Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

There aren't much of way to make the weapons without decimalization or damage types. There are only so much values the weapons can differ by plus some special effects which are more often than not magical. Maybe if there would be somekind of equipment durability or something... If you have ideas then please do tell us.

Most of the diffrent strategies of nations seem to come from magic.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Well, there are also strategies that work around cheap archers (Marignon's crossbowmen, Man's longbowmen, Machaka's dirt cheap archers...), especially if they can somehow be increased in power with spells (Flaming Arrows, Wind Guide).

As long as supercombatants can easily kill off hundreds of conventional non-undead units, and there is no easy way to get rid of them without more work than is needed to make one, buying national units is not good in the long run. IMO giving more choices to fight SCs is better than nerfing them (lifedrain is good, but only to regain hits/fatique - other items can give either one, not both, but work against undead etc). If there were more ways to overcome ridiculous stats, like cheapish armor-neg. weapon with moderately high attack, armies could have special anti-SC units and thugs.

IMHO, this would make national armies more useable until the lategame where artillery spells come into play, and if there were more armies to survive until that time then all of them couldn't be just blasted away.


What about giving normal units experience faster? Very few units benefit enough from Gift of Reason to make it reasonable to scum for lots of five-star units-made-commanders. This would also make mindless and undead units less useful.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Decimal Combat doesn't in any way help against powerful SCs, nor does it make the game any more or less random. The only thing it does is make it harder to evaluate the differences between items for the human players - especially the new ones.

Now that would make there be "more to discover", which in a way would make the game have more replayability for some people. But honestly, I can't understand how anyone could think that turning some equipment into being +1.1 could be a good thing.

It's exactly the same as multiplying the numbers by 10. That's a dreadful idea on every level.

If you want Ulm to have a chance, you should probably make their troops better (especially with better magic resistance, low MR troops just don't matter in the late game) and give Smiths a random pick.

If you want Lifedraining to be less of a concern, you should probably make it MR dependent. Then you should probably jack up the stats on Lamias and Ghosts, because you just heavily nerfed some standard sorcery-driven troops that weren't especially broken or over-powering.

-Frank

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

As usual, I agree with Frank. Decimalization of combat would be a bad idea, IMHO. The game would merely become less intuitive, for little or no benefit. I like the "board game" feel the game already has.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I'd like it if units with healing/regeneration spells would use them outside of combat to heal accompagnying units.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Defining stats on decimal level would, in effect, add more possible values of stats to the game. It would allow units to have better stats and also allow smaller differences. The overall effect would be a difference of about two points in any and possibly all stats of any two items or units, in maximum. Looking at it from that direction, it is too little to have a big enough difference.

However, I can't think of anything else that would make Ulm better without making it magically more powerful/flexible, if we count over-human stats magical. Even reinvigoration would only make Ulmish soldiers last longer, as enemy gets less armor-piercing hits through. Any SCs/mages who can get through their armor (and there are many ways for that) would still kill them just as easily.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I agree with a few of the comments from the anti-decimalization camp.

1) Yes it may make the learning curve for new / casual players a little steeper.

2) Yes I agree it will not help with SCs much, if any, but I would say that's an entirely different issue that could be solved with a minimum hit chance, capping resistances, a minimum fatigue of 1 a round that cannot be regained beyond that level a round no matter what (i.e. 30 fatigue on turn 30 is the minimum a unit can have), or many other reasonable approaches.

3) Also the unmentioned argument that is often forgotten with CPU speeds these days: floating point / decimal calculations are quite expensive compared to their integral counterparts. For older computers this may result in quite the performance hit... even the low graphics environment of Dominions should consider this when battles can take place with thousands of units (and thus require 100000+ floating point calculations)!

However that isn't to say decimal calculations do not have their merits. For example, standard morale for a unit is 10. Many players, however, consider a unit to have elite morale when they have merely 11 and further consider units with 9 morale are quite a bit worse than 10. The same is true for other stats. When dealing with small integers changing even by one step will result in large (in this case 10%) percentage change in overall ability, which often times is more than is desired. Allowing for smaller, more precise steps, would allow more variation amongst units, items, spells, etc.

