Re: More ideas
 

Ok...one more...I hope I'm not putting up too many....

When the spell "Mind Hunt" is cast, please have the message state on what province it was cast. This will let you know when there are not more commanders there. It will also let you know what provinces have astra magi capable of severing your silver cord.

(I really like Arco and Mind Hunt...heal...:))

Re: More ideas
 

I felt compelled to finally register on this forum to request that the developers consider tying unit building capability to different fortifications. For example, an expensive mountain fortress might allow you to build "capital-only" units whereas a wizard's tower would only allow you to build "cheap" troops. Just a thought that may or may not introduce a new, welcome element to game play.

Some More Small Ideas
 

Some more small stuff here:

In the rubrik "More", it could be nice to see more new "Special Dominion"s. Here's an example from me:

- New "Special Dominion" any nation may choose for 25 points, requires Death 1 and Magic 2: ELDRICH HAUNT. The lands of this dominion are eerie and unsettling, attracting spooks and unnatural fauna of all sorts, and filled with oddly shaped trees and bizarre vales. Horses become skittish from odd sounds, men imagine they feel the weight of unseen hands upon their necks. No living creature who does not believe in the dominion of the ruler god will set foot willingly in this land.
All enemy units experience -2 morale within this dominion; mounted units and animals take a -3 dominion penalty. (Mindless, lifeless, and undead beings are unaffected.)


More Small UI Tweaks which would be Worth their Money
- Currently, during "God Creation", one cannot exit without saving ("ready") once a Pretender is chosen. During "God Creation", let there be a button "Exit (without saving)", so that previous Newlords are not overwritten when experimenting.
- Make storing battle orders more user-friendly by letting us store also with shift-1 to 9 and/or alt-1- to 9, or perhaps let us map our own key settings with the (shift+ or alt+) f1-f12 buttons
- The Tactical Screen should also include, perhaps next to the "Give battle orders" buttons, a "Define Squad Form: Square, Phalanx, Line, Default" section, whereby "Default" can be defined by user

AI Improvement Continued:
I'd still like to see the SP Version of this game be more challenging.
The AI rarely forges items which help against starvatation. Why? If this is very difficult or impossible to change, then implement something similar to the following rule:
Easy AI: receives a 10% Supply Bonus per province (or: Net troop supply usage = -10%)
Impossible AI: receives an 85% Supply Bonus per province (or: Net troop supply usage = -85%)

Elaboration, Part the Second
 

Just wanted to concretize some of the ideas I had hastily sketched above with the various screens, this time concentrating on what I think could be a kick-butt GAME SETUP screen configuration. I think if the game were not set up this way, it would be difficult to implement a lot of the good ideas which the developers have hinted at. I envision something like this:

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


NATION STATUS HANDICAP AI TYPE
Abysia -- -- --
Arco Human +15 --
Atlantis Easy AI +150 Defensive
Babylonia Difficult AI +250 Aggressive
Caelum Human -40 --

Human Alliances Allowed Yes
AI Alliances Allowed No
Determine Preset Alliances (click here)

</pre><hr />

In setting up a game, one would first toggle the "Status" button -- default is probably "not playing", which I have represented by "--".
"Handicap" would, I think, be exceptionally easy to represent and be a great boon in both SP and MP. By "Handicap", I mean simply a bonus (or penalty) to starting Design Points. Left clicking subtracts, right clicking adds, as we are used to. In SP games, the idea should work without a problem; human or AI nations will get an additional bonus (or penalty) to their build over and above any bonuses or penalties which a "hard" AI would get.
In MP games, of course, the Host will not be able to start a game in which one or more of the participants has sent a "bad" build (used a bonus handicap where none was allowed); the game would have to send a message of the appropriate type. Any ideas on how this could be worked out smoothly?
Under "AI Type" I imagine (at least) 3 types: A turtler (defensive), who only attacks back if attacked first, a random type (similar to what we have now), and an aggressive type, who will try to pick out the weakest and/or most accessible nation and systematically try to destroy it without trying to harm the others unless attacked by them.
The Alliance section below should be used in stipulating the rules for being able to join forces as humans or AI (where both nations' armies can fight side by side in the same battle and move through the friendly provinces without penalty).

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

AI troop building :

The AI should follow 3 paths for troop building :

Early game (when all research path are between 1-3)
AI builds mostly cheap troops, and a few good ones.

Medium game (when 1 or 2 research path are between 4-6)
AI builds a mixt of cheap and medium troops.

