Making Dominions less fort centric

[twan]

If there's one thing left (there was another one up to dom 4, defender acting first but this version resolved it) I dislike in Dominions system it can be resumed by one word, forts (or 5 "forts everywhere in late game"). Am I the only one ?

To resume most dominions games I played (since dom 2 where it was the worst, as cheapest forts costed only 100 or 200g at this time iirc, but increasing their cost in later versions hasn't really removed the fort spaming problem, just delayed it).
- early game is all about succeeding to expand while saving gold to launch a few forts early as you (most nations) absolutely need them for mages and so research ;
- then there are the first wars, which are dynamic and fun, and able to reach a conclusion fast, because there is still a limited number of forts on the map
- then the early wars winners have their starting forts + conquered forts + gold from a new capitol they usually use to build even more forts, while nations who stayed out of early wars have in the meantime turtled building lots of forts, hoping to compensate their slower expansion with research
- and then the game become an horrible slugfeast where any half-good province need to be sieged to be conquered, while the hordes of mages all those forts allowed to produce need ages to be given orders (or more often are just left there with research as order and cast spells as script), and even when you can assault most forts being full of mages and summons are an incentive to delay even more ; and the more the game advance the more players have a tendancy to use their gold to fortify rather than building regular troops as building troops means more upkeep in addition to the one of mages
- the worst being finishing bad players in midgame wars : good players use their mages on the field to try to win so by the time one try to take the forts of the other most are already dead ; while bad players you easily defeated on the field because they seemed to have no mages for open battles have in fact legions of them who stayed researching in their forts, and realise they can also cast spells and use their remaining gems for summons when they are finally reduced to a few sieged keeps ; often final wars are decided by the amount of losses players have to take to finish their midgame opponents, and the fortresses of low activity players with the 50 or so mages they kept there with research order all game are the worst you can have to take (I still make nightmares of some Arcocephale siege in dom 3 where my quasi inactive midgame opponent learned to finally use communions and gems just for the final battles on his sieged forts and cap)

Here several ideas to reduce the number of forts, for a next game in the serie (not all having to be used at the same time) :
- add an incremental cost to fort construction based on the number of forts you already control (say building a first fort cost 600, the second 900, the third 1200 etc..) ; may be explained by your masons being already busy with maintaining other walls
- make impossible to build new forts in provinces neighbouring a controled fort (would also help newbies who don't understand how ressources allocation system works)
- make building a fort require to control more than half of its neighbouring provinces (workers may fear the risks if asked to work on an unsecured fronteer)
- make forts have an upkeep cost (after all walls need to be repaired)
- allow to recover money by razing forts, so you have an incentive to get rid of excess fortresses after conquests
- and the most important, unlink unit availability and forts (forts would still give commander points bonus allowing to make mages faster but just that), make non cap-only mages only require labs, priests temples, like it's the case for some units/nations already ; eventually also add a new building, baraquements, that would allow national troops construction and give ressources and recruit points bonus without being a fortification ;
- make province defense more efficient (I'd say increase by about half the number of units, and always have a mage as second commander, and most importantly script the pd correctly to counter attack rear ractics) so the need of fortifications to counter small raiding forces wouldn't be as big
- change the way movement work to make faster armies able to catch up, so the need of fortifications to fix opponents in sieges would be smaller (with current system forts have a desirable role to avoid the wars turning into endless pursuits of raiding forces, by forcing attacking armies to stop if they want to take them and finally gain income, but it can be replaced by a system where fast pursuing armies have a chance to catch up with an advancing raiding force, ending with more open battles)
- with forts being rarer, you can consider making them stronger for their fort purpose (make their defense even stronger so siege units are more important), the goal should not be to get rid of forts but make them a rare strategic strongpoint you really build for defense instead of something people tend to just build everywhere to make mages or because PD is too weak to defeat even small raiding forces

[lord_khaine]

I think part of this is certainly just you.
Forts are really important to prevent a single bad fight from turning into a steamroll that lose you the entire game. Though for that matter. You can hotkey mage orders. So its quite easy to order large amounts of mages relatively swiftly.

And i guess it should also be noted, that this complaint is why Thrones were added. If you dont want things to turn into a late game slugfest.
Then simply add a limited amount of High level thrones. If 9 out of 15 points is enough to win, then you would just need to take and hold 3 level 3 thrones.

But forts are fine as they are. Some people think the slower endgame is a feature, not a flaw.

[Silence]

Also, nations that are better at raiding (easy access to cloud trapeze or hordes of undeads) are more efficient against unfortified provinces, whereas when facing a lot of forteresses they lose some of their advantage. And some nations are better at sieges and can breach fortresses easily (ex : Agartha, nations with lots of flyers, ...) when others can struggle.

That's the kind of differences that make a nation unique to another ...

[twan]

Having less forts wouldn't change these national differences, especially if they also are stronger. If a player really has a plan to retreat into forts his forces would be more concentrated and so those rarer forts harder to take, and siege units as important for that. And also there would be far less bad defensive fights if people weren't letting their mages in forts, where they can't research and defend at the same time.

