Wishlist for September

[Endoperez]

Many thanks for Illwinter about the game, the updates we have gotten and the wishes that have been implemented, including modding commands and fast forward in battles.

This is compilation of some wishlists that have been flowing around. Many date back to February, and I don't think many of these are newer than three months... I don't think this should be made sticky, as a sticky should have only one post and would have to be updated regularly.

Suggestions that weren't on the original list in February... Some are mine, most from various threads:

* key shortcuts for 'Fire', 'c'losest, 'a'rchers etc.
* showing upkeep/ recruitement price in the unit info screen
* page that shows upkeep of all units, divided by type (ie. X archers -> Y gp)
* symbol showing that a commander cannot have any more troops (differently colored swrods?)
* when choosing the commander to give an item to, grey out those that cannot use it (no appopriate slots free)
* giving commands for fufure turns, for moving armies and maybe some other things too
* tactical command: retreat if outnumbered x-to-1
* blood slave frequency changeable or linked to magic site frequency
* make AI do your turn
* turn counter visible in battles
* ambush for stealth armies: attacking from the side of the enemy armies instead of front
* forge monthly item-command
* ability to choose target province (for spells) by number
* Dispel shouldn't be unique for Astral
* [Shark Sandwich]'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.

TinkThank, I think:

* "Goto Commander" works for reports on finding sneaking commanders and assasins
* Interface: f5-Research lets you define research numbers per number pad (instead of +/- clicking)
* Interface: Merc Bids definable per number pad instead of +/- clicking
* Tactical AI: Communion Master only if Communion Slave not self available
* from the "View Commander" (Inventory) screen, link to battle orders
* ability to find cursed/ starving/ horrormarked etc. easily
* graphs showing (gem) income from events, items etc.
* unrest increased for independant that fled succesfylly, number dependant from gold/resource cost of the unit that retreated
* ability to choose mutliple provinces for battle commands screen for greater accuracy in dual-attacks
* ability to see what battle screen would look like in the beginning of a fight with your troops in it
* ability to protect blood slaves from heat of the abysian warlock leading them
-new item giving the salves lead by the wielder have all the resistances that the wielder has
* symbols for more abilities, like spy, sailing, ability to heal...
* map overlays for magic sites, sitesearches, pd,
* possibility to restart turn from cratch and/or from the situation you started from, preferably near the exit with/without saving options
* ability to choose things in main menu by letters (create 'G'od, 'C'reate game, 'P'lay...), and in host/exit screen too
* being able to Create god, game and go to play it without going back to the main menu in between


StPatrik's compiling of wishes:


Interface Changes
* Message when a mage forges an item
* 'Lab' filter for main map (like fortress and temple)
* Darker colours/textures in unit displays [to make sprites easier to see/look better]
* Alignment of stats in unit info screens [i.e. in a column]
* 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
* 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 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/ page up and page down 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 physical form of 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 (currently you can only access it by 'M' key

Feature Tweaks
* 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
* Allow finer adjustment of map richness levels
* Add separate gold richness and resource richness settings for new games
* Soldiers with "guard commander" orders fire missiles if a target is within range
* Freak Lord should get a cross-breeding bonus


New Features
* Pre-made pretenders for new players
* Quick start game for new players
* Research point 'lock' for schools of magic, or other way to easily manage two or more paths being reseached at the same time
* Random nation AI opponents
* Map and Scenario triggers
* 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 Stay Behind Troops 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
* Ability to store more than one god for each nation
* Search function for items on commanders
* Battle Sim
* Enabling/disabling spells [being able to indicate which spells your mage should pick from]
* Rework of province defense
* Different types of battle terrain

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 (I thought Domes were enough, but...)
* More global enchantments

Questionable Suggestions
* Alliance possible between Human and AI, rather than just between AIs (note this is different from the request for diplomacy)
* 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



LintMan's wishlist(s), shortened and compacted:

Battle viewer wishlist:
- options to turn on more verbose text of what is happenning in the battle. Ie: "Luigi casts Fireball, 2 militia killed, 1 damaged".
- ability to view unit/squad morale
- toggle to display units' health/fatigue bars above their heads
- small numbers over unit's heads shoving damage they received
- negative effects that a unit can get in combat being visible (entangled, webbed, in fire etc.)
- way to highlight all the commanders (both sides) in battle (no gameplay effect, only to find them from the crowd)

Monthly Messages list wishlist:
- fix the "Goto Province" bug, where it is broken for certain events (such as assasinations)
- Some Messages are very, very generic; more detail would be helpful:
how many gems were found in the gem finding events,
which global enchantment was cast (I don't think it says in some cases),
which global enchantment got bumped, if one did.
- battle reports listing the number of units that fled the battle (both sides), and if units of either side died while fleeing showing that too
- battle results report able to show which commanders/units were lost

UI wishlist:
- things like the exit button and gem totals (on the spell ritual lists)being part of the window frame and not scrolling with the window contents
- In the army setup screen, being able to show all the afflicted units without choosing them
- map icons (like the temple/castle ones) 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.
- 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.

Gameplay stuff:
- It'd be nice if routed units on the victor's side "came back", rather than getting scattered at surrounding provinces
- It'd be cool if units in a surrounded province knew that routing means certain doom, and had a slight morale boost.
- battle limits (death/retreat after xx turns) increased
- 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).
- 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? third-party aoo for this exists

AI wishlist:
- The AI's able to build castles
- AI "personalities" and/or customizable/moddable behavior
- ability to toggle AI/computer control for SP games


added 12th September:
-making armies consisting of only light cavalry move before armies consisting of other troop types
-rebalancing madcastling/raiding:
__*making it easier to catch raiders
__*making temple-burning take one turn
__*the light-cavalry update above
__*making it harder to fortify every province
-rebalancing the spell "False horror" (by increasing Air level needed or fatique cost)


18.9.04

-make bloodmages more willing to use their slaves than gem-using mages their gems Post#274072 (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showthreaded.php?Number=274072)
-make the game show the Version network host is using
-summon XXX (unique summoning spells) should have chance of changing ownership of a unit when all of them are already summoned (thread) (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showthreaded.php?Number=295853)
-new dome that does not block spells but tells you from which province the spell originated, possibly would only work if the spell got through other domes
-shapechanging activated by thing other than death/command (thread) (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showthreaded.php?Number=291998)


-one-way shapechange activated when unit is made prophet
-artifact pretender granting artifact-status to the wielder or the ability to mod it (thread) (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showthreaded.php?Number=294741)
-new pretenders (thread) (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showthreaded.php?Number=294741)
-make "pool slaves" -command not take slaves from commanders making blood sacrifice or let them take their slaves straight from lab
-decay affects more units than seems appopriate by description, it should say that decay effects non-living creatures too
-rebalance vampire lords', wraith lords' and maybe Fallen Angels' abilities to summon allies (eg. by population death) (thread) (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showthreaded.php?Number=294332)
-warning when commander's orders are canceled (list of situations) (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showthreaded.php?Number=295038)
-more random casting/moving etc. order (for DomIII)
-mod command #stoneform making unit immune to petrification (Bug: Origenes is petrified when going from stone to stone)

[Endoperez]

There, it seems it came out okay. Thanks for Gandalf for the idea... feel free to add your own ones. If someone would like to keep care of this monster, feel free but remember to feed it regularly with whatever you catch from these forums, as we don't want to let it die.

Heh, already edited it for the first time... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

Endoperez

[Gandalf Parker]

WOW. Thats the best first-effort Ive seen done on a wishlist.

Previous first efforts tended to start as a next-patch list, or a gripe list, or a demands list, or a fix-this list. You did no opinionated prioritizing. It only mentions fix/broke one time and I didnt find the wording at all questionable or challenging. I only quickly glanced at it but I didnt see anything worded in a way that forced the devs to agree or disagree with a request. VERY nicely done!

If no one messes it up I think this will be a tagged thread for the devs to visit. IMHO

[Lepakko]

that was.... ... .... realy nice.. i mean GREAT!!

i think if they made all that it will take long... but realy nice wishlist..

[Gandalf Parker]

Some of the items I have no problem being "desired features" but I would like to point them out as being possible now. For those who feel they are majorly important items and are willing to do abit to get them now. Maybe we could add a (3) after them to flag them as 3rd party capable.

* being able to Create god, game and go to play it without going back to the main menu in between

* Pre-made pretenders for new players

* Quick start game for new players

* Ability to store more than one god for each nation

* Battle Sim

- adding save/reload functionality for SP only

[Endoperez]

Heh, thanks! However, I only made five or so entries myself. I just copy-pasted the ideas of others, wrote some down from about dozen Posts two or three threads and posted it. But still not so bad, eh? ;D

It is quite easy to make pretenders, but making simple ones easily usable by newcomers is harder. If done officially after our forumites' ideas it wouldn't be too much of a problem, though.

My view of implementing it:
For demo-Abysia:
Special Moloch with Fire 6, Dominion 7, and pretty good scales. The trick is, instead (or in addition to) his description there are general gameplay tips and tricks. This would be easily done by a mod, but mods don't and shouldn't work with demo. The problem is in allowing it to be Abysia's pretender without it showing up in the pretender selection screen. I think Cheat Detection would notice it...

Quick-start game for new players:
Same way, but starting with maybe fourth turn and some general scripts already given to some units. I'm using Abysia as an example agian. One combat should be seen on the Messages, and in it Anathemant Salamander/Dragon participates and casts spells. The turn before a message should have been sent for everyone telling what the AS/AD did, what is the plan and what has already been done. Two Messages, the first being small story and second describing the gameplay effects would be even better.


