The Dominions 3: "Wishlist"

[Zen]

The following is the Dominions 3 Wishlist. Just to clarify, this is what Users would like to have, not neccessarily what they will get. With the announcement of Dominions 3 I'd like to funnel all the "Feature Request", "Johan do this", "This is what I hate about Dom2, change it in Dom3" Posts so that it's easier for Illwinter to read about potential suggestions (that are probably already brewing) and to allow Users to feel they are being heard.

Suggestions will get potentially more attention if they are worded correctly and not as an attack or "x is BROKE! FIX IT" so foam at your own risk.

[Zooko]

Shouldn't there be a separate thread for the "Less Micromanagement" wishes?

I wish for less micromanagement in tax rates. I have a simple rules: if unrest > 9, then lower tax rate by ceil(unrest/10) * 2. If unrest < 10, then set tax rate to 100.

I'm sure the flexibility to set provincial taxes is useful for more sophisticated players than myself, but I'd rather not have to manually tweak taxes in each province each turn unless I want to.

[Zooko]

I wish for super-duper 3-D graphics, as I accidentally blurted out on another non-wishlist thread.

[Zen]

It's okay http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif But knowing those who love Dom2 I know the feature requests are going to be pouring in. This just makes it easier to read and possibly implement any ideas that people may have and would like to share. More than likely IW will be busy making Dom3 that they don't have to spend alot of time reading through suggestions in multiple threads.

[Taqwus]

Sure. I'm a bit of a nut about reducing tedium in interfaces.

Example: Tax policy in a fairly large empire. If tax rates could be set automatically due to a policy dependent on unrest (e.g.
if unrest <= 0 tax at 100
elsif unrest <= 5 tax at 90
elsif unrest <= 10 tax at 80
elsif unrest <= 15 tax at 70
elsif unrest <= 20 tax at 60
etc (or, more succintly, "reduce taxes by 20 for every 5 unrest") with a per-province manual override and a global override (i.e. the current system: no global rule).

----------------------------------------------------------

Units are aggregated in some displays, notably Gift of Reason is much nicer about not showing numerous indistinguishable units for selection. Aggregation in the army screen would be even spiffier; instead of

aaabaaaaabbbcccaaddaa

where a,b,c,d are unit types,

a b c d
12 4 3 2

would be faster to parse in terms of differentiating between units although it'd require an extra step for selecting subsets, and perhaps would need to be expanded anyway in terms of identifying wounded, experienced, etc. Those could be treated as separate unit types, eh.

------------------------------------------------------------

If blood slave pooling still affects sacrificers, it probably shouldn't, as this hampers Mictlan rather disproportionately. I might even wonder if pooling (any resource) should only affect those -gathering- slaves or holding gem-producing items or who innately generate such bits; this would reduce the need to re-arm battle mages who happen to be hovering over a lab that time. Could always have an additional button to force the current comprehensive pooling in case you need it, e.g. getting ready to cast a global or dispel.

Also on gem rearming, perhaps a mage who's expended gems should know how many gems he's used and reload the next chance he gets (over lab and there's sufficient gems); not really sure about this, 'tho, as there might be gem shortages during which we want them to hold off on this.

[Zooko]

I don't really wish for more nations, more units, more spells, or more items. I mean, sure that would be nice (once all the balance issues get ironed out), but it isn't something I really wish for. I've been playing dom2 for around a year, and at the current rate, it will be several more years before I've tried out all the current nations, learned about all the current summonables, etc.

So, while I expect more stuff (due to Illwinter's admirable philosophy), and I intend to enjoy the new stuff, it isn't really a priority for me.

If given the choice between "Dom 2 THREE DEE" with the exactly current gameplay (plus patches and mods) but fancy graphics, or "Dom 3" with exactly the current graphics but a bucketload of new stuff, I might go ahead and play Dom 2 THREE DEE for at least a few months.

I know this makes me sound shallow and ignorant, to say it in this crowd, but somebody's gotta speak up for the shallow and ignorant masses who might buy lots of copies of "Dom 2 THREE DEE" and thus put lots of money into the pockets of Illwinter and Shrapnel.

Just to be clear, I would much rather play Dom2 as is than play a prettier game with worse gameplay. It's just that there has to be a point of diminishing returns in adding units. When do you stop? Eventually you can have so many units that most players are unfamiliar with most of them. Is that good?

At the current rate, by the time Dom3 comes out in 2005 I *might* have learned about most of Dom2's units and I might be ready to try new ones. We'll see.

[Cohen]

Here my first opinions:

Better Pretender and Nation balance.
National Troops *always useful*, perhaps enhanced with more battlefield spells and such.
Better Divine/Unholy Spellcasting, perhaps a dedicated magic school, and forging.
Improved Messaging interface.
More orders for troops, spells in queue.
More skills and special abilities.
More terrain types and more influence of terrain type in battles.
Improved siege.
More indeps unit types and magic site recruits.
Heroic skills assigned related to unit base skills.
Experience gains different from magic summons and national troops.
A random national hero generator (pick a base commander, add something, and create it when the default ones are ended).
More battle maneuver, like flanking (delaying your troop but they enter from flank or rear, doable only by light cavalry for example).
A wider range of events.
Some scales need to be worthy and not exploitable to take negative, especially growth.
Primary and Secondary castle choice, perhaps the secondary allowing only to recruit your troops/mages in, and the primary giving effective defence.
Movement order given by a "command rating" (something like a strategy skill) stat assigned to commanders.
Battle movement given by a tactic skill (if your commander is most skilled you could be even able to move twice than enemy, but only troops are affected, or you move first only ...).
Different kind of battles or order issued (hiding troops could get an Ambush order, to attack only a group of the enemy force for example, this could make useful even villains or such).
Conquering an enemy controlled (from more than X turn --- to avoid a take and retake of a lab in a war, before the lab is filled of stuff it should be considered secure) laboratory could give you a loot due to sacking, stealing gems and perhaps 1 random item from enemy lab.
Better assassination calculation or different way to do that. The assassin could wait for the victim to sleep or to be distracted instead of attacking it in a battlefield.
An assassin could have an assassination percentage that is the chance of success he's, this is augmented by items and experience, and lowered by the amount of bodyguard assigned to the victim. You should be able too to choose who to assassinate.


Now stomach claims something to fill it.

[Zooko]

I spend a lot of time laboriously checking my units for battle wounds, then checking what each battle wound is, in order to sort them into new squads.

Battle Fraught units and badly damaged melee units get thrown into one squad which has the privilege of leading the attack. Damaged archers are allowed to stay in the main archer squads unless they have a wound which reduces their usefulness such as Lost One Eye or Lost One Arm.

One very simple improvement would be for a tooltip to indicate the name of the wound when I hover over the red heart icon.

[Zooko]

I love building up heroes. Even in a game like Dom2 where some of them are destined for a glorious death instead of a glorious victory.

One thing I always loved in Heroes of Might and Magic III was getting to choose between two randomly generated heroic improvements whenever the hero levelled up.

The equivalent in Dom2 is to try to get as many different units into the Hall of Fame as I can, and then choose the one who got the best heroic ability to be my prophet.

All of which is just to say that allowing some kind of (limited) choice about heroic ability could be a real thrill for me.

[johan osterman]

Cohen:
What do you mean with battle movement? Are you saying troops should be 'quickened' if they have commanders with a high leadership?


What do you mean with more skills? Are you saying there should be more stats on the units?

[Zooko]

I wish for a slider allowing me to fast-forward, rewind, and jump to specific moments in the battle. Just think of the battle as being a movie and think of the slider that comes with Quicktime or Real media movies, etc.

I wish that I wouldn't have to sit wait for arrows to make their way through the sky. Maybe arrows could be fired simultaneously with other moves (a la the "realtime battles (not RTS)" wish)? Maybe arrows could just fly with incredible speed? (After all, flying units do!) Maybe if I get the above wish then I can just click the "jump forward 2 seconds" button every time a volley of arrows is loosed.

[RadiantFleet]

Below is a repost from a different thread:

I would like to see some modularity for the AI in Dom3, specifically the main program calling an AI "module" or script that can be tinkered with by players. I think Space Empires IV is a good start, but really anything that would let players tinker with the decision trees by nation and "flavor". I think this would be a huge benefit for both players and illwinter, since the players would get better AI's and we'd help keep Kristofer from getting programmer burn out. I think this strategy has worked extremely well for maps, and would be a big benefit in the AI arena.

PS. Another great example of using modules for AI control is the old tank game "omega".

[Endoperez]

More 'skills' as abilities (mistform, sneak, assasination, sailing...). Eg. thief: a chance to steal an item and/or gems from (semi-)random commander in province, if it doesn't succeed immediately multiple throws against stealth or be found, number of throws dependant on the power of the item/number of gems/recruiting cost of the commander in question/prophethood etc.

Hero improvements, like:
A) Heroes that change not only according to a nation/theme, but on pretender form, his/her/its magics, scales, dominion, pure luck - everything! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Or maybe just heroes dependent on titles.
or B) Heroes bringing items, spells, bodyguards etc. with them. Heroes enabling their nation to cast more spells (when 'addHeroX' then 'addNationalSpellX'), forge new items (eg. Master of the Iron Crutch - Iron Crutch (cursed, poison cloud, disease... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif)

More events, events scaling with time, events dependent on everything as in the hero suggestion above or, again, titles.

When someone kills a god, or even a pretender, something should happen. Lady of Luck: Luck set to -3, unrest increased... Dependent on pretender's form, scales, titles, magic...

'Timer' so that commands other than fort construction take more than one turn, and this as moddable (unique Master Artificer could craft a Crusher if given 6 months).

Independants being able to defend their forts, hide in them, break siege if needed, recruit more units (up to max(suppliesAvailable, difficultyMax)), independent temples slowing dominion spread, independent mages collecting gems (slowly)...

'Independent nations' for Random Map Creator:
All neighbours of a "citadel" are of the same type (eg. trolls, vaettir, wolfriders), and the citadel itself has a castle, is richer than other provinces, has/can have special defenders...

New spells, including: http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/Penguin.gif, ightning:, /threads/images/Graemlins/Bug.gif, Wrath of Seas, /threads/images/Graemlins/Racoon.gif, /threads/images/Graemlins/icon24.gif, /threads/images/Graemlins/icon10.gif, /threads/images/Graemlins/icon07.gif, http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/firedevil.gif, /threads/images/Graemlins/Acorn.gif, /threads/images/Graemlins/icon42.gif and Sea of http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/beerglass.gif!

Ability to mod population types. Ability to give population type defenders that are not the same as the units recruitable there (eg. C'tissian independents, after killing them you get only Slave Lizards), and add special things to the poptype(eg. the independent c'tissian always has a lab, Rarity!, can only be found on a swamp province that borders another swamp province and province that isn't a swamp, has greater chance for magic sites)...

Ability to import characters from Dominions Roguelike! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Things from the old Wishlist for DomII, as developers see fit. (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showthreaded.php?Number=293533)

Whatever balancing Illwinter sees as appopriate.

Also, PLEASE make DomIII to be like DomII, unique. I would like to see something I didn't expect, balancing community didn't request, features that were added "just because", Things That Should Be. Dominions III should be something that won't be expected, something that hits like an Orb Lighting cast by a Virtue hovering high above, something that strikes us mortals with awe... Also, don't take this thread too seriously. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[Truper]

I'd love it if the random map generating feature included ways to modify the results from within the game itself, so that those like me with no drawing skills whatever, and no inclination to obtain and learn a program like GIMP might be able to make maps for MP play.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Way on top of my own wishlist:

Please, please, leave that 'Något gick fel' error message as it is (untranslated) in Dom 3. It always has been, is, and should remain Dominions' most distinctive hallmark. Without it, the game would lose a lot of its appeal to me. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

[johan osterman]

It has been there since CoE days. So I don't imagine it will be left out anytime soon.

[quantum_mechani]

The biggest thing I would like to see is more advanced terrain in battles. Swamps that would really give C'tis an advatage, castles with more options for troops on both sides to use (boiling oil, scaling ladders, perhaps even magical options). Wild terrain would also give a real use for light infantry, a few more commands would make light cavalry useful (fire and flee where they all retreat to the same province, hold until enemy route- for chasing down fleeing troops).

I also hope Dominions will keep the ability that sets its apart from any other game I have played- the ability to play non-PBEM MP with a slow modem. That alone has greatly increased the amout of time I put into Dominions.

[Boron]

Would it be possible to include automatisized Advisors/Governours ?
Like in Civ 3 ?

So if you feel lazy ( mainly in Sp ) you turn on e.g. the tax advisor and he sets taxes in all your empire like suggested above by others according to unrest automatically .

Then monthly forging function , hopefully a forge advisor who automatically stocks clams / fetishes / blood stones / new hoarding items on the right commanders ( scouts ) .

Finally improved recruting that you can give e.g. the command build 10 scouts / turn and the Ai just selects 10 provinces where this is possible and does it.

Gamewise : Finetune the supply system a bit because atm imo it is damn hard to make campaigns in enemy territory with only 50 supply eating armies . Normally investing in the bag of vine is not really worth it too cause you would get lots of vine ogres for that e.g. .

More balanced random events and / or option to completely turn them off for an even more competetive game experience .

Maybe more province build options which cost upkeep too but bring additional benefits :
e.g. build a tax office : Gold 100 , 5 upkeep : +20% tax earnings in province .
Build prison : unrest -x / turn .
Maybe some "wonders" which have a global effect like +0,2% popgrowth in every province or 5% more good events etc.


More options in game settings :
-Random events on/off , frequency options for random events .
-all captured buildings destroyed / captured intact , x% destroyed , etc.

So as much as possible adjustable .
I think Aow 2 Shadow magic is here quite good as example .


Everything modable and with a good Userinterface , so a real editor like civilization 3 editor , Aow 2 SM editor , starcraft editor as good examples .

[PhilD]

Ability to customize some of the UI, with, say, keyboard shortcuts. Saving some "favorite" army setups and battle scripts would be a nice feature; with the game as it currently is, if you find something that "works" for you, you have to recreate it every time. I find I don't have the patience for it...

Similarly: I'd like to see the return of the Battle Simulator - and to have it launchable from the main game. Here I am, planning for my next turn; I know what my available armies are (or could be, depending on how I move this and this one); I have a good (or bad) idea what the opposing armies are (or could be), and what the opposing player's tactics seem to be. I'd like to be able to test, from within the game, what the possible outcomes might be.

More content: I'm not sure this is so essential. I mean, maybe some people managed to explore each and every unit/combo in the game, but I haven't; I'm pretty sure there's enough stuff in there already to Last me until Dom4.

More battlefield orders. More scripting options, especially if it's easier to store/recreate them. Include an "intelligence" stat on some commanders (or troops?) that lets them store more complex orders. Include an option for "if" orders, or maybe just "if unapplicable, do this instead". Of course, for this to be manageable, we'd need better "script management" (I guess that one's my top wish, after all).

Saveable battle replays. Not that it matters so much, but sometimes, in a big MP game, you're so happy with how things turned out, you'd like to be able to brag about it without sharing your password http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Horst F. JENS]

just a little dom3 wish:

add in the manual a (big! long!) section with links to books/pages about all that mythological stuff.

since playing dominions1, i feel that my interest increase to learn more about the background/legends/history of all those monsters and weapons in the game.

[Vynd]

Here are my two (or three) bits:

It would be nice if AI nations would build forts. Better AI in general is always good, but to me this one has always stood out.

More and/or more distinctive choices of forts to select from.

Something to spend those annoying left-over Pretender creation points on. Like maybe allowing up to 20 points to be converted into extra starting cash.

Change the routing system for commanders. I especially dislike the "if only commanders are sent into battle, they all rout when one of them dies" feature. It should be possible to use squads of, say, Ulmish Black Knight commanders with magic items to try and take out an enemy army. Or a squad of Pythium mages to do the same. As it stands now to use teams of relatively fragile commanders like this you need to either load them up with chaff soldiers (which probably still rout and cause your commanders to rout with them), or the good old "lamed pikeman at the rear of the battlefield." Any system that encourages the use of a ridiculous ploy like that one must has something wrong with it.

Change the movement system so that it is possible (not guaranteed, just possible) to move your army into a location with enemy troops and intercept them before those enemy troops get to move elsewhere.

[Esben Mose Hansen]

THAT announcement lured me back here for a bit http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

A humble request from the server providers? Could the client be separated from the server?

Specifically I would like three programs:

1. A gameserver that calculates the new turns.
2. A client that displays the turns (and do all the other GUI stuff)
3. A TCP/IP netserver that listens to a port and accepts uploads of turns and pretenders. Ideally, this server would also allow clients to download mods and maps.

So the design becomes this
<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
client ------- TCP/IP-----&gt; netserver ---- turn/pretender-files --&gt; gameserver
| ^
+--------------------------------- turn/pretender-file by email ---------------+
</pre><hr />

Feel free to email me for any thoughts and suggestions on that one. Client/Server application is what I do professionally these days http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

(As for playing, I agree that making the battlefield mean something would increase the complexity (in a good way) tremendously. I suggest something liek a factor 2 or so.

[Argitoth]

I want only two things:

1. My SC not running away when his auto-summons die.
2. My prophet not going berserk due to a stray arrow.

And many others want this one thing:

1. The ability to tell a unit what not to cast.

[magnate]

Most of my "most important" ones have already been covered -

1. Little need for yet more races/units/spells/items - in hundreds of hours of play I've only explored a fraction of them. I know there will inevitably be more, but units/spells/items that nobody uses (because there's something better and cheaper) are a bit of a waste. That's not a criticism that can be levelled at much of the current content, but the more you have, the more likely it is to occur.

2. More sophisticated combat scripting - lots of people seem to want this, and I'm not an expert by any means but my personal bugbear is storming castles. I'd really love to see "get inside and melee defenders" and "stay outside and pelt defenders" orders. For some reason my troops always end up on the wrong side of the walls ...

3. UI improvements (definable shortcuts, global taxation orders, grouping troops by wounds or experience, selective pooling of gems, etc.). My top top single UI improvement is a screen for locating items - a scrolling list of every commander's inventory (name followed by icons would do, if hovering over the icon pops up the item name or something).

4. On (semi-)automating of tasks (like taxation, production, research etc.): all the games I've ever seen with "governors" or "advisers" to reduce micromanagement have suffered from the excruciating flaw of not making them user-definable! So I either have to do the micro and input the same build queue each time, or turn on the AI "governor" who won't build what I want. If you go down this route, please please please allow players to define and save recruitment queues, forge queues, ritual queues, tax heuristics etc. etc. Otherwise the "reduction" of micro becomes negligible if you can't tailor it to your own play style.

5. Allowing waypoints would be very handy for the later stages of long games. I often find I can't remember where a particular army was heading, especially if a game is only running once or twice a week.

6. I instinctively prefer SP so I'm in the "better and/or moddable AI" camp. I also share Gandalf's love of minor random SP experiences. I used to love finding "retorts" in MoM - if there was a way to include random events which adjusted your scales, or awarded (or took away) magic paths or items from a commander ... without making such things potentially unbalancing ... that would be fun. (Purists please remember that you can always switch such random events OFF ....)

7. (Sorry, I'm getting really carried away now) I think much more could be made of heroic abilities. Being able to choose them would be a bit potentially cheesy, but a little less randomness would be really good (eg. strength more likely on a melee commander or SC, precision more likely on an archer or spellcaster etc.). Perhaps do away with the somewhat artifical HoF mechanic and make heroic abilities the result of experience (meaning finer gradations of xp levels) ... or something. I do think heroes really add to the game (full marks to the person who suggested more national heroes, or randomly generated ones or whatever). Maybe if you got a heroic ability you really didn't want, you could eventually choose to start developing a 2nd one instead of continuing to improve the first one (so the 2nd one would be a much smaller boost, but better than yet more Valour ...)

8. More sophisticated squad arrangements, including routing conditions! Is there a reason why a commander respected by 300 troops can only have 5 squads? Being able to specify that your army will rout if your key HI squad at the front gets decimated (but not if the archers get mashed) would be really good. Not that I want to start another debate about routing of course ....

I'll stop there. Still, this is no criticism - Dom2 is right up in my top 5 games of all time (only MoM, Elite, Civ1 and maybe MoO1 have ever occupied more of my time) - if Dom3 never gets made I bet I will still be playing Dom2 in 5 years' time.

CC

[Gandalf Parker]

I agree that I do not feel I have played Dom2 to its death, nor will this next year let me accomplish that...
But keep in mind that this is mostly a 2 man team. Johan is the programmer, and Kristoffer does the themes/nations/units/items. I dont want to cubbyhole them incorrectly, there may be some overlap...
But the POINT I want to make is that it doesnt do alot of good to try and trade off "I dont want new nations etc etc" with "I would rather see more programming etc etc". If you are going to do tradeoffs then they would need to be programming for programming, or playing choices for playing choices.

[PrinceofLowLight]

Well, Rome: Total War graphics for battles, sentient AIs and a hoburg in every box!

What? It's a "Wish" list.

On the more realistic side...

D2's magic system in general is ridiculously awesome, but the handling of the more mundane aspects of empire building is..lacking, to say the least. Static populations without a growth scale? That's just silly.

Migration and population growth could be factors. Bad luck could cause migrations to less accident-prone areas. That could be a real balance to the luck scale.

The different racial and cultural populations could be a factor. Caelians displacing lizardmen? Neat! And each population would have its preferences. That may be a bit more work than it's worth, though.

Some more abilities for units, especially generals. Strategoi and similar units could give big bonuses to morale.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

magnate said:
2. More sophisticated combat scripting - lots of people seem to want this



Yes, and I must say I'm a bit worried by this. I'd like to see a new 'skirmish' order (or battle formation) implemented for light troops, but that's about it. I don't want an overcomplicated system with tons of choices or conditional options that would led to more MM. I think there's enough of it already.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Almost forgot this old pet peeve of mine -

One thing I'd really like to see in Dom 3: balanced recruitment for national troops. Eg, Arco has hoplite infantry and light cavalry, everybody likes the former but nobody uses the cavalry. The game should track troop recruitment and make overused troop types more expensive over time (or underused ones less expensive) to give players an incentive to field more balanced armies.

[Kel]

I would like to see more detailed battle reports that tell me specifically which units died, with the summary that we have now at the top.

I would also like the second or third the idea of having some sort of tax manager button (not a really sucha problem unless you are playing a blood nation, I suppose).

- Kel

[Sedna]

Two things that haven't been mentioned (much) so far:

1) The ability to set a destination for troops, so I don't have to walk them by hand every single turn. It's okay if it gets broken if, say, your intermediary provinces are conquered, but it would still be an improvement.

2) Underwater provinces need to be more differentiated. I would love to see a variety of types of provinces: in addition to a standard open ocean, for example, there could be shallow coastal waters, deep sea trenches, perhaps areas of high underwater volcanism or subduction zones or other things for the geologically geeky. In addition to having a wider variety of inahbitants, I would also like to have the names means something the way "forest" and "plains" indicate what kind of province it is. Coastal waters could have more income but less magic sites, subduction zones have higher turmoil, troops from deep sea vent provinces tend to glow, etc.

-Sedna

[Zen]

A few of my personal wishlist is:

A.) A more dramatic battlefield impact of Leaders or Leadership upon normal Troops during battle..

B.) More impact of Pretender Blessing on normal troops and/or more sacred or more game spanning Sacred troops (This could play well with NGF's idea)

C.) Movement Phase Initiative System based on troop composition, troop type, leadership, special abilities, survival, dominion, province ownership and whatever other factors to create more of a dramatic 'group' strategy phase.

D.) Mitigate Flying's Strategic strength.

E.) Dynamic Event System based on Nation, Scales, previous events, battles, etc.

F.) Advanced Squad AI based on battlefield conditions. Flank Support, line breaks, etc.

I have quite a number more.

[rex_havok]

i am a new player and one small thing i would like to see. It appears to be very easy to kill off population but impossible to increase pop. expecially in repopulating ermor bLasted lands.
Rex

[ioticus]

Nagot Gick Fel said:
Way on top of my own wishlist:

Please, please, leave that 'Något gick fel' error message as it is (untranslated) in Dom 3.http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif



What the hell does that mean?

[deccan]

It seems that quite a few people have requested that fast armies be allowed to catch up with slower ones on the strategic map. Why not use the movement system in SEIV?

For example, assuming that you want to impose a hardcoded maximum strategic movement of 10, then you would sub-divide each turn into 10 movement phases, and each movement phase can have its own battle if at the conclusion of the phase, more than one army occupies a province.

So, a Doom Horror with strategic movement of 10 would be able to move 1 province during each phase. A heavy infantry unit with strategic movement 1 would only move 1 province each turn and get to move only on phase 10 (the Last movement phase of the turn). A heavy cavalry unit with strategic movement 2 would get to move 2 provinces each turn, meaning that it moves once on phase 9 and again on phase 10. A light cavalry unit with strategic movement 3 would get to move on phases 8, 9 and 10 and so forth.

This way a heavy cavalry unit chasing a heavy infantry unit would catch up with the heavy infantry unit because it moves on phase 9, before the HI moves.

[silhouette]

I want multiple fort building options.

It's apparent that the fortification selection for a nation is a key balance factor in the nation, but it seems excessively and artificially limiting to me to only allow exactly one fort design for the whole nation.

Maybe reduce the cost of forts in the design phase by 20% or so and allow you to 'buy' multiple fort plans -- as many as you want to pay for. Then in play when you construct the thing you get options of all the fort designs you paid for. Is it a bad thing to have different design and building strategies for different needs: high defence fort in those chokepoints, quick building tower when you need it NOW, high admin for production centers, etc.? Maybe when you seige/capture an enemy fortress you can learn that design and add it to your nations build list, or have certain heroes or site-recruitable units which come with 'plans' for other forts. I guess I hear the howls of agony from the anti-mad-castling contingent now....

Sill

[Edi]

Edit: fixed an improperly coded list

Pretender Design
Would it be possible to make the following change to pretender design: Selecting first nation, then special theme, and only then pretender chassis? This way it could be possible to perhaps assign different pretender lists for each nation according to theme if desired, though the current system works quite well.

