Wish List

[st.patrik]

People that have been around for a while might remember this in it's earlier incarnation. I've reposted it with a less …abrasive… title. It's basically a gathering together of all kinds of suggestions for changes that different people have made in one place, rather than have them be scattered every which way in different threads. If you want something added/tweaked please post a reply with a description of your suggestion, and a summation small enough to fit in a bullet point (I hate summarizing what other people have written). I will try to post a fresh Version every week or so, if of course people keep adding things.

I have divided up the wish list into 4 sections: things that would be pretty simple to change, should the devs feel like it would be a good idea; changes which would require some extra work, but not a ton; changes which would require significant work (and thus are unlikely to happen); finally bigger picture balance considerations. This Last Category is for more sweeping considerations than a specific feature addition or change, and for general improvements.

If I missed something I apologize in advance.

1. Tweaks/Easy changes to implement
• Darker colours/textures in unit displays [to make sprites easier to see/look better]
• Alignment of stats in unit info screens
• Pre-made pretenders for new players
• New player 'get started' guide
• Quick start game for new players
• End/quit/save/host button remake [so that 'end turn' takes you directly to next turn]
• Bless effects displayed when creating a pretender's magic
• Actual effects of scales explained when creating a pretender's scales
• Line between commanders and regular units in recruitment screen
• Titles in recruitment screen for unit section and commander section
• More details on exactly what different effects mean (e.g. exact benefits of mountain/forest/swamp survival, etc.)
• Able to quit battles using ESC
• When selecting commander from F1 screen, have the commander be highlighted when it jumps to him
• X axis labeled in score overview graph
• Message in top left when Commander is killed in battle
• When you win/lose a game, instead of exiting the program, get brought back to main menu
• Show undead and magic leadership in unit info screen (e.g. 25/0/10)
• Soldiers with "guard commander" orders fire missiles if a target is within range
• Link from nation overview (F1) to recruitment screen in each province
• Show resource usage in nation overview [so that you can see at a glance which provinces aren't being used to their full potential]
• Warning colours in nation overview (e.g. red for supply usage when higher than supply availability, etc.)
• Allow finer adjustment of map richness levels
• Add "Cast Monthly Ritual" to commander orders list
• Increase accuracy of Evocation spells - if necessary reduce damage to balance
• Change strategic move to 2 for HI and increase the 'cost' of moving through difficult terrain for HI [net effect: LI can move through difficult terrain quicker than HI]
• Research estimate in recruit screen should reflect research with current drain scale
• In enemy/indie province screen, link unit names to description (even if it is just generic)
• prevent blood slave harvesting in provinces where no chance exists to get slaves (pop too low), and show estimated blood harvest for each mage
• Combine Blood Harvest reports into one, linking to each commander
• When using the "N" key to cycle through commanders and a commander in a group gets selected, select the whole group of commanders.
• When a magic site is found, include the level required to find it in the site info window
• Right-click should bring up commander details in gem-transfer screen (as it does everywhere else).
• Seasonal autobid for mercs, like in Dom I
• Default bid price on mercs should not reset itself to the asking price
• Clearer distinction between province and global gold stats
• Net kingdom gem and gold income displayed in F1 screen
• Autoarrange commanders alphabetically by type, then name
• Confirmation screen for 'throw item away'
• Change order of game creation: first choose scenario, then number and types of player etc.

2. Additions of relatively minor features
• Battle results (i.e. list of casualties) when storming a Castle
• '?' accessible on main menu (i.e. as a button)
• Research point 'lock' for schools of magic
• Random nation AI opponents
• Map and Scenario triggers [not sure where this was mentioned]
• Ability to rename commanders, or at least add epithets
• Enhanced start (starting with more than one province)
• Ability to close screens without having to scroll down or press ESC (e.g. Windows-style [x] or 'Exit' button [i]below instead of at the end of scroll-lists)
• Names of units in addition to icons in recruitment/deployment screens
• Detailed breakdown of mixed squads in deployment screen
• Detailed lists of losses (most importantly commanders)
• Right-clicking commander in main screen gives you list of troops under his command
• Build queue for commanders (even though there is only one recruitable per month)
• Shift-click to add higher multiples of units [e.g. 5 at a time] in recruitment screen
• Build queue doesn't charge you for units which won't be built that turn
• Ability to turn off pre-battle zoom animation
• Number of local defense force killed show up on battle report (even though they're automatically replaced)
• Ability to enter new subscreen (F1, recruitment, etc.) without ESCaping out of the current one
• Hostile borders different colour than province borders within your nations [don't know if this is possible]
• Prevent redundant site searching [or have a message like the "preaching cannot be used to raise the dominion of this province any higher" message]
• When game ends prompt for deletion of game file
or
• When game ends, automatically delete game file
• Ability to toggle on/off battle grid in squad positioning screen
• New Command for missile units: Hold or Fire
• Keyboard selection (hotkeys or something else) for every command available with mouse
also including:
• Keyboard command to select next commander within province, even if he already has orders.
• Ability to scroll lists with arrow keys instead of mouse
• Keyboard interface for research screen
• Keyboard command to cycle through friendly provinces
• Expanded gem-transfer screen, showing more than 2 commanders
• Label in nation overview identifying province types [feudal, amazons, etc.], and therefore the troops recruitable there
• Ability to cycle through recruitment screens without exiting to main map
• Add separate gold richness and resource richness settings for new games
• Add tactical "Cast Support Spells", "Cast Summon Spells", and "Cast Attack Spells" commands
• New unit command: Fire and Retire. missile units fire a couple of rounds, then retreat to behind the main battle-line
• Supply bonus for a certain number of LI/LC - in accordance with their role as foragers
• Compress trn files for Online play
• Allow changing pretender in design screen
• In battle screen, link spell casting notification to spell description
• Special Guard commander order "Surround Body Guard":Auto position body guards encircling the commander
• New Order in map screen "Collect Gems/Slaves" - collects all the gems/slaves held by any commanders in a province, and gives them to the selected commander
• New battle order "Hold or Cast Spells"
• Show actual adjustments to stats from fatigue (ie 0 defense, half armour, etc)
• More detailed list of combat losses
• Military info for hostile provinces displayed on main screen

3. Additions of relatively major features
• SP diplomacy
• Increased battle replay functionality (various speeds, etc.)
• Ability to store more than one god for each nation
• Modability
• Search function for items on commanders
• Battle Sim
• Enabling/disabling spells
• Translucent filters for map instead of icons (for dominion strength, production, province defense, etc.)
• Rework of province defense
• Different types of battle terrain

[b]4. Balance considerations
• Improve Strategic AI
• Less focus on supercombatants
• More regrowth possibilities / less emphasis on population death
• Greater 'bless' effects [e.g. starting at an earlier level (lvl 3?), increasing exponentially rather than by addition (1,2,4,8 vs. 2,3,4,5), magic cheaper in general, etc.]
• Reduce effectiveness of artillery-like spells (esp. in hostile dominion), or provide counters
• More global enchantments

Please use this thread for all your 'requests', 'please change', 'this would be good', 'I have a suggestion', 'man this sucks', and various other items of interest that tend to clog the board.

[Saber Cherry]

Oh, yay, you're alive=) Patty, I mean, not Zen http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

[Arralen]

4. Balance considerations
• Less focus on supercombatants
• More regrowth possibilities / less emphasis on population death


You can achieve this with the modding tools already at hand - simply multiply gold, ressource and supply production of provinces and growth per scale at least by 2.

I agree, though, that it would be great to have the option set pop growth with a growth scale of "0", maybe fixed to the equal of 1 scale of growth, so that a death-1 dominion will cancel all growth. I suggest there are diminishing returns from growth as the population nears "starting pop"*2 - shouldn't be too difficult to implement.

A.

[ January 28, 2004, 06:39: Message edited by: Arralen ]

[Gandalf Parker]

My wishlist mostly is for hosting things for the web-based gameserver project. (side note, anyone want to start a 3rd party wishlist?)

a "start game and quit" switch, even better if it works in text-mode

a --preexec switch for making backups or keeping a list of who didnt do turns

increase the --statfile or add a new switch to export scoreBoards (and maybe a provinces owned list? and maybe all Messages?)

a gameserver-only mode which doesnt load all the librarys/graphical/sound so that you can run more tcpip games on one machine would be nice. But I know that would be a major thing. Probably a Dom3 thing.

commandline switches for the MapEditor things so they can be done in a text-mode do-and-quit script. Also probably a Dom3 thing.

[ January 28, 2004, 14:23: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

[rabelais]

[Edit: Originally Magic Items we'd like to see...]

Let me preface by saying I love this game and am deeply indebted to illwinter and this board for giving me such a horribly effective timesink.
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

I looked for the suggestion thread, but can't seem to find it, please merge if appropriate.

Here's my list. Add your own...

1.Items that give leaders (and potentially (all?) followers) move through terrain x (forest, mountain, etc) intrinsic.

1b) Items that enhance strategic movement for an entire squad/army.

2. More precision enhancing items than one cursed semi-boobytrapped affliction inducing misc.

3. Income producing items (Forgable!)

4. have shrouds reduce upkeep (this true already?)

5. Items that affect each domain scale locally

6. More magic boosters, outside of astral they are IMHO too rare. (all fire boosters helmets? why?)

P.S. I'm definutely in favor of the pocket lab someone mentioned earlier! Great idea!


Rabe the Fantastically Accessorized

[Adept]

The bonus effects of water magic are too weak. Complete the list:

Fire: attack bonus
Air: accurasy bonus
Earth: armour bonus
Water: defence bonus
-------------

Currently water only gives a really puny ability of water breathing for 1 unit / power level. This is almost meaningless, and certainly not in par with the other bonus effects.

It would be neat to have the defence option anyway, and this would balance the water dragon with the fire dragon. Currently the fire dragon is a much fiercer beast because of the automatical attack bonus.

The water breathing could parhaps be changed so that any water mage can enter the sea, but not take anybody with him. It's not all that important.

Parhaps an air mage could exit the sea, if aquatic, to balance this.

[Ed Kolis]

I would like to see a log message when one of my mages forges a magic item. Too often I forget I ordered him to (especially in multiplayer!) and I send someone off into battle only to have him get slaughtered because he didn't equip some crucial magic item that is now lying around in the treasury... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif

[PvK]

Originally posted by rabelais:
...