About ability to store more than one god for each nation:
Everyone who reads this and has Excel or similar, go to SunrayBe's site and download the " An excel file to design and compare pretenders, by Schutzpat"! It uses Excel macros and OpenOffice does not seem to execute them properly. However, it lets you choose any pretender and theme available to man, magics and scales you wish as well as the castle you choose. Then it counts it together and shows wheter what you want is affordable. A great, great tool, or atleast great potential! Is it possible to do something along those lines but not requiring excel? Maybe something akin to the Online Grimoire.

I have been going to check Cherry's Battle Simulator for some time, but haven't had time. It only works and give hard numbers, and I presume you meant graphical one, but it is the closest we ahve not counting the one in Dom1.

[quantum_mechani]

I just have one suggestion, an all light cavalry army moving under the 'magical' movement stage (or possibly between the two stages). Oh, and one request is already solved; checking magic/undead/normal leadership.

Good list.

[Gandalf Parker]

Endoperez said:
It is quite easy to make pretenders, but making simple ones easily usable by newcomers is harder. If done officially after our forumites' ideas it wouldn't be too much of a problem, though.



Yep, we had a thread going on the subject once. The initial set would mostly keep people from being confused because the menu buttons "dont work" unless you use them in the right order (cant play game till you start game, cant start game till you make god). The pretenders provided dont have to be great. In fact if they spur the new user with an immeadiate feeling of "I can do better" then that would be fine. There was a project started (the first one listed at www.dom2minions.com (http://www.dom2minions.com) ) but nobody jumped up to help. Sometime I might finish it. It covers the starter game also.


About ability to store more than one god for each nation:



There are alot of ways it can be done. JohanK added the ability to do seperate directorys as an environment variable so that you can have different starter icons start the game using different directorys. Or batch files would work.


I have been going to check Cherry's Battle Simulator for some time, but haven't had time. It only works and give hard numbers, and I presume you meant graphical one, but it is the closest we ahve not counting the one in Dom1.



I did one also. Kindof. Its a mini map with an example of using it to test battles. It definetly could be improved but it does work pretty well for starting a quick game with any pretender/army/equipment set up in provinces next door to each other. At least it allows you to actually watch the battle in game but you have to read the PDF file on map commands to use it. I suppose a program could be built around it, graphically build what you want and have it write out the .map file calling Dom2 to play it.

[Stormbinder]

A lot of good suggestions here.

Few from my own mental wishlist.


1. Something *really* need to be done with madcastling. (And it has nothing to do with cheating for gems/money/whatever.)


It is still the issue in almost all of my MP games. Here are two simple suggestions, any of them (or both) if implemented could really help this issue.


A. Make the price of each of new castle increase, after the level of "madcastling" pass the certain "safe" limit. Something like "My Lord, the economy of your nation is strugling to support the numerious castles that you already have build."

For example - say the original castle cost is 300 GP. While less than 33% of player's territory is covered with castles, they all cost just nominal 300gp to build. After 33% limit passed (light case of madcastling) each new castle cost slightly more than the previous one - 1st one to build over 33% cost 330GP, next 360GP, etc. After 66% of your territory is covered with castles (bad case of madcastling, happens VERY often in MP games unfortunately) the price of each new castle will start to raise more sharply.

Very simple system, takes 10-20 minutes max. to implement in terms of coding, no hard limit on the ammount of castles , therefore the players can still chose to persue this strategy as far as they wants. You want to cover the 400 provinces map with castles? Sure, you can do it, but it'll cost you some extra.

As it is now, there is no reason to NOT madcastle in the competitive MP, especially in the mid/late game where money becomes lees and less important. And playing on the map where each province is covered with castles is *not* fun and quite boring(for everybody other than madcastler of course), as all players that I spoke with agreed.



B. Another and more time consuming suggestion is to make temples burnable only by special commander order. So when enemy rides your province with temple but without castle, he needs to keep it for *at least 1 turn*, so his commander could issue the order "Destroy building" to destroy his enemy temple (temples and monasteries often had a very strong walls for this very reason historically). As of now one of the main reason for madcastling (although of course not the only one) is to protect your temples agaisnt raiders.

This suggestion, if implemented, could make madcastling somewhat a bit less powerfull strategy, and would not force all other players to madcastle when one start madcastling spree, as it currently happens in MP games. Also this change, if imlemented, makes raiding more interesting and complex activity as well, by adding anohter level of choices. For the Raider: "Should I stay in this privince for one more turn, to burn this Temple and kill the priests hiding behind its thick walls? And risk enemy retaliation? Or should I keep moving, raiding another province and stayng 1 step ahead of enemy persuit? Or should I lay trap for my enemy, burning temple while summoning massive reinforcemtns to meet the temple - rescue force?"

For the Defender: " Should I try to help the monks in the temple before it got burned? Or should I concentrate on catching the raiders, since I don't think they would dare to stay in the temple province and face my wraith? Or is it a trap, designed to lure me in and destroy my "fire brigade"?" Et cetera...


Now I reilize that suggestion B may reqire some significant recoding, since there is no concept of "enemy building" in the province, other than Fort, as of now. So it may be difficult to implement. But IMHO suggestion A is very simple since making price of new castles flexible is very easy to do, and it can go a very long way toward making madcastling less notorious.


I would very much like to hear what devs think about it. Several current MP games are trying to limit madcastling with house rules, but it is very hard to do using house rules, since it requires constant recalculations each turn, which is very annoying for some players. While having soft limit on number of castle is very reaslitic (how many castels can your Empire support after all??? Castles reqiure a lot of resourses and population to build and maintain) and it would increase fun and enjoyment from the game for all players. I don't believe that devs have intended for the castles to cover each and every province, as it happen very often, and for most peaople to play with Mausoleum/Watch Towers.

With best regards,
Stormbinder

[Kel]

Stormbinder said:Castles reqiure a lot of resourses and population to build and maintain



Watchtowers, however, which are usually what are being built, do not. Castles DO cost a lot, that's why noone uses them.

and it would increase fun and enjoyment from the game for all players.


I haven't had the same experiences you have and I rarely see the kind of castles you are talking about until the late game. If there was no defense, even temporary, from raiding, it would make my game less fun, not more fun. Your first suggestion, at least, would strengthen raiding and weaken the uses of dominion (at least any that required the use of temples).


I don't believe that devs have intended for the castles to cover each and every province, as it happen very often, and for most peaople to play with Mausoleum/Watch Towers.



I do actually agree with this but this has to do with the nature of the castles, not with the concept of 'madcastling'. Making castles escalate later on in no way encourages one not to take a cheap castle as the watchtower would still be cheaper and built faster than if one had taken a Citadel of some kind. On top of that, it would still build faster (the most important point, to me) and would still cost less design points. I would rather see the cheaper towers reduce resource output (as they have reduced gold via lower admin values now) or something along those lines as far as balancing the fortifications go. That may not have the desired impact on madcastling but like I said, it hasn't been a problem in my games.

- Kel

[Zapmeister]

I don't think it's unrealistic that a structure of some sort should appear in each province. In fact, I think it unlikely that a conquering nation of any competence (in the real world, even) would leave its new acquisitions undeveloped.

What is unrealistic is that a nation can only build one kind of structure, so we never see, say, a castle in one province and watchtowers in the surrounding ones, as one might expect in the "real" world.

Also, and here's the problem that gives rise to madcastling, watchtowers are just as effective as citadels in a most important respect defensively. Their presence means that it takes at least two turns to capture the province. I think that if you fixed this (also unrealistic) property of the cheap fortifications, you would fix madcastling.

[Stormbinder]

Kel said:

Stormbinder said:Castles reqiure a lot of resourses and population to build and maintain



Watchtowers, however, which are usually what are being built, do not. Castles DO cost a lot, that's why noone uses them.




Aghmm... I was talking thematically Kel. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif As you know, there is no castle maintanence in the Dom2, no does in-game population have anything to do with building castles.

Historically though castles did requre a lot of support from the surrounding villages and settlements, the richer and larger castle was the more servs/lands and taxes it needed to support it.





and it would increase fun and enjoyment from the game for all players.





I haven't had the same experiences you have and I rarely see the kind of castles you are talking about until the late game.





I am talking about mid and late game.




If there was no defense, even temporary, from raiding, it would make my game less fun, not more fun. Your first suggestion, at least, would strengthen raiding and weaken the uses of dominion (at least any that required the use of temples).




Wrong. Castles would still defend you from raiding, but you would actully need to think strategically where to build them, instead of just building them everywhere. I strongly beleive that this is closer to what devs had in mind for this game, not castle in every province. With my first suggestion you can still freely build castles in 33% of your territory, or even in 50+% of your territory for small additional cost. But it would become incresengly more difficult to cover every province with castles, therefore forcing you to make a strategic choices where to build castle and where not.




I don't believe that devs have intended for the castles to cover each and every province, as it happen very often, and for most peaople to play with Mausoleum/Watch Towers.






I do actually agree with this but this has to do with the nature of the castles, not with the concept of 'madcastling'.

Making castles escalate later on in no way encourages one not to take a cheap castle as the watchtower would still be cheaper and built faster than if one had taken a Citadel of some kind. On top of that, it would still build faster (the most important point, to me) and would still cost less design points. I would rather see the cheaper towers reduce resource output (as they have reduced gold via lower admin values now) or something along those lines as far as balancing the fortifications go.




