Moving Through Multiple Provinces

[lch]

Originally Posted by licker

Asked and answered... seriously with the tinyist amount of intelligence built into the system none of the so far proposed issues (other than the potential bugs, which are of a different nature) are even possible.

If the chain is broken the move order is canceled, and the commander is defaulted to defend. This works for monthly rituals, if there are not enough gems (or targets) the commander is reset to defend.

Is the whole move order canceled as soon as one of the provinces in the path are no longer passable without trouble? Because if that's the case, then it might be hardly usable in some games, as you'll end up reacting to how the map looks around the battlefront all the time. If you only stop until it directly poses a problem, not in some turns later, you'll have the unwanted effect that your reinforcement armies may run into the hands of your powerful enemy without you knowing. I always hated Wesnoth for that. You set a unit to auto-move somewhere. On the beginning of your turn, new enemies are spotted in front of the Shroud of Darkness. But your lone units still happily end their movement one hex in front of the enemy, as long as that enemy doesn't block their path they're trying to move through, even if that gives an abysmal defense bonus. And in Wesnoth it is extremely important to have a good defense modifier, as is hitting first.

As I said, the feature request would definitely be "nice to have". But given the problems, and that in development feature requests are considered last concerning implementation, I can hardly see it appear in the future.

[Gandalf Parker]

To add to KO's reference to passed orders..
For many things the game does not keep track of units by nation. It tracks them by ID number. The commander you create is "in line" with other peoples commanders and the AIs and the Independents. This has popped up before where a commanders was taken out by spell or event but their actions were passed down to the unit next in queue. It was mostly caught and fixed during beta-group testing but it did hold things up sometimes. It is not simple since much of the game is not modular.

Also, when discussing present waypoint code, keep in mind that this game was created on an Atari long ago and the base code is mostly converted code. Those of you with coding backgrounds saying that waypoints are easy might realize what a bear it is to insert new code routines into ancient spaghetti and cross-platform converted code. I have no idea how much of the game is that way but since we are talking about some of the first portions of the game to be written Im thinking this might be part of the problem. Building on such pre-packaged algorithms was waypoints is much easier than inserting them later. Johan is an excellent programmer but seeing this game develop from infancy to now I suspect that answers of "its not that simple" is probably realistic and cannot be easily compared to other programming projects.

I am hopeful that the new project might have waypoint code in it along with some of the other desires we had that we didnt get because it would involve rewriting the game from scratch.

[licker]

I would break the move command as soon as any province from the chain is missing.

clearly you still need to be aware of the situation, and not blindly leave your armies on some automarch which no longer makes sense due to other conditions, but that in no way makes haveing the option to set an automarch a bad idea, just one you don't want to use blindly.

Then again what do you do blindly in Dom3?

Probably not much, so you may decide to never use it, others may decide it helps them cut down on the micro, others may use it, and get screwed by it by not reacting to changes, but honestly, those in the latter group are screwed anyway if they aren't paying attention.

Might as well complain about forgetting to set some scripts to mages or units because you didn't realize they were going to get attacked.

There's always lots of little things you should do when you have a big nation to manage, makeing some of those little things less tedious is a good thing, getting rid of those little things would be ideal, but probably not in the realm of play style for dom3.

I'm channeling MoO3 there, but that's a different game design concept entirely. Though it could work in a dom type setting/game. Think Majesty or RotK if you prefer those, but basically one leader setting policy, but not actually dirtying their hands with the nitty gritty.

Sure the nitty gritty appeals to some people, and that's fine, I'm talking about completely different games, though I see the advantages in empolying some of those game mechanics to all TBSs which suffer from mid to late game micro management hell.

[SlipperyJim]

Originally Posted by licker

There's always lots of little things you should do when you have a big nation to manage, makeing some of those little things less tedious is a good thing, getting rid of those little things would be ideal, but probably not in the realm of play style for dom3.

I'm channeling MoO3 there, but that's a different game design concept entirely. Though it could work in a dom type setting/game. Think Majesty or RotK if you prefer those, but basically one leader setting policy, but not actually dirtying their hands with the nitty gritty.

