Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Maybe has already been asked.

Return the combat simulator. It's fun and it helps get a hang of what combinations work and what not.

Hey it can even be enhanced to contain some battle template. like tournement, modified weather and terrain conditions, sieges etc.
Also might add ability to give equipment to leaders and script them.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Another thing that was probably mentioned.

In dom-I there was this cool visible effect that the map grew warmer or colder in some areas according to the dominion.

I wonder if it's possible technically to return this.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I miss the warm/cold effect on the map as well. It will unfortunately not implemented in dom3. Other map features will though.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Thanks for the information.
Other features Like maybe forests growing or dying according to life vs. death dominion?

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Other map features? Like maybe labs appearing on the map just like temples and forts do? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Minor one http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I'd like the ability to have an ingame notepad - maybe even tied into the year you make notes. Always thinking of stuff I want to do and then forgetting it a few turns later http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Also history of messages - otherwise you need to keep a seperate (outside the game) record of agreements etc.

Tals

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I think that you should be able(or to have the option) to transfer the bloodslaves to the pool instant. like all other gems, there is also no transport nessesary.

Would greatly remove mirco and is not so complicated for beginners.


SAVE PASSOWRD OPTION for games, so you do not have to type it in again and again(expecially on TCP/IP games)<---!

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I want to generalize that request.
Dominions is a very large scale game and to play it competitively one has to deal with a Hugh amount of information. Dominions I gave very poor management abilities to the player. Dominions II improved that considerable but it is still not there yet.
Some examples (maybe already given).
1. handling tax rates. becomes a nightmare on Hugh maps especially with blood economy running. Two things might significantly improve that. The first is configurable tax rate/unrest ratio. meaning the player can set provinces to maximum tax rate so long as unrest is smaller the X. Then the provinces will set their tax rates accordingly.
The second is important for other aspects as well, it is adding to the management screen (F1) some information processing capabilities. The most important are: sort ascending/descending according to any field. income, population, tax rate, gems per turn, army size; search for ... to search for province name, commander name, site name and so forth; Tie all management screens of game to management screen (like HTML hyperlinks), thus allowing the player to do everything from within one screen and one context. This can save tons of time switching from army screen to management screen to lab etc.

2. The management screen. As described above. In addition allow queries at least for: all commanders that are in state X, for example hiding to manage your scouts. All fire gem producing sites. Top 10 income provinces etc.

3. messages history. All messages are linked to everything in them. say commander this assassinated in province that. user can click on commander to get the stats of the commander, click province to get to that province.

4.Visible not active tag for commanders, so that when cycling all commanders (N key) they are ignored.

5. AI. mages can be assigned the task of site searching. Two options, one by "foot" (visit provinces and search), second by spells for locating sites.

6. Way points. Armies can be assigned a command of "move from start province to designated province".

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Is this anything like F7 - Pool Slaves? It makes all commanders with blood slaves in provinces with a laboratory to put all blood slaves in their inventory into your laboratory. This could be improved, mainly for the sake of Mictlan who has to give its Blood Sacrificing priests new slaves after pooling the slaves every turn.

Possible to do as a shortcut, but a program/graphical front-end for doing working shortcuts for given game, server, port, password, etc. would be nice. This is more probable as a fan project than as an official update.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Hmmm. We should only need to make notes of our own future plans etc. - about a million posts ago in this thread I said something like if you have to make notes of what's happened, then the game isn't providing enough information. Your history of messages idea is the tip of the iceberg - we need to be able to scroll back through every turn of the game and recall what scouting/scrying info we had at any previous point, like Echoview for VGAP. Also what events occurred in previous turns, where armies moved, preferably even watch old battle videos. All this would mean storing old turn data in the client directory separate from the .trn file, but it could be done.

This is definitely one of the most important improvements for Dom3 - the amount of note-taking you have to do at the moment is staggering.

CC

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Diplomacy and unit diversity.

Should I finish my summary of all posts? I'd planned to do another one this month, but this thread is soooo long, and it seems that the devs are reading each message anyway. The only real purpose would be to avoid duplicates.