I think you are missing the point Kel. Both my suggestions would clearly discourage madcastling to the certain degree, no matter Watch tower do you use or some other castle. They are not castle-type specific.

"Madcastling" is the term that means building castles in all provinces, it doesn't refer to specific type of the castle. Although naturaly it is easer to do with cheap and fast castles, as you pointed out, and some people choose Tower/Mausoleum partly or wholy for this purpose, but not all people.

[Stormbinder]

Zapmeister said:
I don't think it's unrealistic that a structure of some sort should appear in each province. In fact, I think it unlikely that a conquering nation of any competence (in the real world, even) would leave its new acquisitions undeveloped.

What is unrealistic is that a nation can only build one kind of structure, so we never see, say, a castle in one province and watchtowers in the surrounding ones, as one might expect in the "real" world.

Also, and here's the problem that gives rise to madcastling, watchtowers are just as effective as citadels in a most important respect defensively. Their presence means that it takes at least two turns to capture the province. I think that if you fixed this (also unrealistic) property of the cheap fortifications, you would fix madcastling.



I agree Zap, but how exactly do you propsoe to acomplish that? If Watch Tower would take less than 2 turns to capture, that would mean 1 turn, right? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Than it would not be a fort at all. And increasing the Defense value of citadel even more would not make Watch Tower easier to capture than it is now.



I completely agree with you that it would be great to have more different province imporvments to build, like Watch Towers that would actually do what what they say, rather than being "real castles", and so on. But I think it is highly unlikely that something like that could be added that late after game's release, since it would requre major recoding.


Making castle price flexible on the other side is very easy to do, and would require minimal changes to the code. (especially considering that AI doesn't build castles anyway http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif ) I am trying to give suggestions that have a chance of being implemented in the patch, if devs will decide that it is worth it.

Regards,
Stormbinder

[Cainehill]

Kel said:

Stormbinder said:Castles reqiure a lot of resourses and population to build and maintain



Watchtowers, however, which are usually what are being built, do not. Castles DO cost a lot, that's why noone uses them.



Nor for that matter do mausoleums require much to build and maintain - look at crypts and mausoleums hundreds of years old in this world. Similarly, one doesn't really expect a Wizard Tower to demand much population / physical resources to maintain or build.




and it would increase fun and enjoyment from the game for all players.


I haven't had the same experiences you have and I rarely see the kind of castles you are talking about until the late game. If there was no defense, even temporary, from raiding, it would make my game less fun, not more fun. Your first suggestion, at least, would strengthen raiding and weaken the uses of dominion (at least any that required the use of temples).




Indeed - even _with_ castles, it can be a real hassle trying to catch raiders. I've been trying to nail some Vanheim raiders for about 6 turns in one of my games; without my towers, I'd've lost temples as well as time, PD, mages, and troops.

For that matter - one could argue that _raiders_ being too powerful is the problem, and "mad castling" the unfortunate solution.

If initiative / movement sequence was random, so there would be a 50/50 chance of catching the raiders in their current provinces, castling wouldn't be so critical.

As is, the raiders _always_ move on to the next territory first, not counting magic army (usually magic _commander_) movement, after already burning any temple in the province and jacking taxes to 200%.

And, just like in the real world, Europe in particular, it's perfectly reasonable to have a castle, tower, fortress, palace, walled city, in every bloody province if one can afford it.

And finally, most of the castle types that can be "mad castled" are pretty easy to kick down.

If the argument is that "they stand up long enough for the VQ / AQ / BL to teleport in and kill the army", I think it's more about people's frustration with army-killing single SCs, and not about the castles.

Possibly the slower, more expensive castles could use some improvement - but that'd require a big rebalancing that I wouldn't expect to see until a Dom3 is more than a twinkle in the players minds. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Zapmeister]

Stormbinder said:
Than it would not be a fort at all.




Not in the existing sense. But it would still be a structure of value, since it would still improve resource collection, provide supply etc.

[Cainehill]

Stormbinder said:
Aghmm... I was talking thematically Kel. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif As you know, there is no castle maintanence in the Dom2, no does in-game population have anything to do with building castles.

Historically though castles did requre a lot of support from the surrounding villages and settlements, the richer and larger castle was the more servs/lands and taxes it needed to support it.




And historically, castles brought in more profits and riches to the owner, as villages and settlements grew around the castles, all of whom were taxed in coin, material, or labor.

Indeed, where a fortification was built was often the only place where permanent civilian settlements would spring up, especially in contested areas. (For instance, Florida, mid 1500s to ... very early 1800s. The oldest continuously occupied settlement in North America is Saint Augustine, which also had one of the earliest forts.)

Other settlements predated Saint Augustine - but were burned down and depopulated, because they didn't have any fortifications.

Profits should thus accrue to provinces with fortifications.

The exception would be very low population provinces, places like deserts, swamps, wastelands where even the peasants won't move. Also, I'm not sure but what that watchtowers and mausoleums shouldn't have their resource / gold bonuses lowered or even removed. I don't see towns springing up around a crypt or watchtower.

But this goes back to the way Dom2 essentially makes a nation use one castle type, conquest and high level spells excepted.

[Endoperez]

Okay okay, I will add madcastling/raiding to the list... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

edit:
Added it, as well as light cavalry moving before other armies and False Horror being weakened a little.

[Mark the Merciful]

But here's a big-problem with this sort of thing. Endoperez has done an excellent job here, but are the developers to take this list as an expression of the consensus of players? Because I don't wan't to see a "solution" to mad-castling on any list that represents me. I don't see it as a problem.

[Endoperez]

Well, then you just express how *you* feel about it. However, if you check the "enchancement"-thread under this one you will notice that IW isn't necessarily going the same way as people seem to.

A voice from Sweden boomed:
"High impact on the gameplay is not necessarily a good thing",
and thus hath the Developer spoken His will for all worthy to listen. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Kristoffer O]

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif /threads/images/Graemlins/PointUp.gif

[Cainehill]

Two things I'd like to see, neither of which would have any impact on gameplay.

#1: Selecting a mage from the Nation Overview should select that mage, not just go to the province. When you have 20-50 mages in one province, and many have the same names (because renaming wasn't turned on), selecting the nation isn't enough. Plus - there's already code for selecting individual mages, because that's what happens when you say "go to commander" from the event list.

#2: An "Item Overview" for browsing through all magic items, thus making it a lot easier to find out which mage has that dwarven hammer/Tempest/Sceptre of Unholy Regency.

[Gandalf Parker]

OK lets try to keep the list thread cleaner in order to make it the most useful. Adding a post to mention something you feel should be on the list is fine. But if you decide to reply in debate it might be best to just post a link to the new thread you opened for the debates on certain items.

I would like to avoid the jockeying for priority which killed the previous lists.

[The_Tauren13]

What I believe to be most important:

• blood slave frequency changeable or linked to magic site frequency
• better text message interface
• graphs showing (gem) income from events, items etc.
• ability to protect blood slaves from heat of the Abyssian warlock leading them
• symbols for more abilities, like spy, sailing, ability to heal...
• When selecting commander from F1 screen, have the commander be highlighted when it jumps to him
• Confirmation screen for 'throw item away'
• Battle results (i.e. list of casualties) when storming a Castle
• Enabling/disabling spells [being able to indicate which spells your mage should pick from]
• Less focus on supercombatants
• More regrowth possibilities / less emphasis on population death
• making temple-burning take one turn
• rebalancing the spell "False horror" (by increasing Air level needed or fatigue cost)

[Gandalf Parker]

The_Tauren13 said:
What I believe to be most important:




*sigh* what tauren13 would most like to see.. ?
or a seperate thread on what people feel is most important.. ?

[The_Tauren13]

well, start a separate thread then.
Endoperez's list just seems *far* too long to interest the devs...

[Thufir]

Gandalf Parker said:

The_Tauren13 said:
What I believe to be most important:




*sigh* what tauren13 would most like to see.. ?
or a seperate thread on what people feel is most important.. ?



I'm not sure I see the problem, Gandalf. Certainly there are times when the arguments we are have about prioritization and the various features often get tedious, obnoxious and sometimes immature, but I think they are inevitable, and in the end useful.

I think Endoperez started this out with a great list, and you now have three of choices for format:
a) 1 thread (as it is now)
b) 2 threads (the wishlist [possibly stickied] and a debate thread)
c) N threads (the wishlist and a separate thread for each argument)

I think a) and b) are both reasonable choices, just don't go to option c) as that will make it harder to track issues. The important thing is the list itself, as this is our communication to the Devs (whom I trust to use this list with appropriate judgement and wisdom). So long as Endoperez is willing to undertake the ugly job of maintaining the list, I think we've got a working system. And at the end of the day, we as Users will just have to live with whatever choices Endoperez makes in terms of how he edits the list.

Debate is a messy thing, but I think the current format is quite liveable. (And thanks to Endoperez and yourself for getting it this far along http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif )

[baruk]

"1. Something *really* need to be done with madcastling. (And it has nothing to do with cheating for gems/money/whatever.)"

I don't personally find mass castle building too bothersome, but I had an idea for a possible solution.

The main exploit, as I see it, is using a castle as an extra 1 turn speedbump to an invasion force. Often the castler will not have significant garrisons in the majority of his fortifications. He can use the extra turn to gateway in a garrison.