6. More magic boosters, outside of astral they are IMHO too rare. (all fire boosters helmets? why?)

... <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Not all fire boosters are helmets.

PvK

[asparagus]

How 'bout an expansion? with 50 additional nations, 100 additional pretenders, spells, artifact and so on and so fort....

It's just a wish.... but hey, isn't this why this computer game was inspired for?

[quantum_mechani]

On the subject of magic items, I was thinking of a Rainbow Vase which changes a commander's gems into other random types. It might take Water, Fire and Earth to forge. Infact, a magic site along the lines of a 'Great Kiln' where you can recruit potter mages with one each of those elements might be interesting as well.

[Gateway103]

I made a suggestion about a Tournament feature, which was inspired by the Arena Death Match event. Anyway, since the current system can't be modded to support this feature, I guess it belongs here.

Since there weren't any actual discussion on this idea in the original thread (which was about Death Match really), and the fact that I don't like cross-linking Posts, as they can get convoluted and troublesome, hence I'll just copy my original post below.

Note, however, if anyone wants to discuss this little idea of mine, it would be preferrable to open a new thread for it, so as not to side-track the original thread or this thread much.

Anyhow, here it is, sorry for the long post.
--------------------
Here is a spin-off thought,

How about a random or annual event where you can host an tournament for your own people?

Here is how it might work.
- you get a notice about the possibility of hosting such a tournament.

- the catch is that you need to pay gold & gem. You may also get to choose how big a tournament and what kind of tournament to host, which affects how much gold & gem you need to pay, perhaps even the type of participants allowed.

- the participants will mostly be your own leaders, the Pretender can't participate. You can send up to 4 of them (or some other number depending on the size of tournament you decided to pay for)

- in addition to your participants, up to 4 other independent leaders (not to be confused with Bogus and other scripted ones) of types that are recruitable anyway on the map will also participate (again, depend on how much resources you pay to "invite" them.) Their skill level will also depends on the type and size of tournament (can't really expect a powerful mage to come to your little "show" in your backyard)

- the participants don't fight each other, but against generated "target" (one of the reasons you pay gold & gem) that may or may not retaliate and/or rout. In the case of non-retaliating target, they may have such high HPs (and non-routabl) that failure to destroy them in 40 turns will result in participant routing and thus lose.

- Alternate thought, to prevent your units from dying, could make all targets non-routable, non-retaliating constructs, but may force the kind of weapons/attacks allowed (e.g. "Archery" section may allow all leaders to participate, but they are momentarily given a kind of bow and have the "Fire" override command assainged to them)

- winning participants are cycled to next "battle" where they face harder targets. do this for a number of times depending on the event you choose to host.

- Alternate thought 2, instead of losing and be disqualified, perhaps leaders can be assigned winning points on the # of targets they destroyed in battle round. But this would require a bit mroe extra coding work. So you tally all the points to determine the final winner.

- any participants suriving all the rounds are declared winners, and gain extra exps. (different scheme than Alternate thought 2)

- regardless of winning or losing, all participants gain extra exp just for participating.

- the best part, you may get to keep some or all of the participating independent leaders. The chance may depend on how well your leaders performed (a "wow! I sure can learn something from them" inspiration effect perhaps), the type of events you hosted (how big/impressive it is, which also mostly affect the quantity & quality of independent participants), and some other things. Should an independent participant be willing to join, he/she/it will ask for a price depending on their qualities and if they won or not. If you opt to pay, the paid leaders became yours permanently and appear in your capitol the next turn.

Anyway, this is a very rough idea to creates a spin-off event that more players may find interesting/fun/useful (getting a mage not in your national path and not recruitable can be really beneficial).

Hope you guys like the idea.
----------

-Gateway103

[rabelais]

two problems I know about.

Fliers set on "fire" don't bother flying to get in range.

Some sacred units (e.g. Black hunters) have no souless analogue and are therefore denied the benefits of the death-9 bless effect.


Rabe the Helpfully Carpish

[olaf73]

Nice list there.

olaf

[Adept]

Ok, another wish:

There should propably be spell for curing battle afflictions. Nature power 3 parhaps and research level 4+ alteration (if that was where the other healing spells are).

With a reasonable casting cost of 10+ nature gems one wouldn't waste it on just anybody, but it doesn't seem right that the arco can heal their large fighting monsters easily, while the grail is the _only_ way for the rest.

As a side thought there should propably be an eye of seeing. It's just too cruel to have a blinded cyclops with no way of curing him.

For some reason this also got me thinking about an artifiscial brain, like the one suggested for Arthur Dent in the Hitchiker's Quide. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

The Grail is not the only other way, you can cast Gift of Health to cure afflictions on all your units.

Though a lesser 'Health' spell might be nice. If it was high enough on either magical path, or school so that you can't have your SC's go around casting it all the time.

[quantum_mechani]

Another wish list item: Give the Freak Lord a bonus when casting cross breeding.

[rabelais]

Originally posted by quantum_mechani:
Another wish list item: Give the Freak Lord a bonus when casting cross breeding. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Freak lord is already significantly better than the vanilla archmage. Trample and +3 devense for 10 points? (*extra misc slot?*)Gimme.

I like the idea of a crossbreeding bonus, but we need to help the weaker pretenders.

Actually increasing flavor among the rainbow humans would be very welcome.

Does *anyone* use a non-dragon master druid/frostfather? or a crone? Icky.

Rabe the Minimax Maven.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by rabelais:
Freak lord is already significantly better than the vanilla archmage. Trample and +3 devense for 10 points? (*extra misc slot?*)Gimme.<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I can't imagine that anyone would ever put a rainbow mage into melee combat.

I like the idea of a crossbreeding bonus, but we need to help the weaker pretenders.<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The archmages are definetly some of the weaker pretenders.

Does *anyone* use a non-dragon master druid/frostfather? or a crone? Icky.<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">A master druid is great for when you don't people to be able to find your fragile pretender and kill him with spells.

[PhilD]

Originally posted by rabelais:


Does *anyone* use a non-dragon master druid/frostfather? or a crone? Icky.

Rabe the Minimax Maven. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I do, rather often. I like to play Rainbow Mages in solo, and I'm not alsways picking a Great Sage. Though I admit, my attempt at using a Master Druid to capitalize on Vine bonus wasn't a great success http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[GhostHawk]

First of all, I would like to say how much I really enjoy this game and look forward to spending many more hours on it. In a very short period of time it has become one of my Favorites along side MOM, the old Warlords classic and the old Heroes of M&M.

One additional feature that would make this game more enjoyable would be to the way the ‘Hall of Fame’ assigns a special attribute to a Hero. If there would be some way for the player to pick which ‘special attribute’ was rewarded or to pick a list, from which one would be randomly assigned. I am very tired, of having my mages get combat heroic abilities (increase attack, etcetera) and my Hand-to-hand warriors getting Precision increases...

Thanks

[Bowlingballhead]

I'd be happy for anybody to get a precision bonus. Rod of fireballs, ho!

But yeah, most of the time a hero gets one of those bonuses and I'm thinking 'Well, that was useless.'

[General Tacticus]

Originally posted by GhostHawk:
First of all, I would like to say how much I really enjoy this game and look forward to spending many more hours on it. In a very short period of time it has become one of my Favorites along side MOM, the old Warlords classic and the old Heroes of M&M.

One additional feature that would make this game more enjoyable would be to the way the ‘Hall of Fame’ assigns a special attribute to a Hero. If there would be some way for the player to pick which ‘special attribute’ was rewarded or to pick a list, from which one would be randomly assigned. I am very tired, of having my mages get combat heroic abilities (increase attack, etcetera) and my Hand-to-hand warriors getting Precision increases...

Thanks <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">On the other hand, that makes the one that get the really cool bonus such a pleasant surprise : valor or awe on your main troop leader for example, or quickness ona combat mage...
I once had a Ulmian commander get "bellow" on turn 3 on the World War scenario. I carefully kept him in the hall of fame, by turn 40 he was up to Cause Fear (+18) IIRC.
On turn 41, the game crashed. I suspect that the fact that Ermor had 10 times the combined number of troops of all the other nations, several thousands of them by my crude estimate, might have something to do with it. I should have moved sooner against them, but I was in no hurry, and I had unfinished business elsewhere. I was not worried, not with my huge income and my 30 temples ready to crank up the priests at any time http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Next time I won't wait so long !

Back to the point : I think letting the player choose would be less fun; but I could go with a system where the player can choose one of the common upgrade (attack, defense, toughness, endurance) or try to get lucky and draw one of the less common ones (valor, awe, fear, ...) by choosing at random.

[ February 03, 2004, 15:47: Message edited by: General Tacticus ]

[Gandalf Parker]

Id like to add an item to the wish list. I wish the alliance command would work for humans.

Having just gotten a new game I realized there is something I love seeing in other games which Dom2 lacks. For those of us who love to solo play but still do it badly (or at least start out that way) I like to fight the "click fest" by having an AI on my side. The alliance command now will let you set 2 AI's to not attack each other but automatically doesnt work if its a human player. Hmmm I can see that as useful, so maybe a new command such as #HumAlly 1 2 which will tell 1 and 2 to be allies whether its computer player or not.

[Adept]

Winemen & Wine ogres. These are thematically cool and interesting, but they just don't work.

It's the classic problem. They aren't worth the mage's time. If one could get 10+ vinemen at a time (for 5+ gems, of course) they would propably be back in the running. I once tried to bace a Pangaea strategy on these creatures in a multiplay, and there is no way for it to work at the present.

In a related topic there should be a few more fortress types.

When playing Pangaea I'd love the have some different options for a fort. Not necessarily a fotress at all, but something to get an admin rate without littering the forest with constructs of stone.

Something like "Stone Circle" => "Sacred Glade" => "Forest Heart"

One of those, Forest Heart parhaps, would get high admin 40 or even 50, but offer no protection at all. (An unwalled city would be interesting as a general choise).

The others would be more like the traditional forts. Propably low in defence but high in admin.

An earth works would parhaps be the most fortlike thing that would still seem right.

[Ed Kolis]

There really ought to be a map filter for labs like there is for forts and temples, given that you can cast ritual spells, forge items, and recruit mages only at a lab. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Also, why does the game "forget" what magic sites are in a province once you no longer control it? (i.e. they are no longer displayed when you right-click the province) The magic sites are still there; they should show up so you remember that the province is important and why! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

edit: oh yeah, a few things about battle reports and replays too...

