Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

IMO graphics in the unit description should not be based on the battle graphics. They should be 2D illustrations.
People creating mods could draw them or scan history books, fantasy comics or movie pictures to add to their unit description.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

So a new player must then learn to recognize and identify two different pics for each and every unit? :-/ I think that the battlefield view is already difficult enough to understand for my taste: There are some creatures one might encounter as enemies pretty rarely. So if I see something new on the battlefield (you have to be watchful for those too!) I right-click them. Now I do not want to write down or memorize everything about each unit, but seeing the battefield picture displayed with the description actually helps to recall a unit's quailities if I encounter them again later on...

My wish: Include the Battlefield Spell-Animation within the Spell Description for each battlefield spell!

It is sometimes difficult to identify the spells cast for less frequently used spells without looking closely inspecting the written info on the upper left of the battlefield view. However, this written info is not very comfortable in battles with a lot of spellcasters of the same type doing different things or when combined with 'f'ast forward. Or spells cast by items in the beginning of a battle do not even have such a description (In fact, it puzzled me for quite some time until I understood the animations displayed by bearers of StaffOfStorm or wearers of CopperPlate Armor were caused by the items, since I rarely cast ChargeBody or Storm manually).


So I would like it if the right-click spell information window would feature a sage casting the the spell over and over again. Or maybe the missile icon for evocations...

Re: NEW MAGIC SITES
 

If you are going to come up with new ideas the least you can do is keep them as realistic as possible. A commander would keep his army away from a volcano. The most realistic effect of an active volcano is to have it have a chance in reducing population in the province or lowering the resources and supplies; creating unrest...

Edit: With the restrictions of realism you have freedom: There could be a spell/special event to create volcanos in a province having good and bad effects. Fire gem production but destroying the province (or maybe even NO fire gem production). Super massive volcano spell could be a global enchantment to reduce supplies, create unrest, and lower population. This is realistic for a volcano.

Re: NEW MAGIC SITES
 

DUH !
The point of this magic site is the income of FIRE GEMS which is realistic with a source like a volcano. And it's obviously realistic for units risk being damaged in the same province as an active volcano.
My example of a volcano adds a magic site which brings danger as well as valuable gems the same as a few other magic sites which spread disease yet give gems.

This could also be added as part of the volcano magic site... but the more details for a magic site the more difficult it will be for the developers. Thus I left my description more simple.

Re: NEW MAGIC SITES
 

How about giving one nation the ability to take over enemy temples?
Just like the 100 gold temples, you could have a nation that can use enemy temples as well as ordinary temples, that could be quite interesting for a little flavor.

I want more toys!!!
 

Searching commanders should have an extra chance (maybe modified by the current luck scale) to uncover a magical trinket in addition to the searched sites:

I do like magical trinkets, but it is hardly worth the gems and mage time to forge them! Furthermore, I love it to find magical items after a battle! Anything that I can get is fine - it just appeals to my primordial greed to seize something as my prize for winning a painful, bloody battle! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif However, my enemies rarely field any item-wielding commanders besides SCs. So why not making low-level items more abundant by such a mechanism? Adding such a mechanism would also increase the luck scale's usefulness (especially if there would be more cursed magical trinket to be found besides the odd slave collar, hehe!).

However, I would oppose the idea that a search and a high luck scale could produce anything better than a lesser magical item or even extra gold/gems in order to avoid an exploit of the luck scale by heavily searching and re-searching...

Re: I want more toys!!!
 

The Slave Collar should reduce your normal leadership to zero. AFAICT, that would make your leader keep fighting after the rest of the troops ran off.

-Frank

It\'s the end of the world, and I feel fine...
 

It might be amusing to add a few more "end of the world"-type globals... for instance,

Rain of Jaguars; as in jaguars falling from the sky. Mictlan. Stat bonuses to Jaguar Warriors, werejaguars; unrest increasing worldwide; tiny chance of jaguars attacking commanders and their bodyguards.