In fact this problem has been seen in another TBS game - Age of Wonders. In AOW 1, the stats varied as integers between 1 - 10. One of the big complaints was this limited stat range issue. When trying to make an elite defender, for example, a single point increase in the defence is quite significant - a unit with 5 defence is too good but with 4 that unit is no better than the rest of his comrades.

So what was their solution? In Age of Wonders 2 they allowed the stats to vary between 1 - 20 and, in a large way, this problem was resolved. This solution also has the merits of not increasing the computation requirements by not switching to decimal calculations.

With all due respect to Frank Trollman, I would argue that if an increased precision in stats is desirable (and in many cases I would say it is, IMHO) that the solution is in fact to multiply all stats in the game by some number - the easiest being 10. I don't quite understand how this would hurt the game. Say for example, Dom2, was released without any changes save that all stats were multiplied by 10 (and the dice rolls scaled appropriately as well). The game would still be the same, the units still have the same effectiveness, weaknesses, abilities, strengths, etc. The stats would just have a 0 at the end. Therefore it would still be the same great game it is now and would require nothing new be learned... yet it would allow for higher precision changes for the modders should they wish to use it. If you want an increase in morale of 10% go ahead but if you want 5% now, well with this change that's possible too!

Maybe I'm missing something (its quite possible http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif) but at the moment I can't see the drawback save for having to consider larger numbers in my head when thinking about a unit http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

Anyway just my 2 cents.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I think there is enough variation in probabilities without expanding the scale. You are rolling two dice, in most cases the dice are open ended, so you can get vary large variation without going to a larger scale. I don't see how the present system is broken.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I had one idea about making hammers and similar weapons derive more benefit from strength than standard weapons... sort of the inverse of non-strength added weapons.

As for decimalisation, I really don't get this idea that it makes things more 'precise' - the numbers are more or less arbitary anyway. Or is there a compelling argument as to why broadswords should be 5.7 damage, 0.2 attack, 1.1 defence and 1.8 length?

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

My three suggestions have to do with gameplay and micromanagement.

The first is the addition of a "skirmishing" command for Cavalry to make it more fun and useful in battle.

The second is a series of micromanagement helpers:
1) Allow us to sort our provinces by any measure on the Empire Overview screen.

2) Have a little icon on the map which shows up when a given province is currently in the process of constructing units (so I know I don't have to go back there and tell it what to do).

3) One of my hotkeys should bring up the spaces with Fortresses in them because that's where I do most of my work. Realistically, sorting my spaces by Resources would probably solve this one.

4) Give me a message when my mercenaries' contracts are about to come up so I remember to rebid.

5) When I'm in a hotkey screen, leave the hotkeys still active so I can switch around quickly and easily.

These little changes will help the micromanagement a lot.

My third suggestion is to have little vignettes, a la SMAC, which trigger when you do things. You don't have to have an overall plot, but if the vignettes would vary by Empire (or even have 4 or so sets, 1 Good, 2 Regular, and 1 Evil), that'd be really sweet. Also, the ending screen is tremendously lame. Gimme SOMETHING to celebrate my success.

To be honest, these really aren't all for Dominions III; the sorting mechanism could come out in a patch.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Well with helmets - the basic helmet gives a protection of 1 and no defence change. The full helmet gives a protection of 2 with a -1 defence change. Say you want to create a helmet in between. At present there is no way - you can't give something a protection of 1.5 and a defence penalty of -0.5.

This is a contrived example but still does show what I was talking about. The other example I already gave with AOW is perhaps a better example.

'Precise' I suppose is a bit of a poor choice of words though.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

No, but you could have a helmet with protection of 2 and no defense change, or a helmet with a protection of 2 or 3 and -2 defense, etc. See what I'm getting at? The change you're suggesting to the system to achieve what you want is simply not worth it at the cost of the elegance and intuitive nature of the basic system.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Either way, the helmet is a fairly minor part of the overall armor protection of the unit. Arguably the way to improve things would be having hit locations - a helmet is only looked at when the head is hit, thus you could then have helmets with protection 1 all the way to 10 or more. Of course, this would require a total rework of combat, thus a total rehash of armor protection values, weapon damages, etc.

And even as a sometime grognard, I would hate to wind up having to do indepth analysis of things with decimal values.

Furthermore : decimalization of things like weapon damage and armor protection would add little to the game. What difference does it really make if that short sword is 4 or 4.2 damage when the amount of damage it'll do can be quantified in the range of 0 to 30 most of the time, and against many armors it'll do 0 80% of the time?

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Indeed the helmet is a pretty insignificant issue on the whole - it was merely an example. I originally just commented on the subject as I believe that scaling the stats is superior computationally than decimalization and that scaling is also easier to understand / more intuitive. Where in decimalization you would have numbers like 2.5 and 3.5, in scaling you would have 25 and 35 which are easier on the eyes for many http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif and not harder to work with really.

A lot of people have asked what is the difference between a short sword having damage 4 to 4.2, or having a broadsword having attack bonus of 0 versus 0.1. This got me curious so I did some calculating. There's a problem with the question being asked: You should not ask what's the difference between 0 and 0.1 but instead ask what's the difference between 0 and 1, as those are the limits imposed by the current system.

To avoid bogging down the thread with too much math I won't go into heavy calculation details (others like alexti and Saber Cherry already have on this forum anyway). Consider changing a short sword with damage 4 to damage 5. When that sword successfully hits, how much more damage, on average, will it do now? 25.6% by my calculations, averaged over reasonable values of protection and strength (0 - 30) of the units in question.

And if you increase broadsword attack bonus from 0 to 1, how much more often are your attacks going to be successful? 20.7% more often.

Both these calculations are rough numbers thrown together in a quick program but I believe them to be reasonably accurate barring any stupid mistakes on my part.

So the questions are: Do I really want my spearman to be 20% more effective at striking when I increase his attack by 1? And do I really want every unit to be 25% less effective against my knight because I gave him a helmet with 1 extra protection?

Ultimately I'll play Dom3 irregardless of whether these changes are implemented. There are other issues that are more pressing (like improving national troops, getting rid of the easy to obtain SCs and stuff like that).

Remember these numbers are on average - your SC's with 30 protection will not be affected much at all by a 1 point increase either way - but a unit with 12 will. So I feel that if national troops did play a more important role, these presently minor issues in a SC / magic dominant world would amplify significantly as more low-level troops would be involved.

Again just my two cents http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Any news on Dom3? Anyone?

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

There are things no mere man were meant to know. I weren't damned, when from the depths of history I managed to find secrets that tell of the future... But I can't forward that information, for the Contract binds me. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif

The development continues, and changes and progress has happened rather recently.

Chalice questing!
 

Any (stealthy?) commander could be issued a "questing" command: The commander simply disappears for at least two turns. Then, each subsequent turn thereafter, there is a small percentage chance that this commander pops up in an assassination attempt with some enemy holding that item. If successful, the commander remerges at his owners captial with the item being transferred to the lab. Otherwise, the proud hero never returns from his quest, his fate unknown to its former lord... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif

Easy implementation: All that needs to be stored is the commander, the target item-class, the basic percentage chance and maybe the total number of turns the commander has been questing. The program should not keep track of actual province locations. The initial chance should be based on things like distance to closest enemy bearing the quested item at the time of command issue and movement rate of the commander. Each subsequent turn, this basic chance is slightly increased by a fixed value and maybe decreased by smaller value if the artifact is moved (in case of artifacts). Maybe any item above level 4 shoud be targetable amd maybe there should be a fixed chance for the commander to get lost...

FUN: I think it would be real fun to hunt for specially needed items, without hazardous micromanagement! This also might make SCs a bit more vulnerable by sending SC-Killers targeted to the enemy SC's items. There is a delay for balance and they might end up with the entirely wrong person and you never know when they will hit, but artefacts might then be really battled for! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Chalice questing!
 

Personally, I think people would send Jotun Scouts to go find Skull Mentors.

-Frank

Wishlist
 

Yet another idea for improving Ulm: A mining bonus. Basically, for each Ulmish province with a fort or a lab, you get free earth gems for unused resources. Say, 80 unused resources would net an earth gem. The player would receive a message each turn saying something like: 'Our mining operations have generated 4 earth gems this turn, my lord.'

It would be nice if resources could be translated into something other than heavy troops.

