What could we steal from other fantasy games...

[JimMorrison]

Couple things-


First, on customizable units, I find this to be one of the most intriguing and interesting facets of a game that allows it. First of all, you would only have a select few chassis to build off of per race, according to what they can make. Second, there is already a robust system of gold/resource costs per equipment. There is the point that this MAY have a complicated imapact on balance..... On the one hand, I don't think there would be a "perfect" gear set, some people would go for plate for high prot, others might go scale or chain for lower enc. But it would allow a bit of tinkering such as if someone prefers mauls on their units, or likes falchions. Where it becomes complicated, is at the point of making a DW unit for a nation that usually doesn't get one, or adding shields on a nation that is supposed to be complicated by their lack thereof. I'd think that if the customization were developed for an eventual Dom4 however, that each gear type could be flagged such that everyone's available gear is different. An example would be that Coral and Meteorite armors would only be available aquatically, and only Ulm could outfit with Blacksteel. By the same token, some nations could be barred from kite shields, some would not use polearms, or perhaps would only have one particular chassis available that was flagged for 2h weapons at all. There are a lot of ways to tweak the system so that it gives people a little bit of flexibility, and the ability to play by their own preferences even when it gives no overt advantage, but still add depth to the gameplay. Also, it might be worthwhile to tie modifications in to Construction research in some way. At least for the magic items like Caelian crafted ice, or Blacksteel, you would need Cons research before you could add those special items to your own designs.


Regarding the item forging, again I think that people aren't looking at the interesting ways that these items could be limited. The first thing that I would do, is limit items to one path period, unless there were a costly and time consuming system for artifact creation. These single path items, could ONLY duplicate effects that you had access to via research. So, they would give a little help to people who went for spells before working on Cons, but their items would only reproduce the effects of spells that they can already cast. For example if you wanted a regen item, you'd have to unlock Personal Regeneration first. As to artifact construction, I think it would take some brainstorming to work out a system that makes it compelling to players, while insuring that the items are no more powerful than artifacts already available, but are significantly more costly to create. Also, adding risks of different kinds to artifact creation, such that an item that needs 50 blood slaves to create, could fail and summon a powerful demon that attacks the forger, or an incredibly powerful astral based item has a chance to leave the forger Lost in Time and Space, that sort of thing.



One other thing that I think could be interesting, would be the ability to create free form mercenary bands. The idea being that you would be able to hire independant mercenaries in a province, beyond your natural resources. The costs would be significant, you would not get to choose your commander type or unit type (though having the units be randomly chosen from what is trainable in the province makes sense), you would get a number of men somewhat relative to the amount you threw down to create the company, but there would be a random factor to it as well, to add the element of risk to it. I think this could be an interesting system for multiplayer, so that people have more options to remain competitive at game start, as well as giving a little more flexibility in how you deal with surprises. Of course, these mercenary bands would have the same 3 month contract, with the ability to renew at the end of the contract.

On the subject of mercenaries, I'd also like to see the mercenary bands that already exist, regenerate their numbers in some way. I mean if they take losses, they still demand the same amount of gold, you would think the excess would be used by the captain to replenish his manpower. They are mercenaries after all, if they're not really exotic like trolls or foulspawn or something, they should be able to hire more men, something like 10% a turn or something, which for most bands would only be 2-3 per month, rather slow but worthwhile if those mercs add something to your nation.



Just some thoughts, feel free to shoot some holes in them. <3

[Saulot]

Some nice ideas floating around.

One that has around 0% of being implemented, but is neat anyway, is the bounty system in Sins of a Solar Empire.

I would suppose one way of doing the dominions version would be a variant on the global Looming Hell, where instead of it targetting armies inside the casting nations dominion, it targets random commanders of target nation, and they get attacked by various indep. assassin units; demonbreds, empoisoners, ninjas, slayers, stalkers, star children, etc.

Each successful attempt subtracted some gold from you. Each unsuccessful attempt subtracted half as much.