--------------------------------

Terrain Types

Currently we have:
Plains
Farmlands
Fresh Water (not visible in-game, please change this?)
Forest
Mountain
Swamp
Waste
Sea
Nostart (switch, but acts like a terrain type)
Manysites (switch, but acts like a terrain type)


I think the following would make great additions, especially if a couple of the existing ones are modified a bit:
Tundra
Glacier
Jungle
Hills
Road (switch, but acts like a terrain type)

Right now, Waste terrain type covers everything from real hot sand and rock deserts to tundra and glaciers. This can lead to such bizarre things as having Plains of Perpetual Drought in and so forth in glacier regions, Cold Lands in the middle of Sahara and so forth. That's why I at least feel that Tundra and/or Glacier (less necessary, but would be nice) would be good additions.

Right now all provinces that should be hills have to be listed as mountains, but it would be great to be able to throw a hill terrain type in conjunction with e.g. forests or farmlands instead of having a whole Himalaya in there, and jungles and temperate forests are also rather different from each other.

The addition of new terrain types would allow for a greater variety of population type assignment by terrain (especially if there will be more units and more population types), more specific correlation of certain types of magic sites with certain types of terrain (Cold Lands and Blizzard Vale more likely in Tundra, not possible in Waste, for example, and the reverse for e.g. Plain of Perpetual Drought).

The new terrain type system would also work very well if the strategic move system is slightly modified, perhaps by increasing the range and assigning different terrain types different strat move costs (without relevant survival, moving through that terrain will cost X start moves, or if not enough strat move, than the units will move just one province).

Example strat move cost suggestions (off the top of my head)
0.75 Plains/farmlands
1 Tundra/waste
2 Forest/hills
2.5 Swamp/jungle/glacier
3 Mountains
Roads would subtract 1 from base strat move cost for terrains with move cost greater than one, works like the manysites and nostart switches.


--------------------------------

Combat System

I'm pretty happy with the current combat system, but there is one order I would really like to see added: Hold and Fire. This would allow for a better use of javelin and throwing axe troops, instead of having them charge immediately to combat if you want them to use their missile weapons, they would wait for three turns before they start firing. This is my single biggest source of frustration for regular unit orders.

Wouldn't mind having a commander script that was one or two orders longer than the current five either.

--------------------------------

Scripts

There was a suggestion in here about enabling scripts to be stored system wide, instead of specific to a game, but how about this: Having a script file for each nation, where scripts stored when playing that nation are recorded, and every time you play any game where you are that nation, Dom3 references that script record file automatically? Problem solved and you can specify the necessary scripts just the first time you play a nation without needing the micro every time you start a new game. If scripts contain orders that are not available (such as casting spells that are not yet researched), the unit does something else that round.

-----------------------

Random Map Generator

If possible, would you please make the random map generator in a fashion that allows people to enter the default map colors they desire as hex codes? Have some default values, but allow them to be altered from RMG settings?

------------------------

These are my humble wishes/suggestions, and I would be definitely overjoyed if IW will see fit to implement any parts of them. The mapmaking related stuff (terrain and the RMG request) are the ones I would most like to see, because they would allow me to produce better maps. However, I can't judge whether or not any of that is feasible to implement, so I will no be devastated if they don't appear.

Edi

[Ranger]

D3 Wishlist

I would like to see a leader class units (King,Queen,Etc.) and one way to win would be to elimination all the leaders of an enemy nation. Each side would get 4 leaders/family members and if you lose your leaders you lose. This would help eliminate the need to conqure all of a enemies territory, if you take out the leaders, their empire falls.

[Foom]

There's the more or less obvious stuff, like UI improvements, less micromanagement and so on. But for me, the most important things would be:

More actual diversity. Dom2 has hundreds of spells, items and troops, but after a short newbie phase it seems like only a fraction of these are ever used. It would be very hard to keep us damned players from doing this, but I think an approach could be made with some sort of a rock-paper-scissors system. Perhaps by dividing leader traits in three Groups (items slots, magic power, physical strength) and making sure no leader is ever good at all of them. Just generally make it harder to make a "best" choice that fits most situations.

More of the same, but better. Dom2 is a great game. Please keep everything that makes it awesome and only add things that make it better. This is probably harder than it sounds.

[Chazar]

Err, how is 'measured' what most folks like and dislike? I just urgently need to agree to some of the suggestion made and repeat and comment further on them:

- I would really like to see terrain affecting battles in both ways: terrain affecting e.g. mounted units in tactical ways (e.g. have some obstacles within the battle field like those castle moats), and effecting stats (Why are Pangaea's units as effective in Wastlands as in Forests?).

- Also I like to see that the survival skill for each terrain would enable a unit to attack one province further into enemy territory if both provinces have the proper type - or maybe roll over slightly defended provinces (ie. if the battle was resolved in less than X turns, then move to the second target province, where the auto-route will happen Y turns earlier, where Y is the number of battle rounds the previous battle Lasted. Fatigue,HP,etc. should be kept as well).

- I also support a proper not-so random movement initiative system, encouraging the use of light cavalry! Quick-moving armies having sufficient scouting fascilities should also be able to patrol more than one province and defend them against slower moving attackers!

- Dom3 definitely needs a waypoint system! I would not require the PC to figure out the shortest route, but I want to manually set way point(s) for each commander. They do not need to affect anything, all they would do is reminding the player where he planned to move his units the turn before... (generally add reminding-fascilities for the feebleminded players like me! Its a pain to write down all my plans for each commander on paper!)

[Chazar]

Oh, wait, instead of adding to much terrain, why no add a scale for humidity/aridity which similar to the heat scale and also affected by the existing seasons?

[Kelan]

I am not sure how well these ideas can fit into Dominions, but I figured I would throw them out there anyway just in case. My apologies if they have already been mentioned.

How about some type of sites that are like ruins or dungeons or abandoned temples. These are not gem producing (although they could be I suppose), but are one time conquerable sites once they are found. A new turn order would be added and be something like "Enter Dungeon" and would have a battle result for those that entered. If the army inside is conquered, there would be some random reward which could be gold, gems, artifacts, or other things perhaps. This would be similar to the feature that the old Warlords games had where you could fight the creatures inside the site to get rewards. The enemies inside could be any combination of troops and even pretender type creatures for the tougher ones. Maybe some sites of this type would be automatically found when a province is conquered, but some would need to be searched for... maybe by a new skill that allows for easier finding. There could be different levels (hardness) of each with scaled up defenders and rewards. I am not sure how this could be handled, but maybe on detection the scout/finder would get some hint of to the type of creatures or ability of them so the player could judge a least a little as to whether they would want to attempt the battle without wiping out easily. This could give you another choice in the game... do I keep expanding or take a shot at getting something cool/useful in the dungeon this turn (if I can win).

Edit: Another thing that may be neat as a reward would be a mage or commander could join your army if you defeat all of the defenders in the dungeon or site and "rescue" them. This could give you a new mage with paths you don't have or possibly a good leader or fighter or even a band of units.

Also, some type of diplomacy like the old Warlords games would be fun for single player, but that would be probably a lesser request. It would be fun to have as an option, though, and could add a level of complexity to the single player experience.

Other than that, some type of modified AI would be nice. This could include changes in how troops are built and having the AI build more castles like others have mentioned. Perhaps just having the AI be a bit more unpredictable would have the single player experience be a bit more enjoyable. I tend to think the AI plays very well myself, but is just too predictable for it to be a challenge to most of the good players.

[Endoperez]

Instead of many new terrains, just new tags for #cold and #hot lands. Tundra is a cold waste, desert hot waste, jungle hot forest etc. This would, of course, affect the temperature. It would also make it possible to have quite thematic maps, from Ice Age to a land where Rimtursar are returning.

More ways to dispel. Independent globals defined in the map.

[Zooko]

I don't wish for more complex scripting for battles. Those little guys are just mortals, and you're never going to configure them to do exactly what you want. And if you did, it would blow away balance and make battles into a "rock-paper-scissors" contest to see whose script destroys the other guy's script.

In fact, the current scripting options are just about as complex as I can stand.

On the other hand, adding complexity to battles in terms of terrain might be great fun.

[Chazar]

I would only like Warlords-like Ruins if there would be an option to disable those! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif I do not like more random elements which would make the Luck Scale even more obsolete...

[Kaljamaha]

There are two things in the current game that really irk me:

First, no disbanding command. I mean, if Joe Farmer decides to take up arms for the greater glory of me, cool. But, if he expects me to feed and pay him, I should be able to tell him to sod off. Currently, I have to divert a commander, who in all likelihood could have been doing something productive, to go pick up Joe Farmer and his merry men, and ship them off to be killed. Except when I try to slaughter them, they don't even manage that, instead running around my kingdom, and doing things like causing Anthrax to flee from a couple of Blackhawks and... *head explodes*

Now that I've reassembled my head, the other thing that annoys me is when I choose a bunch of commanders and order them to go to that province over yonder. If some are able to and some aren't, the arrow shows up, all commanders are still selected, and I'm in no way informed that one or more commanders can't reach the destination. Instead, they commence to twiddle their thumbs. Extremely annoying. Though I guess this could go under the improved UI.

Err... so I guess I'd be happy if those two things were fixed. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif


K.

[Graeme Dice]

Kaljamaha said:
Instead, they commence to twiddle their thumbs. Extremely annoying.



Their orders will only change to move if they are able to make the move. Otherwise they will still be on defend.

[WraithLord]

I read the list of previous wishes, yet I will probably manage to reiterate some of the wishes http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

My list:

1. Less micromanagement. Make end game bearable. Some very good suggestions were already made to automate/streamline some of the more time consuming aspects of the game.
2. Combat simulator. Please let it return. Maybe even enhance it so that you could create a DB of armies and/or previous battles.
3. Game replay. So that we can learn from the games of the masters. So that we can analyze our mistakes.
4. More province structures.
5. Cold and heat change the map dynamically.
6. Saved pretender list.
7. New magic path. Maybe life ala MOM. Maybe psionic.
8. I still want a dark elf nation. (yes, yes, I know DOM isn't a typical fantasy game.)
Also It would be nice to have another nation except ermor that has less use for gold and more for gems. Sort of a summons nations.
For example, Pythium splinter (like ermor) that has gone completely devote to the divine and uses astral/holy magic only.
All commanders and units are summonable ( maybe angels/seraphs/kruvim/malachim etc).
9. A new strategic aspect to the game. Make a raiding nation (like TC barb king) a viable choice.
10. More counters to SCs. It doesn't make sense to me (in the alternate domII reality that is) that an equipped bane lord will stomp countless soldiers. SCs should stay a factor in the game only less major.
11. improve astral summons (angels?)
11. More content. More spells. More pretenders. More nations. More myth.
12.. Change light.bolt animation. I liked the old animation from dom I better http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Kaljamaha]

Graeme Dice said:

Kaljamaha said:
Instead, they commence to twiddle their thumbs. Extremely annoying.



Their orders will only change to move if they are able to make the move. Otherwise they will still be on defend.




Ok, fair enough. But it still is IMHO extremely misleading that the group as a whole stays chosen, with no indication of trouble, when only a part of them can reach the destination.


K.

[Cainehill]

izaqyos said:
Also It would be nice to have another nation except ermor that has less use for gold and more for gems. Sort of a summons nations.




You mean like ... Pangaea's Carrion Woods, or C'tis Desert Tombs? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Turin]

I would like to see a little picture when you select a province, which shows you the population and scale effects.( think MOM city windows).
Basically you have one basic picture and then add content according to the scale effects.
If the population is small, you see a village, if big a large city.
If it has death scale it could be bleak and maybe some corpses hanging from trees, if it has growth, there could be large wheat fields.
For misfortune you could have something like black cats, for luck some four leaf clover sheets.
sloth could be one to three guys sitting lazily at a tree, etc.
Pd could be shown as little soldier icons in one corner of the picture, high unrest could be shown as burning houses.

I think this would add lots to the immersion factor(which is somewhat missing in dom2) and provide you with needed info without hovering your mouse over the scale icons to see if they are 1-3 scales.

[Cainehill]

I'd really like to see Water magic improved, as even in the water it's less useful than certain other paths.

And in some ways, it's plain backwards. Example: Thetis' Blessing. Mostly castable only by the water nations, who don't really _want_ land units to come into the water, thus making it easier for land nations to invade the oceans.

Wouldn't it make more sense for the blessing to allow aquatic creatures onto the land? Then the water nations might actually cast it. As is, I've never seen the spell cast, in a _lot_ of games.

[Phoenix-D]

Several wishes, thiugh I haven't read the thread:

1. NO identically named commanders. Let us rename, use bigger lists, or at the very least put a number at the end. Yes, that damages immersion, but so does ordering the wrong commander because you have 2 with the same name.

2. Friendly fire needs work. Specifically it'd be nice to have a general "Don't fire when allies are near" setting..and units that don't run straight through poison clouds.

3. Retreat would be nice if it was based on the army power rather than the number of units. Eg an army with 10,000 peasents and 10 demigods in it might run if all the demigods fell but not if the peasents were wiped out.

4. Replays- a turn-by-turn scroll is a Good Thing, as is a reverse option. Right now Dom II has all the disadvantages of a real-time reply and none of the advantages..

[WraithLord]

Cainehill said:

izaqyos said:
Also It would be nice to have another nation except ermor that has less use for gold and more for gems. Sort of a summons nations.




You mean like ... Pangaea's Carrion Woods, or C'tis Desert Tombs? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif



I should have added. not death/evil theme http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Sort of an ultra strong divine nation. With an inherent strategic weakness equivalent to Ermor's death spreading dominion. I was thinking maybe it's dominion can cause migration of population into friendly domonion.
This can make such a nation an obvious target in MP games.

[Cainehill]

Some other wishes, mostly UI related:

Expanding the F1 view - currently you can see the provinces all by themselves, or provinces and commanders.

Being able to see only commanders would be great, especially if you could sort the commanders - by magic path, by currently issued orders, etc. Also, to sort by or somehow show at least some of the magic items carried - symbols or letters indicating a commander has a gem producing item, a forging item, a magic path booster, or an artifact. Also, showing the commander's HPs - this would make life simpler when dealing with fever fetishes.

Similarly, if the provinces could be sorted - by population, by unrest, by what magic paths have been searched there, etc. Being able to see population would also be a big help there, as would icons (or even letters) for the terrain types.

This would simplify site searching, tax rate adjustments, figuring out where to blood hunt, etc.

Being able to see a province's population and terrain type simply by clicking on it, instead of having to bring up the info screen for each province. (Maybe a filter to show the terrain types?)

As someone else said - the ability to disband units, even if it costs gold - say, something like 1/10 to 1/2 the recruitment costs. This would represent demustering the troops, giving a retirement payout, etc. Right now, it's sometimes almost impossible to get rid of the militia, for instance - movement rate 1, so it can take 5 - 10 turns (or more) to get them somewhere where you can have a battle, and even then - players you aren't at war with may not understand that you're not _really_ attacking them, you're just trying to retire some troops. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[johan osterman]

Phoenix-D said:
Several wishes, thiugh I haven't read the thread:

1. NO identically named commanders. Let us rename, use bigger lists, or at the very least put a number at the end. Yes, that damages immersion, but so does ordering the wrong commander because you have 2 with the same name.
...



You can rename commanders, and you can add or change names by using mods. Unless you for some reason have not patched the game.

[The_Tauren13]

Nagot Gick Fel said:
Almost forgot this old pet peeve of mine -

One thing I'd really like to see in Dom 3: balanced recruitment for national troops. Eg, Arco has hoplite infantry and light cavalry, everybody likes the former but nobody uses the cavalry. The game should track troop recruitment and make overused troop types more expensive over time (or underused ones less expensive) to give players an incentive to field more balanced armies.


http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
I second this.. sounds like a great idea! Perhaps do something similar with summons, so that you might have to think about actually getting some demon knights instead of more devils (no way! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif).

Reduce the strategic use of flying. I mean, if a 2 strat move army can't march across a friendly plain and then engage the enemy the same turn, why can one fly over a territory and still be ready to fight? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/confused.gif

I'd like to see water gems have a use besides clams. It should also have dominance of underwater battle spells.

On madcastling, raiding, and forts in general: Why should an entire army be able to hide inside a watchtower so that you have to break the door before you can even fight it? It should simply provide arrow support to any friendly troops, as should any fortress that doesn't have true walls. Also, a different movement scheme would be nice, so you can actually have a chance to catch those god damn raiders. This would also help reduce madcastling, as then you could counter raiders by other means. But hey, not everyone thinks madcastling is a problem.

Less emphasis on lifedrain. I mean, there really should be other weapons to consider putting on most SCs. Maybe just make lifedrain weaker, or getting it more expensive. I personally would like to see SCs in general weakened a little, but I'm in a small minority in saying that... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/fear.gif

Where are the really sexy dragons? I personally dislike the pretender dragon's ability to turn into a human. Very unsexyish. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif I would also like to see some really cool non pretender dragons. I guess there is the Torrasque, but it's not like thats very useful competetively. The problem is that life drain is so important that not having arms kills the dragons. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

[Cainehill]

johan osterman said:

Phoenix-D said:
Several wishes, thiugh I haven't read the thread:

1. NO identically named commanders. Let us rename, use bigger lists, or at the very least put a number at the end. Yes, that damages immersion, but so does ordering the wrong commander because you have 2 with the same name.
...



You can rename commanders, and you can add or change names by using mods. Unless you for some reason have not patched the game.



It would sure be nice if the option for renaming commanders was on by default though - numerous games wind up having duplicate commander names with no way to rename them, because the game's creator forgot to turn the option on.

[Graeme Dice]

The_Tauren13 said:
I mean, there really should be other weapons to consider putting on most SCs.



Making lifedrain weaker or harder to obtain wouldn't accomplish that. It would simply make it so that there are less SCs around, and so that those that still had them would be at a significant advantage. The only way to make it viable to put other weapons on SCs would be to make reinvigoration items both cheaper and far more effective, or to completely overhaul the fatigue system.

[Taqwus]

Minor bit:

Messages that involve a commander dying (e.g. Seeking Arrow nails somebody) should at least mention the province; it would be even spiffier if it mentioned his Last order ("Foo, while researching in The Promised Land") or something like that. That way it's far easier to determine who needs replacing with what and where. With some, like Seeking Arrow, you can't even determine the location from a battle replay 'coz there isn't one. Not a big problem with a small game, but a long game on a huge map might have issues with this.


--------------------------------------------------------
Medium bit:

Distribution of themes is a little uneven. R'lyeh, for instance, has no extra themes. Perhaps an expensive theme ("R'lyeh Ascendant"? "Dreamland"?) that caused unrest, R'lyeh cultist attacks, perhaps even offering a slight risk of causing insanity among your enemies in the dominion, or make that Last bit a theme-specific global for better balance. One could also imagine a theme prior to the war with Atlantis; perhaps more illithids and friends, stronger ties to the Void, no Atlantian-derived slaves, no Traitor King hero.

Atlantis, prior to the Fall? Hm.

------------------------------------------------------------

MAJOR bit:

On cavalry, perhaps armies with a strategic move of 2 or 3+ attacking an adjacent province should have an option of "Attack and pillage", saving them a turn and allowing them to live off the land more effectively, at the cost of unrest. That, plus a phased system allowing faster armies to intercept slow armies, might encourage the use of light cavalry. Maybe even a plains survival skill (can this be weighted so basically the horse doesn't much impact supply on plains)?

Along with this, I'd encourage putting limits on how fast province defense can be raised per turn, especially if the province is ungarrisoned, and perhaps having unrest affect both this and the efficiency of constructing buildings; these might slow down how fast one can consolidate territory so while light cav can run around, pillaging and causing trouble, you still need to -hold- land to do well with it, and that should be difficult (at least if the citizens worship somebody else or were happy with their previous ruler) if few troops stay around. Tricky, tricky to get right and logical however.

[Cainehill]

A few password related wishes : The ability to change your password during a game, so that if you (like some people) use the same password for all your games, you can change it if you need a sub for one game and don't want the others compromised.

Also, the ability to set a password on a game at creation, so that people wanting to upload a pretender have to know the password. This would allow someone to start a game on a server while maintaining some control over who joined the game.

--------------------

The ability to see what Version the game server is running via "View Game Settings" so players can verify they're using the right Version to see accurate battle replays.

[PrinceofLowLight]

I really don't like the idea of increasing uniy costs for more-built units. Instead of creating an artificial handicap for units, just make under-used things more effective. There are plenty of suggestions in the thread to make Light Infantry and Cavalry more useful.

I have to echo the request for disbanding troops.

Either make unit AI better or increase scripting options. The desire for more control stems from silly things like your archers wiping out the back ranks of your army one too many times. Maybe certain commanders could unlock better strategies for units?

Multiple fort designs is a good idea too.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

PrinceofLowLight said:
I really don't like the idea of increasing uniy costs for more-built units. Instead of creating an artificial handicap for units, just make under-used things more effective.



Balancing hundreds of units perfectly is impossible, and if unit A is known to be only 99% as cost-effective as unit B, you'll never recruit A when you have the choice. Besides, this system isn't any more artificial than the current unit stat system, quite the contrary IMO: if you have two military academies, one that trains musketeers and one that train dragoons, never incorporating dragoons in your armies would certainly come at a cost.

I've seen this simple idea implemented in a couple wargames, and it worked like a charm.

[/quote]

[Argitoth]

CONTENT WISH: Artilary units for most, if not all nations.

[Chris Adams]

- True 3d battles - e.g. a flying unit shouldn't have to worry about units which don't have ranged weapons or magic, attacking uphill should be harder, some spell effects should flow downhill, etc.

- More targeting options. Just about every army in the history of time has recognized the value of targeting enemy commanders - it'd be cool if my archers and magic Users could do so as well.

- Combined-arms options - e.g. attack after this spell is successfully cast, attack the targeted units from multiple sides (which would be very useful with flying troops), or things like "follow behind the heavy cavalry" so you have a better way of dealing with different unit speeds. In particular I've been annoyed when storming castles when some units spend the entire battle trying to get in through the walls rather than the congested entrance.

- The ability to disband units. It'd be handy if you could automatically discharge any unit with certain wounds or simply do something with all those militia when you're in a low-supply province.

[Graeme Dice]

Chris Adams said:
- More targeting options. Just about every army in the history of time has recognized the value of targeting enemy commanders - it'd be cool if my archers and magic Users could do so as well.



This was purposefully removed, as the presence of this order in Dominions I made it a necessity to have a storms in virtually every battle, as otherwise your commanders were picked off in the first turns by flying troops.

[PrinceofLowLight]

Nagot Gick Fel said:

PrinceofLowLight said:
I really don't like the idea of increasing uniy costs for more-built units. Instead of creating an artificial handicap for units, just make under-used things more effective.



Balancing hundreds of units perfectly is impossible, and if unit A is known to be only 99% as cost-effective as unit B, you'll never recruit A when you have the choice. Besides, this system isn't any more artificial than the current unit stat system, quite the contrary IMO: if you have two military academies, one that trains musketeers and one that train dragoons, never incorporating dragoons in your armies would certainly come at a cost.

I've seen this simple idea implemented in a couple wargames, and it worked like a charm.



[/quote]

It's not about balancing hundreds of units, it's about making combined arms essential. I didn't mean Light Infantry and Cavalry as in the units Light Infantry and Cavalry, I meant that horse archers, fast lightly armored cavalry and javelin infantry in general should have a place in peoples' armies.

That'd contribute to nation balance too. Themes like Batbarian Kings, which have an advantage of good horse archers, suddenly get a needed boost in power. Suddenly, not having good light cavalry or infantry is a disadvantage instead of one less never-clicked sprite in the build menu.

[Cohen]

I'd like to see to a volounteer order of execution of commands too.

I mean, if in a turn I want to dispel a global and cast a mine, this shouldn't be random, my mages should coordinate to FIRST dispel and THEN cast the global.
Same as if I cast a ghost rider to cleanse a province, and then teleport in someone.
Same as if if I've some Master Crystal Matrix, first all my slaves cast communion slave, then the masters casts with benefit from first round from communion.
These are some examples.

I underline too the importance of stop the strenght of raiding, and the flying asset.

Enhancing the provincial building menu could be nice, and upgrading castle defences (like something that could do damage to besiegers, and vice versa for war machines). Indeed this could be put in better castles allowing for more upgrades. After all you pay more points from them, and actually they seems disadvantageous compared to the popular Watch Tower.

[Saber Cherry]

Hi everyone! Been a while.

As for Dom III, I'd love to see a few things:

First, a new combat engine would be nice, though kind of a major change. But for example... putting all stats in the form of low integer numbers has numerous drawbacks. To make a helmet with better protection than 1, you have to have protection 2... which is twice as good! Thus, there are only 3 standard helmet types: none, normal, and super-heavy. Many weapons come out very similar as well, because there are not many variations of small integer combinations (attack, defense, and damage).

An entirely new combat system that used floating point calculations could retain most of the existing numbers, and simply allow greater variation for new items or old ones that need tweaking (like giving a dagger 1.7 damage, a coral knife 1.2 damage, and a copper cap 0.6 protection and .1 encumbrance). Alternately, extant numbers could be reprocessed and multiplied by a fixed value of 2 or 10 (giving normal humans 20 or 100 HP rather than 10, and increasing strengths and weapon damages by a similar ratio) and altering the dice.

Would this be worth the trouble? Yes, in my opinion. Due to the use of small integers, many units and items in the game are (statistically) nearly identical, and some are exactly identical. Others, like the series of armor types, may not be numerical duplicates, but leave no room for new additions without cloning current stats and simply renaming them. Furthermore, changing or modifying the combat engine would allow the perfect opportunity for a more advanced system, with (for example) locational protection and damage (for example, wearing a helmet would not protect you from taking an arrow in the leg, which would slow down a unit for the remainder of combat in addition to causing damage), damage type modifiers (like chain mail providing a bonus versus slashing damage, and an axe doing slash/blunt type damage, and skeletons being pierce resistant), and so forth.


