Re: Swamp Castle
 

Since the beta-test group from Dom2 still exists Im not sure if there will be any mass additions for a Dom3 test group. Most of the new beta-testers will probably be needed for brand new games that have no test-group at all and need many new minds to examine it well. They do have a nice list of upcoming games and if you figure alpha-test at 10-20 and beta-test at adding another 20-30 fresh looks then thats a lot of beta-testers needed for a brand new game. They are trying to increase that pool to offer it to new developers.

Although.... Im not sure if the "speaks Swedish" bonus still applies. On Dom1 it was like a +50 luck item for addition to alpha and beta-test.
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Dom3 Beta Testing
 

I'm not in the beta test pool and wouldn't probably do much good there anyway, but if you guys (IW) want to tap me for producing documentation (both manuals and the type of stuff I've done on my own) or proofreading stuff you are doing for Dom3, I'm available. And you won't even have to pay me anything, I'll do it for free. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Edi

Re: Dom3 Beta Testing
 

Problem: Dominions II stats are too granular (not adjustable to a fine enough degree to make every unit, weapon, and armor distinct).

Solution: Below.

I suggest you read the preface first, unless you are just scanning rapidly for brilliant ideas (like I imagine developers do - in which case, skip to the bottom).



~ Preface ~

Last night, after I thought (incorrectly) that I had finished and correctly posted files to be used in the Rebalance test mod, I went to bed. And I had this Brilliant Idea. So brilliant, I almost got up to write it down, but I thought "It's so brilliant, how could I forget it?" And I went to sleep and forgot it. Then, I just remembered it now, 5 hours after waking up... and here it is!

When examining weapon stats and unit stats, and trying to mod them... I always run into the same problems. How do you make a longspear slightly worse than a spear, without making it worthless? How do you make Full Scale Mail less bad without making it identical to a Chain Mail Hauberk? How do you give units Leather or Chain cowls or Bronze helmets that are beneficial, but not quite as good as a steel helmet? How do you give a unit stats slightly above normal (hp 10, mor 10, att 10, def 10)... but below elite (hp 11, mor 11, att 11, def 11)? How do you differentiate a Ring Mail Hauberk (7, -1, 1, 6 res) from a Scale Mail Cuirass (7, -1, 1, 7 res) without making one worse than the other in any possible situation? How do you make Drain 1 (with its .5 MR bonus) useful in any way?

Answer: YOU CAN'T! Dominions' combat mechanics, based on 2d6 (open ended) and low integers, do not allow such things.

The solution: If you want those things to be possible...









Solution:

Modify the 2d6* (shorthand for "two 6-sided, open-ended dice") to 2d6.0* (shorthand for "two 6-sided, open-ended dice plus a 10-sided, decimal die").

Implementation:

Dominions II dice rolls are usually competing sets of 2d6*, which generate an integer in the range (98% of the time) of about -14 to +15 (see the Dice Roll Chart for details). To get accuracy in the .1 region (allowing rolls of 6.1 or 14.7) is quite simple. Change (2d6*) to ((2d6*) + (1d10)/10). As long as each side gets an additional ((1d10)/10) on all rolls, nothing in Dominions II will change much! Also, make unit stats (and hit points, during combat) floating point numbers with 1 decimal place instead of integers.

With rolls providing sub-integer precision, equipment can be modded much more precisely. A ringmail cuirass can give -.3 defense and +.5 encumbrance, instead of the (unrealistic) 0 defense penalty and 0 encumbrance that it currently gives. A helmet can give +.1 encumbrance and -.3 precision. Longspears can give -.2 attack and -.2 defense, becoming slightly worse - but not vastly worse worse - than normal spears. Ulm could get +1.5 MR from drain 3, instead of the current 1 MR. Elites could get 11 strength / 11 attack, heavy infantry could get 10.7 strength / 10 attack, medium infantry 10.4 strength / 10.2 attack, light infantry 10 strength / 10.5 attack, trained militia 9.5 strength / 9 attack, and peasants 9 strength / 8 attack... and it would all matter!