Late game (when 1 or 2 research path are between 7-8)
AI builds mostly elite troops.

To achieve that, you would need to have race specific AI files, which would include unit ID and a building probability. A good idea would be to put these settings in text form.

An important parameter to code for a commander would also be :
Build a castle if the nearest one is more than xxx provinces away.

Anyway, it would be very important to have race specific AI in text files. Look at SE4 : all AIs have been re-writen and fine tuned by the community. No out of the box SE4 AI can stand its ground versus the community AIs.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

One more wish...that no one's archers on default will have a mass of twenty or more archers firing at a single heavy infantry that isn't near anything else when there are "better" targets.

I think a "value" (perhaps recruitment cost? with an arbitrarily high number given to pretenders) could be assigned to units and Groups and archers could use this value to decide what to fire at.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I would like a way to mark the map with various symbols that would serve as reminders. For example, in the early game I might mark an independent province with knights and crossbowmen with a red circle to indicate that it is relatively well protected. If my scout discovers an enemy capital, I might mark it with a black diamond. What the symbols mean would be left up to the player (and might even change during a game as needs change), so the symbols should be abstract enough not to have any strong prior associations (or at least none close to the game concepts). Also, the symbols would have to be visually distinct from the ones already in use (e.g., sun for heat, clover leaf for luck, etc.). Each province should have room for at least a few player-marked symbols.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

sushiboat,

That is a great idea. An alternative would be to have the game itself keep a record of where enemy capitals etc are so that they can be seen on the overhead map.

As things are now, you somehow forget exactly what magic sites are in a province when you lose control of that province. And you can't recall what was in the province your scout or spy just left. (I hope the devs think this change would fall under the "less micromanagement and paper notetaking" sort of change.)

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Virtual Post-It notes would be nice and generic. Perhaps use color-coded thumbtacks to indicate their existence, and for MP use allow sharing them (individually).

For that matter, so would symbols dedicated to indicating the current (or, perhaps the Last known -- in a shaded form, that is) location of enemy pretenders and prophets. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

More UI thoughts
 

I also like sushiboat's suggestion very much, perhaps in the survivialistmerc Version too.

Here are some more UI suggestions:

- Some more UI functionality:
Hitting "H" while on the Tactical Screen selects all units which are hungry; hitting "h" selects all units in a highlighted squad which are hungry.
Hitting "W" while on the Tactical Screen selects all units which are wounded; hitting "w" selects all units in a highlighted squad which are wounded.
Hitting "E" while on the Tactical Screen selects all units which are experienced; hitting "e" selects all units in a highlighted squad which are experienced.
Hitting the "backspace" button lets you deselect such highlighted units without having to put them somewhere or manually reclick them (as is currently the case).

Perhaps the default arrangement of troops within one squad should be: The more afflictions, the further to the right; diseased counts as two; hungry counts as one-half. The more experience, the further to the left. Afflictions are weighted first. Thus afflicted units to the right, the left of these being those with fewer afflictions and more experience, to the left of these units are those unafflicted in ascending order of experience. (How is the squad ordered currently? I can see no plan.)

- Allow us please to determine how commanders are ordered, both in the map view and the tacitcal view (alphabetically by name, by type, by experience, by magic path, by number of units being led, by orders given, etc.), and allow us to set the default ourselves too.

On AI, and Mercs
 

Now on to AI -- this time concretely about AI thoughts when dealing with Mercs, with which the AI has great problems, and which also brings me to how Mercs are handled in MP too.

First, the idea for improving Merc fun both in MP *and* SP: Please include in each Merc bid a d6 OE.

- Additional idea for AI merc-handling Tweaking: Make Standard AI get a small bonus to Merc bids, Difficult AI an even higher one, and Impossible AI an even higher one. (The current AI bids too low.) That is, let the computer make its standard bid, but it should get a bonus to its d6 roll.

Additionally, an algorithm should be set up for AI merc bids, whereby the value of a non-mage merc band decreases dramatically in accordance with the band's current size compared to that when fully stocked. Mercs with magic abilities may retain slightly more value.
Perhaps as an additional function: Non-mage Mercs who have lost all of their troops have zero hire value by AIs.

- PLEASE make an option in Game Setup to turn Mercenaries OFF. (If simply a way to make SP more challenging if the above cannot be implemented).

Minor Tidbits
 

This is totally minor, but still I would like to mention it:

If the blessing and path system is kept much as it is now in dom3, can the Blood-9 blessing please be changed to something more appealing? I think something like Blood Vengeance (-4) or such would be much more in theme.