Secondly... whatever the method, I wish light infantry and militia were useful, even in non-magical battles. A "Skirmish" command, a decrease in price (and increase in price of super-heavy HI), a decrease in maintenance/supply usage, possibly a battle engine change whereby encumbrance directly affects attack (and precision)... some combo of those might be helpful.


Third... there's still a problem with supercombattants. Unless you follow a specific anti-SC formula - and often, even when you do - a non-artifact-equipped SC can rip you to shreds.


Fourth... more indies are always fun! And having indy populations influence the local scales (hey, some people are better farmers, or better metalworkers, or just plain lazy...), or gravitate to certain special sites, or be easier to seduce into blood slavery... or even be violently despised by a given race and killed on site (for example, maybe Marignon cannot tolerate Amazons and their witchcraft?)

More dynamic indies might also be fun, with strong indy provinces (esp. Barbarians, Amazons, and horse-riding indies) launching raids on your undefended borders. Not raids of conquest, just to steal food, resources (production for a month), gold, and maybe a few people into slavery.


Fifth... redone scales would be interesting. Scales with 5 levels up and down, with variable cost (like +20, +20, +25, +30, +40 incremental cost for moving the productivity scale to +1, +2, +3, +4, and +5, respectively) would allow much more national specificity. Also, +5 / -5 could be off limits in scale settings, achievable only if (for example) you

chose a +4 cold race and then "Wolven Winter" was cast at your province, moving it temporarily to +5 cold.


Sixth... specifying ALL DATA in text files would be AWESOME!!! It would make modifying the game extremely easy. Some sort of CRC would be needed to ensure everyone was using the same data, of course.


Seventh... Allowing double-resolution critters with 4 action poses would be nice! Obviously, most of the critters could remain the same, and just be a little blurry, and use only 2 poses. But the crucial (most used, most seen, and most interesting) units, like Dragon pretenders, Nataraja, militia, archers, normal commanders, priests, and slingers could be redone in double resolution with, say, a "still" pose, "moving" pose, "about to attack" pose, and "attacking" pose.


Lastly, I like special sites. But I dislike games overflowing with gems. A gem cost or gem production multiplier (in game setup), distinct from magic site rarity, would be great. For example, with a cost multiplier, setting the multiplier at 110% would make 20-gem item forges cost 22 gems and 1-gem spells cost 2 gems (rounded up). Alternately, with a production slider, 70% would mean that a site that normally produces 3 gems would only produce 2.7 gems on average. Essentially, a 1d10 would be tossed for each possible gem each turn, and only tosses of 1 to 7 would yield a gem. This could affect blood slaves as well, or there could be an additional slider for them.


Great news to hear that Dominions III is in the works! I hope you guys have as much fun making it as we will playing it!


-Cherry

[Chris Adams]

Graeme Dice said:

Chris Adams said:
- More targeting options. Just about every army in the history of time has recognized the value of targeting enemy commanders



This was purposefully removed, as the presence of this order in Dominions I made it a necessity to have a storms in virtually every battle, as otherwise your commanders were picked off in the first turns by flying troops.



I just think that's the wrong way to solve the problem as it's too obviously an arbitrary restriction; I'd prefer less blatant approach like giving commanders more defense options and making bodyguards smarter. It seems entirely reasonable that an army with flying troops should be able to have them attack the enemy's command structure - it's such a time honored, proven tactic. The answer could be protective gear and better bodyguards (e.g. perhaps a commander gets a certain number of "ablative henchmen" who increase his defense value and take the damage from an attack which would otherwise have hit the commander - basically the secret service guy taking a bullet for the president).

This would also open some interesting role-playing options - e.g. some commanders could have stealth/disguise options ("nobody here but us militia") which another would reject as dishonorable or cowardly and the effectiveness of the ruse would depend on the quality of the attacker's intel (a "suborn bodyguard" attack would be pretty cool, too) and nature of the attack (e.g. a mage couldn't fool another magic user for very long). A beloved hero or religious figure might cause their bodyguards to become fanatical - increased attack / decreased defense because they're too quick to die a martyr's death, etc.

[tka]

My list:
1) More dynamic indies, like Saber Cherry and others suggested.

2) More nation specific items/artifacts.

3) More national heroes.

Well, I think I like whatever you decide to chance/add in Dom III. Keep up the good work. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[deccan]

A very simple thing: make it so that becoming computer-controlled isn't permanent. This way someone could leave a game without leaving everyone else hanging and still gives the option of another human player taking up the nation again later.

[Yossar]

deccan said:
A very simple thing: make it so that becoming computer-controlled isn't permanent. This way someone could leave a game without leaving everyone else hanging and still gives the option of another human player taking up the nation again later.



And with this allow the AI to be given a basic idea of who it is at peace with and who it is at war with when it becomes AI.

[Chazar]

There is one network related feature I would like:

The .2h file should contain a flag indicating whether it is finalized or not. If this flag isnt set, no Quickhost shall happen. The .2h is used regardless of this flag when forced hosting occurs. "End turn" sets the 'finalized'-flag, while "save and exit"-clears it. No changes otherwise.

Or Dom2/3 should ask whether to upload a turn to a quickhosting server or not: I do not do my turns at once, and reconnecting just to see how much time I got left resulted in quite a few half-done turns... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

The server should also ask all connected clients to upload their turn when forced hosting occurs (to fasciliate Blitz-games). Last time I checked this wasnt so...

[Zooko]

I like the idea of changing non-national recruitment costs in response to demand.

It could be global, so that you are competing with other players to hire the best units. It seems like this would instantly balance things out to make more kinds of units get into the game.

I imagine it would also be fun! Instead of just recruiting the same units every turn, I would start looking at the current prices this turn and designing new armies. That sounds like fun. ("Hm. For the next few turns I should be able to pick up light cavalry archers for only 5 gold each! I could add a squad of them to the left flank of my Red Army...")

It could be a nice simple algorithm like: every turn in which a unit of type X was recruited somewhere in the world, the price of X goes up by 1 gold. Every turn in which zero units of type X were recruited, the price of X goes down by 1 gold.

It doesn't have to be exactly like that, but it ought to be simple enough that players can understand why the price has moved and have a certain amount of predictability of future prices.

[Peter Ebbesen]

First, I would really like the Moloch to either loose his imps, have them turned into a lifelong protection force, or, in general, have the fleeing issue solved in a nicer matter than it is now. At the moment, every pretender with autosummons really ought to get a cost reduction for that special ability, which cannot be what was meant to be.

Second, a general UI overhaul. Probably already scheduled.

Third, and possibly already covered by second, but important enough in its own right, a rework of the blood hunting/blood sacrificing/tax adjusting madness would be high on my list. I like occasionally dabbling with blood nations, but it is a real micromanagement pain.

Some simple examples (that would even do for Dominions 2 in a forthcoming patch):
Allow blood slave sacrifice directly from a lab present if the priest has no blood slaves but there is a lab present and slaves in a lab. Do NOT reset a priest from Sacrifice to Defence if there are no slaves. If I have started people sacrificing, I want them to continue until I give them another order, and if I have more people sacrificing than slaves and really want to be sure that certain priests get priority, I can still manually give those select priests blood slaves of their own(This would allow you to use the "pool" command without having to then distribute blood slaves to everybody sacrificing). This would allow, e.g. Mictlan players, to set up priest sacrificers and use the "pool" button without the endless tedium of the current system.
Alternatively, add a "pool slaves EXCEPT FOR THOSE ON SACRIFICERS" button. Not as good as #1, but still slightly better than what you have now.

Unless unrest is completely reworked in Dominions 3, a big red button labeled "SET TAXES SENSIBLY", which would, upon being pressed, set the tax values in all your provinces to a sensible value given the current unrest setting, would prove very useful. You could ignore it if you wanted to and manage all unreset yourself or press it when you felt a need for major readjustment and would like sensible default values. E.g. blood nations would quite likely press this once per turn and then adjust the tax rates for a few strategic provinces rather than, as now, often having to check and adjust the tax rates of a significant fraction of their provinces per turn. A sensible value in the current system would be something like max{110-2*unrest, 0}. A nicer Version would be max{100-v*max{unrest-d, 0}, 0}, where v is value, say, {0...4} and d is a value {0...unrestMax} both chosen by the player, though it and "advanced" (:D) Version like that was used it should probably be called a tax policy rather than a Big Red Button. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Another (minor) irritant is the current solution of putting save games in a subdirectory directly in the root of the installation (on windows, at least). This is ugly and unnecessary. A subdirectory "save games" in which the games directories would be placed would improve the aesthetics and also minimize the risks of some mistakes when messing around with the files manually.


--- Architecturally, the franchise would probably win quite a bit in the long run (if one was looking forwards to producing a #4 or using the code base of #3 as the basis for a new game) by finally doing a major rework of the code structure. Cleanly separate it based on components instead of having it all mashed up together and you gain a much more maintainable code. Even splitting it up in just four discreet components would help:
Server (executes all commands and calculates turns based on input in a well-specified format, returns an output per nation)
Client (displays turn ouput and accepts input that generates a turn order)
Netserver (interface between client and server)
AI (generates a turn order based solely on the information stored in its turn-output and map, just like a player)


Since Dominions is not real-time, there is really very little reason whatsoever architecturally for having the client perform actual execution. While it does make some things much easier (e.g. if you move item A from commander B to C, you just plain move it on the spot rather than storing a "move item A from B to C" action, which has either to be amended to an "move item A from B to D" if the player then subsequently moves it from C to D or to be stored subsequently leading to bloat), it leaves the turn format vulnerable to hacking and corruption.

I appreciate that the Illwinter team is rather small, but this really is an area that is open for major improvement design-wise. (Whether it is economically feasible is, of course, another issue - and one that only Illwinter can answer). If the development team needs (unpaid http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif) help on this, there are several client/server experts on this forum who might pitch in with ideas and advice if asked nicely. Esben comes to mind though he is currently AWOL.

The AI could very profitably have major factors involved in decision taking externalised as modifiable floats allowing everybody to tweak to their content (or discontent as it might be). I am not asking for a full script language here, just a dozen or a hundred floats I can tweak to adjust AI behaviour, mainly on overall (rather than specific) spell choice and troop composition, though front/garrison values for army movement would also be greatly appreciated. Allow a MOD to point to a specific AI file, and, if necessary, store the AI settings chosen (a few K of data max) as part of save game fatherland file. No breath of winter, shockwave, or immolation chosen by the spellcaster AI unless you really want to? Set the KILL_FRIENDS_WITH_FRIENDLY_FIRE_FOR_THE_HECK_OF_IT value to 0.0 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[Avocet]

This has been mentioned in here but I too would like to see a "skirmish" command for light infantry. Letting them pelt the opposition with javelins while staying out of range of advancing troops. When ammo is depleted the light infantry can then retreat....or maybe have the option to close to hand-to-hand if their target breaks.

Another wish is for troops using "fire and flee" to stay together instead of ending up in any adjacent province. Since they aren't routing, but retreating in good order, they shouldn't disperse (hopefully).

Formations, and the ability to move in formation would be nice as well. A solid pike phalanx would be a formidible target from the front (historical) with many opportunities to get poked by long pointy things before landing an attack.

[Yossar]

Peter Ebbesen said:Some simple examples (that would even do for Dominions 2 in a forthcoming patch):
Allow blood slave sacrifice directly from a lab present if the priest has no blood slaves but there is a lab present and slaves in a lab. Do NOT reset a priest from Sacrifice to Defence if there are no slaves. If I have started people sacrificing, I want them to continue until I give them another order, and if I have more people sacrificing than slaves and really want to be sure that certain priests get priority, I can still manually give those select priests blood slaves of their own(This would allow you to use the "pool" command without having to then distribute blood slaves to everybody sacrificing). This would allow, e.g. Mictlan players, to set up priest sacrificers and use the "pool" button without the endless tedium of the current system.
Alternatively, add a "pool slaves EXCEPT FOR THOSE ON SACRIFICERS" button. Not as good as #1, but still slightly better than what you have now.



Also blood hunters in a province with a lab should automatically deposit slaves in the lab.

[Agrajag]

Well...
Obviously I have many wishes for dominions III (not as an insult to II), but here is a short list containing some of them:
1. Being able to choose formations, so instead of a square getting bigger the more troops you put in the squad you would get a choice of square, diamond (a square tipped by 45 degrees), circle etc..
2. Improved unit order - just like a lot of other people say - I understand that you can't provide a highly elaborate plane and expect your braindead soldiers to understand it all and memorize it, but something more elaborate than "Attack" should obviously be an option. As well as increasing the 5 commands limit, you should add a "And repeat X action" command, so a commander can be instructed to cast the same spell repeatedly instead of resorting to an AI selected spell.
3. More spells - Obviously, there are many spells, only you can't use most of them, since because they aren't very good and some because you don't have the mages.
This applies mostly to strictly offensive spells (with two or three being actually effective) but there aren't always good summoning spells available as well.
Obviously this will be taken care of in dom III, I'd just like to say I'd appreciate some more offensive spells a la fireball.

Maybe I'll add some more later, I keep thinking of stuff and then forgeting...

[Ironhawk]

National units competitive throughout the game
Magic and summons far too rapidly overtakes the value of most national troops. Perhaps allow the building of special nation specific sites at your forts (say with an investment of 500 resources/gold or something) which allow access to the next set of national troops, which would be effective for the mid-game. Ditto for the late game.

Make Lifedrain drain only HP or Fatigue, not both
SCs are a very fun part of the game and good from the standpoint of investing magical resources. But lifedrain in its current form is too powerful in that it practically negates the value of all existing mortal troops.

Rethink population killing dominions
Empires with pop-killing dominions are better than they should be since other nations have less incentive to attack them. Why expend all your troops attacking Ermor and get useless dried up provinces when you could attack Arco and get oodles of gold?

Limited Diplomacy / Messaging
Add a simple diplomacy screen from which you could see/set your peace/nuetral/war status with any other empire. A full grid of all nations would be nice but not required. This screen dovetails with the need for updates to the trade and messaging system b/w empires. Make it clearer what Messages you have sent that round and to which nation. Allow multiple items/gems/provinces/etc to be traded in a set instead of one by one.

Some visual distinction of commanders with magic items/gems
Its silly to have to hunt through all your commanders just to find the one that has the particular magic item or stash of gems that you are looking for.

Waypoints for moving troops from far in the rear to the front

An Intercept order
Trying to guess where an enemy will move on the strategic map is sometimes a fun challenge, but more often just a headache. I think that this might actually be hard to code for the movement system as it stands, but I state it here because it really is needed.

[PvK]

(Options to) tone down SC dominance.

Perhaps increase penalties for being attacked by many at once, to reduce the SC dominance.

Reduce effect of Life Drain.

Partial idea: (Optional?) magic system change where mages need to actually study specific spells, rather than automatically being able to cast any spell their nation has researched.

Allow larger sized armies and larger battlefields. This is not just for spectacle, but to help the requests balancing SC's versus human troops.

Add terrain to battlefields with important effects on combat.

Revise the supplies/disease mechanic, replacing with something which makes more sense (people don't get fatal diseases from fasting for a month), even if the net effect is similar (limiting food-needing troop deployment).

Revise system of retreats, auto-rout, stealth and army-interception so that units that escape combat but would be "auto-eliminated" instead become refugees that can find their way into independent forces, mercenary companies, volunteers, event attacks, etc.

Add non-pretender nations and active independents that try to resist the world being conquered by prentender-led nations.

Change sequence of combat so melee attacks are not at the same time as movement and all one-side before their opponents. When two forces meet, not just one side should get the first attacks, based on where they end their turns, as it presently works.

Develop seduction mechanics so it's not just for succubi and doesn't involve teleportation.

Add an option to play where underwater areas are all or mostly barren.

Add more detailed sailing mechanics.

Game settings options for stronger seasonal effects.

Mod options for tweaking combat system a bit - I'm curious about making to-hit rolls harder and damage rolls less lethal (might help light troops), but it'd be days of modding work with the current system.

Change armor system so there is a hit location and the armor at that location is used, rather than adding all armor to every attack, and giving higher values to torso armor. Most hits would be scored on body or shield, but if you get hit in the head and lack a helmet, it would be a problem, etc.

Deathmatches revised and called something appropriately archaic. Perhaps add duel challenges and have warrior-only and mage-only contests. Don't have the AI's tossing their pretenders into duels to the death.

Graphic option to have dead bodies left on the battlefield rather than vanishing.

PvK

[Saber Cherry]

PvK said:
Change sequence of combat so melee attacks are not at the same time as movement and all one-side before their opponents. When two forces meet, not just one side should get the first attacks, based on where they end their turns, as it presently works.



I've been thinking about this, and come up with a solution. Not only a solution for the problem mentioned, but also for troop and weapon differentiation.

It's like this: There are N phases (for simplicity, we'll use 10 phases). If combat Lasts 40 rounds, then there are 4 rounds of each "phase".

Each unit gets an attack speed (which would be doubled by quickness). At a speed of 5, normal for a human with a sword, the unit attacks 5 phases of each 10 phase cycle (in other words, every other turn). A unit with a dagger might attack more quickly, with a speed of 7. So it would attack 7 times in each 10 phase cycle, with a sort of regular scattering. A speed-7 dagger-user with quickness would get a speed of 14, attacking every round, but attacking twice 4 out of the 10 rounds. And so forth.

How does this solve the original problem? At the beginning of battle, every unit has its phases randomly fixed. So if there were 100 speed-5 units, half of them would get this phase system:
A-A-A-A-A-
And the other half would get
-A-A-A-A-A
where "A" denotes an attacking turn, and "-" denotes a turn where the unit does not attack. Heavy armor and big weapons, of course, would reduce speed except on very strong units. With this system, when two armies collide, only some of the units would get "first strike" due to the inevitable turn-based... um... inconsistancies with reality.

Of course, this might make combat viewing take a bit longer... but giving troops (and weapons) different speeds would be worth it, in my opinion.

[Cainehill]

Saber Cherry : In some ways that's a nice idea, _but_ it winds up leading to some very ... cheesy tactics, where very burly high strength units wind up using tiny high speed weapons, which just doesn't seem right. A Niefel Giant using a dagger, for instance? All too likely, because let's say the Giant gets 3 times as many attacks with the dagger as with a great big battle ax. The battle ax has damage 10, the dagger 1, but the giant gets to add its strength 3 times, via 3 attacks, vice 1 attack with the battle ax.

This happened a lot in a bunch of roguelikes and other games, which led to making it such that heavy weapons had a better chance of delivering a critical hit, etc, but the half-ogre barbarians would still all too often using a steak knife. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

[Saber Cherry]

To work correctly, the unit would have to have a base speed, modified by a combination of strength and weapon speed or inertia.

For example:

Human: Base speed 8, strength 10.
Giant: Base speed 8, strength 20.

Fist: Inertia 0.
Dagger: Inertia 10.
Sword: Inertia 30.
Giant Axe: Inertia 70.

Resulting speed = ((base speed) - (inertia / strength)) rounded up

Human + Fist: 8
Giant + Fist: 8

Human + Dagger: 7
Giant + Dagger: 8

Human + Sword: 5
Giant + Sword: 7

Human + Giant Axe: 1
Giant + Giant Axe: 5


So it all works out pretty fairly. I'd rather have a giant attack 5/10 rounds with a long, powerful weapon than 8/10 rounds with a length 0, low damage weapon. Similarly, I'd rather a human NOT use a giant axe and attack only 1/10 rounds, whereas in the current Dominions combat engine it would be an excellent idea to equip infantry with, for example, Jotun Longswords. These are just example numbers; ideally, armor would be worked in as well.

-Cherry

[Zen]

What, no request for cute and/or fuzzy animals! SC, you've gone all soft on us.

[Yossar]

While most of the suggestions are well-meaning, I'd have to oppose a lot of the ones that would add extra micromanagement to an already micro-heavy game. Setting formations, Combat orders past 5 choices, more detailed combat orders, etc. Now, if there were a way to streamline the interface in general, and those changes specifically, then I'd be all for them. As long as lategame turns in large games ended up taking less time than they do now.

[Saber Cherry]

P.S. I want a race of catgirls and another one of bunnyfolk.

Did I really used to say stuff like that? Hmmm... real life must be jading me=)

[Leif_-]

Random ideas:

Skills that are "unlockable" by experience. (So, for instance, Vine Ogres might get "Barkskin" at 4 stars of experience, or barbarians might get Fear +5 at 5 stars.) This could be used to give national troops "staying power" into the mid- to late game.

The reward from the arena should be more substantial. Perhaps a boost to dominion, 2000 gold, a new hero, a new skill / special heroic ability given to the winner. Something like that.

The Fire and Flee command should have the unit retreat to _behind the rest of the army_, rather than fleeing off the battlefield entirely. It just takes too much time to have to coordinate the scattered units.

There should be an option for commanders to "attack alongside unit" and "stay at back of unit" - as it is now, if the commander has slightly different movement from the troops he'll end up either alone in the front, or lagging behind. It would also make it easy to use Valiant abilities, spell-songs and other short-range effects on your own troops. While one can theoretically use "Guard commander" and then "attack" on the commander, the result of that is simply that the commander can't move because the guards are in his way.

It would be nice to have pictures or even mpegs in the list of events; with user-defined triggers in the map file ("When this province is conquered, show this image to conqueror" / "When this commander is killed, show this image to all", "On first turn, show this movie to all") - Just to add some atmosphere and ambience to maps.

Siege engines.

Leadership should be a two-part statistics with "total number of troops / number of units." So a Centurion might have Leadership 100/5 while a Barbarian Chieftain might have leadership 250/1.

Perhaps an Unseelie Court theme for Man. (Redcaps and banshees and pooka - oh my!)

Oh, and furthemore I want a spell that causes jaguars to fall from the sky.

[Cohen]

I'd like to see too a minimum unit number per squad, depending on unit type.

This to avoid strange tactics like the most backward archer to prevent the rout of all your mages and SCs, or to scatter troops as decoy for enemy troops or arrows in single man squad.
In a battle troops go in regiments. So on let's say you could take in account something like "size", and a regiment should have size X, or morale, because Militia need to be mobbed, meanwhile Elites could go in battle in smaller number.

[rylen]

Looking forward to it.

Modding is a great touch. Keep it. (I'm certain the design team is using the same directives when building the core factions. Yes?)

For Pretenders / Summoned critters I'd like "REAL" items. i.e. my Virtue starts with a Flambeau. Being clever, I immediately upgrade him to Faithful or Sword of Sharpness or such. Then I give the Flambeau to someone else.

Rending objects back into gems. Rate of return based on construction level perhaps -- Con 5 means 50% return.

Mercenary replenishment. A surviving merc commander, waiting to hire, will automatically "call allies" up to his units starting capacity. The less units present, the faster they are recruited with different rate for different commanders (It's easier to get more zombies then more knights.) Units that desert are also lured back more quickly.

An always rehire specific merc option. Or a contract expires message.

Changes to hall of fame. I'd like options to exclude pretenders and to make all people on the list visible.

Improved terrain effects in combat. A wider battlefield with some locations only placeable for troops with a certain speed. Think a doubles tennis court w/ only "cavalry" able to use the margins. Or some troops able to enter from the wings during battles -- like WH40Ks flanking reserves.

A "dig in" order which gives the defender a tactical advantage but causes unrest. Could also make it LESS likely to detect sneaking units. (Everyone knows where the army is and they aren't moving around much.)

Improved reporting, especially after sucessful seiges. I'd like to hear:

hero (type x) (name y) died
hero .... (name z) wounded

lost (number) of (type a troop)
fled (number)

lost (number) of (type b troop)


Moveable slots for factions. This means there could be a max n player game w/ more then n factions to choose from. Switches would allow faction vs faction and theme vs diff theme. For instance Ulm vs. Ulm or Ulm vs. Black Forest Ulm.

------
Ideas I've had I'm not sure I want.

A market. Works like mercenaries, occasionally offering magic items (including some weak uniques) asking staggering amounts as a starting bid. May take several turns to purchase an item.

Experienced commanders may leave "corpse misc items" that are recovered by victor. Spells can revive these into undead or living Versions working for their new owner. Further spells can make them obedient.


-----
Rylen

[ioticus]

I want to see the capability to mod the AI!!

[Endoperez]

Still a new idea: Magic paths dependent on seasons. If it is spring, they have air, if summer, fire and so on. This would make seasons much more important for that nation and anyone attacking against them.

I think coupling these kind of varying magic picks would go better if you/your enemy wouldn't know if it was static or varying magic pick, so that one wouldn't have to have own plan for every season. Maybe new ability for mystics, or celestial masters.


Just making the mage recruited have the "element of season" would also work, I think. Same could be done for Nature/Astral/Death, so that mages recruited in early/middle/late season would differ from each other.

And making some powerful (holy) units or mages only recruitable during certain season could also work, but that is more of a game-play limit than a thematic tool. I don't have the knowledge or imagination of IW, however!

So, this was my third post to this thread. Is there some kind of a limit? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[NTJedi]

I mentioned this within another topic yet just recently noticed this sticky and now placing the information here as well:


johan osterman said:
I assume you want a better AI as well, but I couldn't see you mention it.



One of the greatest features lacking in almost every game is a challenging AI. There are several important decisions which could definitely improve the Artificial Intelligence. Hopefully the following listed below will be considered for improving the existing AI opponents:

1) Multiple AI personalities available which are randomly selected at the start of each game. This would keep human players surprised and uncertain what to expect from their neighbors.

2) Providing option to disable/enable starving status for AI units. The AI opponents are not aware of food supply levels within provinces and thus should not suffer the penalties of starving which include diseased units and low morale.

3) Allow scripting or some other tool where Users can develop and customize an artificial intelligence which can then be added to the list of random multiple personalities.

4) Don't have computer opponents send their pretender into the death matches. The battle afflictions, horror marks, and curses are not worth the risk.

5) Higher difficulty setting should have the computer opponents be more aggressive against human opponents as well. This makes sense since its the human player looking for a greater challenge when increasing the difficulty level.


I'm sure there are others but these will greatly improve the AI for the game. Double Thanks !

