Pool anywhere blood slaves.
 

It'd be really cool if there wasn't so much micro involved with blood magic, especially on the slave collecting.
The shift-z command to pool blood slaves was a big help, but i've got an idea that would take it further:
let shift-z pool blood slaves even if you're not at a lab. While I realize it's a bit odd to allow shifting to the stock when not at a lab, it'd really finish the job started by shift-z, of getting rid of mm. Of course this would be one way, it only lets you put slaves into the stock, not take any out. This is another reason i recommend making it part of the shift-z command, as it doesn't require messing with the gem transfer interface.

It'd be really cool and helpful if this could be put in.
Please,
Zlefin :)

Re: Pool anywhere blood slaves.
 

Yeah I'd be fine with that. I'd also be fine with blood hunting auto putting slaves in stock - so if you want them on the actual guy you have to manually assign them.

Re: Pool anywhere blood slaves.
 

What would actually be cool, was if you had a check box like we have for taxation (with which we choose auto-taxation or manual taxation per each province). Tick the check box on blood-hunter -> any slaves get placed in lab. Don't tick the box -> manually decide how many (if any) you want to place in lab :)

Re: Pool anywhere blood slaves.
 

This would be great


A couple other things that would speed up the game alot for me atleast.


An option to repeat what i choose to build in a fort every turn as long as i have the gold to pay for it..

Most of my time is spent buying stuff ill buy every turn in that fort for most of the game..

A way to save the position you want something on the battlefield like we can with orders.. Thats where alot of my other time goes..

Im sure this stuff has been suggested before tho =p

Re: Pool anywhere blood slaves.
 

Requests are great altho probably abit late for Dom3

But just to keep people from getting too frustrated, realize that the answer to micromanglement is the same as in any game. Find a macro program that works in conjunction with the game then program hotkeys to do what you want.

This isnt just a Dom3 thing. Your entire future in gaming can be affected by this. You will get pwned quick in any new MMORPG if you dont realize that someone is definetly going to hotkey their long series of attack actions. As soon as they get a new game, some people will go searching for cheats while others will immediately start testing macro programs to get ahead of those who are waiting for others to post the answers. A very basic "hacker thinking" concept is that nothing should be done over and over. As soon as it seems to be re-occurring, program it away. Hotkey programs are not hard to use. They "watch and record" your mouse and keyboard actions, then assign them to something like Ctrl-Alt-Z (as an alternative to the Z action in Dom3)

Re: Pool anywhere blood slaves.
 

Completely different conceptual level for macros in a twitch reflex game and in Dominions. In Dominions it might reduce your micro, but won't actually change the results, while in a MMORPG or shooter it makes it possible to do things you can't do by hand.

I am curious about how you do this in dominions though. I get how the programs work, but I have difficulty seeing how you apply them to dominions. Particularly the mouse actions, since that would seem to require everything to be in exactly the same positions every time.
To go back to the original topic, how would you automate the task of collecting blood slaves from your blood provinces to scouts and moving them to the nearest labs? Could you do this off one hotkey? Or one per province?

Re: Pool anywhere blood slaves.
 

I completely agree... Dominions_3 is officially in sleep mode.

Ideas/Suggestions/Wishlists can be discussed, but we won't see anything until the development of Dominions_4 begins... which I've guesstimated around 2015.

Re: Pool anywhere blood slaves.
 

To my knowledge macros are mostly forbidden.
Not only because of the stuff that thejeff mentioned but you could theoretically make a macro that does all the boring and repetitive stuff that earns you ingame money and leave your pc running 24/7.
Now, if you are predestined to become the CEO of a big company you could also try to sell it on ebay.

Re: Pool anywhere blood slaves.
 

I love people who do that in MMORPGs. They = easy loot for my thief and easy kills for the rest of my characters :).