Sure the nitty gritty appeals to some people, and that's fine, I'm talking about completely different games, though I see the advantages in empolying some of those game mechanics to all TBSs which suffer from mid to late game micro management hell.

Ever played the original Dominions? Dominions: Priests, Prophets, and Pretenders ... aka Dom:PPP?

No re-usable commander scripts. No automated site searching. No monthly spell-casting commands. No automated pooling of gems and blood slaves.

I feel like one of those cranky old men who's always telling the kids, "When I was your age, we had to WALK to school! Uphill! Both ways! In nine feet of snow!"

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is this: Dominions 3 has seriously reduced the amount of micromanagement that we used to have. Can they go farther? Sure, there's always going to be room for improvement. But they've come a long way.

[licker]

Originally Posted by SlipperyJim

Ever played the original Dominions? Dominions: Priests, Prophets, and Pretenders ... aka Dom:PPP?

No re-usable commander scripts. No automated site searching. No monthly spell-casting commands. No automated pooling of gems and blood slaves.

I feel like one of those cranky old men who's always telling the kids, "When I was your age, we had to WALK to school! Uphill! Both ways! In nine feet of snow!"

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is this: Dominions 3 has seriously reduced the amount of micromanagement that we used to have. Can they go farther? Sure, there's always going to be room for improvement. But they've come a long way.

Actually, yes I did, and I held off on Dom3 for a couple of years because I simply felt the micromanagement still had not been addressed enough. I finally caved in a year ago or so because I had extra money, and wanted to support the franchise anyway, but there are still issues.

Frankly my feeling is at this point there is not really much need for massive amounts of new content in a new Dom game. There is a pressing need to clean up the UI further, fix some of these persistent micro issues, and actually make the SP game meaningful.

I understand that these things are simply not priorities, nor are they 'fun' to work on, but meh, dom will always remain in the little niche it's carved out because the overall polish is so poor.

I can live with it, most people in the community can live with it, so it may just never happen, Illwinter is a small team with limited resources. They do the best they can, and they do what keeps them interested in continuing the game. There's nothing wrong with that, just as there's nothing wrong with fans making requests, no matter how unlikely they are to actually be incorporated.

[MaxWilson]

By the time your empire is big enough for logistics to become onerous, it's probably better to build troops in "factories" on the back lines and Gateway/Stygian Paths/Forest Trod them to the front lines. (Or else just build troops in front-line castles.) If you have cap-only mages that you need to shuffle to the front lines, they are probably too scarce and valuable for you to let an AI handle their transit anyway.

-Max

[licker]

Originally Posted by MaxWilson

By the time your empire is big enough for logistics to become onerous, it's probably better to build troops in "factories" on the back lines and Gateway/Stygian Paths/Forest Trod them to the front lines. (Or else just build troops in front-line castles.) If you have cap-only mages that you need to shuffle to the front lines, they are probably too scarce and valuable for you to let an AI handle their transit anyway.

-Max

This is an entirely personal opinion.

As far as I'm concerned the logistic become onerous as soon as I have capitol only troops which need to go somewhere further than I can move them in one turn. This likely happens before turn 25 in most games.

Yes yes, I can and do accept it, and deal with it, but meh, I'd just as soon not have to bother with the extra routine crap, since there's already enough of that in the game.

I also dislike not being able to set up a repeating forging order, and I dislike the way tactics are scripted, and units are generally moved around to commanders.

I get that the code base is apparently old and cranky, but I don't see that as an excuse.

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally Posted by licker

I get that the code base is apparently old and cranky, but I don't see that as an excuse.

That wasnt the excuse. The excuse was that it would be no fun. The devs only do it for fun and no one here is fixing that.

The reference to the code base being old and cranky was only an explanation vs any reference to the idea that it might be a quick and easy fix because its already been done and the code for it is readily available. Quick and easy changes we might be able to get. Fun additions we might be able to get (particularly if they are flavor vs coding). But since the devs have already moved on to another project then any heavy changes are unlikely and most efforts to motivate tend to be way off course (if not downright anti-motivating).

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by licker

This is an entirely personal opinion.

Why, yes. Yes it is.

-Max

[licker]

Originally Posted by MaxWilson

Why, yes. Yes it is.

-Max

Then you shouldn't have said 'your empire' should you?