Fate's Fury; all new units, either summoned or recruited, have a chance of being cursed and/or horror-marked. Global 1-pt shift towards Misfortune and Turmoil would be thematic, but probably overdoing it...

Re: It\'s the end of the world, and I feel fine...
 

How about a new spell that can be used in combat that dispels all enemy enchantments?

Re: It\'s the end of the world, and I feel fine...
 

I'd like to be able to see the upkeep cost for units. Instead of hunting down their purchase price and dividing by 16 or 32.

On the subject of upkeep. How about allowing certain units to have more or less upkeep than the standards rules.

As example a king midas national hero who contributes 10 gold a turn and has midas touch attack, resist or be turned into gold.

A humble suggestion or 3
 

A few things on my wishlist, some of which I'd bet would be ridiculously unpopular but, of course, they're my wishes.

Nation-based items

These would come in two flavors. Items that can be produced in great numbers but only available to one nation (gainable through trade and battle by others) and items that every nation can make but can only make 1. This way, you can gain more than 1 of these items but only through trade or battle.

Items of the first type would be like "abysian longswords" or "Ulmian necklace" which provides element resistences.

Items of the second type would be gem-producing items. My wish (and I'm sure that's all it will remain) is that gem-producing items be more expensive but produce more. I think that it'd be better for something like a clam to cost 100 pearls and produce 20-40 a turn and be semi-unique (1 per nation) than making commanders for sole purpose of producing gems. If all a commander is doing is being an item wearer it seems to me he's not really much of a commander, but that's really fore a whole different thread. Anyways, I think these big items would add to gameplay considerably without gem-producing getting out of hand.

The return of aim/target mage

This was mentioned much earlier in this thread and I wanted to come at it again. I think that this could be implemented a lot more safely. Perhaps the bodyguard could be increased in size for battle purposes, or perhaps the bodyguard could share in the effects of protection spells the caster casts initially.

To my mind, spellcasters should be powerful but troops should be a major checking force. If you want your mage to get off those nasty spells, they need to cast some protective spells and be guarded. Weakness of body has classically been a mage's balancing factor and I think that it needs to be maintained. It doesn't seem right that I can't target directly the beings which are completely destroying my forces. If protective spells need to be increased in effectiveness to compensate, then fine by me, but spellcasters in battle need this check IMO.

Make trinkets and lesser magic items cheaper and/or produced in numbers

Make the cheap weapon + armor items something like 1-2 gems or be able to make 3-5 of the item if it costs 5 gems. This way you can outfit mediocre commanders with mediocre eq to make them decent commanders, but for minimal gem cost.
I'd actually prefer the second system of being able to produce several of the trinket in one turn, else the cost of wasting a forgers time for a 1-2 gem trinket would be too costly.

Spells that take multiple turns to cast

Whether you add spells of this nature in or make some existing spells like this, I think this would be a good addition. If you have a spy in the province with a mage who's doing this, you get a chance to see if he begins, and then you can take action with spells or assassinations. Of course, assassination would be easier on a mage who's using all his energies on a large spell...

Chance for scouts to not reveal nation or reveal faulty nation

This is one of my favorite wishes. Give scouts a chance to not reveal their nation if they're found out. Then perhaps special national scout units can reveal faulty allegience, or another variety of scout would be one with only a mediocre stealth but NEVER reveals his nation. Looking at the unit in battle would help the player somewhat, but it wouldn't be a sure bet. I think it would add to the political flare to the game in MP.

More items and spells that strengthen troops

Heading says it all, though more healer mages would be cool as well.

Famous Troop Bonuses

This one is pretty far-fetched and would seem hard to implement. If you could get the ability to lock a group units so that they could not be separated from each other, then they could gain notoriety as a group, leading to these bonuses. You wouldn't be able add units to this squad but if the squad got famous they'd have a chance (maybe an order?) to attract followers (of a similar make and model of the units inside) to replenish the units numbers. Pretty far-fetched idea, but would be very neat to my mind.