The idea is to give commanders an additional attack order: move and attempt to storm castle. It would become available when a commander is ordered to attack a castled enemy province (in the same way move and patrol becomes available when moving to a friendly castle). A force given this order would storm a castle the same turn they attack the province, as long as the castle defences were knocked down (the turn order would need to be: province battles, seiging, then storm castle battles).

I think this would make using hordes of cheap, undefended castles somewhat less useful, perhaps making the endgame against a fortified opponent more fluid. It would also have the effect of making defence values of castles more important, if a lightly defended fortification can be lost the same turn it is attacked.

[Gandalf Parker]

Thufir said:
I'm not sure I see the problem, Gandalf. Certainly there are times when the arguments we are have about prioritization and the various features often get tedious, obnoxious and sometimes immature, but I think they are inevitable, and in the end useful.



That depends on what the object is. If the object is to create a quick list that the devs can glance at when wondering what they might want to work on next, in order to not forget good ideas that were mentioned, then extensive discussions in this thread will get in the way.

If the object is to create a thread which is irritating to read and buries good ideas under piles of argument until it flames up and disappears.. well that would just be standard.



I think Endoperez started this out with a great list, and you now have three of choices for format:
a) 1 thread (as it is now)
b) 2 threads (the wishlist [possibly stickied] and a debate thread)
c) N threads (the wishlist and a separate thread for each argument)

I think a) and b) are both reasonable choices, just don't go to option c) as that will make it harder to track issues.



I disagree abit. I think the list is worth being stickied. But I think there will be too many subjects to discuss in one thread. If the sticky thread lists each item such as
- a map command to put indies on patrol
and then just a clickable link to the thread explaining that it allows adding castles to a map for stronger AIs without having them exploitable by 1 scout chasing everyone into the castle and taxing the province to death...
well I think that would be a very clean arrangment.

[Cainehill]

In other words, things that _everyone_ would agree might be useful (like the casualty summary when castles are stormed), as opposed to things which are matters of opinion?

[Gandalf Parker]

Cainehill said:

In other words, things that _everyone_ would agree might be useful (like the casualty summary when castles are stormed), as opposed to things which are matters of opinion?



Not at all. Everything should be listed. In an unbiased simple reference list. And in such a list everything would be seen where obviously some of these flaming threads do not get seen. And Im not saying the debates should not occur but a well done respectful wishlist doesnt need them getting in the way of its purpose.

[Stormbinder]

It is vitually impossible for all players to agree on anything save perhaps most basic suggestions and bug fixing (and even that can be a problem http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif ).

As some famous author said: "No matter how great is the book that you wrote, there will be always people who will hate it. And no matter how bad is your book, some folks will love it."

Same goes for computer games... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Kel]

Not to mention all the bad books being written http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

- Kel

[Arryn]

Kel said:
Not to mention all the bad books being written http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

In your opinion. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Cohen]

I'd agree with Tauren list, adding these points:

Modify of Drain Life weapon - make them less draining. I'd like to see used other weapons too. Probably this will satisfy the less focus on SC.

When you see Messages, sometimes go to province is required instead of go to commander (like a site searching spell result).

I disagree indeed to the temple burning turn.

[tinkthank]

Hey thanks Endoperez!
Only the first couple of items attributed to me in the orig post are from me; I still have a few (mostly bugfixes) I would like to see listed, but am not sure whether to post them here or not. The (interesting!) discussion about where/when/what to post in threads like this, kicked off by Gandalf's comments, has confused me a bit. Should we post here with stuff or not? Should we give opinions or not?

[Kel]

Arryn said:

Kel said:
Not to mention all the bad books being written http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

In your opinion. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif



My opinion that bad books are written ? I doubt it, can't call a book good unless there is a bad book to judge it by http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

- Kel

[Endoperez]

If we are going to make an "official" wishlist, then we should have it be only one message that contains the list of all items in the thread. This is too crowded as a list. So I think you are free to post your ideas in there. But we need to organize this pretty fast if we want all these things for Christmas... Ho Ho Ho http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[Vicious Love]

Y'know what we need? A wishful thinking thread.
Kinda like a wishlisht, but intended for all those frivolous suggestions which are nowhere near urgent. While the proper wishlist would have, oh, say, "extend the casting queue", "fix the Alchemist's Stone", etc, the wishful thinking list would have entires such as "Cannibalism: Because it makes no sense for Pangaea and BF Ulm's armies to starve just because they've run out of rations".


...



Honestly, cannibalism. BF Ulm would be able to do it preemptively, to prevent supplies from eventually running out when under siege, and Pangaea would be forced to do it. Pangaea would eat the wounded and the small first, the sacred(Including prophets) next, and the large Last, BF Ulm would eat the peasants first, the conscripts next, and never eat commanders or knights, R'lyeh would only eat Atlanteans and mercenaries and, as in ages gone by, rule #1 of cannibalism is universally applicable: Thou shalt not eat thine god.



...



But I digress. My suggestion stands: One list/subCategory for urgent stuff which just about everybody agrees on, another for more questionable wishes, and maybe even a third for utterly irrelevant and unfeasible stuff.

Like cannibalism.

[Stossel]

Just to weigh in on the madcastling bit.

I am/was the Vanheim player that attemped to raid Cainehills territories and the most frustrating thing about it was...I accomplished absolutely nothing.

To me, there's no strategy in that. He didn't adeptly shepherd my raiders into a corner and kill them by out-guessing where I was going to go, or strategically place his forces so that when I got my intelligence reports he'd have forced me into a certain province, he just stuck some buildings up and never had to worry about it. Madcastling to me is not good gameplay, it is the death of it. It is too easy to get this sort of thing going, especially combined with the fact that hardly anyone spends money on troops, so all that cash is available for building temples and castles.

I'm not knocking on you Cainehill, nor your skills as a player, I just have a problem with that sort of non-strategy.

It seemed to me from the feel of the game that buildings like temples, libraries and castles shouldn't be *every province* buildings. There's a reason Pan and Man's temples are half the price, because the developers wanted to encourage mass temples for those two nations. At this point in time, it doesn't look like the money is an issue anymore.

[Cohen]

Building a lot of Castles is common in middle ages, every "province" had his castle, big or small ...

Building a lot of the requires a lot of turns, gold and efforts, not to count that a successfull raid burn out an half built castle.

However probably Castles could be reviewed.
Effectively Watchtower and Mausoleum aren't real castle, and didn't provided any real defence to the province.
A wizard tower too don't provide a good defence.
My proposal could get some code work ... but if we count Watchtower as a patrol bonus unit instead of a castle (probably none will choose it anymore however) for defence issue (so in you conquer the province you take immediately the watchtower and you don't need to siege and storm), but you can recruit as a castle.
Mausoleum should work the same for defence and build, but should give a bonus when casting Death spells ... a small bonus like a 10% gem discount.
Wizard Tower should give a small bonus when casting a remote or summoning spell ... perhaps a 10% discount on gems, rounded down, because the tower is suited to support magic channeling (ie a Seeking Arrow will still cost 3 gems, a Fire from Afar will drop from 10 to 9 gems, a Summon Lamia Queen from 15 to 14 because it's rounded down the discount). Wizard Tower doesn't count as castle for defence meaning.

I'd add some Administration to all other castles.

[Stossel]

Well, instead of just responding to what others have written I though I might post a wishlist of my own, since even not-even-mediocre players have hopes and dreams.

* Items that apply bonuses to units lead by the item-holder (someone already suggested this but I'm lending my support to it) and more spells that buff troops. Seems odd to me that given the choice to help 1 unit or many units, especially in dealing with warfare, the emphasis is on 1 unit.

* Attach a small or at least a possibility for a small gain in morale from buffing units. If my troops aren't feeling too good about a battle and then all of a sudden they're all granted ironskin, they're going to feel better about their chances.
* This one is big and barring some miracle won't happen but it is a wish: Attacking a province from different directions should reflect itself on the battlefield. So this way the attacker can attempt to flank, use pincer movement, etc. Doesn't make sense to me that I can attack from both the east and the west and still have all my units on the same side. Of course there would be checks on this, perhaps the defending units leadership ability is compared with that of the attackers and through some calculation if the defender wins, he gets to face his opponents normally (would provide an interesting side effect for crown of command and similar items)

*Receive a message month before merc contract is up giving a prompt asking if you want to keep them on. Accepting would bring you to the bid screen, declining would set the bid to 0.

* The option to disallow Gods on the Hall of Fame.

[Thufir]

FM_Surrigon said:
* The option to disallow Gods on the Hall of Fame.



I like this one!!!

In the same vein (though perhaps a nit), I'd like it if Orion never showed up on the Hall of Fame, would it be reasonable just to greatly reduce his xp in the next patch?

Edit
I don't actually mean that Orion literally never shows up, just that he works like any other merc, and didn't have that insane amount of xp that leaves him permanently pegged at the top of the HoF

[Cainehill]

FM_Surrigon said:
Just to weigh in on the madcastling bit.

I am/was the Vanheim player that attemped to raid Cainehills territories and the most frustrating thing about it was...I accomplished absolutely nothing.

To me, there's no strategy in that. He didn't adeptly shepherd my raiders into a corner and kill them by out-guessing where I was going to go, or strategically place his forces so that when I got my intelligence reports he'd have forced me into a certain province, he just stuck some buildings up and never had to worry about it. Madcastling to me is not good gameplay, it is the death of it. It is too easy to get this sort of thing going, especially combined with the fact that hardly anyone spends money on troops, so all that cash is available for building temples and castles.