I don't think these are duplicate suggestions but I might have mis-read, misunderstood or simply failed to notice/read some posts. If I'm repeating earlier suggestions, I apologize. These suggestions are not as modular as they could be - I view them as a piece.

1) Unit Generation
Preamble, heroes should just cost money. You get one hero, per turn, per province, and they bring their own gear, so no resource costs.

Firstly, each province should generate a fixed amount of-
Resources (needed to make fancy equipment)
Mounts (needed to make cavalry)
Special Training (needed to make elite units)
Holiness (needed to make sacred units)
Magic (needed to make special units and monsters)
Each province outputs a number of units per turn, based on the levy rate, which is like the tax rate but set independently. Additionally, you assign each province a recruiting budget, but this should be small.
Raising the levy rate causes you a penalty to population growth, and may increase unrest. Ideally, unrest should be mitigated by a credible threat (i.e. neighboring hostile force.) Levies should appear prior to offensive unit movement. This will make sending twenty heroes with 15 guys each against somebody less of promising as a military strategy, which is good for realism and reduces a really annoying feature of playing against the AI (and some players.)
Provinces without temples ordinarily make no holiness (perhaps at dominion strength 8+ they do anyway).
Provinces without labs ordinarily make no magic. Magic is used to make special units like trolls, giant hydras, Pegasus riders, etc. Some population types make extra magic, amazons for example.
A province with a castle makes (lots of) extra training, as well as national unit profiles and unit equipment (see below.)
Provinces with marketplaces/foundries/whatever (some extra building) make bonus resources, possibly bonus money as well. Or not.
Provinces with a stables make mounts, as do provinces with certain culture types, for example horse barbarians in plains provinces make mounts without needing a stables built for them.

mechanics -
Firstly, each province figures out how many units it is building, based on the levy rate and the population. Then, if the budget for the province and the number of training and/or holiness points is sufficient, units are upgraded to have elite profiles (automatically).
So, for example, if Pythium levees 22 units and has 13 training available, 13 of those units will have the elite profile (str, precision etc. of a praetorian guard) and 9 will have the basic profile (of a velite). There can be more than 2 profiles, of course, but then you need a system for the player to pick which elite profile is preferred. In fact, you probably need such a system anyway, since some holy/elite profiles should forbid heavy equipment. The simplest (and I think best) way to approach this is to simply let the player turn profiles off with checkboxes. If no profiles are deactivated, the computer will have some relatively simple heuristic to choose whether to build more battle vestals or more praetorian guards. Obviously you can't disable the worst of the profiles (the one that only costs a levy point.)
Then, assuming the budget is sufficient and enough mounts are available, units are mounted. Elite units get mounted first. Some profiles forbid mounting.
Finally, any remaining money is spent on equipment packages, which are handed out to individual models, with the elite units getting the pick of the stuff. So in the example above, if there were money/resources left for 16 full legionnaire packages and 6 wussy packages, you'd get:
13 Praetorian Guard is full armor
3 Velites in full armor
6 Velites in cheap junk
Again, checkboxes should be available to disable most of the packages (except the cheapest/defaults.) That way you can specify that your legionaires all get swords, or all get spears, whatever.

Each province should have a mix of population types and a predominant culture. By population types I mean for example:

Human
Elven
Abyssian
Caelumite
Lizardmen
etc.

and by cultures I mean:
Western (Ermor, Marignon, Pythium, Ulm)
Northern (Jotunheim, Man, Vanheim)
Natural (wild lizardmen, druids, Pangaea?)
etc.

Undead population shares generate a fixed number of units, irrespective of levee rate. If your nation/theme does not have the undead-friendly tag, you don't get the units. Undead unit generation could depend both on population and dominion strength, if desired.

When a new game is generated, for provinces with unspecified population, population and culture in adjacent provinces should be more likely to match. Thus, all else being equal, caelum will have a cluster of caelumite provinces in their general vicinity to make many more caelumites in.

The province mix in the capital is fixed by your nation/theme.

Anyway, based on the population mix, you find out what profiles you get at stage 1 of unit generation.

So if a 50% caelumite, 50% human province levees 14 units, you get 7 humans and 7 caelumites, which can then be trained to be elite humans / elite caelumites, and so on.