Three Simple Things
 

I wish for three simple things:

• Simultaneous Victory Conditions: I want to play games which are won by either a number of provinces, victory points, domininon and research points. Probably not all at one time, but I imagine that having 2 or 3 such conditions simultaneously allows for much more diversity among the strategies employed by the players of a game.
• Victory Margins:I'd like to specify a margin for the victory condition, i.e. a player has won when he has more than a 200 dominion score and more than 30 points more than any other player. I do not like it if someone wins by just one point (dominion, provinces, research, etc.)
• Dominion Dependant Clerical Power:Spells like "falling frost" benefit from excess magical paths. Likewise, high-level priests are more powerful at banishing like their low-level fellows. I would like it if dominion would also affect the power of clerical spells (maybe just like having additional points in holy/unholy for the spell power. It should not affect the available spells, i.e. a 2-lvl priest in 10-dominino should still only be able to cast 2lvl spells (but at 10th level power).

Re: Three Simple Things
 

I haven't checked the wishlist for a long time so my apologies if lots of my suggestions were made before already .

The UI is imo the only part where dominions really needs improvement . Here my current wishes http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

- Make it possible to select a group of 5 , 10 and 25 troops at once in the armysetup screen .
This will make the building of guard squads and other squads much easier .
Atm if you want to build 2 squads each 50 devils e.g. you have to select manually 50 devils ... .
- Scripts for recruiting which a player can do and change , like the build orders in civilization games for recruiting .
They are saved for every turn until the player changes them , he just selects then build 1 black sorcerer , 2 sages , 6 spiders , 20 archers each turn .
The unit highest in the buildorder is built first , then the 2nd highest etc. until no money is left or until left money reaches xxx , which the player can select .

This would reduce a lot of micromanagement as well because i myself build e.g. 1 arch theurg and 5 theurgs every turn in midgame when i have the money .

- Include waypoints for traveling and allow setting the end destination to everywhere , this way you can then e.g. easily bring your soul contract generated devils to the front or your scouts to the domed hoard province .

- Include lots of selectable automanagement functions .
Especially a customizeable tax manager , where you just select a simple condition , e.g. if unrest is &gt;10 , reduce tax by that amount that without events in the next turn unrest = 0 again . If a player changes taxes in one province manually this overrides for this turn though the tax manager anyways ( the player would do that if he knows e.g. that there is a spy in this province instilling unrest ) .

Second i would wish for the following option : Autoassign hoard items to scouts/black servants by default , and the player can add other unit types that are considered hoarditem mules .
Do this by numbers too , example :
1. scouts
2. black servants
3. mage type a , e.g. theurgs
4. spectres

Then if you forge e.g. 10 clams , the game autoassigns the clams to free scouts etc. .
It just has to check a few conditions :
condition 1 : Free miscslot ?
If yes check condition 2 : is the unit already wearing a clam ?
If yes proceed with the next unit until a free unit is found .
Condition 3 : ( only for fetishes ) is the unit undead / demon ? If no proceed and find another unit for that item .

If you have e.g. only 5 scouts with free slots but forged 20 clams , then just give a msg. in the turn summary : Not enough horders found , 15 clams were not assigned by the hoarding automanager .

- Enable Montly forging and enable forging with a customizeable list , e.g. :
turn 1 : forge starshine skullcap
turn 2 : forge jade armour
turn 3 : forge blood thorn
turn 4 : research ( if you select research the unit just continues to research until you select something else for it )

- Change the summonspells this way , that they are customable . You have just to assign per unit costs , and then the player selects how many units he wants to summon .
Example : Devil , price 7 blood each .
The player can chose to summon e.g. 10 devils with his mage , then he has just to pay 70 blood .
Would reduce the micro also a lot because you wouldn't need to select dozens of mages in lategame for summoning .

- option to turn off random events + luckscale completely for competetive games , i.e. battlefield ladder games .

- An editor with good UI like the age of wonders or civilization editor , and make really everything( like themes , magic weapons etc. ) moddable and with a good UI .

- Make Modded Nations be addable as further nations , this way you wouldn't need to remove existing nations and if you are crazy enough could play a 40 nation game on a 800 province map .