The local defense ought to show up in the battle report; it's really kind of disconcerting (esp. to newbies!) to see a report that 50 forces were defeated by 3, only to have to go to the replay and find that there were REALLY 100 enemy units because of the local defense! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif

There is no victory point score graph? Seems rather essential to me http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[ February 05, 2004, 02:47: Message edited by: Ed Kolis ]

[johan osterman]

Originally posted by Ed Kolis:
...
There is no victory point score graph? Seems rather essential to me http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">There is s a victory point score graph if you play with victory points, victory requirement is denoted by a grey line, if you play with dominion or number of provinces victory they grey line will appear in the appropriate graph window.

[moodgiesanta]

All I want is a Mictlan theme that follows the Lawgiver or whatever he is called in the country description, where the ruler outlawed blood sacrifices. I'd do it myself, but I don't know how to turn off the funny rules for dominion for Mictlan. Maybe I'll just overwrite another country with Mictlan 2.

Hmm . . .

[st.patrik]

Since Version 2.08 is out, and several items on this list have been now taken off, I thought it would be a good idea to bring this to the fore again. I confess I didn't want to because there are just so many suggestions and some of them wouldn't be supported by everyone anyways. but what the hell.

First here are the things which have been taken off the list because they have been implemented. Way to go Illwinter for listening to your fans http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Implemented !
• Ability to rename commanders, or at least add epithets
• Enhanced start (starting with more than one province)
• Modability [large strides made]
• New player 'get started' guide [thanks to Bruce Geryk]
• Improve Strategic AI [continuing project]
• --preexec switch

of course they did a lot more than these changes, but these were the ones on this list previously. Thanks Illwinter.


Here's the rest of the list. I've changed the organization of stuff some:

Recent Suggestions
• Various web-based gameserver requests from Gandalf, including:
'start game and quit' switch
--preexec switch
switch to export scoreBoards
gameserver only mode
commandline switches for Map Editor
• More Items (see Rabelais' post for more info)
• Message when a mage forges an item
• Gateway's Tournament Idea (see below for details)
• Freak Lord should get a cross-breeding bonus
• Alliance possible between Human and AI, rather than just between AIs (note this is different from the requests below for diplomacy)
• 'Lab' filter for main map (like fortress and temple)

Interface Changes
• Darker colours/textures in unit displays [to make sprites easier to see/look better]
• Alignment of stats in unit info screens
• Bless effects displayed when creating a pretender's magic
• Actual effects of scales explained when creating a pretender's scales
• Line between commanders and regular units in recruitment screen
• Titles in recruitment screen for unit section and commander section
• Able to quit battles using ESC
• When selecting commander from F1 screen, have the commander be highlighted when it jumps to him
• X axis labeled in score overview graph
• Message in top left when Commander is killed in battle
• Show undead and magic leadership in unit info screen (e.g. 25/0/10)
• Link from nation overview (F1) to recruitment screen in each province
• Show resource usage in nation overview [so that you can see at a glance which provinces aren't being used to their full potential]
• Warning colours in nation overview (e.g. red for supply usage when higher than supply availability, etc.)
• Research estimate in recruit screen should reflect research with current drain scale
• In enemy/indie province screen, link unit names to description (even if it is just generic)
• prevent blood slave harvesting in provinces where no chance exists to get slaves (pop too low), and show estimated blood harvest for each mage
• Combine Blood Harvest reports into one, linking to each commander
• When using the "N" key to cycle through commanders and a commander in a group gets selected, select the whole group of commanders.
• When a magic site is found, include the level required to find it in the site info window
• Right-click should bring up commander details in gem-transfer screen (as it does everywhere else).
• Seasonal autobid for mercs, like in Dom I
• Default bid price on mercs should not reset itself to the asking price
• Clearer distinction between province and global gold stats
• Net kingdom gem and gold income displayed in F1 screen
• Autoarrange commanders alphabetically by type, then name
• Confirmation screen for 'throw item away'
• '?' accessible on main menu (i.e. as a button)
• Ability to close screens without having to scroll down or press ESC (e.g. Windows-style [x] or 'Exit' button [i]below instead of at the end of scroll-lists)
• Names of units in addition to icons in recruitment/deployment screens
• Detailed breakdown of mixed squads in deployment screen
• Battle results (i.e. list of casualties) when storming a Castle
• Detailed lists of losses (most importantly commanders)
• Right-clicking commander in main screen gives you list of troops under his command
• Build queue for commanders (even though there is only one recruitable per month)
• Shift-click to add higher multiples of units [e.g. 5 at a time] in recruitment screen
• Build queue doesn't charge you for units which won't be built that turn
• Ability to turn off pre-battle zoom animation
• Ability to enter new subscreen (F1, recruitment, etc.) without ESCaping out of the current one
• Prevent redundant site searching [or have a message like the "preaching cannot be used to raise the dominion of this province any higher" message]
• When game ends prompt for deletion of game file
or
• When game ends, automatically delete game file
• When you win/lose a game, instead of exiting the program, get brought back to main menu
• Ability to toggle on/off battle grid in squad positioning screen
• Keyboard selection (hotkeys or something else) for every command available with mouse
also including:
• Keyboard command to select next commander within province, even if he already has orders.
• Ability to scroll lists with arrow keys instead of mouse
• Keyboard interface for research screen
• Keyboard command to cycle through friendly provinces
• Expanded gem-transfer screen, showing more than 2 commanders
• Label in nation overview identifying province types [feudal, amazons, etc.], and therefore the troops recruitable there
• Ability to cycle through recruitment screens without exiting to main map
• Allow changing pretender in design screen
• In battle screen, link spell casting notification to spell description
• Show actual adjustments to stats from fatigue (ie 0 defense, half armour, etc)
• Military info for hostile provinces displayed on main screen
• More details on exactly what different effects mean (e.g. exact benefits of mountain/forest/swamp survival, etc.)
• Add "Cast Monthly Ritual" to commander orders list

Feature Tweaks
• Greater 'bless' effects [e.g. starting at an earlier level (lvl 3?), increasing exponentially rather than by addition (1,2,4,8 vs. 2,3,4,5), magic cheaper in general, etc.]
• Change order of game creation: first choose scenario, then number and types of player etc.
• Special Guard commander order "Surround Body Guard":Auto position body guards encircling the commander
• Increase accuracy of Evocation spells - if necessary reduce damage to balance
• Allow finer adjustment of map richness levels
• Add separate gold richness and resource richness settings for new games
• Change strategic move to 2 for HI and increase the 'cost' of moving through difficult terrain for HI [net effect: LI can move through difficult terrain quicker than HI]
• Soldiers with "guard commander" orders fire missiles if a target is within range

New Features
• Pre-made pretenders for new players
• Quick start game for new players
• Research point 'lock' for schools of magic
• Random nation AI opponents
• Map and Scenario triggers [not sure where this was mentioned]
• New Command for missile units: Hold or Fire
• Add tactical "Cast Support Spells", "Cast Summon Spells", and "Cast Attack Spells" commands
• New unit command: Fire and Retire. missile units fire a couple of rounds, then retreat to behind the main battle-line
• Supply bonus for a certain number of LI/LC - in accordance with their role as foragers
• Compress trn files for Online play
• New Order in map screen "Collect Gems/Slaves" - collects all the gems/slaves held by any commanders in a province, and gives them to the selected commander
• New battle order "Hold or Cast Spells"
• Increased battle replay functionality (various speeds, etc.)
• Ability to store more than one god for each nation
• Search function for items on commanders
• Battle Sim
• Enabling/disabling spells
• Rework of province defense
• Different types of battle terrain

[b]Vague Suggestions
• Less focus on supercombatants
• More regrowth possibilities / less emphasis on population death
• Reduce effectiveness of artillery-like spells (esp. in hostile dominion), or provide counters
• More global enchantments

Questionable Suggestions
• SP diplomacy
• Number of local defense force killed show up on battle report (even though they're automatically replaced)
• End/quit/save/host button remake [so that 'end turn' takes you directly to next turn]
• Hostile borders different colour than province borders within your nations [don't know if this is possible]
• Translucent filters for map instead of icons (for dominion strength, production, province defense, etc.)

These Last suggestions are labeled 'questionable' either because there is/was debate about them, or because they just plain aren't possible the way Dom II works, or finally because they seem questionable (quite subjectively) to me http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

If people have suggestions/feedback, post here and maybe one day I'll update the list. Posting suggestions succinctly with bullet points will make this more likely http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

[Arryn]

I find that the single most annoying UI issue is not being able to use the PageUp/PageDown keys when viewing scrollable lists, or being able to click on a scrollbar and have the view jump up or down to that point. These are very basic windowing UI concepts.

EDIT: in Patrik's list he mentions arrow keys for doing this. My suggestion is in addition to that.

[ February 20, 2004, 03:16: Message edited by: Arryn ]

[rabelais]

I would like to suggest that upkeep be changed to

(sum of costs/15)[normal]+
(sum of costs/30) [sacred]

rather than having the upkeep getting rounded on a per unit basis.

Given the alleged rounding up, the current system radically changes the costs of units over certain cost thresholds.

Ideally summonables that had an upkeep cost would display that cost in their unit info...

Even more ideally there could be an upkeep "page" where costs are shown:

123 longbowmen@12gp ---> 1476/15 upkeep= ~98gp

This would add the possibility of other kinds of upkeep than gold...particularly powerful summons costing gems/slaves to maintain, for example.

Rabe the Moddish Accountant

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Arryn:
EDIT: in Patrik's list he mentions arrow keys for doing this. My suggestion is in addition to that. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You can use a mouseweel however, which is probably why I didn't realize that the pgup/pgdn keys didn't work.

New battle order "Hold or Cast Spells" <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I believe there is one at current, or is this some sort of modified one.

[st.patrik]

Just in case anyone isn't clear about this - these aren't all MY suggestions; rather these are a collection of suggestions made by lots of people since the game came out. This thread is a forum for airing suggestions.

Zen: there is a command 'hold or cast spell'. I think what was meant by the suggestion is a once-for-all command like 'fire and flee' rather than something you have to click 5 times and then choose something else. However, I might be completely wrong about that - I have no idea who suggested that in the first place.