The culture of a province may influence which profiles you get (so Amazon provinces should generate female versions of everything), as well as which equipment packages are available.

If you build a castle, you get a pile of extra production of every sort. Also, a certain percentage of the levy turns into your national population type, and they get first pick of all goodies. Finally, your national equipment packages become available to all the units there. This means that a pythianise castle in a lizard men province will produce mostly human legionnaires but also some lizard men in legionnaire armor.

2) Unit dismissal.
Units should not cost a lot to hire, but they should cost a lot to maintain (relatively speaking), and even more to dismiss.
When units flee a province, or are dismissed, they should have a chance of taking up banditry and turning into unrest points, as well as a chance of deserting harmlessly. The same is true for units who are not fed, or who are not paid, with varying likelihoods having to do with morale, existing unrest level etc. When you dismiss units, you can (and generally this should be beneficial on balance) spend money to prevent them from turning into unrest points.

Anyway, the idea of these changes is to make the game, absent magic, a better simulation of late dark ages period warfare. It's already pretty good.

3) Diplomacy, between player positions
Firstly, some people are going to hate diplomacy and there should be both custom map and start of game flags that disable it. So they can stop complaining right now.
The game needs to support the following pacts. These pacts can be reciprocal, but need not be. The target of a pact must accept the pact, and can cancel it at any time (generally by giving units the "attack current province" order)
a) Permission to travel. If you have permission to travel from me, then you get to move through my provinces without attacking them, if you wish. If a province changes hands while your troops are in it, your troops will fight the new owner unless you also have permission to travel from them.
b) Aid defense. If you have aid defense from me, you have permission to travel through my provinces, AND, if my provinces are attacked while your units are in them, your units will fight.
c) Respect your faith in your lands. This pact greatly reduces my ability to reduce your dominion in your territory.
d) Respect your faith in all lands. This pact greatly reduces my ability to reduce your dominion PERIOD.
e) Alliance. Must be reciprocal. Includes reciprocal aid defense and respect faith in your lands pacts, automatically. The number of VP you need (or other condition) to win is increased somewhat, but your VP, provinces, total research and total dominion are pooled for victory purposes.

All of this is modeled after the Dune board game, which had a special event card that allowed alliances to be formed/changed. You might consider the same thing.

Trade pacts and such would be cute but aren't really needed.

Computer players should sometimes, ala Master of Orion, call you up and demand tribute to avoid attacking you (this option is of course already available to players.) Likewise, there should be some way to make such demands to computer players, and a chance they'll respond.

4) Diplomacy, with the peoples of the world and the powers of the spheres
Again, some people will hate this, so if you include it, include options to turn it off.
You have relationship meters with the various forces - one for each element, plus the celestials, the demons, nature sprits and the denizens of the underworld.
Your deities spheres and the nation you play influence them as starting values.
If game settings allow, these different factions are capable of taking the initiative in helping your enemies if they hate you. They might offer a bounty (in gems of the corresponding type, or magic units) to take out specific players provinces.
You can improve relations with these forces by attacking players they hate, or by offering them various pacts/bribes. Of these the two most important are:
a) Pact of joint worship. Beings associated with that force are incorporated into your religion as your aids and flunkies, and prayers are directed to them as intermediaries to your glory. This dilutes your religion (a penalty to dominion strength) but makes the forces in question like you. It may also unlock extra, sacred versions of units associated with that force.
b) Pact of elevation. When you are Supreme Being, you promise to elevate one faction of supernatural beings above all others. That faction now adores you - all the other factions now hate your guts.
Relationships with forces modify -
a) Morale of beings associated with that force in your armies (and/or magic resistance.)
b) Severity of detrimental spells, associated with that force, that land in your provinces.
c) Type of random events that are generated in provinces that contain sites associated with that force. If Water hates you, provinces with water sites risk being targetted by raiding water elementals and sea trolls, for example.
d) Income from sites associated with that force - water sites have a chance of spitting out extra gems if water really likes you.
e) Random events in general. Some events (e.g. Queen of Water shows up to work for you for no reason) require and/or become more likely depending on elemental relation scales.