General gameplay ideas :

- Make more individual scales for nations and make them editable also , like deathscale with abysia or income for Ctis Miasma .
My other idea would be that you have more choices for pretender design and pick special abilities ( skills , traits etc. ) from a construction kit . Basically like MoM but with many more options .
You can then e.g. also buy the skill great summoner for your pretender , and then you get x % discount on everything summoned out of the conjuration school .
Another trait could be e.g. kind god . This gives your troops + x morale and lessens your upkeep / recruiting costs by x % .
There are lots of possibilities .
So you could include about 50-100 different traits , some general available , some nation specific etc. .

- More province building options , some nation specific .
Better national creatures require stronger buildings .
Some buildings are capitol only .

The building speed for the buildings is no longer x turns , but xx resources , so in a high resource province a castle can e.g. be built within 1 turn while in a poor province you need 5 turns .

- Resources and admin :
I would prefer the following model :
1. Extra admin from a castle no longer leeches the resources out of a neighboring province .
2. Extra population gives also extra resources . Resources are to my understanding mainly work resources while raw materials are neglectable . 1000 men normally built at average 10 times more goods ( armours , swords etc. ) more then 100 men .

- National troops + supply :
They require a 3rd resource , manpower . But supply is completely removed .

1 population = 1 manpower .

A militia requires e.g. 3-5 manpower , while a knight requires 50 manpower and a giant or dragon 200 .

Manpower is abstract for the logistic organisation + workers that provide important goods for your army .
In an army normally 5 or 10 non combatatants are needed to supply 1 combatatant with the needed goods , especially ammo + fuel + repairing services .

This way the problem with starving AI would be solved , it would be more realistical and would make growth scale a bit more attractive as well .

- A new kind of upkeep for summoned creatures . This could be in gems or a new resource like divine mana is added .
This new resource is calculated out of e.g. :
(Sum of : Y x dominionstrength for all provinces) + a sum for all your magic gem income / blood income + a bonus by the might of your god ( impressive gods like a dragon get more ) + boni for impressive summons like Air queens , Arch devils

- Include a disband option .

- If you can't pay your upkeep for 5 turns nothing happens but after 5 turns of no upkeep as many units desert until you make a surplus again .
You can let the computer chose automatically or select the troops you wan't to disband manually .

Re: Three Simple Things
 

I think it would be a good idea to do no printed manual but only include it as a PDF .

I e.g. always play dominions with opened MIQR , SCQR , Magiboost.xls , Unitattributes.xls and units.xls .
Sometimes a few more rarer needed additional documents http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif .


So the PDF would serve 2 goals :
1. searchable documents , so you find the info you need easy . A book has just no searching options so a long printed manual is inferior to a PDF or similiar with good searching options .

2. This would decrease the costs for producing dominions 3 . I don't know how much the dominions 2 manual costed but my guess is that it costed at least 5 times more then the CD .

This way you could hopefully offer dominions 3 for 40€ and not for 50€ . Then more ppl will buy it and you will make a bigger profit as well .

While i e.g. bought RTW instantly for 40€ i considered much more if i should buy Battle for Middleearth as well which costed 55€ .

I think especially in the PC gaming market 40€ is a magical border and there is another , more eLastic aggregate demand formula for prices &gt;40€ then for prices &lt;40€ .

Re: Three Simple Things
 

A way to set the deployment and battle orders of the province defense would be handy. I wonder if it would make more sense to restrict how it can be raised -- e.g. instead of allowing somebody to (probably foolishly!) plunk down a large chunk of change to raise PD from nothing to substantial in one turn, perhaps commanders could be ordered to train PD, with the rate of training based on Leadership ability with a bonus if any commander participating in the drill is native to the province.

For that matter, perhaps a high-leadership commander should be able to drill his troops in a way that grants slightly more experience than the normal per-turn allotment, up to some cap (e.g. 1 or 2 stars).

Should people be able to build unfortified supply depots/administrative centers, which would have admin supply/resource/recruitment effects but none of the defensive value of a castle?

Minor oddness: Gift of Reason perhaps should either also remove the Mindless flag, or be slightly renamed.

Morale
 

PDF manual would be good. Make the game downloadable too, at least after initial sales have peaked. Anything that saves shipping costs and time is good.

I would like to see a change to morale. It really irks me to see a winning army turn tail and run. There should be a "prospects of winning" variable based on obvious signs of the tide of battle: relative numbers, enemy routing, commanders killed, etc. If this prospects variable ranges from 0% to 100%, a very high value would bypass the morale check. A moderately high value would give a bonus for the morale check. Low values would give morale penalties.