[nordlys]

Full-fledged diplomacy in SP, as per MOM/MOO/Civ etc. Alliances, NAPs, trade of gold/gems/items/units/provinces, maybe even spells (that demands a slight change in spell research system, making not all spells per school available at every level but some random percentage of them). Works for MP too, but SP doesn't even have "unofficial" diplomacy.

Multi-turn movement orders via waypoints would be helluva useful too. And queuing (sp?) orders in general, like "move prov 1, move prov 2, cast summon something, move prov 2, move prov 1".

[Aezeal]

I personally don't mind teh diplomacy in SP.. in all other games diplomacty is usually so easy to abuse and the AI so bad at it that as it is in dom 3 is to be preferred really.

[LDiCesare]

Diplomacy and scripted events are definitely what's most needed in my opinion.

[SsSam]

....There are several basic UI improvements that would make the game more accessible to newer players.

The first one that comes to mind is allowing the user to see what you can build in your national capital during pretender construction. Yeah after playing a game with a nation I won't need this, but that doesn't help me when I start. (What paths are available to my mages? what units are sacred? What kind of commanders/scouts do I have? What are my unit's strengths? What are capitol only builds?)

A system to save not only diplomatic messages, but maps and battle images for future reference. This would include messages to self as a reminder of what it was you were intending to do.

An editing system for in game diplomatic messages would be great for those of us who type like foo.

My mage has found a gem producing site by spell X. On a large map I now have to find my way to the nation screen and find the province and then mouse over what that site is. Ordering that province list would be a start. Hypertext from the message list would be even better.

I want to find that province that can produce wind riders....uh oh. Similarly, I want to find the non-castle provinces where I can build scouts. oops.

Simple path finding to move your stack/unit to province 31 would be a great boon, but I understand the objection, it would require some real coding.

[Dragar]

As a new player it is definitely the UI that I think could be improved, it can be very tedious handling a lot of the small things each turn. In turns of content and depth the game is great. Civ IV probably handles a lot of similar issues, if we’re talking about games to steal from. Maybe some better ways around them exist and I just don’t know how yet, but the repetitive tasks I’d love to avoid are:
• Movement – scheduling movement over a number of turns with waypoints, or alternately a pathfinding mechanism. Wouldn’t hurt to have someway of automoving troops recruited in a province to a different province, particularly where the place you are recruiting from is far from the battlefront. I understand there is an issue with commander requirements, but there must be a valid solution to it.
• Repeat build – setting a province to recruit the same units each turn until you change it.
• Repeat forge – as above, would be a great time saver with some of the mass produced items especially.
• Site searching – would love to be able to tell a mage to wander amongst friendly provinces and site search. Or even to assign his movement with waypoints but be able to tell him to search for a turn at each one. Could do the same with site searching spells, the caster casts the specific spell each turn on a province that hasn’t been tested for it before.
• Goto next active unit – I often find I forget to move someone. The difficulty I guess is units that have moved defaulting to Defend, so how would the computer identify active units you want to do something with? I’m sure there is an answer somewhere though
• Battle reports – More detail on the units present and numbers of each type killed, not just overall numbers. Watching every battle is time consuming, having enough summary information would reduce the number we need to watch. Also when capturing a fortress or an assassination fight, no detail is given at all in the sense of a normal battle.

I’m sure there are others – basic theme is to take mundane tasks out of the game to save more time for the interesting stuff! I’m sure it would make multiplayer games faster and more viable too.

One other is with regards to save games. At first I thought it was great not to have a save option, no incentive to cheat a little to go back. That is until I sent my Pretender alone into a fight a couple of hours into a game, not realising that the other commander with the army hadn’t:
- been selected,
- couldn’t fulfil the move but it wasn’t flagged when I click
- picked up all the troops sitting in the province due to a retreat or commander death

Those little mistakes that happen because you aren’t spending a heap of time checking everything can ruin a long game due to the save system. I fully understand having the ability to save as an option only, especially in MP, but I find the level of checking required in a SP game when I’m trying to learn pretty tiring. I want to spend my time making interesting decisions, not micromanaging detail. I can only imagine how much work there is playing larger maps – I’m only on medium so far!
That said, very interesting game with a steep learning curve, which is awesome. I’ve already convinced one other friend to buy so we can MP.