Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Now that the topic arose in this thread here as well, I just thought that I should mention that I have updated my thoughts about multiplication of resistances in that other thread (Post#311949), since it is not entirely clear to me how to model susceptibility Ratings. I see essentially two sensible choices, both having some small drawbacks...

(Edited to avoid crossposting. So please see the above linked thread if you are interested in my views on resistance & susceptibility stacking.)

-------

Apart from that, I also wish for an option to have somewhat erratic and delayed nation graphs. I do not like the nations graphs turned off during MP-play, but I do not like them to be turned on either: Gossip & Spies should not be able to figure out e.g. the exact number of research points my enemies had Last turn, and anyway, such information should need some time to seep through...

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

This is actually a very good idea. Every 10 points of province defense should add a new and stronger commander... perhaps 2 new commanders after 50 with province defense. Currently spells like 'send horror' and 'ghost riders' destroy any level of province defense for almost all races.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

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

Music should be encoded in a common format (mp3 or maybe flac because it's open source). The files should be played randomly from one directory. The player should then easily add/remove the music he wants.

Or maybe there should be two directories (one for main interface and one for the battles).

The two cents of a newbie http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif .

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I will confess I haven't read the entire thread yet.

One of my pet peeves is that missile units do not reaquire targets and keep firing at their first set of targets until that set routs. This seems to me undesirable. I would think these troops would be smart enough to target fast troops or large enemy monsters, such as elephants, which are about to overrun their positions the following turn and fire at them when there is no screen of troops between them and what appears to be their certain death (especially when their original targets are a small squad that hasn't advanced much). I would include in this retargeting feature also pretenders or other large size commanders that are about to attack them physically and are located nearby (though I wouldn't want to see them pick out that sage pretender in the back and all fire at him if he is staying back).

I love the game you folks have made. And I finally downloaded all the new patches.

It would be amazing if "fire and flee" were not converted into "fire and rout" so that it could be used with mercenaries and the orderly retreat would be to a designated province.

I agree that graphics are far less important than gameplay (and I've deleted Shadow Magic from my hard drive but still have Dominions). Yet you guys have already done the hard work of designing good gameplay. I have to ask for the eye candy, which you could probably subcontract out if you don't have the time or inclination to do it yourselves. And I'd pay another 50 bucks for it.

I love the ideas to reduce micromanagement, especially of tax rates and the like. And if you would just go ahead and make the wounded troops look different without having to click a member of that group and then press W that would be great. Maybe make them more reddish-gray in a way easily visible for all nations and have them get more so as they pile up the afflictions. Let each user set rules for who gets autoselected by affliction and let us see the afflictions by moving the mouse over the afflicted unit. This shouldn't be that hard to do and it would go a long way toward reducing wasted time in the game.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Oh...I didn't say...I would like for an option to turn off mercenaries and/or make them more rare. Having them makes a lot of SP play somewhat similar in the beginning and not so much dependent on nation type.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

The one thing I would like to see is longer spellcasting scripting. And the ability to exclude spells from being cast.

Thanks

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I should add that the list for spells that individual mages are not to cast and a list for spells for no mage in the army to ever cast are excellent ideas.

And so is the idea that combat should not be one side first then the other side. Perhaps the longer weapon should get first strike if significantly longer. One of the only simplistic parts of the Dom 2 experience is that it's hard to predict what army with end up in striking distance first and that factor alone can be the deciding factor of a battle.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Two more requests:

- I need a call-god-o-meter. When I lose a pretender early in the game and it takes several turns to call back, I have to make notes on paper if I want to get to exactly the 40 level-turns needed and use some priests for something else in the Last turn. Put it on the research screen, for example, with the same sort of progress meter.

- There should be an easier way to exchange equipment between 2 commanders in the field. E.g I want to send out a scout with a new hellsword and flying boots to a lone SC in the field, and have the scout walk home with his flambeau and messenger boots, but they can't exchange items unless there is another emptyhanded/footed commander there to act as swap space? Annoying. Maybe an interface like the gems exchange screen, where you can select commanders and see their slots contents side by side, and drag and drop to exchange items. Or maybe this can be part of a bigger item-management system that would also solve the 5 minute who-has-the-forge-lord-hammer search.

Sill

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

An optional feature offering more support for alliances, either defined at game start, or agreed on during play. So allied forces could be allowed to pass through each other's lands or even fight together against enemies (or at least not accidentally fight each other when encountering each other).

PvK

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Oh...how about keeping the ctrl-# commands the same from one game to the next.

Lots of folks try the same nation multiple times. And it gets annoying having to reprogram your favorite spell attacks over and over. It's just another tedium-reducing idea.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I probably shouldn't keep adding things, but this one seems relatively easy and also a huge tedium saver.

How about letting us see a mage's random picks by putting them on his icon? This way you could pick out those blood sages to start a blood hunting group. Or that astral sage you want to make an amulet of luck with without having to scroll down and check each unit individually.

Anything that allows you to see information you would click to see in as few clicks as possible (zero where possible) is a good thing imo.