Maybe nobody else cares about this degree of arcane number-crunching complexity. But I DO! And I hope there are others out there who feel the same way http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Dom3 Beta Testing
 

I think I mentioned this once before, but... if Dominions III allows magic sites to have text descriptions, I (and probably other people in the forum) would be more than happy to fill them out http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Addendi
 

Please make castle attributes (point cost, admin, defense, supply, build time, gold cost) modable. There is a hidden request here to allow for build time to not have to equal gold cost/150.

A thought from my brother and I...
 

My brother and I the other day were commenting on the increase in national spells announced in Dominions III. We agreed this was a 'good thing'(tm).

My brother then made the suggestion of pretender-specific spells. As an example (this is not part of the request), Nagas have all of these bonuses with Lamias. Why not let the Naga start with Call Lamia? (I can think of quite a few reasons, off the top of my head, but it was a brainstorming session.)

In a similar vein, the Vampire Queen could start with the Vampire-summoning spell.

Then, another thought that crossed our minds was to have pretender-specific Sacred units.

Again, using the Naga as the example. If you choose the Naga as your Pretender, Lamias (and Lamia Queens) are Sacred for you. Vampires could be Sacred for VQs, Ghosts for Ghost Kings, Astral mages for Oracles (;)), etc.

Anyway, just a suggestion.

1) Pretender-specific spells.
2) Pretender-specific Sacred troops.

Re: A thought from my brother and I...
 

Scott's idea could be worked through |> themes <| that are only available for certain pretenders. That would open up some other interesting possibilities, too.

I like the pretender-spesific ideas, and would like to add nation-/pretender-/mage-spesific items only forgeable by a spesific nation, nation under the rule of a spesific pretender or a spesific mage-type commander.

EDIT: I meant pretender-spesific themes, not mods. Both would be nice, but I think themes would be easier to make.

Re: A thought from my brother and I...
 

Yes, just giving us the ability to mod this in would be great.

Re: A thought from my brother and I...
 

Seems like a good idea to define a half dozen "empty" nations who's only purpose is to be modded (maybe with a set of some empty pretender, hero, weapons, units). Having a set of empty nations would allow nation mods to not have to replace existing nations, so you could have Loren vs Pangea vs Oglala vs TC easier. New nation mods could all be written for Empty1 and could easily be adjusted to play as Empty2 or 3... since they would all have the same template (Empty1 weapons are 730-739, Empty2 weapons are 740-749, etc). Even if the game itself didn't support loading these nation mods directly, it would be easy to make scripts to combine them and make combo mods with multiple new nations in selected empty slots. Resolving mod overlaps is no fun now.

Sill

Re: A thought from my brother and I...
 

Adding a couple of empty slots is no big problem. Nation modding will be a lot easier in dom3. Themes are made as different nations and most stats can be modded or enabled for a given theme (province defence, production bonus, blood sacrifice etc).

Re: A thought from my brother and I...
 

When casting site searching spells I would like to be able to see whether a province has already been searched and the type of terrain of a province when selecting the target of the spell.

A backpack item slot in which units could store any item. Possible for cursed items found on the battlefield.

Immunity to disease for certain magical beings like angels and elemental royalty.

All dominions 2 bugs fixed http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

Re: A thought from my brother and I...
 

> When casting site searching spells I would like to be able to see whether a province has already been searched and the type of terrain of a province when selecting the target of the spell.

Good point.

> A backpack item slot in which units could store any item. Possible for cursed items found on the battlefield.

Cursed items don't let themselves be put in bags. They invariably end up in the possession of their finder and corrupts him. The finder will never part from his precious once he gets his fingers on it.

> Immunity to disease for certain magical beings like angels and elemental royalty.

Hmm. In some part a good idea. But I really like diseased angels. Sort of losing their divinity when they come to our world.

>All dominions 2 bugs fixed http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

We wouldn't want that would we? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: A thought from my brother and I...
 

A point regarding this. May I suggest a palette shift on provinces that have been already searched? That seems the easiest way to know whether a given site has been searched with a given spell. Alternatively, being able to bring up the F1 screen to select a province that way would work just as well.