[Vicious Love]

Wee lickle suggestion, why not ignore bodyguards when determining whether "all troops" have been routed?
As things presently stand, bodyguards are more likely to get a commander killed than actually save him, as all of your commanders remain on the battlefield to face whatever chased off your entire army.
Another annoyance along these lines crops up in commander-based battles, that is, battles with only commanders on one side, no regular troops. Suppose you teleport a dozen or so Demonbred into a virtually undefended province in an enemy's hinterlands. Further suppose that one of these Demonbred has Lifelong Protection.
First round of combat, your flying ubermages square off against a handful of militia, two or three imps fly out to harry the poor bastards, the imps are killed, your Demobred flee and, finding nowhere to retreat, inexplicably drop dead.
I suppose a simple enough fix might be to ignore routing battle summons unless there were already ordinary troops on the field, but I can see how this solution might screw up much more than it fixes. Tricksy.

Update: Whoops, kind of in a rush, forget to actually put this down in the requested format, after explaining it at length.
*ahem*

*Bodyguards ignored when determining whether all regular troops have routed

*Commanders only rout when "all regular troops have been routed" if their side had regular troops on the battlefield to begin with.

Cumbersome phrasing, but what can ya do?

[ February 20, 2004, 06:11: Message edited by: Vicious Love ]

[tinkthank]

Is there any reason why TWO "wish list" threads are up and running? COnfused where to post and read. Can we merge them?

[st.patrik]

Originally posted by tinkthank:
Is there any reason why TWO "wish list" threads are up and running? COnfused where to post and read. Can we merge them? <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It's probably because I've been so lax about keeping this one current. Apologies. I don't mind what happens with the lists - no rivalry here, just trying to provide a helpful resource.

[Arryn]

Originally posted by st.patrik:
It's probably because I've been so lax about keeping this one current. Apologies. I don't mind what happens with the lists - no rivalry here, just trying to provide a helpful resource. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Why should you apologize for being helpful? It's the other fellow, who began a similar thread without first doing a topic search (which would have discovered this thread), that's confused Tinkthank ... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[Vicious Love]

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
IIRC bodyguards are ignored <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Wuzza? But how come...? I mean, in my game, I thought...

Everything's shifting ...

If it turns out I was non-pharmacologically stoned off my flaw-finding *** when I lost those Seraphines, methinks I shall be sorely disappointed.

[Vicious Love]

Originally posted by Arryn:
It's the other fellow, who began a similar thread without first doing a topic search<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">On top of that, my viceroy thread's swiftly becoming a general-purpose micromanagement wishlist. Oh, the humanity, the roiling, bubbly humanity.

[Arryn]

Originally posted by Vicious Love:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Originally posted by Arryn:
It's the other fellow, who began a similar thread without first doing a topic search<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">On top of that, my viceroy thread's swiftly becoming a general-purpose micromanagement wishlist. Oh, the humanity, the roiling, bubbly humanity. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Hehe, I was actually referring to Zen's wishlist thread. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[Aikamun]

My one wish (so far).

I would like to be able to recruit the original troop types of a captured fortress. The first time I captured Machaka as Jotunheim, my hope was to produce spider knights. But, no, my Jotuns had completely eradicted the original inhabitants. Gods look for recruits in all shapes and sizes, so I doubt they would view all other races as not being able to contribute. Maybe not be able to recruit another nation's sacred troops, since they are more devout to the deposed god. Different recruits would also increase strategic depth. This could be provided as an option at game start-up.

Thanks,
Aikamun

[PvK]

I think it should be an option, with some types still not available, especially the holy ones. Actually this is sort of how it is now, except that most aren't allowed. I know you can at least get some small hydras out of the Pythian capitol, for example. I'd like to see at least a few units available, at least when an option is selected. Having most/all seems like it should just be optional, though, because in general, wiping out an enemy or occupying their captitol for a while wouldn't mean you could raise armies just like they had done for themselves.

PvK

[Kristoffer O]

>Originally posted by rabelais:
> I would like to suggest that upkeep be changed to

>(sum of costs/15)[normal]+
>(sum of costs/30) [sacred]

>rather than having the upkeep getting rounded on a per unit basis.

It already is (and has always been).

> Given the alleged rounding up, the current system radically changes the costs of units over certain cost thresholds.

> Ideally summonables that had an upkeep cost would display that cost in their unit info...

Valid point.

> Even more ideally there could be an upkeep "page" where costs are shown:

> 123 longbowmen@12gp ---> 1476/15 upkeep= ~98gp

> This would add the possibility of other kinds of upkeep than gold...particularly powerful summons costing gems/slaves to maintain, for example.

This possibility is not dependent on an "upkeep page". It is dependent on us adding stats and costs and implementation of gem upkeep. It has been given some thoughts, but no desicions has been made. We didn't want it when we first made the game. I'm not entirely sure why, but I believe we had some good reasons. One I do remember was that we wanted a distinction in the nature of summoned and recruited units. The current system makes for more summons in the late game.

> Rabe the Moddish Accountant

[ February 20, 2004, 12:50: Message edited by: Kristoffer O ]

[Kristoffer O]

Originally posted by Vicious Love:


Update: Whoops, kind of in a rush, forget to actually put this down in the requested format, after explaining it at length.
*ahem*

*Bodyguards ignored when determining whether all regular troops have routed

*Commanders only rout when "all regular troops have been routed" if their side had regular troops on the battlefield to begin with.

Cumbersome phrasing, but what can ya do? <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">IIRC bodyguards are ignored

[st.patrik]

Originally posted by Aikamun:
My one wish (so far).

I would like to be able to recruit the original troop types of a captured fortress. The first time I captured Machaka as Jotunheim, my hope was to produce spider knights. But, no, my Jotuns had completely eradicted the original inhabitants. Gods look for recruits in all shapes and sizes, so I doubt they would view all other races as not being able to contribute. Maybe not be able to recruit another nation's sacred troops, since they are more devout to the deposed god. Different recruits would also increase strategic depth. This could be provided as an option at game start-up.

Thanks,
Aikamun <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">There was a big discussion about this back in the fall IIRC. I was pushing the same idea you are suggesting, but people (inc. devs) thought it would take away from the uniqueness of each race. I can see their point I think - I wouldn't want an uber-nation who had all the best units and magics etc. Each race has its weaknesses, and that's a good thing IMHO.

[Hozzy]

I Just got the game........Awesome!!

One thing that the game desperately need is a printed Unit Description Guide. Best to do it as a PDF that way if new units are added or deleted you could just sub or add a pages to your already printed copy, nothing fancy, the unit description screen would be perfect

[Arryn]

Originally posted by Aikamun:
I would like to be able to recruit the original troop types of a captured fortress.<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">In addition to PvK's and Patrik's comments I'd like to add that if we could recruit another nation's unique troops, not only would the game lose some (or a lot) of it's current flavor, but Dom would then resemble Warlords and AoW too much.

[Psitticine]

I believe the idea of a printed unit list was discussed before publication. The problem is that with so many units, the cost would just be obscene. PDFs would be nice, but that was nixed because electronic documentation might increase the rate of piracy.

[Arryn]

Originally posted by Psitticine:
PDFs would be nice, but that was nixed because electronic documentation might increase the rate of piracy. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Which is peculiar, since IW appears to be supportive of Zen's (and others) efforts to publish the PDF documents you speak of. The Shrapnel site already hosts Zen's MIQR, and I have little doubt they'll also host his other docs when they are ready.

I think it's more accurate to say that IW hasn't done the documents themselves due to a lack of time and resources. They can work on the game, or work on the docs. I'm sure most of us prefer they spend their time on the game ... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[Psitticine]

Hey, all I know is what I was told when I was editing the darn things. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[Sandman]

I'd like to see the resource-sucking effect of fortress admin only apply to unused resources. So you could still build units in provinces with two adjacent fortified cities.

[fahdiz]

Here's a completely fluffy http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif suggestion: I would love to see moddable "skins" for the UI...perhaps one for each nation. For instance, Man's default UI skin might be a stony grey, outlined by Celtic knotwork...Arcosephale's might be a white/grey marble. And so on.

[vanedor]

What about... when you capture the home province of another god, the...(arg, I don't remember the true name for this) trouble is 200. So you need to pacify the city or/and be nice with the population for a while before starting to hire troops from there.

[Gandalf Parker]

I know I have fought and fought the "there is no game saves because its PBEM" but I had a thought.

Maybe at the menu where you hit HOST to have it actually process the turn, we could get 2 more buttons. Save backup, restore backup. All the game would need to do is save another 2h but name it something like bak. The restore just copies a bak over the 2h.

Hmmm I wonder if that would be confusing to any gamers who multiplay. Do you think it might cause "yeah I know but after I saw that I hit restore and sent a new turn for that round" arguments? Hmmmm might be better to leave it as an outside-of-the-game function.

[ February 23, 2004, 20:36: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

[Huzurdaddi]

Here are two features that I would like with spell casting:

1) When scripting spells for a mage to cast the UI does not take into account the previous spells to determine which spells are available.

Ok that was complicated. Perhaps an example I have a caster with 1 in fire magic and 1 in astral. My 1st spell is Power of the spheres, I want my 2nd spell to be fire ball however it is not on the list since the game knows that I am only level 1 and does not take the pervious level into account.

Now clearly the game can not figure out all possibilities since communion can cause variable additions to a caster's level. So how about adding a UI element that allows you to set how many extra levels you want to add to your caster (for filter purposes only). A simple addition to the UI, but it would give much more control over combat.

2) I would really like to be able to script more than 5 spells. But I could see people complaining that this could cause balance problems (not that I agree!!!).

AFAIK your first point is already done in the game. You just have to have the ability researched.

If you have at least 1 in a path (Like Fire) and have the spell researched, it will allow you to script spells that are outside of their range to cast.

On point 2. I would like more spaces to cast (if only 1) but I understand why they might not want to implement this - because there are instances where you could buff yourself to invulnerability then attack. So it's a toss up.

[Gandalf Parker]

I would like to see the color bars from Dom1 returned. Im finding that new players are not noticing that the commanders they maxxed out assigning troops to, can again receive more troops later. I liked the green bar showing how many troops and that it turned red when full. Also the same bars on the province view showing troops waiting to be assigned

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Huzurdaddi:
2) I would really like to be able to script more than 5 spells. But I could see people complaining that this could cause balance problems (not that I agree!!!). <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The only reason this would cause a "balance" problem is because of crappy AI spellcasting. If the AI's spellcasting didn't suck, it would have cast those spells anyway. Imbalance simply wouldn't occur either way, since anything given to both sides is automatically balanced. Besides, the AI is already allowed an unlimited-length spell queue that he can actually alter in combat. The human player doesn't get this at all.