Improving Artificial Intelligence
 

A game feature which always seems in great demand for TBS games is smart computer opponents. Very often we see computer opponents develop predictable patterns and/or little strategy. I've listed some suggestions below to make the Artificial Intelligence more challenging for Dominions_3. I've listed some of the more important ones below.

1) Don't make computer opponents send their pretenders into the death match. Any human player knows this is never a good idea.

2) Allow some type of alteration/adjustments for AI via scripts or editor. Then 6 months after the release there's bound to be two or three challenging/different AI.

3) Don't make computer opponents suffer from starvation when they're not even aware of the danger. It's sad to see their huge armies quickly flee because of starving units.

4) Don't have computer opponents purchase the super weak "militia". Anyone who has played more than 3 games would not purchase these units in mass numbers... so please adjust the choices it makes for purchasing units.

5) Verify the computer opponents will consider casting all types of spells which become available via research. Currently they don't cast some of the more powerful spells such as Flames_from_the_Sky, Elemental Kings/Queens, DemonLords, GhostRiders, etc,.

6) Guide them to use mages in searching for magic sites and researching. Even with an Impossible setting within Dominions_2 I always toast the computer opponents on researching and magic sites. Perhaps some on/off option for allowing all computer opponents to start with research finished for all paths at X level... then the player could move the X variable from 1 to 9 accordingly for a different game experience.

7) Provide the computer opponents some long-term wisdom by focusing on human players when one or more human players become the overall strongest on the map. It's sad watching two dying computer opponents kick and spit at each other while the powerful human player swallows them.

Re: A humble suggestion or 3
 

I like most of your ideas, but I dislike the above cited suggestion of yours as much as I dislike clamming. I've found EarthBloodStones and Clams to be very helpful to equip on my battle mages in order to reduce micromanaging their supplies via scout ferries. Taking them away would make things awakward again!

The mechanism to limit the number of times certain powerful spells can be cast by a mage with gems in addition to fatigue is pretty convincing to me!

My suggestion against Micromanagement(tm):
However, maybe one could allow mages to order their gems automatically by mail or magic pigeons: You choose a standard gem pouch for each mage and a priority (a two digit number). As soon as a mage's gem pouch is depleted, he orders new gems from the nearest laboratory, provided that there are gems available after higher-priority mages have been served first. The pigeons delivering the gems might take a turn or two depending on research levels - or preferably depending on the distance to the nearest lab (instant if colocated).

To avoid total gem depletion, the lab gem overview screen should show a second column (like the gem transfer column showing two commanders in the existing game), and only one of the columns is used to serving mages via magic pigeon mail order. Maybe adding a priority number for each type saying that only mages with high enough priority are getting served would suffice as well to prevent the gem stock being depleted by greedy mage tramps...

Re: A humble suggestion or 3
 

My idea would be a special forgeable pouch that is eqipped at the same slot clams occupy and is refilled with magic gems at the rate of one/turn (or more, for more powerful pouches).
The thing is, you can't take the gems out of the pouch and into the lab, so it can only be used as a way to increase a mage's power in combat with gems.

Re: A humble suggestion or 3
 

Chazar --

Definitely agree. I'd like to see some form of memory wrt gem expenditure / replenishment.

I'd also like to see less micro involving blood slave harvesting -- e.g. any blood slaves harvested go into the pool, unless the harvester has actually expended them and still neds replacement or there's no lab.

Re: A humble suggestion or 3
 

The problem with this order is that what it actually accomplishes is to make a staff of storms required for any group of mages.

Re: A humble suggestion or 3
 

While this may be true in Dom2, this need not be true in Dom3. A buffing of anti-arrow spells mages have access to might help, as well as other changes, perhaps allowing bodyguards to soak up arrow damage.

