I’ve mentioned before the out of castle advance idiocy under standard orders, and use of the “Guard Commander” order was recommended.
So I’m undersiege in a previously captured castle, I anticipated the invasion and set up the guard commanders orders. I did NOT order the units to “break siege”. Then I replay the battle, and find my units defending in front(!!) of a minitower (WTF, is that) where their failure to advance makes me suffer much more losses in winning the battle than I should. To add insult to injury my best leader refused the orders I gave him to use the magic weapon I specifically gave him for this battle.
Either the castle defense AI needs improvement or I need to be able to give a defend in place until advancing units are “x” squares away order…
I don’t exactly understand what you’re saying in your post, but let me take a shot at an explanation. This is just one possibility for what might have happened–post more detail for dense folks like me and maybe I can understand better. Here’s my possible explanation:
When you capture an enemy fortress (rather than building one of your own), you get whatever kind of fortress your enemy had, not the kind you picked when you made your pretender. Some of the really cheap fortresses are not fortresses at all, they’re just towers. So if you captured an enemy tower, now you’re defending a tower when you get re-attacked. And yeah, if you’re defending a tower, there are no walls or anything. Your guys are just out in the open. That’s why towers are so cheap.
Here’s the easy way to test whether this is what happened to you: think back to when you captured this fort from your enemy. Was there an actual fort that you had to storm, or was it just a tower? If it was just a tower, then that’s why a tower is all you have now. Obviously, using the “guard commander” order with a tower is not very helpful. :)
I don’t remember the take over but this is probably what happened. But even if it’s just a tower why defend in front of it? I can understand it having less room for a full army, but shouldn’t my priests be able to sit in it to cast banishment? Otherwise I should never defend a tower since it is exactly as if I “broke siege”
But say, it was my screw up for giving the wrong order,why doesn’t the AI ignore the wrong order like it ignores the right order to use the magic item? 8)
Love the game, but the battle scripting needs work.
IIRC the tower still shoots at enemies, but that’s about the only thing it’s good for in a battle. (Of course, it’s useful on the strategic map, because it lets you build special units and it increases supply and resources.)
From reading the shrapnel boards and listening to some of the ultra-scary pros debate the topics, the watchtower is primarily useful in that it’s cheap and prevents enemy blitzes.
Apparently some people like to sink most of their points into one ultra scary immortal pretender such as the vampire queen, and then build temples and cheap watchtowers in every single province they control. The goal is to spread dominion as much as possible. Any invasions will be stalled by the forts and the immortal pretender can drop in and wreak havoc with zero risk since the battle is in friendly dominion.
I’ve tried this in single player and it’s silly effective at first. As long as all your front line battles are within one-two turns movement of your capital then the immortal pretender can just keep bashing at enemy armies. Death is no problem, just come back next turn and try again. It starts to break down as the empire grows and it takes the immortal multiple turns to get back to the front lines after a death. I imagine on a small map it’s a nearly unbeatable strategy.
There are always ways around it… keeping your dominion high as a defense is one way to kill off the Vampire Bonuses, plus if she dies in enemy dominion, she’s toast!
Some Construction items are specifically designed to hunt Undead and Demons… one of the early ones, Just Man’s Cross, is 3x Damage vs. Undead or Demons, which is pretty disgustingly huge.
There are always ways around it… keeping your dominion high as a defense is one way to kill off the Vampire Bonuses, plus if she dies in enemy dominion, she’s toast!
Some Construction items are specifically designed to hunt Undead and Demons… one of the early ones, Just Man’s Cross, is 3x Damage vs. Undead or Demons, which is pretty disgustingly huge.[/quote]
I’m not going to unleash the nasty vampire queen debate fungus on this board. It’s already done enough damage to the shrapnel boards. Suffice to say that parental-basement-dwelling dom2 pros on the shrapnel boards haven’t reached a consensus on whether immortal pretenders are too powerful. The devs will make the final decision of course, so look to the patches for the answer on that one.
I have a question of my own related to castle defense: how do you get an approximation of the castle’s defenders? I swear that sometimes when I’m beseiging a castle I can at least see a red “army” box superimposed on my own army box. But sometimes I see no army box, only to find a large defending army after I storm the castle. I can’t tell what separates the one situation from the other. What gives? What do I need to do to see the size of the defending army?
Quote:
“I have a question of my own related to castle defense: how do you get an approximation of the castle’s defenders? I swear that sometimes when I’m beseiging a castle I can at least see a red “army” box superimposed on my own army box. But sometimes I see no army box, only to find a large defending army after I storm the castle. I can’t tell what separates the one situation from the other. What gives? What do I need to do to see the size of the defending army?”
Whether you see how many defenders are inside is determined by your dominion. If the castle you are seiging is in an enemy domain, you get no info on defenders. If it is within your domain, then you do get info.
Lloyd, when you said your commander would not use the weapon you told him to use, exactly what orders did you give to that commander? And why did you set your units on guard commander?
I haven’t checked it out, but isn’t this just true of Arcoscephales dominion, which has a scry effect.