Say in current game you have 20 provinces and 8 to 10 forts by late game. With my ideal number of forts you would have 20 and 4 or 5 but still 10 places where you can produce units (with baraquements or other systems allowing national units production out of forts), and globally same number of units to protect your forts. In the two cases if you are unable to oppose the opponent taking the control of the field in all those 10 unit production provinces you are unlikely to come back. The main difference if they are forts is a) your forces are more split if you want to defend all those forts, b) your mages can't both research and defend these places and c) your opponents likely know where these places are even with minimal scouting. With less forts, your same number of units would be more concentrated if you retreated to defend them, and/or you would have kept them in your out of forts production provinces with open labs the opponent has more difficulties to take and detect, than to start sieges, as your researchers are helping defending these provinces instead of staying behind walls.

By the way it's sort of a waste to put researchers in a place making them useless for defense, except if you are already losing and your only goal is to delay your opponents victory. Best default move for a mage past early game is to move him to an open lab (with some defensive force) before research where he can research or summon and help stop eventual raiders at the same time, having mage production not linked to forts would just make more people realise they often prevent you to win defensive battles you could have won more than they really help.

Speaking about cloud trapeze, anyone having faced the legendary Fomorian war opening move ("you now have one giant on every fort, good luck") know how much fort reliance can be a weakness rather than a strength, even if the opponent has no plan to take them (just shutting down all enemy production and movement from forts for a turn, knowing it's unlikely someone will put enough mages on patrol to have a chance to stop a sc, then starting to take provinces around the forts while the enemy can only break sieges).

[Zymeth]

I don't see any fortspam problem ; if some1 builds many of them early , he build them for you to take (as you'll have much more money to make a war).

If some1 builds them later, then I see little point to it - you won't even get enough money to spend on mages everywhere (at least EA / MA, but LA is the least balanced in any means I'd say).
It also depends on the map ; I barely ever see a person who spams with forts and I saw such person winning 0 or once.

[sunbeam]

Originally posted by Zymeth:

I barely ever see a person who spams with forts and I saw such person winning 0 or once.

?

What game are you playing?

The OP was spot on. This game has a tendency to degenerate into utter drudgery, late game.

Something he mentioned, makes me think of something else though:

"and the more the game advance the more players have a tendancy to use their gold to fortify rather than building regular troops as building troops means more upkeep in addition to the one of mages"

Late game seems to get to the point where regular troops are irrelevant besides mages. Ideally you want some cost effective national spell (preferably using blood slaves) to summon hordes of chaff, and more effective units.

I guess some people will say this is a feature, not a bug, but you can often see nations that don't even bother recruiting their normal troops anymore, unless they have good sacreds, or recruit anywhere sacreds (and even those need to be worth the time).

The ideal seems to be thousands of upkeep free units that you can somehow acquire turn after turn. And if your nation doesn't have the tools to do that, then you better win or steamroll early, because you aren't beating Sceleria or Ermor by summoining mechanical men or vine ogres.

Also the OP wrote:

"- make impossible to build new forts in provinces neighbouring a controled fort (would also help newbies who don't understand how ressources allocation system works)"

I've noticed the "good" players seem to build a fort on any farmland that doesn't have a well of pestilence or something. Left unsaid is the fact that players want to build as many temples as they can afford, and it isn't smart to build one in an unforted province, when any Vanjarl can just uncloak and wipe out your measly 6 PD (or whatever number a particular player uses to avoid events).

[Zymeth]

Certainly not mine games - and I play with variously experienced players, though its not the best point at all, since veterans can be bad too.

You propably play LA more than I do ,and I see nth bad at sceleria spamming forts - thats the way this nation plays, while eremor is stiupidly imbalanced.

"Then you better win or steamroll early" - totally possible, if you don't bother with building plenty of early forts and your opponent spent most of his money of placing them ; what is wrong with that point ? Tell me- why not to punish early builder like that ?

[terve886]

While forts are important, I don't see that as a bad thing. In fact, I think OP's suggestion to let mage/priest recruitment anywhere as long as there is approriate lab and temple would be extremely bad for game balance. There is nations with only sacred mages, requiring temple and lab and those are extremery vulnerable to raiding if temples are built on unforted provinces.

[sunbeam]

Originally posted by Zymeth:

"Then you better win or steamroll early" - totally possible, if you don't bother with building plenty of early forts and your opponent spent most of his money of placing them ; what is wrong with that point ? Tell me- why not to punish early builder like that ?

The problem is some nations aren't capable of doing much of anything without forts.

You could go a long way just pumping Anakites out of the capitol. Or Zhayedans, or Vans, or White Centaurs, or Garmhirdings, or...

If your nation is one of the less favored, and you have to expand and take on other civs with recruitable units like Bakemono or Tower Guards, it doesn't work as well.

