Wish-List for Dominions 4

[Edi]

Wahnsinniger said:

Yeah, thats the worst part about ultra-popular online games like Counterstrike and WoW(never played WoW though). I like to call it "Counterstrike Syndrome": where most of the players are idiots. You can escape by playing new mods with small player bases, but, if the mod becomes popular, eventually the Syndrome catches up and the game fills up with a bunch of idiots again.

It'd be nice to not see Dominions end up like that, and as a testament to it, I don't think I've yet seen any flaming or other such idiocy on these forums yet. Good people around here. (Don't worry though, I'll eventually post something stupid. It usually happens)

If the ravening hordes of morons ever became a problem in Dom3 (doubtful, since playing Dom3 actually requires both possession of and the ability to use brains), setting up games with the simple stipulation that anything goes and not giving any breaks to whiners and lamers would take care of that problem for most games. What would they do, quit on you? Good riddance. As far as such hordes infesting the forum and making trouble here, let's just say that I suspect any troublemakers would be very unpleasantly surprised indeed. There is precedent of disruptive users having been booted out in the past.

[Sandman]

I'd like more filters for the army setup screen. At the moment, you can hide researchers, but it'd be nice to be able to hide other things, like preachers, sneakers or non-mages.

[Morkilus]

Sandman said:
I'd like more filters for the army setup screen. At the moment, you can hide researchers, but it'd be nice to be able to hide other things, like preachers, sneakers or non-mages.

Did you mean to post this in the Dominions 2 forum?

[Edi]

No, he didn't, I think. If you press tab in the army setup screen, every mage with research orders (regardless of whether he has squads) will be hidden just like the tab used to do for researches in Dom2 on the overland map.

[Morkilus]

Oh, wow. That's nifty. Now if I could sort by path I'd be much more inclined to actually use my Arcosephalian Mystics.

[MaxWilson]

Rename. "Mystic FE," "Mystic FW," etc.

-Max

[Maraxus]

Is there a top-list of suggestions somewhere?
Here are my Top 4, in order of priority:

1. Either a better combat-AI or (prefered: ) more scripting options. I guess this was mentioned allready.

2. More terrain influence. The caves are nice allready, but I'd like to see combat maps with narrow streets or lots of trees, too (and a good pathfinding to handle this). Units that get specific terrain-bonusses would be nice, too.

3. Borders that can only be crossed by amphibian and/or flying units and/or take more then 1 movement point. Actually all borders could take a number of movement points and the units could have a high number of movement points and movement costs per terrain type.

4. Streets, that can be build like buildings to increase movement speed between 2 provinces you control.






Maybe a more thought out vision on scripting stuff:

Squards:
You can set your Squards' formations, agressiveness and Tactics.

Formations:
-Phalanx: The Squard will move and attack as a long line. This may break into a loose formation if the ends are attacked or into a tight formation if the center is attacked.
-Wedge: This is a really close formation, soldiers at the back of the Squard will not try to move around their comrades in front of them. The Squard will try to attack their targets, even if attacked themselves

-Close formation: The units will try to stay together and attack one enemy squard
-Loose formation: The units will spread out and attack individually. Useful for and against archers.


Agressiveness:
-Very aggressive: The Squard will rush the enemy at full speed and go for melee. If equipped with ranged weapons, the units will fire untill the target comes into melee reach themselves. This overwrites a tight formations order to stay together, for units of differing movement speeds.
-Aggressive: The Squard will not break, if ordered a tight formation. When attacking an opponent squard with lower movement speed, they will try to get the first attack.
-Defencive: The units will wait in place, untill opponents come into charging range, then attack. Enemy missle fire might cause this to change to aggressive.
-Very defencive: The units will only defend themselved if attacked, not engage on their own, they are more likely to retreat.


Tactics:
-This includes the Target-priority from Dominions 2 and 3 and adds the following:
-Skirmish: The Unit will try to attack the next enemies not attacking them while trying to retreat from any unit attacking them.
-Defend: The Unit will attack charging enemies




Commanders:
Commanders can follow a number of scripts, players are even able to generate their own scripts.

Pre-Generated scripts are:
-Passive: The unit will stand around and try to avoid enemies.
-Warrior: The unit will attack opponents (in the savety of an army, if available)
-Fighter: The unit will Fire opponents with ranged weapons, try to outmaneuver the bigger armies (both in number and unit size) and attack smaller ones.
-Spellsword: The unit will cast support-spells on itself, untill it is moderately fatigued, then attack.
-Mage: The unit will cast a mixture of support- and attack spells.
-Evoker: The unit will cast attack spells at the enemy army, focussing on damage dealing.
-Supporter: The unit will cast spells that buff the own units and try to heal them. If out of useful spells for this cause, it will attack the opponent, focussing on debuffs and staying concious.
-Savety caster: Like mage but focussing on low cost spells and saving gems.
-Assasin: The unit will try to avoid enemy troops and attack the commanders. Only Assasins have that option.


Misc:
-Commanders can now move through own squards, by exchanging places with other units.

-Commanders have a strategy-value, that influences routing behavior:
-High values decrease the probability of single squards routing but slightly increases the probability of the whole army routing.
-Depending on the value, the commander's troops might stay in the province after retreading from a battle that was won afterwards. Same goes for fights at castles.
-If the commander retreats, there is a probability on the skill, that his retreating troops all retreat into the same province.

[jutetrea]

wish: battlefield wide +defense and +attack spells. Seems like there's about 8 spells for +prot. Instead of doing the caster, aoe 1, aoe 15-25, battlefield progression it would be cool to be "battlefield +1 atk, battlefield +2 atk, etc". Maybe have the +atk be a priest spell (crusade or xenophobia or something) and +defense would add some meat to water paths along with quickening.

Maybe +1, +2, +4 at lvls 5,6 and 8?