The removal of this order removes a valuable check on powerful units like mages. This is one reason I think national and "mundane" troops are at such a disadvantage (and why you often see armies with little or no mundane units at all). They can't be ordered to be effective, and thus can't be effective.

I lost my taste for Dom2 multiplayer because games were ALL about mages and summons and whatnot. There was no focus at all on mundane units, which I think is a shame. It's an aspect of the game I'd love to see get played up a bit more in Dom3, so I think that in order for mundane units to be worthwhile, the user needs more control over them than they currently have.

Re: A humble suggestion or 3
 

That's why I'd love to see an option to limit magical research, a la the demo : If you limit research to 2 or 3, national troops are pretty much the main focus of the game. Limit it to 4-6, the troops are important but not necessarily the only option. Best of all, it'd require minimal coding effort ( especially since it's already been done for the demo) and doesn't get into the complication of mods.

( Such as players not having the right version, mods not being uploadable to mosehansen, mod vs mod conflicts, etc. ) I believe someone actually did a mod that facilitated removing all the spells and constructed items, but I think it had to be editted to get the exact level of magicality desired, and then distributed to all players.

Re: A humble suggestion or 3
 

This is an issue with money giving sites.

Currently money giving sites(like gold mines) are affected by taxes, unrest and population.

The problem is most noticeable with carrion woods where you have a low population killing dominion. You get the situation where you get no money from money giving sites when a couple of hundred people are still living in the province, but when you pillage to kill those last people off you can suddenly put taxes to 200% without a problem and get 100% of income from money giving sites. It's kinda unlogical.

I'd prefer it if money giving sites worked independently of other factors.

Re: A humble suggestion or 3
 

Actually, these are two mods to do that, but you can merge them without any problem. They are SC's Null Spell mod and my own Null Item mod; paste all the contents of one of these mods into the other, and remove everything with a research value higher than what you need (Find and Replace all in a text editor). It will, of course, conflict with any other mod changing spells and items, most notably Zen's Balance mods... unless you feel like converting Zen mods in the Null mods format.

On another note about money sites and no population: maximal unrest from taxes is equal to population/10 or 500, whichever is lower, so you can set the taxes to 200% if you only have 200 population or so. That will kill them faster, and will not lower your income. However, 200% taxes does not mean 200% of the site income, oddly enough: the actual figure seems to vary, but I don't know why it is so.

Re: A humble suggestion or 3
 

200% taxes will give around the listed income on the site. 100% will give around half.

Re: A humble suggestion or 3
 

Silly me, the differences I had noticed were simply linked to the scales (Ermor doesn't exactly have scales that increase gold production).

Re: More ideas
 

Please do NOT implement this.

1. It's incredibly annoying. The save directory should be visible, and should be in the same directory as the game. If you are on a genuine multi-user system, you could specify "personal savegame dirs" as an installation option.

2. It's inconsistent with the behaviour of the MS-Windows version. Both should behave the same way. (It could be possible for the MS version to put savegames in /My Documents/Dom3saves or similar, if personal save dirs is chosen.)

CC

Re: Swamp Castle
 

I'm not at all sure that having Dom3 beta tested by exactly the same people who tested Dom2 is a good idea. Yes, you want some of the same people, who have expert and in-depth knowledge of Dom2, who can really try to break it and find its weak points. You also, I would think, want some total newbies who have NOT played Dom2 (or hardly at all), but who are otherwise gamers and who can give you a fresh view of the product.

Sadly I don't fall into either category. Ho hum.

CC

Re: Summary wishlist
 

Well, it's about 27 pages since I first contributed my wishes to this thread, and reading everybody else's has given me a pretty good idea of what's important to me. I'll try not to go on too long - it seems to me that there are only three really important principles here:

1. Information, in as few clicks as possible. So make the main map screen show terrain types, site search status, age of latest intel etc., with no more than one click. Ditto for wounds, experience, items, food status, waypoints on units. Battle reports should name dead commanders and list exact numbers of unit types killed. Basically, my view is that if you need to implement the "post-it" note system that some have suggested, then you haven't provided enough paths to information. I shouldn't have to make a manual note on the map that there is a library here or a bunch of indie knights there, I should be able to see this in a pop-up or with a single click. Perhaps map overlays are the answer.