I still like Saber Cherry's idea of having the basic province defense information visible by just clicking on the province without having to click "province info."

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Just do what I do, name the mages according to their paths as soon as you recruite them, still MM, but more effective.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I'd rather that there were ctrl-# slots separately for each nation that carried over from game to game. Not hard to do, and it would seriously cut down on script reassignment.

And I most definitely second the suggestion about game music being made into a common format, preferably support for multiple formats if possible. MP3 being the most obvious, but I'd also like .it (I want my original Age of Wonders music, thank you very much, Battle Macabre simply rocks!).

Edi

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I was thinking along the same lines. Even if a 1 pixel dot for each magic in that magics "color" would be very helpful. It might be hard to tell 1 fire 2 earth apart from 2 fire 1 earth, but it would at least tell me which ones to skip checking

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Color codes on top of a units icon is definitely a must-have! Customizable colour codes please!

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

If the magic color codes go vertically rather than horizontally for stronger power, it'd be easier to read. So an F1E2 would look like:

<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
FE
E
</pre><hr />

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Script command / combat action: Rest
Allow commanders to spend a combat turn resting to recover fatigue. This will allow mages to act more sensibly by resting before falling unconscious. Being unconscious is a pretty bad idea when the rest of the army routs.


Spell scripting:

Show which spells are being scripted (as originally suggested by RedRover)
Players need to be able to see what has been scripted without starting over.

Set gem usage for spell script.
Allow the player to set how many gems are used for casting each scripted spell.

Show the estimated fatigue for the spell script.
For each scripted spell, show the fatigue from casting this spell, and the sum of the fatigue from all spells cast at this point in the script. Automatically update this if encumberance changes (due to equipment changes, chest wounds, etc).

Review spell script.
Allow players to review the spell script details, including information about spells, gems and fatigue, without automatically clearing the script.

Warnings/information.
Notify the player of important things, like situations where scripted spells will never be cast (for example because the caster does not have enough gems to cast the spell without incurring 300 points of fatigue =&gt; suicide). A mage may have the required gems one turn, but not the following turn. Highligt mages in the army list, who are unable to perform their spell script (any number of reasons could cause this, including added encumberance (chest wounds, heavier armor), lack of gems, lost both eyes, feebleminded, etc.)


AI spell casting:

Fatigue management
Do not let the AI cast spells which render the caster unconcious, unless the AI have good reason to think it is a very good idea. Instead the AI should let the mage rest (see script command suggestion above).

Spell selection.
Give the AI the ability to intelligently choose spells. For example, only cast air shield if at least X enemies have ranged weapons AND they comprise Y% of the total size of the enemy army. Only cast fireball if no friendly units without fire resistance are adjacent to the intended target. Etc.


Spell casting in melee:

Never force mages to melee.
There are some excellent spells with “touch” range, which are very rarely used, since mages are often either slain before they can use them (when enemies come into range) or because the mage is forced to do melee. Mages should never be forced to do melee when they have touch range spells available. They should be allowed to choose between their touch range spells or melee, whichever they think is the better.

Move and cast touch range spells.

Mages with touch range spells should be allowed to move up to half their normal movement allowance, and deliver a touch range spell to an enemy. They should only ever do this if the enemy can be reached in one move (ie., move and spell cast in same action / turn). Mages should still NOT be allowed to move and cast non-touch range spells.


Gem handling.

Alchemy.
Since alchemy does not require any time, but merely the presence of a mage at any lab, the alchemy command should be moved from being a commander option, to be a lab option in the gem review panel (F7). Simply disable the command with the information text that no mage is present to perform the alchemy if this is the case.

Commanders and gems.
For each commander, replace the gem slot with a single icon of each gem followed by a number showing how many gems of that type the commander is currently carrying. To transfer gems, change the number for the desired type of gem (this can transfer both to and from the pool as the new number can be higher or lower than the original number carried). This will save up to 30 tedious mouse clicks and give a better overview of exactly how many gems the commander is carrying. Add a button to force all gems from this commander to the pool.

Gem pooling.
Have two commands for gem pooling. One command will force all gems from all commanders at labs to be pooled (as per Dom II). The other will only pool gems from commanders who are flagged to allow gem pooling. (ie., the first command overrides no-pool flags, where the second command does not).


Taxes and unrest.

Tax / unrest handling panel.

Create a panel for handling taxes and unrest for your nation. Allow the setting of a tax policy based on unrest levels. Allow individual provinced to use the nation’s tax policy or not by flagging. Include known sources of unrest (sites) in the tax / unrest province list, and specify exactly how much unrest is generated by these sites. Inlcude any relevant information on the dominions order / turmoil level.


Army setup.

Army panel (T)

The army panel shows the garrison as a jumble of troops. Many troops look very similar, since there are often small variations on national troops. Cleaning the garrison display up as suggested by Taqwus might be a good idea.

Army parade / display.

