A simple improvement
 

I'm currently playing LA Ermor. As others have commented, all the units that keep spawning are a pain.

I see what seems to me a simple change to the game that would solve this (and a few related ones) headache.

Have every province have a concept of routing. All spontaneously-created (perhaps even all new) units & commanders move to whatever adjoining province it points to. When they arrive in the new province they retain their new status so if it has orders they'll follow it also.

Presto: No more micromanagement hassles bringing troops forward. They would all walk towards where you wanted them on their own.

Re: A simple improvement
 

But that might make LA Ermor a bit too tough, being easily able to get all their freespawns to a specific place rather quickly.

Re: A simple improvement
 

Anyone played warlords?

They had this automove in that game. It was excellent for saving micromangement, basically you could order the troops to repeat build, they would be automatically be sent to the province you choose, arriving in the same number of turns as if you had moved them manually.

Great mircomanagement saving and does not change the game at all.

Re: A simple improvement
 

It also would be very "game realistic". Arent most of the units mindless that are being discussed? Routing (or just wandering) to other nations if there are no commanders present might be realistic. Altho on the other hand, there are usually considered to be PD commanders to pick them up.

It would save micromanagment for some nations but would make some overly powerful. Im not sure that the tradeoff is worth it.

Hmmmmm if the controlling factor was PD then it might balance abit. IF units are created or generated in a province and IF there is zero defence THEN they will rout to nearby provinces.

Re: A simple improvement
 

I'd been thinking of something similar, and wondering if it might be less unbalancing/easier to implement to restrict it to "units gather at adjacent forts". This still removes a lot of micromanagement, and better handles what happens to uncommanded units. They just sit in the fort when the province is attacked, and flee if they're uncommanded when the castle is stormed.

Re: A simple improvement
 

I can't see how it can unbalance anything if it works by the rule (ie you need commander to carry the troops).
It'll just save mm so would be great, as would be waypoints for multi-turn moves, "armies" (multi-leader) allowing to better distinguish the groups by mid-late game, and several other things ...

Re: A simple improvement
 

It would add quite a layer to the turn processing. Every province would have to be checked (1500 provinces) and then processed if need be.

Re: A simple improvement
 

Why that ? Only provinces producing something plus having "route" orders would have to be processed. Only with Ermor LA you'll have *many*. And only you play 1500+ provinces maps http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif
But I was not talking (like the original poster) of auto-moving the troops, just having "route to" orders working as long as commanders exist to ferry the troops.

Re: A simple improvement
 

Yeah, I liked that feature, although I'm not sure about it--it means the troops are invulnerable while going to the rally point. I think my solution accomplishes the same thing without the invulnerability issue.

I also like the autobuild--I would like to be able to assign a province to keep building the same thing until stopped. The queue helps but you still have to peek in now and then and you can't queue commanders.

Re: A simple improvement
 

What really bugs me is the spontaneously-created stuff. It's mostly mindless, although there's still the militia, fanatics and such. It's quite a micromanagement headache to make use of.

Two more things that have occured to me based on that game:

1) LA Ermor commanders should be able to control more units. You get tons of junk and a screenfull of commanders might not be enough to take a tough target.

2) When you order an army into water that has units that can't go into water, just ask *ONCE* what to do about it, not once per commander.

Re: A simple improvement
 

I would permit it to happen without commanders. Soldiers don't really need commanders to be told "Go to city X".

Re: A simple improvement
 

It would add almost nothing to the turn processing. (Note: I've been making my living programming for half my life now.)

1) Checking even 1500 provinces would be a triviality on modern processors.

2) There's no reason to check them in the first place. The check would be made when new units are created or when units executed new-unit orders.

It does, however, affect the storage format. You need to add a flag to every province saying where to move to and you need to add a flag to units saying that they are executing new-unit orders.

Re: A simple improvement
 

The game doesnt do things that way. It doesnt keep track of things. You can see in the logs that it checks each province for many things that would fall into the category of "if" checks. And those checks do take measureable time. Adding another would be felt.

Im not saying its an idea killer. Just that it would be part of the "con" side of it.

Re: A simple improvement
 

No way. If the game programming is done half correctly, this would take no more time than processing an equal number of orders - exactly as much as it would take if each nation's player had issued the order, province by province, except they wouldn't have to bother doing it.

Giving more options, ways for players to automate their order-giving (like letting them issue multiple turn movement orders, and so on), would not make turn processing significantly more complex. It's more work to code in, sure, but that's another matter.

Re: A simple improvement
 

Like I said, it sounds like a good idea.
But looking at the logs you can see that it processes thru all of the provinces multiple times for many different things. I suspect its the result of adding such routines to a game that wasnt originally meant to take things like that into account.

Its still a good idea but dont be surprised if it processes thru all the provinces to do it.