Re: Wishlist
 

Sit and Grow is not a strategy that Illwinter will ever agree with. No.

Re: Wishlist
 

They tolerate clamming, though.

Re: Wishlist
 

Oceania is known to change Clams to W2N1, and as Oceania is a preview of DomIII clamming is at least limited. Possibly Fever Fetishes and undead stop working together.

Re: Wishlist
 

This is 1 big idea for fort variety which I will recommend stealing from other games like Majesty and Sim-${var}. Instead of having just a single all-or-nothing fortification plan for each nation, have an expandable design plan of forts available. Put them in lines of development, so if you buy a certain fort plan, you build type A, then you can later upgrade a fort type A to a type B by spending time/gold again, and then maybe to type C later. The nation design can still be important if you create different specialized lines of development (with A -> B-> C), which is what you buy at nation creation, instead of one fixed design.

I imagine it like this as an example: suppose there are 3 levels of each fort design, the initial level-1 and 2 levels of "upgrade". One nation wants to focus on high Defence, and buys a category of forts which has a lvl-1 Tower (admin10,def150), lvl-2 Fortress (admin15, def250), lvl-3 Citadel (admin20, def350). When you build a fort you get a Tower, then you can expand the Tower later into a Fortess (pay time/gold again, get +5admin,+100def), and if you want, then later expand to Citadel (pay time/gold again, ++ again). You can't upgrade to any other fort types, because these are the only ways you can evolve an existing design into a bigger one.

Another buys the "High Admin" design line which has these 3: lvl-1 Pallisade (admin30,def50), lvl-2 Walled City (admin40,def100), lvl-3 Fortified City (admin50,def200). Even if this nation expands a fort as big as possible, it will never have as good a defense as the first nations lvl-2 forts, but the admin is always way better.

Another nation (all you MP players) wants a fast-building fort, so they choose the Hasty-build line of designs which has lvl-1 Outpost (admin15, def0), lvl-2 Hold (admin20,def75), lvl-3 Stronghold (admin30, def150). This line of designs builds faster at each level, and is in between the first two in admin/def. As an additional penalty, the lvl-1 design has 0 defense (Ghost Rider vulnerable, insta-breach), so although it builds in only 2 turns it doesn't provide any protection until upgraded to a Hold.

Then there is the default line which costs the least design points and is in between the Citadel and Fortified city lines also (like the Stronghold), but builds in 3 turns instead of 2: lvl-1 Watchtower (admin20,def75), lvl-2 Keep (admin30, def150), and lvl-3 Castle (admin35, def250).

You can choose how large/sophisticated a fort you develop at each location, but it is still limited to the flavor you selected at the start. Largest forts take a long time and gold to build, but you only expand where you need it, and if you really need to defend a location you can do something more than just pile militia and summons into the fort. Imagine an attacking force coming to seige a Keep, and see it upgraded to a full Castle (extra def and supply) just as they arrive. Maybe a Pallisade province is taken by defenders just 1 month before the completion the Walled City, and then the seiged have to drive the attackers away just long enough to (continue) complete the construction.

Every nation starts with their level-2 as their home fort, so it is bigger then the lvl-1 forts they will start building elsewhere. But it still has upgrade headroom for later in the game or if they think there is an early rush coming and choose to beef up the home fort first instead of expanding with a new fort. Maybe require a lvl of construction research before being able to upgrade forts to lvl-3. It also provides another good investment to spend money on for those longer games where I always have extra cash.

You see... this is what happens when you stay up late reading about history of fortifications and how defences evolve at specific sites over time?

Sill

Re: Wishlist
 

Absolutely. Further, I would like different fort plans to cover different things at the different levels.

For example: if you spend out the points for "magical fortresses", your forts protect the magic sites with just a level one fort. Otherwise you need the level 2 or even level 3 fort to do that. Contrarywise, if you spend out the points for the "city walls" archetype, you get a big admin value even on the level 1 fort.

