My 2 wishes for Dominions 3!!
 

1. Lot better singleplayer AI.

2. Please add some improved multiplayer, play by email is a horrible thing. Can we have something like we have in most of the strategy games?
Multiplayer lobby with create/host a game, Join to a game etc. etc. This is a must have, I know many ppl who don't like the Doms II. MP because of the PBEM.

Re: My 2 wishes for Dominions 3!!
 

Whats wrong with the server-based play? Server hosts, clients join, game is played... easy! Just like any other strategy game...

Re: My 2 wishes for Dominions 3!!
 

Because a lobby mode is lot better. You can talk with the others in the lobby, you can create a game with a click, the others can see it and join up ASAP. I really hope that we will have something like this. If this gonna happen, Shrapnel should consider to use gamespy as the service provider for this. I just purchased Kohan 2 Kings of War, and the multiplayer lobby is really awesome, and gamespy is hosting it.

Re: My 2 wishes for Dominions 3!!
 

This is not something that should be pushed to the game developers, because they are GAME, not interface, lobby, chat program etc. developers. Shrapnel Games might be able to get something like this done, and it would be nice, but we will manage even without it. I'm not quite sure we would manage without DomIII... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: My 2 wishes for Dominions 3!!
 

Yes yes, perhaps someone from Illwinter can tell some details about the MP in Doms III.?

Re: My 2 wishes for Dominions 3!!
 

Details? The game development has recently begun.

Re: My 2 wishes for Dominions 3!!
 

You can't compare Kohan (games are 2-3 hours long) with Dominion where you can play the same game for days.
There is some chat channel and these forum. I think it is sufficient for finding players and starting a game.
Not even mentioning that shrapnel's people has on their todo list setting up a server 'a la' Mosehansen.

Re: My 2 wishes for Dominions 3!!
 

Its a good idea but I dont know if I want Johan to put it in the gaeme.

GameSpy and such lobbys are available for download. Someone could probably look into making it work with Dom3 (and Dom2 for that matter)

The concept of lobby is closer to the concept of the web servers for games. And the headaches involved with security, compatability, being load friendly, etc is a whole new truckload of garbage for a programmer to bang their head on. Especially since the same thing, at various levels, could be easily done by modifing something like a chat or forum or bbs package.

I think something like that would best be done by a 3rd party programmer. And as was done with my requests, and Esben Mose Hansens requests, I am sure that Johan would be more than willing to consider putting in any switches or handles which such a program would want.

Re: My 2 wishes for Dominions 3!!
 

Wait, hold right there! Example in Kohan 2, you can save the multi game anytime, and just load it up later on!!! Yes all this with a gamespy lobby system!
So if someone has to go....the host just saving the game, and loading it up when everyone available again! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: My 2 wishes for Dominions 3!!
 

Pardon me, but this is a ludicrous comparison! Kohan plus GameSpy are provided by two separate companies, that are very comercially oriented, with huge resources.

Illwinter Design is a very talented, non-commercial development house, with two developers. IMNSHO, the fact that Dominions II (and no doubt III), has such an elegant design base, combined with an excellent implementation (especially when consider w/r to the limited dev resources available), that it far outshines any of the more commercial titles available. I am not an anti-commercial snob - I have greatly enjoyed many commercial titles, but if you like epic scoped, turn based strategy games, Dom II is the hands down winner, as far as I am concerned.

Now, when considering Dom III, the Last thing I would put on my wishlist is a game lobby. This is not to say that a game lobby would be a bad thing, but the task of creating a game lobby does overlaps little with game development, and I would far, far prefer to have our most excellent IW game designers/developers doing, well, game design and development.

If a game lobby were to be done, it should be as others have said, done by a third party. If this could be arranged, that might be nice, but I suspect (as was also suggested), that this would have to be set up by Shrapnel, rather than IW (the steps to initiate this would have to be on the business side, rather than development). I suppose it might be nice if GameSpy itself were to take an interest in Dom II (I don't know enough about GameSpy to even know if this were a good thing), but from a business perspective, this sound more than a little unlikely.

But even if a likely third party is identified, there are so many steps that precede game lobbies, that game lobbies still fall down on the list. Before you can talk about game lobbies, you will need servers run by some company, that can afford to maintain them and keep them running. To that end, if Shrapnel stepped up to the plate and provided servers to run Esben Mosehansen's *very* nice (and by my guess, low maintenance) PBW Dom II server, that would be a wonderful thing. I'm not sure that it would pay for Shrapnel to do this, but it would certainly be far cheaper to do this than to provide a game lobby.

