Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I'd really like to see Water magic improved, as even in the water it's less useful than certain other paths.

And in some ways, it's plain backwards. Example: Thetis' Blessing. Mostly castable only by the water nations, who don't really _want_ land units to come into the water, thus making it easier for land nations to invade the oceans.

Wouldn't it make more sense for the blessing to allow aquatic creatures onto the land? Then the water nations might actually cast it. As is, I've never seen the spell cast, in a _lot_ of games.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Several wishes, thiugh I haven't read the thread:

1. NO identically named commanders. Let us rename, use bigger lists, or at the very least put a number at the end. Yes, that damages immersion, but so does ordering the wrong commander because you have 2 with the same name.

2. Friendly fire needs work. Specifically it'd be nice to have a general "Don't fire when allies are near" setting..and units that don't run straight through poison clouds.

3. Retreat would be nice if it was based on the army power rather than the number of units. Eg an army with 10,000 peasents and 10 demigods in it might run if all the demigods fell but not if the peasents were wiped out.

4. Replays- a turn-by-turn scroll is a Good Thing, as is a reverse option. Right now Dom II has all the disadvantages of a real-time reply and none of the advantages..

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I should have added. not death/evil theme http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Sort of an ultra strong divine nation. With an inherent strategic weakness equivalent to Ermor's death spreading dominion. I was thinking maybe it's dominion can cause migration of population into friendly domonion.
This can make such a nation an obvious target in MP games.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Some other wishes, mostly UI related:

Expanding the F1 view - currently you can see the provinces all by themselves, or provinces and commanders.

Being able to see only commanders would be great, especially if you could sort the commanders - by magic path, by currently issued orders, etc. Also, to sort by or somehow show at least some of the magic items carried - symbols or letters indicating a commander has a gem producing item, a forging item, a magic path booster, or an artifact. Also, showing the commander's HPs - this would make life simpler when dealing with fever fetishes.

Similarly, if the provinces could be sorted - by population, by unrest, by what magic paths have been searched there, etc. Being able to see population would also be a big help there, as would icons (or even letters) for the terrain types.

This would simplify site searching, tax rate adjustments, figuring out where to blood hunt, etc.

Being able to see a province's population and terrain type simply by clicking on it, instead of having to bring up the info screen for each province. (Maybe a filter to show the terrain types?)

As someone else said - the ability to disband units, even if it costs gold - say, something like 1/10 to 1/2 the recruitment costs. This would represent demustering the troops, giving a retirement payout, etc. Right now, it's sometimes almost impossible to get rid of the militia, for instance - movement rate 1, so it can take 5 - 10 turns (or more) to get them somewhere where you can have a battle, and even then - players you aren't at war with may not understand that you're not _really_ attacking them, you're just trying to retire some troops. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

You can rename commanders, and you can add or change names by using mods. Unless you for some reason have not patched the game.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
I second this.. sounds like a great idea! Perhaps do something similar with summons, so that you might have to think about actually getting some demon knights instead of more devils (no way! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif).

Reduce the strategic use of flying. I mean, if a 2 strat move army can't march across a friendly plain and then engage the enemy the same turn, why can one fly over a territory and still be ready to fight? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif

I'd like to see water gems have a use besides clams. It should also have dominance of underwater battle spells.

On madcastling, raiding, and forts in general: Why should an entire army be able to hide inside a watchtower so that you have to break the door before you can even fight it? It should simply provide arrow support to any friendly troops, as should any fortress that doesn't have true walls. Also, a different movement scheme would be nice, so you can actually have a chance to catch those god damn raiders. This would also help reduce madcastling, as then you could counter raiders by other means. But hey, not everyone thinks madcastling is a problem.

Less emphasis on lifedrain. I mean, there really should be other weapons to consider putting on most SCs. Maybe just make lifedrain weaker, or getting it more expensive. I personally would like to see SCs in general weakened a little, but I'm in a small minority in saying that... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/fear.gif

Where are the really sexy dragons? I personally dislike the pretender dragon's ability to turn into a human. Very unsexyish. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif I would also like to see some really cool non pretender dragons. I guess there is the Torrasque, but it's not like thats very useful competetively. The problem is that life drain is so important that not having arms kills the dragons. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

It would sure be nice if the option for renaming commanders was on by default though - numerous games wind up having duplicate commander names with no way to rename them, because the game's creator forgot to turn the option on.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Making lifedrain weaker or harder to obtain wouldn't accomplish that. It would simply make it so that there are less SCs around, and so that those that still had them would be at a significant advantage. The only way to make it viable to put other weapons on SCs would be to make reinvigoration items both cheaper and far more effective, or to completely overhaul the fatigue system.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Minor bit:

Messages that involve a commander dying (e.g. Seeking Arrow nails somebody) should at least mention the province; it would be even spiffier if it mentioned his Last order ("Foo, while researching in The Promised Land") or something like that. That way it's far easier to determine who needs replacing with what and where. With some, like Seeking Arrow, you can't even determine the location from a battle replay 'coz there isn't one. Not a big problem with a small game, but a long game on a huge map might have issues with this.


--------------------------------------------------------
Medium bit:

Distribution of themes is a little uneven. R'lyeh, for instance, has no extra themes. Perhaps an expensive theme ("R'lyeh Ascendant"? "Dreamland"?) that caused unrest, R'lyeh cultist attacks, perhaps even offering a slight risk of causing insanity among your enemies in the dominion, or make that Last bit a theme-specific global for better balance. One could also imagine a theme prior to the war with Atlantis; perhaps more illithids and friends, stronger ties to the Void, no Atlantian-derived slaves, no Traitor King hero.