[Agrajag]

Hmmm...
Did I put "Improved Modding Capabilities" in my previous wishlist?
I think I didn't!
So, please improve the modding capabilities, allow mods, allow multination pretender restriction, allow ALL the special abilities (including stuff like the auto-imp-summon), allow adding new spells, allow adding new forgeables etc.
There is a lot that could be added to the modding abilities...

[RedRover]

Dom3 Manual Wishlist

Sidebar with System Requirements/Installation:
It would be nice to have the system requirements and installation notes summarized directly in the manual.

Sidebar with CD Key Location: Just a little boxed note early on that reveals the location of the CD Key number (believe it or not, when I had occasion to look for this in Dominions 2, it took me a considerable amount of time to find it).

Nations/Themes
Please organize the Themes as sub-cases of their Nations. It seems to me that more people start with the question “What nation do I want to play?” and only later ask “What theme do I want to play.” So subordinating the theme to the nation will cut the page-turning time and organize the manual more efficiently.

Spell/Magic Item Sections

Descriptions: Please organize the descriptions in these sections alphabetically. Most of the time I need a reference, it's because I have the name of the spell or item, but don't know what it does. Paging through lists by school or item power is a big timewaster in this case. As the spell list grows, the inefficiency of organization by path grows as well.

Lists: Short lists by path and level for spells, and by power for items, would preserve this aspect of the current manual but, again, please make the actual description sections alphabetical.

I’d also like to see the manual include (in the description sections) the magic path/level requirements for casting/ forging.

Consider an electronic (searchable) manual.

FAQ Appendix
Some issues might be best handled by this format. For example:

1. Pretender Afflictions. Just a list of the game workarounds would be sufficient, IMO—the Gift of Health spell, the Chalice artifact, the Arcoscephale priestess, the queen of the Faerie Court spell.

2. Starting Capital and Scales: note these may not match.

3. Blood Economies: Getting started.

4. Plus a lot of the non-walkthrough elements of the on-line FAQ. The walk-thru elements should get their own section in the manual (or not) rather than appearing in the FAQ.

Unit Mod Appendix
Short intro to the idea of modding units and note where to find the current modding manual (assuming it’s not built into the manual).

Map Mod Appendix
Short intro to idea of map modding and note where to find current map editor manual. (assuming it’s not built into the manual.)

Scenario Building Appendix
Short intro to scenario building and how to coordinate it with mapping mods. IMO this material should be treated as a separate topic from map making. You can get into this easily with just text commands. It's also a difference in focus--scenarios are designed game set-ups with many fixed elements.

IMO a manual needs to be "playtested" the same way a game or scenario does.

[Truper]

Hire RedRover to help with the manual!

[RedRover]

Here's a short post with a theme...

HOTKEYS/OPTIONS

Save Game: Flash-save so I don’t have to quit the program in order to save a game. Maybe automatically disable this in Multiplayer mode.

Bug Log: A one key-stroke option to save the current turn files into a special “Bug Log” folder so everything that should be sent in is stored automatically in one place. Time stamp or number so subsequent saves using same nation/same game won’t overwrite an existing bugfile.

Show God: Screen stores the exact original setup of the Pretender in the current game; that is, all decisions made during Pretender setup. (Lots of times I have gone into a game so fast I forgot to write down the Pretender stats, then tried in vain to recall them during the mid-game or reconstruct them later for a new game.)

Save God: Automates the process of saving a god design, so when I find a design I want to play around with awhile, I don’t have to recreate it from scratch each time. This feature should also have the capacity to save more than one Pretender per nation.

Save/Restore Scenario: Automates the process of saving a game setup to a special “Scenario” file. The scenario is recallable, so the same map setup can be replayed. This also has tournament applications. A scenario hotkey might also bring up a Replace God screen, so that I could plug a new Pretender design (or a bunch of them) into an existing map setup.

Back-step Hotkey: Goes back a step at any screen in Pretender set-up. For example, if I have misspelled the god’s name, or want to tweak the setup due to a late brainstorm, I don’t have to redesign the whole Pretender from scratch again. Maybe have a “Confirm Start” popup that seals the set-up.

Set Default God &lt;name&gt;: File containing the original default Pretender seeds the AI has when the game is new, available for instant recall. It drove me crazy the first time I realized that I had overwritten the default AI gods when I made my first crude efforts at Pretender design. I was stuck playing really inferior opposition for awhile since I'd tried to play everything once before repeating. &lt;Name&gt; is the nation’s name.

Select Theme: A popup screen that appears in setup after nation selection. Allows theme selection and automatically sets minimum scales and adds any theme-specific Pretenders to the Pretender screen for setup.

Nation/Theme starting sites: A popup that let’s me see nation or theme gem income before I finish setting up my Pretender.

F[key] Command to scroll through own forts.
F[key] Command to scroll through own Hiding/Sneaking units.
F[key] Command to scroll through own mages with forge bonus.

Programmable “Find” function: Lets you pick what to search for—Examples: 1) scrolling though leaders for a specific magic item, 2) scrolling through a magic path and level+ (in other words, Air 2 would hit all friendly Air mages with 2+ levels), 3) scrolling through all known recruitment magic sites, 4) scrolling through all known casting bonus magic sites, etc.

An alternative might be a series of screens that record specific items, and take you to the map location when you click on the entry line (cf. the way Shogun: Total War handles Ninja/Shinobi tracking). Test to see which screens would be most-used and include those. Build in the capacity to plug in modular expansion screens as needed.

[Endoperez]

Re-made pretender creation so that you would have different options in tabs, and you could go from one tab to another any time in pretender creation. If you chose another pretender form the cost of magic paths/dominion selected would be calculated again.

This would make it much easier to see which is the cheapest way to achieve the desired results.

I also second the "Save God" -function.

[jseppane]

Could wounded or unnecessary troops be added/dumped to local province defence with 1:1 or some fixed or variable ratio?

Jukka

[Chazar]

I'd like to see that "Hall of Fame" commanders, and maybe prophets which die in battle get a random chance of surviving as prisoners:

Each of those notable ones gets a chance depending on the amount of negative HP and afflictions after the battle. If they are lucky and survive, the enemy may demand a ransom for their release for those survivors. If no agreement could be made within 3 turns they just day anyway in order to be called back or resurrected normally.

How much would you pay for your favoured mage? Would you allow your enemy to buy back a captured prophet for gold and gems?

[Edi]

There was something I thought of yesterday when micromanaging gems. As we all know, that's a very, very tedious part of the game, yet essential, and I've a suggestion to improve it:

Add a small checkbox to the commander description box titled "No Gem-pooling" or similar, and toggling that switch on or off will remove the commander from the list of whose gems are taken into the lab pools. Just adding a line into the pooling code to the effect of "If NoGemPool==1, do not pool gems from this commander" when itgoes through the list of commanders would remove a great amount of micromanagement and make everyone (but especially Mictlan players) happy. Shouldn't be too hard to do either, or is it?

Edi

[Hasslmaster]

Dear Illwinter,

I just want to encourage you to stick to your well-thought-out design decisions rather than replacing them with posters' generic more-of-everything proposals.

E.g., it was your well considered choice to let players determine only five orders for a leader. It's a nice device to not let mages and supercombatants get out of hand.
Other examples include how assassination is handled randomly, that troopless leaders rout when one of them dies (thus giving troops a reason to exist in late game), or the restriction to build only one castle type.

Stardock and Quicksilver (with their unspeakable MoO3) both made the experience that it's not a good move to base game design decisions on the choices of hard core gamers on forums. Learn from their mistakes before you have the chance to repeat them. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

But, as we're allowed to place suggestions here,

please get rid of the item exploits like clam hoarding, (instead of make them easier to manage!)

and please greatly nerf life draining effects like soul vortex.

[silhouette]

A couple of the requests here have asked to be able to save pretenders or have backups of such, why not go the next step: Make the pretender/nation design a standalone program, and make the game executable able to find and ask you to pick from all the defined pretenders on nation selection.

It wouldn't need a fancy database backend, most (sane) folks won't have hundreds of choices, but even being able to have a favorite set of 6 for some nations would be great. Having to juggle the newlord files is possible but does not add teh fun (sic). I am an old roleplayer and have almost as much fun designing new gods as playing them. I imagine being able to load up a just-played pretender, changing his name, altering some magic paths and scales, and trying the new design in a game. If I don't like him, I can delete it and load the original back to try different tweaks. This would be also great since I like to play human-designed, AI played opponents in SP -- pick all human nations, set them all up from the pretenders I designed for each, and then set all but 1 or 2 to AI to play against.

Thanks for considering our input. We are a fortunate community to have a company and developers who are accessable and so open to feedback.

Sill

[silhouette]

Oooh, how about two additional stealth commander orders...

- Pilfer from lab: Allows a chance to take a random item from the enemy magic item treasury in the province (or gems?). If you fail you fight the province defense.
- Pickpocket from commander: Allows a chance to take a random misc slot item from a commander (or gems?). If you fail you fight [the commander and bodyguards | the commander and all his troops | the commander and troops plus province defence | all enemy forces ?]

Sill

[YellowCactus]

I'd like a movement safeguard. Like pressing the space-bar as you give movement orders. There's nothing more frustrating than planning moves to perfection, then getting a message that some of your army didn't make the critical move because you mis-clicked at some point.
Maybe a sageguard for changing movements would work as well.
Thanks,
-Yc

[Addreon]

Well, from what I have gathered, Dominions seems to be a very interesting game. A game in which I've been waiting for quite some time now.

Here are my ideas:

1) A divinty status after a certain amount of levels in each sphere of influence is achieved (necromancy and etc) starting from a demigod, to a lesser god, then finally a full god. At the divine status of a full god, the player will become a disembodied god, letting the faith be the primary power. This will make it even more of a challenge for players to eliminate them. They must destroy the faith to destroy the god, not the other way around. The god's former form could become his/her avatar and could be used to appear in battles and so forth.

2) When I played the demo, I had no control over my units and it all seemed automated. I'd like complete full control over my units and their abilities. It is the best to allow me to strategize tactics.

3) Animated units in battle.

4) Fully customizable god forms. From size, to wings, skin color, auras, and more. Perhaps when a god reaches a new level to learn new abilities, he or she could add bonus appearance changes to their god.

[RedRover]

Dom3 Wish List: Flight Over Seas

I would like to see Flying units gain the capability to cross one sea province, provided they can land at the end of their movement.

I don't care if they can't use the full fly move across water, but sometimes there's a map with an island one sea zone from everything, and I think a flyer should be able to reach something like that.

I wouldn't mind if such units attacking across a sea province were destroyed if they fail. Players choose their risks and take their chances.

(Not knowing that much about coding, I’m not certain how this might be incorporated. My current idea is the rather clunky one of introducing some sort of ocean waypoint command and make the player click on the sea province to be crossed, then click again on the target province, but as I said, clunky. Anyone have any ideas about an approach?)

[Zen]

All this requires is to give the Flying Command a tie into the Sailing. It wouldn 't be hard at all to code as the command and effect is already there.

However, if it's a good idea, is another matter http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[slimemold]

People have asked for less micromanagement. Here's a tangentially related request: cumulative intelligence. Dom2 rewards players who tediously record every bit of information from previous turns, in order to get estimates of indy strength, or to track likely sources of enemy dominion. When a scout goes through an indy province, it would be nice if someone could remember his report 2 turns later, perhaps with a notation indicating how old the intelligence is.

Currently, to play optimally it is necessary to maintain a spreadsheet of past information, and that's just not very fun. We are playing this on a computer, after all, and computers are nothing if not good at compiling data.

[RedRover]

Zen: http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I think the simple tying of flight to Sailing is not a good idea.

First, there may be some conditions that would affect one and not the other.

Second, allowing the full aerial move over water leads to other distortions, particularly on the world-size maps where the sea provinces represent huge areas.

Also, my intuition is that allowing aerial moves across a several-water-province barrier is bad for balance.

On the other hand, not being able to make a small jump plays havoc with my suspension of disbelief and immersion.

Thus, a small conflict and a wish.

[RedRover]

Spell Scripting Improvements

1) Show what spells are being scripted as the scripting is being done.
Many times I get confused halfway through scripting a sequence, lose track of where I am, and have to start over.

2) Add the ability to edit a spell script without starting over.
Let’s say I have plugged in Mistform and Body Ethereal, then decide I should have cast Quickness first. I’d like to be able to insert Quickness at the start of the sequence without having to go back and retype everything.

[LDiCesare]

UI:
Be able to iconify the information boxes (units, menus, province info... all). The list of commanders for instance may well hide just about all the map. Right now, I end up with a dead part of the screen between menus in the upper right part of my screen.

Single Player:
-The ai would be much more interesting if it built castles.
-Some diplomacy would be great in SP. Simple things like propose to attack someone, request a province, allow for taking of a province.
-Make sure the program remains usable for SP and hotseat. A client/server thingy like some people want should remain hidden if it is implemented.

Fog of war: Remember information about regions you used to see but no longer do. This information would ba tagged as 'old' somehow. Who owns the province, strength of the troops... Alternately, let the player write some info for each province and display it on the map as an additional map filter.

Getting rid of useless units and items noone ever uses. Does anyone build light cavalry? Or make them worth buying. Here, less units/spells/items could actually be a plus.

Raid command. If your army has a strategic move of 2, you could use it to raid the neighboring province (i.e. attack, loot and come back) rather than attack it really. It would act as a pillage command, but in the neighboring province. The units would have to fight the defense force with something like a 'hold 3 turns and flee' order. This could make light cavalry worth buying. Plus it would be nasty.

A national building and national troop unlocked when this is built. If you research one school (e.g. Construction for Ulm, Summonning for Ermor, Evocation for Marignon...) to level X(6?), you have the ability to build one special building (in only one province) which unlocks a new national troop. This building would cost gold and gems (most races) or gems only (Ermor?) or gold only (Ulm?). The available units could be built either normally or through an 'enter site' command from an appropriate commander, and be worth buying late in the game.

Make the Arena worth going into it. Gaining a cursed two handed weapon, however strong, is no excuse for risking the death of your commander. Winning should instead give a special ability as the hall of fame does, boost some stats, provide luck, or something worth having. Particularly when you run the risks of facing a diseased scout equipped with a half dozen cursed items.

Already stated by others, but I'll repeat them here anyway:
-Add an option to play where underwater areas are all or mostly barren.
-Tax management: Be able to precise a tax reduction per unrest formula and say which provinces it does NOT apply to. Formula would be something like reduce tax by (float) for every 1 unrestor (int) per 10 unrest.
-Save God.

[RedRover]

Just a quick note to check out my new post/thread on Water Magic. I didn't want to clog this thread with a long and detailed post, but I'd be interested in some feedback.

Post#307918 (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showthreaded.php?Number=307918)

[FarAway Pretender]

Dom2 is a great game (among the 5 best I've ever played, and I've been playing for more than 20 years now!), and rather than getting too specific (I hope!!--sometimes my enthusiasm gets the best of me), I'd like to stick with/suggest some general themes:

1) Reduce micromanagement. This is really my only complaint with the game, but it's a big bother and seems to be a very common one. Includes:
- Allow Scripted "taxation vs. Unrest" policies
- Allow repeatable Artifact forging
- Allow disbanding of unwanted units
- Reduce micromanagement of gems ("Gem pooling from Clams")

2) Try to clean up the "Things that make you go huh?" issues. Mostly AI-related, but not all. This just detracts from the gameplay and interrupts the real feeling of beloved immersion I get when playing the game. A few of my pet peeves:
- Legendary Hero bonuses that make little sense. Having an extra-strong Crone of Avalon, or a Knight with extra Precision... Either assign them by hero type, or allow players to choose between two options when given a special ability.
- Spell-casters who insist on casting defensive spells on themselves when all the enemy is already routed.
- Allow setting archers for "Aggressive Fire" (the current default, where 20 Crosbbowmen will fire at one surviving Militia surrounded by 15 of my Heavy Infantry) or "Cautious Fire" (only shooting at targets not adjacent to my units).
- Spell-casters who keep casting spells on incapacitated units (e.g., when I've already paralyzed a Jotun Axeman, it's kinda silly to keep Casting Soul Slay on him, as opposed to the other Axeman who's carving up my cavalry). This is especially infuriating against units with high MR.

3) Keep combat scripting simple. I'm sympathetic to players wanting better tactical control of units, but allowing this makes for even more micromanagement. It also handicaps the AI, who should remain a credible challenger well into any game. I LIKE having "modest control" over what happens in combat, and think this is good for play balance.

4) Try to give the hero's a little more individual character, at least a few of them. Possibilities include:
- Tying Legendary bonuses to unit types is one thing.
- Revise the way those bonuses work, so that 33% of units get a "Heroic Bonus" upon reaching Lvl. 1 might be cool. Have those abilities be useful but not great, but have them escalate into more dramatic abilities with Experience. This gives heroes more individual flavor, but also encourages you to be less cautious with the ones you like until they're "unkillable by normal units".
- Consider giving some Heroes abilities that might affect the province they're in. Maybe only give this ability at Level 3 or Level 4? Such abilities might include:
* Speak to the People: Reduce Unrest by 10 in current province
* Inspire Work: Increase Productivity scale 1 notch in current province
* Promote Commerce: Increase Order scale 1 notch in current province
* Drill Master: Double XP accumulation (2/turn instead of 1/turn, I think?) of units in current province.

5) Give the provinces more individual flavor. I LOVE the Dom2 system, but I wish my provinces had a little more character or sentimental value to me (as opposed to Gold and Production numbers). I can think of three ways to do this:
- Give more Magic Sites a function not related to Gem Production. This could even extend to modest bonuses for units produced in the province:
* Waters of Quickness: 1 Water Gem/turn, units built in this province get +1 to Defense.
* Great Oak Tree: 1 Nature Gem/turn, +1 Growth Dominion locally.
* Dwarven Forge: +1 Earth Gem/turn, units built in this province get +1 to Protection, +1 to Strength.
- Have Terrain affect combat. Easiest way to do this is to use the Warlords approach, where certain unit types get certain bonuses in certain terrain. Cavalry SHOULD be more fearsome in plains than in mountains, no?
- In addition to Unrest, have "Abiding Love" in certain provinces when a Pretender REALLY earns their adoration. Repelling attacks successfully, random events, etc. might bring extra bonuses when a province has positive Dominion and 0 Unrest. This could increase the Pop Growth, Productivity, or Gold production by 1-10%, depending on how much "Love" people feel. Conquering armies rampaging through would obviously obliterate that.

6) Ruins. I think you could work this into the game in a way that would be play-balanced and fun, but not too intrusive. Specifically, as a possible Magic Site (but perhaps one very easy to find), have certain Ruins, guarded by Monsters but offering Treasures/benefits. A few possible things you could do with this:
- Have Ruins contribute to Unrest (3, 5, or 10 per turn, depending on the magnitude of the critters hiding in the Ruins) effectively reducing income (and perhaps production). Or, just contribute "negative dominion" (e.g., Death, Sloth, Turmoil), if that seems more appropriate.
- Have Ruins of different levels, guarded by Monsters of different severity and number. Killing those monsters might yield Treasure (gold and/or random magic items--if I only had Earth Magic, I'd love to equip a Hero with an "Ice Sword" I found in a dungeon), and/or might allow access to higher-powered Magic Sites. Don't have Ruins be so disruptive that they have to be explored, but leave it as an option that the player will "want to clean up sooner or later".

[Graeme Dice]

FarAway Pretender said:
- Reduce micromanagement of gems ("Gem pooling from Clams")



Clicking pool on the gem info screen accomplishes this.

[Blacksilver]

I understand the ravages of a Deity war are going to
reduce populations. That being said I've come across
a problem in most games, that skew most games in favour of
undead or non supply populations.

Your populations diminish with random events, half a dozen
spells, combat, and pillaging hordes. When playing against
a Ermor or Ctis this usually hands them the game. All it
takes is one break through your lines and that province is
destroyed for any non death caster.

Growth is ineffective. I've played with growth 3 and seen
no movement on populations over a hundred turns. Provinces
below 1000 will never grow short of a random influx of citizens. (Probably because the growth calculation rounds down).

I'd like to see 3 things...

1. Growth as a dominion aspect much more improved...Perhaps
even tie it into the prophet. When the prophet comes to a
loyal town he probably has to preside over quite a few marriages.... large increase in birth rate.

2. Mid level spells to counter specific dominion aspects on
a province by province basis. Somewhere around lvl 4 or 5
so that when the enemy seeps death or misfortune across
your physical border you can send mages out to battle it
directly. (And high dominion doesn't always stop these
things from spreading) ex Joe the Air mage casts -Blue Moon- luck in the province has increased -make them yearly rituals, so they have to be refreshed every 4 turns.

3. The ability to move or increase population growth through
a zero tax rate. Provinces next to a zero tax province will
see a gradual stream of emigration to that province. A farm
land isn't going to send hordes to a wasteland, so terrain-terrain should be factored... but a depopulated farm land
should draw hordes from surrounding regions.

Playing a heavy supply based nation would be feasible if you
had any kind of (long term) real control over the supplies
in a province. The high level nature spell(Gift of Nature's bounty) is knocked out in 1 turn by any smart Ermor
or Ctis player, or is not realisticaly available to many
nations.


Thanks, keep up the great work guys, best strat game since Moo 2.

[Graeme Dice]

Blacksilver said:
When playing against a Ermor or Ctis this usually hands them the game.



I'm not sure why you include C'tis in there, since they need population as much as anyone else. Ermor might kill population, but their armies evaporate in the face of moderate resistance anyways, so it's usually not too much of a problem.

[Agrajag]

Regarding Ermor's provinces being rendered completely useless:
1) Ermor has a hard time spreading its dominion since the ONLY thing that spreads their dominion is building temples (no preaching available, no blood sacrifices available), so most of the time their dominion won't bother you.
2) Ermor lives and dies by gem supplies, they can't recruit [censored] so they have to rely on a very high gem supply, that means that a smart Ermor player will make efforts to discover all possible magical sites (which is very easy with all their randoms), which will give you plenty of magical gems of all types on all of the previously-Ermorian provinces (unlike provinces from nations that lack certain types of paths etc.).

Obviously, I could just be stupid and misleading, but then again, I don't think I am...

[Oelfwine]

I believe #1 (above) is wrong Agrajag. Ermor AE at least has Bishops and such which they can summon which can preach. Am I mistaken?

[Endoperez]

Ermor's unholy priests can't preach. I don't think even the normal (40 gp indep.) priests Ermor might recruit cannot preach (they become Unholy-1 for Ermor, BTW).

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Endoperez said:
Ermor's unholy priests can't preach.



I believe unholy priests can't preach, whatever the nation they belong to.

[Graeme Dice]

Nagot Gick Fel said:
I believe unholy priests can't preach, whatever the nation they belong to.



Undead unholy priests cannot preach. Living unholy priests can.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Graeme Dice said:

Nagot Gick Fel said:
I believe unholy priests can't preach, whatever the nation they belong to.



Undead unholy priests cannot preach. Living unholy priests can.



Or it's just 'undead can't preach', and (un)holiness has nothing to do with it. I remember my Souless (holy) priests couldn't preach anymore when I tried a death-9 blessing (Life after Death effect).

[Agrajag]

Nagot Gick Fel said:

Endoperez said:
Ermor's unholy priests can't preach.



I believe unholy priests can't preach, whatever the nation they belong to.


That wasn't the point...
The point was that Ermor's priests cannot preach, not that unlike other nation, Ermor's unholy priests can't preach.

[Graeme Dice]

Agrajag said:
The point was that Ermor's priests cannot preach, not that unlike other nation, Ermor's unholy priests can't preach.



Ermor's living unholy priests can preach however.

[Agrajag]

Graeme Dice said:

Agrajag said:
The point was that Ermor's priests cannot preach, not that unlike other nation, Ermor's unholy priests can't preach.



Ermor's living unholy priests can preach however.


...
Okay, so what you are saying is that in order to preach, Ermor has to spend its none-existent money on indep-priests for preaching, which besides being a waste of money (That would be much better used for temples and fortifications) and an annoying increase in upkeep (that goes out of a none-existent income) suck at preaching (Unless you are lucky to find some site which gives average priests).
So... Ermor (that is, none-default Ermor) still has a VERY hard time spreading its dominion, especially in unconquered lands.

Maybe next time I should add a couple of pages of explanations for every word I say so there will be no misuderstandings.
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[rylen]

Another "would be nice" wish -- a searched province overlay. Now, instead of checking each province or my master list for which one I haven't probed yet, I touch a button, see the number sets just like the province names, and make my choice. It could get cluttered, but thats acceptable. Especially if it can be turned back off.

Rylen

[Cainehill]

That would be nice, or if the province list would show the terrain types (1 site in a mountain calls for more searching; 1 site in plains doesn't).

[Oelfwine]

(Sorry if this has been suggested already). I would love to see random events tied to scales more directly. For example, a lucky event and high Growth result in migration. An unlucky event and high Growth is the vineman attack. Lucky event and high Production is a watch tower being thrown up. Lucky event and high Drain is enemy researcher in your dominion being unable to research that turn.

If random events affected enemy provinces in your dominion with scale-related effects, I think it'd add some nice twists without necessarily imbalancing anything.

[Endoperez]

Oelfwine: Your wish has already been fulfilled, atleast somewhat. Vineman attack needs Magic and maybe Growth atm, besides Unluck. For knights/barbarians to attack, you have to have Turmoil or lots of unrest. With Order (and maybe Production) and some Luck, you can even get a fortified city! For the rich prince to die, you need high Luck but also Death.

Your other idea about enemy provinces being atacked is interesting, though. Most of the 'liberator' -attacks (knights, barbarian horde, vinemen) would only occur if people didn't like you, the really bad diseases wold only occur under your enemy's death dominion etc. Also things like people burning your temples down, destroying your labs, being unruly, villain attack coupled with new magic site (hidden) increasing unrest... This would be nice in making dominion more important.

[deccan]

Endoperez said:
For knights/barbarians to attack, you have to have Turmoil or lots of unrest.



Eh? I've had barbarian attacks on provinces with order 3 and very low unrest...

