Small suggestions for the next patch

[kr]

Hi!
I am pretty new to Dominion 3 but I did notice some things that could be done to make the player's life a little easier (and sorry if I bring up things that were discussed a hundred times here, I did read a lot of threads, but not all of them, so just don't hit me ):

1. An "infinite recruit" setting/button to the army recruit screen of the dominions
Sometimes it can be very time consuming, when you have to go to every province to recruit your troops at every turn, especially if you have a lot of dominion.
It would help to reduce the micromanagement a lot, if you could just set some to train the maximum troops that can be trained there at the begining of every turn

2. Some graphical representation of some important values in the game
I noticed that when I check the dominions for their income or population, it takes a lot more time to "decode" the numbers, that are there, then it was in, well, in Master of Magic.
There when I clicked around the cities, I could immediately tell, if I get a low or high income from it, just by waching the gold coins.
If there were something like that in Dominions, like, a gold coin for every 50 gold income next to the accurate number, you could get the feeling about the more and less important dominions much quickly.

3. A dismiss command to release the not needed soldiers from their duty
I don't think that needs any explanation, I think everybody met that situation, when you got stuck with "once so important but now so useless" troops, like an undead elephant (behemot), that don't let you use its summoner's magic, or a lot militia after a large, "I need as many man as possible" - fight.

4. Something to help me sort out the spells
Well, as I said, I am a pretty new player, so everything is new to me. And when I saw the spell research/ritual casting/spell library window, I nearly cried. There was like, a ton of spells, but I needed to ckeck them one by one, if I wanted to know, if a specific one is casted on the battlefield, or it is a ritual, if it is a ritual, it is a summoning spell or an enchantment, thing like that.
Please, just let me sort them by type, cast level, or gem need. It will really could make it easier to find a spell for a specific job.


So, that's it.
I know it is nothing serious, but sometimes, these thing could add up, and become very annoying.
And I will continue to play, because it is a fun, even if sometimes very time consuming game

[Jack_Trowell]

2. Some graphical representation of some important values in the game
I noticed that when I check the dominions for their income or population, it takes a lot more time to "decode" the numbers, that are there, then it was in, well, in Master of Magic.
There when I clicked around the cities, I could immediately tell, if I get a low or high income from it, just by waching the gold coins.
If there were something like that in Dominions, like, a gold coin for every 50 gold income next to the accurate number, you could get the feeling about the more and less important dominions much quickly.

There's such an option, that I activate each new game I start : in the menus, near the option where you show the neighbours connections, there is one option to show a "box" for each province, the box showing gold coins , hammers, and candles to let you have a global view of income, ressources, and dominion of a province without having to select it first.

[Kalin]

1. You can queue up the troops as much as you want, as long as you have the gold for it. The resource will go negative, and so will the holy count for sacred troops, the ones that can't be recruited will be done the turn after.

Try going to your capital, hold down shift, and click a dozen time on your favorite troops (to add 10 per click), and it'll continue to recruit them until it's done. You have to have the gold to spend on them though. XD

2. There are income and dominion icons on the map, it's just disabled most of the time. Try hitting "4", or go into "Map filters" and check "Income box".

3. A dimiss option is sorely needed, I definitely agree. Right now the best way to kill worthless troops is to astral gate into the ocean with a shambler skin armor (late game solution). You can also walk into the ocean with a sea king and abandon them there to drown earlier in the game.

4. Spell sorting would be useful I suppose, although having played for a while, I've kinda gotten used to all of them, so I don't really notice it anymore (kinda memorized most of them). Still, it's always nice to have the option... especially when you got one of those wishers... XD

[Actuarian]

I agree dismiss would be nice. You shouldn't have to creatively kill your own troops to 'retire' them.

I do have to say that I have very seldom wanted to dismiss troops. Even the low level random event troops make good chaff for armies or for individual spell casters, asumming they are generated reasonably near the front.

Regarding the behemot, they aren't great, but I wouldn't say they are useless. If I remember correctly you can transfer them to another weaker death mage, and you can have more than one commanded by a single mage. If you have the time to get a decent sized group of them they can cause some significant trample damage.

[Loren]

As for queueing:

You can only queue up 100 units. I have actually had a situation where I could--and wanted to--recruit more per turn than this (I had been trying for a long time to get into the water and finally found a Shambler Reef.) Furthermore, you're limited by the amount of gold on hand.