Along these same lines, could we please have 'sticky-note' capability? I'd dearly like to be able to put notes directly on the map that tell me certain things about the provinces in question.

'Knights - avoid' or 'Library here' and stuff. It would work best if it were completely configurable (i.e., I type in what the note says), but even a color-configured push-pin system would work, too.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

In the screen for casting ritual spells, a player's gem inventory is shown at the top. When going down a long list of spells, however, the gem inventory scrolls off. If the gem inventory could be locked at the top so it doesn't scroll, that would be great.

The unit info cards in the battle movies should have the nation's flag. Sometimes a unit will switch sides during a battle, and it's not always easy to tell.

Most suggestions are for the programming side, so I wil make a couple of game art suggestions. First, a splash screen or animation for major events -- especially final victory -- would be nice. Second, the event messages are very plain. I'd like to see some small pictures or icons added. For example, any province disaster could show a dark sky and people weeping over dead bodies. Tarot card art or CCG art might be good places to get ideas. I know that creating new art for every possible spell effect would be a lot of work, but using themes that cover several spells or kinds of events should be manageable. In some cases, you could even use existing Dom2 art -- e.g., the icon of the magic site found. A good luck event could have the four-leaf clover.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

How about a magic shop that sells magic items and summoned creatures? Every turn, some of the unsold items and creatures would drop off the inventory, and new ones would be added. Most RPG games have a magic shop, though I don't think it is common in war/strategy games. In addition to adding an element of random fun, the magic shop might also collect information about the relative demand for different items and units.

Here is a possible game description:

The Mage Guild

The Mage Guild is devoted solely to advancing the study and practice of magic. It is an independent international organization, with a branch in every nation's capital. Although each nation is suspicious of an organization not under its control, the Mage Guild is tolerated because its scholarly activities benefit the training of new mages. The Guild sells magic items and summoned creatures at reasonable prices.

three unrelated suggestions
 

Three unrelated things:

• I've come to think about Taqwus "Forced March" proposal again. I really like the idea to be able to trade battle force for mobility, but I think it should not be generic and available to everyone:
  
  So a forced march should give ordinary living non-flyers, non-swimmers an additional movement point at the cost of a temporary moral loss and initial fatigue.
  
  I think that the fatigue obtained by forced marching should be based on the encumberance score and that 0 encumberance units should be excluded. A soulless is already marching at his top speed, so there is no way to force it to move faster. So maybe the lifeless and mindless tags should prohibit forced marching too.
  
  Maybe "forced march" could allow to move one single step behind enemy lines, like flyers are able to do.
  
  
• It's ok that the world population will eventually drop to zero in a war of gods and raw magical forces, but I would really like to see more immigration effects due to bad/good scales, high/low taxes, natural disasters and good/bad scales.
  
  
• The map editor should allow the deletion and adding of white dots while preserving the semantics of the map file. Have you ever added or removed one or two provinces in a map? The renumbering throughout the file is a pretty dull and error-prone task.
  
  Idea: All province numbers should have a unique syntax, e.g. like adding braces to distinguish pronvice number [32] from the terrain modifier 32 or for the unit type number 32. It would make manual editing much more simpler (search and replace) or allow lazy bats like me to come up with an external tool for renumbering map files, as one would not need to care for the semantics of all those numbers inside the mapfile...

Re: suggestion
 

I think its been mentioned but I'm not sure. I'd like mages in hand to hand to be able to cast the touch only spells. Either automatically or (better yet) as another option in the tactical combat screen.

The best I can do now is script something like "buff buff buff attack attack spells" which sort of works, but that has lots of problems.

Re: suggestion
 

I'd really like to see the game announce when turns aren't given for a nation - this would really help to know when some @*#$ decides to start staling for 5, 10, 20 turns, and he could be set AI, or at least everyone knows that it's time to start clawing out a piece of those territories.