Atlantis, prior to the Fall? Hm.

------------------------------------------------------------

MAJOR bit:

On cavalry, perhaps armies with a strategic move of 2 or 3+ attacking an adjacent province should have an option of "Attack and pillage", saving them a turn and allowing them to live off the land more effectively, at the cost of unrest. That, plus a phased system allowing faster armies to intercept slow armies, might encourage the use of light cavalry. Maybe even a plains survival skill (can this be weighted so basically the horse doesn't much impact supply on plains)?

Along with this, I'd encourage putting limits on how fast province defense can be raised per turn, especially if the province is ungarrisoned, and perhaps having unrest affect both this and the efficiency of constructing buildings; these might slow down how fast one can consolidate territory so while light cav can run around, pillaging and causing trouble, you still need to -hold- land to do well with it, and that should be difficult (at least if the citizens worship somebody else or were happy with their previous ruler) if few troops stay around. Tricky, tricky to get right and logical however.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

A few password related wishes : The ability to change your password during a game, so that if you (like some people) use the same password for all your games, you can change it if you need a sub for one game and don't want the others compromised.

Also, the ability to set a password on a game at creation, so that people wanting to upload a pretender have to know the password. This would allow someone to start a game on a server while maintaining some control over who joined the game.

--------------------

The ability to see what Version the game server is running via "View Game Settings" so players can verify they're using the right Version to see accurate battle replays.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I really don't like the idea of increasing uniy costs for more-built units. Instead of creating an artificial handicap for units, just make under-used things more effective. There are plenty of suggestions in the thread to make Light Infantry and Cavalry more useful.

I have to echo the request for disbanding troops.

Either make unit AI better or increase scripting options. The desire for more control stems from silly things like your archers wiping out the back ranks of your army one too many times. Maybe certain commanders could unlock better strategies for units?

Multiple fort designs is a good idea too.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Balancing hundreds of units perfectly is impossible, and if unit A is known to be only 99% as cost-effective as unit B, you'll never recruit A when you have the choice. Besides, this system isn't any more artificial than the current unit stat system, quite the contrary IMO: if you have two military academies, one that trains musketeers and one that train dragoons, never incorporating dragoons in your armies would certainly come at a cost.

I've seen this simple idea implemented in a couple wargames, and it worked like a charm.

[/quote]

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

CONTENT WISH: Artilary units for most, if not all nations.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

- True 3d battles - e.g. a flying unit shouldn't have to worry about units which don't have ranged weapons or magic, attacking uphill should be harder, some spell effects should flow downhill, etc.

- More targeting options. Just about every army in the history of time has recognized the value of targeting enemy commanders - it'd be cool if my archers and magic Users could do so as well.

- Combined-arms options - e.g. attack after this spell is successfully cast, attack the targeted units from multiple sides (which would be very useful with flying troops), or things like "follow behind the heavy cavalry" so you have a better way of dealing with different unit speeds. In particular I've been annoyed when storming castles when some units spend the entire battle trying to get in through the walls rather than the congested entrance.

- The ability to disband units. It'd be handy if you could automatically discharge any unit with certain wounds or simply do something with all those militia when you're in a low-supply province.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

This was purposefully removed, as the presence of this order in Dominions I made it a necessity to have a storms in virtually every battle, as otherwise your commanders were picked off in the first turns by flying troops.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

[/quote]

It's not about balancing hundreds of units, it's about making combined arms essential. I didn't mean Light Infantry and Cavalry as in the units Light Infantry and Cavalry, I meant that horse archers, fast lightly armored cavalry and javelin infantry in general should have a place in peoples' armies.

That'd contribute to nation balance too. Themes like Batbarian Kings, which have an advantage of good horse archers, suddenly get a needed boost in power. Suddenly, not having good light cavalry or infantry is a disadvantage instead of one less never-clicked sprite in the build menu.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I'd like to see to a volounteer order of execution of commands too.

I mean, if in a turn I want to dispel a global and cast a mine, this shouldn't be random, my mages should coordinate to FIRST dispel and THEN cast the global.
Same as if I cast a ghost rider to cleanse a province, and then teleport in someone.
Same as if if I've some Master Crystal Matrix, first all my slaves cast communion slave, then the masters casts with benefit from first round from communion.
These are some examples.

I underline too the importance of stop the strenght of raiding, and the flying asset.

Enhancing the provincial building menu could be nice, and upgrading castle defences (like something that could do damage to besiegers, and vice versa for war machines). Indeed this could be put in better castles allowing for more upgrades. After all you pay more points from them, and actually they seems disadvantageous compared to the popular Watch Tower.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Hi everyone! Been a while.

As for Dom III, I'd love to see a few things:

First, a new combat engine would be nice, though kind of a major change. But for example... putting all stats in the form of low integer numbers has numerous drawbacks. To make a helmet with better protection than 1, you have to have protection 2... which is twice as good! Thus, there are only 3 standard helmet types: none, normal, and super-heavy. Many weapons come out very similar as well, because there are not many variations of small integer combinations (attack, defense, and damage).

An entirely new combat system that used floating point calculations could retain most of the existing numbers, and simply allow greater variation for new items or old ones that need tweaking (like giving a dagger 1.7 damage, a coral knife 1.2 damage, and a copper cap 0.6 protection and .1 encumbrance). Alternately, extant numbers could be reprocessed and multiplied by a fixed value of 2 or 10 (giving normal humans 20 or 100 HP rather than 10, and increasing strengths and weapon damages by a similar ratio) and altering the dice.