Well, I just finished a seige in PBEM today as Pythium, and I had zero info while enemy dominion reigned, and I got (and maintained) info as soon as I got dominion. Getting dominion on any enemy province gives you additional information in the form of population, resources and income. Even when you have Eyes of God up, getting dominion on an enemy province means you get the province defense rating as well (which you don’t get if you don’t have dominion.
I ordered him to use the weapon’s spell which was targeted for Ermor(Herald Lance??) but he cast Banishment instead.The Lance has much more range and I hoped he would take out some leaders first.
I ordered them to guard commander to keep them behind the walls that I thought the castle had, since in the last castle siege I defended the attack orders made the stupid fools leave the castle to attack a larger force, rather than attack the small trickle which could get in at a time.
There needs to be a “defend in place” battle order, IMO, for castle defense,and when you are in a castle it should be shown on the unit setup screen so you can position them properly.
Although that would be great for defending a fortress, it would throw off the whole balance of the game because fortresses would become essentially un-stormable. People are always wishing for better ability to direct the combat in this game, but the combat AI is deeply intertwined in the game’s balance.
I ordered him to use the weapon’s spell which was targeted for Ermor(Herald Lance??) but he cast Banishment instead.The Lance has much more range and I hoped he would take out some leaders first.
I ordered them to guard commander to keep them behind the walls that I thought the castle had, since in the last castle siege I defended the attack orders made the stupid fools leave the castle to attack a larger force, rather than attack the small trickle which could get in at a time.
A couple things about items:
Think about putting items like Herald Lances on non-spell-casting commanders. If you put them on a spell-casting commander, then the commander has to choose between casting their normal assortment of spells and using the item.
I believe you must order a unit to “Fire” if you want it to use a ranged item (like the Herald Lance). My suspicion is that you ordered your commander to cast spells, hence the reason you got Banishments instead of Herald Lance use.
A couple things about castle defense:
I’ve always found Guard Commander to be a horrible order on the battlefield (which makes for a good strategy choice - any units that bodyguard are not that useful in combat). The units just stand there arrayed around the commander, and seem to only combat those that attack them, leaving them to be picked off one by one. They also keep your commanders from routing, which you usually want them to do after the rest of the army has routed (there are a few exceptions to this for SC, and that is one scenario where Guard Commander might makes sense). For a castle defense, simply set your units to Hold and Attack. Any large attacking army will almost certainly get to the gates before your defenders rush out. This will lead to your units bottling up the gate as long as they live, which is normally exactly what you want.
In your case, you were defending a Wizard’s Tower, so you were screwed from the beginning. You can see what kind of castle you are defending by clikcing on the province, then right-clicking on the castle icon to the right edge of the screen.
Think about putting items like Herald Lances on non-spell-casting commanders. If you put them on a spell-casting commander, then the commander has to choose between casting their normal assortment of spells and using the item.
I believe you must order a unit to “Fire” if you want it to use a ranged item (like the Herald Lance). My suspicion is that you ordered your commander to cast spells, hence the reason you got Banishments instead of Herald Lance use.
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I think there was a specific order in the spell list for “weapon spells” or “item spells” with the Lance’s spell listed under it, so that’s what I ordered, “fire” is REALLY nonintutitive. I also have just assumed that non mages could not use spell weapons, thanks for this info.
I don’t think fire is the order you want. If the item spell appears on your order lists under items, then that’s the order you want. I’m guessing the problem is the really flaky spellcasting A/I. It will over-ride your scripted orders any time your scripted orders don’t make sense. This is lots of fun because your orders may have made perfect sense, but the AI disagreed.
I’m betting this is what happened to you, as any priest type units have a strong preference for casting banishment when there are any undead about. This is an exploitable A/I behavior, which makes it extra fun. As Ctis, I enjoy adding a small handful of undead to my otherwise mortal armies. I put the undead on “guard commander” around a sauromancer who stays in the backfield. The presence of undead generally prevents the opposing priests from casting sermon of courage or fanatacism, as they are too busy trying to banish the undead. This makes enemy armies much easier to rout :twisted:
As this thread has been appointed the current Dom 2 Q&A/Tips thread, here’s something about playing your own music in Dom2. Sorry if I’m kicking a dead horse here.
If you’re using a jukebox program like media jukebox, WinAmp or whatnot, you can have playback of your own music while still hearing Dom2’s battle sounds by:
going to Dominions 2 preferences and turning “sound system” to “Direct Sound”, and
doing the same with the preferences of your jukebox. Media Jukebox: Settings -> Options -> Playback -> Output Mode “Direct Sound”
(Of course, turn ingame music off before you do this.)
Most of all I like playing other games’ soundtracks when playing Dom2, like Anachronox, Descent to Undermountain (bad game, good soundtrack), Beyond Good and Evil, and the likes.
I hope this will relieve all those players dogged by the heavy yoke of an endlessy looping “Santa Maria Amar”. Though it was a wonderful song during loop 1-10.