For example:
76-100% = bypass morale check
61-75% = morale +1
41-60% = regular morale
25-40% = morale -1
11-24% = morale -2
1-10% = morale -3
0% = automatic rout

Good and Simple UI tips
 

I still think that new features (such as full alliance building, improved AI) will truly make dom3 a *new game* (as oppossed to an expansion pack), but I think the UI suggestions will certainly help.

Here are some more good ones, I think, which I believe would be relatively easy to implement:

- The Ctrl-p (or some other hotkeyable key) cycles through all commanders set to "Preach".
- The Ctrl-m (or some other hotkeyable key) cycles through all commanders set to "Cast Monthly".
- The Ctrl-r (or some other hotkeyable key) cycles through all commanders set to "Research".
- The Ctrl-f (or some other hotkeyable key) cycles through all commanders set to "Forge Monthly".
- The Ctrl-u (or some other hotkeyable key) cycles through all commanders who have forged an item Last turn.
- The Ctrl-b (or some other hotkeyable key) cycles through all commanders with a forge bonus.

- The ctrl-f1 to ctrl-f12 and shift-ctrl-1 to shift-ctrl-12 keys can be set to these up to 24 selected commanders; the f1-f12 and shift-f1 to shift-12 keys can then be used to as hotkeys to jump-select these. (One could to imagine that the current Overview, Lab, etc. buttons are set to 1-8, and that the Map Filter flags are set to shift-1-8 (personally, I use these map filters almost never once they are set, I rarely change my settings, so I wouldnt even need these hotkey, dont know about you. I find I need commanders more frequently than filters.)

Another simple thing...
 

Seeing thinktank's post, I forgot a fourth simple thing (and a fifth not-so-simple-not-so-complex thing) with respect to my previous post:

• "Leave me alone"-order:This new order is essentially equal to "Defend Castle" or "Hide", except that hitting the "n" key will never bring up a commander with the "leave me alone"-order. I really hate it to cycle through all my scouts over and over again, after manually clicking at someone else! The "Leave me alone" order should revert to "Defend" or "Hide" after hosting.
• A simple single non-magical research branch: At every level researched, the player gets some random immediate nation wide bonus, i.e.: +10 Defense Points to castles, +1 admin point, -1% production cost, -10GP to castle building, -10GP to temple building, ... , +3 archers per defense tower, +1 protection to national troops' armour, etc. So it should be something simple to spend excess research points on, with more than 10 levels. Most of these goodie should be allowed to stack a few (limited) times.
  Another idea would be to allow these non-magical goodies also at pretender generation, but I am not so sure that this would be a good idea...

I wonder if we could have the option for simultaneously active victory conditions like described in my previous post already in a patch for Dom2...

Re: Another simple thing...
 

Hey Chazar, I really like your idea as well. I was thinking about that a lot too, since it has a lot of the flavor of "research" from other types of games, which are usually called *"technology"* or some such. This would certainly be a very interesting addition, and one which would require a lot of balance testing. I would hope, however, that this "technology" branch would not be available at pretender creation.

Re: Another simple thing...
 

Just figured a single mod/unit creation command that could make making some very cool effects easy.

#preferredscale [what scale] [what value -3...3] [penaltystat] [penaltyvalue]

All units such as niefel giants or abysians would be modeled as what they are on their best situation, say cold-3 for niefel giants, and then their stats would be modified by a set modifier for each point a scale in the province in which they reside differ from their preferred value.

So, for example, niefel giants would be something like:
#prefscale heat -3 prot -2
#prefscale cold -3 enc +1
etc etc, so niefel giants would get +6 enc when in heat 3...



What's so good with it is that with it many hardcodings can be removed and simplified into a single softcode command, everything from mage research ability in drain to units encumberance malus in wrong heat conditions and many more things that already are in the game, to many that are very thematic but aren't now and would be hard to implement otherwise. For example speed and strenght for Pan CW units in growth dominion, morale bonus for early ermorian and late pythian troops in order dominion (so also a quite substantial malus in turmoil...) and some more interesting things such as units whose stats differ much depending from the scales so that some stats go up and some down.

Just an idea, implementable?

Re: Another simple thing...
 

-Please- included a printed manual. PDFs suck, plain and simple. You have to print them to get any use out of them; if you want a manual for reading on screen there are much better choices (like, oh, HTML..)

More buildings
 

I like the concept of resources as a local constraint on troop recruiting. However, in addition to forts, there should be ways to upgrade a province's resources or decrease the resource costs of troops. I suggest three new buildings. A smithy would increase a province's resources. A barracks would decrease both the resource costs and the monetary costs of all kinds of foot soldiers. A stable would decrease resource costs and monetary costs of mounted troops.