- Thufir

PS My apologies if the tone of this sounds hostile, but there is just *so* much to this question that I couldn't help myself from spewing out a lengthy response http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: My 2 wishes for Dominions 3!!
 

Thufir, a game lobby cant be bad, dont even try to tell me that. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
Sure we cant compare and RTS to a TB game so what?! Just because Dominions is a TB game, does that means that its not worth to have an own lobby???? Trust me, a lobby would be a very good thing, and many players would like it. Who the hell wanna use a web-based server all the time and wait for the emails etc, when we could have an awesome lobby, host directly from there, chat with the others etc.
Do not tell me that this is bad! Since Dominions is very MP oriented this should be a must have.

Re: My 2 wishes for Dominions 3!!
 

I'm not saying that, at all! But I do question what priority it should be placed at. And a large part of my questioning is based not on the value it would provide to players, but rather on what it would cost Shrapnel/Illwinter to create.

Can I ask you - have you ever played an MP game using mosehansen as the server? Personally, I think MP games work on this very nicely. IMO, the biggest problem with mosehansen is not the lack of features, but rather it's limited availability. Since this server is provided by a private individual entirely free of charge, it's kinda hard to complain about that. Bottom line: I would personally place as a higher priority having Shrapnel (or a 3rd party - if such a deal could be done), providing/maintaing a small number of PBW servers running Esben Mosehansen's Dom II web front end. This would be relatively modest in cost, and would greatly improve our ability to conduct MP games.

Well, clearly since there is a sizeable community already playing Dom II, it's not quite a must have. Perhaps, if Shrapnel found a way to make this happen for Dom III, and the interest in Dom III skyrocketed, and the sales therefore skyrocketed, and the investment in the game lobby were thus payed off - I would be proven wrong. I'm a bit skeptical about that prospect, but I sure would be happy to see such a thing occur http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: My 2 wishes for Dominions 3!!
 

What exactly makes it non-commercial? Dont get me wrong, i love the attitude IW has for it's games, but I think you just blatantly misused the word. They get money from it, they sell it, we buy it, it's commercial.

(edit) just found out, it's possible to edit something without marking it as edited. Should be fixed. (/edit)

Re: My 2 wishes for Dominions 3!!
 

Im still not seeting what a lobby built into the game is going to give that makes it so worthwhile. The host saves a MP game and can start up at any time? Dom does that now. In fact it does it with every turn and is part of some complaints against it. You can chat and start games? The Dominions IRC channel does that now. You can signup thru a web interface? MoseHansens site does that. Tournament play? the-battlenet does that now. Not to mention what what can be done just by creating a thread in a forum and using file attach.

Im not saying it would be worthless. It would be one-stop, probably friendlier, easier to use especially for those who are used to such systems, and could be used to advertise. Im just saying that I dont see it as a "must have".

Re: My 2 wishes for Dominions 3!!
 

One thing that radically changes the play level of the community is replays. Nothing exposes flaws in the game quicker than replays. I can't say enough about how they change the competitive landscape.

Re: My 2 wishes for Dominions 3!!
 

I don't see what good a lobby would do, given that the great majority of the games don't run with all of the players playing at the same time, and the games that are done with all the players Online at once (blitzes) have serious issues in that some players take half an hour (or longer) to do a turn, while another player is finished in 5 minutes and has to wait on the sluggards who take 40 minutes for the 1st turn, and the ones whose empire is larger enough to require a lot of management.

For chatting with the other players, IRC works just fine - far better than the chat facility in most of the lobby software out there right now, even ones done by relatively huge companies like Blizzard (Diablo, Starcraft, Warcraft, etc).

So - since the majority of the games run with 24 or 48 hour turns, how does a lobby do anything that benefits the game or the players?

The one thing that would be nice would be an official server that could be set up like Mosehansen, with a bit more dedicated resources so that more games could be hosted.

Re: My 2 wishes for Dominions 3!!
 

Guys, I understand you all, sure maybe this is not a must have but a lobby with mp system would be lot better and easier and more user friendly, than the current Dom 2. MP system.
Perhaps the IW devs can do something about it.

Yes as it is now, 1 turn takes hella lot of time to play in MP, with a lobby/mp system this would speed up drastically. You have 1 hour to play? Hell you are logging in, and if a game is up you join. No games up? Others in the lobby? You can talk with the others in the same place about hosting a game etc. You wont have to wait for an email to do your turn. You won't have enough time to finish a game? There should be a save function for the host.
Seriously imho this would be an awesome addition for the MP. Hopefully IW will consider to add something like this. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: My 2 wishes for Dominions 3!!
 