Re: suggestion
 

Armor and weapon breaking would be a nice add to bring that one bit more realism. The breaking would show up on the unit sheet similarly to a battle affliction (broken sword&shield icon) pointing which equipment is broken. There would be two possible break-downs: 'halving' and 'complete'. Halving would halve the power/protection/defence of the equipment, while complete destroys it entirely. Magic equipment is much more resistant to the breaking effect.

This naturally brings up 'repair'-skill, (compare to 'heal) which repairs X amount of equipment depending on how good repairer you're using (More uses for Master Dwarf).

Re: suggestion
 

Armor can already break down. They need to be weakened first (with Acid spells or Rust Mist/similar spells), and even then it takes a strong hit to actually break the armor, but it does happen. The armors are repaired when the units spend some time in province with spare resource points.

Magical armors (magic items) are immune to this, and there might be a flail/morning star having this effect in the magic item lists.

Re: suggestion
 

Strange that I haven't noticed this effect before.. well anyway I hope that equipment breaking will be more visible in Dom 3.

Re: suggestion
 

It is marked by a "Broken Sword" icon, but I haven't seen it either. It is quite rare. 'Desctrucion', Alter 4 and E3, destroys armor on AoE 6, no magic resistance roll. However, Ulm won't use it, Pangaea's mages can be used for more interesting things and they are very expensive (although this would work nicely with Maenad hordes), and Vanheim's Dwarves are limited by their capital-onlyness.

Re: suggestion
 

Any acid casting will show you the icon fairly quickly. Try playing TC and using a few battlemages with a few levels in evocation. You should see a goodly amount of Acid flying around causing havok with armor.

Re: suggestion
 

I was playing through Master of Orion 2 again recently and that is what we need. We need each province to have a separate population of every kind of basic humanoid in it. In the game so far, that's:

Ex-Imperial Humans (Marignon, Ulm, Arco, Pythium, Man, Ermor)
Norse Humans (Vanheim, Jotunheim - Utgard)
African Humans (Machaka)
Central American Humans (Mictlan)
East Asian Humans (Tien Chi)
Demons (Abyssia)
Caelumites (Caelum)
Hoburglings (Hoburg Alliance)
Jotun (Jotunheim)
Vaetti (Jotunheim - Iron Woods)
Tritons (Oceania)
Shamblers/Atlantians (Atlantis, Rlyeh)
Amazons (Themaskyra)
Barbarians (none)
Satyrs (Pangea)
Undead Hordes (Ermor)
Icthyds (none)
Woodsmen (none)

These should matter, and grow at different rates depending upon scales. Furthermore, these races should be required in a province to make specific troop types.

Thus, Caelum should go ape trying to grab Raptor provinces, because they are populated with Caelumites and allow the Caelum player to make troops they can otherwise only make in the capitol.

---

And like MOO2, provinces should have a basic carrying capacity that should engender a certain level of growth until populations reach it. Growth scales should increase populations faster and increase the carrying capacity over time. Death scales should just kill population and do nothing to the carrying capacity (but even death 1 should kill people faster than base replacement rate).

You could have a little house diagram that was partially filled out in various colors on the main screen that would give your a proportional idea of how full the province was of various types of creatures, and then when you went to the hire troops screen it could give you an exact breakdown of how many people of various races are in the province.

---

Finally, every race should put forward at least two nations that can use them, and every race should be represented on the world map with occassional provinces. Sometimes a waste should just have a bunch of Abyssians in it. Sometimes a province should be defended by vaetti. The Revenge of the Raptors should be a separate nation from Caelum so that the Seraphs and the Harab can do battle over the all important Caelumite populated provinces.

And even so, that's not enough population types! I want to be able to play a "Rise of the Vine Nation" nation, and that means that there should be Vinemen populated provinces. I want to play with Willard as my god, and that means that there need to be Rat infested provinces.

And there should be a few troop types that are set by population type, to the extent that when I conquer Abyssia, I should be able to recruit humanbred soldiers from the Smouldercone.

Finally, I want either a MOO2 or AoW style population "management" system, where I can purposefully genocide peoples whose religions aren't mine or settle desirable population around so where I want it. It's OK if it's time consuming, or even just not very good, in a game like this I think it's important that you be able to have sub-goals like "kill all the Abyssians" or "populate the entire planet with Van".