The basic no-frills set-up would be something like:

Watch Tower (low admin, covers your Lab and Temple)
Castle (medium admin, covers your Lab and Temple and Magic Sites)
Citadel (High Admin, covers your Lab and Temple and Magic Sites)

but other progressions should certainly exist (and cost points):

Warrior Monastery (low admin, IS your Temple, covers Lab)
Shiro (Medium Admin, IS your Temple, Covers Lab and Magic Sites)
Dark Citadel (Medium Admin, IS your Temple, Covers Lab and Magic Sites)

Fortified Estate (Medium Admin, Covers your Lab and Temple)
Walled City (High Admin, Covers your Lab, Temple, Population and Magic Sites)
Fortified City (Very High Admin, Covers your Lab, Temple, Population and Magic Sites)

Wizard Tower (Low Admin, Covers Lab, Temple, and Magic Sites)
Magic Castle (Medium Admin, Covers Lab, Temple, and Magic Sites)
Floating Fortress (Medium Admin, Covers Lab, Temple, and Magic Sites)

-Frank

Re: Wishlist
 

I'm not so sure about covering magic sites. They could be hundreds of kilometres apart within the province...

Other than, well, I don't really have an opinion. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Oh yeah, I'd like to see the possibility to make a "mutating" dominion which alters the recruited unit's stats randomly within given parametres. So a units HP could be affected within the range -6 to +8.

I know it's not really relevant but the weird nation plan I cooked up today after playing Kamband would really need it to work. And magic site modding. And magic sites generating random gems.

*slaps himself -bad Nerfix, be less selfish* *sticks his head into chaos mist*

Re: Wishlist
 

In Dominions II, every castle covers the lab, temple, and magic sites. It does not cover the populations, and is a separate building from both the lab and temple.

Strategically, I would like it to cost a bit more to defend magic sites. Right now any old Watch Tower will do. I do not think that I am ready for it to be impossible to defend magic sites with fortifications.

-Frank

Re: Wishlist
 

I might wish for an option to allow your blessing to change upward or downward depending on your current paths in the various magical powers. Not sure how hard it would be to code. And it's not too important. I tend to go rainbow and want to acquire blessings in my SP games.

It might also be nice to have an Option, not automatic so that folks who do things differently need not be bothered by it, to assign newly ordered troops to the largest squad of such troops on the commanders present at the recruitment site. This is because I spend too many clicks assigning troops too often when I'm just making one large group on a particular commander.

The other thing I thought of is a command to "Go to province x as a group in as few moves as possible." So you wouldn't have to move your stacks manually every turn.

Just a couple of thoughts.

Re: Wishlist
 

A Rainbow mage who equips Staff of Elemental Mastery, Robe of Wizardry, Flaming Helmet, Ring of Wizardry, Skull of Fire would net +5 Fire. I think 60 Fire (empowerment from 3 to 4) gems is quite a cheap way of getting Fire 9 bless, and that would mean that I get Fire 9 in any game that lasts long enough. I don't like that.

However, if only EMPOWERMENT and unboosted magic skill were counted in, it might work... It would make bless pretenders more risky, or more expensive if one bought level 10 in case.

Re: Wishlist
 

He said "an option"... Make it a non-default option. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Wishlist
 

Well I personally feel blessing troops were pretty underpowered. I never used em and they would only be used in conjuction with a powerful spell combo anyway... so... like... yeah... and... all...

Re: Wishlist
 

Blessing troops underpowered? *snicker*

Yeah, blessed centaurs, spiders, giants, wardens, vans, and heart companions are all so underpowered.

The only problem with blessed troops is that some nations have relatively sucky sacred troops, and that most are capitol only while lucky lucky Vanheim gets to build one of the best and cheapest everywhere.

show me everything I want to know
 

In keeping with my on-going theme of "show me everything I want to know", it is really irritating to see "base hitpoints 100, dominion -20, current hit points 110". Please please please tell me the actual numbers which add up to the current number. If you can't bring yourself to do that, then just remove that whole page, because numbers that don't add up are more irritating than no numbers at all.

Next, battle wounds should have tooltips so that hovering over the red heart with the mouse will let you know which wound it is. (Even better: invent unique icons for every kind of wound. :-) But they all have to be identifiable as battle wounds (i.e. they all have to start with the same big red heart)).

Along the same lines, when inspecting troops on the armies page, they should have teeny tiny hearts and stars inscribed atop their image so that you can tell which ones are experienced and wounded without clicking on them. If you can't do that, then at least give tooltips so that you have to hover but don't have to click.