2. Flexibility - never underestimate the diversity of the user population. Some love randomness, some hate it. Some love precision/exposure of formulae, some hate it, etc. Try to make as many settings as possible configurable and/or moddable, yet without cluttering the setup screens. A single master config screen (the current Game Settings) is enough, with some possible additions in this thread (turning off mercs etc.) and the rest configurable in text files, for AI modding or themed games etc. For example, I would like to be able to specify which theme the AI plays when it plays a certain nation. I'd also like better scripting features - I accept the argument for limiting the amount of scripting, but stuff like spells not to cast, gems not to use, conditional retreats etc. Also more variety in victory conditions - multiple VCs, cumulative VCs etc.

3. Micromanagement, reduction of. In a game of such vast possibilities you can never get this exactly right, but lots of the suggestions here are helpful - shortcuts for cycling through types of commanders, tax management, gem management, research, forging, group movement etc. Someone's idea of virtual taskforces (ie. a user-chosen set of commanders who need not be in the same province and can be given orders as a group) would be really helpful in long games.

The combination of these means reworking the F1 display and the army screen to show items/wounds/etc. without having to click down into individual units. Some people will want to see provinces listed by income, others by garrison size or army size, others by type of castle., others by spells paths or holy levels etc. etc. This is what I mean about the combination of info and flexibility - every info screen must have plenty of different ways of being formatted/presented. User-programmable tax heuristics are a must - please DON'T create an auto-tax function that follows an unchangeable formula. Ditto forging orders, ritual spells and other repeatables.

Anyway, all this is effectively about improving the Dom2 interface and assumes that Dom3 will be at least similar. I've not said much about actual content changes, largely because I think Dom2 is so fantastically rich that I will repeat my plea not to have yet more of everything just for the hell of it. I particularly and vehemently disagree with Dr Wotsit who did the big summary a while back and wanted 10x as much of everything or Kristoffer's head on a plate ... as any experience of roguelikes will tell you, more stuff leads inexorably to more junk, and the debates about light cavalry and other national units will tell you we don't want more junk. Some more types of helms & boots would be good though, there are so few compared with weapons & miscs.

In spite of that, there are some content suggestions I really like: more building options, specifically taking castles out of pretender design and having them race- and terrain-related - hey, and how about path-related - buildings only buildable by a mage with specific paths ...
er, where was I ... balancing SCs by changing the routing rules so that they can use troops and not have to go in alone, introducing more anti-buffs etc. I also really like the suggestion of moving from whole-race-knows-all-researched-spells to individual spell learning, so you can focus mages on specific suites of spells for different types of battles or for other purposes (blood hunting, forging, castling, etc.). There would obviously need to be some interplay between the two, for global enchantments etc. This would need quite a lot of thought. As would Saber Cherry's decimalisation suggestion, but I like that too.

Finally, one big and potentially quite simple improvement for the AI: basic diplomacy. Currently you can specify alliances for the AI in the map file at the start of the game, but you can't change them, right? Well, if the AI could be coded to make simple strategic decisions on war/non-aggression/alliance with other races it would make SP immediately a lot more interesting. In an MP game people naturally ally against a leading player (esp. if graphs are on), but the AIs never do, even when there are two of them left and I control 90% of the map. I know it would be quite a lot more hassle to introduce human-AI diplomacy, but surely it wouldn't be too much to have the AI make (and break) alliances with each other. It would be particularly neat if your scouts could find this out ...

Ho hum. Back to work. Well, back to thinking about my next turn ...

CC

Re: Summary wishlist
 

I remember wanting these to Dom II and I'd be thrilled to see them in Dom III:

- Map that changes with the dominions. I really loved the "ugly pixel" maps of Dom I. It was thrilling to see small white-blue and green dots appear in provinces under my dominion...

