Larian Studios Forums Dragon Commander Dragon Commander - Beta About the size of the population pool

Good morning/afternoon/evening everyone!

Although I have lots of fun playing DC, there is one thing which keeps bothering me in the last few beta versions in the campaign - this is the population pool size for each country.

While in the first beta versions the average size was around 2000 recruits (if I remember correctly), it has been increased since then to about 8000 recruits per country. Well, in my humble opinion, this is a step in the wrong direction and the increased population size has only disadvantages. Let me explain what I mean.

1) The duration of the battles has grown exponentially. At the beginning, each battle used to last around 15-20 moments at the utmost. Then the population pool has been depleted and the end was inevitably coming. Now, it just takes TOO long to deplete the population pool (also with the hindsight to the fact that the overall battle pace has been reduced). It is very often now, that after 40 minutes fighting I look at the counter and it is still around 4000 - I am then just exasperated and hit the retreat button to end the neverending skirmish.

2) The units from the strategy map loose in importance with the increasing population size. A situation from yesterday evening (2v2): I enter the battle with 7 hunters and my enemy has only 1 trooper, so my winning chances are almost 90 percent. Just after the beginning I bounce on the enemy base with all my hunters (and even succeed in taking it down after a few minutes). Meanwhile, the ally of my opponent (who did not have any units at the beginning) manages to produce HORDES of troopers, grenadiers, shamans... I also have many recruits and just keep hitting Z-, X- as well as h-, t-, g- and e- buttons. And the battle just keeps going and going and going... The end of it: After 40 minutes I win, but all my initial hunters are gone so that the country remains in the enemys hand. So, the bottom line of this: Autoresolve battles if you have a winning chance > 60 percent. Then it is more likely to keep the expensive strategy map units.

3) Now, all countries have a population pool between 7000 and 8500. So there is basically NO difference between them. You do not feel any consequences for the battle if you invade the country with just 7000 recruits instead of 8000 recruits. Why then bother at all with the different population size numbers?

So, I guess, my suggestion would be: Reduce the population size drastically. In my opinion, the average number should be around 1000 recruits. In this case, all of the problems mentioned above would be gone:

1) After 15 minutes the population pool is depleted and the battle will end.

2) Since you can produce only a small amount of units on the RTS map, you MUST plan your invasion strategically. You have to think about which units to take into the battle and you also have to think which units should be produced on the RTS map (in contrast to just randomly spamming any units)

3) It would be a huge differnce if you invade a country with just 400 recruits opposed to the country with 2000 recruits available. So, it makes you think about how to move your units on the campaign map.

Well, this is just my experience with the RTS battles and my thoughts on what could be done to address the issues.

I agree on almost all of your points although 400 recruits seems a little on the small side (unless it's a territory that has been fought over a ton. I think population regain should be slower). I don't think it should be on every territory though. Maybe tie it to gold income to represent larger areas so that we have a larger variance. Maybe make the average territory have 2000, low income backwater territories have 1000, high income territories might have 3000-4000 to represent a larger population around the financial centers and finally have 6000-8000 in capitols for a very epic fight. This would keep most maps small and quick while allowing for big drag out fights in the important areas to give them a more epic feel. Maybe adjust autocalc a bit to allow for higher attrition on both sides in high population provinces so you aren't penalized for playing it yourself. That's just campaign though. I like where skirmish is at in terms of population.

Yes, I was also talking only about skirmishes in the campaign and not about the stand-alone skirmish mode (in case it wasn't clear).

I love it as it is. You can end battles far sooner if your simply better than the other player. However against equal opponents battles should last long. It drives the tension in battle and the combat to look at the population slowly dwindling and prepare/maintain to be in the best position possible when the population finally dwindles to 0. As well as to make sure you dont overextend yourself. You actually have to remind yourself not to do that and can forget about the population limit early match but it will cost you the battle later on.

If you know your gonna be defeated and are in a bad position when the population nears zero you should retreat anyways regardless of population size. Larger the size just makes ti more noticeable later on in the battle.

Also i never managed to win a battle in MP Campaign without crashing afterwards but doesn't the country maintain the population losses they lost in battle afterwards?

If not they should to represent the province becoming war torn and needing turns to replenish population loss.

I have not played much recently (hopefully to change this weekend), but at least a couple betas ago the population recovered fairly quickly on the strategy map.

