Wish-List for Dominions 4

[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.

[Gandalf Parker]

Maraxus said:
Is there a top-list of suggestions somewhere?

There is a top list of bugs but not a top list of suggestions.

Personally I dont think a top list of wants would be a good idea for this game. Getting something added tends to be more about getting the interest of the devs. Either programmically (Johan) or thematically (Kristoffer). Any effort along the line of "we are all really noisy about wanting this" tends to act against us. Keep up the suggestions, and the discussions.

Altho, come to think of it, a short-list might help it get read more often when the devs are bored. Quick one sentence lines for each item with a link to the further discussions in case it sparks their interest.

[BigDisAwesome]

I'd hate to have the job of summing up all the ideas in this thread.

[HoneyBadger]

I'm really proud of this thread. It's one of the longest ever on this forum, and so many people have come up with so many really great ideas, as well as insights into the inner workings of Dominions and especially enthusiasm for the continuation of the series.

And that was really the point of the thread in the first place-to show Johan and Kristoffer how thrilled we are with what they've done, and how much we want more and better of the same

[Cor2]

I have more wishes:

Researchers should be allowed to research for gold, instead of magic. THis would be mostly useful when there is notghing else to research. The conversion could be very high to prevent abuse like 20 research = 1 gold or something. I dont liek end of game when you have built this massive research machine and then you have a thousand nearly worthless mages with nothing to do, this would help, maybe.


2.I suggest a "volunteer badge" for units that you get in special events. I think most of us hate those hordes of militia. THe volunteer badge would give a bonus to morale of 1-3 making them less likely to break. It makes sence in rpg terms, they want to be there, they want to fight for their god, but they have a 9 morale? this would also make flaggies better as well.

[YuanShi]

Better unit graphics.

Grass and other improvements on the background where unecessary.

The units are still fuzzy, the general form is OK, but they look real bad and not in tune with the background.

A good idea (IMO) would be trying to make the untis and background like medieval paintings or miniature, thus reducing the amount of necessary colors.

The battlefield is also way too big, much more than needed. Reducing it would save resources that could be used rendering visually more appaling units.

[llamabeast]

The problem is not rendering time. Each unit is hand-drawn, pixel by pixel. It's an incredible set of largely great quality pixel art. Just 'improving the graphics' isn't really an option, redoing the sprites in a higher resolution would take months of artist time. It's not really like they have the team size to do it.