense: Making an attack against a spearman requires a morale test against a 'fake' attack the spearman makes against the defender, if they have a longer weapon than you. This test isn't terribly hard in most circumstances, but considering how hard it is to hurt Ulmish infantry at all, even cutting down the attacks made against them by a fraction is a lot. This makes spearmen sort of a compromise between mauls and shields, as they will take less attrition in melee while still packing a weapon that can do a lot of damage easily.

[ulzgoroth]

One of the most common variations is a one-hander+shield unit vs. a two-handed weapon version. Shields are pretty good at what they do, so the two-hander unit will be a lot more vulnerable (maybe especially to missiles?) but also has bigger damage which typically makes them better at damaging armored enemies.

For the classic sword vs. hammer barbarians the sword is almost entirely better (though rarely the bashing damage might be a big advantage) but costs significantly more resources so maximizing recruitment may require some compromise depending on the province.

[DasaKamov]

Originally posted by Dezzmont:

This is part of what is unintuitive about dom stats.

You COULD get into the minutae if you like, but it's totally unnecessary.

It's very intuitive that spears are longer than swords, for example. Likewise, it's intuitive that flails get a bonus attack against shields, that crossbows are more powerful but slower to fire than standard bows and that blunt weapons cause more damage to skeletons than piercing weapons.

That's all that's really needed for someone who's just trying to learn the ropes of Dominions.

[Chris]

Supporting the intuitive angle somewhat - a lot of it just comes with time. I couldn’t tell you any of the details or formulas for different weapons and protection, etc., but I have enough built up experience to put together my turn two expansion army, and to choose my target provinces without issue, and to fairly accurately judge how a matchup against an opponent will go.

Can other players do better relying on a more thorough understanding of the mechanics? Absolutely. But is it necessary to do well against standard AI or in casual MP games? Not really!

[ethorin101]

A lot of the time it doesn't matter... on the other hand, the difference Khlysty and Flagellants is primarily that one has a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ mace, and the other has a flail, and the one with the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ mace is effectively unusuable, you can toss 100+ bless points and all the buffing in the world, Khlysty still suck. On the other hand, Flags are nearly freespawn and just need a bit of extra durability to become excellent. Flails are GREAT.

Similarly, you can find a lot of people who will point to a specific weapon and say "and this is why I recruit exactly this guy out of these options". Weapon variety is sometimes a subtle difference, and sometimes it's a Flail.

[Dezzmont]

Originally posted by DasaKamov:

Originally posted by Dezzmont:

This is part of what is unintuitive about dom stats.

You COULD get into the minutae if you like, but it's totally unnecessary.

It's very intuitive that spears are longer than swords, for example. Likewise, it's intuitive that flails get a bonus attack against shields, that crossbows are more powerful but slower to fire than standard bows and that blunt weapons cause more damage to skeletons than piercing weapons.

That's all that's really needed for someone who's just trying to learn the ropes of Dominions.

I find that a big hurdle to a lot of people learning Dom is this specific fact, as the non-linear difference in outcomes from stats due to DNR is integral to almost every interaction. The fact that subtle troop stat differences lead to such different outcomes is very central to what makes Dominions dominions, and more importantly for learning how troops work, makes its counters harder than most other strategy game counters: in something like starcraft even though marines are very hard countered by carriers, the carriers are going to take losses vs a sufficient stack of marines. In Dominions, a few heavy cavalry units can take on a fairly arbitrary amount of basic troops with no casualties.

The short version wouldn't be 'its intuitive that spears are longer than swords' but probably 'a difference in 2 on stats is very big, and a difference in 4 is nearly overwhelming.'

Spears being long is also very counterintuitive, specifically because a spear's length doesn't impact the game in any way besides hitting certain sized units in certain body parts, dual wielding, and morale interactions, so explaining that (even on a surface level) is pretty important, because it doesn't grant the things you would actually expect a spear to grant you.

Specifically, you kind of need to explain that spears are about fighting low morale units safely, as the main thing you would expect spears to be good for, which is being a second line of troops, doesn't work at all.

[Blaise_art]

weapon length matter a lot, you can win a fight only because of parry.

[Dezzmont]

Originally posted by SaD-82:

You have a really bad habit of drawing conclusion from yourself about others - it's almost like you would think you would be a benchmark for anything at all.

I have taught 6 people to play dominions and every single person has tried to put long spears behind shield troops because that is literally how they were used historically.

[Sombre]

Originally posted by Dezzmont:

I have taught 6 people to play dominions and every single person has tried to put spears behind shield troops.

That's interesting! I would not have thought of that.

[Ddraig Lleuad]

To put it in short, basic terms; Dominions is a game whose dice system trends much more strongly towards average results than many people are used to.

In something like D&D or Warhammer, most rolls are a single die against a flat target. In Dominions you're rolling opposed sets of 2d6, so you're rolling more dice and comparing the highest - and then doing that across battles of dozens or hundreds of units. Averages win out a LOT more than most other systems.

So yes, small-seeming stat differences of 2 points can be very important.

[Dezzmont]

Originally posted by twitch.tv/blaise_art:

weapon length matter a lot, you can win a fight only because of parry.

I did forget about parrying! That still serves a similar purpose of spears being an anti chaff unit though!

[Blaise_art]

Originally posted by Dezzmont:

Originally posted by SaD-82:

You have a really bad habit of drawing conclusion from yourself about others - it's almost like you would think you would be a benchmark for anything at all.

I have taught 6 people to play dominions and every single person has tried to put long spears behind shield troops because that is literally how they were used historically.

You can do that with some nations in COE