I see your point. However, my problem is that the RTS part as it stands now is not very well balanced againt the TB strategy. If you autoresolve the battle with the 90% winning chance, you are very likely to keep all of your strategy map units. In contrast, if you enter the combat, you are very likely to loose almost all of your troops. Of course, you can rush into the base of one enemy, but by the time you have destroyed it, the other opponent in 2v2 (who did not have ANY units in this country on the strategy map) can build up a huge army so that all of your initial units will be gone pretty soon. It is just not possible to take down TWO bases at the same time unless you outnumber your opponents by 10 to 1 or so. In my opinion it is just unfair: why should the RTS phase benefit someone who only has little (or even no) units on the TBS map?

What I tend to do now is the following: I use a hotkey for my initial units, capture a few resource sides with them at the very beginning and then send them to the farthest corner of the map where they will be unlikely attacked. Then I just start spamming new units and fight all the battle with these RTS-produced units. It is the only way which I figured out how to achieve the same battle result as autoresolve. But I guess, it is not the way it should work, is it?

And one of the problems I see which encourages spamming units on the RTS map is this large population size. Cut it down - and then all your initial units begin to REALLY matter. It also makes you think which units to produce and not just randomly spam them. You still can have epic battles which last for a very long time - if both of the enemies enter the battle with huge armies.

So, I guess, everything boils down to the following point. In my opinion, the RTS produced units should be just support units (like produce a few shamans to heal your troops or a few devastators to take down the enemy base) and the whole battle should be fought with units which you bring with you from the TBS map. At the moment it is exactly the reverse situation (TBS units are just support units in a large battle with RTS produced troops). And one point why it happens is a very large population size which does not put any constraints on producing new units.

Maybe, I am just mistaken and it was meant to be this way from the very beginning (fight the battle with RTS units and use TBS units as support troops). But then, again, in that case, the winning chances should seldom be more than 60 % and the autoresolve function should also be adjusted in the way that you also loose almost all your initial units (as happens if you enter the combat a a dragon).

Reducing population size isnt the only way to increase the value of campaign map units.

Increasing production and lower costs of campaign map units is also another way,. I mean this is supposed be a steampunk world in the phase of industrialization period. so larger scale warfare should be quiet plausible.

I mean on the battle map it is very difficult and takes many many turns before you can assemble a decent and balanced army that is versatile and have a army whose units can combine its arms to support itself.

I mean it takes a minute or two to pump out a dozen troopers and grenedaries in the battle map (if you have the recruits and a single battle forge) yet it would take you like 3 turns on the campaign map to do the same. So it aint a population value problem that is kinda screwy comparing campaign map vs battle mode in my mind it is the production values/speeds.

THAT is the whole problem! As you say, it is difficult and very expensive to create a good army on the TBS map - and it is just frustrating to see it destroyed in no time on the RTS map because spamming of the units is made so incredibly cheap during the battle. Why should I then bother at all with the unit production on the TBS map? If I do not want to autoresolve (which is the only option at the moment where the winning chance does really count) but enter the combat as a dragon, I can just forget about assembling an army on the TBS map since the need for it is entirely obviated on the RTS map.

This is the balance issue which I have been talking about. There are surely different approaches to solve this problem: mine is to reduce the population size, yours is to increase the production and to lower the costs for the TBS units. At the end, both solutions have the same effect.

I have to agree, the AI unit spam is just ugly. I actually have yet to win an RTS map battle, because by the time I've gotten a couple recruitment centers the AI seems to have about 30 units headed towards my 10 or so units. Now I've only played two games so far, but the AI is stomping on me so badly that I'm actually losing interest already. There really does seem to just be too many units being produced.

Really? I think they did really well with the latest build. If you have a large force heading towards you try retreating towards a unit producing structure and have that start spamming your own units. Another thing to note is the AI spams a ton of troopers early in the match (which gives the illusion of huge armies but is really just a paper tiger as troopers are fairly weak). If you can bring out just a few hunters they can make mincemeat of trooper blobs. Also a dragon can usually take out 10-20 troopers really quickly even without too many upgrades. The trick is to always be producing something if you can. It's a fast paced game but I prefer that because once single player is added I want to really explore the RPG elements and that is harder when battles drag out for 2 hours between rounds. One suggestion though is they do have a slow game pace option in for those who prefer it that way. I haven't touched it personally as I like the pace it's at now (so long as they add autocast in) but I heard it's somewhere in the options. That said I still support each map token representing more forces in the RTS map. Even if you put 3 tokens of grenadiers that only represents 9 (if memory serves) which can be produced in no time at all for pretty cheap on the RTS map. If the token represented more it would make fast unit production less valuable than simply having larger forces to begin with and add to the strategy layer.

The flip side of unit numbers per map pawn is that late-game, you can be moving armies of 20+ pawns, which basically leaves you with no support to build anything new as you start off.

Also, Ravenhoff... walls of text are hard to read. Use paragraphs, easier to read.