That sounds like the #Dominions IRC channel.

Re: My 2 wishes for Dominions 3!!
 

Okay maybe it does Gandalf, but that is just an additional little part of the MP system. The key features here are the host a game, join to a game features, the saving in MP.
Also I am pretty sure, that almost all players will be able to host their own games. This game wont require a powerpc in MP, also it wont require a very fast connection at all.
Later on maybe even an Online ladder could be added as well, or some statistical features like in Kohan 2 for example.

Re: My 2 wishes for Dominions 3!!
 

The "lobby" won't do anything to help with hosting a game, as the only issue there is having a 24/7 Online connection and, preferably, a stable IP.

You keep going on and on about not having to wait for an email - what's the difference? You're not waiting for an email, you're waiting for all players to complete their turns and/or for the turn to be hosted. If the turns are hosted at a particular time - as a number are - then again, the lobby doesn't do a thing.

Saving in MP? It's already saved on the host, and once the player gets their turn, it's essentially saved on her or his computer as well - they can look at and tweak that turn all they want.

And the _next_ turn isn't going to host until the time limit, or until all players have finished their turns. So, what benefit would several months of programmer effort for a half baked lobby provide?

PBEM games are still going to ignore the lobby, and are still going to be popular, since it allows a game to be hosted and run by someone with a dialup network connection. (In case you didn't know, many Dominions players are outside of the USA, in places where their Online time is billed by the minute, sometimes at expensive rates.)

And people wanting to host a non-PBEM game, already can. I've done so, and a lobby wouldn't have done anything to eliminate the real problems of doing so, which include things like reconfiguring firewalls to allow the players to connect to the server without eliminating security.

Re: My 2 wishes for Dominions 3!!
 

I'm beginning to wonder what drugs you're on. How in Dog's name does a lobby speed up the process of taking turns in MP? If I have 30 provinces and 43 mages to manage and it takes me 45 minutes to do so, the other players have to wait 45 minutes.

If a game is already up, there's no way to join in the middle of a game. If a game is starting and looking for players, it tends to take over an hour for people to get their pretenders, decide game settings, house rules, and nations. After going through all that, if a player joins and thinks to quit after 1 hour of play, that player probably isn't going to be welcomed back by the group of players.

When _ONE PLAYER_ decides they've played enough, that's it for the whole group of players, unless Player #1 goes AI. And with games often taking months to play, and often over 100 hours of player time, talking about "1 hour games" or 1 hour of playing time just doesn't make much sense.

Re: My 2 wishes for Dominions 3!!
 

Cainehill, what about small map blitz games? 1 turn wont take more then 4-5 mins in late game. Have you ever played doms 2 blitz games for example? I doubt it! Also many players can just leave Dominions on, and leave the comp meanwhile if a turn takes too long in huge games...or just save! What the hell is your problem with the lobby/mp system?! I cant understand your points. This would be lot easier/user friendly then the current system. This is the key.
Yes, you can say that this isnt a must have, but would be a great addition IF IW would have time to code something like this. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: My 2 wishes for Dominions 3!!
 

There are several shortcomings of Dom2, and only a limited time for the small developing crew to deal with them. A lobby system might be nice, a full-fledged in-game-message editor would be nice, better graphics would be nice, but all of these are not important. Dom2 lives from its rich gameplay, and this what should be further developed.

In addition, Dom2 network features are already impressive: PBEM, Lan & Hotseat - changeable on the fly; all cross-platform ! Now that's really great!

Other games may have a neat click-interface for Network, but how could you set up an interface like Mosehansen's with those? Dom2 offer all by the commandline, for a resource saving commandline host, which can be managed by all the commandline tools Linux-Users (mainly) are used to anyway. Sure Mosehansen's server might not be needed if the game brought along itself, but other people are able to do this pretty as we have seen, while other people are not able to add more to the gameplay itself!

And ok, to review/replay older turns you have to put your hands onto some files to manually copy them, but that's the least inconvenience I can imagine...

Re: My 2 wishes for Dominions 3!!
 

Not everybody knows about / how to use Irc. What Illwinter _could_ do, is to embed an irc client within Dominions itself, pre-configured to connect to #Dominions on a particular network. It would lower the threshold and get more players into the channel.

On the other hand, while embedding a client dosen't have to involve all that much work, it _does_ carry with it potential legal pitfalls re licensing, and also some amount of work in getting the UI to match with the rest of the game. And let's face it - Illwinter doesn't like doing UI (not that I blame them - it's excruciatingly painful and boring work.)