These may be independent of any diplomatic initiatives that the forces of water may make for or against you. The two aspects of diplomacy should be disable-able separately.

Similar diplomacy should be available in dealings with the various sentient races.

Pillaging provinces not only pisses off the residents of a given province, but the races represented in the province dislike you, world-wide. This isn't a perfectly satisfying mechanic.

If a race likes you, unrest in provinces populated with that race is reduced, units of that race have positive morale adjustments, and your dominion spreads more easily in provinces populated by that race.

If a race hates you, the reverse of all that applies.

Same things with random events and so forth.

Races can't call players up and demand things, but you should have the option on race-specific policies.

A policy of genocide against a given race means your troops perpetually, and selectively, pillage that race out of all provinces. Obviously they hate you.

A policy of disfavor against a race raises tax income from that race's population, at the expense of making them dislike you.

A neutral policy towards a given race has no effect.

A policy of favor towards a race costs you money but makes them like you more.

Finally, you can nominate one race as the master race, if you wish, promising them a favored place in the new order when you ascend. Like the equivalent pact with one of the forces, they really like this and all the other races really hate it.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

About the map showing heat or cold, you could put a halo round the center of the province.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I would prefer the halo telling about the dominion levels of that province, instead of boring long or short candles. Changing map, map filters, scales, dominion power candles and bigger magic site pictures on the top of the screen are few of the things I miss from original Dominions.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I really agree. I also miss the greyed out animation for units that can't be produced in this turn. And, this may sound weird, to the hosting animation (the rolling cube), it reminds me somewhat of hell raiser puzzle cube (lament) .

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Windows Server Improvements

Ability to run game as a service
Ability to start game at a command prompt as a service
Ability to manage game remotely

But still keep its resource requirements low (most important!)

Tals

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

A feature request:

Indies and monsters from events (barbarian hordes, vampire counts etc) regarded as belonging to different "nations" (e.g. "indies" and "marauders"). That way if some event happens in an indie province, the monsters from the event aren't just added to the province garrison but there will be a battle between the indies and the special monsters, with whoever is victorious left in control of the province. Similarly, an indie provice getting the high priest, Elludian refugee and other similar events would have these added to their garrison. This suggestion was inspired by the problems that occurred with the Doom Horror garrisoning an indie province on the Loemendor map.

-----

Another one:

It would also bne awesome if indie provinces could act like nations and recruit additional units and commanders. This idea might work better if such happens only when the indie provinces border one or more nations, they would go into recruitment mode (or they could start from turn 1) and once they get enough above what they began with (e.g. a 50% increase or double), you would have forces from the indie province trying to reclaim land from the evil, imperialistic gods who intend to gobble them up (so some province that was left sitting alone for a long time would mount preemptive raids immediately upon getting a nation neighbor). Scripted provinces would have to use the number of units they originally got during game generation before the #land command wipes them out for this determination.

Don't know how easy or difficult this would be to do, but it would certainly spice up the game and would also give good incentive to really take care of the nastier indie provinces as soon as possible or risk getting your plans disrupted by invasions.

In the same vein, indie units from events (barbarian horders etc) and units from these proposed incursions should damn well also siege and storm forts and then hold them (which would make taking indie provinces with forts a big priority, because they would also get more resources as per admin and be able to recruit more troops).

Would also be nice if when some nation dies a Dominion death, their leftover units would simply go native and become indies instead of vanishing like smoke into the wind.

Edi

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

The first and last are definately things I'd strongly agree with, as they both enable better suspension of disbelief (troglodytes living with militia, vampire swarms moving in with knights & priests, huge (player) armies going "poof" following a dominion death, and shouldn't be terribly hard to implement, in the sense of not requiring additional AI & gaming logic.

No more barbarians living peacefully with amazons! Hear hear! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I think Pretenders should be able to cast Priest/Unholy Priest Spells!I think it is dumb how priest & prophets can bless but pretenders can't!

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I'm quite sure this is not going to change. I like it better the way it is anyway.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

A new chapter of the dev diary.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

And where would one find this dev diary? I haven't been paying as much attention as I should have, so I don't know where it is. I lost patience with Google, couldn't find it...