Re: More buildings
 

Don´t know if this has been mentioned before, but here is a small ui suggestion:

it would be nice if you could set spells cast by items to cast monthly. Right now it´s possible to click on the spell, but you get the "this ritual is too complex for this mage" message, if he doesn´t have the necessary paths.

It´s most notable with stone spheres, it´s a major hassle to click on the same province turn after turn if you want to scry on it always.

Castle Limit
 

How about a simple, numeric limit on the number of castles you can have? If you have that number or more (you may have captured some) then you simply can't build any more. The exact number might be game parameter (like the number of HoF entries).

The idea, obviously, is to address the castling problem.

UI Navigation
 

In Dom2, the map is the central screen of the game. For mid/late game management, however, the map is an inefficient way of moving from one task to another. I would like to see navigation be more free, so I can move from recruiting to research to nation overview without going back to the map every time. I would also like to have "previous" and "next" buttons to take me to my other provinces, in the order given in the nation overview.

Think of this new UI as becoming more similar to a web browser. You don't go back to your starting page before going to a new page. You just go straight to the new page. Perhaps there could be a fixed navigation pane across the top. It would have buttons for some key screens and some customizable buttons.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I would like to see more specific Global counterspells like Fate of Oedipus to put less emphasis on the Dispel spell for getting rid of enemy enchantments. Perhaps certain globals could conflict with each other (e.g. Second Sun and Utterdark cancel each other's effects without dispelling either enchantment).

For map editing, I would like to see grouped random start locations--for instance, each group of start locations belongs to a single specific or non-specific nation. In this way a nation could be assigned to a specific map area without forcing them to be contained in a specific province. A structure something like this may help explain what I mean:

#Start_Group "North Forest"
#Number_of_Random_Nations_In_Group 1
#Start_Province 113
#Start_Province 114
#Start_Province 115
#Start_Province 116
.
.
.
#End_Start_Group

or

#Start_Group "North Forest"
#Nation_In_Group 17 //Machaka
#Nation_In_Group 11 //Pangaea
#Start_Province 113
#Start_Province 114
#Start_Province 115
#Start_Province 116
.
.
.
#End_Start_Group

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I would like an additional nation-global way to do Alchemy instead of just a commander action. Whenever I need a few extra gold, it is several extra mouse clicks to go back to a province with a lab, click a commander, do the alchemy, then scroll back where you were before and finish recruiting or buying defence or whatever. And then you forgot that you hired an alchemist 3 turns ago, or had the alch. stone in someone else's hands. Since alchemy doesn't take a turn, reducing the micromanagement to use it should be easy. Just have a national "slot" for designated alchemist that you can assign to a specific mage at a certain site, and then you can open the alchemy screen anywhere like the globals, and it defaults to that guy. Or maybe make it a national role like Prophet -- it takes a turn of training to become the national alchemist and then he gets a small gold bonus..

Sill

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Perhaps one can label "good event" volunteers (and freely volunteering creatures, such as Ryleh Hybrids and Pan Manaeads) #noupkeep, so that they must be fed and hence require supplies but don't hold their hand out for a paycheck the entire time.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

The UI needs improvement! My conrecte wish:
Similar as assigning troops to commanders, commanders should be assingable to "task forces" - which are nothing more than named lists. The tactical setup screen should then be sortable by "task forces" and there should also be a tactical setup screen which just shows all commanders and their troops assigned to that particular "task force", regardless of where they are located.

Yesterday I gave up in confusion while making my turn. I had 3 castles with too many troops and wanted to attack now. Firstly, I divided my troops in each of the 3 castles into attack Groups, but distributing gems and scripting and positioning was immposssible, as I could not remember who was accompanying whom else from what other castle!

So it would have been nice, if I could invent a name and assing some commanders to that name, and then pull up a tactical screen exactly like the one we have now, which exclusively contains the units belonging to the task force to coordinate the troops. The "garrisson" field should combine all garrissoned troops available in all provinces where commanders of the task force are located, but its ok if one could only assign troops to commanders being in the same province at the time of assignment...

I assume that this would enhance the managbility of troops greatly, and I do not think that it would be too difficult to add named records of commanders...

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Sounds good.

Here's another suggestion for the game setup / god creation screens. It comes from the desire to experiment and try out different God creations.