Would this be worth the trouble? Yes, in my opinion. Due to the use of small integers, many units and items in the game are (statistically) nearly identical, and some are exactly identical. Others, like the series of armor types, may not be numerical duplicates, but leave no room for new additions without cloning current stats and simply renaming them. Furthermore, changing or modifying the combat engine would allow the perfect opportunity for a more advanced system, with (for example) locational protection and damage (for example, wearing a helmet would not protect you from taking an arrow in the leg, which would slow down a unit for the remainder of combat in addition to causing damage), damage type modifiers (like chain mail providing a bonus versus slashing damage, and an axe doing slash/blunt type damage, and skeletons being pierce resistant), and so forth.


Secondly... whatever the method, I wish light infantry and militia were useful, even in non-magical battles. A "Skirmish" command, a decrease in price (and increase in price of super-heavy HI), a decrease in maintenance/supply usage, possibly a battle engine change whereby encumbrance directly affects attack (and precision)... some combo of those might be helpful.


Third... there's still a problem with supercombattants. Unless you follow a specific anti-SC formula - and often, even when you do - a non-artifact-equipped SC can rip you to shreds.


Fourth... more indies are always fun! And having indy populations influence the local scales (hey, some people are better farmers, or better metalworkers, or just plain lazy...), or gravitate to certain special sites, or be easier to seduce into blood slavery... or even be violently despised by a given race and killed on site (for example, maybe Marignon cannot tolerate Amazons and their witchcraft?)

More dynamic indies might also be fun, with strong indy provinces (esp. Barbarians, Amazons, and horse-riding indies) launching raids on your undefended borders. Not raids of conquest, just to steal food, resources (production for a month), gold, and maybe a few people into slavery.


Fifth... redone scales would be interesting. Scales with 5 levels up and down, with variable cost (like +20, +20, +25, +30, +40 incremental cost for moving the productivity scale to +1, +2, +3, +4, and +5, respectively) would allow much more national specificity. Also, +5 / -5 could be off limits in scale settings, achievable only if (for example) you

chose a +4 cold race and then "Wolven Winter" was cast at your province, moving it temporarily to +5 cold.


Sixth... specifying ALL DATA in text files would be AWESOME!!! It would make modifying the game extremely easy. Some sort of CRC would be needed to ensure everyone was using the same data, of course.


Seventh... Allowing double-resolution critters with 4 action poses would be nice! Obviously, most of the critters could remain the same, and just be a little blurry, and use only 2 poses. But the crucial (most used, most seen, and most interesting) units, like Dragon pretenders, Nataraja, militia, archers, normal commanders, priests, and slingers could be redone in double resolution with, say, a "still" pose, "moving" pose, "about to attack" pose, and "attacking" pose.


Lastly, I like special sites. But I dislike games overflowing with gems. A gem cost or gem production multiplier (in game setup), distinct from magic site rarity, would be great. For example, with a cost multiplier, setting the multiplier at 110% would make 20-gem item forges cost 22 gems and 1-gem spells cost 2 gems (rounded up). Alternately, with a production slider, 70% would mean that a site that normally produces 3 gems would only produce 2.7 gems on average. Essentially, a 1d10 would be tossed for each possible gem each turn, and only tosses of 1 to 7 would yield a gem. This could affect blood slaves as well, or there could be an additional slider for them.


Great news to hear that Dominions III is in the works! I hope you guys have as much fun making it as we will playing it!


-Cherry

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I just think that's the wrong way to solve the problem as it's too obviously an arbitrary restriction; I'd prefer less blatant approach like giving commanders more defense options and making bodyguards smarter. It seems entirely reasonable that an army with flying troops should be able to have them attack the enemy's command structure - it's such a time honored, proven tactic. The answer could be protective gear and better bodyguards (e.g. perhaps a commander gets a certain number of "ablative henchmen" who increase his defense value and take the damage from an attack which would otherwise have hit the commander - basically the secret service guy taking a bullet for the president).

This would also open some interesting role-playing options - e.g. some commanders could have stealth/disguise options ("nobody here but us militia") which another would reject as dishonorable or cowardly and the effectiveness of the ruse would depend on the quality of the attacker's intel (a "suborn bodyguard" attack would be pretty cool, too) and nature of the attack (e.g. a mage couldn't fool another magic user for very long). A beloved hero or religious figure might cause their bodyguards to become fanatical - increased attack / decreased defense because they're too quick to die a martyr's death, etc.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

My list:
1) More dynamic indies, like Saber Cherry and others suggested.

2) More nation specific items/artifacts.

3) More national heroes.

Well, I think I like whatever you decide to chance/add in Dom III. Keep up the good work. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

A very simple thing: make it so that becoming computer-controlled isn't permanent. This way someone could leave a game without leaving everyone else hanging and still gives the option of another human player taking up the nation again later.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

And with this allow the AI to be given a basic idea of who it is at peace with and who it is at war with when it becomes AI.

The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

There is one network related feature I would like:
[*]The .2h file should contain a flag indicating whether it is finalized or not. If this flag isnt set, no Quickhost shall happen. The .2h is used regardless of this flag when forced hosting occurs. "End turn" sets the 'finalized'-flag, while "save and exit"-clears it. No changes otherwise.