[Oelfwine]

Endoperez,

Thanks. Deccan, perhaps barbarian attacks are less likely under Order 3 than Turmoil 3? I would be perfectly happy with that. I generally prefer scales to affect the chances of certain things happening, with the absolutes reserved for the strongest effects (rich prince, etc.)

[Agrajag]

Oelfwine said:
Thanks. Deccan, perhaps barbarian attacks are less likely under Order 3 than Turmoil 3?



Considering that the Order scale decreases the chances of a special event happening, its an obvious yes...

BTW, here is a nice wish (that has been mentioned plenty of times): Either let us dissmiss units or get rid of the militia/flagellant-granting events.

[atul]

Oelfwine said:
perhaps barbarian attacks are less likely under Order 3 than Turmoil 3? I would be perfectly happy with that.


In the previous discussions about the subject devs have said (IIRC) that there are two kinds of good/bad events: common and rare (not related to common/rare random event settings, though, my English just fails me in search for synonyms). For example, huge barbarian attack is a rare bad event, but with turmoil 2 or high unrest it becames a common bad event.

And of course there's the order/turmoil effect on event frequency.

[Sandman]

My wishes:

Reworked Pretenders

I've never been that happy with the various pretenders available. A lot of them are really pretty useless, and could be easily removed from the game - the various Egyptian-style pretenders, especially, and some of the mages as well. A lot of the pretenders are rather ugly and drab, as well.

Let's dump the seldom-used pretenders, give the good ones a graphical sprucing up, and create more genuinely useful new pretenders. More immobiles would be nice, for starters, like a Yggdrasil 'World Tree' with nature-3.

Another thing about the pretenders is how, well, secular they are. Apart from the bless effects, they don't interact that much with the priests and the sacred units of a nation. The pretenders need to be more, well, holy. There are lots of potential ways to do this. What if bless effects applied to the pretenders as well? Overpowered at the moment, yes, but it does make sense thematically.
Or what if the magical choices of a pretender gave priests extra spells? Say, holy fire to priests of a strong fire pretender, or holy armour to priests of an earth deity. These would generally be somewhat weak, but also very low fatigue, like all priest spells.
How about if pretenders (and maybe prophets) could derive extra power from bringing their priests into the battle? Maybe there could a special buff that priests could cast to help their deity, or a communionish effect that only worked between priest and god.

Reworked Fortresses

The fortresses could use a shot in the arm as well. Many of them are worthless or nearly worthless, and the others are quite boring. My ideas to make fortresses cooler include:

Make fortresses dependant on terrain. It seems obvious that a mountain citadel should not be buildable on farmland.

Create many more nation specific fortresses.

Give fortresses extra abilities. For example, a wizard's tower gives +1 research to all units within. A holy city increases dominion spread and gets a defence bonus based on dominion. A dark citadel weakens besieging enemy morale. A forest citadel can't be seen from adjacent provinces, and regrows quickly. A tribal encampment can be disbanded to yield 80% of the gold it took to set up, and is always destroyed when captured. A maritime city allows sea travel to units stationed there. And so on.

Indie units built at a fortress you own should wear your colours, within reason. Maybe not amazons, but longbowmen and knights, for example.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Sandman said:
What if bless effects applied to the pretenders as well? Overpowered at the moment, yes, but it does make sense thematically.



It does? Not my opinion. Blind faith is really what makes an unit holy, and thus eligible for bless effects. Pretenders are merely a bunch of egocentric maniacs with an unextinguible thirst for power, and enough charisma to fool others into believing they're gods. And that's it - I have a hard time imagining they share their followers' faith in themselves.


Or what if the magical choices of a pretender gave priests extra spells? Say, holy fire to priests of a strong fire pretender, or holy armour to priests of an earth deity.



Holy fire, holy armour - that's sort of Fire 9 and Earth 9 give you already.


Give fortresses extra abilities. For example, a wizard's tower gives +1 research to all units within. A holy city increases dominion spread and gets a defence bonus based on dominion. A dark citadel weakens besieging enemy morale. A forest citadel can't be seen from adjacent provinces, and regrows quickly. A tribal encampment can be disbanded to yield 80% of the gold it took to set up, and is always destroyed when captured. A maritime city allows sea travel to units stationed there. And so on.



Some good ideas here. What about the nation/theme bringing flavour to fortresses instead? After all, Ulm fortresses already get a production bonus. Eg, if you've ever read Lovecraft, you probably know that the architect who designed R'lyeh (the city) had a very unusual sense of geometry - and because of that R'lyeh caused insanity to people who were unfortunate enough to visit it. Maybe in Dominions R'lyeh fortresses could get a chance to cause feeblemindness to non-mindless, non-Illithid and non-Starspawn units who happen to be in the province. Pangaean fortresses could have a 'Beckoning' effect on besiegers. Diabolical Faith fortresses could have a 'Looming Hell' effect on besiegers. Pythium fortresses could grant a +1 strat move bonus, and ignore terrain penalties in castled provinces. And so on.

[Sandman]

Blessable pretenders: Well, this all a bit theological, but surely it's not a simple question of personal faith and sacrifice that confers blessability? What about void summons or those sacred dogs the Tuatha have? I'd say that it's as much a question of the society at large believing in the sanctity of certain units, not just the individual creatures themselves. And who does the society believe in more than anything? The pretender, that's who.

Extra holy spells: True enough. I just thought it might be interesting to have more holy spells available, based on choices the player makes.

Fortress Types: With regards to the Ulmish resource bonus, the way I would do it would be for there to be at least two Ulm-specific fortress types, which would grant the resource bonus, as well as being very good forts in their own right. But there'd also be other forts available, with their own specific bonuses.

So whilst there would be one or two R'lyeh-specific forts with insanity effects, there could also be other ones they could choose from. It would be like choosing a pretender, really.

Some special fort types would available to more than one nation, for example, forest citadel would be available to Pangaea and Man, at the least. Pangaea, Machaka and Mictlan would certainly be able to select tribal encampment.

[Endoperez]

I like Sandman's suggestions about reworking pretenders and fortresses, but unfortunately that quite a lot of work...
Differentiating the pretenders from each other is, IMO, one of the things that would help the game a lot. The descriptions are wonderful, but unfortunately all pretenders don't stand up to it.

About holy spells:

Some national/theme-spesific holy spells would really do wonders on ceratin occassions. Think Iron Faith Ulm, as an example. "By the faith in iron shall the people of Ulm survive"... Holy 3 Legions of Steel would be the physical manifestation of such a spell.
Other nice spells that would be nice to see as holy include some summons (esp. those of Tien Chi), Magic Duel ( Don't you dare to expect The Inqusition! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif ), Holy Pyre, Banish Demon (with 5+ priest requirement), even blindness and/or curse for some nations.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Sandman said:
Blessable pretenders: Well, this all a bit theological,



http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

Perhaps 'theological' is a bit too strong a word here - well, who knows, maybe Kristoffer teaches his students Dominions mythology in real life. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif


but surely it's not a simple question of personal faith



Personal? Where did I write 'personal'? Your words, not mine.


and sacrifice that confers blessability? What about void summons or those sacred dogs the Tuatha have? I'd say that it's as much a question of the society at large believing in the sanctity of certain units, not just the individual creatures themselves.



It's true we have two kinds of sacred units, the 'zelots' (flagellants, KotC, etc., who are usually recruitable units) and the 'divine beings' (like Angels, Celestial Servants, void monsters, etc., who are usually summoned - I'd put Cu Sidhe in this Category). I don't think many in a sane society would believe in the sanctity of flagellants, although they probably would believe in the sanctity of Angels.

So what? The 'zelot' types get their holy status from their own (personal) faith, and the 'divine' types from the faith of commoners who consider them as sacred - just like football aficionados put faith in the players of the team they support. I see no real difference here: one cause (faith), one effect (holiness).


And who does the society believe in more than anything? The pretender, that's who.



I think you look at all this the wrong way. Pretender gods draw their power from their own magic, and from their followers's beliefs. The blessing system is just a way for gods to grant their most devout followers a part of their power. Eg, a pretender skilled in fire magic will get bonuses to his attack rating, and so will his blessed troops. A pretender skilled in nature magic will regenerate faster when casting the apprioprate spell, and thus if he's skilled enough, his sacred troop may gain regenerative powers. The blessing effects may not always match spell effects, or abilities/stat bonuses gained from magic skills, for many obvious reasons - anyway it's also obvious the pretender is the source of these blessings. And now you want him to get a part of this gifted power back - to me it's just like you want to make the sun shine brighter by refecting its own light back with mirrors.

And BTW, I completely forgot to address this other point:


How about if pretenders (and maybe prophets) could derive extra power from bringing their priests into the battle? Maybe there could a special buff that priests could cast to help their deity, or a communionish effect that only worked between priest and god.



You're just asking for something that already exists in the game. Pretenders get extra power and buffs (in the form of stat increases) in provinces where lots of people believe in them (IOW, where their dominion is high).


Fortress Types: With regards to the Ulmish resource bonus, the way I would do it would be for there to be at least two Ulm-specific fortress types, which would grant the resource bonus, as well as being very good forts in their own right. But there'd also be other forts available, with their own specific bonuses.



Makes sense to me. Having to raise a full fortified city where you only need a watchtower is something I've always found... odd.

[andvare]

I'd like to make a small contribution to the wish-list... For some time now I have been playing with the thought of introducing handguns in Dominions.

I know there have been a few threads about the idea as well as a mod or two that included them... But well, it would be nice with official balanced rules as well as graphic and sound. And if you don't think they work that well in a fantasy oriented world I beg to differ, think of how well they go with the dwarfs in Warhammer for example. (note: I'm not asking for a debate on how serious the fantasy in Warhammer is here).

Anyway, think of it.

[Zooko]

"based on choices the player makes"

Ooh! Ooh! Different dominion scales give you different holy spells!

[The_Tauren13]

I think it would be good for PD to be more useful. Then you would have an option other than madcastleing to stop raiding. But that would probably require a total rework of the PD system to balance.

[Graeme Dice]

The_Tauren13 said:
Then you would have an option other than madcastleing to stop raiding.



The other option is that you can always go on the offense.

[The_Tauren13]

Yeah, but what fun is a purely offensive scortched earth raid fest? Ok, so I guess that does sound kinda fun. But still, there should be better options for defence.

[Tominator2]

More Diplomatic Options
trade - money, territory, units
cooperation - ceasefire, safe passage, joint efforts
victory - voting (ala MoO1), pantheon (with primary victor), domination (to end boring endgames)


Building Scripts
recurring recruiting - I'd like a Sage every turn, please
equipping - create items a, b, c, and d for my Bane Lord


Other
the Dwarven Hammer should be auto-assigned to the forger of the most expensive item - playing "who has the Dwarven Hammer?" is boring
a multi-turn "auto-move and search for magic sites" order would be nice
3D for just pretenders would look cool


Geeking out on the AI
The only things really needed for an AI are the current situation (the map, troop locations, money/gem levels, etc.) and a list of valid orders (build troops, cast spells, attack, etc.). A summary of the previous turn would be nice, too.

What would be needed then is:
CP - a text-based, human-readable file describing the current position (also CP', CP'', etc.)
O - a list o1, o2, ... on of operations (e.g. o5 might be "build n soldiers of type x in area a")
V(oi) - a function that determines whether oi is valid given the current game position, where oi is an instantiated rule (e.g. oi might be "build 1 hypasist in Great Waste")
L - a list of moves that the AI wishes to make this turn (this will be the file sent to the server)
A(CP, oi, L) -&gt; (CP', L') a function that applies oi to CP, resulting in CP' and adding the appropiate entry to L, resulting in L'

[liga]

I read all the Messages ... a lot of idea ... I try to see the most 3 things I want:

1.an improved order system

just imprved ... it is funny and realistic looking your troops and command behave like they want during the ed of the battle. But something like "guard position" (stay firm until an enemy is in reache). fire and retreat and so on ...

2. an imporved manual and/or ingame descriptio

at least in the manual (or ingame description) I must know what a spell really does (summon 2+ ghosts is not enouhg for me) or how the squad size alter the morale of my squad

3. reduce the strenght of ritual spell in the nd of the game

it must be not easy (more difficult/costing) cast spells on provinces far away form your mages and/or your scouts

[PvK]

* If "target commanders" etc. were added back in, add a difficulty to spot and indentify those targets. The player may get a bird's eye view of the map with perfect information about what everything is, but a soldier in the field has to see through obstacles, people, has limited knowledge and limited time to make decisions.

* Either modify the sequence of play in combat, or the AI, so that units do not just charge into certain death against foes that can wipe them out. This could be handled in a variety of ways, but in general, give units a chance to back away from charging hordes of enemies, if they have the room and speed to do so. Thus, faster units (especially Light Infantry and Cavalry) could and would avoid being caught by superior Groups of enemy Heavy Infantry, for example. Also, small Groups and commanders could avoid engaging (or at least, avoid getting totally mobbed by) larger Groups that they could outrun.

[Pocus]

woud it be possible to enhance the scripting possibilies of scenarios? It would be a boon, for solo and MP, as we are still really lacking in 'real' scenarios, with triggers, events, etc.

as an exemple, I would like to be able to script an independant or AI commander in the scenario file, because as of now, a fully equiped independant queen of air will cast spells until she passes out where as she would surely only cast mistform, mirror image and then attack in the hands of a player.

[DragonFire11]

First I want to say that Dom2 is fantastic, and if they only made superficial changes in Dom3 I'd still give them my money. It’s more likely, however, that the skill and motivation that created Dom2 makes that possibility unlikely and happily so. I have dozens of minor thoughts that probably aren’t worth their consideration or time. I will tender my personal recommendations where I think they might have the most impact:

1. Some simple interface changes might go a long way. For instance, Medieval Total War had this nice feature that you could simply push the shift button (or was it Tab or ctrl?) and the map would reveal a color-coded means of determining the degree of unrest: green, yellow, and red each specifying a degree of risk of revolt. This feature was a huge time saver. Also, the ability to give orders and script commands needs simplification. Yes, I like the way researching mages can be grayed out but more in this respect can be done. For example: I say you should be able to group all commanders and mages. You should also be able to group by those lacking orders, or by those with particular spell skills and in ascending or descending order by strength. There should also be an easier way to access and read spell paths.

2. A tutorial. Let’s face it: this game is utterly recondite. I say this with great affection because the abstruse nature provides the some of the best moments of gaming. But learning the game at even a modest degree is a chore and you certainly lose gamers (and profits) to the intimidated. You might want to add a list of basic combination spell and attacks just to get folks started.

3. This is probably a tall order: idiot server setup and interface. Now I don’t know anything about this type of thing (thus I am the idiot in need), but it seems to me that the easier to set up servers, and the more user friendly, the happier your customers will be.

Also, for email games, which is a very nice thing by the way, you might want to create some sort of utility that automatically backs up user files by moves because we make mistakes and it’s a real shame to lose a game when you confuse two email games.

4. Trade. Ok, so I’m a hopeless capitalist. But trade among provinces and nations add wealth, and a weakness to attack. In my mind, trade can be quite simple and depicted in a basic fashion. As long as there is a way to obstruct trade with military, spells, and weather, it might be worth considering.

5. Titans. Some games are long. Some games are long and you know you are going to get beat bad because the other player is so much better. Introducing Titans (as inspired by Warlords Battlecry) might be a nice way to add a little chaos to the system so someone might invest energies building up a really bad baddie. Obviously, this would have to work with the balance of the game, but it’s something to consider.

6. Buildings. Hey we can build temples, labs, and keeps, why not other good stuff like smiths, carpenters, war colleges, armories, devil forges, added defenses, etc. Make them expensive so you might have to choose between quality or quantity and have something to lose if invaded.

7. Family. My god is worshiped like a rock star, so maybe he should act like one. If he has offspring, these mini-gods might add extra goodness to a great game.

8. Hostages. If you can have valuable family members, perhaps you can hold or take key individuals hostage like in the Shogun books.

9. More ritual spells. Those things are so cool I want more. For instance, you could make a spell that makes armies eat more, so that starvation is a bigger issue. Maybe make weak ritual spells that have less impact but need less research.

10. More individuals. Perhaps the comment regarding family members address this, but it would be nice to see certain commander progress more in terms of experience and ability. I know this is a touch like RPG, but think adding a few more key individuals along with the gods would add a personal aspect, and the risk reward of certain attacks might be increased.

11. Pacts. Ok, this one is a bit strange, but diplomacy might take on a twist if players could enter pacts enforced by the game that if defined agreements are breached, the collateral or pledge is forfeited.

Just a few thoughts. I have more thoughts, but these came to mind first at this sitting. Now the only problem about the Dom3 announcement is that I have to wait for it.

[deccan]

Recently there was some discussion of wards and whether or not they stacked. I requested that the different kinds of wards be made stackable (e.g. Thunder Ward + Storm Warriors) so as to allow armies to get 100% resistance to something though it would expensive in terms of gems and getting the right casters in place.

However this was voted down by the devs.

How about we add battlefield spells that give susceptibility to a damage type to targets, which would effectively give say -50% fire (or whatever) resistance to whatever in its area of effect?

If we imposed a max of 50% susceptibility from spells of this type, then people would need 150% resistance to be absolutely safe, but it would then be more viable to allow resistance wards to stack.

The idea is that a player should be forced to have several mages working together to cast the appropriate ward type or susceptibility type spells for maximum effect, reducing the power of having just 1 powerful mage killing entire armies with Wrathful Skies type spells.

[Saber Cherry]

If sub-100% resistance are stacking is multiplicative rather than additive, it might work better... in other words, if a unit has three different 50% fire resistances (perhaps one from an artifact, one from the unit's nature [e.g. a demon] and one from a battlefield spell) then they could stack like this:

50% and 50% and 50% = .5 + .5 + .5 = 150% (additive)

or like this:

50% and 50% and 50% = 1-(1-.5)*(1-.5)*(1-.5) = 1-.125 = 87.5%


By the way, did I mention that it would be nice if national and indy units were useful in the mid and late game in Dom III? I think I did, but wishing twice never hurts:)

Edit: Ooops, just noticed Chazar already said this exact same thing in another thread... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/redface.gif

[Chazar]

Now that the topic arose in this thread here as well, I just thought that I should mention that I have updated my thoughts about multiplication of resistances in that other thread (Post#311949 (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showthreaded.php?Number=311949)), since it is not entirely clear to me how to model susceptibility Ratings. I see essentially two sensible choices, both having some small drawbacks...

(Edited to avoid crossposting. So please see the above linked thread if you are interested in my views on resistance &amp; susceptibility stacking.)

-------

Apart from that, I also wish for an option to have somewhat erratic and delayed nation graphs. I do not like the nations graphs turned off during MP-play, but I do not like them to be turned on either: Gossip &amp; Spies should not be able to figure out e.g. the exact number of research points my enemies had Last turn, and anyway, such information should need some time to seep through...

[NTJedi]

The_Tauren13 said:
I think it would be good for PD to be more useful. Then you would have an option other than madcastleing to stop raiding. But that would probably require a total rework of the PD system to balance.



This is actually a very good idea. Every 10 points of province defense should add a new and stronger commander... perhaps 2 new commanders after 50 with province defense. Currently spells like 'send horror' and 'ghost riders' destroy any level of province defense for almost all races.

[Olive]

Hi all http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Music should be encoded in a common format (mp3 or maybe flac because it's open source). The files should be played randomly from one directory. The player should then easily add/remove the music he wants.

Or maybe there should be two directories (one for main interface and one for the battles).

The two cents of a newbie http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif .

[SurvivalistMerc]

I will confess I haven't read the entire thread yet.

One of my pet peeves is that missile units do not reaquire targets and keep firing at their first set of targets until that set routs. This seems to me undesirable. I would think these troops would be smart enough to target fast troops or large enemy monsters, such as elephants, which are about to overrun their positions the following turn and fire at them when there is no screen of troops between them and what appears to be their certain death (especially when their original targets are a small squad that hasn't advanced much). I would include in this retargeting feature also pretenders or other large size commanders that are about to attack them physically and are located nearby (though I wouldn't want to see them pick out that sage pretender in the back and all fire at him if he is staying back).

I love the game you folks have made. And I finally downloaded all the new patches.

It would be amazing if "fire and flee" were not converted into "fire and rout" so that it could be used with mercenaries and the orderly retreat would be to a designated province.

I agree that graphics are far less important than gameplay (and I've deleted Shadow Magic from my hard drive but still have Dominions). Yet you guys have already done the hard work of designing good gameplay. I have to ask for the eye candy, which you could probably subcontract out if you don't have the time or inclination to do it yourselves. And I'd pay another 50 bucks for it.

I love the ideas to reduce micromanagement, especially of tax rates and the like. And if you would just go ahead and make the wounded troops look different without having to click a member of that group and then press W that would be great. Maybe make them more reddish-gray in a way easily visible for all nations and have them get more so as they pile up the afflictions. Let each user set rules for who gets autoselected by affliction and let us see the afflictions by moving the mouse over the afflicted unit. This shouldn't be that hard to do and it would go a long way toward reducing wasted time in the game.

[SurvivalistMerc]

Oh...I didn't say...I would like for an option to turn off mercenaries and/or make them more rare. Having them makes a lot of SP play somewhat similar in the beginning and not so much dependent on nation type.

[Edge]

The one thing I would like to see is longer spellcasting scripting. And the ability to exclude spells from being cast.

Thanks

[SurvivalistMerc]

I should add that the list for spells that individual mages are not to cast and a list for spells for no mage in the army to ever cast are excellent ideas.

And so is the idea that combat should not be one side first then the other side. Perhaps the longer weapon should get first strike if significantly longer. One of the only simplistic parts of the Dom 2 experience is that it's hard to predict what army with end up in striking distance first and that factor alone can be the deciding factor of a battle.

[silhouette]

Two more requests:

- I need a call-god-o-meter. When I lose a pretender early in the game and it takes several turns to call back, I have to make notes on paper if I want to get to exactly the 40 level-turns needed and use some priests for something else in the Last turn. Put it on the research screen, for example, with the same sort of progress meter.

- There should be an easier way to exchange equipment between 2 commanders in the field. E.g I want to send out a scout with a new hellsword and flying boots to a lone SC in the field, and have the scout walk home with his flambeau and messenger boots, but they can't exchange items unless there is another emptyhanded/footed commander there to act as swap space? Annoying. Maybe an interface like the gems exchange screen, where you can select commanders and see their slots contents side by side, and drag and drop to exchange items. Or maybe this can be part of a bigger item-management system that would also solve the 5 minute who-has-the-forge-lord-hammer search.

Sill

[PvK]

An optional feature offering more support for alliances, either defined at game start, or agreed on during play. So allied forces could be allowed to pass through each other's lands or even fight together against enemies (or at least not accidentally fight each other when encountering each other).

PvK

[SurvivalistMerc]

Oh...how about keeping the ctrl-# commands the same from one game to the next.

Lots of folks try the same nation multiple times. And it gets annoying having to reprogram your favorite spell attacks over and over. It's just another tedium-reducing idea.

[SurvivalistMerc]

I probably shouldn't keep adding things, but this one seems relatively easy and also a huge tedium saver.

How about letting us see a mage's random picks by putting them on his icon? This way you could pick out those blood sages to start a blood hunting group. Or that astral sage you want to make an amulet of luck with without having to scroll down and check each unit individually.

Anything that allows you to see information you would click to see in as few clicks as possible (zero where possible) is a good thing imo.

I still like Saber Cherry's idea of having the basic province defense information visible by just clicking on the province without having to click "province info."

[Agrajag]

Just do what I do, name the mages according to their paths as soon as you recruite them, still MM, but more effective.

[Edi]

SurvivalistMerc said:
Oh...how about keeping the ctrl-# commands the same from one game to the next.

Lots of folks try the same nation multiple times. And it gets annoying having to reprogram your favorite spell attacks over and over. It's just another tedium-reducing idea.


I'd rather that there were ctrl-# slots separately for each nation that carried over from game to game. Not hard to do, and it would seriously cut down on script reassignment.

And I most definitely second the suggestion about game music being made into a common format, preferably support for multiple formats if possible. MP3 being the most obvious, but I'd also like .it (I want my original Age of Wonders music, thank you very much, Battle Macabre simply rocks!).

Edi

[Gandalf Parker]

SurvivalistMerc said:
How about letting us see a mage's random picks by putting them on his icon? This way you could pick out those blood sages to start a blood hunting group. Or that astral sage you want to make an amulet of luck with without having to scroll down and check each unit individually.



I was thinking along the same lines. Even if a 1 pixel dot for each magic in that magics "color" would be very helpful. It might be hard to tell 1 fire 2 earth apart from 2 fire 1 earth, but it would at least tell me which ones to skip checking

[Chazar]

Color codes on top of a units icon is definitely a must-have! Customizable colour codes please!

[Psitticine]

If the magic color codes go vertically rather than horizontally for stronger power, it'd be easier to read. So an F1E2 would look like:

<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
FE
E
</pre><hr />

[Rainbow]

Script command / combat action: Rest
Allow commanders to spend a combat turn resting to recover fatigue. This will allow mages to act more sensibly by resting before falling unconscious. Being unconscious is a pretty bad idea when the rest of the army routs.


Spell scripting:

Show which spells are being scripted (as originally suggested by RedRover)
Players need to be able to see what has been scripted without starting over.

Set gem usage for spell script.
Allow the player to set how many gems are used for casting each scripted spell.

Show the estimated fatigue for the spell script.
For each scripted spell, show the fatigue from casting this spell, and the sum of the fatigue from all spells cast at this point in the script. Automatically update this if encumberance changes (due to equipment changes, chest wounds, etc).

Review spell script.
Allow players to review the spell script details, including information about spells, gems and fatigue, without automatically clearing the script.

Warnings/information.
Notify the player of important things, like situations where scripted spells will never be cast (for example because the caster does not have enough gems to cast the spell without incurring 300 points of fatigue =&gt; suicide). A mage may have the required gems one turn, but not the following turn. Highligt mages in the army list, who are unable to perform their spell script (any number of reasons could cause this, including added encumberance (chest wounds, heavier armor), lack of gems, lost both eyes, feebleminded, etc.)