In additionn to letting us "cancel" a god creation (instead of accepting it as "ready"), it could be great if we could also "save" god creations to a folder, perhaps called "oldgods", or "savedgods". That way, we can have more than 1 active newgod for each race, and compare them or save models we particularly liked. Gods can be saved with any valid filename, such as Man_Earthbless_Cyclops_growthscale_2.
So the suggestion would also include a "load god" option from the game creation screen which would pull up a list from the othergods folder from which we could choose.

I think this suggestion belongs to the "nice to have" list, isnt really super-important, but I think it would be nice, especially for newbies.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

A small one.

Someone mentioned mixed VCs in game setup. I would like to second that and suggest a way in which the default VCs could be conceived, since I think Dominion should play, as the name of the game implies, an even stronger component.

Winning X number of provinces (or VPs) should not be enough unless explicitly stated; standard VC should be X Provs (or VPs) *plus* Y dominion. I think this would be not only feel better than "control the whole world militarily", but also reduce frustration in end-game, and additionally allow for nail-biting and mixed-strategy/surprise tactics in dealing with the dominion VC component.

Anyhow, at least a way to stipulate VC-mixing involving provinces and dominion.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Addenudm to my Taskforce-Mechanism-Proposal: Each "taskforce" record should have a custom name, a custom note field and a choosable color code. The color code is used to draw a frame around the commander icon box in the map view (or maybe a blob on top of the commander picture), so that one can easily see to what kind of taskforce a commander belongs to. The note incorporates the "sticky note" concept that has been proposed earlier by several people here. Assigning it to the taskforce might make it general enough rather than allowing for every commander already on its own...

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Improving Province Defense

One or more of these ideas can be used for improving province defense:

A) Provinces adjacent to the main capital and including the main capital have very powerful defenders for its province defense. These units should have much higher morale, defense, magic resist, and protection.

B) More unique and stronger defenders as provinces defense increases. Province defense(1_thru_10) basic units, Province defense(11_thru_20)average units added with basic units, Province defense(21_thru_30)strong units added with basic and average units, and so on...

C) For province defense beyond 20... adding a commander with a standard(+8) and additional commanders with standards for every additional 10pts of province defense.

D) Some unique powerful unit(depending on the race) added for any location with province defense of 50 or more.

E) Increase resources in a province when the province defense goes beyond 25, yet doesn't work on capital. This would give province defense a second value. Province defense beyond 25 is an investment of over 350 gold.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I think the army setup screen needs some work:

1) In actual battles, the size of the battlefield appears to stretch to accomodate the forces involved, but the army positioning box in the army setup screen does not, which imposes an upper limit on the size of the army that can be positioned correctly.

2) In the topmost row of troops in garrison, the units become ever smaller as you have more troops there. Normally this is okay, but in one current game, I have so many troops in garrison that even non-commander Tartarian Titans become non-viewable due to the unit compression and so non-selectable! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif

Some Debuffs
 

Like many of NT Jedi's suggestions there!

Just thought to add some more examples for Buffs and Debuffs to those above-mentioned examples:

Cure Paralysis: Alteration 3, Air2, Fatigue 30-; removes 1d6(oe) Paralysis from one friendly target, more powerful mages can remove +1 point for each level of air above 2.

Fluid Joints: Alteration 5, Water3, Fatigue 50-, removes 1d6(oe) Paralysis from a small group of friendly units, more powerful mages can remove +1 point for each level of water above 3.

Sunburst: Conjuration 6, Fire4 Astral1, Fatigue 200-, calls for the warm rays of the sun upon the battlefield, clearing the skies, and thus has a chance (mage casting strength + d6oe vs. opposing mage casting strength + d6oe) of eliminating any any storms, mists, or rain currently active; in addition, it automatically casts "fanaticsm" once upon coming into effect.

Re: Some Debuffs
 

It would be nice if Vortex of Returning

(a) Was never cast without being specifically scripted, or at least
(b) Preserved orders and unit assignments (which units go with which leaders in what formation and orders).

It was irritating watching one of my Spectral Mages VoR a 800+-unit army that was easily stomping an indy force of ~50 light cav (trivial battle, especially with a vanguard of ~140 wights led by a wraithlord and a heavily-armed Ambicephalos...).

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I'ld really, really like it if I could save a number of pretenders from the same faction.
Maybe accompanied by the option of saving, like getting the prompt: Would you like to save this pretender?

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I wish all unmounted, routing units with encumbering shields would drop them.