Re: A simple improvement
 

It's late, I'm tired and have little notion to go into details - with the current game engine, there's no way to tell troops to "go somewhere" on their own.

Routing is triggered by battles (and during battles - check the turn sequence order) and is not available during unit freespawn or building.
Furthermore, routing is random - routing units spread into neighbouring provinces. If that was easily changable, we might already have "fire and retreat" orders for light cav which have it move back into the starting province without scattering.

We don't have waypoints for a similar cause - no way to store the destination and steps in between over several turns.

Keep in mind - the game engine is basically the one from DomPPP - and when they started to make that game, no-one thought about complex movement army orders and 1500 provinces ...

And if someone wonders if this will change in Dom4, or if there will be a Dom4 ... the devs would have to throw away nearly all the code done in the last years and start from scratch ... therefore chances are very slim.

Re: A simple improvement
 

But you do it very well.

Re: A simple improvement
 

I suspect its possible to code in multiple turn orders without throwing away all existing code, and probably without much impact on turn resolution time, though it would take some time to code, and UI work :O
Just make it so you can queue orders onscreen, which on the .2h file are represented as more order under a different sector, marked "should be done in X turns", and at the end of the turn resolution process, just make the block for the next turn's orders into the next turn's .2h file (and the blocks for "in x turns" into "in x-1 turns"), then just like you load a game now and get a choice wether to continue the save or erase all orders, you'll have the .2h file for this turn's orders.
My idea obviously has several drawbacks:
1) It assumes that invalid orders are disregarded, rather then cause an error.
2) Would make MP more cumbersome, since it would require lugging around both .trn and .2h files for each turn.
3) Would require quite some coding work, especially dreaded UI work.

Re: A simple improvement
 

My approach doesn't even need an ability to queue orders. It needs two data fields:

Units need a "new" flag that means they execute orders on the province. Provinces need a destination.

At the start of move order resolution you look at each unit. If the flag is set and there's a valid target (it won't move if the target isn't in friendly hands) you move the unit, otherwise you clear the flag.

Re: A simple improvement
 

Configuring auto-marching orders for troops sounds nice, but it isn't really thematically consistent with the rest of Dominions where commanders are required to really get troops to do anything.

What about another approach to issue - one more focused on the sorts of things we already see in the game. Suppose there were a new order for certain types of commanders ("Gather Minions") that would act like a spell that teleports all existing uncommanded troops from adjacent provinces to him. This would dramatically reduce the scale of the management issue without requiring anything really new. You could even get fancy and limit the effect to his leadership ability.

There are already commander abilities that generate troops and spells that can target uncommanded troops (not specifically maybe but hostile rituals can certainly hit them), so it wouldn't seem like there were any obvious hurdles. Although, I'm sure a lot of little complications would pop up, and this mechanic (or anything like it really) would be extremely powerful so it'd take some careful thought.

Nice loops
 

Very clever idea loops. Wouldn't help with the headache of moving mages around hunting for areas they havent searched yet (or casting around) But very good.

Maybe if possible the troops could take a month to arrive from an adjacent areas.

Re: Nice loops
 

I like that idea also. In fact, if it was too much overhead to gather from neighbors, I wouldnt even mind if it worked for just the province he was in. Seems thematic to me and would definetly cut MM.

Re: Nice loops
 

MM?

Re: Nice loops
 

micro management

Re: Nice loops
 

Sorry, MicroManagement.
The tiresome endless do-the-same-thing kind of things that make a game drag toward the end.

Its a continual subject. On one hand people argue that they are the pretender-God and wouldnt micro-manage their empire down to petty things like assigning troops to each commander. Then they argue that they feel they should be able to direct every action in combat. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

obviously its going to end up being someplace in the middle

Re: Nice loops
 

It does not after be. The very best games allow the player to choose, wether they wish to micromanage everything or just make the big decisions or somewhere inbetween.

Games are all about enjoyment and fun really so game designers should try to make a game as customizable as possible.

Of course I am sure they would point to how much you can mod the game, as an example of giving a player many options.

Re: Nice loops
 

Well as far as the combat, thats pretty locked in. The game wouldnt easily support management of combat without becoming a completely different kind of game.

As far as the rest, the devs do listen and accept many ideas. This one sounds reasonably possible.

Re: A simple improvement
 

Hey Loops - are you the same guy who has 32 victories and no defeats on Land of Legends? Have to say, I hate you man - there's no way I can ever get a better rating than that (even not taking into account the fact that there's someone online in this game about once in a blue moon)...

Re: A simple improvement
 

lol, hi PhilD, yes this is the same Loops. Sorry, I got kinda burnt out on LoL and decided to quit while I was ahead. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif My record isn't nearly as impressive as all the wins that others have piled up in the meanwhile anyway - I just started with a lucky streak.