[ March 05, 2004, 00:22: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
Besides, the AI is already allowed an unlimited-length spell queue that he can actually alter in combat. The human player doesn't get this at all. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I have no idea what you are talking about here. A human player gets exactly the same spellcasting choices as the AI does by just selecting the "Cast Spells" order. And yes, it would be wuite unbalancing. Take a physically strong, magically power pretender, say a titan with AE Ermor. Give it 2 fire, 3 air, 3 water, 6 astral, 4 death, 4 nature. Give it a script of quickness, summon earthpower, invulnerability, breath of winter, fire shield, phoenix pyre, body ethereal, personal luck, astral weapon, astral shield, iron will, resist magic, personal regeneration, elemental fortitude, etc. That's only 7 rounds of buffing, and with cheap equipment you end up with a SC monster with MR around 34.

[Huzurdaddi]

AFAIK your first point is already done in the game. You just have to have the ability researched.
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well dang you are right. I always assumed that since they were grayed out you could not click on them.

Well that's great news! Back to my game then!

One more thing ... my only concern left is SuperCombatants. They seem to be pretty gosh darn powerful. If they (SC's) are supposed to be the focus of the game then it's all good. However if the focus of the game is supposed to be armies crashing into each other where the pretenders have an effect on combat yet do not by themselves determine it then it seems that there is a problem.

There are many, many ways to deal with SC's. It's important in my mind for Pretenders, or high magic/items/creature to have a great impact on a battle. There are two lines of the debate. But I believe a good balance has been found with the SC's and their counters. Though they still are a factor; they are much more killable than they were.

[Taqwus]

Perhaps when in the lab with an item selected, and choosing which commander it should go on, commanders which would get no use out of it (not enough free slots of the right type, already has same item which has only non-stacking abilities, does not have C'tissian lizard head, does not have the magic path which would be boosted when path boosting is the only effect, etc) could be greyed-out.
Repeat-forging would be nice, especially if there were a way to select a research booster and have the game dump it on a random researcher who did not already have that booster.
Repeat-recruitment, especially with a default order ('research', say) would be good.
Speaking of research, researchers should probably go on Defend in the odd eventuality that all magic has been researched. Not much point in staying in the pool, except for being ignored with 'n'-type idle commander iteration.
Messages regarding commanders being arrowed, et al, should mention not only commander name, but province and possibly task.

[Argitoth]

The #1 feature for me would be "HOLD AND FIRE" YOU STUPID ARCHERS, don't stupidly run up to firing range, wait for them to come to you, for goodness sakes, why are archers so stupid? Someone tell me please before I go on an archer killing spree. Oh wait, I don't need to. They die enough as it is.

[Chimpman]

Hi all, I'm a noob who has been playing the demo for a litle over a week now (boy is my wife starting to get irritated http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif ) My copy is set to arrive tomorow! Yay! I'd just like to say that this is the game I've been waiting to play for years now. Man, where was I for Dom 1? Boy did I miss out...

Anyway I do have a major suggestion (which stems from playing Stars! oh so long ago). I do realize that this would probably constitute major changes to the game, but what the heck... I'll throw it out for your amusement anyway:

The ability to set orders for X# of years in advance. It would be nice to be able to set some long term plans that would not need to be messed with (unless the circumstances warented it) and just let the game run its course. This would alleviate the need to micromanage so many things on a per turn basis, and free me up to soak in the overal scope of my campaign.

Several things would need to be implemented in order for this to happen:

1) A production queue for both normal units and heroes. Additional information might be needed when generating heroes such as "Have all casters produced here set to research," or "send this hero to X's army"

2) The ability to script an army's movement for several turns in advance. Even if an army can only move one strategic space per turn I'd like to be able to plot its course over several turns. Assuming that all goes well, then I'd just let the army continue on its way. If something goes bad, well then the player can step in and change orders.

2B) Related to the above it might be interesting if armies that could move more than one strategic space per turn would actually be able to move through multiple enemy territories (conquering as they go). A fast strong army might be able to inflict vast amounts of damage through undefended enemy territory.

3) The ability to script a hero's movement and actions in a dynamic way. What do I mean by this? Say you have a main army out in the field somewhere that you want to keep supplied with fresh troops. Script a hero to goto your fortress, pick up troops, and then goto the army (wherever that might be) and drop them off.


That's all for now. In addition to reducing micromanagement, I think that these types of changes would also make MP campaigns a little friendlier/more forgiving. Say for instance that for some reason you weren't able to make your turn before DomII auto generates. Well, you might be ok if you had scripted your dominion for several turns in advance. This could also help to jump start a game. Players could plan for several years in advance and then quickly host through the first X# of months.

[fahdiz]

Originally posted by Argitoth:
The #1 feature for me would be "HOLD AND FIRE" YOU STUPID ARCHERS, don't stupidly run up to firing range, wait for them to come to you, for goodness sakes, why are archers so stupid? Someone tell me please before I go on an archer killing spree. Oh wait, I don't need to. They die enough as it is. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That's awfully strange. I don't tend to have much problem with archers dying, nor routing. Where do you place them in the squad?

[Peter Ebbesen]

Wish #1: Changing Tactical Orders Should Never Cancel Strategic Movement Orders*

* Though adding new troops with shorter move/different movement abilities is allowed to do so, if, and only if, the new troop composition is unable to obey the old order.


Occasionally, when I set new tactical orders for a commander (e.g. spells, attack, hold & attack &etc), the game cancels any current movement order for the commander and his army on the strategic map.

The two areas of functinality have NOTHING to do with each other. There is no possible change in a commander's tactical orders that can influence its strategic movement orders, so it makes absolutely no sense to cancel the strategic movement order. The current functionality has no benefits whatsoever, but does increase the number of errors made (armies not participating in a planned fight because of Last-minute changes to the tactical orders being the most common cause) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon8.gif

It may be that it is simply a case of click-through - i.e. the click on the exit-button when closing the army setup screen counting as an additional click on the game screen, as this problem does not arise all the time - but it is incredibly frustrating when it happens.

[ March 10, 2004, 22:47: Message edited by: Peter Ebbesen ]

[Argitoth]

Originally posted by fahdiz:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Originally posted by Argitoth:
The #1 feature for me would be "HOLD AND FIRE" YOU STUPID ARCHERS, don't stupidly run up to firing range, wait for them to come to you, for goodness sakes, why are archers so stupid? Someone tell me please before I go on an archer killing spree. Oh wait, I don't need to. They die enough as it is. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That's awfully strange. I don't tend to have much problem with archers dying, nor routing. Where do you place them in the squad? </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I actually don't have much of a problem with it either, but I still badly want it. Instead of Hold and Attack for my spear/javelin infantry, I'd like Hold and Fire. It would make them more effective. That way they fire if they can and they don't attack the enemy if they still have javelins left (like in Hold and Attack)

[Chimpman]

I'd also like to see combat orders like "Retreat if outnumbered 2-1" or "retreat if outnumbered 3-1", etc...

A commander should know when to leave the field.

[WraithLord]

Is there a central place for the wish list?

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by izaqyos:
Is there a central place for the wish list? <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">This one seems pretty good. St. Patrick was updating the list for awhile (scroll back thru this to see it) and was doing a good job of shortening, classifying, and marking complete on the various requests.

[Vicious Love]

Here's a minor and relatively feasible wish, for a change:
I'm a big fan of toying with site frequency, research speed and world richness. Just a few minor changes in any of those scales is enough to drastically change the nature of the game. I've noticed, however, that even in Ulm-friendly, low magic games, blood magic is still almost as powerful as ever(Blood slaves are just as easy to come by, and there's only one school to research).
The ability to change a scenario's "blood slave frequency", default 100, to 200(Twice as many blood slaves per slave captured), 0(Blood slaves extinct) and anything in between would be nice.
Of course, I imagine this could be tricky, as the smallest possible unit of a blood slave is a blood slave. Rather than messing with quantum slavery, I suppose we could make blood magic cost more slaves, though this leads to even more problems... did I say this was feasible? My bad.
Then again, some players might be happy with a simple percentile reduction of the number of blood slaves captured, rounded down, so that scouts/low level mages without SDRs would not even be capable of blood hunting in low-blood eras. That seems doable to me.
Of course, this might be missing the essential stylistic quality of blood mojo. If Vampire: the Masquerade has taught us anything, it's that blood is the only magic that never wanes, and that trenchcoats are the greatest thing since sunglasses-by-night.

[st.patrik]

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Originally posted by izaqyos:
Is there a central place for the wish list? <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">This one seems pretty good. St. Patrick was updating the list for awhile (scroll back thru this to see it) and was doing a good job of shortening, classifying, and marking complete on the various requests. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">erm...yes I kinda stopped updating the list, since it was getting so incredibly long.

[Ice_Sickle]

I'll limit my list (for emphasis). This has already been mentioned but a pretender management system is needed, badly. The current system allows only one pretender per race and is completely blind. Without entering a game you can't view the pretender. I started a multiplayer game a little while ago and I wanted to use the pretender I had created but add a password. In order to do that I had to recreate him. So I fire up a game and inspect my pretender and write down his magic levels, the nature of my dominion and the castle I'm using, exit and then recreate the same thing with a password. That's insane. I'm sitting in front of a 2.5Ghz information management machine and I'm writing stuff down to enter elsewhere!

There should be a screen for managing pretenders -- up to 20 pretenders per race --that allows me to view all races and all pretenders on a screen. By right clicking on a pretender it shows me all the attributes and my notes I wrote that describe why I set up what I did and some basic strategy notes. I should be able to copy pretenders, change attibutes and do either a "save" or "save as..." When I am looking at joining/starting a game I should be able to access the pretender management screen to select not only the race but which pretender I want to use.

The only other thing that really drives me nuts is the network host screen. On my machine (Radeon 9600) the graphics for the flags only works the first time. After an alt-tab it goes to blocks and letters instead of flags with and without "X's". Half the time when I try and maximize it, it changes my screen res, turns black for a second, back to desktop and reduced res, back to black back to desktop and regular res -- the screen never gets up. There should be a simple text based server screen that gives me the information the current screen does.