-Frank

Re: suggestion
 

Perhaps spells that help defend a certain province in battle.
A wall of fire that does firedamage to any enemy army trying to attack the province.
A flying fortress spell making a castle inaccesable to ground troops.
A Cloud of Shadow spell making all battles in that province under the influence of a darkness spell.


A way to sort commanders on magic paths or items would be handy.

Gem usage
 

How about a toggle that lets you specify the maximum number of gems a mage will use in any given combat? The AI may decide to use less, but at least this way you can be sure you won't use your full inventory of gems in one battle.

Re: suggestion
 

Ex-imperial humans is a bad category. There are just generic people, and there could be Ulmish, Marignon etc. populated-provinces.

There are Tribal Cavalry, who could belong to the "barbarians" category, and personally I would put Woodsmen to Pangaean/Vine Men/treehuggers category.

Did you read that thread of mine (reading maps from .map files) about map-inhabiting program that could handle areas of few provinces that would contain units with similar themes? A list like this would be of great help if I ever get the program to work. Would you be interested in doing your own list of themed province defender types (barbarians, tribal cavalry, tribal archers+warriors or HI, x-bow and shield-spear-leather LI or even vine men, satyrs, woodsmen), I would be very grateful.

I don't like the "required to make special units" part, but that might just be me. I don't have experience from this kind of population effect.

Re: suggestion
 

I'm actually with you here. Unfortunately, right now "humans" are mostly interchangeable. I want that to change, but even in the backstory the people of Pythium and Marignon and Ermor are all the same people.

I agree that I'd rather see provinces populated by Ulmites, who all had extra hit points, strength, and reduced encumberance. That would be cool. I would also like it if the "Knight" provinces were all in the Maignon or Man style and had occassional Chalice Knights or Avalon Knights to back things up.

Yes. That's a really good idea, but I don't actually program except in html and bbcode, so I felt that I had nothing useful to add.

No problem.
http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...;Number=346553
The idea is that this would supplement the "capitol only" properties, allowing for an intermediate range of elite troops that are only available in limited amounts, but which with proper management and economic investment or luck you could find elsewhere.

It would be kind of like the AoW deal where you needed cities of a certain size to make more powerful units. Or the Warlords III deal where you could buy the ability to build your home units in distant cities.

-Frank

Unseen Servant Runners
 

I disable/enable a "Staff of Storms" by transfering it to/from an accompanying sneaking scout. This is somewhat messy...

Commanders should have some servants at their disposal to carry unused items (enable checkbox?). Furthermore they should be able to ship magical items to laboratories without carrying themselves. Of course, there should be time penalty and maybe some gold cost, but requiring explicit scouts is a bit troublesome.

On the other hand, this would preclude the interception of enemy carriers, which might be desireable. Maybe some scouts could be turned into instant recruitable units: Pay some gold (maybe deduct resources) and you get a crappy (maybe non-sneaking) 0-command commander just to carry things, which can be disbanded as easily?

(It should not alter much of the game, but I think predicting the need for carrier-scouts is just micromanaging...)

Re: Unseen Servant Runners
 

Here's another wish: Please run all text through an English spell checker! But you're not through yet; didn't think I'd let you off that easy did you? Have all text proof read by an English professor. I'm sure many would do it for free even!

Re: Unseen Servant Runners
 

Actually any of us could do that and turn in the results. Maybe I will remember to sometime

Re: Gem usage
 

Everybody seems to want this http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif But keeping a scout stocked with slaves and gems (and maybe a winebag) works just as well, especially because he's hidden and cannot die in combat. Just transfer the number of gems you want to be usable from the scout to the mage. It seems like a clutzy solution, but actually I prefer it to additional interface complexity.

For me, there are a couple aspects of commander control that cannot be solved without interface changes, which take higher priority.

1) Forcing / disabling spells beyond the script, as there is no way to keep a commander from casting "Breath of Winter" and killing all of your other mages and commanders, or to force him to cast "Lightning / Thunder Strike" instead of useless phantasmal warriors.