Edi

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I think his WISH is a new chapter of the dev diary... Quite straightforward, but I thought the same as Edi when I read that. Must be our hopes getting the better of us. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Another feature request: Add the following commands to the tactical orders menu:

• Hold and Fire - same as hold and attack, but for missile units. The stupid buggers don't know how to hold off for a few moments, which is necessary sometimes, especially with javelin units.
• Attack and Fire - again a new missile unit command. Again, the morons will never use javelins, throwing axes or any other missile weapons if they have been given normal attack or hold and attack orders. This command would have the idiots charge forward and switch to missile weapons immediately upon coming in range. They would keep firing until out of ammo or forced to melee, whichever comes first.

Adding these two commands would remove a lot of the headaches of planning battle tactics and trying to make certain the units don't do something stupid on their own. I especially like to use the indie light infantry with javelins (or other similar units), and the only way to get the maximum effectiveness out of them or Abysian axe throwers is to leave them unscripted. That annoys the hell out of me.

Edi

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

t Edi, Endo: FRAG! newsletter you silly old men.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I got the FRAG!, but I ain't got no DevDiary...

I have the FRAG!, but it only mentions Dominions as one of the top sellers, and the only other interesting thing is the Fiction. Wouldn't it be cool to have a DomII fictive story on the FRAG!? Now we just need a writer... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

1.Better missile units!I bet many of us have lost 'cause the !@&)@! missile units hurt YOUR units more than your foes

2.More nations and pretenders!

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

No no no no NO.

NOT "more nations and pretenders". Argh. Damn that's annoying. There are squillions of nation/theme/pretender combinations already, and the more you add, the harder everything is to balance properly. Look how many pretender chassis currently don't get used, even in a Zen-modded game. Why add more? If you add more less useful ones, they simply take up space and don't get used. If you add more good ones, they simply get used at the expense of others, which get relegated to wasting space.

I can't understand this obsession with more content. Please please let Dom3 focus on a better UI and better gameplay experience, there is already buckets of content to keep us fascinated until well after the release of Dom4.

CC

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

It should be nice to give an Intercept order to an army. If any adjacent province is under attack, the army will defend it (being informed of the attack by the people of the attacked province or supposed scouts). If there are more than one of the adjacent provinces under attack, the one with the biggest enemy army will be defended.

Also, I'd like a second patrol order, let's say Patrol for enemies , only searching for sneak units in the province, not killing people (and not reducing unrest of course).

It seems fair and not unbalancing imho http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif .

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

*very small voice* an ally feature?

oh and magnate what do you mean by "squillions" of nations?do you mean the measly 17 that grow boring quickly?

"squillions" of themes?do you mean the 0-2 extra themes some lucky nations have?

"squillions" of pretenders?you are reffering to the rather boring animals/statues/<instert boring random physical form choice here> yes??

so get the facts straight before you open your gob next time!

I a....COW has (in a way) foxed you!

Who said cows were dumb again???

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Bovine (oh such an apt name) - if the current thirty-plus nation/themes have quickly bored you, I respectfully suggest that you find a game more suited to your intellect, such as DOOM3 or maybe Tic-Tac-Toe. It is people like you who constantly whinge about wanting more content who seriously jeopardise the success of Dom3. I hope and pray fervently to the One True God that the devs ignore you and all your ilk, and concentrate on the real limitations of the game, which are certainly not in the area of content. We don't, for example, need more spells, we simply need the existing spells differentiated slightly better, so that there are no useless spells and no "no-brainer" spells. The same is certainly true of units, and imho pretenders as well.

On balance, there is just one area where I think a few things could be added, which is in forgeable items. There are plenty of weapons and body armours and misc items, but far fewer shields, hats and boots. Many commanders don't use a shield and a surprising number don't have feet, but I think we could do with a slightly broader choice of hats to forge.

There you go - want some more content? Design some hats.

CC

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Maybe you missed his point. It was that there are already too many pretenders, spells, and to less extent, nations that are not in par with the other choices. Magnate wants to have more choices, not by adding more units, but by making all the existing ones more interesting.