Re: My 2 wishes for Dominions 3!!
 

Oh, and as for a wish for Dominions 3 - I'd really like to be able to change the population types when modding. (I want a province where I can recruit dragons and wombat-riding rabbit knights!)

Re: My 2 wishes for Dominions 3!!
 

Im sorry. I still havent seen anything that cant be done in IRC, or a web front, or a forum that allows file attaches to Posts, or an actual lobby by some 3rd party programmer. Those things are all already available, and someone else has banged their head on the security aspects of it. To write another, and insert it into the game, would be IMHO time consuming and open a can of worms for little return.

But then, this is a wish list. You can say its on your wish list with no problem at all. Its just trying to convince others that its an "absolute must have" which generates discussions. Mostly with people who have their own "absolute must haves" which yours would get in the way of. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: My 2 wishes for Dominions 3!!
 

Yes, he's played quite a few blitz games. Enough to know that there will always be somebody who takes 30 minutes on turn 10, and that turns in the late game start to take more than 20 minutes unless you happen to losing.

How is this different from what exists now?

It's not any easier though. There would have to be hundreds of games starting at any given moment for a "Join Random Game" button to make sense.

Re: My 2 wishes for Dominions 3!!
 

Do you also doubt that the earth is round? I've played a _lot_ of blitz games, organized and started via the #dominions IRC channel. And some people (like Stormbinder) take 30 minutes to do turn _10_, and in the late game, the turns for normal players commonly take 20-40 minutes.

A small map blitz game, with victory conditions, the turns might take 4-14 minutes, sure. But ...

So then you have rude players who wander off from their computer, returning half an hour later while everyone else has been waiting for _them_. "or just save!"?? What part of, "That ends the current game session for everyone" don't you understand?

My problem with the lobby system is that it does _nothing_ to enhance the game itself, does nothing that can't already be done via irc or a webserver like Esben's, and in fact would provide half-arsed chat facilities compared to IRC.

And, with only 2 developers (and _1_ programmer), IW isn't going to have the ability to dedicate the amount of programmer time necessary to do even a half-baked lobby without taking way too much development effort away from game-enhancing things.

Now, it'd be nice if they'd improve the interface for creating / joining games, sure. But the programmer hates UI work, so that ain't going to happen either - we can't even get "laboratory" put at the top of the magic item equiping menu.

Re: My 2 wishes for Dominions 3!!
 

Now thats is a real pain for sure! Fixing this would speed-up my turns considerably for me, since I dont have a scrollwheel-mouse on my laptop! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/mad.gif

Re: My 2 wishes for Dominions 3!!
 

Speaking of simple, but nice additions, how about a 'maximum research level'
in the game settings? I would love to try a few MP games with research levels
set to 0, 2, and 4.

Re: My 2 wishes for Dominions 3!!
 

That'd be nice, and should be easy to implement - at least the research level 4 limit is already there in the demo, and would allow some very different flavored games, where *gasp* national troops were important all throughout the game.

(The only other way I've seen to achieve something like this was with Quantum Mechanic's Twilight games, where magic sites were set to 0; the very difficult research helped too, but the lack of gems kept many summonings or magic items from being used.)

Re: My 2 wishes for Dominions 3!!
 

How did the twilight games work out? I have never played MP with magic that restricted.

Re: My 2 wishes for Dominions 3!!
 

Thx for your replies guys, as I see noone cares about my ideas. Ah well.....I still cant understand that why but I can live with it anyways.

Re: My 2 wishes for Dominions 3!!
 

I thought they were quite a bit of fun - we couldn't add any magic to our choice of pretender chassis, meaning that they could be useful, but weren't overpowering.

The lack of magic sites meant that finding anything was a great event, and lower level summonings had to be used that never obsoleted the national troops.

It was also neat the different strategies some of us used regarding pretenders : in one, Graeme choose the great wyrm, which combined with Serpent Cult Pythium meant that he could risk dying with no real loss - his researchers could bring him back in 1 turn, and no magic to lose. Quantum took a titan, to get the highest possible magic, and I took the burliest dual magic path chassis I could find (carrion dragon).

One thing we found was that it's necessary to be very careful about choices of maps. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif One (Tyrande) had way too many high powered magic sites built into the map, another (Yalun-to) had too many impassable areas (a section separated by cliffs, and with no magic, difficult to get into the sea) and a single province that was essentially a chokepoint for the entire map.

But they were a lot of fun.