Ahem. First - my castles were up before you started raiding. Currently something like 9 castles out of 21 provinces, on turn 41. Not exactly mad castling, but the castles did what they were supposed to - protect labs and temples.

Then - it's difficult to herd raiders on a map with an average of something like 6 neighbors per province, not counting the sailing neighbors which you, as Vanheim, made use of.

I attempted to predict where you would go - frankly, I never expected you to go driving inland away from the sea, as that gave up one of your big advantages.

And several times, I would have balked your progress, except for two things. #1, Caelum's PD is more of a hindrance than a help, since they fly right up and then rout, meaning that I had to get troops with each response force.

#2, on one or two occasions, I did predict your movement, and believe I would have broken your army, except that the fortifications worked against me: My forces moved to where you moved, and sat on their arses inside the walls. If there had not been a fort, or if there was a "Move and Patrol" / "Move and Attack" order, you'd've have been hurting.



It seemed to me from the feel of the game that buildings like temples, libraries and castles shouldn't be *every province* buildings. There's a reason Pan and Man's temples are half the price, because the developers wanted to encourage mass temples for those two nations. At this point in time, it doesn't look like the money is an issue anymore.



As stated - 9 out of 21 provinces is hardly an "every province" situation. If raiders didn't have the huge advantages they currently do, I wouldn't _need_ to build a fortification on every temple. As it was, if I had left a couple of temples unguarded, I would have lost them.

If I had built the cheap forts (mausoleum / watch tower) I might have lost a couple of them, as you would have been able to storm the turn after arriving. As it was, the wizard towers were perfect - and frankly, paying 120 design points seems a strategic investment in those forts.

Money not being an issue? Obviously you don't have an inkling of what my upkeep is like. If I build so much as a temple, that's recruiting I can't afford to do, much less a temple and tower.

And finally, you say you accomplished nothing? Wrong. You didn't accomplish as much as you wanted to, obviously, but you cost me a number of mages, and a fair amount of gold spent on PD (which was between 5 and 11 in every province, I believe).

More significantly, you totally disrupted my research and forging, as something like 2/3 or 3/4 of my mages were either patroling, or flying around trying to intercept you for half a dozen or more turns.

It didn't seem like nothing to me. And for this, I will crush Vanheim. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Arryn]

Cainehill said:
It didn't seem like nothing to me. And for this, I will crush Vanheim. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Go get 'im! Spite is such a wonderful thing.

Oh, and be sure you build a tower in each of his provinces, just to demonstrate what "madcastling" actually looks like.

[Stossel]

Well Cainehill if that's not even close what what "madcastling" is, then I'm REALLY against it.

Though to be honest I'm really just bitter and at a loss at how to counter the type of units I went up against.

[Arryn]

FM_Surrigon said:
Though to be honest I'm really just bitter

It shows. /threads/images/Graemlins/Envy.gif


FM_Surrigon said:
and at a loss at how to counter the type of units I went up against.

There have been several threads over the past months regarding countering Caelum. I suggest doing a forum search on Caelum and (re)reading them. And also doing a search on Vanheim, so that you can play to its strengths. Vanheim is a strong nation and one of the better ones for countering Caelum.

[Cainehill]

FM_Surrigon said:
Well Cainehill if that's not even close what what "madcastling" is, then I'm REALLY against it.

Though to be honest I'm really just bitter and at a loss at how to counter the type of units I went up against.



That's part of what Dom2 is all about: going through phases where you're frustrated because you can't figure out anything to do against cavalry, then being frustrated because you can't deal with devils, then being frustrated because you can't deal with SCs - there's always a new frustration around the corner. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Frankly - you shouldn't have done as well as you did. Leading an army of troops that are all starving and half diseased isn't exactly a great strategy. Worse, you brought a bunch of non-stealthy troops, and you refused to abandon them, thus saving your Vanjarls and whatnot. (Note that your prophet got killed, not by my native troops and commanders, but by an army of mostly water trolls and ichythids, with a few mages mixed in.)

You could have brought (bought or forged) supply items, which would have allowed your troops to do much better. There's a number of other things that would have helped and been wise for you to do - but since I've no doubt this isn't over, I'm not going to tell you what you should do to have a fighting chance against me.

Well, except for one tip: Try not to start wars if you don't have a plan for how to win. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[Cainehill]

FM_Surrigon said:
Well Cainehill if that's not even close what what "madcastling" is, then I'm REALLY against it.

Though to be honest I'm really just bitter and at a loss at how to counter the type of units I went up against.



Oh - my apologies to everyone.

FM_Surrigon - if you wish to continue this, feel free to start a new thread. What we've done is a prime example of how to drag a thread further and further from its intended subject matter.

[Graeme Dice]

Cainehill said:
If there had not been a fort, or if there was a "Move and Patrol" / "Move and Attack" order, you'd've have been hurting.



There is actually. Have the army move into the province, then click on their order bar and change it to "Move and patrol."

[Endoperez]

Not perfect, but if someone has a suggestion please only post it in short format. If you have to explain it, try to do it in some other thread or link to a thread in which it was discussed. Also, if you post an idea that was mentioned between the Last and most recent update of this list, please also post a link to the thread it was mentioned on. Well, except if it the Bug thread... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

18.9.04

-make bloodmages more willing to use their slaves than gem-using mages their gems Post#274072 (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showthreaded.php?Number=274072)
-make the game show the Version network host is using
-summon XXX (unique summoning spells) should have chance of changing ownership of a unit when all of them are already summoned (thread) (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showthreaded.php?Number=295853)
-new dome that does not block spells but tells you from which province the spell originated, possibly would only work if the spell got through other domes
-shapechanging activated by thing other than death/command (thread) (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showthreaded.php?Number=291998)


-one-way shapechange activated when unit is made prophet
-artifact pretender granting artifact-status to the wielder or the ability to mod it (thread) (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showthreaded.php?Number=294741)
-new pretenders (thread) (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showthreaded.php?Number=294741)
-make "pool slaves" -command not take slaves from commanders making blood sacrifice or let them take their slaves straight from lab
-decay affects more units than seems appopriate by description, it should say that decay effects non-living creatures too
-rebalance vampire lords', wraith lords' and maybe Fallen Angels' abilities to summon allies (eg. by population death) (thread) (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showthreaded.php?Number=294332)
-warning when commander's orders are canceled (list of situations) (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showthreaded.php?Number=295038)
-more random casting/moving etc. order (for DomIII)
-mod command #stoneform making unit immune to petrification (Bug: Origenes is petrified when going from stone to stone)


Also, the guides and readme's seem to be unavailable/still in writing. Updated Modding Guide is high on the list, and readme-files should say which Version you need to update to the newest patch.

[Cohen]

I'd like to see something against raiding that is so damn strong.

[Boron]

Cohen said:
I'd like to see something against raiding that is so damn strong.



I think population in general dies too quick .
Iirc 0,3% pop / 10% tax above 100% are killed .

Putting taxes to 200% is imo a bit too strong . If it is done only 1 turn you need to run taxes after that 1 turn on 40% to reduce the unrest to zero again and more important 3% of your pop died .
This is especially severe with Caelum . They can reduce by this your goldincome easy 20-30% when they do it earlygame even if you can take back the provinces .


My suggestion : Reduce the poploss from 200% taxation 2/3 to 1% .
This still prevents abuse earlygame by putting taxes to 200% for a few turns but in 2 turns the poploss by 1 turn 200% tax is recovered this way .

You still kill population fast enough by pillage .


Or perhaps include a spell which requires Water or Nature or a combination of both to cast which gives positive growth in some variations :
A rather cheap one with small effect like +0,5 % growth for 5 turns which is low research .
A more expensive one where the effect is bigger , mid level research .
And high level research a global which gives you something like +0,2% growth / dominionlevel in all your provinces .

But at the moment if ermor is included normally at turn 30-40 i think the world population is probably about 50-60% from the starting one . This is a bit too severe imo .

Population is the only resource which normally declines during the game . With lots of luck with events and positive growth you can keep it constant or get a small increase but not a big one .

[Cohen]

The real problem is that you can never catch enemy raiders unless you bet on the province where the enemy will go (and this is damn difficult with Caelum ...) and send in troops.
Considering other raiders like Thuata and Vanheim sneaks in shadows too probably you can't catch them properly.

So how to defend except mad castling? Trapeze or teleport an SC there? But if you haven't an A2 or S3 SC ... ?
If they sneak I dunno if your guys teleporting in will catch them.

So on I'd like to see troops having some chances to move into before the enemy can move. And I'd use the Leadership rating to choose who move first, the higher the first you'll move (leadership could be seen too as how a commander could organize troops, lead them in forced marches and such).
This could be a boost too for items not so used like Crown of Command and such, that are usually never used.

[Graeme Dice]

Boron said:
My suggestion : Reduce the poploss from 200% taxation 2/3 to 1% .
This still prevents abuse earlygame by putting taxes to 200% for a few turns but in 2 turns the poploss by 1 turn 200% tax is recovered this way .



I don't think you quite understand the implications of what you've just suggested. Lowering the death for high taxes would simply lead to people starting to tax and patrol to get the most gold.


But at the moment if ermor is included normally at turn 30-40 i think the world population is probably about 50-60% from the starting one . This is a bit too severe imo.



Everybody suffers the same. What's the problem?

[Cohen]

The problem is that Pop don't regrowth except for growth scale, that however has a minimal effect.

I believe IW should improve the growth scale to 0.4 or 0.5%% at scale point.

