Mobility! For Dom4 Thread - Dominions 4: Thrones of Ascension

The way terrain affects movement in dom4 has changed relative to dom3, and has had the effect of dramatically restricting movement. For example, it is very rare for a mapmove-2 unit to be able to move 2 provinces.

I must admit I don't enjoy this change very much, and in fact I have the impression that even Illwinter did not really intend to significantly reduce mobility. To my mind a mapmove-2 unit should quite often be able to move further than a mapmove-1 unit. I also feel that reasonably fast movement makes the game more dynamic and exciting.

Now we can't mod the movement mechanics, but there is an alternative. Surprisingly, simply increasing the mapmove of all non-flying units in the game by one largely has the effect of restoring mobility to Dominions 3 levels. It's not exactly the same, but it's comparable.

The most concerning effect which I'm sure you'll all immediately think of is that heavy infantry can then sometimes move 2 provinces. However in practice this is quite rare - they have to start in a plains, move through a plains and travel to a plains. It may happen occasionally, but honestly I'm fine with that since it's quite a special case.

The table below summarises whether units of different speeds are able to make different journeys, in each of Dom3, Dom4 with this mod, and unmodded Dom4. The journeys shown on the left all involve only plains and forests, for convenience. Other difficult terrain like wasteland is equivalent to forests. Mountains are very difficult terrain in dom4 - chances are that for any journey involving a mountain (including leaving a mountain), a unit can only move one province.

I hope people enjoy this mod! It can be downloaded here.

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I would prefer that any comments are posted on the dom3mods here: Z7.invisionfree.com , simply because it's messy to watch two threads and the forum software works much better there.

Edited by: llamabeast

I like it. Beautiful table too.

Just saw this mod, it would speed up even heavy troop movements in favorable terrain. It would be interesting, but those with multiple survival traits would benefit the most.

Gwyllion wrote: Just saw this mod, it would speed up even heavy troop movements in favorable terrain. It would be interesting, but those with multiple survival traits would benefit the most.

Feel free to point out what troop speed way too much with this mod.

It's a base to give +1mov to everybody ; finer adjustment are certainly necessary.

Ohlmann wrote:

Gwyllion wrote: Just saw this mod, it would speed up even heavy troop movements in favorable terrain. It would be interesting, but those with multiple survival traits would benefit the most.

Feel free to point out what troop speed way too much with this mod.

It's a base to give +1mov to everybody ; finer adjustment are certainly necessary.

Maybe heaviest foot troops should keep their base mm1 ?

Yeah, particularly slow or ponderous units should probably keep their mm1.

Your table doesn't include the fact that guys who used to be MM3 now can move through 5 connected plains in one turn?

My experience is that the random map-maker often produces quite clumpy regions (in large maps anyway), including many where you can get 3-4 plains in a row. Also, I tend to like to pick fort-locations at speed-bump forests, so that I can build roads and increase mobility, thereby producing longer stretches of what effectively are plains. With your mod, doing that would allow everything to move past there at 1 faster than they traditionally could?

As gwyllion pointed out, this really helps troops with survival traits, esp. forest survival because forests are the most common movement-impeding terrain. E.g., nations like Kailasa or Eriu with lots of forest survival are boosted by this mod to effectively be MM3 nations (MM4 for Eriu's Sidhe!), aside from the occasional waste or swamp to slow them down. I'm not sure whether this is completely overpowered when the other nations are enjoying some (usually smaller) benefit too, but I suspect it is.

How does your mod interact with flying boots or flying carpets? I suspect it makes for incredible mobility?

Edited by: TelosTelos

TelosTelos wrote: How does your mod interact with flying boots or flying carpets? I suspect it makes for incredible mobility?

IIRC it's not released yet, but there is a version where thoses item make the commander switch back to vanilla MM while worn.

For the 5 plain in a row : I litteraly never seen that occur naturally. And using fort to make it happen can be of help sometime, but very rarely, and the amount of effort you need for that make it very balanced in my opinion.

I appreciate this mod greatly. I do not like how much slower even fliers are.