Re: Moving Through Multiple Provinces
 

No, I'm not leading an empire. Either I'm playing a game or I'm an ascendant god making important decisions while my followers handle the details. I'm also not someone who is never satisfied, so I won't just find something else annoying. I love this game. The content and strategy rocks. It would just be great to clear out some unnecessary clicking

Re: Moving Through Multiple Provinces
 

Ironlord, are you using the keyboard shortcuts? It's more of a pain to move armies around if you don't use the 'n' key. You should be able to do something like:

n - select the next commander

If your commander can lead more troops:
t - army setup screen
(left click one of the new zombies in province)
a - select all unassigned zombies
stick as many fit on your commander
escape

left-click province to move to

click 'n' again, etc.

If you're not bothering to pick up new undead along the way, it's even faster just to 'n', left-click, 'n', left-click. You don't need to wait for the arrow to finish drawing.

I wouldn't even bother trying to get the armies into formation until they get to the front lines.

Re: Moving Through Multiple Provinces
 

The suggested feature would be great, but it won't happen. It was suggested before Dom3 was released, and it'd have been nice to get it then. We didn't, though, and such a huge change after release would be expansion pack -stuff, while new nations, units and such are relatively simple and can be added in patches. Well, at least for this game. :p


In addition, every once in a while there's a mention of a non-Dominions project underway.

Hmmm?

Re: Moving Through Multiple Provinces
 

Also, the .trn files would become pretty bigger to memorize all the waypoints and pathfinding etc., requiring more time and bandwith from the servers to send in pbem. Not a thing to overlook.

The only thing I feel the need of, to reduce micro, is really the forge monthly command. :smirk:

Re: Moving Through Multiple Provinces
 

This would be great, and since we already have a similar mechanic (for casting rituals monthly), it might be possible to implement without too much hassle.

Re: Moving Through Multiple Provinces
 

I see this "getting reinforcements to the front line is boring" as a non-issue because mostly it's only a specific setup which requires this: single player games against a losing AI and/or playing freespawn nations like LA Ermor. In the first case, you usually can just ignore that some crappy troops are waiting for you in some of your provinces and instead focus on your advance. If you're in a competitive game, you'll have far more to worry about than having somebody collect your crappy troops all the time. Most of your turn time will be spent on setting orders and scripts for your mages. If you don't want a micromanagement heavy game, don't use LA Ermor. You knew what you signed up for. You don't pick a blood nation if you don't like micromanagement either. If you don't want to spend too much time on armies, use mages or SCs. :P

In my opinion, there are too many variables about moving armies that you really can't let the AI do this for you. Some of those just include:
- which way to move, depending on terrain
- what to do about enemy provinces and/or enemy attacks along the way
- adding units encountered in provinces along the way
- how to handle supply problems when moving with multiple big armies

In general, I think that even a sophisticated solution for this, which would take an immense amount of work to set up, would be inadequate and require constant fine-tuning all the time anyway. Shortcuts to pool gems and so on that are already present in the game are usually pretty simple stuff, and as soon as it gets a little more complex (e.g. remote site searching) people are not too impressed with the results. Something like army movement is decidedly non-trivial to me.

Re: Moving Through Multiple Provinces
 

VFB,

"I wouldn't even bother trying to get the armies into formation until they get to the front lines."

Tried this plan myself. Three problems:
1. Forgot to to put army into formation.
2. Got attacked unexpectedly.
3. I script my mages when I put armies into formation. Got attacked unexpectedly.

Your plan probably only works for people smarter than me. So for me and the two others not in that exclusive club, we will have problems waiting to put armies into formation.

Re: Moving Through Multiple Provinces
 

I can't think of a single game I own that has pathfinding that I'd describe as "good". Apparently it's more difficult to code than it looks.

I can't remember ever using the monthly ritual hotkey, for that matter. Micromanagement FTW.

Re: Moving Through Multiple Provinces
 

Ha ha ha :) I like your sense of humour.

But I'm specifically talking about LA Ermor here, not in general. Would not dream of doing that with other nations.

Re: Moving Through Multiple Provinces
 

I cannot tell you how much I agree with your observation. The pathfinding problem is particularly onerous in many RTS games. I'll frequently click a group of units, click a destination, and then go on to another task. Several minutes later, I go to check on my wandering units, and I discover that half of them have gotten stuck on some sort of obstacle. The other half of my troops went straight to their destination and got slaughtered because they didn't have enough support. :doh:

Actually, I can think of one game with a decent pathfinding engine: Civ4. But that's the only one.

I use the monthly ritual commands for remote site searching and some summonings. Put a couple of necromancers in a lab, set them to summon Wights every month, and you can have quite a respectable force in short order.

That said, I totally agree with lch's point about the drawbacks in the automated remote site-searching. I use it gladly, but there are a few shortcomings in the way it determines which sites to search. On the one hand, I really don't want to waste gems and mage-turns to search captured enemy capitals. I already know which site will be in Niefel's capital -- it's Niefelheim, thanks -- and I don't need to search for it. On the other hand, it would also be good if my remote site searchers would be willing to search a province that had already been searched by a level-1 or level-2 mage, because that first search could have missed a site or two. I gladly use the automated remote site-searching, and I consider it to be a huge boon to the gamer, but it's definitely not perfect.