[Alneyan]

Illwinter has also stated population was supposed to die because of the whole battle between gods; living in such a troubled era results in many deaths according to this logic. As such, you should not expect to gain much population, and I feel it is fine as it is currently.

My only wish is for more modding commands (magic items, or possibly even a way of making new summons; perhaps by copying an already existing spell, and changing the ID of the summoned creature?), but Illwinter already adds such commands with each patch, so it may be quite redudant to add it to a Wishlist.

[Boron]

Graeme Dice said:

Boron said:
My suggestion : Reduce the poploss from 200% taxation 2/3 to 1% .
This still prevents abuse earlygame by putting taxes to 200% for a few turns but in 2 turns the poploss by 1 turn 200% tax is recovered this way .



I don't think you quite understand the implications of what you've just suggested. Lowering the death for high taxes would simply lead to people starting to tax and patrol to get the most gold.





That's why i said reduced to 1% .
200% taxes give doubled income but also +18-20 points unrest .
50 points unrest lower the income to 1/2 but i think it is a exponential scale or similiar .
However at 18-20 points you still lose income , i think something between 10-20% .

Now patrolling comes into account : 40 patrollers give 0-40 points of unrest reduction with equal chances which means that 50% of the time they reduce unrest to 0 while 50% of the time some unrest remains : 1-20 points .
Furthermore patrolling kills a bit population too and all earlygame patrollers cost upkeep .
Call of winds would be good but it costs 5 airgems + a black hawk still costs 0,3 upkeep .

So it would be only worth doing that with your capitol and other highincome provinces .

The 1% was just a suggestion . It maybe a bit too low and 1,5% or 2% maybe better .

At growth 0 :

If you do the taxing with 1% as suggested for 10 turns 9,6% of your population has died with the 1% and a bit more with patrolling so about 10% .
So after 10 turns your base income is already 10% lower .
With very good scales + castle you have about 200 income in your capitol .
Let's take machaka as example :
They could patrol earlygame .
Costs for 40 patrollers :
Eye of the lord + 25 archers = 50 + 25x8 gold buycosts
50/30 + 25x 8/15 upkeep .

That is 250 gold + 15 upkeep / turn .

In a quick test with these 40 patrollers i got after 5 turns unrest of 47 .
You need about 80 patrollers to have an average unrest of about 5-10 .

Even with my 1% poploss in 50 turns this way 39,9% of the population is killed and a bit more by patrolling .
Furthermore you can always get a peasants have left their homes event with unrest >20 .
So after 50 turns you earn about the same as the province where never was taxed + patrolled .
And you have to pay upkeep of course for your stuff so it maybe ok for about 10-20 turns .
But in the first 10 turns until call of the wilds you don't get too good + cheap patrollers anyway .


Cohen's idea about leadership determining if you can catch an enemy or not is better though .

[Graeme Dice]

Boron said:
That's why i said reduced to 1% .
200% taxes give doubled income but also +18-20 points unrest.



A person wouldn't need to go to 200% taxes to see the benefit. Even 120% taxes would benefit greatly, and 150% would be easily doable with growth 3. 200% would also be possible in very large provinces with growth 3.


So it would be only worth doing that with your capitol and other highincome provinces .



Which is exactly what happened in Dominions I, where incomes ended up being more than what they are now. It's a bad idea because it increases the micromanagement of any given turn by a huge amount.

[Cohen]

The problem is that Nations like Vanheim, Thuata Man, Caelum, Abysya and Mictlan with Fiends or Devils, and every skilled raider could attack you with hit and run, but setting taxes to 200% so he'll kill your pop too even if you after retake the provinces.

[Endoperez]

Maybe I should post my old "friendly area = friendly dominion" -idea. In short, change the first mover from the owner of the province to the one in his own dominion. Raiders would be caught unless they raided in their own dominion.

[Thufir]

Endoperez said:
Maybe I should post my old "friendly area = friendly dominion" -idea. In short, change the first mover from the owner of the province to the one in his own dominion. Raiders would be caught unless they raided in their own dominion.



This idea sounds a bit arbitrary, to me. From my limited experience, it seems like a difficult proposition to fix the raiding problem in a patch.

The notion that I had (which may well have been proposed previously) is a generalization of the idea of light cavalry having a chance to catch raiders. That being to allow some probability of catching raider based on strat movement. Perhaps +1 strat move gives a 50% chance, +2 gives 75%, etc. Flying armies could give a bonus to catching, and stealthy raiders could give a negative modifier to being caught.

But this sounds like an idea that will be unbalancing, maybe doable in Dom3, but perhaps not in a Dom2 patch.

[Boron]

Cohen said:
The problem is that Nations like Vanheim, Thuata Man, Caelum, Abysya and Mictlan with Fiends or Devils, and every skilled raider could attack you with hit and run, but setting taxes to 200% so he'll kill your pop too even if you after retake the provinces.


Yeah this raiding is imo the most effective way to wage war earlygame when you still can't risk beating the enemy SC pretender . But with your mentioned nations you can raid the hell out of your enemy and he almost can't defend against it .
This way you create a huge gap between you and him and then some turns later your new Sc like an Airqueen or similiar can finish off what the raiders prepared .

[deccan]

Alneyan said:
My only wish is for more modding commands (magic items, or possibly even a way of making new summons; perhaps by copying an already existing spell, and changing the ID of the summoned creature?)



Me too. This way I can get around to making a vampire-only nation to replace Ermor. Hehe.

[Alneyan]

You should actually be able to do so Deccan, although you would have to suffer the Dominion of either Ashen Empire or Soul Gate. These two themes come in with a lot of nation-only spells, and so you should be able to fully change these spells and the creatures they summon to suit your tastes.

In this case, the problem would be the auto-summon of AE/SG (you could ignore these creatures though), and their population-killing Dominions. Note that the above has not been tested, although I should toy with modding nation specific spells one of these days...

[Endoperez]

For dyccan/Alneyan:

Wouldn't it be possible to just make the special spells of Ermor themes national spells of Ermor? This would give them to base Ermor. You could even change the unholy spells as they are unique to Ermor (I think) and your mod won't probably have any unholy priests... Besides, if you changed Ermorian Cultists and Ghouls vampires could just turn up and attack your enemies! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

For Thufir:

What about this: the army with faster strategic move moves first. If the army moves in owned province, they get a bonus of +1 to their strategic move when the moving order is considered. With this chance, armies consisting of light cavalry and other troops with Strat. Move of 3 would always catch armies consisting of heavy infantry.

It woldn't help against Caelum though, and would make it very easy for them to repel raids. But then, Caelum is meant to be a good raider...

[deccan]

Endoperez said:
For dyccan/Alneyan:

Wouldn't it be possible to just make the special spells of Ermor themes national spells of Ermor? This would give them to base Ermor. You could even change the unholy spells as they are unique to Ermor (I think) and your mod won't probably have any unholy priests... Besides, if you changed Ermorian Cultists and Ghouls vampires could just turn up and attack your enemies! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif



Interesting. I did some tests and yes, I could change the paths, ritual casting costs and the resulting creature from a spell like say "Revive Lictor". However, there doesn't seem to be a way to give the spell "Revive Lictor" to base Ermor, so a player will have to choose the AE theme to gain access to the spell, and it doesn't seem to be possible to rename the spell itself.

I'll run some tests and work through some ideas. Thanks Alneyan.

[Alneyan]

Actually you can set the spell to be nation-only; the School command allows you to set it to Ermor only, and it will be available in standard Ermor.

You cannot change the name or the description of the spell though, but everything else can be altered (such as path requirements or gem cost).

[atul]

Endoperez said:
What about this: the army with faster strategic move moves first. If the army moves in owned province, they get a bonus of +1 to their strategic move when the moving order is considered. With this chance, armies consisting of light cavalry and other troops with Strat. Move of 3 would always catch armies consisting of heavy infantry.



The problem I see with this, is that it'd force the implementation of third battle resolution phase. Now, the battles are resolved after 1) magic movement and 2) normal movement. Any new system to catch raiders based on fast movement would need to resolve battles after 1) magic movement, 2) fast unit movement and 3) slow unit movement. It'd be a management nightmare.

Without the third phase, how else would you implement raider movement? Sure, anti-raider group catches the raiders, but what if raiders win? They move to next province like first instructed and battle again? Or could you keep raiders immobile by sending small move-3 Groups at them turn after turn?

I may be missing something since I haven't thought about this much, but that's what I come up with first impression.

[Arryn]

I just need to reiterate the following: The bug, which has been around for the past several patches, in which global spells do not go away when the pretender who cast them goes poof really REALLY needs to be fixed. It's extremely annoying. Please, please, if we get no other fixes/tweaks, let's get this one.

(Can you tell I'm miffed at the moment? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/mad.gif )

[Endoperez]

atul said:
Without the third phase, how else would you implement raider movement? Sure, anti-raider group catches the raiders, but what if raiders win? They move to next province like first instructed and battle again? Or could you keep raiders immobile by sending small move-3 Groups at them turn after turn?

I may be missing something since I haven't thought about this much, but that's what I come up with first impression.



That's what I had thought, but I hadn't realised that one could keep the raiders immobile that way... I quess if the raiders moved to the province the small army moved from they might cross each other unnoticed, but that would be the only way of doing so.

I am beginning to think that there is no easy solution to the raiding issue. We still don't have any word from Ilwinter so we don't even know if they are considering changing something. Even if they are they just might not know what to do about it. I wouldn't want to be in a situation like that.