AI spell casting:

Fatigue management
Do not let the AI cast spells which render the caster unconcious, unless the AI have good reason to think it is a very good idea. Instead the AI should let the mage rest (see script command suggestion above).

Spell selection.
Give the AI the ability to intelligently choose spells. For example, only cast air shield if at least X enemies have ranged weapons AND they comprise Y% of the total size of the enemy army. Only cast fireball if no friendly units without fire resistance are adjacent to the intended target. Etc.


Spell casting in melee:

Never force mages to melee.
There are some excellent spells with “touch” range, which are very rarely used, since mages are often either slain before they can use them (when enemies come into range) or because the mage is forced to do melee. Mages should never be forced to do melee when they have touch range spells available. They should be allowed to choose between their touch range spells or melee, whichever they think is the better.

Move and cast touch range spells.

Mages with touch range spells should be allowed to move up to half their normal movement allowance, and deliver a touch range spell to an enemy. They should only ever do this if the enemy can be reached in one move (ie., move and spell cast in same action / turn). Mages should still NOT be allowed to move and cast non-touch range spells.


Gem handling.

Alchemy.
Since alchemy does not require any time, but merely the presence of a mage at any lab, the alchemy command should be moved from being a commander option, to be a lab option in the gem review panel (F7). Simply disable the command with the information text that no mage is present to perform the alchemy if this is the case.

Commanders and gems.
For each commander, replace the gem slot with a single icon of each gem followed by a number showing how many gems of that type the commander is currently carrying. To transfer gems, change the number for the desired type of gem (this can transfer both to and from the pool as the new number can be higher or lower than the original number carried). This will save up to 30 tedious mouse clicks and give a better overview of exactly how many gems the commander is carrying. Add a button to force all gems from this commander to the pool.

Gem pooling.
Have two commands for gem pooling. One command will force all gems from all commanders at labs to be pooled (as per Dom II). The other will only pool gems from commanders who are flagged to allow gem pooling. (ie., the first command overrides no-pool flags, where the second command does not).


Taxes and unrest.

Tax / unrest handling panel.

Create a panel for handling taxes and unrest for your nation. Allow the setting of a tax policy based on unrest levels. Allow individual provinced to use the nation’s tax policy or not by flagging. Include known sources of unrest (sites) in the tax / unrest province list, and specify exactly how much unrest is generated by these sites. Inlcude any relevant information on the dominions order / turmoil level.


Army setup.

Army panel (T)

The army panel shows the garrison as a jumble of troops. Many troops look very similar, since there are often small variations on national troops. Cleaning the garrison display up as suggested by Taqwus might be a good idea.

Army parade / display.

Allow players to review the army setup on an actual battlefield. This way the player can check that his units are positioned exactly as he wants, and admire his glorious army (before it is crushed utterly). It will allow players to check that those astral mages are adjacent to the units they want to cast body ethereal on (range = 1). It will allow players to see how that heap of 12 commanders plus 50 bodyguards that are all heaped on top of each other actually deploy on the field, and make adjustments if desired. It will probably be necessary to be able to flag commanders or squads to be part of the review or not (so units that are not supposed to go off with the army when it moves do not displace the units that make up the intended army).


Combat

Horse archers and other skirmishers

Add commands and AI to make these types of units viable. For example, allow a skrimish command where the unit will attempt to engage with ranged weapons, but will move away from the enemy at up to half speed, while staying within maximum range of their thrown or fired weapons and attacking. Javelin equipped light infantry, slingers, horse archers, etc. would become viable, especially for hit and run tactics. Only allow skirmishers to move away by moving towards the rear of their own side of the battlefield. This way we know that they will eventually be caught and pinned, and melee will ensue, even if the skirmishers are twice as fast as the enemy.


/Rainbow

[Edi]

It'd be nice to be informed of what units exactly got wiped out by spells like Beckoning, Lure of the Deep and other similar. Getting a message of "X units succumbed to spell Y" when the affected units cannot in any way be identified is bloody annoying.

Edi

[Aetius]

I definitely agree with having a greater variety of Independents. I think that choosing a fortress should be removed from the game. I think each nation should start of with a unique national capital that is specifically tailored to that particular nation/race. In other provinces you should be given a choice of what type of fortress to build perhaps, there should be restrictions that only certain races can build certain types of fortresses and there should be geographically limitations (i.e. mountain fortress only in mountains).

Using Ulm as an example, since Ulm is a 'builder' type nation. Ulm would have the choice of building the following fortress types: citadel, castle, hill fortress, mountain fortress, watch tower, or fortified city. I think of the castle, citadel, and fortified city as being medival in nature. It would be nice for Arco or Pythium if there was a city-state, or something more metropolitan but in theme with Greco-Roman times. I realize of course that Byzantium was at one time one of the most heavily fortified places on earth so maybe the fortified city is good enough, just does not look right graphics wise for Greco-Roman.

[kukimuki]

Just popped in here, sorry if what i have to say has already been discussed and discarded as stupid. I'm a new player, this may be bad because i don't know the game very well and good because the game itself hasn't shaped my expectations yet. Anyway, glad to see that many strat game problems that have always disturbed me have finally been solved and implemented sucessfully in this game.

First impression

* The very first impression of the game was that the first menu panel looked nice and music was good (or positively different from most games), and the landscape on the background could have been softer in shape and colors to match the nice menu. In the pretender creation it would have been better if nation and avatar selection were in the same panel as the dominion-magic-castle.

* In game selecting things like provinces with right mouse button wasn't much of a problem to get used to, but nevertheless it attracted attention as non-standard way of doing things. I would expect selecting with left mouse and opening the province info with right mouse. When looking at provinces it might be better to open the info frame at place, instead of moving the mouse and eyes away to the edge of the screen and back all the time. At that point i felt somewhat intimidated by having to learn both unusual interface and unusual game mechanics.

* 2d graphics of dom1 were quite nice. If reasonably improved, dom1 2d graphics might look much better than 3d landscape with unit size perspective graphics of dom2 imho. Maybe even better than whatever 3d graphics there could be for dom3. 2d often produces better usability (more clear overview, e.g. Starcraft compared to Warcraft3). With such long micromanagement games i am scared to think about wishes that all those tiny units should be 3d in dom3, looking slightly different at every angle. Many units often look almost identical already, it would make recognizing them even more difficult. I wonder what could be the reason for 3d? Enabling larger battlefield? Maybe an alternative could be units being able to stand closer together like Groups of people were depicted in many old paintings. Ok, i guess this time i'm just getting to extremes and full 2d dom3 isn't going to happen anyway.

* Battle afflictions is a nice feature, but maybe the removal of the pain of micromanagement it causes would be even nicer? Maybe even battle formations would become something to consider more seriously if we didn't have limps.

* If you can't issue commands during battle, what's the point of keeping battle turn-based instead of real-time? There are nice examples of real-time battle games. My wild guess is that transferring just the random seed might solve the possible problem of larger multiplayer data transfer.

* Somewhat uncomfortable to determine what spells are affecting a unit, maybe just a list of spells would be nice?

* Maybe the long time players have got used to that, but to me the friendly fire situation was and is annoying to such extreme that i discontinued using shooters and mind burn became my favourite combat spell for beginning game.

Battle orders

* Setting morale or wimpy level for stacks and heroes lower than max value or setting conditions for routing like you choose 'Cast a specific spell' would be nice.
* If retreating was what you ordered your troops to do, they shouldn't disperse. Maybe they even shouldn't disperse if enemy isn't closely chasing them, or maybe there could even be 'rear' part of battlefield where fleeing units would have time to stop and reconsider unless closely chased.
* In order for troops to flee, there should be non-fleeing enemies on the battlefield.

* 'Repeat' battle order and 'Alternative' battle order in some form if what you primary order cannot be executed. Putting the orders to be repeated between '[]' in those examples and each battle round on separate line.
Example 1:
(quickness)
[(numbness)]
Example 2 (setting preferences by '&gt;'):
(quickness)
[(cold bLast) &gt; (attack one turn)]
Example 3 (skirmish; assuming you move to sufficiently close range if you fire):
[(fire)
(retreat one turn)]
The problem is that there's too much unnecessary galloping back and forth if the opponent isn't advancing. Maybe there should be 'Avoid melee' order:
Example 3.a:
[(avoid melee) &gt; (fire)]
Example 4 (setting equal preference by '=' to let the AI decide):
[(sermon of courage) = (banishment) = (smite demon)]
This may be my strictly personal opinion, but with this little detail of added control it looks simpler than the current system to me. You can just give the commands in a little bit more natural way instead of trying to take into account all possible battle situations and script a large number of 'just in case' spells that turn out useless and ridiculous most of the time.

* Maybe removing the 'attack rear' might be worth considering if it's sole (intended) purpose is to 'attack closest' from the side. It could be replaced by an algorithm that finds the path to the enemy even if it's behind a friendly stack. The fleeing units also look funny when they stubbornly try to move strainght through an enemy heavy cavalry or even a wall.

MISCELLANEOUS

* Cainehill: 'Saber Cherry : In some ways that's a nice idea, _but_ it winds up leading to some very ... cheesy tactics, where very burly high strength units wind up using tiny high speed weapons, which just doesn't seem right.'
Saber Cherry: 'Resulting speed = ((base speed) - (inertia / strength)) rounded up'
It would be more or less like (base inertia -- bare hand):
attack time = (base inertia + weapon inertia) / strength * fatigue
fatigue cost = (base inertia + weapon inertia) / strength
Maybe strength and base inertia could be incresed by e.g. 1/3 if you wield the weapon 2-handed, so that a giants might be able to wield heavier and longer weapons with shield in the other hand.
Maybe allow a really heavy hit to continue to the next target with some weapons if it killed the first one to make heavy weapons more attractive for giants.
continued hit damage = (hit damage - first target full health) / 2

* Option to disable mercenaries or set their cost higher when creating game

* All kinds of castleing madnesses should imho be better countered by other means than by limiting the castle types you can build to 1.

* Intercept enemy movement if enemy is attacking a province. This could be done by counting enemy battle rounds vs your battle rounds, if your battle rounds entering the enemy province are less than enemy battle rounds attacking the other province, you catch the enemy before it crosses the border of the province it attacked. So, if there's no militia in the enemy province nor has the enemy left any troops behind to slow you down, and there's militia or a few troops in the province the enemy attacks, then the enemy is caught. If you have faster troops, you can probably conquer the enemy token distracting troops before the enemy can conquer the token militia of the province it attacks. Just another alternative that i didn't see mentioned in this thread.

* Maybe unrest/loyalty could be somehow connected how to morale and leadership works, like commander with awe or maybe even fear should be better at decreasing unrest.

* I guess there's some reasoning behind the 'staying in hall of fame increases the special ability over time'. For a while I naturally thought that it would depend on exp, until i found a hint to the time instead. Which, of course, made me wonder why it was arranged that way. The problem is that it wasn't readily visible and i still don't have a clue, maybe just writing a few words of explanation somewhere where it can be noticed would do the trick.

* if there are strange events causing superstition in people, there would be a higher chance that some more radical event occurs in that province soon (maybe it's like that already).

* Interesting that hydra doesn't have any head slots while wyrm does. I understand that the hydra is already hyperpowerful as it is, but shouldn't it have the recuperation ability? and shouldn't tritons have recuperation?
* Oracle could have some prophesy skills, e.g. predicting some random events, maybe some Version of it could be available with astrologers. Meaning hints like 'finding a treasure 3 turns after a hero appears'.
________
thanks for reading, wish you all the success at creating a game that will hopefully start a new generation of strategy games.

[Graeme Dice]

kukimuki said:
* Battle afflictions is a nice feature, but maybe the removal of the pain of micromanagement it causes would be even nicer?



What micro? The only one I'd ever consider worrying about would be battle fright. Any other affliction, and the troops can just be left alone.


I understand that the hydra is already hyperpowerful as it is, but shouldn't it have the recuperation ability?



Hydras aren't really that powerful. They are easily killed by many times less than their cost in throway units like militia.

[kukimuki]

Graeme Dice said:

kukimuki said:
* Battle afflictions is a nice feature, but maybe the removal of the pain of micromanagement it causes would be even nicer?



What micro? The only one I'd ever consider worrying about would be battle fright. Any other affliction, and the troops can just be left alone.

Meant
1) Having units represented individually.
2) If the armies are larger there are usually many units with different kinds of wounds, havn't figured out how to select battle frighted units only.
3) And mainly having to check your armies after every battle which is more or less every turn, all this little checking sums up to big micromanagement in my eyes, taking a considerable proportion of playing time.

I think some other afflictions are also uncomfortable, but if you say 'battle fright only', then is the

excitement bonus that your army may randomly rout now and then so that you can have fun reassembling it from neighboring provinces

worth the excitement penalty of having to regularly check your army for wounds?

Graeme Dice said:

I understand that the hydra is already hyperpowerful as it is, but shouldn't it have the recuperation ability?



Hydras aren't really that powerful. They are easily killed by many times less than their cost in throway units like militia.

interesting, my hydra often flees from militia. 1..3 hydras in the center with a mind burn theurg in back corner looks like a nice newbie strat to me, keeps expenses low. the only problem is that hydras figure out this fleeing tactic all by themselves in most surprising situations without any afflictions or casualties on my side.
so, if this is really an ineffective strat, it would be nice to have hydra with at least 3 head slots and recuperation:)

[Aetius]

I would like dominion to have an effect on terrain. Using Abyssia as an example as your domain spreads it should change other lands to wasteland. Similarly for C'tis I would see either swap or if playing Tombkings desert should spread.

Another thing that I would like to see change is currently in the game all of the population dense areas tend to have low productivity due to low resources. This is particularly true of the provinces with knights. Somehow I think production needs to be tied into population density.

[Endoperez]

Dominions 1 had pixel-based maps, in which 9? colors were defined for terrains (waste, mountain, forest, borders, capital, sea...), and dominions actually changed these pixels! You could quess that Abysia was in that corner, because it was becomeing more and more yellowish every turn, etc. Unfortunately those maps were very ugly. IW team had said that it was a great feature, but IIRC they didn't know a way to implement it in the game.

High population -&gt; low resources is not always true, but there is very good reason behind the trend. Farmlands have high population but very low resources. Knights only appear in Farmlands. Other kinds of terrains affect population/resources/ chance of magic sites differently. Mountain has low population, high resources and lots of magic sites, forest is similar but not as much, plains is general, waste and swamp just bad but have more magic sites.

[Zooko]

I wish that in Dominions 3, players will be able to answer questions about game mechanics simply by playing the game.

Whenever the devs read this forum and see players asking a question about game mechanics, the devs should think "Could dominions be changed so that the player answered that question by playing the game instead of by asking the forum?". For example, I just posted some questions about Communion:

more communion questions (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showthreaded.php?Cat=&amp;Number=313913&amp;page=&amp;view=&amp;sb =5&amp;o=&amp;vc=1)

The question about where the fatigue goes can be answered by playing the game, pausing after a spell is cast, and examining which mages got increased fatigue. The question about how much of a boost is given cannot, because the communion boost is not visible in the game.

If the communion boost were visible to the user, then that question too could be answered this way.

(P.S. I could infer the boost level by summing the aggregate fatigue imposed, subtracting the fixed spell-casting encumbrance of each mage, and then figuring out how much of a boost would have reduced the fatigue to that number, but this doesn't count as being "visible".)

P.S. Adding the facts to the manual isn't a good solution. It would be too huge, and it would be too hard to find what you want to know in the manual, and anyway I don't want to spend my time reading a tome of rules, I want to spend my time playing.

[Aetius]

Endoperez said:
High population -&gt; low resources is not always true, but there is very good reason behind the trend. Farmlands have high population but very low resources. Knights only appear in Farmlands. Other kinds of terrains affect population/resources/ chance of magic sites differently. Mountain has low population, high resources and lots of magic sites, forest is similar but not as much, plains is general, waste and swamp just bad but have more magic sites.



I think you missed my point, I am of the opinion that the areas of high population density should be the best manufacturing/production areas. Currently, in the game it is the areas where there is the greatest amount of resources (i.e. raw materials) that are the best production centers.

The admin value/bonus of fortress does a nice job of abstracting the flow of raw materials to a population center. However, if you are a nation that has capital only units that are expensive in resources, if your starting location is lousy in terms of resources you are out of luck.

Thus far I have been unable to think of system that does not add more micromanagement, of which there is already too much in the game.

[kukimuki]

Aetius said:
The admin value/bonus of fortress does a nice job of abstracting the flow of raw materials to a population center. However, if you are a nation that has capital only units that are expensive in resources, if your starting location is lousy in terms of resources you are out of luck.

Thus far I have been unable to think of system that does not add more micromanagement, of which there is already too much in the game.



Sounds like fun..

What if getting resource from neighboring province added to price in gold?

You have 3 provinces, p1, p2, p3, placed in a line, each produces 10 resources.
1 point of local resource costs 0 additional gold, 1 point of resource from neighboring province costs 1 additional gold.

You build in p2 for 10 resources and in p3 for 20 resources.
In this case, the system must understand that building in p2 does not use local resources but uses the more expensive resources from p1, so that you can build for 20 resources in p3.

Resources used would cost 10 additional gold in p2, and 10 additional gold in p3, totalling 20 additional gold.

But suppose p3 purchases resources from p1 for 2 additional gold per resource point? That would cost 0 additional gold in p2 and 20 additional gold in p3, totalling 20 gold which is the same as above.

The complication is that we can get resources from neighboring provinces only, and this is a nice feature imho, because it makes you feel you don't have railroads and the like.

Seems that it can be done, writing about further details would take longer than i expeted, though. The problem would lie in representing the unit price change to the player while indicating max resource available. It could get as bad as
10 resources for 0 additional gold per resource (local resources)
10 resources for 1 additional gold per resource (unused resources from neigboring province)
10 resources for 2 additional gold per resource (provided you are building in neigboring province and the neighbor of the neighbor has free resources)

Might help with resource luck a little maybe.
_______
I hope that resource production in a mountain province still depends on population of the mountain province.
Interestilngly, fort construction takes gold only, what if it's build time would depend on resources available? I guess that's another topic.

[SurvivalistMerc]

Edi,

Your idea of having the scripts stay the same for each nation between games unless reassigned is better than my origninal idea.

[kukimuki]

Post deleted by kukimuki

[SurvivalistMerc]

Kukimuki,

I find the correspondence to "squares of troops" to actually be useful. I would of course prefer for it to give me a rough idea of army strength. (Black plate infantry should produce a bigger square than militia perhaps.)

Using squares of troops rather than troops gives a better idea of how powerful the force is. Because one Jotun is significantly more powerful than one regular-sized unit. That is true for most of the larger units.

[Turin]

I would like to see a bit more randomness in the unique summons. e. g. an air queen could get 3-5 air +-2 attack/defense etc. Would raise the excitement before summoning those spells a bit and you would get memorable games, where you have those "perfect" Uniques.

[ioticus]

I hope Illwinter adds more spells, magic items and monsters to the game instead of reducing them. The variety of stuff in the game is one of its best features. I think it would be nice if more variety of troops could be recruited for each nation. I would like to see each nation have a special unit that could be recruited after a certain level of research and maybe after building a special structure.

[kukimuki]

First, I take back my suggestion about using rectangles with area that correspods to troops instead of troops in the power of 2. Seeing 20 militia producing four times as large rectangle area as 10 militia must have been an artifact of zooming out the map too much. So it's already as i wished it to be.


SurvivalistMerc said:
Kukimuki,

I find the correspondence to "squares of troops" to actually be useful. I would of course prefer for it to give me a rough idea of army strength. (Black plate infantry should produce a bigger square than militia perhaps.)

Using squares of troops rather than troops gives a better idea of how powerful the force is. Because one Jotun is significantly more powerful than one regular-sized unit. That is true for most of the larger units.

As this post was written in response to me and I cannot understand what it's about, i guess there might have been some misunderstandings.

What i meant was that when you have size 10 army (no matter if it's units or sum of unit sizes or whatever way you measure it), and you draw a rectangle 10 X 10, then the area of the rectangle corresponts to the square of army size. To get area that corresponds to army size, you would need sqrt(10) X sqrt(10) rectangle.

[tinkthank]

I would like to make the following suggestions, which I am trying to classify into sections:
- General comments on development strategy
- General wishes for prioritizing development resources
- Concrete functionality wishes

I hope this is helpful to the devs (and others) in understanding what I think would make a great game, and by that I mean what is fun for me and, hopefully, for others too.

GENERAL COMMENTS on development strategy
- Perhaps the most important factor of making a game successful is making it fun to play. I think this point has often wrongly been considered trivial and hence not worth mentioning. But it is: “Fun” also means paying attention to what players like doing, encouraging actions and functionality which supports that, and by making actions which players DON’T like doing as seldom as possible. So with keeping that in mind and trying to incorporate the results of the polls I have made:
- Maximize the user interface transparency: from every screen, let us be able to access all appropriate information with as few clicks as possible (e.g.: battle orders and scripting, statistics, inventory, etc.); currently, a province with 20 commanders is hard to manage, you cannot see who is doing what: When you click on a commander to view his statistics, you cannot access the battle orders screen from there, you must go back to that screen and find the commander again; I really dislike doing this in midgame.
- Minimize late-game micromanagement needs where possible; if possible, make the late-game function much like early- and mid-game.
- The game is LESS FUN if there appears to be only a limited number of successful strategies which lead to a win. A game like Dom2 becomes broken if there is only one way to win, since everyone will race to mimic this one path. Keep it as varied as possible. Thus ensure that there can be no clear “no-brainers” and ensure that some paths (e.g., it has been said in dom2 that there is a race for certain Summons (e.g. Queens of Air, high-level Blood) or the building of certain SCs) are not overstressed.

PRIORITZING WISHES
I know that Illwinter has very limited resources, and cannot do everything. But here are some of the things that I find important, in order of their importance to me.

- AI. I would really enjoy a challenge from an AI, and I would greatly wish for most energy to be spent on AI improvement, both *tactically* (script building, troop placement, spotting and exploiting the enemy’s weakness) and *strategically* (troop and fort building, movement, plan development and plan follow-through, dynamic plan changes, minimal diplo possibilities (bribes, etc.)).
- User Interface: I would wish for an interface which is as smooth as possible; let us issue battle orders from every commander screen (or a link to the battle-orders on every commander screen); let us use the keyboard as much as possible (spending money, spending spell research points, etc.), use of hotkeys (f9-f12), use of strategic scripts (e.g. “forge X monthly”, “forge X and return hammer to lab”, etc.); User Interface customization
- Variation: As third point, I would wish for more tactical variation and more checks and balances: Make more types of buffs and de-buffs. EXAMPLE: Debuff Spells which slightly *decrease* an enemy’s resistances to poison, magic, or the elements; Debuff spells which temporarily make it more difficult to cast certain spells or spell types; Debuff spells which slow down an enemy’s movement rate; Buff spells which counter the effects of these types of spells.
- Graphics: I would love to have fabulous Warcraft-III-style graphics, but I believe that is very difficult to do, so I would suggest not even getting started on graphical improvement.
- Music: Please do NOT invest in music. (I personally listen to my own.)


CONCRETE WISHES
- Increased RPG elements: Experienced units have non-combat bonuses as well, such as increased chance of raising dominion in province when preaching; increased stealth ability; etc.
- Theme modding: From the hints I have received elsewhere, I think that Illwinter is concentrating on this. I think it would be great to be able to have an interface which allows us to plug in as many themes to a nation as we want; if players A, B, and C all have these mods downloaded and installed, they can be played.
- Creativity modding: Don’t underestimate the wishes of the players. Let *all attributes be moddable and conditional*: E.g., let it be possible to mod the stealth value of Type A to be dependent on Terrain Type, or on Season of Year, or on Temperature; let it be possible for the “assassination” command to be practiced only on Undead, or during the Winter, or in Wastelands. Etc.
- Increased Interface Flexibility: Access to battle order screen via Stats/Inventory screen; f12 scrolls through forts; f11 scrolls through hidden/stealthy commanders; f10 switches between prophet and pretender; f9 scrolls through mages with forge bonus; Customizationability: shift-f1 displays commanders alphabetically, shift-f2 displays them in order of their type, shift-f3 displays them in order of their action queue (as it is presently);
- Enhanced Tactical Spell AI Interface: Commanders can not only queue spells they want to cast, but can, for the rest of the spells, click one of four boxes: 1. Never Cast, 2. Cast with Low Priority, 3. Cast with Medium Priority, 4. Cast with High Priority; default setting can be determined by the player
- Enhanced Message System: With Outbox which one can review and delete one message without deleting all; copy-and-paste ability
- Complete Icons (see thread here (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=&amp;Number=259266&amp;page=&amp;view=&amp;sb=5&amp;o =&amp;fpart=1&amp;vc=1) )

Thanks for listening; your feedback on our feedback will also be greatly appreciated!

[deccan]

A couple of suggestions:

1) Let me sort the order that my commanders are displayed in various screens in whatever way I want. When I have lots of mages with the same paths, I'd like them all to appear one after the one. Makes it a lot neater.

2) Maybe make it so that creating pretender / nation is like in SEIV, allowing the player to choose the development points allowed in a game and to save the result to a named file. I can't be the only one who has fantasies of playing Mictlan with F9A9W9 blessings...

[ioticus]

Awesome post tinkthank! I agree 110%!!

[FarAway Pretender]

Yeah, tinktank echoed a lot of my sentiments, but a bit more succinctly.

For me, enhancing the RPG aspects of the game would be the most enjoyable part--especially if it could be done while very slightly weakening SC's.

Giving individual heroes, and individual provinces, more "personal" flavor, would make the games more enjoyable to me. I prefer to play on smaller maps (100 provinces or less), so the individualized provinces thing just may be my own preference.

[Zooko]

I agree that more individualized heroes would be fun, and that they shouldn't strengthen the supercombatant strategy.

I still love the "Heroes of Might and Magic III" mechanism of being allowed to choose between two randomly-selected heroic abilities whenever your hero levels up.

One way to increase the RPG aspect of heroes without strengthening the supercombatant strategy would be to invent more heroic abilities that help the troops under the hero's command.

[Zooko]

P.S. But despite what I just said about heroic abilities and RPGs, my wishlist definitely falls into this priority order:

1. Better UI
* reduce unnecessary clicking to see the information I want to see (e.g. configuring a large army with many commanders and units)
* less micro-management (e.g. taxes)
* reduce unnecessary clicking to do the action I want to do (e.g. when I do alchemy, just use the best alchemist who is currently in a laboratory)
2. More mechanisms made visible.
* e.g. how much contribution is made by what kind of units to rebuilding or tearing down castle walls? I don't want to read through a manual, read through forum Posts, and do a bunch of arithmetic on a napkin, I want to SEE it happening. See also the next wishlist item.
3. Simpler rules. There are too many damn rules. If dom3 adds more rules and more exceptions and more terms to the algebraic equations that determine what happens, I am going to scream.
* Why not eliminate some of the less important features, like maybe repelling, or morale checks? Notice that I think of eliminating features which are less "visible" to me.
* Why not simplify the equations that determine what happens? Maybe some things like the effects of fatigue no longer get randomized (33% chance of reducing your armor at fatigue &gt; 50 blah blah blah) but instead are simple and deterministic (your armor = your armor - your fatigue).
4. Better graphics and sound effects. (I know, this one is potentially difficult.)
5. Tweaked style of play, e.g. more RPG flavor.
6. More balance. Let N be the number of different strategies that an experienced player will attempt when playing against other experienced players. Now let N go to infinity!
7. Better combat AI.
8. Programmability for modding battle and strategic AIs. The simplest way to do this is just to open up and document the turn file (for strategic AI) and to invent a "per-battle-turn battle turn file" (for battle AI).
9. More units, more magic items, more spells, more nations, more gods.

NOT-A-WISH 10. Something I really do not want to see is increased scriptability and micromanagement such as the frequently requested deeper queues of scripted spells.

The difference between #8 and #10 is that #8 is something that a programmer does and then every player uses it, exactly like a mod. #10 is something that each player does to use for himself against the other players.

Thanks for listening! Or actually if you aren't listening, thanks for not banning me from the forum in order to prevent me from posting.

[ioticus]

3. Simpler rules. There are too many damn rules. If dom3 adds more rules and more exceptions and more terms to the algebraic equations that determine what happens, I am going to scream.
* Why not eliminate some of the less important features, like maybe repelling, or morale checks? Notice that I think of eliminating features which are less "visible" to me.



I strongly disagree with simplifying the rules. There are enough games with "simple" rules, but very few for the hardcore fantasy wargamer. (I can't think of any besides Dominions 2, actually.) I think the equations used are very well done, and brilliantly simulate the chaos of war. The features that you say are hidden are actually very important to the wargame feel, allowing you to plan strategy without being certain of the outcome. Repelling and morale? Those are some of its best features in my opinion. I do agree that all equations should be well documented.

[Edi]

Zooko, the idea that repelling and morale checks should be eliminated are, frankly, the ravings of an idiot, and the assertion that they are "not visible" is outright lunacy.

Without morale checks, armies would fight until everyone on one side is dead, and if you think this would not be a major change, you're on drugs. Repelling is a very important part of battlefield tactics, just put a squad of pikemen or hoplites in the front rank and see what happens when some generic troops armed with broadswords, axes or spears try to attack them. Half of the time they fail because the pikemen and hoplites get a repel attempt and use it to successfully attack them, i.e. they get an extra attack while the enemy loses his. Same applies to bigger units like SCs who use longer weapons.

Your idea about eliminating probabilistic mechanisms in favor of absolute ones from combat is equally stupid. It's less realistic, and it has similar implications as the morale check and repelling ones, it changes the whole dynamics of combat and would make it far less interesting. Taken together, these changes would ruin Dominions as it now stands, and would require a huge extra effort on part of the devs to compensate and fix what they broke (and which was working quite well, thank you).

Edi

[ckfnpku]

Personaly I think it's boring as hell when you have all these equations for everything that happens in a game. Playing becomes like a math lesson. No, keep things obscure and make players rely on their feel of things.

Of course you need equations to drive the mechanisms of the game, but don't reveal those equations to the players and make them so they can't be extracted precisely.

[Gandalf Parker]

ckfnpku said:
Personaly I think it's boring as hell when you have all these equations for everything that happens in a game. Playing becomes like a math lesson. No, keep things obscure and make players rely on their feel of things.

Of course you need equations to drive the mechanisms of the game, but don't reveal those equations to the players and make them so they can't be extracted precisely.



NO equation stays obscure for long. In Dominions 2 they very much wanted players to discover what does and doesnt work, but in the forum players are always working out the formulas. Of course you can do what they did and have at least one die roll in the formula. Personally I find a formula without some bit of random to be boring, AND abit unrealistic.

But of course you will get into the solo-players (more randoms) vs multi-players (less randoms) arguments so a switch to run a game with randoms turned off might be a good idea.

[Zooko]

My idea wasn't to have large-scale things like battles to be deterministic. My idea was that if you have a large-scale thing, like who wins when two units fight it out, or which army wins when two armies fight it out, then some of the components that go into it can be simple and deterministic while the overall result is still complex and non-deterministic.

A neat thing about simultaneous-move games is that even if there is zero randomness in the rules then the game is still non-deterministic because you don't know what your opponent is about to do.

When I suggested morale checks as a possible target for simplification I didn't mean eliminate the notion of routing and have everyone fight to the death. I meant make the way routing is triggered simpler.

[Zooko]

Some games have known rules where the player can be expected to understand all of the rules. Others have intuitive rules where the player doesn't understand the details, but only develops a feel for the result. The former kind includes most turn-based strategy games, the latter kind includes most real-time strategies.

ckfnpku above is saying that he prefers the latter kind.

Dominion and Dominions 2 fall into an interesting middle ground. I've played many, many hours of these games, and much of that was in "intuitive" mode. Even today, most of my decisions are made by feel rather than by thinking about what the actual rules will entail. For example, do you really remember what the exact rules are for morale checks? I don't. I learned them once, but now I just move Battle Fraught units into separate squads and remember not to rely too heavily on low-morale units to stick it out.

I'm not sure if I really would prefer Dom3 to be a fully "known-rules" game, but I would definitely regret it if it became and even more "intuitive-rules" game than it already is.

But regardless of which way it moves, one thing that will improve it is more visibility of rules. I'm quite hopeful about this, because Illwinter has consistently improved this over time. Remember when some commander qualities such as Supply Bonus or Recuperation were not shown graphically, for example?

It seems like with each passing year more of the rules of the game become visible elements of the user interface. Hopefully the same will hold true next year.

[Zooko]

Here's a simple wish for more visible rules: have different sound effects for "attacked and missed", "attacked and hit but did no damage" and "attacked and hit and did damage".

Here's another one: show the effects of communion on the power levels of Communion Masters.

[Agrajag]

Here's a wish:
Don't simplify and don't obscure any formula.
I really enjoy playing a game when I know exactly how each calculation is made and predit quite accurately how things will turn up in a set situation.
HOMM, one of the best TBS series (lets ignore Heroes IV and the legendary V), has almost all of its mechanisms out in the open and it makes things a whole lot more fun.
I admit, I play HOMM III with a calculator handy, but having the power to predict all possible outcomes improves my decisions and makes things quite clear (now I can easily see how that pack of lowsy pikemen killed that black dragon).
Besides, lets go for a second to the most well known strategy game of all - Chess.
In chess you know all the rules, you know exactly what you can and cannot do and how your compnion/competitor/enemy can respond to your moves, every "unit" is slightly different from every other "unit" but each turn and retaliation is 100% predictable (though starting to take into consideration all the possible 10^20 moves or so that your competitor might take is impossible for humans).

[Turin]

I disagree about Homm3 being more fun http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif . I actually like it that you don´t know the inside rules for routing etc.

Let´s consider two games:
In one game(1) we know all the rules, in the other(2) we only know generally how things work.

So imagine you have to decide if you want to attack another guys army.
This is what happens in a competitive multiplayer game 1 :
you fire up your handy battle calculator, which tells you the results. You get favourable results, you attack, the next turn comes as no surprise, since the calc is good. Next turn happens and you have to enter the math again, you get bored and quit.

This is what happens in game 2:
You think about the battle, recollect your past experiences with battles under similar circumstances, make a lot of guesswork and decide to attack. The next turn hosts and you see that you either failed, or you get that very nice feeling, that everything really worked out like you planned.

For me game 2 is far more exciting and interesting and luckily dominions 2 is such a game.
HoMM3 on the other hand is pretty and a nice waste of time, but not really challenging, once you know the rules. That means that HoMM3 became boring for me pretty fast.

For the comparison between dom2 and chess, that´s pretty much apples and oranges. dom2 has lots of random elements, which alter the game drastically and a good deal of the fun in dom2 is surprising your opponent with spells/tactics, so dom2 is so radically different, so comparing those two isn´t very helpful.

[The_Tauren13]

Knowing all the rules is not going to get you anywhere near being able to completely predict the outcome of a battle. There is a large enough random factor to prevent that. So I say: let us know all the equations.

[ioticus]

The game is much more exciting and realistic with the element of chance factored into the equations. Taking away chance would ruin the game for me. I love the open ended die rolls!

[Gandalf Parker]

Part of the problem is that many multi players like set formulas because it means that the winner of the game won by strategy and tactics.
Many solo players like unknown rules or at least variable results.

MY displomatic suggestion is to keep the formulas the way Illwinter has done them, with a random die-roll in most of them. Increase the randoms even. But also have a game switch which turns off as many of the randoms as possible to set-formulas if possible. MAYBE even make it a game option with variable settings for off, low, medium, high. That way both Groups can be happy.

[Zooko]

I was a single-player player until a few weeks ago, and now I'm a multi-player player. But I'm not desirous of more predictable outcomes, only of simpler mechanisms. For example, suppose the concept of ambidexterity was removed, so that every unit paid the same price (or no price at all) for multiple weapons. Would you be better able to predict the outcome of a battle after that simplification? I wouldn't, especially since I don't know how my opponent is going to position and instruct his troops.

Now, someone is probably thinking of objecting that eliminating the multi-weapon penalty would make unbalanaced Nataraja Supercombatants or something. I'm sure that is a legitimate balance issue and I value balance highly, but you don't need the rule of ambidexterity in order to balance Supercombatants, you just need to adjust a few of the hundreds of parameters. (Such as Zen does in his Conceptual Balance series of mods.)

[Chazar]

Agrajag said:I admit, I play [...] with a calculator handy,


You really like that? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif I am a mathematician, and I like my job, but where is the fun of measuring who can calculate faster and better, especially if you can use computer-aid in PBEM gameplay?

I do prefer complex modern board games, and some friends of mine object that these are too complicated for full-computation - but that is why I play them! I like complex games because I know that my opponents cannot calculate everything and must base their play on intuition like I want to do myself.

Similarly I stopped enjoying chess when I could only advance in the league by learning all those openings by heart rather than playing instinctively. Of course, one could theoretically also learn these by experience of playing over and over again, but it limits the fun if you see all fellow players advancing much faster because they just bypass the need for this slow memorizing experience (as opposed to the difficult experience of juding opponents).

Nevertheless, I do look at all the information available here: All those unit, item &amp; site listings, all those percentage sheets, I even calculate some chances myself, but this is no fun! I do it because I need to do it in order to play competitively, and because I do not have the time to do extensive testings or boring AI-play (for the AI has no intuition), but I would rather like no to do it.

Thus IMHO:
The game should obfuscate its mechanics as much as possible, so that no one can gain an advantage by extensive simple calculations only.
It should make available anything that can be learned easily by sheer testing (like the Quick Reference Sheets for Summons, Items or the Spell Infos (including list for Wish), since players who just have the time for extensive testing should not gain a significant advantage. (Like making an AI-game just to experiment with the Wish-spell)
It should keep many random elements. Otherwise PBEM players who have enough time can gain enormous advantages by simply setting up and running simulations.


Players should win by their abilitiy to intuitively judge their enemies and strategically sensible management of their forces, not by sheer computing power (= time * calculating hardware).



(PS: Before someone comment on that part of my first paragraph: I am aware that a good mathematician does not necessarily need to be good at calculating, but rather be good at understanding how to calculate, which is something different... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif )

[kukimuki]

Intuitive rules are nice as long as they don't become non-intuitive. In addition to some game rules that are non-intuitive by their main idea, some rules cause non-intuitive behavior in exceptional situations. I guess numerous cases are widely known, saving me the trouble of giving examples.
________
Interesting that people are so afraid of slight improvements to combat scripting. If done within limits of reason, imho it would make scripting easier (reduce micromanagement) + cause more natural behavior on the battlefield (reduce the cases when some troops do something no sane person would do). Btw i am not talking about long scripts with 1000 conditionals, but 1..3 command scripts that would do most things a casual player needs, rather.
________
For forging there could be a screen that shows items that can be forged by all free commanders in the town with a lab (maybe even all labs), and dwarven hammers that are available. Dwarven hammers could be assigned to items, not commanders. If the commander who would need to do the forging is not "free" (i.e. it is assigned some non-forging task), it could still show the item in gray (but not enable to select it (unless you appropriately change the order for the commander, of course). Motivated by the fact that (as far as i know) it should make no difference if forging tasks were assigned to appropriate commanders automatically.

A more complicated Version could be that, in addition to the above, you could select what orders don't enable the commander to forge and what can be changed automatically. I guess no one would want 'move' orders to change automatically, while 'preach', 'patrol', 'blood hunt' and 'research' might often be less important than forging if no other commander has the magic skills.
________
I greatly second to the idea of showing condition of castle gates. Sorry for saying no new info, but i couldn't help it.

[ioticus]

Zooko said:
But I'm not desirous of more predictable outcomes, only of simpler mechanisms. For example, suppose the concept of ambidexterity was removed, so that every unit paid the same price (or no price at all) for multiple weapons. Would you be better able to predict the outcome of a battle after that simplification? I wouldn't, especially since I don't know how my opponent is going to position and instruct his troops.




Well, I sure hope they don't follow your advice. The Last thing I want is for them to water the game down and start removing characteristics that make units unique.

[Chazar]

I am not sure to whom kukimuki is referring to, but I am totally supporting kukimuki's view, which is not at all contradicting mine, although one might think that at the first glance...

[Taqwus]

I've probably mentioned this before. But...

Casters should avoid casting spells which make a friendly unit that's currently immune to an attack form, suddenly vulnerable to that attack forum (notably: barkskin, protection, mass protection; all reduce fire resistance). You shouldn't keep a nature mage around your Abysian army as things stand right now.

Note 1. If resistances stacked multiplicatively, and were applied to damage directly so 100% damage resistance =&gt; x0 multiplier for damage, 100% vulnerability = x2 multiplier etc., then this wouldn't be an issue.

Note 2. If they still stack the current way, even checking the current resistance might not be enough; it might cause problems if the player had scripted a ward spell to grant immunity (perhaps by stacking with an existing sub-100% resistance).

[kukimuki]

Oh, sorry for confusing people, just used quick reply for the first time, didn't see that i was replying to some specific person. The intention was to reply to the topic or something like that.

[Agrajag]

I see you didn't completely understand me...
What I said was that knowing the rules means you can predict the results of one action, and understanding the reasoning behind each action.
Knowing all the rules does not mean that the game can be won using mathematic, there are so many randoms and possible counteraction the enemy can use, it is impossible to predict even the next few moves of a single battle, and certainly not an entire battle.
You should also consider how little information is revealed, you don't know how many units your enemy has and what kind of magic and magical items are available to him, all things to could extremely effect a battle.
Knowing all the rules simply gives you a quick and easy way to evaluate your army's strength with a few clicks, instead of having to gauge your power by standards which you acquire after many hours of playing.
Also, if you do inform us of all the rules, you'd better make sure there are plenty of randoms, because randomless rule WILL lead to calculator battles.

[Blacksilver]

I'd like to see
Growth tied to Taxes (very low tax rate less than 30 give
a bonus to growth scale)

Turmoil tied to Defense (Defense values more than 30 reduce Turmoil)

Production tied to # of unused command points defending
the province (Commanders without troops inherently increase
production by assisting in co-ordination of local pop)

Cold/Heat tied into... nothing

Fortune tied into priests praying beyond their dominion limit (5 ranks of priests praying beyond their limit raise fortune 1 point)

Magic/Drain tied into # of Mages "defending" (ie not
researching or casting... 20 idle casting ranks adds +1 to
scale

And I'd like to see all these dominion effects eachmodifiable by
a friendly/or hostile remote spell, even if only on a province by province basis...

And Lastly... some way to counter a massive pop hit, either from pillagers or hostile magics(tidal wave). Most serious
games I've played fall into population elimination wars, either through targeted spells, or undead/hvy magic players killing the whole map. A couple of tidal waves crashing through your shield in your home province, and or farm lands
is very likely a game ending event, more so than wish, and at a fraction of the cost. Or getting it as a random misfortune in the first 10 turns.... = restart.

[tinkthank]

ADDENDI to my post above, v. 1

These fall under section III, "Concrete Suggestions", with one Plea at the end

- Concrete suggestion for UI overhaul: Make the "message" screen an interactive interface with either these 5 "filters" or with click-links to 5 different "tabs", "registers" or screens, each of which will have some of the functionality described below. The gist of this is to give the nation a "feel" for their various branches, ranging from executive (message) to the various operational aspects of running a nation.
1. Trade (shift-f1): The trade screen shows a list of all items, gems, and money you have sent Last month and to whom; on this screen you also see who sent what to you; this is also the screen you use to send gems, items or money to others next turn. I envision an interface that looks a bit like a webmail screen, with an IN and an OUT section, and there are buttons for sort-by (type, nation, etc.) and for sending new tradable resources (send-gems, send-money, send-items). EDIT: Individual trade actions in the Outbox can be edited and/or deleted here without having to delete all Messages.
2. Message Board (shift-f2): Another webmail-looking screen in which your incoming Messages are sorted and from which you can send new Messages to other nations. EDIT: Individual Messages in the Outbox can be edited and/or deleted here without having to delete all Messages.
3. Events (shift-f3): "Unrest in increasing in Bobville." A list of feedback from events, sortable by type: Battles, luck events, sneaking events, etc.
4. Magic (shift-f4): "Bob has cast Snotty Rain". A list of all the spells you have cast and who cast them Last turn.
5. Laboratory Reports (shift-f5): "Bob has forged a Hammer of Hatred": Lists the mages who have forged items, what they forged, and where they can be found.
Edit: Screen 6: Ally Screen (see below).

- Function: Disband Troops. I can think of two ways to do this; probably one of them is too hard, and the other may not be as neat but better from both an RPG as well as a game mechanics perspective.
v1: On a troop overview screen, click on and highlight the troops you want disbanded and hit "d"; a popup screen comes on and asks "Do you really want to disband these troops permanently?"
v2: Disbanding can only be done by a commander. Gather all the troops you want disbanded under a commander who can lead these troops. Set commander's orders to "Disband"; next month, all the troops under that commander's lead have disappeared (have been killed by "diseases", if the game mechanics require some way to do this easily).

- Some Random Events should be more strongly tied to the province in which they occur. For example, snows blocking trade routs resulting in tax losses of 100 gold should not be able to occur in provinces whose income are only 20 gold; there can be forest fires harming resource production, but only in forest provinces.

- I like the way that Dominion plays an important role in many ways, I would like to see this implemented even more. I would like to see more spells which are influenced by higher / lower dominion, and could imagine seeing tax income *slightly* more affected by dominion over and beyond scales (such as the way that Miasma works, but globally and with somewhat less potency).

- (odd BALANCE SUGGESTION: Taxes can only be raised in a province which is not your capital by 20% per month that province is owned; thus newly conquered provinces can have at most 120% taxes, although they can be set to 0% at any time, but to 200% only after 5 months.)


- ALLY INTERFACE: I know nothing about programming, but I think this would be a really big job; if successfull, it would easily take Dominions3 into a new dimension worthy of a new game, not just an expansion.
Screen 6 is Ally Screen: You can offer your alliance here to any nation you can "see"; if an Alliance offer is sent, the recipient may accept or decline. Once accepted, an alliance can be broke by using this screen -- but one can imagine setting up the interface to allow for certain conditions. Perhaps there are different kinds and types of alliances one may share.

Here's the kick: Once an alliance (of, say, Type A) is made between nation A and B, *the troops of nation A are treated as FRIENDLY by those of nation B and vice versa*.
That means at least these two implications: Nation A and B can both move into province X simultaneously without conflict; they then fight *together* on the battlefield against any enemies that may be there with all restrictions normally applied. (E.g., if Nation A brings 1 commander with 10 militia, Nation B brings only SCs, the armies of A and B will both route once the militia are dead; flaming arrows cast by A, for example, affect all A and B's units.) It also means that A's Globals affect allied B's units as if they were their own (GoH helps B too, Wrath of God does not hurt B).

If nation A and nation B are allied, and A asks nation C if he also wants to ally, both B and C will be messaged and both must give consent.
My suggestion would be that an alliance formed by using the Ally Screen would not change the victory conditions.

Perhaps some alliances can be set at the beginning of the game under Create Game. If A and B ally from the beginning against C and D, one could imagine that the VCs are shared; at least, this could be an exciting option. If the "Share VC" option is clicked, the sum of whatever quantified statistic could be taken (dominion, provs, whatever); I dont think that would be too problematic.

There would have to be rules (perhaps different settings which one can choose when setting up a game) which stipulate IF and if so, under what conditions an AI nation can become an ally. I think, however, that AI nations should not be allowed to ally; their reasons for accepting an alliance with A over B or not at all would be very hard to quantify. For simplicity's sake, I would be more than happy to exclude AI nations from the Ally Screen interface, but allow for AI nations to be allied at the start of the game under Game Setup.
I think this would be a fornicatingly bucketload of fun.
Thanks.


PLEA: It would be most helpful if a member of the Dev team were to express his or her feedback regarding (at least some of) the suggestions on this thread and/or the makeup of the thread in general (till now, there have been but two very brief comments on 2 aspects: commander renaming (already in) and the nagot gik fel message); what is the deal? Are we being helpful? Are we being constructive? Are some of the suggestions good, or bad, or noteworthy, or what? Which types are helpful? Or are we being useless? Are we being to vague? Are we being to unrealistic? Are we being read?
Are we being ignored?

[SurvivalistMerc]

I also like the idea to keep a record somewhere of at least all nations at war with you in case you leave a game for a while and come back but don't remember. This would be helpful even if no new diplomacy AI is implemented. (I personally like diplomacy the way it is because otherwise players learn how to take advantage of the AI to too great an extent.)

It would also help if anytime you see another pretender you would have a record of their magic paths at the time you Last saw them. (Of course you only learn this in battle.)

[Zooko]

I recently realized that if you play a multi-player game, you really ought to keep a record of all the provinces your scouts see, the stats of enemies that you observe in battle, etc.

It would be nice if dom3 would do all this for you, but it seems like a challenge to design and implement a user interface for it.

[Zen]

Tinkthank,

This thread isn't intended to be a "Dev feedback" thread, it is intended to concentrate all the suggestions and 'wishes' of players into one place so that *IF* IW wishes, they can take the suggestions they feel are good and implement them.

Getting a Developer to say "This is good, we'll implement this" is like pulling teeth, especially since these particular Developers are working on a schedule that doesn't allow some of the more "pie in the sky" wishes that might be great but can't be implemented.

Don't take silence from the Developers to be 'ideas are good, or ideas are bad'.

[johan osterman]

tinkthank said:
...

PLEA: It would be most helpful if a member of the Dev team were to express his or her feedback regarding (at least some of) the suggestions on this thread and/or the makeup of the thread in general (till now, there have been but two very brief comments on 2 aspects: commander renaming (already in) and the nagot gik fel message); what is the deal? Are we being helpful? Are we being constructive? Are some of the suggestions good, or bad, or noteworthy, or what? Which types are helpful? Or are we being useless? Are we being to vague? Are we being to unrealistic? Are we being read?
Are we being ignored?



You are being read.

Some of the ideas are constructive and useful others not quite as much so. Very specific requests for the creation of a certain unit, spell or nation are not likely to be listened to. Proposing a theme for a nation and then writing down stats for all the units you think should be included is probably counterproductive to your wishes. On the other hand making concrete and specific suggestions about rules is helpfull. So make general suggestions for content and specific suggestions for mechanics.

[tinkthank]

thanks, both to Zen and JO for the clearup, that is helpful.

[Taqwus]

If disbanding troops is permitted, I would suggest that troops disbanded outside their home province should at least sometimes be converted to unrest. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/redface.gif (Perhaps even if -in- their home? And troops that desert due to low pay, should almost always cause unrest if they don't already. Brigandage and all that, you know.) Along similar lines, it might be interesting if mercenary bands despairing in their unemployment would look for weak provinces to plunder... or perhaps be "hired" by an independent province, even.

If I were being really cynical, I might suggest that spies be allowed to attempt to bribe other nations' mercenaries even the latter's contracts -aren't- going to end the next turn, although it shouldn't be feasible to be able to bribe them into a certain-death situation (sneak away into the bribing side's province next door, perhaps; try to take over the massively garrisoned capital province with nowhere to retreat to afterwards, no. They're in it for the money, not the glory of death in battle. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif And, being mercenaries, it wouldn't be out of character to take the bribe and betray the one who offered it.)

Continuing in the line of deceit and treachery, I wonder if experienced assassins should be permitted the initiative in battle (not when they're caught, that is).

There's a lot that potentially would be amusing in terms of counterintelligence (allocating spies to disinformation so that enemy scouts and spies perhaps get bogus information, say) but this would be rather hard to do well and realistically methinks. If a scout could be caught and turned so that, for instance, he'd keep reporting whatever he saw, troop-wise, the view from the turn before he was caught, then it'd be possible to hide the movements of an army...

A wargamer might wonder if there's a use for a force-marching option (e.g. get an extra movement point for the ground-pounders, at the cost of -2 or so morale (or more, even) and heavy fatigue (40-60+ ?) upon their arrival, and a penalty with regards to how much supply they're getting from provinces due to spending less time on that (which means: bring a supply train, er, broth etc). Bad if you're going to attack immediately afterwards, but the potential surprise factor may help and it might save your bacon if you find a reason to shift troops in a hurry.