A simple "Repeat last spell" option might solve this.

2) Ordering a commander to never retreat, unless he personally has a morale failure. This problem makes Molochs and some other pretenders that auto-summon allies very weak, and exacerbates the supercombattant problem, since SCs cannot be grouped with normal units - so they must be used solo, thus they can't be deployed unless they can take on an entire army alone, forcing people to use a few insane SCs rather than lots of medium SCs, narrowing choices and making the game less interesting. It also weakens thugs - very strong combat commanders that can take out an army, if you have maybe 5 of them. If one gets killed, the rest rout and you lose. So why bother? Just save your gems for a single powerful SC. Also, the slave collar is rendered useless. Has it ever had a function in any version of Dominions?

A "Never Retreat, Never Surrender (R)" toggle per commander, defaulting to "off", would solve this.

Re: Unseen Servant Runners
 

As much as possible was gone over before release, but unfortunately too much was embedded in the code. Hopefully, all the text in Dom3 will be in a form that can be handed to an editor.

Re: suggestion
 

Reminds me another game http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif .

Anyway, provincial spell would be nice, but then should wehave a provincial dispell spell too (cheaper) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif .

Re: suggestion
 

Another suggestion: have all scouts default to "retreat" orders instead of "attack" orders.

NEW MAGIC SITES
 

RECOMMENDED NEW MAGIC SITES
Here are some ideas for new magic sites for Dominions3.


HotSprings = Any commander and units under him may enter and receive +1 STR this effect works only once for those units.

Active Volcano = +2 Fire Gems per turn... 20% chance each turn any units within the province take 1-25pts of fire damage.

Arena of Gods = Any commander in the province may enter to fight a random monster... if victorious the reward will be 3 random gems. Also all other pretenders are able to watch this battle.

Temple of Ancient Air Spirits = Any commander and units under him may enter and receive temporary flying only for the next turn. very very rare mostly useful for map editors.


Altar of Fire or Poison or Cold or Shock = A commander may enter and one unit under his control is randomly sacrified. All units under the commander matching the type sacrified will receive 25% resistance for the type of Altar. Example= Altar of Fire would be 25% resistance for Fire.

Hyperbolic Time Chamber = A commander may enter which causes him and the Chamber to vanish for 3 to 7 turns. The commander returns as ethereal yet the Chamber is destroyed. +1 Astral Gem and Pretenders cannot enter.


Dimensional Vortex = Province is cursed causing independent supernatural attacks such as Horrors, Phantasmal Warriors and other supernatural beings.

Brigands Kingdom = Unrest increase by 5, 5% chance of independent brigands/thieves/rogues attack, 5% chance one random commander has an assassination attempt by an independent assassin.

Great Fault = The province is seriously unstable with frequent earthquakes and 10% of the time causing a Major Earthquake each turn... any units here during a Major Earthquake will take 1-12 damage. No structures/buildings can be built here.

Oracle of Faith = Any commander may enter and units under his command temporarily gain +3 morale for the next two turns.

ArchDemons Blood Pit = A commander may enter causing the sacrifice of 12 blood slaves in exchange the commander will receive +2 permanent hit points.

Magic Sites
 

What I'd like is for each magic site to have a little bit of text description. Who made the White Man hill? What's the story behind the Shrouded Lands?

Re: Magic Sites
 

I have this idea for 'spell slots'. Basically every unit gets a number of spell slots, and various spells take up slots when they are cast. Mostly buff type spells but perhaps other battlefield wide spells (wrathful skies, darkness, etc.) could take up slots

There are lots of things you can do with this:

- limits the number of buffs a mage can cast so you could allow more than 5 orders per commander
- stronger (or lower reasearch level) spells could take up more slots
- more tough strategic choices if other battlefield wide spells take up spell slots - you can have wrathful skies but its harder to protect the casting unit
- different units (especially pretenders) could have different number of spell slots
- some items could give (or use) extraspell slots

A way to do the UI would be to have another line of icons with the slots and what is occupying them. It would look similar to the icons for the various buffs now, but with boxes for the slots.