- Dominion displayed in diffrent shades of white if you want to ala Dom I. I have hard time paying attention to those candles in Dom II.

- Populations ala MOM and MOO 2...

- Diplomacy!

- Magic sites displayed on the map (like in some current maps) if known.

- Neat special effects popping on provinces when they are hit by a spell. Magic sites on map and huge bursts of energy when some bigger spell was cast were the two best things in AOW 2... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

- I also wish that IW doesn't ignore the changes done in some of the popular mods (Conceptual Balance, Recruitable Rebalance). From the time I spent with HOI I learned that the very popular mods (CORE, SR) we're somekind of a vox populis, a less hinting suggestion about what is wrong in the game...

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

One thing I think would add a lot to Dominions 3, and yes, it's greater variety. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif A few more terrain types, special terrains if you will, to allow greater diversity and tactical/strategic nuances in maps.

True "Port" provinces, which would allow sailing to other ports but would not be usable by fliers. (This might also be done via a new type of neighbor command.) Reason for this : currently maps which attempt to implement ports are abusable via flyers, a la Cradle of Dominion. In addition, I think strategic movement should both begin and end in a port - ie, cavalry can't move across a sea and extra provinces beyond.

Chokepoint provinces : land provinces that can't be bypassed / flown over.

Portals : to allow movement to another portal, but without the provinces being considered neighbors for purposes of scouting, dominion, castle admin, etc. These could be two-way or one-way, and require a troop to at least begin movement on the portal province.

Another variation on "neighbors", to indicate provinces which aquatic / amphibian troops can cross between, but which non-amphibians can not. This would solve some issues with maps using rivers/bays/lakes as barriers between provinces, where logically amphibians should be able to go across. (Also possibly for flyers to cross - a half-mile wide river might be a near-complete barrier to infantry and ground troops, but not to flying troops.)

I'm sure there are other possibilities others can think of, but these would really add a lot to facilitate the ingenuity of the Dominions community's mapmakers.

Re: A humble suggestion or 3
 

I agree with FM here. I think what it actually accomplishes is having to put some thought into protecting mages. You might need to provide bodyguards. You might need to forge them some basic armor. You might need a force of archers set to attack flyers. A Staff of Storms is an all-purpose solution, but its not the only solution, and it must be remembered that the Staff cuts both ways.

As it stands now, mages can cast until they pass out in perfect security, knowing that they will never be targeted by anything. Ever.

Re: A humble suggestion or 3
 

Would Fire Rear be enough? That can't be interecepted by simple units, and most battle spells' range is low enough to put the mages to danger of atleast some conventional missiles...

I think there should be more possibilities of actually attack enemy armies' back/rear, but don't think Attack Magic Users or Fire Magic Users commands need to come back.

Re: A humble suggestion or 3
 

I would also fancy seeing stuff from Conquest of Elysium, namely the Dopplegangers and out of player control summonables/crusades.

Re: A humble suggestion or 3
 

Some ideas :
- Introducing basic diplomacy would be nice (OK, It has certainly already been said, but this is how I see it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif ). Peace, alliances (maybe allied victories), the possibility to offer units to another pretender (same way as gold and crystals- of course it's possible to refuse). And the possibility to cross allied provinces.

- Possibility to move the capitol city to recruit capitol only units nearer to the front (for example). Of course, it shouldn't be free, it should have a high gold cost, and maybe require the presence of the pretender working at it for some turns in the new capitol (or the prophet).

- Heat/cold should modify units characteristics instead of being an economic factor. Or maybe both. A bit like cold blooded units, units from a race liking cold should be very disadvantaged in hot provinces. Temperate units should have smaller characteristics reductions in cold/hot provinces. Don't know if morale, strength, hps or something else should be affected, but you get the idea http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif .

And I like magnate's idea to have magically summoned buildings. It should replace the non-existing city improvements and province enchantments and be managed in the magic sites lists. One commander could destroy them. I.E. : death magic would allow an assassins guild (permitting to recruit assassins), fire should permit a volcano (increasing hotness), etc...

Re: A humble suggestion or 3
 

Magically summoned buildings are kinda against the spirit of the game, since they reward ultra-defensive play. Mind you, so do gem-generating items, which the developers seem to tolerate.

A small wish: Change the way libraries work. They're just too useful at the present.

Re: A humble suggestion or 3
 

I completely agree with Sandman... libraries are way too powerful.

An ideal fix for this and many many other issues would be an advanced options menu where the host could enable/disable specific game features.

EXAMPLE:

Advanced Options Menu:

Enable/Disable Items/Artifacts
Enable/Disable Magic Spells
Enable/Disable Magic Sites
Enable/Disable Building Types (labs, temples, forts, etc.)
Enable/Disable Commanders/Units
Enable/Disable Province Population Types

Here gamers can enable/disable one or more from each category.

** THUS far fewer complaints/issues about some spell or item or mass castle building because the gamers and host can decide before they start **

--- another idea is maybe making these options available as commands within the .map file so map makers will be able to create more unique worlds and different experiences. ---

Re: A humble suggestion or 3
 

1) A full fledged (as in I-don't-want-to-type-page-loads-of-code-&-commands), graphic interfaced editor...

- for units (sprite libraries topick from)
- for items (same + all properties)
- for nations (sprite lib. again - symbols/colors/shiels)
- for the map (the actual way of modding maps is extremely clumsy)

2) Diplomatic options (competing pretenders need to form stratgic alliances at times - even if only temporarily)

3) Management options (more specialized building with various funtions)

4) More control on the advancement/upgrading options of units/leaders (now they just increase without the player having any control over the process)

5) Built-in save/load command !


Basically check out other games on the market and don't be shy about borrowing whatever neat options those others have. It would only improve an already very addictive game.



G.

Re: A humble suggestion or 3
 

I know, but I'm a camper who has always played the few strat games he got ultra-defensively. I just tried http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif .

More random stuff:
 

Some new afflictions:

Parasite: Causes -2 strength, +2 encumbrance and 10% less hit-points. Strongly associated with ocean and swamp provinces.

Disfigurement: 50% leadership penalty, and -2 precision. Nasty on commanders, not so much on soldiers.

Frostbite: -1 attack, defense, move and strength. Similar to limp, but it can stack with it for extra misery. Strongly associated with cold provinces and frost spells.

Horrific burns: -3 protection, -1 attack. Caused by fire and acid spells.

Re: More random stuff:
 

What about "dynamic" magic sites:

e.g. when you make construction spells in one prov all the time, you get there a construction 20 bonus - Site after a timr...

or after a big fight(something like battlefield), or when a pretender dies.

Re: More random stuff:
 

I like the fire/cold dependent afflictions! Disfigurement might not be as serious in Dominions where a blck hawk or a super intelligent hydra might be their commander the next day.

Re: More random stuff:
 

Magic site descriptions, or at least possibility to make them, would be pretty neat. Magic sites generating random gems would be kinda nice too.

I would also like to see some summons that are double-edged like the demon lords. Perhaps some new demon lords. I'd also like to see more advanced spell modding, ability to alter the summoning spells that summon unique/random creatures and the ability to change spell names. Perhaps a way to make spells, combat or ritual, with random effects defined by the modder. Ability to add new spells would be pretty neat too.

Re: A humble suggestion or 3
 

That's why I think it would be wonderful if it were a command line (or other) option : it could be used with any set of mods to quickly and easily cap the research levels, without the likelihood of introducing errors into the mod files (or winding up with scads of copies of modified mods : one for research 2, one for 4, one for 6, one for 7, etc). Much easier to programmatically cap the research (vis a vis the demo) then to manually edit complex mod files time and again.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I double those suggestions.