Allow players to review the army setup on an actual battlefield. This way the player can check that his units are positioned exactly as he wants, and admire his glorious army (before it is crushed utterly). It will allow players to check that those astral mages are adjacent to the units they want to cast body ethereal on (range = 1). It will allow players to see how that heap of 12 commanders plus 50 bodyguards that are all heaped on top of each other actually deploy on the field, and make adjustments if desired. It will probably be necessary to be able to flag commanders or squads to be part of the review or not (so units that are not supposed to go off with the army when it moves do not displace the units that make up the intended army).


Combat

Horse archers and other skirmishers

Add commands and AI to make these types of units viable. For example, allow a skrimish command where the unit will attempt to engage with ranged weapons, but will move away from the enemy at up to half speed, while staying within maximum range of their thrown or fired weapons and attacking. Javelin equipped light infantry, slingers, horse archers, etc. would become viable, especially for hit and run tactics. Only allow skirmishers to move away by moving towards the rear of their own side of the battlefield. This way we know that they will eventually be caught and pinned, and melee will ensue, even if the skirmishers are twice as fast as the enemy.


/Rainbow

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

It'd be nice to be informed of what units exactly got wiped out by spells like Beckoning, Lure of the Deep and other similar. Getting a message of "X units succumbed to spell Y" when the affected units cannot in any way be identified is bloody annoying.

Edi

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I definitely agree with having a greater variety of Independents. I think that choosing a fortress should be removed from the game. I think each nation should start of with a unique national capital that is specifically tailored to that particular nation/race. In other provinces you should be given a choice of what type of fortress to build perhaps, there should be restrictions that only certain races can build certain types of fortresses and there should be geographically limitations (i.e. mountain fortress only in mountains).

Using Ulm as an example, since Ulm is a 'builder' type nation. Ulm would have the choice of building the following fortress types: citadel, castle, hill fortress, mountain fortress, watch tower, or fortified city. I think of the castle, citadel, and fortified city as being medival in nature. It would be nice for Arco or Pythium if there was a city-state, or something more metropolitan but in theme with Greco-Roman times. I realize of course that Byzantium was at one time one of the most heavily fortified places on earth so maybe the fortified city is good enough, just does not look right graphics wise for Greco-Roman.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Just popped in here, sorry if what i have to say has already been discussed and discarded as stupid. I'm a new player, this may be bad because i don't know the game very well and good because the game itself hasn't shaped my expectations yet. Anyway, glad to see that many strat game problems that have always disturbed me have finally been solved and implemented sucessfully in this game.

First impression

* The very first impression of the game was that the first menu panel looked nice and music was good (or positively different from most games), and the landscape on the background could have been softer in shape and colors to match the nice menu. In the pretender creation it would have been better if nation and avatar selection were in the same panel as the dominion-magic-castle.

* In game selecting things like provinces with right mouse button wasn't much of a problem to get used to, but nevertheless it attracted attention as non-standard way of doing things. I would expect selecting with left mouse and opening the province info with right mouse. When looking at provinces it might be better to open the info frame at place, instead of moving the mouse and eyes away to the edge of the screen and back all the time. At that point i felt somewhat intimidated by having to learn both unusual interface and unusual game mechanics.

* 2d graphics of dom1 were quite nice. If reasonably improved, dom1 2d graphics might look much better than 3d landscape with unit size perspective graphics of dom2 imho. Maybe even better than whatever 3d graphics there could be for dom3. 2d often produces better usability (more clear overview, e.g. Starcraft compared to Warcraft3). With such long micromanagement games i am scared to think about wishes that all those tiny units should be 3d in dom3, looking slightly different at every angle. Many units often look almost identical already, it would make recognizing them even more difficult. I wonder what could be the reason for 3d? Enabling larger battlefield? Maybe an alternative could be units being able to stand closer together like Groups of people were depicted in many old paintings. Ok, i guess this time i'm just getting to extremes and full 2d dom3 isn't going to happen anyway.

* Battle afflictions is a nice feature, but maybe the removal of the pain of micromanagement it causes would be even nicer? Maybe even battle formations would become something to consider more seriously if we didn't have limps.

* If you can't issue commands during battle, what's the point of keeping battle turn-based instead of real-time? There are nice examples of real-time battle games. My wild guess is that transferring just the random seed might solve the possible problem of larger multiplayer data transfer.

* Somewhat uncomfortable to determine what spells are affecting a unit, maybe just a list of spells would be nice?

* Maybe the long time players have got used to that, but to me the friendly fire situation was and is annoying to such extreme that i discontinued using shooters and mind burn became my favourite combat spell for beginning game.

Battle orders

* Setting morale or wimpy level for stacks and heroes lower than max value or setting conditions for routing like you choose 'Cast a specific spell' would be nice.
* If retreating was what you ordered your troops to do, they shouldn't disperse. Maybe they even shouldn't disperse if enemy isn't closely chasing them, or maybe there could even be 'rear' part of battlefield where fleeing units would have time to stop and reconsider unless closely chased.
* In order for troops to flee, there should be non-fleeing enemies on the battlefield.

* 'Repeat' battle order and 'Alternative' battle order in some form if what you primary order cannot be executed. Putting the orders to be repeated between '[]' in those examples and each battle round on separate line.
Example 1:
(quickness)
[(numbness)]
Example 2 (setting preferences by '&gt;'):
(quickness)
[(cold bLast) &gt; (attack one turn)]
Example 3 (skirmish; assuming you move to sufficiently close range if you fire):
[(fire)
(retreat one turn)]
The problem is that there's too much unnecessary galloping back and forth if the opponent isn't advancing. Maybe there should be 'Avoid melee' order:
Example 3.a:
[(avoid melee) &gt; (fire)]
Example 4 (setting equal preference by '=' to let the AI decide):
[(sermon of courage) = (banishment) = (smite demon)]
This may be my strictly personal opinion, but with this little detail of added control it looks simpler than the current system to me. You can just give the commands in a little bit more natural way instead of trying to take into account all possible battle situations and script a large number of 'just in case' spells that turn out useless and ridiculous most of the time.

* Maybe removing the 'attack rear' might be worth considering if it's sole (intended) purpose is to 'attack closest' from the side. It could be replaced by an algorithm that finds the path to the enemy even if it's behind a friendly stack. The fleeing units also look funny when they stubbornly try to move strainght through an enemy heavy cavalry or even a wall.

MISCELLANEOUS

* Cainehill: '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.'
Saber Cherry: 'Resulting speed = ((base speed) - (inertia / strength)) rounded up'
It would be more or less like (base inertia -- bare hand):
attack time = (base inertia + weapon inertia) / strength * fatigue
fatigue cost = (base inertia + weapon inertia) / strength
Maybe strength and base inertia could be incresed by e.g. 1/3 if you wield the weapon 2-handed, so that a giants might be able to wield heavier and longer weapons with shield in the other hand.
Maybe allow a really heavy hit to continue to the next target with some weapons if it killed the first one to make heavy weapons more attractive for giants.
continued hit damage = (hit damage - first target full health) / 2

* Option to disable mercenaries or set their cost higher when creating game

* All kinds of castleing madnesses should imho be better countered by other means than by limiting the castle types you can build to 1.

* Intercept enemy movement if enemy is attacking a province. This could be done by counting enemy battle rounds vs your battle rounds, if your battle rounds entering the enemy province are less than enemy battle rounds attacking the other province, you catch the enemy before it crosses the border of the province it attacked. So, if there's no militia in the enemy province nor has the enemy left any troops behind to slow you down, and there's militia or a few troops in the province the enemy attacks, then the enemy is caught. If you have faster troops, you can probably conquer the enemy token distracting troops before the enemy can conquer the token militia of the province it attacks. Just another alternative that i didn't see mentioned in this thread.

* Maybe unrest/loyalty could be somehow connected how to morale and leadership works, like commander with awe or maybe even fear should be better at decreasing unrest.

* I guess there's some reasoning behind the 'staying in hall of fame increases the special ability over time'. For a while I naturally thought that it would depend on exp, until i found a hint to the time instead. Which, of course, made me wonder why it was arranged that way. The problem is that it wasn't readily visible and i still don't have a clue, maybe just writing a few words of explanation somewhere where it can be noticed would do the trick.

* if there are strange events causing superstition in people, there would be a higher chance that some more radical event occurs in that province soon (maybe it's like that already).

* Interesting that hydra doesn't have any head slots while wyrm does. I understand that the hydra is already hyperpowerful as it is, but shouldn't it have the recuperation ability? and shouldn't tritons have recuperation?
* Oracle could have some prophesy skills, e.g. predicting some random events, maybe some Version of it could be available with astrologers. Meaning hints like 'finding a treasure 3 turns after a hero appears'.
________
thanks for reading, wish you all the success at creating a game that will hopefully start a new generation of strategy games.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

What micro? The only one I'd ever consider worrying about would be battle fright. Any other affliction, and the troops can just be left alone.

Hydras aren't really that powerful. They are easily killed by many times less than their cost in throway units like militia.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Meant
1) Having units represented individually.
2) If the armies are larger there are usually many units with different kinds of wounds, havn't figured out how to select battle frighted units only.
3) And mainly having to check your armies after every battle which is more or less every turn, all this little checking sums up to big micromanagement in my eyes, taking a considerable proportion of playing time.

I think some other afflictions are also uncomfortable, but if you say 'battle fright only', then is the

excitement bonus that your army may randomly rout now and then so that you can have fun reassembling it from neighboring provinces

worth the excitement penalty of having to regularly check your army for wounds?
interesting, my hydra often flees from militia. 1..3 hydras in the center with a mind burn theurg in back corner looks like a nice newbie strat to me, keeps expenses low. the only problem is that hydras figure out this fleeing tactic all by themselves in most surprising situations without any afflictions or casualties on my side.
so, if this is really an ineffective strat, it would be nice to have hydra with at least 3 head slots and recuperation:)

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I would like dominion to have an effect on terrain. Using Abyssia as an example as your domain spreads it should change other lands to wasteland. Similarly for C'tis I would see either swap or if playing Tombkings desert should spread.