Or Dom2/3 should ask whether to upload a turn to a quickhosting server or not: I do not do my turns at once, and reconnecting just to see how much time I got left resulted in quite a few half-done turns... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif
[*] The server should also ask all connected clients to upload their turn when forced hosting occurs (to fasciliate Blitz-games). Last time I checked this wasnt so...

supply and demand for unit gold costs
 

I like the idea of changing non-national recruitment costs in response to demand.

It could be global, so that you are competing with other players to hire the best units. It seems like this would instantly balance things out to make more kinds of units get into the game.

I imagine it would also be fun! Instead of just recruiting the same units every turn, I would start looking at the current prices this turn and designing new armies. That sounds like fun. ("Hm. For the next few turns I should be able to pick up light cavalry archers for only 5 gold each! I could add a squad of them to the left flank of my Red Army...")

It could be a nice simple algorithm like: every turn in which a unit of type X was recruited somewhere in the world, the price of X goes up by 1 gold. Every turn in which zero units of type X were recruited, the price of X goes down by 1 gold.

It doesn't have to be exactly like that, but it ought to be simple enough that players can understand why the price has moved and have a certain amount of predictability of future prices.

Yet a few ideas
 

First, I would really like the Moloch to either loose his imps, have them turned into a lifelong protection force, or, in general, have the fleeing issue solved in a nicer matter than it is now. At the moment, every pretender with autosummons really ought to get a cost reduction for that special ability, which cannot be what was meant to be.

Second, a general UI overhaul. Probably already scheduled.

Third, and possibly already covered by second, but important enough in its own right, a rework of the blood hunting/blood sacrificing/tax adjusting madness would be high on my list. I like occasionally dabbling with blood nations, but it is a real micromanagement pain.

Some simple examples (that would even do for Dominions 2 in a forthcoming patch):

1. Allow blood slave sacrifice directly from a lab present if the priest has no blood slaves but there is a lab present and slaves in a lab. Do NOT reset a priest from Sacrifice to Defence if there are no slaves. If I have started people sacrificing, I want them to continue until I give them another order, and if I have more people sacrificing than slaves and really want to be sure that certain priests get priority, I can still manually give those select priests blood slaves of their own(This would allow you to use the "pool" command without having to then distribute blood slaves to everybody sacrificing). This would allow, e.g. Mictlan players, to set up priest sacrificers and use the "pool" button without the endless tedium of the current system.
2. Alternatively, add a "pool slaves EXCEPT FOR THOSE ON SACRIFICERS" button. Not as good as #1, but still slightly better than what you have now.

Unless unrest is completely reworked in Dominions 3, a big red button labeled "SET TAXES SENSIBLY", which would, upon being pressed, set the tax values in all your provinces to a sensible value given the current unrest setting, would prove very useful. You could ignore it if you wanted to and manage all unreset yourself or press it when you felt a need for major readjustment and would like sensible default values. E.g. blood nations would quite likely press this once per turn and then adjust the tax rates for a few strategic provinces rather than, as now, often having to check and adjust the tax rates of a significant fraction of their provinces per turn. A sensible value in the current system would be something like max{110-2*unrest, 0}. A nicer Version would be max{100-v*max{unrest-d, 0}, 0}, where v is value, say, {0...4} and d is a value {0...unrestMax} both chosen by the player, though it and "advanced" (:D) Version like that was used it should probably be called a tax policy rather than a Big Red Button. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Another (minor) irritant is the current solution of putting save games in a subdirectory directly in the root of the installation (on windows, at least). This is ugly and unnecessary. A subdirectory "save games" in which the games directories would be placed would improve the aesthetics and also minimize the risks of some mistakes when messing around with the files manually.


--- Architecturally, the franchise would probably win quite a bit in the long run (if one was looking forwards to producing a #4 or using the code base of #3 as the basis for a new game) by finally doing a major rework of the code structure. Cleanly separate it based on components instead of having it all mashed up together and you gain a much more maintainable code. Even splitting it up in just four discreet components would help:

• Server (executes all commands and calculates turns based on input in a well-specified format, returns an output per nation)
• Client (displays turn ouput and accepts input that generates a turn order)
• Netserver (interface between client and server)
• AI (generates a turn order based solely on the information stored in its turn-output and map, just like a player)

Since Dominions is not real-time, there is really very little reason whatsoever architecturally for having the client perform actual execution. While it does make some things much easier (e.g. if you move item A from commander B to C, you just plain move it on the spot rather than storing a "move item A from B to C" action, which has either to be amended to an "move item A from B to D" if the player then subsequently moves it from C to D or to be stored subsequently leading to bloat), it leaves the turn format vulnerable to hacking and corruption.

I appreciate that the Illwinter team is rather small, but this really is an area that is open for major improvement design-wise. (Whether it is economically feasible is, of course, another issue - and one that only Illwinter can answer). If the development team needs (unpaid http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif) help on this, there are several client/server experts on this forum who might pitch in with ideas and advice if asked nicely. Esben comes to mind though he is currently AWOL.

The AI could very profitably have major factors involved in decision taking externalised as modifiable floats allowing everybody to tweak to their content (or discontent as it might be). I am not asking for a full script language here, just a dozen or a hundred floats I can tweak to adjust AI behaviour, mainly on overall (rather than specific) spell choice and troop composition, though front/garrison values for army movement would also be greatly appreciated. Allow a MOD to point to a specific AI file, and, if necessary, store the AI settings chosen (a few K of data max) as part of save game fatherland file. No breath of winter, shockwave, or immolation chosen by the spellcaster AI unless you really want to? Set the KILL_FRIENDS_WITH_FRIENDLY_FIRE_FOR_THE_HECK_OF_IT value to 0.0 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

This has been mentioned in here but I too would like to see a "skirmish" command for light infantry. Letting them pelt the opposition with javelins while staying out of range of advancing troops. When ammo is depleted the light infantry can then retreat....or maybe have the option to close to hand-to-hand if their target breaks.

Another wish is for troops using "fire and flee" to stay together instead of ending up in any adjacent province. Since they aren't routing, but retreating in good order, they shouldn't disperse (hopefully).

Formations, and the ability to move in formation would be nice as well. A solid pike phalanx would be a formidible target from the front (historical) with many opportunities to get poked by long pointy things before landing an attack.

Re: Yet a few ideas
 

Also blood hunters in a province with a lab should automatically deposit slaves in the lab.

Some of my wishes
 

Well...
Obviously I have many wishes for dominions III (not as an insult to II), but here is a short list containing some of them:
1. Being able to choose formations, so instead of a square getting bigger the more troops you put in the squad you would get a choice of square, diamond (a square tipped by 45 degrees), circle etc..
2. Improved unit order - just like a lot of other people say - I understand that you can't provide a highly elaborate plane and expect your braindead soldiers to understand it all and memorize it, but something more elaborate than "Attack" should obviously be an option. As well as increasing the 5 commands limit, you should add a "And repeat X action" command, so a commander can be instructed to cast the same spell repeatedly instead of resorting to an AI selected spell.
3. More spells - Obviously, there are many spells, only you can't use most of them, since because they aren't very good and some because you don't have the mages.
This applies mostly to strictly offensive spells (with two or three being actually effective) but there aren't always good summoning spells available as well.
Obviously this will be taken care of in dom III, I'd just like to say I'd appreciate some more offensive spells a la fireball.

Maybe I'll add some more later, I keep thinking of stuff and then forgeting...

Re: Some of my wishes
 

National units competitive throughout the game
Magic and summons far too rapidly overtakes the value of most national troops. Perhaps allow the building of special nation specific sites at your forts (say with an investment of 500 resources/gold or something) which allow access to the next set of national troops, which would be effective for the mid-game. Ditto for the late game.

Make Lifedrain drain only HP or Fatigue, not both
SCs are a very fun part of the game and good from the standpoint of investing magical resources. But lifedrain in its current form is too powerful in that it practically negates the value of all existing mortal troops.

Rethink population killing dominions
Empires with pop-killing dominions are better than they should be since other nations have less incentive to attack them. Why expend all your troops attacking Ermor and get useless dried up provinces when you could attack Arco and get oodles of gold?

Limited Diplomacy / Messaging
Add a simple diplomacy screen from which you could see/set your peace/nuetral/war status with any other empire. A full grid of all nations would be nice but not required. This screen dovetails with the need for updates to the trade and messaging system b/w empires. Make it clearer what Messages you have sent that round and to which nation. Allow multiple items/gems/provinces/etc to be traded in a set instead of one by one.

Some visual distinction of commanders with magic items/gems
Its silly to have to hunt through all your commanders just to find the one that has the particular magic item or stash of gems that you are looking for.

Waypoints for moving troops from far in the rear to the front

An Intercept order
Trying to guess where an enemy will move on the strategic map is sometimes a fun challenge, but more often just a headache. I think that this might actually be hard to code for the movement system as it stands, but I state it here because it really is needed.

Re: Some of my wishes
 

(Options to) tone down SC dominance.

Perhaps increase penalties for being attacked by many at once, to reduce the SC dominance.

Reduce effect of Life Drain.

Partial idea: (Optional?) magic system change where mages need to actually study specific spells, rather than automatically being able to cast any spell their nation has researched.

Allow larger sized armies and larger battlefields. This is not just for spectacle, but to help the requests balancing SC's versus human troops.

Add terrain to battlefields with important effects on combat.

Revise the supplies/disease mechanic, replacing with something which makes more sense (people don't get fatal diseases from fasting for a month), even if the net effect is similar (limiting food-needing troop deployment).

Revise system of retreats, auto-rout, stealth and army-interception so that units that escape combat but would be "auto-eliminated" instead become refugees that can find their way into independent forces, mercenary companies, volunteers, event attacks, etc.

Add non-pretender nations and active independents that try to resist the world being conquered by prentender-led nations.

Change sequence of combat so melee attacks are not at the same time as movement and all one-side before their opponents. When two forces meet, not just one side should get the first attacks, based on where they end their turns, as it presently works.

Develop seduction mechanics so it's not just for succubi and doesn't involve teleportation.

Add an option to play where underwater areas are all or mostly barren.

Add more detailed sailing mechanics.

Game settings options for stronger seasonal effects.

Mod options for tweaking combat system a bit - I'm curious about making to-hit rolls harder and damage rolls less lethal (might help light troops), but it'd be days of modding work with the current system.

Change armor system so there is a hit location and the armor at that location is used, rather than adding all armor to every attack, and giving higher values to torso armor. Most hits would be scored on body or shield, but if you get hit in the head and lack a helmet, it would be a problem, etc.

Deathmatches revised and called something appropriately archaic. Perhaps add duel challenges and have warrior-only and mage-only contests. Don't have the AI's tossing their pretenders into duels to the death.

Graphic option to have dead bodies left on the battlefield rather than vanishing.

PvK

Re: Some of my wishes
 

I've been thinking about this, and come up with a solution. Not only a solution for the problem mentioned, but also for troop and weapon differentiation.

It's like this: There are N phases (for simplicity, we'll use 10 phases). If combat Lasts 40 rounds, then there are 4 rounds of each "phase".

Each unit gets an attack speed (which would be doubled by quickness). At a speed of 5, normal for a human with a sword, the unit attacks 5 phases of each 10 phase cycle (in other words, every other turn). A unit with a dagger might attack more quickly, with a speed of 7. So it would attack 7 times in each 10 phase cycle, with a sort of regular scattering. A speed-7 dagger-user with quickness would get a speed of 14, attacking every round, but attacking twice 4 out of the 10 rounds. And so forth.

How does this solve the original problem? At the beginning of battle, every unit has its phases randomly fixed. So if there were 100 speed-5 units, half of them would get this phase system:
A-A-A-A-A-
And the other half would get
-A-A-A-A-A
where "A" denotes an attacking turn, and "-" denotes a turn where the unit does not attack. Heavy armor and big weapons, of course, would reduce speed except on very strong units. With this system, when two armies collide, only some of the units would get "first strike" due to the inevitable turn-based... um... inconsistancies with reality.

Of course, this might make combat viewing take a bit longer... but giving troops (and weapons) different speeds would be worth it, in my opinion.

Re: Some of my wishes
 

Saber Cherry : In some ways that's a nice idea, _but_ it winds up leading to some very ... cheesy tactics, where very burly high strength units wind up using tiny high speed weapons, which just doesn't seem right. A Niefel Giant using a dagger, for instance? All too likely, because let's say the Giant gets 3 times as many attacks with the dagger as with a great big battle ax. The battle ax has damage 10, the dagger 1, but the giant gets to add its strength 3 times, via 3 attacks, vice 1 attack with the battle ax.

This happened a lot in a bunch of roguelikes and other games, which led to making it such that heavy weapons had a better chance of delivering a critical hit, etc, but the half-ogre barbarians would still all too often using a steak knife. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Re: Some of my wishes
 

To work correctly, the unit would have to have a base speed, modified by a combination of strength and weapon speed or inertia.

For example:

Human: Base speed 8, strength 10.
Giant: Base speed 8, strength 20.

Fist: Inertia 0.
Dagger: Inertia 10.
Sword: Inertia 30.
Giant Axe: Inertia 70.

Resulting speed = ((base speed) - (inertia / strength)) rounded up

Human + Fist: 8
Giant + Fist: 8

Human + Dagger: 7
Giant + Dagger: 8

Human + Sword: 5
Giant + Sword: 7

Human + Giant Axe: 1
Giant + Giant Axe: 5


So it all works out pretty fairly. I'd rather have a giant attack 5/10 rounds with a long, powerful weapon than 8/10 rounds with a length 0, low damage weapon. Similarly, I'd rather a human NOT use a giant axe and attack only 1/10 rounds, whereas in the current Dominions combat engine it would be an excellent idea to equip infantry with, for example, Jotun Longswords. These are just example numbers; ideally, armor would be worked in as well.

-Cherry

Re: Some of my wishes
 

What, no request for cute and/or fuzzy animals! SC, you've gone all soft on us.

Re: Some of my wishes
 

While most of the suggestions are well-meaning, I'd have to oppose a lot of the ones that would add extra micromanagement to an already micro-heavy game. Setting formations, Combat orders past 5 choices, more detailed combat orders, etc. Now, if there were a way to streamline the interface in general, and those changes specifically, then I'd be all for them. As long as lategame turns in large games ended up taking less time than they do now.

Re: Some of my wishes
 

P.S. I want a race of catgirls and another one of bunnyfolk.

Did I really used to say stuff like that? Hmmm... real life must be jading me=)

Re: Yet a few ideas
 

Random ideas:

Skills that are "unlockable" by experience. (So, for instance, Vine Ogres might get "Barkskin" at 4 stars of experience, or barbarians might get Fear +5 at 5 stars.) This could be used to give national troops "staying power" into the mid- to late game.

The reward from the arena should be more substantial. Perhaps a boost to dominion, 2000 gold, a new hero, a new skill / special heroic ability given to the winner. Something like that.

The Fire and Flee command should have the unit retreat to _behind the rest of the army_, rather than fleeing off the battlefield entirely. It just takes too much time to have to coordinate the scattered units.

There should be an option for commanders to "attack alongside unit" and "stay at back of unit" - as it is now, if the commander has slightly different movement from the troops he'll end up either alone in the front, or lagging behind. It would also make it easy to use Valiant abilities, spell-songs and other short-range effects on your own troops. While one can theoretically use "Guard commander" and then "attack" on the commander, the result of that is simply that the commander can't move because the guards are in his way.

It would be nice to have pictures or even mpegs in the list of events; with user-defined triggers in the map file ("When this province is conquered, show this image to conqueror" / "When this commander is killed, show this image to all", "On first turn, show this movie to all") - Just to add some atmosphere and ambience to maps.

Siege engines.

Leadership should be a two-part statistics with "total number of troops / number of units." So a Centurion might have Leadership 100/5 while a Barbarian Chieftain might have leadership 250/1.

Perhaps an Unseelie Court theme for Man. (Redcaps and banshees and pooka - oh my!)

Oh, and furthemore I want a spell that causes jaguars to fall from the sky.

Re: Yet a few ideas
 

I'd like to see too a minimum unit number per squad, depending on unit type.

This to avoid strange tactics like the most backward archer to prevent the rout of all your mages and SCs, or to scatter troops as decoy for enemy troops or arrows in single man squad.
In a battle troops go in regiments. So on let's say you could take in account something like "size", and a regiment should have size X, or morale, because Militia need to be mobbed, meanwhile Elites could go in battle in smaller number.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Looking forward to it.

Modding is a great touch. Keep it. (I'm certain the design team is using the same directives when building the core factions. Yes?)

For Pretenders / Summoned critters I'd like "REAL" items. i.e. my Virtue starts with a Flambeau. Being clever, I immediately upgrade him to Faithful or Sword of Sharpness or such. Then I give the Flambeau to someone else.

Rending objects back into gems. Rate of return based on construction level perhaps -- Con 5 means 50% return.

Mercenary replenishment. A surviving merc commander, waiting to hire, will automatically "call allies" up to his units starting capacity. The less units present, the faster they are recruited with different rate for different commanders (It's easier to get more zombies then more knights.) Units that desert are also lured back more quickly.

An always rehire specific merc option. Or a contract expires message.

Changes to hall of fame. I'd like options to exclude pretenders and to make all people on the list visible.

Improved terrain effects in combat. A wider battlefield with some locations only placeable for troops with a certain speed. Think a doubles tennis court w/ only "cavalry" able to use the margins. Or some troops able to enter from the wings during battles -- like WH40Ks flanking reserves.

A "dig in" order which gives the defender a tactical advantage but causes unrest. Could also make it LESS likely to detect sneaking units. (Everyone knows where the army is and they aren't moving around much.)

Improved reporting, especially after sucessful seiges. I'd like to hear:

hero (type x) (name y) died
hero .... (name z) wounded

lost (number) of (type a troop)
fled (number)

lost (number) of (type b troop)


Moveable slots for factions. This means there could be a max n player game w/ more then n factions to choose from. Switches would allow faction vs faction and theme vs diff theme. For instance Ulm vs. Ulm or Ulm vs. Black Forest Ulm.

------
Ideas I've had I'm not sure I want.

A market. Works like mercenaries, occasionally offering magic items (including some weak uniques) asking staggering amounts as a starting bid. May take several turns to purchase an item.

Experienced commanders may leave "corpse misc items" that are recovered by victor. Spells can revive these into undead or living Versions working for their new owner. Further spells can make them obedient.


-----
Rylen

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I want to see the capability to mod the AI!!

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Still a new idea: Magic paths dependent on seasons. If it is spring, they have air, if summer, fire and so on. This would make seasons much more important for that nation and anyone attacking against them.

I think coupling these kind of varying magic picks would go better if you/your enemy wouldn't know if it was static or varying magic pick, so that one wouldn't have to have own plan for every season. Maybe new ability for mystics, or celestial masters.


Just making the mage recruited have the "element of season" would also work, I think. Same could be done for Nature/Astral/Death, so that mages recruited in early/middle/late season would differ from each other.

And making some powerful (holy) units or mages only recruitable during certain season could also work, but that is more of a game-play limit than a thematic tool. I don't have the knowledge or imagination of IW, however!

So, this was my third post to this thread. Is there some kind of a limit? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I mentioned this within another topic yet just recently noticed this sticky and now placing the information here as well:

One of the greatest features lacking in almost every game is a challenging AI. There are several important decisions which could definitely improve the Artificial Intelligence. Hopefully the following listed below will be considered for improving the existing AI opponents:

1) Multiple AI personalities available which are randomly selected at the start of each game. This would keep human players surprised and uncertain what to expect from their neighbors.

2) Providing option to disable/enable starving status for AI units. The AI opponents are not aware of food supply levels within provinces and thus should not suffer the penalties of starving which include diseased units and low morale.

3) Allow scripting or some other tool where Users can develop and customize an artificial intelligence which can then be added to the list of random multiple personalities.

4) Don't have computer opponents send their pretender into the death matches. The battle afflictions, horror marks, and curses are not worth the risk.

5) Higher difficulty setting should have the computer opponents be more aggressive against human opponents as well. This makes sense since its the human player looking for a greater challenge when increasing the difficulty level.


I'm sure there are others but these will greatly improve the AI for the game. Double Thanks !

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Hmmm...
Did I put "Improved Modding Capabilities" in my previous wishlist?
I think I didn't!
So, please improve the modding capabilities, allow mods, allow multination pretender restriction, allow ALL the special abilities (including stuff like the auto-imp-summon), allow adding new spells, allow adding new forgeables etc.
There is a lot that could be added to the modding abilities...

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Dom3 Manual Wishlist

Sidebar with System Requirements/Installation:
It would be nice to have the system requirements and installation notes summarized directly in the manual.

Sidebar with CD Key Location: Just a little boxed note early on that reveals the location of the CD Key number (believe it or not, when I had occasion to look for this in Dominions 2, it took me a considerable amount of time to find it).

Nations/Themes
Please organize the Themes as sub-cases of their Nations. It seems to me that more people start with the question “What nation do I want to play?” and only later ask “What theme do I want to play.” So subordinating the theme to the nation will cut the page-turning time and organize the manual more efficiently.

Spell/Magic Item Sections

Descriptions: Please organize the descriptions in these sections alphabetically. Most of the time I need a reference, it's because I have the name of the spell or item, but don't know what it does. Paging through lists by school or item power is a big timewaster in this case. As the spell list grows, the inefficiency of organization by path grows as well.

Lists: Short lists by path and level for spells, and by power for items, would preserve this aspect of the current manual but, again, please make the actual description sections alphabetical.

I’d also like to see the manual include (in the description sections) the magic path/level requirements for casting/ forging.

Consider an electronic (searchable) manual.

FAQ Appendix
Some issues might be best handled by this format. For example:

1. Pretender Afflictions. Just a list of the game workarounds would be sufficient, IMO—the Gift of Health spell, the Chalice artifact, the Arcoscephale priestess, the queen of the Faerie Court spell.

2. Starting Capital and Scales: note these may not match.

3. Blood Economies: Getting started.

4. Plus a lot of the non-walkthrough elements of the on-line FAQ. The walk-thru elements should get their own section in the manual (or not) rather than appearing in the FAQ.

Unit Mod Appendix
Short intro to the idea of modding units and note where to find the current modding manual (assuming it’s not built into the manual).

Map Mod Appendix
Short intro to idea of map modding and note where to find current map editor manual. (assuming it’s not built into the manual.)

Scenario Building Appendix
Short intro to scenario building and how to coordinate it with mapping mods. IMO this material should be treated as a separate topic from map making. You can get into this easily with just text commands. It's also a difference in focus--scenarios are designed game set-ups with many fixed elements.

IMO a manual needs to be "playtested" the same way a game or scenario does.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Hire RedRover to help with the manual!

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Here's a short post with a theme...

HOTKEYS/OPTIONS

Save Game: Flash-save so I don’t have to quit the program in order to save a game. Maybe automatically disable this in Multiplayer mode.

Bug Log: A one key-stroke option to save the current turn files into a special “Bug Log” folder so everything that should be sent in is stored automatically in one place. Time stamp or number so subsequent saves using same nation/same game won’t overwrite an existing bugfile.

Show God: Screen stores the exact original setup of the Pretender in the current game; that is, all decisions made during Pretender setup. (Lots of times I have gone into a game so fast I forgot to write down the Pretender stats, then tried in vain to recall them during the mid-game or reconstruct them later for a new game.)

Save God: Automates the process of saving a god design, so when I find a design I want to play around with awhile, I don’t have to recreate it from scratch each time. This feature should also have the capacity to save more than one Pretender per nation.

Save/Restore Scenario: Automates the process of saving a game setup to a special “Scenario” file. The scenario is recallable, so the same map setup can be replayed. This also has tournament applications. A scenario hotkey might also bring up a Replace God screen, so that I could plug a new Pretender design (or a bunch of them) into an existing map setup.

Back-step Hotkey: Goes back a step at any screen in Pretender set-up. For example, if I have misspelled the god’s name, or want to tweak the setup due to a late brainstorm, I don’t have to redesign the whole Pretender from scratch again. Maybe have a “Confirm Start” popup that seals the set-up.

Set Default God <name>: File containing the original default Pretender seeds the AI has when the game is new, available for instant recall. It drove me crazy the first time I realized that I had overwritten the default AI gods when I made my first crude efforts at Pretender design. I was stuck playing really inferior opposition for awhile since I'd tried to play everything once before repeating. <Name> is the nation’s name.

Select Theme: A popup screen that appears in setup after nation selection. Allows theme selection and automatically sets minimum scales and adds any theme-specific Pretenders to the Pretender screen for setup.

Nation/Theme starting sites: A popup that let’s me see nation or theme gem income before I finish setting up my Pretender.

F[key] Command to scroll through own forts.
F[key] Command to scroll through own Hiding/Sneaking units.
F[key] Command to scroll through own mages with forge bonus.

Programmable “Find” function: Lets you pick what to search for—Examples: 1) scrolling though leaders for a specific magic item, 2) scrolling through a magic path and level+ (in other words, Air 2 would hit all friendly Air mages with 2+ levels), 3) scrolling through all known recruitment magic sites, 4) scrolling through all known casting bonus magic sites, etc.

An alternative might be a series of screens that record specific items, and take you to the map location when you click on the entry line (cf. the way Shogun: Total War handles Ninja/Shinobi tracking). Test to see which screens would be most-used and include those. Build in the capacity to plug in modular expansion screens as needed.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Re-made pretender creation so that you would have different options in tabs, and you could go from one tab to another any time in pretender creation. If you chose another pretender form the cost of magic paths/dominion selected would be calculated again.

This would make it much easier to see which is the cheapest way to achieve the desired results.

I also second the "Save God" -function.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Could wounded or unnecessary troops be added/dumped to local province defence with 1:1 or some fixed or variable ratio?

Jukka

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I'd like to see that "Hall of Fame" commanders, and maybe prophets which die in battle get a random chance of surviving as prisoners:

Each of those notable ones gets a chance depending on the amount of negative HP and afflictions after the battle. If they are lucky and survive, the enemy may demand a ransom for their release for those survivors. If no agreement could be made within 3 turns they just day anyway in order to be called back or resurrected normally.

How much would you pay for your favoured mage? Would you allow your enemy to buy back a captured prophet for gold and gems?

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

There was something I thought of yesterday when micromanaging gems. As we all know, that's a very, very tedious part of the game, yet essential, and I've a suggestion to improve it:

Add a small checkbox to the commander description box titled "No Gem-pooling" or similar, and toggling that switch on or off will remove the commander from the list of whose gems are taken into the lab pools. Just adding a line into the pooling code to the effect of "If NoGemPool==1, do not pool gems from this commander" when itgoes through the list of commanders would remove a great amount of micromanagement and make everyone (but especially Mictlan players) happy. Shouldn't be too hard to do either, or is it?

Edi