Next, when the "zoom into the province" happens just before a battle replay, I can rarely tell which province it is. That's because the image being zoomed in doesn't have the overlays that I'm used to, such as the name, fortresses, temples, dominions, etc.

One solution to this is to include the current overlay settings in the zoom image. Alternately, allow the user to pan and zoom the image before he clicks okay to see the battle.

no battle spoilers
 

I like to watch the battles without knowing who wins. It makes it exciting! Unfortunately the messages screen sometimes gives away who won, either by having a random event happen in that province and showing the flag of the new owner or by announcing that my troops in that province are starving.

Perhaps this could be fixed by not-showing the flag of the owner of a province until the user has viewed all battles (or all battle-results-pages) in that province. Likewise, "troops are starving in Province" messages could be hidden until the user has seen results of all battles in that province. For users who want to see all messages and don't care about spoilers, there could be a "show all messages" button that effectively marks all battles as viewed.

user interface: inclusion > tooltips > click
 

In general, if there is some information that I will often want to know, and which can be encoded into the current page without over cluttering that page, then that is the best solution.

example: wouldn't it be cool if the wound, poison, fatigue bars were displayed on the battle display, such as was done in the Myth games? (It would of course be togglable, just like the grid and background parts of the battle display are.)

example: show wound and experience marks right on the "t" military information screen, as teeny tiny graphical overlays on the units

example: which battle wound it is should be indicated right on the unit information page, by encoding the battle wound type into the battle wound red-heart icon.

example: when looking at the F1 nation page I often want to know the terrain type of a province. Currently I have to click on it to find out.

Okay, but for various reasons you sometimes don't encode all information onto the current page. In that case, the next alternative should be to make that information be tooltipped.

Example: if I hover the mouse over a unit on the battle display, the wound/fatigue/poison bars should pop up beneath (or next to, or on top of) the unit.

Example: if I hover over a unit on the "t" military information display, its battle-wound and experience status should appear.

Example: if I hover over a battle-wound on the unit information page, which battle-wound it is should appear.

Example: if I hover over a province on the F1 nation page, its terrain types should appear.

Re: no battle spoilers
 

I would like to have an option to list all spells or by school but only those that a specific mage can cas.

Example: I pick The renegade sage with 1 nature. then I can see the list of all 1 nature spells and not the others. This will make research pathing easier.

Re: show me everything I want to know
 

That works. "dominions: -20" shows how the dominion of the province the unit is in affects its hitpoints. The "current hitpoints" is (base + dominion_bonus) of the last turn. In your example, whether the pretender/prophet moves to another province or not in the next turn, it will have 80 hitpoints.
Except that it wont, because it has little extra hp left from the turn before (your example, i.e. 110 hp), but I don't know how that is calculated.

Re: show me everything I want to know
 

Endoperez: I know the explanation of why the hit points numbers are reported like that, but it doesn't matter. My brother was playing yesterday and I was looking over his shoulder and when he looked at the hit point report, he cursed. The user interface is irritating, and turns off potential customers, even though it is actually possibly for an experienced player to figure out the hidden variables and deduce most of what it actually means.

Re: show me everything I want to know
 

- Wishing for "gems" produces a magic item called "Gems" which goes to the caster's misc slot. The description would say "They are pretty baubles".
- Wishing for "doom horror" would result in the caster gaining reversed effects of Twsit Fate and Luck and a Curse. Description would say "You're doomed, oh the horror!"
- Wishing for a particular kind of magic gems would result in 50 gems of the type

Re: show me everything I want to know
 

Wish costs 100 astral pearls, which can be alchemized into 50 gems of any other kind except blood slaves. Then again, I suppose that fits with the theme of screwing over newbies who don't know enough to download and read the user-written information files. Good way to prevent new people from enjoying the game!

Re: show me everything I want to know
 

It's a good way to screw

I wish
doom horror
gems
doom horror

Re: show me everything I want to know
 

Oh yeah, new people really tend to start casting wishes right away. The main issue with newcomers to the game is that there isn't any decent walk-through or guide to the early game, although someone (Arralen or Alneyan?) is working on that. Still won't really solve the problem unless / until Illwinter starts including something like it with the demo and game.

