Re: Brilliant Idea to make Indies More Interesting
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Mundanes - hmmmm. Tribals, maybe? I can't think of any rationalization why they would affect the magic scale, or be able to notice it. And as for +-2... that's getting potent enough to be fairly game-altering. As it stands, the majority of indy provinces would still have neutral scales, with a few special ones made a little more special.

-Cherry

P.S. Did I miss any indy types?

[ January 19, 2004, 15:20: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]

Re: Brilliant Idea to make Indies More Interesting
 

Not that I'm against this idea exactly, but...

What does it do beside add some flavor to the game? What is the actual effect on game play? Do the indie scales spread? Are they limited to their province? I'm just trying to get a handle on what you actually want to accomplish.

Seems to me this doesn't do a whole lot besides slowing down (or speeding up) a given provinces rate of change to to a nations dominion. There's nothing really wrong with that, but it doesn't seem like a whole lot to get really excited about either. Also C'tis and Caelum would appear to be most influanced by this in terms of the effects of temperature on their troops. Again, not a big deal, but seemingly a bit of a disadvantage for them (disadvantage in that its now harder for them to bend the opposite temperatures to the side they want).

Again, its a cute idea, but on the whole... it doesn't do much for me.

Re: Brilliant Idea to make Indies More Interesting
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well, scale effects are only half of the suggestion... and temperature scales are only 1/8 of it. Indy scales would work identically to the current magic site scales. Do you dislike those?

Re: Brilliant Idea to make Indies More Interesting
 

ok.
Oh I got "mundane" from a really bad SF/Fantasy author from the 1980s I liked as a youngster, Pierce (or Peirce?) Anthony, who in his Xanth series had a magic realm and a "Mundane" realm (= Florida) where magic was impossible. Maybe one could have some dwarven-type or some priestly-type indies by which "drain +1" is standard?

Re: Brilliant Idea to make Indies More Interesting
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well, dwarves have magic skill of earth 3. Maybe if there was an indy province with Ulmish troops in it...

Re: Brilliant Idea to make Indies More Interesting
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It all depends on how you like to play the game. If you are a powergamer, you probably wont care about creating an engaging and coherent fantasy world for dominions. To some extent all the artwork, races, units, spells, could just be described logically and you could play the game without all the artsy stuff.

Thats cool, if that's really what you want.

I like dominions for many reasons. Sure i love the gameplay part, but the part of the game that lets me disappear into a fantasy world is just as important to me. Thats why "cute ideas" mean more to me than they do to you. I would love for the dominion gameboard to be much more dynamic. Conquering a "living" world, where the indies have "personality" and the indy provinces tell their own story is much more appealing to me than getting my flag planted on a white polygon labelled "whateverheim - income 45".

Re: Brilliant Idea to make Indies More Interesting
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Ditto your opinion. Otherwise you can just play AoW, or Warlords, etc.

Re: Brilliant Idea to make Indies More Interesting
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That is good.
Especially if it is not difficult to implement. I really like things that are cost-efficient to do, although I personally would give other types of changes (e.g. to interface or AI) higher priority.

Re: Brilliant Idea to make Indies More Interesting
 

As Saber Cherry said most of the ideas in this thread shouldn't require very much in the way of coding. In regards to the "dynamic province" issues, i think a lot of it could be scripted using very simple logic, since Dom II already has an underlying abstract province description (stats like income, scales, terrain, etc.). However, in the world of programming you never know. There's often some weird stumbling block when you want to change or add to some code, due to the ever present shortcuts and non-generalized instances. So i guess its moot until a developer actually puts it into perspective.

Re: Brilliant Idea to make Indies More Interesting
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Ditto your opinion. Otherwise you can just play AoW, or Warlords, etc. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You lost me here... Are you saying that AoW or Warlords have less dynamic gameBoards than Dom? I always thought they had more dynamic gameBoards, though the process for changing the tiles is certainly different than in Dom (well at least for AoW). That's really neither here nor there, neither AoW nor Warlords can compete with Dom when you get down to the stratigic aspects, what they can compete on is the bells and whistles and 'cuteness'. This proposed addition is 'cute', it won't change much as far as how anyone approaches the game from a strategic viewpoint, all it does it add more 'flavor'. There's nothing wrong with that, all I said was that that *particular* added flavor doesn't interest me, and, unless the addition is trivial I'd rather the devs not bother with it, it just doesn't add much bang for the buck (depending on how much time/difficulty is involved in adding it).

Anyway, its been pointed out time and time again, that none of us knows what the time/difficulty is for the devs to add anything new, so just saying that 'it shouldn't take much' doesn't really mean anything. You can think that it would or wouldn't but we don't know.

I guess my point of view is that if you're going to change something (indies in this case) you might as well do it right and make it meaningful. I'd rather see a more complete reworking of indie provinces than minor additions that don't have a great impact on gameplay. Things like making it possible for indies to convert to your control without attacking them (if dominion gets high enough, or a new command for priests like 'convert' rather than just preach). I'd like to see indies sometimes act agressively against each other and existing nations. I dunno, I'd like the system to be more detailed with more options. Maybe this suggestion is a good start, maybe not, only the devs can tell http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif