Re: concrete proposals for visibility of rules
 

Part of the problem is that many multi players like set formulas because it means that the winner of the game won by strategy and tactics.
Many solo players like unknown rules or at least variable results.

MY displomatic suggestion is to keep the formulas the way Illwinter has done them, with a random die-roll in most of them. Increase the randoms even. But also have a game switch which turns off as many of the randoms as possible to set-formulas if possible. MAYBE even make it a game option with variable settings for off, low, medium, high. That way both Groups can be happy.

Re: concrete proposals for visibility of rules
 

I was a single-player player until a few weeks ago, and now I'm a multi-player player. But I'm not desirous of more predictable outcomes, only of simpler mechanisms. For example, suppose the concept of ambidexterity was removed, so that every unit paid the same price (or no price at all) for multiple weapons. Would you be better able to predict the outcome of a battle after that simplification? I wouldn't, especially since I don't know how my opponent is going to position and instruct his troops.

Now, someone is probably thinking of objecting that eliminating the multi-weapon penalty would make unbalanaced Nataraja Supercombatants or something. I'm sure that is a legitimate balance issue and I value balance highly, but you don't need the rule of ambidexterity in order to balance Supercombatants, you just need to adjust a few of the hundreds of parameters. (Such as Zen does in his Conceptual Balance series of mods.)

Re: concrete proposals for visibility of rules
 

You really like that? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif I am a mathematician, and I like my job, but where is the fun of measuring who can calculate faster and better, especially if you can use computer-aid in PBEM gameplay?

I do prefer complex modern board games, and some friends of mine object that these are too complicated for full-computation - but that is why I play them! I like complex games because I know that my opponents cannot calculate everything and must base their play on intuition like I want to do myself.

Similarly I stopped enjoying chess when I could only advance in the league by learning all those openings by heart rather than playing instinctively. Of course, one could theoretically also learn these by experience of playing over and over again, but it limits the fun if you see all fellow players advancing much faster because they just bypass the need for this slow memorizing experience (as opposed to the difficult experience of juding opponents).

Nevertheless, I do look at all the information available here: All those unit, item & site listings, all those percentage sheets, I even calculate some chances myself, but this is no fun! I do it because I need to do it in order to play competitively, and because I do not have the time to do extensive testings or boring AI-play (for the AI has no intuition), but I would rather like no to do it.

Thus IMHO:

• The game should obfuscate its mechanics as much as possible, so that no one can gain an advantage by extensive simple calculations only.
• It should make available anything that can be learned easily by sheer testing (like the Quick Reference Sheets for Summons, Items or the Spell Infos (including list for Wish), since players who just have the time for extensive testing should not gain a significant advantage. (Like making an AI-game just to experiment with the Wish-spell)
• It should keep many random elements. Otherwise PBEM players who have enough time can gain enormous advantages by simply setting up and running simulations.

Players should win by their abilitiy to intuitively judge their enemies and strategically sensible management of their forces, not by sheer computing power (= time * calculating hardware).



(PS: Before someone comment on that part of my first paragraph: I am aware that a good mathematician does not necessarily need to be good at calculating, but rather be good at understanding how to calculate, which is something different... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif )

Re: concrete proposals for visibility of rules
 

Intuitive rules are nice as long as they don't become non-intuitive. In addition to some game rules that are non-intuitive by their main idea, some rules cause non-intuitive behavior in exceptional situations. I guess numerous cases are widely known, saving me the trouble of giving examples.
________
Interesting that people are so afraid of slight improvements to combat scripting. If done within limits of reason, imho it would make scripting easier (reduce micromanagement) + cause more natural behavior on the battlefield (reduce the cases when some troops do something no sane person would do). Btw i am not talking about long scripts with 1000 conditionals, but 1..3 command scripts that would do most things a casual player needs, rather.
________
For forging there could be a screen that shows items that can be forged by all free commanders in the town with a lab (maybe even all labs), and dwarven hammers that are available. Dwarven hammers could be assigned to items, not commanders. If the commander who would need to do the forging is not "free" (i.e. it is assigned some non-forging task), it could still show the item in gray (but not enable to select it (unless you appropriately change the order for the commander, of course). Motivated by the fact that (as far as i know) it should make no difference if forging tasks were assigned to appropriate commanders automatically.

A more complicated Version could be that, in addition to the above, you could select what orders don't enable the commander to forge and what can be changed automatically. I guess no one would want 'move' orders to change automatically, while 'preach', 'patrol', 'blood hunt' and 'research' might often be less important than forging if no other commander has the magic skills.
________
I greatly second to the idea of showing condition of castle gates. Sorry for saying no new info, but i couldn't help it.

Re: concrete proposals for visibility of rules
 

Well, I sure hope they don't follow your advice. The Last thing I want is for them to water the game down and start removing characteristics that make units unique.

Re: concrete proposals for visibility of rules
 

I am not sure to whom kukimuki is referring to, but I am totally supporting kukimuki's view, which is not at all contradicting mine, although one might think that at the first glance...

Re: concrete proposals for visibility of rules
 

I've probably mentioned this before. But...

Casters should avoid casting spells which make a friendly unit that's currently immune to an attack form, suddenly vulnerable to that attack forum (notably: barkskin, protection, mass protection; all reduce fire resistance). You shouldn't keep a nature mage around your Abysian army as things stand right now.

Note 1. If resistances stacked multiplicatively, and were applied to damage directly so 100% damage resistance => x0 multiplier for damage, 100% vulnerability = x2 multiplier etc., then this wouldn't be an issue.

Note 2. If they still stack the current way, even checking the current resistance might not be enough; it might cause problems if the player had scripted a ward spell to grant immunity (perhaps by stacking with an existing sub-100% resistance).

Re: concrete proposals for visibility of rules
 

Oh, sorry for confusing people, just used quick reply for the first time, didn't see that i was replying to some specific person. The intention was to reply to the topic or something like that.

Re: concrete proposals for visibility of rules
 

I see you didn't completely understand me...
What I said was that knowing the rules means you can predict the results of one action, and understanding the reasoning behind each action.
Knowing all the rules does not mean that the game can be won using mathematic, there are so many randoms and possible counteraction the enemy can use, it is impossible to predict even the next few moves of a single battle, and certainly not an entire battle.
You should also consider how little information is revealed, you don't know how many units your enemy has and what kind of magic and magical items are available to him, all things to could extremely effect a battle.
Knowing all the rules simply gives you a quick and easy way to evaluate your army's strength with a few clicks, instead of having to gauge your power by standards which you acquire after many hours of playing.
Also, if you do inform us of all the rules, you'd better make sure there are plenty of randoms, because randomless rule WILL lead to calculator battles.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I'd like to see
Growth tied to Taxes (very low tax rate less than 30 give
a bonus to growth scale)

Turmoil tied to Defense (Defense values more than 30 reduce Turmoil)

Production tied to # of unused command points defending
the province (Commanders without troops inherently increase
production by assisting in co-ordination of local pop)

Cold/Heat tied into... nothing

Fortune tied into priests praying beyond their dominion limit (5 ranks of priests praying beyond their limit raise fortune 1 point)

Magic/Drain tied into # of Mages "defending" (ie not
researching or casting... 20 idle casting ranks adds +1 to
scale

And I'd like to see all these dominion effects eachmodifiable by
a friendly/or hostile remote spell, even if only on a province by province basis...

And Lastly... some way to counter a massive pop hit, either from pillagers or hostile magics(tidal wave). Most serious
games I've played fall into population elimination wars, either through targeted spells, or undead/hvy magic players killing the whole map. A couple of tidal waves crashing through your shield in your home province, and or farm lands
is very likely a game ending event, more so than wish, and at a fraction of the cost. Or getting it as a random misfortune in the first 10 turns.... = restart.

Addendi
 

ADDENDI to my post above, v. 1

These fall under section III, "Concrete Suggestions", with one Plea at the end

- Concrete suggestion for UI overhaul: Make the "message" screen an interactive interface with either these 5 "filters" or with click-links to 5 different "tabs", "registers" or screens, each of which will have some of the functionality described below. The gist of this is to give the nation a "feel" for their various branches, ranging from executive (message) to the various operational aspects of running a nation.
1. Trade (shift-f1): The trade screen shows a list of all items, gems, and money you have sent Last month and to whom; on this screen you also see who sent what to you; this is also the screen you use to send gems, items or money to others next turn. I envision an interface that looks a bit like a webmail screen, with an IN and an OUT section, and there are buttons for sort-by (type, nation, etc.) and for sending new tradable resources (send-gems, send-money, send-items). EDIT: Individual trade actions in the Outbox can be edited and/or deleted here without having to delete all Messages.
2. Message Board (shift-f2): Another webmail-looking screen in which your incoming Messages are sorted and from which you can send new Messages to other nations. EDIT: Individual Messages in the Outbox can be edited and/or deleted here without having to delete all Messages.
3. Events (shift-f3): "Unrest in increasing in Bobville." A list of feedback from events, sortable by type: Battles, luck events, sneaking events, etc.
4. Magic (shift-f4): "Bob has cast Snotty Rain". A list of all the spells you have cast and who cast them Last turn.
5. Laboratory Reports (shift-f5): "Bob has forged a Hammer of Hatred": Lists the mages who have forged items, what they forged, and where they can be found.
Edit: Screen 6: Ally Screen (see below).

- Function: Disband Troops. I can think of two ways to do this; probably one of them is too hard, and the other may not be as neat but better from both an RPG as well as a game mechanics perspective.
v1: On a troop overview screen, click on and highlight the troops you want disbanded and hit "d"; a popup screen comes on and asks "Do you really want to disband these troops permanently?"
v2: Disbanding can only be done by a commander. Gather all the troops you want disbanded under a commander who can lead these troops. Set commander's orders to "Disband"; next month, all the troops under that commander's lead have disappeared (have been killed by "diseases", if the game mechanics require some way to do this easily).

- Some Random Events should be more strongly tied to the province in which they occur. For example, snows blocking trade routs resulting in tax losses of 100 gold should not be able to occur in provinces whose income are only 20 gold; there can be forest fires harming resource production, but only in forest provinces.

- I like the way that Dominion plays an important role in many ways, I would like to see this implemented even more. I would like to see more spells which are influenced by higher / lower dominion, and could imagine seeing tax income *slightly* more affected by dominion over and beyond scales (such as the way that Miasma works, but globally and with somewhat less potency).

- (odd BALANCE SUGGESTION: Taxes can only be raised in a province which is not your capital by 20% per month that province is owned; thus newly conquered provinces can have at most 120% taxes, although they can be set to 0% at any time, but to 200% only after 5 months.)