And even if you left out all the "similar" nations/themes, like Vanheim/Man:Last of the Tuatha (sneaky, sacred, high-def special units and commanders) and Pythium & Ermor: Broken Empire (same units, different magic), you are losing much. All the nations play very differently, especially when you consider what kind of pretender would help them. I'll use Last of the Tuatha and Vanheim as an example:, because I consider them the two nations that share the closest theme/idea in how they work:

shared abilities: high-def sacred units lacking good protection, mage-commanders with awesome defence, Air magic, human allies with few special elites
Tuatha: Nature, better human allies (knights and longbowmen), cheap temples, stealthy priests and spies, spell songs that can be used to boost morale in enemy dominion, forced scales (no Order/Misfortune for them)
Vanir: Dwarves, Earth, minor access to Blood and Blood Sacrifice, sailing, flying Valkyries, prefer cold (bonus points), glamour makes the Vanir undetectable by enemy scouts or spies

Because Vanheim already has Earth, Vanheim player won't probably go for Earth blessing. Rejuvenation does wonders for mages, although it would work better with ones cheaper than theirs, and would help Vanirs' protection. Water helps them very much, boosting the Vanirs' defence into absurd numbers. Vanheim doesn't have easy access to nature, because going for a bless makes new paths costly, and bless makes their special units and mages much better.
Last of the Tuatha, on the other hand, can very well go for Earth blessing. They could take Earth and reserach Enchantments, aiming for Enliven Statues and playing with Cloud Trapeze, Personal Regeneration, Haste, Faery Trod, Relief and even Flaming Arrows if they can access it in the meantime. The Tuatha can go for Water as well, and Fire gives them access to Flaming Arrows which makes their longbowmen even more devastating. Each of Water, Earth and Fire blessings can work very well with the Tuatha, and can double to form interesting combinations: access to anti-undead items, Dwarven Hammers, quickness, protection or rejuvenation in items or blessings; and/or Claymen, Rune Smashers (to use with Charm), unresistable Acid Evocations, access to both cold- and heat-based spells (and damage shields!) to play around enemies' weaknesses, Magma Bolts and later Magma Eruption, Charcoal Shields...

As for items, Dwarve Smiths can do wonders. Have you realized E3A1 Smith can take Bag of Winds and Winged Helmet a Vanadrott forged, and make an Elemental Staff? Those are great items, and enable Smiths to forge even more boosters for other elements.

And if one considers how Vanir and Tuatha differ as warrior-mages, both have good defense and access to Mirror Image and Mistform in Air Alterations. Vanir start with minor Mirror Image, and can get good protection with Smiths' Earth, while Tuatha have access to Regeneration and can use Eagle Eyes to boost their precision to absurd numbers. I wonder if a Bard with Bow of Botulf, ordered to Fire Rear, fires at the enemy mages... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif Of course, a Vanherse or even a Jarl with a Black Heart kills enemy commanders with much more deadly accuracy. While they cannot don Flying Boots, Flying Carpets and few extra Vanir might be enough to even take over weakly defended provinces, and quickly move over both seas and land. Unmatched paranoia!

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

EDIT: I have failed. Nevermind what was here.

moddable AI
 

So I just heard that Civ 4 will include a feature which I have previously suggested for Dom 3: moddable AI using Python

http://pc.ign.com/articles/614/614551p3.html

Now actually I made two suggestions. The first one is to make the strategic AI fully moddable. This can be done very simply -- so simply that Illwinter can probably actually do it for Dom 3. The way to do it is simply to publish complete specification of the contents of the .trn and .2h files. Done.

The second suggestion was the make the tactical AI moddable. You can imagine making the tactical AI moddable in the same way: invent ".tactical-trn" and ".tactical-2h" files, have the game write out and read in those files in between every step of the battle. Obviously, that would be completely impractical. So where Python comes in (or you could choose a different scripting language -- Lua is popular and Io is very nice) is that instead of writing out a .tactical-trn file, you make a call to a Python function, passing all of the data as arguments. Instead of reading in a .tactical-2h file, you get a return value from the Python function containing all of the data.

That latter one is harder to implement so I'm not suggesting that Illwinter attempt it for Dom 3. (Maybe for a patch though?)