It would be great if I could hover the mouse over the entry in the taskbar and it would give me a text window that describes what turn it is and who has and who has not completed their turn.


Ice

[Gandalf Parker]

There is a third party program which handles most of your god requests. It runs in java but does offer multiple god saves and multiple game saves. I dont use it, I think its on Arryns web page. Ido the same thing with manual copy commands or using the --preexec switch.

The text going back to letters can be avoided by not left-clicking it when its on the bar. Right-click and choose restore

And there is a text server mode.

[LintMan]

My (rather large) wish list, broken into a few categories:

Battle viewer wishlist:
- The f and n keys are a big improvement to speed up battles (thanks!), but I'd still love to see an r key to "rewind" the battle 1 turn at a time.
- I've love some options to turn on more verbose text play by play of what is happenning in the battle. Ie: instead of just "Luigi casts Fireball", the next line would be "2 militia killed, 1 damaged". I'd even like to see text play-by-play for missile fire and melee attacks; it wouldn't have to be for every unit, but just per group. ie: maybe "Archers fire shortbows at heavy cavalry" and "Wolves attack light infantry".
- It'd be nice to be able to look at a unit and have some idea what its group morale status was, perhaps a small bar that shrinks as its group morale drops.
- How about a toggle to display their health/fatigue bars above units heads (like in RTS games)? This would beat the heck out of having to click on each unit to know all their health status.
- Another nice RTS-ism would be if little numbers floated over the heads of units as they took damage.
- A lot of the negative effects that a unit can get in combat don't show seem to up in the unit information window (I'm thinking stuff like cold effect, on fire, entangled/netted, etc)
- It'd be nice if there was a way to highlight all the commanders (both sides). Some of them completely blend into the crowd so you have to hunt for them, particularly if you're new to the game or just unfamiliar with the race.

Monthly Messages list wishlist:
- fix the "Goto Province" bug, where it is broken for certain events (such as assasinations)
- Assasination and Castle battle notices should give battle result reports in the same way as regular battles. (ie: who won, and how many units lost on each side)
- Some Messages are very, very generic; more detail would be helpful: Say how many gems were found in the gem finding events, which global enchantment was cast (I don't think it says in some cases), and which global enchantment got bumped, if one did.
- It'd be interesting to see in the battle result reports how many provincial defense units were killed (listed separatedly from non-pd).
- It'd be very nice if the battle reports listed the number of units that fled the battle on both sides, and if those units on either side died while fleeing.
- It'd be awesome if the battle results report was able to show which commanders/units were lost (in a clickable fashion to bring up their info), rather than just numbers. Not as nice, but still good would be if the report could provide a text list of commander names and which/how many units were killed.

UI wishlist:
- Show a unit's upkeep cost in its unit info window.
- Add a 'disband' button to the unit info window (or somewhere else) to dismiss units you no longer want to pay for.
- It'd be nice to have a window with an upkeep cost breakdown: per province: the cost of every mage/commander, and every group of non-commanders.
- Scrollable windows should all support the PgUp/PgDn keys, as well as the cursor keys to scroll them.
- It'd be nice if things like the exit button and your gem totals (on the spell ritual lists) were part of the window frame and did not scroll with the rest of the window contents, so you don't have to scroll around to find them.
- In the army setup screen, it'd be nice if you could (optionally) have all wounded/afflicted units show a little "w" (or a heart) under them, so it'd be easier to find and group them. I know that the w key selects wounded, but it only works for the current group, not for the whole army screen, and it leaves the originally selected unit highlighted even if it isn't wounded.
- I'd love to see map icons (like the temple/castle ones) for laboratories, and for scouts/spys/assasins in enemy territory.
- It'd be nice if province name and assorted info (ie: population, ownership), gotten from scouting/spying was remembered after the scout/spy leaves the area. Maybe it could be "ghosted", to indicate the information might have changed since you no longer have a direct observer.
- If you select a ritual spell that you cannot afford, or which your mage cannot cast, the window closes without any warning that your selection was invalid. I believe this is also true for magic items you can't afford to forge. It'd be nice if there was a little popup warning you about this.
- If you let your magic item treasury fill up, further forged items get lost without warning. It's be nice if the treasury couldn't fill up, or if you got a warning about this. (Yes, this isn't a common problem, but late game if you're forging tons of stuff, it can happen).

Gameplay stuff:
- It'd be nice if routed units on the victor's side "came back", rather than getting scattered. Or at least, if it worked that way for units ordered to fire and retreat or cast spells and retreat.
- It'd be cool if units "with their backs up against the wall" in a surrounded province knew that routing means certain doom, and had a slight "we'll go down fighting" morale boost.
- It'd prefer to see "auto death after 40 rounds of combat" be changed to auto retreat, and the round limit increased, especially for castle battles, which can drag on.
- It'd be nice if archers and mages became more conservative about potential friendly fire when they are going after already-routed targets. It seems the friendly fire deaths to my melee units get worse at that point than any other time, which seems senseless.
- I've seen Groups of units blithely chase a routed group right past a crowd of non-routed archers that were drilling it ruthlessly. It'd be nice that if a group's target routes, it would reprioritize its targets to go after non-routed enemies first to minimize casualties. (I can see cases where "keep them from fleeing at any cost" would be preferable, but I think the generally preferable case would be to minimize your own casualties.)
- more flexible game creation options: change pretenter starting point amount (via mod?), split out "rich" map setting to a separate resources and gold, and have a few levels of setting ie: .75x/1x/1.5x/2x for gold/resource availability. Allow the max number of global enchantments to be set to any number (including "unlimited")
- allow the path cost multiplier for pretender creation to be modded (ie: instead of 8 per level, allow modding it to 6, or 10).
- allow the individual scale costs to be modded. (Ie, make, say, "order" cost more, or "luck" cost less, or possibly even allow negative scales to pay more or less than the positive side does).
- it might be interesting if province defense that successfully flees to another province either became part of the player's regular army, or increased the pd of that province, rather than just disappearing. (Not sure if that'd be unbalancing, though).
- I know Dom2 is PBEM and all, but how about throwing us single-player-only people a bone and adding save/reload functionality for SP only? The third-party domsaver tool is very nice, but I hate alt-tabbing out every turn to use it to save my game, and I prefer not to play in a window, either. Even just having a fixed number of, say, 10 save-game "slots" would be better than nothing.

AI wishlist:
- The AI's need to build castles!
- It'd be nice to have AI "personalities" and/or customizable/moddable behavior
- Any other general improvements to the AI would be nice - I do SP only, so the AI's all I got!
- It'd be nice to be able to toggle between AI and human control of any player, at any time (at least for SP games).

[Aetius]

I would like to see provinces that produce units which are costly in terms of resources have enough resources to produce at least one unit per two turns. There are few things more frustrating in the early game then conquering a feudal province which normally results in half of your army being anhilated to find that you can build one knight in oh ten turns. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon8.gif

[ May 10, 2004, 10:51: Message edited by: Aetius ]

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by Aetius:
I would like to see provinces that produce units which are costly in terms of resources have enough resources to produce at least one unit per two turns. There are few things more frustrating in the early game then conquering a feudal province which normally results in half of your army being anhilated to find that you can build one knight in oh ten turns. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon8.gif <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">But the advantage of some of the nations is their spys or information granting dominion which allows them to make better choices in that area

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Aetius:
I would like to see provinces that produce units which are costly in terms of resources have enough resources to produce at least one unit per two turns. There are few things more frustrating in the early game then conquering a feudal province which normally results in half of your army being anhilated to find that you can build one knight in oh ten turns. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon8.gif <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well, build a fortress there. That'll improve resource production. You can't build much of any independent unit if you don't have a fortress to improve production (except for commanders/mages).

Feudal provinces, in my experience, at least reliably have plenty of population, which makes them good for gold and supply even if they are resource poor.

You can also estimate the resource richness of a province by its terrain. Forests and mountains have more resources than farmlands or plains.

[wombatsSAR]

One of the things I see lacking with the stealthy armies is some equivalence to an ambush. Sure, one can try to sneak some army around behind enemy lines and then pop-up and attack, but the attack is just another set piece attack as any other. This is not how a stealthy army would attack. I would like to see would be some level of "ambush" capability. Basically, it would be similar to the "wolves from the woods" sort of attack that the ***** queen gets or it could be some number of moves during which the enemy army doesn't get to attack or maybe some combination of the two. This is not to say that it would be an automatic attack in this manner - the level of surprise should be moderated by ... the number of scouts with the army, the number of light troops/light cav - historically, that was one of their big jobs: being the screening force. For a prepared force, the ambushing army ends up in a setpiece battle - or maybe even counterambushed, or it just cuts down on the turns of inactivity by the prepared force.

For the more typical ICU/UC me battles, a stealthy force could be added either from the side, or again, a couple of turns of combat with no response (rather, in this case, I think I prefer the side attack option). If the stealthy army is spotted, it is either just shoved in with the other army or it gets attacked separately.

For a "pie-in-the-sky" implementation, the stealthy army could have an option to "raid" as an order, with a corresponding "brigands or raiders in province X" report on the message screen. Another additional order would be "Harass" wherein the stealthy army tries to pick-off stragglers from the opposition. This could be literally losing some troops or it could mean loss of supplies in a province. As a balance to these orders, I'd suggest the stealthy army be easier to counter attack when executing these orders - they have a higher profile.

[Slygar]

Lintman summed up just about everything I would like to see in Dom2 - nothing wacky or too far out, just a bunch of UI improvements and mod/option functions. I suggest the devs print that list he made and put it under their pillow, so all those things seep into their minds. It's a whole bunch of little irritations that do add up eventually.

As for this..: "
- If you select a ritual spell that you cannot afford, or which your mage cannot cast, the window closes without any warning that your selection was invalid. I believe this is also true for magic items you can't afford to forge. It'd be nice if there was a little popup warning you about this."

Just be glad you can directly target a province with a ritual now. I cant say how many times in Dom 1 I went to cast Seeking Arrow or something at a province, realized I forget to get the province number, exited and checked it, saw some army I had forgotten to move or something, went back to cast the spell, realized I'd forgetten the number, and so on..

Just to add my own bit to the wishlist, a "Forge Monthly Item" command would help me out a lot.