I remember the first time I ever encountered someone macroing. They were casting an are of effect spell over and over and I wanted through the area. So I sent them some tells to stop long enough for me to move through the camp and they never did. I got hit with an AOE, got ticked off and killed the guy. His town was nearby so I went there to kill him again. His character was standing in town casting the same spells over and over. That's when the light bulb turned on ;).

Re: Pool anywhere blood slaves.
 

I like the idea. To further it (if only because I enjoy discussing the game), I'd suggest that pooling bloodslaves outside of an area equipped with both a lab and a fortress (you need a proper dungeon to lock up those slaves, and a magical lab to keep them pure), should make them vulnerable.

If a province where you've pooled your slaves should be attacked, those bloodslaves could then appear on the battlefield. That would significantly nerf the ability, while making for additional strategic choices. Scouts (only) might also have the special ability to free bloodslaves in such vulnerable provinces, while hidden, which would give scouts a nice boost of useability, without breaking their balance.

Re: Pool anywhere blood slaves.
 

I was going to say that it's almost counter productive to try and 'further' a seemingly simple change or add features or ideas to improve on it,...

But then I remembered there's no chance of the initial idea being implemented anyway :]

Re: Pool anywhere blood slaves.
 

I find it best to use keypresses whenever possible.
For necessary mouse commands I find it helpful to always begin the macro with a move as far as possible to one of the screen corners. That tends to zero-out the start position so that the macro doesnt try to act from wherever the mouse happens to be sitting.

As for the Z command, how about #1-a-Z-#2-a-Z-#3-a-Z-#4-a-Z-
I know it seems nuts to go thru every province even the ones you dont own and A/Shft-Z in each one, but it goes fast on most computers. And we are talking about late game MM so the larger the map the more its worth the wait. Actually its kindof fun to watch macros speeding thru the actions.

BTW I prefer AutoHotKey

Re: Pool anywhere blood slaves.
 

I suppose that would work for the mouse, though it does rely on every thing else remaining in the same relative position: selecting a commander if a new one in the province has moved him down the list, for example.

I agree that keys are far better. I could probably do more with keys than I do, even manually.

For the blood example, yours would work I assume, though it would be simple just to pool blood slaves from the lab menu. :)
You could limit it to your hunting provinces, which would leave sacrifices and mages elsewhere their slaves, so that would be better than pooling. You'd still have issues sacrificing at the hunting provinces and with blood mages going out to battle from there. The real problem is that you've already built a lab at each province, in some cases just to make the micro less. I was imagining a macro that would transfer the slaves from the hunters to a scout in the province and set him to move to a nearby lab. Probably too much to ask. I might try one just to click 30 times to transfer slaves though.

That's my general problem with the macro solutions though. There isn't enough really rote repetition to justify it for me. Everything is just enough variation of what I did the turn before to break the macros. Of course, I don't play on 1000+ province maps, which may simplify things.
The real micro for me is in the slightly more complex but still not interesting tasks: A macro that found the x lowest research fire mages, assigned them hammers and had them forge lanterns would be heaven, along with another automatically assigned any new lanterns to researchers in castles somewhere.

Re: Pool anywhere blood slaves.
 

Yeah after thinking about it I realized it didnt have to hit every province like some of my macros. But a macro list like I gave could easily be edited to only include the labs you want. Something like #-111-a-Z-#-223-a-Z-#-450-a-Z-#-495-a-Z-

As to the forging thing could make one to assign it to every mage in a province if you wanted to group your low fire mages together. Then just go to the labs involved and hit the key. Or edit it to do a # on the lab province then assign them all.

Re: Pool anywhere blood slaves.
 

There are several programs that can do (for collecting the bloodslaves, that is) what Gandalf suggest above, and also keyboards (such as Logitech G15). However, they really are not worth it (in my opinion at least) for e-mail games, where you do your turns relatively seldomly. Bur for SP games and direct IP hosted MP games they shouldn't be such a hassle (especially if it is easy to add in lines for new provinces).