Re: Magic Sites
 

It would be wish for some missle weapon buff spells that do not cost gems and are not battlefield wide. For example, an 1 aoe spell that makes missile weapons have some amount of extra cold damage. Right now aim is the only spell that I can think of in this category.

More ideas:
 

National unit upgrades

It would be nice if national units recieved certain improvements based on your current research. For example, Ulmish armour would get better stats if you researched construction. At con-0, full plate of Ulm would have the same stats it has now; 18 protection, -5 defence and 5 encumbrance. At con-5, the armour would have improved to (say) 20 protection, -3 defence and 4 encumbrance. At con-10, it would be very good indeed.

Another example would be Man's Avalon units. For each level of enchantment reached, they could gain +1 strength, hitpoints or morale. Their discription says they're enchanted by the witches - so shouldn't that enchantment get better with research?

I don't intend for these upgrades to become the norm; they're primarily a way to enhance (in a thematic way) some units, giving them more of a chance against powerful magic.

Similar possibilities:

Weapons upgrades for Ulm.
Spider Armor upgrades for Machaka.
Martial arts abilities (alteration?) for Tien Chi.
Coral upgrades for Atlantis (enchantment?)

show me everything I want to know
 

I was noticing again today how Dom2 doesn't tell me which specific commanders died during a battle. I don't want to watch the whole battle over and over, keeping my eye on the commanders and hoping to notice when each one bites the dust. Maybe the "units killed" part of the battle report could be clicked on, and when you click it shows you the display of the commander (full stats and everything, just like dead heroes in Hall of Fame).

The related issue of having to write down everything that your scouts tell you could be solved by having a general purpose rewind feature. We already do this sometimes, especially in multi-player -- we save all the .trn files so that we can watch the whole game again afterward. If that kind of functionality were made part of the standard interface then whenever I wonder what a scout told me about this province I could just rewind until I find the turn where the scout reported and read his original report.

Re: show me everything I want to know
 

How about an ingame battlelog in which players can write down their plans and in which all scouting and other information is automatically added.

Units shapeshifting into different units after a certain time or reaching a certain experience.

Tactical position presets
 

For the tactical order screen, I would like to have presets for field positions. When you hold the cursor over the green position square and press a number, it would change the position of that squad or commander. There could be 9 presets corresponding to the edges and the center:

1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9

5 would be what is currently the default position, the center. 3, 6, and 9 would be the front; 1, 4, and 7 would be the back. These presets could be customizable with the same control-# used with tactical commands.

Re: show me everything I want to know
 

That is essentially what I wanted with my suggestion of sticky notes on commanders or more refined with assigning commanders to non-local groups having sticky notes:

A log is fine, but then you need to describe or name the units used for that plan. So why not attaching a players plan for each (group of) commanders directly to that commander?! It should also help to cycle through a group, eg. assigning all forger to a group, where I write down my forging need...

Re: show me everything I want to know
 

In the same way, why not keeping informations on provinces you once visited ? I.E. you had a scout in a province, but now he as moved elsewhere and you have no more info. It seems that you have forgotten the name of the province (there's a ???).

Why not having the name of the province and the infos you had last time you knew something about that province ? I.E. : 'last time you visited that province, there was 40 hostile independant units, mainly militias, that was 5 turns ago'. Or something like that http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif .

A quick idea
 

The astral bless is fairly redundant on the R'lyeh void summons, given that they have high magic resistance already and aren't really built to make good use of twist fate.

The death bless has different effects on undead units, so why not give the astral bless different effects on void summons? Improved regeneration, perhaps?

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I'd love to see a new style of victory condition, a cumulative victory point win.

That is to say : currently, if 5 VPs are enough to win the game, as soon as someone gets them all, game over, allowing stealth victories, surprise victories, and even accidental victories. Not that this is a bad thing. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

But Alneyan's King of the Hill games are essentially a cumulative VP condition : One key province (the Hill), and whoever holds it for a total of 20 turns wins, with everyone knowing each turn who holds the Hill and how many turns everyone has held it.