[Cainehill]

Arryn said:
I just need to reiterate the following: The bug, which has been around for the past several patches, in which global spells do not go away when the pretender who cast them goes poof really REALLY needs to be fixed. It's extremely annoying. Please, please, if we get no other fixes/tweaks, let's get this one.

(Can you tell I'm miffed at the moment? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/mad.gif )



This was with 2.14? Thought they said they'd cleaned up that problem.

[Arryn]

Yes, the problem still exists in 2.14. I don't recall if the pretender went poof before or after I applied the 2.14 patch, but even if the pretender went bye-bye prior to my having applied 2.14, the game code should check every turn to see if the caster of a global spell is still alive, and it very much seems that the game fails to do so.

[Chazar]

Umh, can I still add another wish to this small and topic-focused thread? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

- Ban pretenders from the Hall of Fame! Add their Kill/Exp stats to the Nations-Info screen instead. This would make a 10-place HoF worthwhile in games of ten nations...

- Add to the description text of "RitualOfReturning" that only the leading 10 heroes may return or fix that bug otherwise...

- Include markers on unit-pics within strategic maps, i.e. some flag to toggle on/off, or a dot that changes colour when clicked, or simply a coloured frame of the unit icon! This would make it easier to remember ViP (i.e. those carrying DwarvHammers, SiegeHorns, StaffofStorms,etc.)

[Alneyan]

A request regarding the wishes we can make: do the developers need wishes about future modding commands, or will they be added as time/programming allows it?

[Kristoffer O]

Hmm. Very annoying. I hope it's only a remnant from patch switch. If anyone can reproduce the global enchantment bug with 2.14 (not in 2.13-2.14 switched games) let us know.

[Kristoffer O]

Alneyan said:
A request regarding the wishes we can make: do the developers need wishes about future modding commands, or will they be added as time/programming allows it?



Both. We could easily think of some modding commands that could be implemented, but it would not necessarily be useful ones. Post some suggestions on what is missing. They will be added as time/programming allows it, but in this case your suggestions are important. After all modding is for you. I can make whatever I want without modding tools http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

[Arralen]

- A mod/map/command line command to make pop growth work as follows:

<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
pop growth =((1+[number of growth scales])*[growth %tage])*
[acutal pop of province]^2
/
2*[average starting pop of province]
</pre><hr />

- AI that builds castles

- tac AI that can let a mage sit there and do nothing for a turn if no suitable target in range (not wasting fatigue on senseless buff spells)

[Alneyan]

Very well; then, without further addendum, here comes my own wishes (and the three hundred astral pearls needed):

* A way of altering the required paths (and thus the cost) of magic items.
* If possible, a "clone" command for spells would be nice. It would create a copy of an already existing spell. I am thinking of possible applications mostly in the field of summoning spells.
* Allowing a player to select the ID of the summoned creature would also be an interesting addition if we are allowed to create new spells.
* These two suggestions could also be applied to magic items, mainly weapons and armour (miscellaneous items are likely much harder to change).
* The ability to edit descriptions of spells and items, and possibly the name of new spells as well (already existing spells may have a problem with having their name changed however).

At the moment, the only way to make new summonings is to highjack Ermor, which has more than enough of these, and to alter their nation specific creatures. If this solution is good enough to make creating new spells uneeded, being able to change descriptions would be needed; otherwise, you will be stuck with Ermorian descriptions, even if creating a nation of goodly creatures.

The other problem with having Ermor as the sole way of creating more than a few summoning spells is that it may make mods incomptabible with one another, if they all use Ermor to get their summoning spells. Even if T'ien Ch'i, C'tis and Pangaea have their summoning spells stolen by a modder, this problem will still likely occur.

As usual, I have no idea of how much work all the above requires, or how easy it is to implement these wishes.

[deccan]

It would also be very nice to have some control over the special effects of some nations, such as the type/number of autosummons of dominions like Ermor and Pan CW, as well the inherent population killing effect (independent of death scale) of these nations.

[Molog]

Could ermorian cultists become stealthy. It would fit thematically and would make them more usefull.

[quantum_mechani]

Here are some ideas several players came up with to make the blood 9 bless worth it:

*A chance that anyone hit by the sacred unit would be effected by the Bleed spell.

*An incresaed chance for the sacred unit to give afflictions.

*A half-lifedrain effect, meaning they would only drain fatigue.

I'm not sure what would be easiest to add, but I would love to see one of these ideas used (or any other good ideas for the blood 9 bless).

[Endoperez]

Mooding command ideas:

A way to poison weapons, or preferably a way to choose a special effect from special effect list. This would include banefire, the effects of bane blades and whatever is in there.

Way to choose number of effects for spells, both the summons and combat spells (I don't remember if any/bot of these already exist). Also a way to control the number of extra things gotten for skill level over one needed.

Ability to give mage linked randoms, like the ones of Kings of the Deep.

A general #copy that could be used to copy all the stats and abilities of target unit/item/spell to the unit/item/spell being modded. This would have to be used at the start of the modding file, because it would probably rewrite everything before it.

A way to change the names and descriptions of items and spells.

Being able to change the castable/targettable underwater/on land -tags.


Alneyan wrote:


At the moment, the only way to make new summonings is to highjack Ermor, which has more than enough of these, and to alter their nation specific creatures.




Why no-one else seems to remember that *any* spell can be made a national spell of *any* nation... This includes those special summons of both Ermor themes!

[Zen]

Endoperez said:
Mooding command ideas:

Ability to give mage linked randoms, like the ones of Kings of the Deep.

This you can already do and have been able to since the first Modding was implemented.

[Endoperez]

Really? I thought that there was a command for giving mage many randoms, but that they all would be different... Should have tried, not quessed, it seems... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

[Zen]

You can do that if you prefer, but if you apply a random, say:

#magicskill 51 2

It will put both randoms in the same slot. You can do this for Elemental or Sorcery only, if you prefer. It's harder to do a bunch of different randoms, you have to go.

#magicskill 50 1
#magicskill 50 1
#magicskill 50 1

So it's there and availiable if you'd rather have linked randoms or elementals/sorceries.

[Endoperez]

Okay, I thought that

#magicskill 51 2

would give the commander in question two random picks that were not linked to each other... I really should try things before posting.

However, now that I remember it, I will post one new command:

#prophetshape
When a unit is made prophet it becomes a unit of the id spesified by the #prophetshape. If possible, it would be nice if any magics the prophet shape might have were transferred too.

[Alneyan]

Endoperez said:
Why no-one else seems to remember that *any* spell can be made a national spell of *any* nation... This includes those special summons of both Ermor themes!



I am not sure I get your point here. You could indeed give Ermor's spells to, say, Arcoscephale, but that will simply destroy themed Ermor when this mod is applied (standard Ermor should be fine though). Or did I fail to understand you here?

[Kristoffer O]

He says that summon cave drake could be made Man only, nature lvl 6, death 2 and fatigue cost 300. Then exchange the cave drake with your cigar smoking pumpkin man sprite, a good set of stats and immortality and an assault rifle and you are ready to go kicking some ... sorry, lost track of topic!

No one will create cave drakes anymore, but if you restrict each of the drakes it might not matter much.

[deccan]

I didn't notice it so apologies if it's already in:

The ability to change a nation's password after a game has started (to take effect after hosting).

[Edi]

This is a wider feature request, and one I'm sure has been posted several times earlier, but how about allied victory possibility?

It'd require a bit of additional code, but having War, Neutral and Allied status for nations, with a simnple diplomacy system where you can propose alliance and declare war (which would set the status accordingly when decalring war or when alliance proposal is accepted).

This would make pantheon games feasible without using special victory conditions, and instead of a single god rising above all, it would be a pantheon of gods.

Edi

[Gandalf Parker]

Edi said:
This is a wider feature request, and one I'm sure has been posted several times earlier, but how about allied victory possibility?


That is pretty automatic, and happens a lot with multiplayer games. Did you need some sort of menu in order to allow it with solo-play games? Im just commenting because adding menu features is alot of work and this seems kindof cosmetic.

[daesthai]

UI:

My humble request is simple to continue to push for the ability to alter the color of the nieghboring provinces filter.

[Ozymandias]

I would really like some way to configure the keyboard shortcuts... editing a text file would be fine for me, and wouldn't require any ui work (although the informative popups ingame are another matter). This is mostly because some commands like sacrifice (used by three nations) and pillage (usable by all nations, but I really want the shortcut for ermor) have no keyboard shortcut, while capture slaves, usable only by mictlan, does. Also it would be great if the C and M hotkeys worked with ritual spells from items. Nobody would dislike a monthly forging hotkey either.

[Arryn]

Ozymandias said:
Nobody would dislike a monthly forging hotkey either.

That's probably the single most-requested feature that's yet to be implemented. And it should be a trivial matter for IW to code it ...

[Edi]

Gandalf Parker said:
That is pretty automatic, and happens a lot with multiplayer games. Did you need some sort of menu in order to allow it with solo-play games? Im just commenting because adding menu features is alot of work and this seems kindof cosmetic.


More like just adding a checkbox of Allied victory on/off. I was thinking in terms of how it was done in the original Age of Wonders where they had this small box that you could click on or off. Much like the cheat detection on/off when setting up a game. Of course, the functions and new menu items for the message menu would have to be added, four that I can think of: declare war, propose alliance, propose peace/truce (to return state of war to neutrality) and cancel aliance (to reset alliance to neutrality).