[ May 10, 2004, 21:51: Message edited by: Slygar ]

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Slygar:
Just be glad you can directly target a province with a ritual now.<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'd also like to be able to use the province number as well as directly clicking, since there are times when you want to send multiple spells at a province that will take a long time to scroll to.

[Gateway103]

Originally posted by Slygar:

As for this..: "
- If you select a ritual spell that you cannot afford, or which your mage cannot cast, the window closes without any warning that your selection was invalid. I believe this is also true for magic items you can't afford to forge. It'd be nice if there was a little popup warning you about this."
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Not completely true. For example, Pollux the Arch Theurg with 3A1W3S4H attempted to cast Ritual Spell "The Wraith of God" (5S3A), which he obviously doesn't have the level for. A screen pops up when clicking on the ritual, saying "The ritual is too complex for this mage".

What is true is that no error is given if you don't have enough gem but have enough path. This applies to Item Forging as well.

On the other hand, if you do not have the level to forge an item, that item simply won't appear in the "Forge Magic Item" window even if you have the Construction level needed. E.g. you won't see "Boots of Quickness", a Construction 6 item, despite having Cons 6 researched, if you use the Forge command with a Mage without path in Water. The exception is with "The Forge of Ancient" global enchantment, where you can see and forge items that have requirement at most 1 level above the forging mage in each path.

So not having the path either gives an error message, or in the case of magic items, th\at said item won't appear in the list of forgeable items. No error is given, however, in both cases if insufficient gems are present.

-Gateway103

[ May 10, 2004, 22:14: Message edited by: Gateway103 ]

[Aetius]

Originally posted by Chris Byler:
<SNIP>You can also estimate the resource richness of a province by its terrain. Forests and mountains have more resources than farmlands or plains. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I was aware of that and I suspect that it may be part of the problem since it seems that most of the Feudal provinces are on grasslands, thus low resources. Of course this is only based upon my observations I have not tested this hypothesis.

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:
But the advantage of some of the nations is their spys or information granting dominion which allows them to make better choices in that area <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Good advice. However my intent was to express that I think it is logical that provinces that are capable of producing resource costly units have adequate resources to do so. Not necessarily on a 1-1 unit per turn ratio but 1-2 or even 1-3 would be reasonable. What I object to are situations were you have 1-6 or greater ratio of units per turn to build a knight.

[PvK]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Originally posted by Slygar:
Just be glad you can directly target a province with a ritual now.<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'd also like to be able to use the province number as well as directly clicking, since there are times when you want to send multiple spells at a province that will take a long time to scroll to. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Ok. In the meantime, how about just zooming out the map so the target doesn't require scrolling?

PvK

[PvK]

Some people may accuse me of beating a dead horse, but hey, I have a fresh dead horse to beat - the one that was just shot dead along with my elite heavy cavalry while they were pursuing ONE LIMPING MILITIA MAN, by their own men.

Enemy losses: 3 leaders, 45 men
Own losses: 0 leaders, 2 men DUE TO FRIENDLY FIRE

Argh!

Wish: AI does use Accuracy <100 ranged attacks on targets that have friendly units near them that have any appreciable chance of getting hit by accident!

PvK

[PvK]

Originally posted by Aetius:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Originally posted by Chris Byler:
<SNIP>You can also estimate the resource richness of a province by its terrain. Forests and mountains have more resources than farmlands or plains. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I was aware of that and I suspect that it may be part of the problem since it seems that most of the Feudal provinces are on grasslands, thus low resources. Of course this is only based upon my observations I have not tested this hypothesis.

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:
But the advantage of some of the nations is their spys or information granting dominion which allows them to make better choices in that area <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Good advice. However my intent was to express that I think it is logical that provinces that are capable of producing resource costly units have adequate resources to do so. Not necessarily on a 1-1 unit per turn ratio but 1-2 or even 1-3 would be reasonable. What I object to are situations were you have 1-6 or greater ratio of units per turn to build a knight. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">However if you build a proper fortress there, then they are generally able to produce at least one knight per turn, especially if you own the surrounding provinces. To me, it seems reasonable and interesting that you can't just easily create knights from farmland as soon as you've taken over a province with no military infrastructure.

PvK

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by Aetius:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:
But the advantage of some of the nations is their spys or information granting dominion which allows them to make better choices in that area <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Good advice. However my intent was to express that I think it is logical that provinces that are capable of producing resource costly units have adequate resources to do so. Not necessarily on a 1-1 unit per turn ratio but 1-2 or even 1-3 would be reasonable. What I object to are situations were you have 1-6 or greater ratio of units per turn to build a knight. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I understand that. Im not sure of the logic. Rarely is a province not able to create a unit. They just arent able to do it as fast as you would like. Since the indepts have been there awhile I dont see illogic in them having made those troops. And I think there is a resource switch on making the game that you can turn up.

But what to you is an irritation, to me is a tactic. If it has low return (low resources, low gold, no strategic advantage, not next to my castle) and has high cost (dangerous troops guarding it, cant seem to get my dominion pushed into it) then I would leave it there to be a problem for my enemys.

A great strategic chokepoint is to find a province that is worth taking, sandwiched between two that are not worth taking. Leave them there and buildup the chokepoint until later in the game when you have pushed well past that point. Make the indepts the easier route to you. Force the other guy to hit them then strike when he is weakened and sitting in a province he cant rebuild army in.

[ May 11, 2004, 20:28: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

[Aetius]

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:

I understand that. Im not sure of the logic. Rarely is a province not able to create a unit. They just arent able to do it as fast as you would like. Since the indepts have been there awhile I dont see illogic in them having made those troops. And I think there is a resource switch on making the game that you can turn up.

But what to you is an irritation, to me is a tactic. If it has low return (low resources, low gold, no strategic advantage, not next to my castle) and has high cost (dangerous troops guarding it, cant seem to get my dominion pushed into it) then I would leave it there to be a problem for my enemys.

A great strategic chokepoint is to find a province that is worth taking, sandwiched between two that are not worth taking. Leave them there and buildup the chokepoint until later in the game when you have pushed well past that point. Make the indepts the easier route to you. Force the other guy to hit them then strike when he is weakened and sitting in a province he cant rebuild army in. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I think we will have to agree to disagree and leave it at that. The title of the thread was wishlist, this is my wish. I seem to be in the minority so I will respect the opinion of the majority and not bring this up again.

To PvK call it luck of the draw but in most of the games that I play I end up with a feudal province next to my capital. Regarding the advice of building a castle to ensure high resource output that would depend upon the race I was playing. If cavalry poor then I probably would. The majority of the time I tend to place castles on resource rich areas to maximize national troop building capacity.

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by Aetius:
I think we will have to agree to disagree and leave it at that. The title of the thread was wishlist, this is my wish. I seem to be in the minority so I will respect the opinion of the majority and not bring this up again. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">My apologies. You are quite right. Your fine and Im out of place. This is the wishlist thread and you posted quite nicely. Im afraid others of late have put me into a debate mode.

[mivayan]

On the select nations screen, I have to click 5 times on a nation to set it to impossible AI. It would be nice if right clicking did the opposite of left clicking so I could right click once to chanege a player from inactive to impossbile AI.

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by mivayan:
On the select nations screen, I have to click 5 times on a nation to set it to impossible AI. It would be nice if right clicking did the opposite of left clicking so I could right click once to chanege a player from inactive to impossbile AI. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Im surprised no one ever bothered to write a "default" game starter. It would be easy to do. Something with a config file so I can say who I usually play against, their settings the map, everything. Then if I want to start a new game I can just click. The initial settings when its downloaded could be set for a newbie learning game which would make it handy to recommend for the people who ask about recommended newbie settings also.

[Taqwus]

A way to automatically set tax rates based on unrest would cut down a fair bit of micro perhaps.

[HotNifeThruButr]

I want to see all races with an ability to dispel magic.

Instead of it requiring 3 astral levels, maybe just three levels of anyone ONE path, or even, say, 5 levels of any paths.

And/or, dispel can use any type of gem and blood slaves.

[Norfleet]

Considering how much it will cost to dispel anything, the cost of empowering somebody to do it is a relatively small fraction of the cost, which only gets smaller if you can roll an astral random, empower to S2, and then forge a Starshine.

[Stormbinder]

Originally posted by PvK:


Enemy losses: 3 leaders, 45 men
Own losses: 0 leaders, 2 men DUE TO FRIENDLY FIRE

PvK <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I like this suggestion. It should be nice to see how much troops you have lost due to your own helpfull mages, archers, area-raiating troops, whatever, and you could use this feedback to improve your troops position/orders. Also it should be rather simple to implement.

I also would like to see the numerci results of my opponents battles (when I can directly observe them), and of course the numeric resutls of my storms/castle defenses.

[ May 16, 2004, 05:09: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

[Norfleet]

I don't think that was an actual suggestion, Storm. I think the suggestion was more towards the reduction of friendly fire.

[Belcarl]

This post has gotten to be pretty long and its possible this has been mentioned before.

I'd like to have a better set of Diplomacy options with the computer. Trying to court and bribe your enemies and even forge temporary alliances would be a great improvment.

[Ice_Sickle]

I'd really like to see a better text message interface that would include:

1) The ability to review previously sent and received Messages.

2) The ability to move the cursor around in the message to edit it.

3) Copy, paste, etc. functions

4) The ability to send the same message to a selected recipient list.

5) The ability to have the message up and have it be transparent so names of nations could be seen. Currently it's a bit of a pain to send a message to another player about a group of certain territories. I have to write down the names and then switch to the text interface type them into the message. It would be nice if I could alternate between map view and text message or see them both at the same time so I could reference the map while I am typing.

I guess that's about it.

[HotNifeThruButr]

Some sort of Earth and Blood nation/mage so that I can field my favorite demon, demon knights!

[Phoenix-D]

Originally posted by PvK:
Some people may accuse me of beating a dead horse, but hey, I have a fresh dead horse to beat - the one that was just shot dead along with my elite heavy cavalry while they were pursuing ONE LIMPING MILITIA MAN, by their own men.
PvK <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Not a dead horse. This peeved me so much I gave up on the demo. What's the point of all the fancy stuff if you can't get your units to use it without killing themselves anyway?