This really inspires the fighting - no one wants to let someone else come close to holding the Hill for 20 turns, and as anyone starts to get close, epic attempts to wrest control of the Hill take place.

But it takes the person hosting it to make this work.

So, what I'd like to see is a way to have fixed victory point locations on a map, and the game keep track of how many turns each player has held those VPs, along with a mandatory score graph displaying the gradual accumulation of those victory points. (This particular score graph would be on, even if graphs were turned off.)

This would promote conflict, and keep games from running on too long - once the victory provinces are taken, the scores start accumulating. I can imagine new maps being created with places of power, holy sites / cities, etc, that serve as the victory provinces, as well as old maps which already depict such places being modified for this style of game.

I think it would also make for more intense games, with hot spots of interest and conflict surrounding all the victory provinces. Do people expand in all directions aiming to build up enough strength for the victory sites, or head straight towards them? Given that there's a definate time constraint, people can't just meander about building clams and gobbling independents, not once someone starts accumulating the victory points.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

I'm a total newbie to this great game, so I won't suggest precise rule changes.

Many interesting things have been suggested in this thread, but I think developers should focus on making things simpler and nicer rather than deeper (which does not prevent them from adding new features).
Don't forget many suggestions on that forum come from experienced gamers.
Think about new users : try to stay simple and accessible without loosing the depth of this game.

I'msurprised few people talk about the graphics, while it's obviously the main weakness in Dom2. I 100% agree that the interest of this game is not in its graphics, but anyway, it would be relatively easy improve them, without making it a burdensome task.

Not necessarily by making tedious 3-D graphics but by giving more atmosphere to the game. Nice illustrations for units in their description, nicer (and more distinct) units in army setup screen ; illustrations accompanying messages such as magic site discovery, etc...
Why not try to have some different kind of graphics for each nation ? Chinese style paintings, medieval enluminure or renaissance frescoes...
Battle could be improved of course but not necessarily with realist 3-d graphics. I liked the 2-D, semirealistic approach of Heros of Might and M%agic II.
Dominions 2 cannot, and should not try to, compete on the visual aspect with big commercial games. But it could be much nicer and maybe more "poetic" than it is, and then attract many people who otherwise will not even try it.

The same with the instruction manual. It should include a tutorial and a few tips, and easier to use spell, unit and object lists.

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

Most older units (unit number under 600 or so) were made for Dom:PPP, and were drwan only 16 pixels high. The unit resolutions were doubled for DomII, but all old units weren't redrawn. The work is still on its way, and although the "graphics department" of Illwinter has mentioned he enjoyed redrawing Slinger, he also said that he got depressed with all the other old units he still would have to drawn. This was from old FRAG! review, so things might have progressed.


Also, if by different kind of paintings you mean the GUI (menu) backgrounds, the ability to customize those has been added in the newest DomII patch. I suppose we will see national GUI themes in DomIII, but this is just a supposement. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I also think that the manual should be reworked. Having the manual should be the reason to buy the game, explaining game mechanics better that the current one.


Also, whenever given order cannot be accomplished, it should always be noted with a message. E.g. for magic items with insufficient gem availability, a message among the lines of "It seems you don't have enough Fire gems.

3 more Fire gems needed."

Re: The Dominions 3: \"Wishlist\"
 

One thing to remember about better graphics is that a modder making new units will have to keep the newly required graphics up to par.

A text only game is easy to add units to, you just write a description of a new unit. A 16 pixel-high unit requires a 16 pixel-high piece of art. A 3d wireframe with attached cellshading requires... and so on.

So the higher tech the art gets, the harder it is going to be to add a new team. And since we are still missing:

Klackons (or Abeil, or Formians)
Arabians
Vietnamese
Tibetans
Incans
Vaettiheim (or swamp goblins, or the Unseelie Court)
Beastmen

etc. etc. etc.

...that remains something to worry about. The Dominions meta-setting is one which could potentially incorporate virtually any group from virtually any fantasy or historical setting, and therefore should. So it must remain easy to create a new group.

-Frank