The former one obviously raises cheating concerns, but as we have seen, a secret 2h spec does not prevent cheating, it only makes it harder and less widely known. Whereas a server that verifies the fairness of all moves and a published 2h file spec would completely prevent cheating and also enable strategic AI mods.

Adding that "verification of fairness" is more work that might interfere with the timeline that I've proposed. One option would be to go ahead with Dom 3 plus strategic AI mods, and then add fixes for any cheats that are discovered in subsequent patches.

I don't have much time to spare, but for a tiny tiny sliver of a royalty, I will spend a few hours a week consulting to help you guys (Illwinter) implement this and make sure that it is safe. (A sliver of a royalty of Dom 3 is much less than my normal fee for this kind of consulting work -- I would do it only because I love the game so much and it would be fun.)

Re: moddable AI
 

When user clicks the 'e' button a confirmation window is opened.
This is good for the rare scenarios when one is the last player to submit his turn in a TCP/IP hosted MP game.
Otherwise that player will lose his turn.

hehe, although rare, I still remember the few times it happened to me, for I seem to have a knack for it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: moddable AI
 

Got an idea for the castles (don't know if it has been said before). Instead of choosing one castle type and making the same kind of castle for all the game, why not building custom castles ?

There's one basic castle type (i.e. : admin 10, 20 supplies, 20 defense...) When designing the pretender, the player could use design point to get knowledge of different improvements. During the game, the player builds the basic castle structure. And if he's got the right knowledge, he can spend extra gold improving the castle. Like building a better admin center or putting ballistas on the walls to defend during an assault.

I see these domains :
- Warehouse (increases admin)
- Granary (better gathering of supplies)
- Masonry (increases defense)
- Ballistics (putting crossbows, ballistas, etc... on the walls)

It would allow the player to build small castles where he doesn't needs big ones, and, if he's got the knowledge, big ones where he needs. And the ability to build good castles would still cost design points, to keep the same balance for pretender design.

It seems nice and balanced (???)

Re: moddable AI
 

Allowing more kinds of buildings to build would turn this into more of a civlike game.
Most often building all those improvement buildings turns into a micromanagement nightmare(for example you´d almost always want to build warehouses, since more admin==more gold==even more warehouses etc) and that distracts from the wargame aspect.

I´d like to see a flexible castle design system in the pretender creation part though, with similar functionality to the scales system (higher admin costs points, longer buildtime gets you points etc).

Re: moddable AI
 

> more admin==more gold
Admin increases only resources.

Don't know if it will add more micromanagement. As far as you build castles only in specific places (strategic places or to recruit indep units), the micromanagement will be limited. Afaik, it should take less time than moving armies and giving orders.

Don't know of the time ratio it should take to make custom castles. If it'is too high, then having an only castle by nation as you suggest is better... don't know.

Re: moddable AI
 

The thing about economy boosting buildings is that whilst they would turn the game into a micro-management fest, they'd still be fairer and more fun than clams, which are effectively the same thing.

Re: moddable AI
 

admin increases the gold you gain from the province by half the admin value. So a castle with admin 40 increases the goldincome from a province by 20%.

It´s a difficult decision if the game should be made more of a buildergame like the civ series or AoW. Those games are a huge success, but I feel that the builder aspect almost always becomes tiresome.
In addition the comparison with clams is accurate. Most people don´t like to play with clams in multiplayer because clams encourages a defensive hoarder style. More improvement buildings would have the same effect and a game where the best strategy is to bunker up tends to get boring quickly.

Re: Endoperez
 

Note to Endoperez:

"Pythium & Ermor: Broken Empire (same units, different magic)"

The therugs are the only goddamn things they both have!

"I'll use Last of the Tuatha and Vanheim as an example:, because I consider them the two nations that share the closest theme/idea in how they work:
shared abilities: high-def sacred units lacking good protection, mage-commanders with awesome defence, Air magic, human allies with few special elites"

Excuse me for not falling on my knees with awe...2 Boring human empires have something in common for your reasons and because their both empires of homo sapiens...so what?got any pictures of pigs flying???