Heck 30 Garmhirdings can crack forts that it would take 150 human type infantry the same amount of time to crack. (just guestimating equivalent siege power). Plus the human army pretty much moves one province per turn, the Garmhirdings more realiably about two.

[boozermonkey]

I have just two things to say (well, plus some commentary below) - LA Lemuria and EA Therodos.

These two nations in particular can't do a thing without forts. These nations MUST fort every province they own so they can even get troops to fight with.

Fix that, or go home with this.

[twan]

@terve886

It's true that like with any change nation balance may be affected and need to be considered.

Now the decision to make haste not affect spellcasting was disastrous to nation balance according to some early dom3 players (it completely ruined Ctis and other water-death nations hasted skellyspamers strategy that was dominating in the old times). The decision to introduce slow-recruit mecanism in dom4 was criticized for balance reasons too, it was awful for all nations relying on big cap only mages. Etc...

It's a very complex game and usually changes can be counterbalanced by other changes if they end handicaping some nations too much.

But I get your point, it would probably be needed to introduce baraquements and make mages require lab + baraquements to be recruited and sacred mages lab + temple to balance the removal of fort as requirement for sacred mages only nations .Or perhaps to give new advantages to sacred mages to compensate, or make non sacred mages more expensive or slower to recruit, whatever.
As well freespawn nations would need a system linking less their spawns and number of forts (although it would be good balance for some of them if forts became more expensive).

I was not making the suggestion of immediately implementing this one of my long list of ideas and without considering side effects nor changing anything else. I'm just thinking that it would be good for next game in the serie, among other changes, to consider mechanisms making forts rarer in late game, and so endgame more dynamic (note : out of making forts rarer, making siege system more interesting may also be considered).

[Zonk]

Have you considered making all units not require forts would significantly decrease nation diversity?
Right now some nations have units that don't require forts (EA Ulm, Ur & Uruk, Xibalba...); if everyone has that then it's no longer something special.

[alexsa2015sa]

Dismantling the OP suggestions one by one:
- incremental fort cost makes little sense, especially since it punishes lategame forts when you can Wizard Tower or better yet Three Red Seconds anyway. And the latter will remain too cheap regardless until a blood slave pool will become a thing (when they aren't abstracted by 5000-pop mechanic but actually dry up because there aren't any remaining, and regenerate based on pop growth/magic scales)
- Impossible to build forts near forts is an extremely punishing mechanic for no reason other than punishing forts. New or not, let the players do silly things all they want, I always built fort chains and never once regretted this. When you have two provinces with good mage recruits is another situation when forts nearby are desired.
- Justification for needing to control neighbouring provinces makes zero sense for Ermor in particular. And really, this justification is completely unthematic in a game with slavery and world-shattering Armageddons available for everyone with no penalties.
- Upkeep cost on forts is a good idea. Even if they currently have *income bonus* instead, flat upkeep for a fort to further encourage forting farms sounds good.
- I'm ambivalent on recovering money from razed forts. Limiting fort destruction to one level per turn? Certainly.

- Foreign recruitment is IMPORTANT. If Illwinter wants to add foreign recruitment for older nations (for many of these it makes sense), it'd be their decision. Most foreign mages won't make sense anyway.

- Province defense numbers are already good. It's commanders being useless that trips the mechanic. And, spending enough gold to kill a Vanjarl will never be viable unless PD is so stronk you need a doomstack to kill them. AI already overproduces so much PD you can't raid without super-combatants.
- Movement mechanics likely won't see an overhaul until Dominions 6. But the way you can't catch mapmove 8 raiders with mapmove 26 cavalry and flyers is jarring. Also sailing would really benefit from same granularity as other movement but that's offtopic.
- Forts were made weaker precisely to reduce importance of siegestrength. I don't personally understand this decision, but that happened.

Edit: I personally don't have any problem with lategame forts being a thing, I've got issues with no-upkeep hordes of everything displacing gold-upkeep troops. The only reason for this is lack of gem upkeep which again isn't likely to happen until Dom6 and it'd take 0.001 to 0.0001 values for Ermor to remain playable.

[Zonk]

One thing I would appreciate when it comes to forts is the ability to 'shut off' a fort drawing resources from a specific province. But I can foresee people complaining that this would just increase the necessary micro to play competitively.
(and of course, it's a buff, not nerf)

[Zymeth]

@sunbeam- I agree, but building 1, 2 or even 3 forts is not a fort spam and is totally doable. And your opponent fort-spamming will have less units anyway.

[lord_khaine]

I do agree with most of the things Alexa writes, but this bit in particular

"And the latter will remain too cheap regardless until a blood slave pool will become a thing (when they aren't abstracted by 5000-pop mechanic but actually dry up because there aren't any remaining, and regenerate based on pop growth/magic scales)"

I do kinda disagree with the idea of gem upkeep though. Its not generally like most summons are to strong. Would rather put gold upkeep on some things without instead.