How it should work:

You should be able to recruit without regard for gold just like you can recruit without regard for resources or holy points. Anything beyond what's available will be shaded just like what happens now for resources.

There should also be a "repeat" checkbox on the screen. If checked the units are not removed from the queue when recruited, thus you will get the same thing each turn until you cancel it.

The queue needs to be expanded to at least 400 items. There are units that cost one resource point so the queue needs to contain at least as many slots as the highest number of resources a province can produce.

[thejeff]

A little trickier than it sounds.

Consider: Assume I have 400 gold on hand and 400 income.
I queue up 500 gold worth of troops in 2 provinces.
Which get bought this turn?
If you base it on which was selected first, which would seem reasonable, what about next turn? I still don't have the cash for all of them. Who gets bought?

I like the repeat idea better, but it runs into the same money allocation problem.

[Nick_K]

There are a lot of user-friendliness improvements that can be made, but I don't know if we'll see there in Dom3. I'd like mercenary renewals to be automated. When I'm playing a fast SP game checking my mercs is a fairly substantial part of many turns. It's also prevents me from really getting lost in the fun parts of the game, because I have this niggling voicei n my head wondering if I've checked the mercs.
There's also some stuff from Dom2 such as the ability to grey-out researchers and remove them from the unit assignment screen that'd be really nice to see again.

I do agree that queuing could be improved. I prefer short games so it's not a huge issue for me, bit it'd be nice. As for the 'money allocation problem'... ideally how it was allocated would be up to the player. For example, provinces could be given a priority level and money would be divided equally among each province at the highest level until all troops are bought, then the next.

The ability to queue commanders would also be of huge benefit

Finally, I think that some of the messages, in particular battle reports could be improved a lot. The main offender is "We captured the fortress!" but even regular reports could give more info. I sometimesl ike watching battles, but if I lose a commander in a fairly dull battle I don't want to watch the whole thing just to figure out which one. I'd like it if battle reports gave a full list of casualties on both sides by commander name and type (e.g. "Ariulf the priest") and by unit number and type ("8 militia").

As I said, I don't know if this sort of thing is a realistic expectation for a doms3 patch. UI is an area that illwinter have mostly improved in further versions of dominions, but of course it's a very important part of the game and I'd hope to see continuing improvements for as long as any issues exist.

[mivayan]

kr said:
1. An "infinite recruit" setting/button to the army recruit screen of the dominions

Would be neat, especially for commanders.

3. A dismiss command to release the not needed soldiers from their duty

Yeah. Would be usefull.

The behemot description is confusing. *Your* mage, the one that casts the Behemoth spell, is free to do whatever afterwards. The spell reanimates both an elephant and a little mage guy who will sit on the elephant and control it, in game terms you'll never notice the mage.

4. Something to help me sort out the spells

The manual helps a bit with this. If all you have is fire mages, you can look for battlefield spells-fire at page 246.

Edit for more replies:

thejeff said:
Consider: Assume I have 400 gold on hand and 400 income.
I queue up 500 gold worth of troops in 2 provinces.
Which get bought this turn?

Those in the province with the lowest number probably, but to me it doesn't matter since I'd have to be careless for it to happen.

Nick_K said:
There's also some stuff from Dom2 such as the ability to grey-out researchers and remove them from the unit assignment screen that'd be really nice to see again.

Pressing tab at the unit assignment screen will remove researchers, but the grey-out option on the main screen is sadly missing. It was awesome.

[Wish]

re: 4

you can already sort spells - by their main spell type (i.e. astral, blood, nature, etc.) just press "a" for air, "s" for astral, all the others are the first letter of the spell type.

Also they are broken down by research path already - both of these were not present in DOM 2, and it really makes it a LOT easier.

[Hellboy]

Wish_For_Blood_Slaves said:
re: 4

you can already sort spells - by their main spell type (i.e. astral, blood, nature, etc.) just press "a" for air, "s" for astral, all the others are the first letter of the spell type.

Also they are broken down by research path already - both of these were not present in DOM 2, and it really makes it a LOT easier.

That's good to know!! I think it may mention the sort in the manual (or somewhere I read, but I never remember.