Re: Endoperez
 

Are you saying that the Theurs are only useful units they have? I find Principes to be exceptional infantry, for both nations.
Or are you saying that the theurgs are the only thing they have in common? From Velites to Triarii, their units are the same, and both also have Standard. Broken Empire doesn't have Hydras, gladiators or Emerald Guards, it has Praetorian Guards and can summon undead. Even Broken Empire can get impressive amounts of undead in surprisingly short time.

Again, I'm not sure what your are implying. Are you trying to say that both of those are boring human nations, and that is the reason I find similarities? Neither centers around humans. Last of the Tuatha wins or dies with the Tuatha, the knights and longbowmen are just something to support them. The same things with Vanir, Valkyries and Dwarves of Vanheim; they are the point, the humans are just there so that you have something cheaper to use as cannon fodder and in early game. And, the human parts happen to be pretty different: Knights, Longbowmen and useless militia vs basic shielded spear/sword units, berserkers and Shapeshifters without real ranged units.

Or was your point that there aren't enough differences between two human nations? Unit-heavy Ulm is weaker than most nations under most situations, Marignon has priests, firepower and the power of fire, neither is like Machaka, Mictlan plays differently from anyone else, and as said above, both Man and Vanheim have different powers and weaknesses even in their human armies. The base troops are very similar between the human nations, but magic and special units make the difference.

And it just so happens that I do have a picture of a flying pig. Granted, this isn't from actual game, because Fay Boars aren't very useful melee units. One would need a Flying Carpet or two to transport the "dead" ones back to the main armies, and there are better things to use your Flying Carpets for.

Re: moddable AI
 

Ooops. Didn't knew that http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/redface.gif .

I thought of - real - basic building. Didn't thought of that, but I naturally play defensively ( camper and clam hoarder http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif ) . If it changes the spirit of the game, then let's forget it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif .

The thing I'm sure is that I don't want a clone of Civ or AoW-SM http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif .

Re: moddable AI
 

How about at least if you go to the army setup screen, you get an overlay showing where the fortification is located so you can strategically protect certain chokepoints without having to memorize the layout of every fort? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

A map-command for global random equipment of independents. (like #randomequip command, but for all independent commanders at once)

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I'd like to see more local enchantments. Right now, if you want to magically boost your empire, you have exactly five global enchantment slots to work with, that you have to fight for with the other pretenders, no less. The only local enchantments that come to mind are the various domes and astral window. How hard can it be to boost resources in one province, growth in another, and maybe travel through another?

On that note, I'd like to have a number somewhere that shows how many turns the enchantments that have gem dependent duration have remaining.

And finally (this has probably been mentioned already, but here goes) I dislike the fact that battle scripting is rather... binary. A few examples:

For some odd reason I like javelin tossing infantry. Now, if I script them to attack, they never use javelins, but I leave the script open the do, and then engage in melee. Good so far. However, if I'd like them to hold and attack intelligently, no can do.

In one game, I was playing Vanheim and got Vanlade. Great! I equip him with items and send him out to kick butt. Problem: after the buffing script, he can either casts spells, or attack, one or the other but never both. So, it's either spam undead into unconsciousness, or attack without ever using spells. It would be much smarter for him to buff, attack for a while, and when a bunch of infantry surrounds him, cast Shockwave.

I'm not sure how to implement intelligent, or even semi-intelligent choices after the five action script, but the current MO is extremely wasteful, not to mention more than a little moronic.


K.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

On the same note, more global enchantment slots would also be nice. Say about ten of them. Because there must be around 20 or more of them that are useful and having more than just 5 would make for a more enjoyable game.

Edi

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

More (or fewer) global enchantment slots would be good as a game option. A good number depends on the number of players (as well as your taste). Five slots for 17 players seems insanely cutthroat. On the other hand, for two players, three slots might be plenty.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

1.Better AI for mages.I was using my pretender and my army vs an emeny and my pretender did NOTHING but sit there and cast spells on himself

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I think cutthroat was the general idea of developers, but some option to change it would really be welcome. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

1.Nations specific items?I mean C'tis has the Jade Mask and Ermor has the Black Laurels!