Another thing that I would like to see change is currently in the game all of the population dense areas tend to have low productivity due to low resources. This is particularly true of the provinces with knights. Somehow I think production needs to be tied into population density.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Dominions 1 had pixel-based maps, in which 9? colors were defined for terrains (waste, mountain, forest, borders, capital, sea...), and dominions actually changed these pixels! You could quess that Abysia was in that corner, because it was becomeing more and more yellowish every turn, etc. Unfortunately those maps were very ugly. IW team had said that it was a great feature, but IIRC they didn't know a way to implement it in the game.

High population -&gt; low resources is not always true, but there is very good reason behind the trend. Farmlands have high population but very low resources. Knights only appear in Farmlands. Other kinds of terrains affect population/resources/ chance of magic sites differently. Mountain has low population, high resources and lots of magic sites, forest is similar but not as much, plains is general, waste and swamp just bad but have more magic sites.

visible game mechanics
 

I wish that in Dominions 3, players will be able to answer questions about game mechanics simply by playing the game.

Whenever the devs read this forum and see players asking a question about game mechanics, the devs should think "Could dominions be changed so that the player answered that question by playing the game instead of by asking the forum?". For example, I just posted some questions about Communion:

more communion questions

The question about where the fatigue goes can be answered by playing the game, pausing after a spell is cast, and examining which mages got increased fatigue. The question about how much of a boost is given cannot, because the communion boost is not visible in the game.

If the communion boost were visible to the user, then that question too could be answered this way.

(P.S. I could infer the boost level by summing the aggregate fatigue imposed, subtracting the fixed spell-casting encumbrance of each mage, and then figuring out how much of a boost would have reduced the fatigue to that number, but this doesn't count as being "visible".)

P.S. Adding the facts to the manual isn't a good solution. It would be too huge, and it would be too hard to find what you want to know in the manual, and anyway I don't want to spend my time reading a tome of rules, I want to spend my time playing.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I think you missed my point, I am of the opinion that the areas of high population density should be the best manufacturing/production areas. Currently, in the game it is the areas where there is the greatest amount of resources (i.e. raw materials) that are the best production centers.

The admin value/bonus of fortress does a nice job of abstracting the flow of raw materials to a population center. However, if you are a nation that has capital only units that are expensive in resources, if your starting location is lousy in terms of resources you are out of luck.

Thus far I have been unable to think of system that does not add more micromanagement, of which there is already too much in the game.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Sounds like fun..

What if getting resource from neighboring province added to price in gold?

You have 3 provinces, p1, p2, p3, placed in a line, each produces 10 resources.
1 point of local resource costs 0 additional gold, 1 point of resource from neighboring province costs 1 additional gold.

You build in p2 for 10 resources and in p3 for 20 resources.
In this case, the system must understand that building in p2 does not use local resources but uses the more expensive resources from p1, so that you can build for 20 resources in p3.

Resources used would cost 10 additional gold in p2, and 10 additional gold in p3, totalling 20 additional gold.

But suppose p3 purchases resources from p1 for 2 additional gold per resource point? That would cost 0 additional gold in p2 and 20 additional gold in p3, totalling 20 gold which is the same as above.

The complication is that we can get resources from neighboring provinces only, and this is a nice feature imho, because it makes you feel you don't have railroads and the like.

Seems that it can be done, writing about further details would take longer than i expeted, though. The problem would lie in representing the unit price change to the player while indicating max resource available. It could get as bad as
10 resources for 0 additional gold per resource (local resources)
10 resources for 1 additional gold per resource (unused resources from neigboring province)
10 resources for 2 additional gold per resource (provided you are building in neigboring province and the neighbor of the neighbor has free resources)

Might help with resource luck a little maybe.
_______
I hope that resource production in a mountain province still depends on population of the mountain province.
Interestilngly, fort construction takes gold only, what if it's build time would depend on resources available? I guess that's another topic.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Edi,

Your idea of having the scripts stay the same for each nation between games unless reassigned is better than my origninal idea.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\" *DELETED*
 

Post deleted by kukimuki

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Kukimuki,

I find the correspondence to "squares of troops" to actually be useful. I would of course prefer for it to give me a rough idea of army strength. (Black plate infantry should produce a bigger square than militia perhaps.)

Using squares of troops rather than troops gives a better idea of how powerful the force is. Because one Jotun is significantly more powerful than one regular-sized unit. That is true for most of the larger units.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I would like to see a bit more randomness in the unique summons. e. g. an air queen could get 3-5 air +-2 attack/defense etc. Would raise the excitement before summoning those spells a bit and you would get memorable games, where you have those "perfect" Uniques.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I hope Illwinter adds more spells, magic items and monsters to the game instead of reducing them. The variety of stuff in the game is one of its best features. I think it would be nice if more variety of troops could be recruited for each nation. I would like to see each nation have a special unit that could be recruited after a certain level of research and maybe after building a special structure.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

First, I take back my suggestion about using rectangles with area that correspods to troops instead of troops in the power of 2. Seeing 20 militia producing four times as large rectangle area as 10 militia must have been an artifact of zooming out the map too much. So it's already as i wished it to be.