The only actual UI change or new addition required would be a diplomacy status display screen where you can see if you're at war with, neutral or allied with the different nations. The rest could be done by just adding the menu options, assuming the menu buttons have been made on the list type basis as follows:

Pseudocode
<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>Menu Button 1
display code
functions

Menu Button 2
display code
functions

etc</pre><hr />

Adding three new ones to an existing menu should not be difficult. Writing the actual diplomacy code (i.e. how the AI should behave in the three different states) could be easy or difficult, depending. As I see it, neutrality and war don't need much, the existing AI implementation works just fine, usually the AI will initially leave you alone for a while unless you bother it. It will eventually attack and pursue the war more or less actively (unless it gets seriously attacked from another front).

Alliance option can already be set with map commands in the map file to specify that nation A and nation B will not attack each other, the alliance coding would just have to make this a resettable variable, with the actual status determined by the actions from the message menu.

Optionally, if a little bit more complex diplomacy were to be added, there could be a relationship value for the nations on a scale of +/- something for different actions. Breaking alliance without declaring war should obviously decrease chance of renewing the alliance in the future, otherwise this could be abused against the AI. Increasing the value should be through considerable (meaning really big) gifts of gems, gold or magic items and declaring war on an AI nation's enemies, while decreses would be through declaration of war, even more for attacking without declaration of war and most for backstabbing an ally.

The idea is basically a system like AoW 1 had, simple and effective. Scope for influencing relations here is more limited, but then again, alliances are often less imnportant in SP games than MP, and I think my idea as such would offer a relatively simple and effective (yet hopefully not too complex) framework for formalizing stuff in MP. Secret alliances would still have to be done as neutrals with verbal agreements, but you'd have to formalize them eventually to get pantheon victory.

Of course, like I said, this is more a wider feature request than just a simple improvement suggestion, and because I know nothing about the actual Dom2 code, I have no idea how feasible it is to implement and how eager the devs would be to do that even if it is feasible.

But just thinking of the possibilities, e.g. heat vs cold nations games and other kinds of alliance (e.g. Ulm and Marignon vs Man and Pangaea would be anoher pretty thematic one) games would be easier to formally set up, you could have really nice full pantheon clashes where you don't need so much to worry about being constantly backstabbed.

Did this post make things any clearer?

Edi

[Boron]

Arryn said:

Ozymandias said:
Nobody would dislike a monthly forging hotkey either.

That's probably the single most-requested feature that's yet to be implemented. And it should be a trivial matter for IW to code it ...



This reminds me of a disband feature too http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif . Would be very very useful too and should be extremely easy to implement too i guess http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Gandalf Parker]

Edi said:

Gandalf Parker said:
That is pretty automatic, and happens a lot with multiplayer games. Did you need some sort of menu in order to allow it with solo-play games? Im just commenting because adding menu features is alot of work and this seems kindof cosmetic.


Adding three new ones to an existing menu should not be difficult. Writing the actual diplomacy code (i.e. how the AI should behave in the three different states) could be easy or difficult, depending.



Ahhh so you are seeking for a way to win a game while allied to the AI? Thats what I was trying to find out. The feature would mean little in multiplay, and we have a hard time trying to get things for solo-play.


Optionally, if a little bit more complex diplomacy were to be added, there could be a relationship value for the nations on a scale of +/- something for different actions. Breaking alliance without declaring war should obviously decrease chance of renewing the alliance in the future, otherwise this could be abused against the AI. Increasing the value should be through considerable (meaning really big) gifts of gems, gold or magic items and declaring war on an AI nation's enemies, while decreses would be through declaration of war, even more for attacking without declaration of war and most for backstabbing an ally.



This has been discussed before. The PbEM form of the game makes it more difficult to track such things across multiple turns.


The idea is basically a system like AoW 1 had, simple and effective. Scope for influencing relations here is more limited, but then again, alliances are often less imnportant in SP games than MP, and I think my idea as such would offer a relatively simple and effective (yet hopefully not too complex) framework for formalizing stuff in MP. Secret alliances would still have to be done as neutrals with verbal agreements, but you'd have to formalize them eventually to get pantheon victory.



As much as I like having diplomacy in a game, I fail to see where this will be used. In a MP game having the game recognize an alliance usually limits it. And having it declare an allied win will probably never happen. Very few MP games (or solo games for that matter) actually continue until the game itself declares a winner.


But just thinking of the possibilities, e.g. heat vs cold nations games and other kinds of alliance (e.g. Ulm and Marignon vs Man and Pangaea would be anoher pretty thematic one) games would be easier to formally set up, you could have really nice full pantheon clashes where you don't need so much to worry about being constantly backstabbed.



Those are all great ideas and could be done with a map setup. Take a look at WEvsTHEM at www.dom2minions.com (http://www.dom2minions.com)

[Endoperez]

Being able to choose allied nations when changing to AI control.

I think this would help MP games quite a lot.

[Endoperez]

Some threads about suggestions/improvements that I thought would be good to mention atleast once, and decided against bumping all these threads. Hopefully IW has already memorized these threads, but just in case they haven't... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif


New Water spells (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showthreaded.php?Number=271666), including interesting Waterways (coastal-to-coastal teleport) and ideas for different summons (from Nessie to Yeti to Nymphs to Crocodiles).

Suggestions to improve the Water Magic Discipline (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showthreaded.php?Number=265219), another Water thread, many ideas seem same. Longer, has more ideas, but also more non-topic discussion. First mention of the Waterways above

New Item Suggestions (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showthreaded.php?Number=251340)Started by Saber Cherry back then. Some interesting ideas, many overpowered ideas and Arms of Steel. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

AI thread (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showthreaded.php?Number=234768) (20 pages), started as AI improvements but turned to discussion about AI

AI troop building algorithm (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showthreaded.php?Number=265057) Not Tested

AI castle building algorithm (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showthreaded.php?Number=265057) Not Tested

Also, the Wishlist I made and linked to once, from my previous post. I thought about a thread, but decided against it.

Unfortunately I remember only those threads, and the 20-paged one didn't end so I had to give in looking through "suggestion" search.

[silhouette]

I haven't been playing long, but I'm still finding new sites I have never seen and that is great. I even appreciate the time I "discovered" one of those eeevil sites when it horror marked my prophet and pretender the same turn...http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif

Here are a couple of ideas which might be fun for new magic sites that I haven't seen suggested anywhere:

+ Halls of Elevation: provides X% bonus for Empowerment
+ Empty Altar: provides a +X Call God bonus (I need this way way too often)
+ Mystic Archive: provides a +X Research bonus
+ Wormhole: a 1-way #neighbor to a random map province
+ Storm Home: permanent Storm effect for any combat (other Versions for Haunted Forest, Fog Bank for Mist, Energy Vortex for Antimagic, Holy Ground for Bless, etc)
+ Angered Earth: chance of an Earth Attack at any time (other Versions for Flames from the Sky, disease, Call of W/W, etc?)
+ Black Market: reduced (tax) income, chance an item will be "pickpocketed" from a commander, can recruit Villain/Assassin?
+ Echo Canyon / Resonant Woods reduces/increases the effect of all song/tunes (Soothing, Healing, etc)
+ Pirate's Lair: Can recruit Pirates and Captain (seacoast)

and how about a way to create new sites in a mod http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif


Silhouette
--
warning: this has been a First Post (tm)

[Wauthan]

Well since wishing couldn't hurt...

An altered death9 blessing perhaps? Since you can never compensate for all the wierd sacred units in the game (not to mention those found in mods) it might be better to give death9 something else. Poison and Cold resistance perhaps?

National heroes are a very nice addition to the game but they either need to more numerous or a lot tougher. I can fully understand the basic idea with heroes being beefy normal units but as it stands now their appearance is fairly redundant. My own request would be that heroes grant the nation abilities it does not already have (a mighty airmage for R'lyeh would be a lot more welcome than a mighty watermage for example). Or giving an assassin/spy/healer/supply provider etc to a nation that lacks this. Or perhaps a few heroes could summon allies for free (Sporsnjall could perhaps summon 4 Vaetti/turn).

I wouldn't mind if the spell Transformation got an overhaul as well. And a site added that casts this spell on whatever unit that enters it.

A few more items that compensates for afflictions would be nice. We already have heart and eye "transplants" but what about items that compensate for other wounds? I really enjoy the idea of giving a wounded commander an item that turns a disadvantage into an advantage. Since only nature magic/arcosephale are reliable sources for curing afflictions the ability to craft items to help put a valued unit back into action would be really great.

That's all from me. I reckon you guys are drowning in suggestions already.

[Endoperez]

I forgot to say it in my bump (that I originally was going to post to DomIII wishlist, and some wording might seem strange because of that), but I don't think this list has any meaning whatsoever now that the first post can't be updated. If you Wish for something it might be better to put it in Dom3 thread. These two atleast were aimed quite much to that direction.

So, if you wish to get something, either make a new wishlist thread and/or collect ideas to form a new wishlist, or post to Dom3 wishlist thread.

[silhouette]

Endoperez said:
... If you Wish for something it might be better to put it in Dom3 thread. These two atleast were aimed quite much to that direction.


I understand, but think there is some value in keeping a separate list of things that seem more "patchable" Dom2 wishes vs the bigger only-in-Dom3 wishes. But yeah, this thread is probably too big to be useful (and it's not Sept anymore).

Sill

[Endoperez]

I thought about doing a new one, but never got around to it. Besides, it would be hard to manage without being able to edit the first post...