- ALLY INTERFACE: I know nothing about programming, but I think this would be a really big job; if successfull, it would easily take Dominions3 into a new dimension worthy of a new game, not just an expansion.
Screen 6 is Ally Screen: You can offer your alliance here to any nation you can "see"; if an Alliance offer is sent, the recipient may accept or decline. Once accepted, an alliance can be broke by using this screen -- but one can imagine setting up the interface to allow for certain conditions. Perhaps there are different kinds and types of alliances one may share.

Here's the kick: Once an alliance (of, say, Type A) is made between nation A and B, *the troops of nation A are treated as FRIENDLY by those of nation B and vice versa*.
That means at least these two implications: Nation A and B can both move into province X simultaneously without conflict; they then fight *together* on the battlefield against any enemies that may be there with all restrictions normally applied. (E.g., if Nation A brings 1 commander with 10 militia, Nation B brings only SCs, the armies of A and B will both route once the militia are dead; flaming arrows cast by A, for example, affect all A and B's units.) It also means that A's Globals affect allied B's units as if they were their own (GoH helps B too, Wrath of God does not hurt B).

If nation A and nation B are allied, and A asks nation C if he also wants to ally, both B and C will be messaged and both must give consent.
My suggestion would be that an alliance formed by using the Ally Screen would not change the victory conditions.

Perhaps some alliances can be set at the beginning of the game under Create Game. If A and B ally from the beginning against C and D, one could imagine that the VCs are shared; at least, this could be an exciting option. If the "Share VC" option is clicked, the sum of whatever quantified statistic could be taken (dominion, provs, whatever); I dont think that would be too problematic.

There would have to be rules (perhaps different settings which one can choose when setting up a game) which stipulate IF and if so, under what conditions an AI nation can become an ally. I think, however, that AI nations should not be allowed to ally; their reasons for accepting an alliance with A over B or not at all would be very hard to quantify. For simplicity's sake, I would be more than happy to exclude AI nations from the Ally Screen interface, but allow for AI nations to be allied at the start of the game under Game Setup.
I think this would be a fornicatingly bucketload of fun.
Thanks.


PLEA: It would be most helpful if a member of the Dev team were to express his or her feedback regarding (at least some of) the suggestions on this thread and/or the makeup of the thread in general (till now, there have been but two very brief comments on 2 aspects: commander renaming (already in) and the nagot gik fel message); what is the deal? Are we being helpful? Are we being constructive? Are some of the suggestions good, or bad, or noteworthy, or what? Which types are helpful? Or are we being useless? Are we being to vague? Are we being to unrealistic? Are we being read?
Are we being ignored?

Re: Addendi
 

I also like the idea to keep a record somewhere of at least all nations at war with you in case you leave a game for a while and come back but don't remember. This would be helpful even if no new diplomacy AI is implemented. (I personally like diplomacy the way it is because otherwise players learn how to take advantage of the AI to too great an extent.)

It would also help if anytime you see another pretender you would have a record of their magic paths at the time you Last saw them. (Of course you only learn this in battle.)

Re: Addendi
 

I recently realized that if you play a multi-player game, you really ought to keep a record of all the provinces your scouts see, the stats of enemies that you observe in battle, etc.

It would be nice if dom3 would do all this for you, but it seems like a challenge to design and implement a user interface for it.

Re: Addendi
 

Tinkthank,

This thread isn't intended to be a "Dev feedback" thread, it is intended to concentrate all the suggestions and 'wishes' of players into one place so that *IF* IW wishes, they can take the suggestions they feel are good and implement them.

Getting a Developer to say "This is good, we'll implement this" is like pulling teeth, especially since these particular Developers are working on a schedule that doesn't allow some of the more "pie in the sky" wishes that might be great but can't be implemented.

Don't take silence from the Developers to be 'ideas are good, or ideas are bad'.

Re: Addendi
 

You are being read.

Some of the ideas are constructive and useful others not quite as much so. Very specific requests for the creation of a certain unit, spell or nation are not likely to be listened to. Proposing a theme for a nation and then writing down stats for all the units you think should be included is probably counterproductive to your wishes. On the other hand making concrete and specific suggestions about rules is helpfull. So make general suggestions for content and specific suggestions for mechanics.

Re: Addendi
 

thanks, both to Zen and JO for the clearup, that is helpful.

Re: Addendi
 

If disbanding troops is permitted, I would suggest that troops disbanded outside their home province should at least sometimes be converted to unrest. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/redface.gif (Perhaps even if -in- their home? And troops that desert due to low pay, should almost always cause unrest if they don't already. Brigandage and all that, you know.) Along similar lines, it might be interesting if mercenary bands despairing in their unemployment would look for weak provinces to plunder... or perhaps be "hired" by an independent province, even.

If I were being really cynical, I might suggest that spies be allowed to attempt to bribe other nations' mercenaries even the latter's contracts -aren't- going to end the next turn, although it shouldn't be feasible to be able to bribe them into a certain-death situation (sneak away into the bribing side's province next door, perhaps; try to take over the massively garrisoned capital province with nowhere to retreat to afterwards, no. They're in it for the money, not the glory of death in battle. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif And, being mercenaries, it wouldn't be out of character to take the bribe and betray the one who offered it.)

Continuing in the line of deceit and treachery, I wonder if experienced assassins should be permitted the initiative in battle (not when they're caught, that is).

There's a lot that potentially would be amusing in terms of counterintelligence (allocating spies to disinformation so that enemy scouts and spies perhaps get bogus information, say) but this would be rather hard to do well and realistically methinks. If a scout could be caught and turned so that, for instance, he'd keep reporting whatever he saw, troop-wise, the view from the turn before he was caught, then it'd be possible to hide the movements of an army...

A wargamer might wonder if there's a use for a force-marching option (e.g. get an extra movement point for the ground-pounders, at the cost of -2 or so morale (or more, even) and heavy fatigue (40-60+ ?) upon their arrival, and a penalty with regards to how much supply they're getting from provinces due to spending less time on that (which means: bring a supply train, er, broth etc). Bad if you're going to attack immediately afterwards, but the potential surprise factor may help and it might save your bacon if you find a reason to shift troops in a hurry.

On mobility, given that we have different movement classes (water, land, air) it might be interesting if a .map file could specify limitations on adjacency (e.g. province 1 is adjacent to province 2 for flying units only) so that one could specify rivers that could be flown or swum across, or perhaps a mountain range between two provinces that's an obstacle to flight, but has mines / tunnels that offer land units a way through.

Re: Addendi
 

I'd like too see more impact on "survival" skills too.
Like a forest survival troops have a bonus in the forest in stats.
A sneaking has a bonus in forest provinces of his hiding skill.

There could be a counterpart that lowers the chances too, likewhise a "Plain Survival" (I know it doesn't exist), that could be the knights, have a boost in Plains/Farmlands, but have some hindrances in forests or swamps or mounts.

concrete comment on spending gems in battle
 

I am confused by the rules about spending gems in battle. I've read the manual (back before I lost it Last week) and I've read Liga's manual addendum, and discussed it on the forum and in private Messages. I *think* mages can spend up to one gem to increase their effective level by one, plus up to N-1-K gems to reduce their fatigue, where N is their effective level (*before* the first gem was spent ??) and K is the gem cost of the spell. But I wouldn't bet on my understanding being correct.

I'm really hoping to figure this out before I try to cast huge high-level spells in combat. But to get back on topic for this thread, I'm also hoping that gem usage is simpler in dom3.

Hm. Now I will think of a concrete proposal to make it simpler -- not because I'm likely to think of a better idea than Johan and Kristoffer can think of, but because my proposal might stimulate them to think of a good idea.

... Hm. Okay:

My proposal is that gems have no effect in combat except to satisfy the "gem requirement" for spells.

That feels good to me, because I feel like the battle AI is sure to make bad decisions about when to spend or not to spend gems, so if the scope of opportunities to spend gems is narrowed I'm happy.

Also, it would reduce confusion, thus making the game easier for new players to get into.

Re: Addendi
 

In reply to Taqwus' proposals:

• I really like your forced-march proposal! This would greatly increase strategical choices!
• Your example with tunnels is somewhat flawed, for flyers can surely walk through these tunnels as well. On the other hand, if they walk, they should not cover as much provinces as before (i.e. fly3, walk1). Since flying is a big boon, I've thought about using road-provinces in a map that I am making, but the simple adjacencies only give flyers another edge.
  
  So I propose the following simple solution for flyer/foot-movement, which retains the province-based movement of Dom2, which I really like (as opposed to provinceless hex-based or square-based games):
  
  A flyer has a strat movement score as everyone else, which works as for everyone else. The flying ability is then equipped with a number (e.g. like the supply bonus currently is). For an example, let's say that the flyer has start move of 2 and a flying ability of 100. This means that he can either move 2 provinces as everyone else by foot or may fly-move to all provinces whose white dot is within the 100 pixels radius of the white dot of his current province. Similar to the zoom factor, a .map-file should then contain an float entry which is used as a factor to flyers moves - that serves as a yardstick and sets the scale of the map.
  
  So flyers could then reach provinces that other units could not, but on large open plains they could only reach as far as any other unit could.
  
  (Non-metric maps, like those who use wrap-around but have a neighbor relation which ignores the torus shape of wrap-around but rather reflect a sphere (compare "World" to "Inland"), limits the use of the flying ability around the poles, but this is not a severe problem in my view and could also be repaired somewhat by allowing a set-individual-yardstick-value-command for provincs.)

Re: Addendi
 

I haven't read all the Posts of this thread, but I have one major improvement in my mind:

The battles in dom 2 seem to go in real time, but they really go in turns. In my opinion this is somewhat bad choice, since it unbalances the fights.

For example a battle that seems to be a cakewalk, BUT.. the enemy troops gain the "first strike" (hit with all of its troops, while you hit 0 times). At its worst this can lead to a severe morale loss, which again causes all your troops to route. In terms of realism this isn't right, since both the defening and the attacking squads should have almost an equal amount of hits. So let's compare turn-based and real time battles:

Turn-based

- Unbalanced
- Unrealistic first strike

Real Time

+ More action = more fun
+ More realistic feel
+ The strategic element more visible
+ You don't have to wait for every single arrow to hit
- Harder to see the course of the battle
- Battle system somewhat challenging to carry out

Re: Addendi
 

It's a good point, Azhur.

I would find real-time battles more fun to watch, because I get tired of waiting for arrows to fly.

In fact, I sometimes hit fast-forward while arrows are in flight and then hit pause as soon as the following turn happens so I can see what's going on.

Azhur's complaint about arbitrary first-strike could be solved by making battle moves simultaneous but still turn based. But simultaneous games have a whole bunch of funny corner cases, of course...

The devs should play Titan -- the strategy board game -- if they haven't. It's combat rules are interesting and they avoids weird corner cases. Titan's combat rules are not simultaneous-move.

I kind of feel like the Dom combat rules, which evolved (I guess) from a board game, should evolve some more to be best for a computer game and not a board game...

Re: Addendi
 

Real time battle has been suggested earlier in this thread, you might want to dig it up to see what comments it got. IIRC it would be too hard to be worth implementing, and would present problems such as missiles and spells that would be shot at the place enemy units are moving away from...

UI wish
 

I wish that the UI for "outside the game" things were better. For example, it takes a lot of clicks to connect to a server and see the status. For another example, I don't know how to download the game state and make my moves off-line and then upload my moves later. I guess maybe connecting and then choosing "Quit without saving" and then choosing "Play game" and choosing the game named after the server and then later connecting again, but I don't want to try it for fear of losing my turn if it doesn't work.

Re: Addendi
 

As far as i know of real-time battles being mentioned before in this thread, it got absolutely no comments (lol)....that are already solved in many games. On the downside, solving problems that are already solved might be less challenging than leaving unsolved problems unsolved.

Re: Addendi
 

Dominions does many things better than some other games, but it can't do everything as well as every game that was the best at something.

Here is a link to a message of Soapyfrog and the discussion that followed.

Re: Addendi
 

Thanks a lot for the link to the real time battles discussion.
________
Disclaimer: I have nothing against randoms. Maybe all the suggestion below was caused by a few funny-looking exceptions I didn't know of.

Got the impression that sometimes morale slightly over 10 is something that makes the troops concentrate more on the dilemma of 'to rout or not to rout' than the battle. But sometimes they fight with unexpected bravery. Which makes me think that there might be too high chance of getting the extreme results with the routing formula. Maybe there could be some inertia in the function (like more consecutive bad events have more serious impact on routing).

Also, havn't had time to check it again lately, but don't units still have normal morale when you pick them up in the neighboring provinces after routing? Was a surprise at first, somehow I naturally expected that fleeing from battle would ruin morale.

So it makes me think that the morale stat you see in unit info in battle is some base morale of the unit, not the actual morale in battle. Maybe it would be nice to see more components of morale and when morale drops below blah-blah, the unit would be likely to flee. And 'likely' would be somewhat more predictable than atm, coupled by more predictable 'unlikely'. Meaning more chance to get the average result, less chance to get the extremes. Or if the unit is secretive about it's real morale response to demoralizing battle events, maybe there could be some comprehensive estimation based on battle events.

I hope the routing formula used atm is something different from 'given enough time any army will rout no matter what because of the encoded probability'.

Re: Addendi
 

An elaboration

I will try to be as concrete and specific as possible in detailing what I mean by the nation
management screens I sketched in my previous post (addendi), because I think this would
particularly useful while not costing terribly high amounts of resources.
Basically, the "inbox" and "outbox" scheme can have the same form throughout all screens and
represents information coming in from Last turn (inbox) and going out this turn (outbox).
I will use the Lab and the Magic screen as examples here:

"LAB SCREEN" (shift-f3):

PREVIOUS TURN
<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>

Mage Action Bonus Type Place
---------------------------------------------------------------
Bob* forged Crystal Coin* 25% hammer Snofonia*
Jim* forged Magic Lamp* -- Dogville*
Art* forged Rainbow Armor* 50% hammer + M. Oggville*
</pre><hr />


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

CURRENT TURN
Mage Action Bonus Type Place
----------------------------------------------------------------
Stan* forge Skull Staff* -- Snofonia*
Jim* forge Staff of Elem* -- Dogville*
Bob* forge Slave Matrix* 25% hammer Snofonia*
Ted* forge Lightless Lanter* 25% Master S. Ulm*


</pre><hr />

The fields marked with an asterisk (*) should be "hyperlinked"; that is, for example,
clicking on Bob will send you right to him, highlighted; clicking on Snofonia will send you
to that province; clicking on the object forged (Crystal Coin) will send you right to that
item in what is now the f8 screen.

The "trick" is the order screen for the current turn. As soon as you set a mage to perform a
task, he or she is automatically and instantly put into the "outbox"; that is, her orders
are set up in the Lab screen. No more must you search forever for that hammer you were sure
you had, nor must you keep track of who is casting what. You want Stan to forge a Crown of
the Ivy King instead of casting Summon Vine Ogres -- no problem finding the appropriate
people now. You want to make sure that someone is casting Summon King of Elemental Fire, but
you want the mage who is doing that now to cast Flaming Arrows in a battle somewhere else --
now you can exchange places easily. This way, mages can be easily found and their orders
changed.
I envision the Lab Screen to be one tab in a national overview, and the Last Turn and
Current turn to be next to one another side-by-side on one screen. If this proves to be too
much of a nuisance, perhaps this suggestion would be better: Have "Current Turn" and
"Previous Turn" be two "tab registers" on the "same" screen.

The setup sketched above can be used not only for the Lab -- and analogously, the Magic
screen, where casting rituals are documented -- but also for receiving and sending Messages
and items:


"TRADE SCREEN"

PREVIOUS TURN
<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>

Sent to Items Sent Quant. Received From Items Received Quant.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mictlan Lightless Lantern 1 Mictlan Fire Gems 5
Mictlan Astral Pearls 19 T'ien Starshine Skul. 2
T'ien Lightless Lantern 1
</pre><hr />


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

CURRENT TURN
Sending to Items to Send Quant. EDIT
Marignon Staff of Storms 1 edit/delete this transaction
T'ien Chi Astral Pearls 11 edit/delete this transaction

*SEND NEW ITEM* *SEND NEW GEMS*

</pre><hr />

On this screen, the "SEND NEW" fields highlighted here with asterisks indicate buttons which
allow you to send resources.


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

"MESSAGE SCREEN"

Incoming Messages

Received From Topic
Mictlan Our trade
T’ien Want to kill Mictlan?
Marignon Why are you bothering me? 1
</pre><hr />


<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
CURRENT TURN
Sending to Topic EDIT
Marignon Misunderstanding edit/delete this message
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I think this would make my gaming experience, especially dealing with late-game micromanagement, exponentially more fun. Thanks for listening.

Re: Addendi
 

I can almost guarantee that it is at present although a couple of us think there's something buggy with morale in the latest patch.

At present, I've watched normal infantry keep coming even after about 24 out of 25 in the unit had been killed, after which one would _think_ that Last wounded unit would rout, if not substantially sooner.

Also, supposedly non-berserk troops rout after all commanders die, and non-berserk, non-immortal commanders rout after all troops die, and commanders with no troops rout after a commander dies, but it all too often doesn't work this way. (But this is something I am pretty sure has been mentioned in the bug thread, which is where it belongs.)

Yet More Addendi and Elaborations
 

II.
In the Category Prioritization of Dev Resources:

- At the very bottom of the prioritization list should be "more"; I would not like to see "more" units, more gods, more nations, more weapons, more trees, at least not at the expense of other things (see above, see below), and not primarily. The "more (of the same)" aspect feels like an expansion pack. Dominions 3 should not be an expansion pack, but a new, wonderful game in the Dominions tradition.
- therefore, the Ally Option (form alliances, allied troops can fight together on the battlefield against opponents) should have high priority, as should other aspects of this nature, such as theme-modding; after which should come
- improved fun-insuring UI
- Game balance doublechecks (make sure certain aspects (e.g. race for SC-building) or combinations of aspects (Caelum and Wrathful Skies) do not become no-brainers)

III.
Concrete Suggestions:
- Each "state" (e.g. mistform, etheral, mirror imaged, fire resistance, communion master) should have an icon and can be flagged during unit modding.
- Allow in Game Setup an option which lets you specify the number of Globals allowable simultaneously via slider (say, 0 to 20)
- New Checks and Balances: In addition to more Buffs and Debuffs (my first post), there could be more concrete, small defenses which protect well against specific attacks, thus awarding players' usage of strategic scouting, for example:
Dog Whistle: This item can cause Panic in nearby Wolves when used
Garlic Talisman: Wearing this item will bestow the wearer with Awe (+2) which only works on Vampires

New Diversity in Functionality of Spells:
- Divine Intervention: Make some (very few) powerful spells castable only by Pretenders
- 3-path Spells: Perhaps there are a few rare spells which have requirements in 3 paths, or perhaps even more.

Re: Yet More Addendi and Elaborations
 

I always assumed that those 8-9 path spells were supposed to be pretender-only spells, arent they?

So I simply suppose the introduction of a new random event, which causes a powerful mage having a weak morale to split up with his former master to become a pretender himself/herself with his/her own followers (i.e. becoming independant and attacking like Bogus and his neat friends)... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image.../firedevil.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/stupid.gif ...always remember to eliminate your minions if they become too powerful! (Modders: Beware of Illwinter! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif )
This would thus turn 9th level spells to almost-pretender-only! (Calculating: 3 native, +1 from gems, +3 from items = 7, so I guess those 9th level spells would be at least Pretender OR communion exclusive...)


It would also make having luck bit more worthwhile, so adding that kind of event would be a true two-for-one bargain!!! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Yet More Addendi and Elaborations
 

It's quite possible to get base levels of 4 or 5 on a non-pretender for most magic paths : Elemental Kings / Queens have up to 4 or 5, Lich has 4 in death, Treelords have 4 or 5 nature, Archdemons have 4 or 5 in blood and other paths. You can easily get +4 or +5 from non-unique items for most paths once you get S4 for a ring of sorcery and then wizardry.

And I'm not sure that I agree that the 9th level spells are supposed to be pretender only - just that they're supposed to be rare and hard to get to cast, and I'm not sure that I see the ultra high level spells get cast often enough....

I _like_ the fact that it's sometimes possible to get an 8th or 9th level spell or enchantment off from a surprising source. Example: I managed to have a High Seraph cast Arcane Nexus (S8). Sadly it died a mere two turns later, but still....

Re: Yet More Addendi and Elaborations
 

Well I dont know about you but I sort of meant that "Divine Intervention" could be a new form of spell type, one that didnt require a high path level, and not necessarily a global enchantment -- simply a decent (not über) spell which only a Pretender may cast. An example of this type of spell could be....

- Battle Magic: "Resurrection" (req. some Astral, and/or some Death?), can bring fallen (holy?) comrades back to life which fell in that battle

- Ritual: "Deus Ex Machina" (req. some Earth, maybe some air?) will transport the pretender in a holy wooden construct to the province of his/her/its choice, landing with a loud crash (combat: large AoE panic), and returns the pretender along with 10+ choice troops back to the capital (automatic ritual of returning) after 10 combat rounds;
"Merkhabah" (req. fire, astral?), sends the pretender in a visionary flaming chariot across the skies, causing fear and unrest in an enemy province or boon and morale boost in a friendly province; the pretender lands in that province and, should a battle ensue, will automatically start that battle with awe+4, an astral shield and a fire shield on.

Well I dont think this is terribly important, would just be some flavor, maybe others think this is stupid, I dont know. Much prefer the Ally option if there had to be a choice!

Re: Yet More Addendi and Elaborations
 

More micromanagement saving ideas.

I played my first Ermor game recently. And I was depressed at all the micromanagement of putting undead under the command of commanders and setting each commander's orders. Ermor just gets way more troops in raw numbers than just about any other nation especially ashen empire.

It would be great if troops would automatically go into command until the command is full, in a default formation set by the player, with the commander having default orders set by the player. That would save soooo much time.

Re: Yet More Addendi and Elaborations
 

Only if you could disable that option!
It could possibly lead to commanders which didn't reach their command maximum to pick up stray soldiers being recruited in provinces they go to, if unspotted this could lead to disaster (whoops! my tactical move is reduced to 1 because of damn miltiamen, and my morale just took a nose dive!) or just to some more MM...

More ideas
 

Some more suggestions (apologies if they've already been done):

Nation-specific random events. In particular, no more 'militia' events for Ermor. Give them something like "an ancient burial vault has been unearthed" or something.

The ability to permanently hire mercenaries, after you've employed them three times, for example.

I also think that mercenary Groups should survive routs, especially if the leader survives. And it would be nice if mercenaries could replenish themselves, rather than becoming weaker and weaker.

And how about mercenaries which will only go for nations with specific dominion settings (i.e. the Flamemaster and his lava golems will only go for a nation with heat-1 or more)?

Re: More ideas
 

Sandman,

I like your mercenary idea. And your nation-specific events idea. Militia for Ermor or carrion woods Pangea doesn't make a lot of sense. But I'm not sure you would want to give Ulm a bunch of infantry of ulms as they are much better than militia.

Mercenaries I think do need to be more customizable. And able to be turned off. And I thought it was hillarious when I hired the eternal knights as Ermor and sent them to their certain death. But that shouldn't have been allowed to happen. They should not have willingly hired themselves out to an all-undead nation because it goes against their nature. Maybe things Groups like Orion's should look at your overall scales and decide if you even qualify to bid on them. I could even see the mages prefering magic scales, the druids prefering growth, and so on.

Re: More ideas
 

Minor note:

'National' blood slaves might be thematic, and in certain situations would help -- e.g. Abysia recruiting fire-resistant blood slaves which don't combust in combat. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: More ideas
 

Actually, I wouldn't mind if Ulm got Ulmish infantry from a free troops event. Ulm has few advantages as it is, and they could do with being able to extract some usefulness from the luck scale. I'd much rather have twelve decent infantrymen than forty militia.

Yes, that's the idea. Those are really good examples which hadn't even crossed my mind.

Re: More ideas
 

Which? Are you so used to hunting slaves you think of them as objects? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif (A revealing lapsus as they would say)

I would like to make a suggestion, which may or may not have any interest for the other players. It would be a way to counter or negate battlefield enchantments, pretty much like it is possible to dispel global enchantments. A few ways I can think of would be:

- The enchantment could be dispelled if the caster/item is removed from the battlefield (either by dead or retreat). If it is already the same, and I am overlooking the obvious, feel free to slap me. This would be a fairly simple suggestion, but it would allow to actually get rid of the enchantment in the battle.

- In addition to this, a spell may be introduced to allow to kill the caster of the item, and/or a battle order to specifically target such commanders. The latter part seems rather odd however, especially as Illwinter removed the "Target enemy spellcasters" option, but might make sense if it is linked to another spell (a magic beacon say, which would make such casters much easier to locate and elimitate).

- A generic, battle-wide Dispel spell may be used instead to remove such enchantments.

- Specific counter-spells may appear to negate a particular enchantment. For example, a Earth Channel spell would counter Wrathful Skies.

I think such a change would make it harder to make sure a specific enchantment is active during a battle, perhaps making it worthwhile to send more than one mage to cast the same enchantment (instead of being confident your Staff of Storms bearer will call a storm for you). It could also increase the effectiveness of certain strategies; for example, the Mass Flight spell would perhaps be a very potent enchantment for hordes, but its use seems limited by the availability of Storms/Staffs of Storms earlier in the game.

Re: More ideas
 

Breaking up the "spells" order for mages into several slightly more specific orders, namely "attack spells," "summon spells," and "buff spells."

This would keep people from creating super-micromanaged mages of doom while still eliminating some of the really irritating aspects of the current mage AI, such as how they favor summons over attack spells, leading any elemental mage with gems to waste them summoning elementals instead of using attack spells and conserving their gems.

ALso, it would be nice if saving army orders using ctrl-# also saved the position of that unit on the battlefield. Voila, two clicks eliminated for every commander and unit group.

EDIT: Also, having some more details in the descriptions for battlefield and global spells would be nice. As it is most combat spells and summoning rituals have decent descriptions (ie: they include all the important pieces of data like area of effect/# of effects, damage, etc), but often you have very little idea of what a battlefield enchantment or global does until you actually cast it. Flavor descriptions are nice, but actual knowledge is better. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: More ideas
 

Use .dominions3 instead of dominion3 as the name of the savefile directory under Unix/Linux systems. It is convention to create all top-level computer generated files in the user's home directory as dotfiles.

Re: More ideas
 

Here are some ideas for enhancements that should be fairly easy to implement. Some of these I know have already been mentioned, but I think they are all easy and pretty much popular suggestions.

1) How about saving battle replays to a file? Shouldn’t be too hard since that data must be stored somewhere already, and it’d be really cool to be able to save some of your really awesome battles. They could be shared for AARs, as tutorials, etc. Also, having a button to rewind to the Last round (same functionality as the skip forward button, only reversed) would be great to.

2) Ranged troops set to fire should try and maintain a minimum distance (ie skirmish) while ammo Lasts. Fire &amp; Withdraw should have them continue firing until either ammo is depleted or they move off the back of the battlefield trying to maintain a minimum distance. I think it would go a long way towards making LI viable if I could harass the enemy, then (at least try to manage it so that) my LI fell back behind my HI so that the HI met the enemy’s charge, at which point my LI runs out of ammo and attacks to support the HI (or withdraws if that’s what I want).

3) Have a withdraw option, distinct from routing (keep your troops together).

4) An option to specify that a mage not use gems unless scripted to. I think it’s very often the case that players want somebody to cast a single spell requiring gems (ie wrathful skies, mass protection, etc) then preserve the rest of the gems for future fights. Since this can already be accomplished through MM, this is just a MM reducing feature.

5) In keeping with the Dom paradigm, its important to limit the amount of tactical control the player has when scripting mages. It would be very strategically useful though to be able to assign them a role (summoning spells, attack spells, buff-other spells). Artillery mages shouldn’t pass out buffing themselves, and death mages should be able to do something other than summoning skeletons. It’d be great (and fit the paradigm) to be able to script a few specific buffs then give them very general direction.

6) Allow good hooks for AI modding. AI design for such a complex game is really hard, and this is one of the more vocal complaints I’ve seen about Dom II. This game has a large community of creative types who know the strats and game mechanics ridiculously well. Lets leverage it, and shut up all the AI whiners with a “put your money where your mouth is”. Expanding this to include modding the unit battlefield AI would be great(if not prohibitively difficult). That would give interested parties a way to play around with archer friendly fire, light infantry, mage spell selection, etc.

Re: More ideas
 

I've been idly wondering whether it'd be possible to model troops falling back without actually routing first.

To take an example from another computer game, the "Total War" engine -- at least, the incarnation that features in the "Shogun:TW" game -- permits the outcome of 'push' from two soldiers fighting each other: one soldier forces the other a bit backwards, but the fight continues on both parties.

For a more historical perspective, if we take Machiavelli's "Art of War" as an authority on Roman tactics when he quotes his contemporary Fabrizio (an assertion which I'm not qualified to properly assess, not having studied this in any detail), the different lines in formation might fall back and join with lines previously held in reserve during battle, and continue the fight from there.

These are most likely two different situations -- falling back as an individual, and falling back while trying to preserve some semblance of organization as a line. Adding either would add a bit of flavor over the currently binary advance-or-flee model. I'd also agree that having light infantry -- velites! -- fire and fall back (either through gaps or along the flanks) would add a reasonable option and go a long way towards making them something other than patrollers and garrison troops.

Re: More ideas
 

I second Alneyan's idea. I would also very much like to see more types of checks and balances and counters of the type:

debuff
disenchant
dispel

Perhaps there can be spells which dispel all (including friendly) "entire battlefield" air spells, death spells, etc., and one which dispels all of them.

Re: More ideas
 

What I would like to see is having a research level limit adjustable from game to game, either as a blanket limit or preferably school by school, so that you could for example limit construction to Lv 4, have conjuration up to 6 and alteration and enchantment to lv 7. It could make for very interesting games where some options would be limited while still having a magic rich game (because right now the only way to limit magic is by lowering site frequency so that gems will have to be used very carefully and there won't be massive hordes of fully equipped SCs in late game.

Re: More ideas
 

yeah more starting options would be great:

apart from the research restriction I would like to see:
-efficiency of bloodhunting (low/normal/high)
-number of global spell slots (5/10/15)
-bigger hall of fame(5-50)
-gem cost of ritual spells/forging items(half/normal/twice the cost)
-number of pretender design points
-fog of war on/off(every player has an eyes of god enchantment always active)

Re: More ideas
 

That's a little harsh and removes a lot of strategy. I'd be willing to go with a seriously truncated Version of this, which would allow everyone to always see who owns which province, but nothing else unless they really have EoG or some other means of seeing in there (Astral Window, scouts, spies etc)

Edi

Re: More ideas
 

Something else I should really have posted before, but forgot. It would be fairly likely that someone made the same request before though.

I would like to see multi-path spells/items in Dominions 3, requiring more than two magic paths to be used. I believe it would be a nice addition for nations with Jack-of-all-trades mages (who said T'ien Ch'i?), which would be the only ones with an easy access to these spells.

Re: More ideas
 

More good ideas.

I have another from a mistake I made in a SP game. How about a confirmation screen the first time you attack a nation you are not "at war" with? Just something like "Really attack Pangea?"

I hate to just about lose a game due to a stupid accident made in a strategy game moving one priest into a neighbor's territory instead of into my own.