As this post was written in response to me and I cannot understand what it's about, i guess there might have been some misunderstandings.

What i meant was that when you have size 10 army (no matter if it's units or sum of unit sizes or whatever way you measure it), and you draw a rectangle 10 X 10, then the area of the rectangle corresponts to the square of army size. To get area that corresponds to army size, you would need sqrt(10) X sqrt(10) rectangle.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I would like to make the following suggestions, which I am trying to classify into sections:
- General comments on development strategy
- General wishes for prioritizing development resources
- Concrete functionality wishes

I hope this is helpful to the devs (and others) in understanding what I think would make a great game, and by that I mean what is fun for me and, hopefully, for others too.

GENERAL COMMENTS on development strategy
- Perhaps the most important factor of making a game successful is making it fun to play. I think this point has often wrongly been considered trivial and hence not worth mentioning. But it is: “Fun” also means paying attention to what players like doing, encouraging actions and functionality which supports that, and by making actions which players DON’T like doing as seldom as possible. So with keeping that in mind and trying to incorporate the results of the polls I have made:
- Maximize the user interface transparency: from every screen, let us be able to access all appropriate information with as few clicks as possible (e.g.: battle orders and scripting, statistics, inventory, etc.); currently, a province with 20 commanders is hard to manage, you cannot see who is doing what: When you click on a commander to view his statistics, you cannot access the battle orders screen from there, you must go back to that screen and find the commander again; I really dislike doing this in midgame.
- Minimize late-game micromanagement needs where possible; if possible, make the late-game function much like early- and mid-game.
- The game is LESS FUN if there appears to be only a limited number of successful strategies which lead to a win. A game like Dom2 becomes broken if there is only one way to win, since everyone will race to mimic this one path. Keep it as varied as possible. Thus ensure that there can be no clear “no-brainers” and ensure that some paths (e.g., it has been said in dom2 that there is a race for certain Summons (e.g. Queens of Air, high-level Blood) or the building of certain SCs) are not overstressed.

PRIORITZING WISHES
I know that Illwinter has very limited resources, and cannot do everything. But here are some of the things that I find important, in order of their importance to me.

- AI. I would really enjoy a challenge from an AI, and I would greatly wish for most energy to be spent on AI improvement, both *tactically* (script building, troop placement, spotting and exploiting the enemy’s weakness) and *strategically* (troop and fort building, movement, plan development and plan follow-through, dynamic plan changes, minimal diplo possibilities (bribes, etc.)).
- User Interface: I would wish for an interface which is as smooth as possible; let us issue battle orders from every commander screen (or a link to the battle-orders on every commander screen); let us use the keyboard as much as possible (spending money, spending spell research points, etc.), use of hotkeys (f9-f12), use of strategic scripts (e.g. “forge X monthly”, “forge X and return hammer to lab”, etc.); User Interface customization
- Variation: As third point, I would wish for more tactical variation and more checks and balances: Make more types of buffs and de-buffs. EXAMPLE: Debuff Spells which slightly *decrease* an enemy’s resistances to poison, magic, or the elements; Debuff spells which temporarily make it more difficult to cast certain spells or spell types; Debuff spells which slow down an enemy’s movement rate; Buff spells which counter the effects of these types of spells.
- Graphics: I would love to have fabulous Warcraft-III-style graphics, but I believe that is very difficult to do, so I would suggest not even getting started on graphical improvement.
- Music: Please do NOT invest in music. (I personally listen to my own.)


CONCRETE WISHES
- Increased RPG elements: Experienced units have non-combat bonuses as well, such as increased chance of raising dominion in province when preaching; increased stealth ability; etc.
- Theme modding: From the hints I have received elsewhere, I think that Illwinter is concentrating on this. I think it would be great to be able to have an interface which allows us to plug in as many themes to a nation as we want; if players A, B, and C all have these mods downloaded and installed, they can be played.
- Creativity modding: Don’t underestimate the wishes of the players. Let *all attributes be moddable and conditional*: E.g., let it be possible to mod the stealth value of Type A to be dependent on Terrain Type, or on Season of Year, or on Temperature; let it be possible for the “assassination” command to be practiced only on Undead, or during the Winter, or in Wastelands. Etc.
- Increased Interface Flexibility: Access to battle order screen via Stats/Inventory screen; f12 scrolls through forts; f11 scrolls through hidden/stealthy commanders; f10 switches between prophet and pretender; f9 scrolls through mages with forge bonus; Customizationability: shift-f1 displays commanders alphabetically, shift-f2 displays them in order of their type, shift-f3 displays them in order of their action queue (as it is presently);
- Enhanced Tactical Spell AI Interface: Commanders can not only queue spells they want to cast, but can, for the rest of the spells, click one of four boxes: 1. Never Cast, 2. Cast with Low Priority, 3. Cast with Medium Priority, 4. Cast with High Priority; default setting can be determined by the player
- Enhanced Message System: With Outbox which one can review and delete one message without deleting all; copy-and-paste ability
- Complete Icons (see thread here )

Thanks for listening; your feedback on our feedback will also be greatly appreciated!

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

A couple of suggestions:

1) Let me sort the order that my commanders are displayed in various screens in whatever way I want. When I have lots of mages with the same paths, I'd like them all to appear one after the one. Makes it a lot neater.

2) Maybe make it so that creating pretender / nation is like in SEIV, allowing the player to choose the development points allowed in a game and to save the result to a named file. I can't be the only one who has fantasies of playing Mictlan with F9A9W9 blessings...

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Awesome post tinkthank! I agree 110%!!

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Yeah, tinktank echoed a lot of my sentiments, but a bit more succinctly.

For me, enhancing the RPG aspects of the game would be the most enjoyable part--especially if it could be done while very slightly weakening SC's.

Giving individual heroes, and individual provinces, more "personal" flavor, would make the games more enjoyable to me. I prefer to play on smaller maps (100 provinces or less), so the individualized provinces thing just may be my own preference.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I agree that more individualized heroes would be fun, and that they shouldn't strengthen the supercombatant strategy.

I still love the "Heroes of Might and Magic III" mechanism of being allowed to choose between two randomly-selected heroic abilities whenever your hero levels up.

One way to increase the RPG aspect of heroes without strengthening the supercombatant strategy would be to invent more heroic abilities that help the troops under the hero's command.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

P.S. But despite what I just said about heroic abilities and RPGs, my wishlist definitely falls into this priority order:

1. Better UI
* reduce unnecessary clicking to see the information I want to see (e.g. configuring a large army with many commanders and units)
* less micro-management (e.g. taxes)
* reduce unnecessary clicking to do the action I want to do (e.g. when I do alchemy, just use the best alchemist who is currently in a laboratory)
2. More mechanisms made visible.
* e.g. how much contribution is made by what kind of units to rebuilding or tearing down castle walls? I don't want to read through a manual, read through forum Posts, and do a bunch of arithmetic on a napkin, I want to SEE it happening. See also the next wishlist item.
3. Simpler rules. There are too many damn rules. If dom3 adds more rules and more exceptions and more terms to the algebraic equations that determine what happens, I am going to scream.
* Why not eliminate some of the less important features, like maybe repelling, or morale checks? Notice that I think of eliminating features which are less "visible" to me.
* Why not simplify the equations that determine what happens? Maybe some things like the effects of fatigue no longer get randomized (33% chance of reducing your armor at fatigue &gt; 50 blah blah blah) but instead are simple and deterministic (your armor = your armor - your fatigue).
4. Better graphics and sound effects. (I know, this one is potentially difficult.)
5. Tweaked style of play, e.g. more RPG flavor.
6. More balance. Let N be the number of different strategies that an experienced player will attempt when playing against other experienced players. Now let N go to infinity!
7. Better combat AI.
8. Programmability for modding battle and strategic AIs. The simplest way to do this is just to open up and document the turn file (for strategic AI) and to invent a "per-battle-turn battle turn file" (for battle AI).
9. More units, more magic items, more spells, more nations, more gods.

NOT-A-WISH 10. Something I really do not want to see is increased scriptability and micromanagement such as the frequently requested deeper queues of scripted spells.

The difference between #8 and #10 is that #8 is something that a programmer does and then every player uses it, exactly like a mod. #10 is something that each player does to use for himself against the other players.

Thanks for listening! Or actually if you aren't listening, thanks for not banning me from the forum in order to prevent me from posting.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I strongly disagree with simplifying the rules. There are enough games with "simple" rules, but very few for the hardcore fantasy wargamer. (I can't think of any besides Dominions 2, actually.) I think the equations used are very well done, and brilliantly simulate the chaos of war. The features that you say are hidden are actually very important to the wargame feel, allowing you to plan strategy without being certain of the outcome. Repelling and morale? Those are some of its best features in my opinion. I do agree that all equations should be well documented.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Zooko, the idea that repelling and morale checks should be eliminated are, frankly, the ravings of an idiot, and the assertion that they are "not visible" is outright lunacy.

Without morale checks, armies would fight until everyone on one side is dead, and if you think this would not be a major change, you're on drugs. Repelling is a very important part of battlefield tactics, just put a squad of pikemen or hoplites in the front rank and see what happens when some generic troops armed with broadswords, axes or spears try to attack them. Half of the time they fail because the pikemen and hoplites get a repel attempt and use it to successfully attack them, i.e. they get an extra attack while the enemy loses his. Same applies to bigger units like SCs who use longer weapons.

Your idea about eliminating probabilistic mechanisms in favor of absolute ones from combat is equally stupid. It's less realistic, and it has similar implications as the morale check and repelling ones, it changes the whole dynamics of combat and would make it far less interesting. Taken together, these changes would ruin Dominions as it now stands, and would require a huge extra effort on part of the devs to compensate and fix what they broke (and which was working quite well, thank you).

Edi

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Personaly I think it's boring as hell when you have all these equations for everything that happens in a game. Playing becomes like a math lesson. No, keep things obscure and make players rely on their feel of things.

Of course you need equations to drive the mechanisms of the game, but don't reveal those equations to the players and make them so they can't be extracted precisely.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

NO equation stays obscure for long. In Dominions 2 they very much wanted players to discover what does and doesnt work, but in the forum players are always working out the formulas. Of course you can do what they did and have at least one die roll in the formula. Personally I find a formula without some bit of random to be boring, AND abit unrealistic.

But of course you will get into the solo-players (more randoms) vs multi-players (less randoms) arguments so a switch to run a game with randoms turned off might be a good idea.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

My idea wasn't to have large-scale things like battles to be deterministic. My idea was that if you have a large-scale thing, like who wins when two units fight it out, or which army wins when two armies fight it out, then some of the components that go into it can be simple and deterministic while the overall result is still complex and non-deterministic.

A neat thing about simultaneous-move games is that even if there is zero randomness in the rules then the game is still non-deterministic because you don't know what your opponent is about to do.

When I suggested morale checks as a possible target for simplification I didn't mean eliminate the notion of routing and have everyone fight to the death. I meant make the way routing is triggered simpler.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Some games have known rules where the player can be expected to understand all of the rules. Others have intuitive rules where the player doesn't understand the details, but only develops a feel for the result. The former kind includes most turn-based strategy games, the latter kind includes most real-time strategies.

ckfnpku above is saying that he prefers the latter kind.

Dominion and Dominions 2 fall into an interesting middle ground. I've played many, many hours of these games, and much of that was in "intuitive" mode. Even today, most of my decisions are made by feel rather than by thinking about what the actual rules will entail. For example, do you really remember what the exact rules are for morale checks? I don't. I learned them once, but now I just move Battle Fraught units into separate squads and remember not to rely too heavily on low-morale units to stick it out.

I'm not sure if I really would prefer Dom3 to be a fully "known-rules" game, but I would definitely regret it if it became and even more "intuitive-rules" game than it already is.

But regardless of which way it moves, one thing that will improve it is more visibility of rules. I'm quite hopeful about this, because Illwinter has consistently improved this over time. Remember when some commander qualities such as Supply Bonus or Recuperation were not shown graphically, for example?

It seems like with each passing year more of the rules of the game become visible elements of the user interface. Hopefully the same will hold true next year.

concrete proposals for visibility of rules
 

Here's a simple wish for more visible rules: have different sound effects for "attacked and missed", "attacked and hit but did no damage" and "attacked and hit and did damage".

Here's another one: show the effects of communion on the power levels of Communion Masters.

Re: concrete proposals for visibility of rules
 

Here's a wish:
Don't simplify and don't obscure any formula.
I really enjoy playing a game when I know exactly how each calculation is made and predit quite accurately how things will turn up in a set situation.
HOMM, one of the best TBS series (lets ignore Heroes IV and the legendary V), has almost all of its mechanisms out in the open and it makes things a whole lot more fun.
I admit, I play HOMM III with a calculator handy, but having the power to predict all possible outcomes improves my decisions and makes things quite clear (now I can easily see how that pack of lowsy pikemen killed that black dragon).
Besides, lets go for a second to the most well known strategy game of all - Chess.
In chess you know all the rules, you know exactly what you can and cannot do and how your compnion/competitor/enemy can respond to your moves, every "unit" is slightly different from every other "unit" but each turn and retaliation is 100% predictable (though starting to take into consideration all the possible 10^20 moves or so that your competitor might take is impossible for humans).

Re: concrete proposals for visibility of rules
 

I disagree about Homm3 being more fun http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif . I actually like it that you don´t know the inside rules for routing etc.

Let´s consider two games:
In one game(1) we know all the rules, in the other(2) we only know generally how things work.

So imagine you have to decide if you want to attack another guys army.
This is what happens in a competitive multiplayer game 1 :
you fire up your handy battle calculator, which tells you the results. You get favourable results, you attack, the next turn comes as no surprise, since the calc is good. Next turn happens and you have to enter the math again, you get bored and quit.

This is what happens in game 2:
You think about the battle, recollect your past experiences with battles under similar circumstances, make a lot of guesswork and decide to attack. The next turn hosts and you see that you either failed, or you get that very nice feeling, that everything really worked out like you planned.

For me game 2 is far more exciting and interesting and luckily dominions 2 is such a game.
HoMM3 on the other hand is pretty and a nice waste of time, but not really challenging, once you know the rules. That means that HoMM3 became boring for me pretty fast.

For the comparison between dom2 and chess, that´s pretty much apples and oranges. dom2 has lots of random elements, which alter the game drastically and a good deal of the fun in dom2 is surprising your opponent with spells/tactics, so dom2 is so radically different, so comparing those two isn´t very helpful.

Re: concrete proposals for visibility of rules
 

Knowing all the rules is not going to get you anywhere near being able to completely predict the outcome of a battle. There is a large enough random factor to prevent that. So I say: let us know all the equations.

Re: concrete proposals for visibility of rules
 

The game is much more exciting and realistic with the element of chance factored into the equations. Taking away chance would ruin the game for me. I love the open ended die rolls!