It's historical (except for Spartans! ;-), it makes sense in the game, it's implementable, and mercy is a virtue even if the cowards don't deserve it.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Something minor:

In the nation overview, please include a slot for Terrain Type (so we can find all mountains, swamps, etc.)
In the nation overview, please include a slot for Dominion strength. (This is also vital for finding those priests whom you have set to preach...)

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

All the data should be kept in txt files, like in Space Empires.
Amen. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Addendi
 

My own three suggestions for interface improvement.

1) Allow the targeting of site-searching spells on the F1 screen. That alone would make things much simpler for the magic site nut. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

2) Allow typing of numbers for transmutation. I was playing Soul Gate Ermor on the World War map and scenario, and when I wanted to transmute hundreds of gems at one time it got kind of ridiculous. If I could just press transmute and type in the number, it would have been more helpful.

3) Differentiate dominion. Afaict, only one pretender has dominion in any province, so color coding the candle based on the colors of the controller would be very useful. It would also be helpful if you could paint the overworld map with the dominion of all enemies that you knew. This would allow people to get a rough gauge of where each enemy was and roughly how large their sphere of influence is.

Just a few ideas. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Wyatt

Re: Addendi
 

Another UI suggestion:

A feature "search", much like any windows application text search feature: when you call it up, you can enter either a commander name or an item name (perhaps there are two separate hotkey functions: Find Name and Find Item). The game then searches, and hits could be either listed in a small screen with clickable search results and/or the game simply highlights that Commander with a name found on the map screen (much like the "n" key currently), while if an Item is found the game selects the commander with that item on his or her person in his or her Inventory screen or simply shows the laboratory screen. If there are more than 1 commander or item of that name the successful hits will scroll through them.

Re: Addendi
 

A strategic AI suggestion:

The AI does not seem to make items very well. It will construct things, but these are often squandered. (I have seen the AI stick a Blood Collar on a prophet and other useless ideas.)

If this cannot be fixed by giving concrete plans for an AI to follow (a long, but perhaps worthwhile project), perhaps the following could be done:
- For all nations except Ulm, do not allow the AI to research Construction above 3 (for legions of steel, which the AI likes).
- For all nations except Ulm, do not let the AI forge any items which do not increase the spell-casting effectiveness of the units or which are not armor.
- All weapons can only be equipped by commanders with no magic skills. (I know this is silly, but I think developing a really great algorithm is beyond me.) This would avoid wasting resources on mages who will only cast anyhow.

This would force the AI to spend more time researching other paths.

Re: Addendi
 

I think what AI needs is an SC-algorithm, which calculates SC-value of a commander from his hp, str/att/def, nbr of attacks, defences (buffs and those from items, prot, mr)... etc. Then these SCs could "order" an item that would boost them, and that item would be produced when possible.

I know this is far-reaching, but this would also let Dragons etc. without script to cast some buffs, decide they can handle the enemy and attack. Easily avoidable by setting them to Cast Spells/Stay Behind Troops.

Re: Addendi
 

A small modding wish:

#spelleffect /name/ /casterlevel/

This will apply that spell's effects to this unit as an attribute.
Thus one could have
# spelleffect mistform
which would give this unit a mistform effect for every battle, or a
#spelleffect mirrorimage 4

Re: Addendi
 

Could also be a helpful idea in dom3 to decouple capital-only recruitability of troops with sites, perhaps using a

#capitalonly 10

command (would make that unit capital only for Pan, for example). Only drawback would be for certain findable sites which let you recruit special troops (like that one that lets you get D. Sidhe), that site would have to let you recruit a different monster, e.g. a D.Sidhe without the #capitalonly command.
This would make it a lot easier to mod capital-only monsters without borking other nations' units.

Re: Addendi
 

This would be very nice.

However, it wouldn't be done this way. It would be a command for nation modding, and would be #homeunit and #homecom. This wouldn't need making new, non-capital versions of existing units.

Option to reduce micromanagement for forging items
 

I'd suggest that higher level smiths can forge either 1) high level item per turn, or 2) several level 1 items. For example, an Ulm smith could forge 3 level 1 items a turn or 1 level 3 item. This would ease micromanagement, what I see as the key aspect to improving Dom3, and also make "loading up heroes" a more viable option.

Re: Addendi
 

The only change that would require would be that the #capitalonly would be an additional command, so if you want them that way, it's #capitalonlyunit &lt;nbr&gt; and #capitalonlycom &lt;nbr&gt;, and that the nation's home province has some kind of capital flag. Then sites that give these units (like The Glowing Hill) would be supremely unaffected.

Edi