[Stormbinder]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
I don't think that was an actual suggestion, Storm. I think the suggestion was more towards the reduction of friendly fire. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">If it was not than I make it to be a suggestion. After all, it should be easy to tell for example the man riped to peaces by enemy werewolfs, from the one who looks almost alive, if not for the few "friendly" arrows growing from his back. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif And for newbie players, as well for experienced one who don't want (ir din;t have time to in blitz) to see every battle, it would be nice feedback.


And of course I see no reasons not to count corpses after the siege, as an opposite to regular battle.

[ May 16, 2004, 12:14: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

[tinkthank]

My Hit List, scaled in order of what-I-think-is-important divided by resources-needed-to-implement-(guessing-only):

1. Rehiring Mercs set to half price by default
2. "Goto Commander" works for reports on finding sneaking commanders and assasins
3. Full battle reports after Storming Castle
4. BugFix: Call of the Wilds forest only
5. "Throw Away" option in "Transfer Item" screen set off somewhat from "put into lab"
6. Icons added ( see this thread (http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=74;t=001872#000000) )
EDIT: 6a. f12 scrolls through forts; f11 scrolls through hidden/stealthy commanders; f10 switches between prophet and pretender; f9 scrolls through mages with forge bonus
7. Interface: f5-Research lets you define research numbers per number pad (instead of +/- clicking)
8. Strategic AI: Fort-building Algorithm
9. Strategic AI: Troop-building Algorithm
10. Interface: Merc Bids defined per number pad instead of +/- clicking
11. Tactical AI: Communion Master only if Communion Slave not self available
12. Tactical AI: Will let routing Independents flee (will not attack routing Independents to reduce friendly fire casualties and gem consumption)
13. Interface: From the "View Commander" (Inventory) screen, give us (a link to) the button "SET BATTLE ORDERS"!!
14. Interface / Tactical AI: In Spell Queue, all spells can be clicked either "disabled", "low priority", or "high priority"

[ May 17, 2004, 11:14: Message edited by: tinkthank ]

[johan osterman]

Originally posted by tinkthank:
...
12. Tactical AI: Will let routing Independents flee (will not attack routing Independents to reduce friendly fire casualties and gem consumption)
... <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">To me it comes across as very gamey, in a bad way, for the Tac AI to behave differently with independents and other enemies. It is not like the supposed commanders have any notion of independents being unable to regroup.

[tinkthank]

Originally posted by johan osterman:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Originally posted by tinkthank:
...
12. Tactical AI: Will let routing Independents flee (will not attack routing Independents to reduce friendly fire casualties and gem consumption)
... <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">To me it comes across as very gamey, in a bad way, for the Tac AI to behave differently with independents and other enemies. It is not like the supposed commanders have any notion of independents being unable to regroup. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">OK, fair enough.

[rabelais]

Don't know if there is one already, but it would be insanely great if there were a group search command (a la "w" for troops with afflictions) to tell me which troops are starving, so I can weed them out if going to somewhere with inadequate supply so as to minimze disease chance.

Think of it as triage for those who don't look like they can make another long march without going to for R+R. You can do it manually of course, but it's micromanagement hell.


Rabe the Recreation Counselor

[rabelais]

Hey, there is one already! Nice. Thanks so much to the devs. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Here's another wacky (i.e. obvious to the point of possibly being implemented already) idea:

I think right now the score graphs only show income from taxes, it might be a useful feature if they showed income from other sources as well, so that lucky folks, and (particularly) aggressive pillagers get outed as well.

Might help locate the castlers early so they can be negatively reinforced.

I don't like score graphs much, but if you're going to use them, they should be accurate and comprehensive in their full disclosure.

Does Clam income show up in the gem graphs, at the moment?


Rabe the Loophole Closer

[HotNifeThruButr]

Originally posted by johan osterman:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Originally posted by tinkthank:
...
12. Tactical AI: Will let routing Independents flee (will not attack routing Independents to reduce friendly fire casualties and gem consumption)
... <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">To me it comes across as very gamey, in a bad way, for the Tac AI to behave differently with independents and other enemies. It is not like the supposed commanders have any notion of independents being unable to regroup. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">This gives me an idea, what if Independants that flee successfully add to Unrest depending on unit cost in gold and resources? If a militia fled, you get, say, 1 extra point of unrest in that place. If I knight fled, you get, say 10.

[Aetius]

As part of a wish list I would like to see a new unit for Abyssia, the salamander rider. Abyssia really suffers, in my opinion, from the combination of no archers, no cavalry, and all heavy infantry. I feel this is especially the case when Abyssia is commanded by the AI. One of Abyssia's better units is the salamander, however these tend to have poor morale and break easily.

Therefore I propose, the salamander rider, it could be a Humanbred so as not to be too unbalanced, and perhaps no offensive weapon since it needs focus all it's effort on control it's steed, the salamander. Therefore you would have a salamander rider at cost 85 gold and 25 resources (special heat resistant armor and saddle) with a normal salamander stats but improved morale and maybe a weak one handed attack depending upon balance issues. Any thoughts? Unbalanced? Or just the cure for Abyssia?

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Aetius:
As part of a wish list I would like to see a new unit for Abyssia, the salamander rider. Abyssia really suffers, in my opinion, from the combination of no archers, no cavalry, and all heavy infantry.<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Archers are okay, but quickly become mostly useless. Abysia can get as many shortbow archers as they could ever want just from independent provinces. They really don't need cavalry, since they have devils.

One of Abyssia's better units is the salamander, however these tend to have poor morale and break easily.[/QUOTE}

They are also severely overpriced, extremely fragile, and become fatigued too quickly.

[QUOTE]Any thoughts? Unbalanced? Or just the cure for Abyssia?<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Abysia doesn't really need anything else, they have all the aspects they need for a powerful nation.

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
Abysia doesn't really need anything else, they have all the aspects they need for a powerful nation. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'd have to agree with Graeme that Abysia has all they need to be a powerful nation and are so. Salamanders are not that great, and don't seem to serve a real function. And perhaps they could be adjusted in order to have some sort of different use instead of a fragile, high priced, nearly never recruited cavalry.

But it isn't anywhere near a priority for balance. Abysia is just fine IMO.

[Chazar]

I'd enjoy a switch to set the tactical display to the target destination:

I often start my attacks/defense from different regions, and it is very difficult to set up all troops so that they cooperate well. Therefore it would be nice if a units tactical setup would not show the troops which are currently in the same region of the unit, but all units that remain or are currently ordered to move into the destination region of a unit.

I know that troops might get intercepted by the enemy, but usually my troops fight all together as I planned, and defending does always succeed due to the move evaluation order. So I think that this would really simplify things for me. Currently I use a non-permanent marker on the screen to coordinate my attacks, but this is kinda unconvenient...

[Aetius]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Originally posted by Aetius:
As part of a wish list I would like to see a new unit for Abyssia, the salamander rider. Abyssia really suffers, in my opinion, from the combination of no archers, no cavalry, and all heavy infantry.<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Archers are okay, but quickly become mostly useless. Abysia can get as many shortbow archers as they could ever want just from independent provinces. They really don't need cavalry, since they have devils.

One of Abyssia's better units is the salamander, however these tend to have poor morale and break easily.[/QUOTE}

They are also severely overpriced, extremely fragile, and become fatigued too quickly.

[QUOTE]Any thoughts? Unbalanced? Or just the cure for Abyssia?<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Abysia doesn't really need anything else, they have all the aspects they need for a powerful nation. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I did solicit opinions and thoughts, yours are noted, clearly we are at a point of disagreement. However, you did not address my remark regarding the AI and Abyssia. From my own eperiences I have yet to see an AI Abyssia rampaging with large numbers of devils, devils being your proposed substitute for cavalry. Even playing Abyssia I have yet to get a powerful blood magic economy, but perhaps this is more a function of my inexperience with playing this nation and blood magic in general.

I am more of the Gandalf Parker school of thought and there are no useless units or summons. I have found that if placed correctly salamanders can provide a devasting attack to open up the ranks of oppossing heavy cavalry or heavy infantry. My only problem is their low morale.

The only problem with independent archers or any independents for that matter and Abyssia is the heat generation. If you do not micromanage, or if you are careless you will end up roasting your own independents, this is particularly frustrating with blood slaves.

The use of Devils for Abysia in the stance of AI is not a balance issue at all, but an AI issue.

I did solicit opinions and thoughts, yours are noted, clearly we are at a point of disagreement. However, you did not address my remark regarding the AI and Abyssia. From my own eperiences I have yet to see an AI Abyssia rampaging with large numbers of devils, devils being your proposed substitute for cavalry. Even playing Abyssia I have yet to get a powerful blood magic economy, but perhaps this is more a function of my inexperience with playing this nation and blood magic in general.<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I feel this may be your inexperience with the nation. Blood and the economy around it are a more subtle aspect than some of the more visible gem economy. Abysia has a somewhat difficult decision in the fact that their troops are so expensive while blood does take a portion of economy, but this is true with almost any blood nation. Abysia just happens to be the one it is most visible because of the high caliber of their troops making them expensive.

The only problem with independent archers or any independents for that matter and Abyssia is the heat generation. If you do not micromanage, or if you are careless you will end up roasting your own independents, this is particularly frustrating with blood slaves.<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">This is true of quite a few nations (I.E. Incompatability and having to micromanage in order to be successful). I don't feel balance should be considered for the "careless" or those particular reasons. Dom2 is not idiot friendly in any of it's game mechanics, why change it so that it is with one nation which will in turn make it extremely powerful.

[Cainehill]

Originally posted by Aetius:
However, you did not address my remark regarding the AI and Abyssia. From my own eperiences I have yet to see an AI Abyssia rampaging with large numbers of devils, devils being your proposed substitute for cavalry. Even playing Abyssia I have yet to get a powerful blood magic economy, but perhaps this is more a function of my inexperience with playing this nation and blood magic in general.<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I haven't managed a blood economy even with Mictlan http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif but let me assure you, I've just had a human Abysia opponent overwhelming my Vanheim with devils, primarily. I'd have to agree that Abysia doesn't really need cavalry. Unless their blood magic is taken away. (hopeful smile) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

The only problem with independent archers or any independents for that matter and Abyssia is the heat generation. If you do not micromanage, or if you are careless you will end up roasting your own independents, this is particularly frustrating with blood slaves.

Yeh, it's kind of understandable with the independent troops, imo, but having the blood slaves all get frozen or burned up by the mages who in theory intend to use them is ... insane.

But then, that's why we have great Artificial Insanity in Dom2. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif