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.