I would like to also see some more variety in weapons, like anti-airshield missiles (a 10 Anti-Airshield missile weapon would reduce the airshield effect by 10), weapons that have serious bonuses against riders (Guisarmes, Pikes) or some specific type of creatures. If damage types don't get in then it would be nice to see more armor piercing weapons like the Longbows, Rondels or Mauls.

It would be nice if weapons could have the damage types and perhaps even going so far that you could define if the weapon always does mixed damage or if it does damage type x for x% of the time and the other type for x% of time (An Axe could be 70% Slash and 30% Crush and a Spetum could do Pierce 75% of time and Slash 25% of the time), perhaps even separate damage values for the diffrent attack types like 6 piercing and 2 slashing for the Spetum...

And how about diffrent versions of weapons going by the Eras? In the early era Halberds wouldn't differ all that much from big axes but in later eras they would have the spear-head (piercing damage) and the hook (bonus against riders).

There could also be weapons that would disappear or appear by the eras: Spetums, Partisans, Copper and Stone weapons in the early era while the later era could have things like Ahlspiess or Brandistocks.

Repeling could be improved too and it could use the various modifiers of the weapon like Poisoned or Magical in the attack. Some weapons like Pikes could have a repel bonus. Also, didn't pikeneers often historically carry short swords with them because the pike was next to useless in close combat? Perhaps making pikes and some similar weapons an infantry version of lances?

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

"putting all stats in the form of low integer numbers has numerous drawbacks. To make a helmet with better protection than 1, you have to have protection 2... which is twice as good! Thus, there are only 3 standard helmet types: none, normal, and super-heavy."

I consider this a feature, not a bug.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Well yeah, it's a feature but it could be improved.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I say NO to decimal combat stats and damage types. Going percentage-crazy and introducing explicit scissors-stone-paper arrangements does not make a game more strategic or accurate, it just makes it more random and fiddly.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Yeah, making diffrences other than whether piece of equipment is life draining or not matter and thus getting comments like "Dominions III has the most detailed combat system fantasy game has ever had" from reviewers, making some not-so-used units used and creating a counterweight against magic-strong nations with not very varying troops has always been a bad thing. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v50/Nerfix/ja.gif

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I'd like to have a way to grab all the "will heal" wounded or "permanently crippled" units and move them as a group to another line on the troop screen. I hate picking through all those troops and trying to figure who's worth saving.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I prefer things like troop placement, logistics, terrain, scouting, flexibility and initiative to matter more than having the right 'counter' for something.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I understood the "counterweight against magic-strong nations" as something to give Ulm a better chance of winning, if the player is able to utilize the things you mentioned well enough. How can Ulm win against, say, Arcoscephale, when Ulmish Heavy Infantry can be stopped by Hoplites and Astrologers and Mystics easily overpower Smiths. Even worse, Vine Ogres or even Vinemen can stop those units!

An adequate "counterweight" would, IMHO, be increased number of troop-enchancing spells. AoE Iron Will would help Ulm against magic. Currently, I can only think of Legions of Steel, Strength of Giants, Weapons of Sharpness and Astral/Nature spell granting luck, etherealness, magic resistance, regeneration and more protection+fire suspectibility. Fire spell with AoE 3 Range 10 that gives weak Flaming Weapons (4 ap Fire) would help against anything Ethereal, reinvigoration from Earth (Earth Power) or Nature/Earth combination (Strength of Gaia) with AoE would help living units against undead and construcs, etc.

Some, like that reinvigoration, would also help mages to decimate units more quickly, but these exceptions are not balanced, just ideas.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Yes, it's not like players have to plan any counters now, not especially against magic or supercombatants.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Just for the record, I support making weapons more unique; just not with decimalisation or damage types.

As far as Ulm goes, I'd rather they had a range of different strategies up their sleeve for fighting magically powerful nations, rather than a single counterweight.