What it will take for me to purchase Dom III

[Agrajag]

I think the problem lies in the fact that summons get stronger as the game progresses, while regular national troops do not.
If it was possible to divert magical research to technological research to improve your troops, it might contribute towards making national troops viable later in the game.
Maybe you can add a "techonology" tab to research, where you can choose to spend RP on technological advances, so in that tab, instead of "Enchantment" and "Conjuration" you would have "Infantry Weapons" and "Cavalry Shields", and instead of spells you would have upgrades, such as "Sharpening Stone" which increases damage for all weapons by 1 or "Combat Training" which gives all newly produced units an expirience star etc...

[Endoperez]

Many of the suggestions here would shoot micromanagement through the roof. While it would be nice to be able to enchance units magically, quickly choosing the most experienced, least wounded units of most useful types from hundred or so soldiers would take time. Another research tree would also be a nuisance, and I imagine most nations already know of the "Sharpening Stones", and that the more non-militia have already undergone "Combat Training" (just compare a Militia to a generic Light infantry).

I still think I'd like to see a way to have national units play a big(ger) role in DomIII, but Jeff, Ygorl and Vicious Love make good points about the absurdness of mere humans standing against unnatural, supernatural, or even b]big[/b] enemies.

[shovah]

i think being able to research upgrades for items is a good idea and after reading a litttle of what everything does i doubt it would add much micromanegement

[Endoperez]

If better armors can be researched, and mages will research those, doesn't that screw Ulm with its "better steel but less magic" policy? And why play Ulm if the only thing you get is a head-start on others on the arms war, when you can't get as far in the magic war?

[B0rsuk]

I think I have an idea how to make nationals scalable without increasing micromanagement.
--------------
National troops would get predefined bonuses for each additional fortification you control. Makes sense, as you need them to produce national anyway.
Flavor-wise it would be something along the line "The garrison of Blahuageuawraarhsaark made some improvements to heavy crossbow design and we can now use it nation-wide" or " new forging techniques, or news of national hero/propaganda (inspiration;see soviet Russia for reference), source of better ore...

To stop Watch Tower abuse, it would be NumberOfForts*FortAdminValue (no I have no idea of Dominions variables).
--------------------
Edit

For those of you who think that "you can just start producing nationals for free - therefore they should suck"
- nationals require forts (say 300-450 gold, 3-5 turns to build, and a commander)
- Process of building a fort can be interrupted.
- forts need adjacent provinces to work properly
- resources, unlike gems, don't carry over to next month (seems like, doesn't it ?)
- there's a hard limit on how much you can recruit in one turn. On the other hand, you can burn LOTS of gems in a single turns.
- you can get gems from another player, not true with resources. Technically you can get away without magic sites for some time.
- you can keep all summoners in one spot, forts force you to expand.
- many national units require temples (usually 200 and a priest to build it) or labs (200 and a mage). Combined with 450 fort, this means 850 gold, multiple turns of building and commanders.
- I'd say population killing spells are quite effective. Growth scale is slow. Your ability to buy conventional troops is affected by cold, heat, unrest, productivity, order..

[shovah]

Endoperez said:
If better armors can be researched, and mages will research those, doesn't that screw Ulm with its "better steel but less magic" policy? And why play Ulm if the only thing you get is a head-start on others on the arms war, when you can't get as far in the magic war?

i was thinking more like you just get x points of tech research per turn that dosnt require commanders research

[Chazar]

Huh, things are pretty hot here... [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Cold.gif[/img]

...nevertheless I'd like to comment that the AI is also important for MP games, since most of my MP games ended with someone sadly suddenly turning into AI. It would be furthermore more nice if players could set a basic AI guidline (including "do nothing") for themselevs in case of an unexpected stale turn. Cheers!

[Endoperez]

Chazar said:
Huh, things are pretty hot here... [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Cold.gif[/img]

...nevertheless I'd like to comment that the AI is also important for MP games, since most of my MP games ended with someone sadly suddenly turning into AI. It would be furthermore more nice if players could set a basic AI guidline (including "do nothing") for themselevs in case of an unexpected stale turn. Cheers!

Now THAT is a good idea! We would need few AI templates (I don't know if they already exist), but it would be very useful.

[Cainehill]

And I can see what Arralen is saying - it doesn't bother me too much because I am capable of playing MP games, but if I wasn't, I'd be unhappy as hades : I find the SP almost totally unplayable.

Not just the lack of AI, but the things that AI does which are blatant cheating, or diplomatically insane. Example : Even on the World map with 4 players, by turn 15 the AI is hitting me with Seeking Arrows, Fires from Afar, Call of the Winds, etc. Blatant cheating which adds immeasurably to my level of irritation with the game.

Or the way the AI declares war against the human players - diplomatic insanity, as it does so regardless of strength, location, levels of threat, etc.

All of which is apparently considered acceptable because Dom2 is intended mainly as a MP game - but nothing in the game's description indicates that it's _only_ suitable for MP gaming. I can see where Arralen and players like him might be a tad bit bitter.