On mobility, given that we have different movement classes (water, land, air) it might be interesting if a .map file could specify limitations on adjacency (e.g. province 1 is adjacent to province 2 for flying units only) so that one could specify rivers that could be flown or swum across, or perhaps a mountain range between two provinces that's an obstacle to flight, but has mines / tunnels that offer land units a way through.

[Cohen]

I'd like too see more impact on "survival" skills too.
Like a forest survival troops have a bonus in the forest in stats.
A sneaking has a bonus in forest provinces of his hiding skill.

There could be a counterpart that lowers the chances too, likewhise a "Plain Survival" (I know it doesn't exist), that could be the knights, have a boost in Plains/Farmlands, but have some hindrances in forests or swamps or mounts.

[Zooko]

I am confused by the rules about spending gems in battle. I've read the manual (back before I lost it Last week) and I've read Liga's manual addendum, and discussed it on the forum and in private Messages. I *think* mages can spend up to one gem to increase their effective level by one, plus up to N-1-K gems to reduce their fatigue, where N is their effective level (*before* the first gem was spent ??) and K is the gem cost of the spell. But I wouldn't bet on my understanding being correct.

I'm really hoping to figure this out before I try to cast huge high-level spells in combat. But to get back on topic for this thread, I'm also hoping that gem usage is simpler in dom3.

Hm. Now I will think of a concrete proposal to make it simpler -- not because I'm likely to think of a better idea than Johan and Kristoffer can think of, but because my proposal might stimulate them to think of a good idea.

... Hm. Okay:

My proposal is that gems have no effect in combat except to satisfy the "gem requirement" for spells.

That feels good to me, because I feel like the battle AI is sure to make bad decisions about when to spend or not to spend gems, so if the scope of opportunities to spend gems is narrowed I'm happy.

Also, it would reduce confusion, thus making the game easier for new players to get into.

[Chazar]

In reply to Taqwus' proposals:
I really like your forced-march proposal! This would greatly increase strategical choices!
Your example with tunnels is somewhat flawed, for flyers can surely walk through these tunnels as well. On the other hand, if they walk, they should not cover as much provinces as before (i.e. fly3, walk1). Since flying is a big boon, I've thought about using road-provinces in a map that I am making, but the simple adjacencies only give flyers another edge.

So I propose the following simple solution for flyer/foot-movement, which retains the province-based movement of Dom2, which I really like (as opposed to provinceless hex-based or square-based games):

A flyer has a strat movement score as everyone else, which works as for everyone else. The flying ability is then equipped with a number (e.g. like the supply bonus currently is). For an example, let's say that the flyer has start move of 2 and a flying ability of 100. This means that he can either move 2 provinces as everyone else by foot or may fly-move to all provinces whose white dot is within the 100 pixels radius of the white dot of his current province. Similar to the zoom factor, a .map-file should then contain an float entry which is used as a factor to flyers moves - that serves as a yardstick and sets the scale of the map.

So flyers could then reach provinces that other units could not, but on large open plains they could only reach as far as any other unit could.

(Non-metric maps, like those who use wrap-around but have a neighbor relation which ignores the torus shape of wrap-around but rather reflect a sphere (compare "World" to "Inland"), limits the use of the flying ability around the poles, but this is not a severe problem in my view and could also be repaired somewhat by allowing a set-individual-yardstick-value-command for provincs.)

[Azhur]

I haven't read all the Posts of this thread, but I have one major improvement in my mind:

The battles in dom 2 seem to go in real time, but they really go in turns. In my opinion this is somewhat bad choice, since it unbalances the fights.

For example a battle that seems to be a cakewalk, BUT.. the enemy troops gain the "first strike" (hit with all of its troops, while you hit 0 times). At its worst this can lead to a severe morale loss, which again causes all your troops to route. In terms of realism this isn't right, since both the defening and the attacking squads should have almost an equal amount of hits. So let's compare turn-based and real time battles:

Turn-based

- Unbalanced
- Unrealistic first strike

Real Time

+ More action = more fun
+ More realistic feel
+ The strategic element more visible
+ You don't have to wait for every single arrow to hit
- Harder to see the course of the battle
- Battle system somewhat challenging to carry out

[Zooko]

It's a good point, Azhur.

I would find real-time battles more fun to watch, because I get tired of waiting for arrows to fly.

In fact, I sometimes hit fast-forward while arrows are in flight and then hit pause as soon as the following turn happens so I can see what's going on.

Azhur's complaint about arbitrary first-strike could be solved by making battle moves simultaneous but still turn based. But simultaneous games have a whole bunch of funny corner cases, of course...

The devs should play Titan -- the strategy board game -- if they haven't. It's combat rules are interesting and they avoids weird corner cases. Titan's combat rules are not simultaneous-move.

I kind of feel like the Dom combat rules, which evolved (I guess) from a board game, should evolve some more to be best for a computer game and not a board game...

[Endoperez]

Real time battle has been suggested earlier in this thread, you might want to dig it up to see what comments it got. IIRC it would be too hard to be worth implementing, and would present problems such as missiles and spells that would be shot at the place enemy units are moving away from...

[Zooko]

I wish that the UI for "outside the game" things were better. For example, it takes a lot of clicks to connect to a server and see the status. For another example, I don't know how to download the game state and make my moves off-line and then upload my moves later. I guess maybe connecting and then choosing "Quit without saving" and then choosing "Play game" and choosing the game named after the server and then later connecting again, but I don't want to try it for fear of losing my turn if it doesn't work.

[kukimuki]

As far as i know of real-time battles being mentioned before in this thread, it got absolutely no comments (lol).
...would present problems...

...that are already solved in many games. On the downside, solving problems that are already solved might be less challenging than leaving unsolved problems unsolved.

[Endoperez]

Dominions does many things better than some other games, but it can't do everything as well as every game that was the best at something.

Here is a link (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showthreaded.php?Number=304240) to a message of Soapyfrog and the discussion that followed.

[kukimuki]

Thanks a lot for the link to the real time battles discussion.
________
Disclaimer: I have nothing against randoms. Maybe all the suggestion below was caused by a few funny-looking exceptions I didn't know of.

Got the impression that sometimes morale slightly over 10 is something that makes the troops concentrate more on the dilemma of 'to rout or not to rout' than the battle. But sometimes they fight with unexpected bravery. Which makes me think that there might be too high chance of getting the extreme results with the routing formula. Maybe there could be some inertia in the function (like more consecutive bad events have more serious impact on routing).

Also, havn't had time to check it again lately, but don't units still have normal morale when you pick them up in the neighboring provinces after routing? Was a surprise at first, somehow I naturally expected that fleeing from battle would ruin morale.

So it makes me think that the morale stat you see in unit info in battle is some base morale of the unit, not the actual morale in battle. Maybe it would be nice to see more components of morale and when morale drops below blah-blah, the unit would be likely to flee. And 'likely' would be somewhat more predictable than atm, coupled by more predictable 'unlikely'. Meaning more chance to get the average result, less chance to get the extremes. Or if the unit is secretive about it's real morale response to demoralizing battle events, maybe there could be some comprehensive estimation based on battle events.

I hope the routing formula used atm is something different from 'given enough time any army will rout no matter what because of the encoded probability'.

[tinkthank]

An elaboration

I will try to be as concrete and specific as possible in detailing what I mean by the nation
management screens I sketched in my previous post (addendi), because I think this would
particularly useful while not costing terribly high amounts of resources.
Basically, the "inbox" and "outbox" scheme can have the same form throughout all screens and
represents information coming in from Last turn (inbox) and going out this turn (outbox).
I will use the Lab and the Magic screen as examples here:

"LAB SCREEN" (shift-f3):

PREVIOUS TURN
<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>

Mage Action Bonus Type Place
---------------------------------------------------------------
Bob* forged Crystal Coin* 25% hammer Snofonia*
Jim* forged Magic Lamp* -- Dogville*
Art* forged Rainbow Armor* 50% hammer + M. Oggville*
</pre><hr />


<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>

CURRENT TURN
Mage Action Bonus Type Place
----------------------------------------------------------------
Stan* forge Skull Staff* -- Snofonia*
Jim* forge Staff of Elem* -- Dogville*
Bob* forge Slave Matrix* 25% hammer Snofonia*
Ted* forge Lightless Lanter* 25% Master S. Ulm*


</pre><hr />

The fields marked with an asterisk (*) should be "hyperlinked"; that is, for example,
clicking on Bob will send you right to him, highlighted; clicking on Snofonia will send you
to that province; clicking on the object forged (Crystal Coin) will send you right to that
item in what is now the f8 screen.

The "trick" is the order screen for the current turn. As soon as you set a mage to perform a
task, he or she is automatically and instantly put into the "outbox"; that is, her orders
are set up in the Lab screen. No more must you search forever for that hammer you were sure
you had, nor must you keep track of who is casting what. You want Stan to forge a Crown of
the Ivy King instead of casting Summon Vine Ogres -- no problem finding the appropriate
people now. You want to make sure that someone is casting Summon King of Elemental Fire, but
you want the mage who is doing that now to cast Flaming Arrows in a battle somewhere else --
now you can exchange places easily. This way, mages can be easily found and their orders
changed.
I envision the Lab Screen to be one tab in a national overview, and the Last Turn and
Current turn to be next to one another side-by-side on one screen. If this proves to be too
much of a nuisance, perhaps this suggestion would be better: Have "Current Turn" and
"Previous Turn" be two "tab registers" on the "same" screen.

The setup sketched above can be used not only for the Lab -- and analogously, the Magic
screen, where casting rituals are documented -- but also for receiving and sending Messages
and items:


"TRADE SCREEN"

PREVIOUS TURN
<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>

Sent to Items Sent Quant. Received From Items Received Quant.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mictlan Lightless Lantern 1 Mictlan Fire Gems 5
Mictlan Astral Pearls 19 T'ien Starshine Skul. 2
T'ien Lightless Lantern 1
</pre><hr />


<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>

CURRENT TURN
Sending to Items to Send Quant. EDIT
Marignon Staff of Storms 1 edit/delete this transaction
T'ien Chi Astral Pearls 11 edit/delete this transaction

*SEND NEW ITEM* *SEND NEW GEMS*

</pre><hr />

On this screen, the "SEND NEW" fields highlighted here with asterisks indicate buttons which
allow you to send resources.


<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>

"MESSAGE SCREEN"

Incoming Messages

Received From Topic
Mictlan Our trade
T’ien Want to kill Mictlan?
Marignon Why are you bothering me? 1
</pre><hr />


<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
CURRENT TURN
Sending to Topic EDIT
Marignon Misunderstanding edit/delete this message
T'ien Chi Bloodlust edit/delete this message


</pre><hr />

I think this would make my gaming experience, especially dealing with late-game micromanagement, exponentially more fun. Thanks for listening.

[Cainehill]

kukimuki said:
.... I hope the routing formula used atm is something different from 'given enough time any army will rout no matter what because of the encoded probability'.



I can almost guarantee that it is at present although a couple of us think there's something buggy with morale in the latest patch.

At present, I've watched normal infantry keep coming even after about 24 out of 25 in the unit had been killed, after which one would _think_ that Last wounded unit would rout, if not substantially sooner.

Also, supposedly non-berserk troops rout after all commanders die, and non-berserk, non-immortal commanders rout after all troops die, and commanders with no troops rout after a commander dies, but it all too often doesn't work this way. (But this is something I am pretty sure has been mentioned in the bug thread, which is where it belongs.)

[tinkthank]

II.
In the Category Prioritization of Dev Resources:

- At the very bottom of the prioritization list should be "more"; I would not like to see "more" units, more gods, more nations, more weapons, more trees, at least not at the expense of other things (see above, see below), and not primarily. The "more (of the same)" aspect feels like an expansion pack. Dominions 3 should not be an expansion pack, but a new, wonderful game in the Dominions tradition.
- therefore, the Ally Option (form alliances, allied troops can fight together on the battlefield against opponents) should have high priority, as should other aspects of this nature, such as theme-modding; after which should come
- improved fun-insuring UI
- Game balance doublechecks (make sure certain aspects (e.g. race for SC-building) or combinations of aspects (Caelum and Wrathful Skies) do not become no-brainers)

III.
Concrete Suggestions:
- Each "state" (e.g. mistform, etheral, mirror imaged, fire resistance, communion master) should have an icon and can be flagged during unit modding.
- Allow in Game Setup an option which lets you specify the number of Globals allowable simultaneously via slider (say, 0 to 20)
- New Checks and Balances: In addition to more Buffs and Debuffs (my first post), there could be more concrete, small defenses which protect well against specific attacks, thus awarding players' usage of strategic scouting, for example:
Dog Whistle: This item can cause Panic in nearby Wolves when used
Garlic Talisman: Wearing this item will bestow the wearer with Awe (+2) which only works on Vampires

New Diversity in Functionality of Spells:
- Divine Intervention: Make some (very few) powerful spells castable only by Pretenders
- 3-path Spells: Perhaps there are a few rare spells which have requirements in 3 paths, or perhaps even more.

[Chazar]

tinkthank said:
- Divine Intervention: Make some (very few) powerful spells castable only by Pretenders


I always assumed that those 8-9 path spells were supposed to be pretender-only spells, arent they?

So I simply suppose the introduction of a new random event, which causes a powerful mage having a weak morale to split up with his former master to become a pretender himself/herself with his/her own followers (i.e. becoming independant and attacking like Bogus and his neat friends)... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/firedevil.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/stupid.gif ...always remember to eliminate your minions if they become too powerful! (Modders: Beware of Illwinter! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif )
This would thus turn 9th level spells to almost-pretender-only! (Calculating: 3 native, +1 from gems, +3 from items = 7, so I guess those 9th level spells would be at least Pretender OR communion exclusive...)


It would also make having luck bit more worthwhile, so adding that kind of event would be a true two-for-one bargain!!! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[Cainehill]

Chazar said:
This would thus turn 9th level spells to almost-pretender-only! (Calculating: 3 native, +1 from gems, +3 from items = 7, so I guess those 9th level spells would be at least Pretender OR communion exclusive...)




It's quite possible to get base levels of 4 or 5 on a non-pretender for most magic paths : Elemental Kings / Queens have up to 4 or 5, Lich has 4 in death, Treelords have 4 or 5 nature, Archdemons have 4 or 5 in blood and other paths. You can easily get +4 or +5 from non-unique items for most paths once you get S4 for a ring of sorcery and then wizardry.

And I'm not sure that I agree that the 9th level spells are supposed to be pretender only - just that they're supposed to be rare and hard to get to cast, and I'm not sure that I see the ultra high level spells get cast often enough....

I _like_ the fact that it's sometimes possible to get an 8th or 9th level spell or enchantment off from a surprising source. Example: I managed to have a High Seraph cast Arcane Nexus (S8). Sadly it died a mere two turns later, but still....

[tinkthank]

Well I dont know about you but I sort of meant that "Divine Intervention" could be a new form of spell type, one that didnt require a high path level, and not necessarily a global enchantment -- simply a decent (not über) spell which only a Pretender may cast. An example of this type of spell could be....

- Battle Magic: "Resurrection" (req. some Astral, and/or some Death?), can bring fallen (holy?) comrades back to life which fell in that battle

- Ritual: "Deus Ex Machina" (req. some Earth, maybe some air?) will transport the pretender in a holy wooden construct to the province of his/her/its choice, landing with a loud crash (combat: large AoE panic), and returns the pretender along with 10+ choice troops back to the capital (automatic ritual of returning) after 10 combat rounds;
"Merkhabah" (req. fire, astral?), sends the pretender in a visionary flaming chariot across the skies, causing fear and unrest in an enemy province or boon and morale boost in a friendly province; the pretender lands in that province and, should a battle ensue, will automatically start that battle with awe+4, an astral shield and a fire shield on.

Well I dont think this is terribly important, would just be some flavor, maybe others think this is stupid, I dont know. Much prefer the Ally option if there had to be a choice!

[SurvivalistMerc]

More micromanagement saving ideas.

I played my first Ermor game recently. And I was depressed at all the micromanagement of putting undead under the command of commanders and setting each commander's orders. Ermor just gets way more troops in raw numbers than just about any other nation especially ashen empire.

It would be great if troops would automatically go into command until the command is full, in a default formation set by the player, with the commander having default orders set by the player. That would save soooo much time.

[Agrajag]

Only if you could disable that option!
It could possibly lead to commanders which didn't reach their command maximum to pick up stray soldiers being recruited in provinces they go to, if unspotted this could lead to disaster (whoops! my tactical move is reduced to 1 because of damn miltiamen, and my morale just took a nose dive!) or just to some more MM...

[Sandman]

Some more suggestions (apologies if they've already been done):

Nation-specific random events. In particular, no more 'militia' events for Ermor. Give them something like "an ancient burial vault has been unearthed" or something.

The ability to permanently hire mercenaries, after you've employed them three times, for example.

I also think that mercenary Groups should survive routs, especially if the leader survives. And it would be nice if mercenaries could replenish themselves, rather than becoming weaker and weaker.

And how about mercenaries which will only go for nations with specific dominion settings (i.e. the Flamemaster and his lava golems will only go for a nation with heat-1 or more)?

[SurvivalistMerc]

Sandman,

I like your mercenary idea. And your nation-specific events idea. Militia for Ermor or carrion woods Pangea doesn't make a lot of sense. But I'm not sure you would want to give Ulm a bunch of infantry of ulms as they are much better than militia.

Mercenaries I think do need to be more customizable. And able to be turned off. And I thought it was hillarious when I hired the eternal knights as Ermor and sent them to their certain death. But that shouldn't have been allowed to happen. They should not have willingly hired themselves out to an all-undead nation because it goes against their nature. Maybe things Groups like Orion's should look at your overall scales and decide if you even qualify to bid on them. I could even see the mages prefering magic scales, the druids prefering growth, and so on.

[Taqwus]

Minor note:

'National' blood slaves might be thematic, and in certain situations would help -- e.g. Abysia recruiting fire-resistant blood slaves which don't combust in combat. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Sandman]

Actually, I wouldn't mind if Ulm got Ulmish infantry from a free troops event. Ulm has few advantages as it is, and they could do with being able to extract some usefulness from the luck scale. I'd much rather have twelve decent infantrymen than forty militia.


I could even see the mages prefering magic scales, the druids prefering growth, and so on.



Yes, that's the idea. Those are really good examples which hadn't even crossed my mind.

[Alneyan]

Taqwus said:
Abysia recruiting fire-resistant blood slaves which don't combust in combat. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif



Which? Are you so used to hunting slaves you think of them as objects? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif (A revealing lapsus as they would say)

I would like to make a suggestion, which may or may not have any interest for the other players. It would be a way to counter or negate battlefield enchantments, pretty much like it is possible to dispel global enchantments. A few ways I can think of would be:

- The enchantment could be dispelled if the caster/item is removed from the battlefield (either by dead or retreat). If it is already the same, and I am overlooking the obvious, feel free to slap me. This would be a fairly simple suggestion, but it would allow to actually get rid of the enchantment in the battle.

- In addition to this, a spell may be introduced to allow to kill the caster of the item, and/or a battle order to specifically target such commanders. The latter part seems rather odd however, especially as Illwinter removed the "Target enemy spellcasters" option, but might make sense if it is linked to another spell (a magic beacon say, which would make such casters much easier to locate and elimitate).

- A generic, battle-wide Dispel spell may be used instead to remove such enchantments.

- Specific counter-spells may appear to negate a particular enchantment. For example, a Earth Channel spell would counter Wrathful Skies.

I think such a change would make it harder to make sure a specific enchantment is active during a battle, perhaps making it worthwhile to send more than one mage to cast the same enchantment (instead of being confident your Staff of Storms bearer will call a storm for you). It could also increase the effectiveness of certain strategies; for example, the Mass Flight spell would perhaps be a very potent enchantment for hordes, but its use seems limited by the availability of Storms/Staffs of Storms earlier in the game.

[Sindai]

Breaking up the "spells" order for mages into several slightly more specific orders, namely "attack spells," "summon spells," and "buff spells."

This would keep people from creating super-micromanaged mages of doom while still eliminating some of the really irritating aspects of the current mage AI, such as how they favor summons over attack spells, leading any elemental mage with gems to waste them summoning elementals instead of using attack spells and conserving their gems.

ALso, it would be nice if saving army orders using ctrl-# also saved the position of that unit on the battlefield. Voila, two clicks eliminated for every commander and unit group.

EDIT: Also, having some more details in the descriptions for battlefield and global spells would be nice. As it is most combat spells and summoning rituals have decent descriptions (ie: they include all the important pieces of data like area of effect/# of effects, damage, etc), but often you have very little idea of what a battlefield enchantment or global does until you actually cast it. Flavor descriptions are nice, but actual knowledge is better. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[CJN]

Use .dominions3 instead of dominion3 as the name of the savefile directory under Unix/Linux systems. It is convention to create all top-level computer generated files in the user's home directory as dotfiles.

[Baalz]

Here are some ideas for enhancements that should be fairly easy to implement. Some of these I know have already been mentioned, but I think they are all easy and pretty much popular suggestions.

1) How about saving battle replays to a file? Shouldn’t be too hard since that data must be stored somewhere already, and it’d be really cool to be able to save some of your really awesome battles. They could be shared for AARs, as tutorials, etc. Also, having a button to rewind to the Last round (same functionality as the skip forward button, only reversed) would be great to.

2) Ranged troops set to fire should try and maintain a minimum distance (ie skirmish) while ammo Lasts. Fire &amp; Withdraw should have them continue firing until either ammo is depleted or they move off the back of the battlefield trying to maintain a minimum distance. I think it would go a long way towards making LI viable if I could harass the enemy, then (at least try to manage it so that) my LI fell back behind my HI so that the HI met the enemy’s charge, at which point my LI runs out of ammo and attacks to support the HI (or withdraws if that’s what I want).

3) Have a withdraw option, distinct from routing (keep your troops together).

4) An option to specify that a mage not use gems unless scripted to. I think it’s very often the case that players want somebody to cast a single spell requiring gems (ie wrathful skies, mass protection, etc) then preserve the rest of the gems for future fights. Since this can already be accomplished through MM, this is just a MM reducing feature.

5) In keeping with the Dom paradigm, its important to limit the amount of tactical control the player has when scripting mages. It would be very strategically useful though to be able to assign them a role (summoning spells, attack spells, buff-other spells). Artillery mages shouldn’t pass out buffing themselves, and death mages should be able to do something other than summoning skeletons. It’d be great (and fit the paradigm) to be able to script a few specific buffs then give them very general direction.

6) Allow good hooks for AI modding. AI design for such a complex game is really hard, and this is one of the more vocal complaints I’ve seen about Dom II. This game has a large community of creative types who know the strats and game mechanics ridiculously well. Lets leverage it, and shut up all the AI whiners with a “put your money where your mouth is”. Expanding this to include modding the unit battlefield AI would be great(if not prohibitively difficult). That would give interested parties a way to play around with archer friendly fire, light infantry, mage spell selection, etc.

[Taqwus]

I've been idly wondering whether it'd be possible to model troops falling back without actually routing first.

To take an example from another computer game, the "Total War" engine -- at least, the incarnation that features in the "Shogun:TW" game -- permits the outcome of 'push' from two soldiers fighting each other: one soldier forces the other a bit backwards, but the fight continues on both parties.

For a more historical perspective, if we take Machiavelli's "Art of War" as an authority on Roman tactics when he quotes his contemporary Fabrizio (an assertion which I'm not qualified to properly assess, not having studied this in any detail), the different lines in formation might fall back and join with lines previously held in reserve during battle, and continue the fight from there.

These are most likely two different situations -- falling back as an individual, and falling back while trying to preserve some semblance of organization as a line. Adding either would add a bit of flavor over the currently binary advance-or-flee model. I'd also agree that having light infantry -- velites! -- fire and fall back (either through gaps or along the flanks) would add a reasonable option and go a long way towards making them something other than patrollers and garrison troops.

[tinkthank]

I second Alneyan's idea. I would also very much like to see more types of checks and balances and counters of the type:

debuff
disenchant
dispel

Perhaps there can be spells which dispel all (including friendly) "entire battlefield" air spells, death spells, etc., and one which dispels all of them.

[Edi]

What I would like to see is having a research level limit adjustable from game to game, either as a blanket limit or preferably school by school, so that you could for example limit construction to Lv 4, have conjuration up to 6 and alteration and enchantment to lv 7. It could make for very interesting games where some options would be limited while still having a magic rich game (because right now the only way to limit magic is by lowering site frequency so that gems will have to be used very carefully and there won't be massive hordes of fully equipped SCs in late game.

[Turin]

yeah more starting options would be great:

apart from the research restriction I would like to see:
-efficiency of bloodhunting (low/normal/high)
-number of global spell slots (5/10/15)
-bigger hall of fame(5-50)
-gem cost of ritual spells/forging items(half/normal/twice the cost)
-number of pretender design points
-fog of war on/off(every player has an eyes of god enchantment always active)

[Edi]

Turin said:
-fog of war on/off(every player has an eyes of god enchantment always active)


That's a little harsh and removes a lot of strategy. I'd be willing to go with a seriously truncated Version of this, which would allow everyone to always see who owns which province, but nothing else unless they really have EoG or some other means of seeing in there (Astral Window, scouts, spies etc)

Edi

[Alneyan]

Something else I should really have posted before, but forgot. It would be fairly likely that someone made the same request before though.

I would like to see multi-path spells/items in Dominions 3, requiring more than two magic paths to be used. I believe it would be a nice addition for nations with Jack-of-all-trades mages (who said T'ien Ch'i?), which would be the only ones with an easy access to these spells.

[SurvivalistMerc]

More good ideas.

I have another from a mistake I made in a SP game. How about a confirmation screen the first time you attack a nation you are not "at war" with? Just something like "Really attack Pangea?"

I hate to just about lose a game due to a stupid accident made in a strategy game moving one priest into a neighbor's territory instead of into my own.