If people can get past the steep initial curve of figuring out how to deploy units on the battlefield, give them commands, etc, they don't seem to have much of a problem with enjoying the game while they find more and more of the hidden lore.

Re: show me everything I want to know
 

AFAIR, wishing for 'gems' currently gives just enough gems to alchemize them to 100 pearls. That is how it should be, IMO.
Wish should be about choice, absolute choice, of getting whatever one might want to play with. It should be choice of "what is worth it" instead of "quess the password". The choices should all be beneficial and of about similar power-level. Of course, this does not mean all units should be able to face each other in combat, but that wishing for powerful monsters shouldn't always or even in most cases be the optimal choice.

Re: show me everything I want to know
 

Doom Horrors aren't even necessarily the best thing you can wish for, to be honest.

You can wish for a "lord of hell", and get a Demon Lord that spawns Militia and even Blood Slaves as soon as you GoR it.

You can wish for a Vastness, it has no item slots once you Gift of Reason it, but it is immune to Cold, shock, and Poison, and it has Astral Magic Level 3, and it has a bunch of Mind Blasts (which yes, are enhanced by the Astral Magic once you make it a leader).

Nerfing the standard wishes now will just make people spend some time wishing for new crap in single player for a while getting new units and effects that are crazy good.

It would issue in another dark time, where some people know what is good that can be Wished for and other people don't. That makes it unfair. Frankly, the list of high-quality wishes should be published with the game. It's fine if not everyone knows about wishing for Vastnesses, but at the very least everyone should know about:

*Gems
*Magic Power
*Doom Horror
*Gold
*Girls

Those are the standard wishes, and everyone should have access at least to those. The more specialized wishes, like Arena Fight and Lord of Hell can be Easter Eggs, but all the "raw power" wishes should be available to everyone.

-Frank

Re: show me everything I want to know
 

Well, considering that the in-game wishes one is most probably going to try will be 'gems', 'gold' or 'magic'. The ones trying it out for the first time won't know just *how* the Wish will carry that out. In the case of "magic" (I think that should give the same as "magic power" if it already doesn't, for the reason FrankTrollman listed above), the surprise will be quite positive, I think. And as Doom Horrors will be unique in DomIII, they will be less of a problem as well.

Wishing for at least some spells should also work. I'm mainly thinking of the high-level summons, the ones that give you uniques. Newbies might not now the creature types of the summonable creatures, but they can find the spells from the manual.

Re: show me everything I want to know
 

What does "Girls" do? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I was thinking about Vastness too. Maybe it should give something along the lines of "The *caster* started to grow in size. He crushed the entire province! Then he grew so large he sank into the earth, never to be seen again!" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Oh yeah,

*wishes*

Move and Pillage
Skirmish

Re: show me everything I want to know
 

Maybe wishing for any of the void monsters, the Void itself or the Void Gate should act as a mage had just entered a void gate, with some pre-defined summoning bonus and lesser (only 80% or so) chance of insanity thanks to the wish. That would be more in line with how the game works.

Re: show me everything I want to know
 

"Reverend Bob the Arch Theurg wished for Vastness. Azatoth ate his brain. Tasted like chicken."

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: show me everything I want to know
 

Wish costs 100 Astral Pearls and requires a ginormous investment just to make the path requirements. Casting it should be good.

Let's face it, two castings and 120 gems to get a Doom Horror or Vastness as a leader just isn't all that titanic compared to the 95 gems and 6 castings it takes to get an Air Queen off the ground.

The only thing that is a problem with Wish is that not everyone knows how it works.

-Frank

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

For multiplayer games, there should be a "no staling" option, which means that the AI plays one turn for the nation that would have staled. It is usually better than nothing for the would-be staler and for opponents who want competition. It would also allow another player to substitute for one who has dropped out because the AI could just play on a turn-by-turn basis instead of taking over for the rest of the game.

If this option is implemented, there should be a revised message to indicate that the AI took over temporarily. For example, "Rumors say that Ulm's Grand Vizier has been exercising greater authority recently."

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Or at least something that _says_ "Ulm's pretender slept for the 7th straight month", etc, so people could know when to complain to the player, set him AI, swear to never get into another game with them again, etc.