2 Things this game desperately needs
 

One is some sort of mechanism to allow units to patrol while doing other things...like preaching or casting rituals.

The other is some sort of in game alliance mechanism, that allows allies to cross each others' provinces without provoking battles.

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

On #1, I'm not sure I agree. If you mean a way to get units to participate in castle defense in spite of being assigned to other things, then yes, that would be nice (if not urgent). If you mean a way to get them to actually patrol, thereby reducing unrest and possibly catching spies, then I disagree. Patrolling is an action and should remain mutually exclusive with other actions.

#2 might be nice but introduces possible complications. For instance, it could require rewriting the "defeat" conditions, because it's no longer possible to say someone is out of the game when they own no territory. Also, does a prophet crossing someone else's territory still spread dominion? Finally, from a role-playing perspective, the current state of alliance = wary, armed truce makes a lot of sense, since ultimately you both know There Can Be Only One. It would be nice to have the option, though.

-Max

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

it would be fun if you could designate a commander and his troops as mercs, and sell them on the free market.

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

1. Ability to autoroute or vector armies.

2. Disband button.

These would be my current top 2 most needed features. There are many other refinements that could be made, but these two really feel like they're missing when you compare Dom3 with other strat games.

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

If the mercenary system were redone so mercenaries had a physical location before being hired, sure. Otherwise, there are teleportation exploits...

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

First let me say that I'm enjoying the game immensely just as it is, so please don't anyone take this as a complaint!

But I think you could get around the 'Only One' problem with a little 'Pantheon' modification to the story. It doesn't seem to much of a stretch to have on one side 3 races of man with a Forge Lord, Mother of Rivers, and a Great White Bull; opposing Yomi, Mictlan and Lanka with a Prince of Death, Deva, and Father of Serpents.

Alliances between some 'enemy races' could be made impossible, like {Kailasa,Lanka} or the Hiems.

I'd certainly pay $50 for a Dominions 3 Expansion Pack which included a feature like that!

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

Some interesting ideas, I have but one to offer: make preaching count as patrolling or patrolling/2 since one would have to meet and greet the people to preach no?

I wouldn't say the same would be true for rituals as I imagine diabolic wizards casting days long ceremonial rituals from within their pentagrams of protection and that doesn't provide for a ton of time to check on peoples tax payments if ya ask me!

Anyways.. Preaching= patrolling, good idea. Ritual casting=Nay!

Rathar

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

I'll say:

1. Disband button.
2. Multiple monthly site-searching rituals of the same type.

Fortunately, #2 looks like it will be in the next patch. :) That may be biasing my judgment but I'm really looking forward to it.

-Max

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

1. Disband button.
2. Hold and fire command.
3. A message reminding you to pay mercs.

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

Disband - only at a cost of increasing unrest in that province. You know, annoyed soldiers set loose...

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

Why on earth punish the player like that?

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

You guys are way to modest with your wishes. The trick is to make a lot of noise for outrageous things and the developers will consider handing you a few reasonable alterations.

So in order to help the disbandment crowd...

1. Expanded importance of the battlefield. Bonuses and weaknesses dependent on terrain. Range and precision modifications depending on high ground/low ground placement. Battlefield appearance in random. Add Strategy ability (ranging in value +0 to +100) to units that improves the chance for an optimum battlefield. What is "optimum" depends on the composition of your troops (dry flat ground for mostly cavalry, hill for mostly archers, obstacle heavy forest for mostly forestsurvivors, nighttime for most nightvision/undead. Attacker and defender each roll a dice. The lower value is subtracted from the higher value. The side that scored the best value gets to "choose" the battlefield.

2. Fortify order that gives the defender an edge on the battlefield (+50 Strategy). Defenders also get some defensive "buildings", like trenches and ramparts, creating chokepoints and cover.

3. Way better castles. Missile units on castle walls (with 20-50% cover), melee units at castle gate (40-80% cover), mages at castle towers (serious range improvement because of high elevation + 80% cover).

4. Autobuild+Move to province vectoring.

5. Option to disable recruitable independent units at map creation.

6. "Global" events (optional at map creation) to put a bit more random into the singleplayer experience.

There ya go. Proper wishnagging that is.

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

My original thought on number 1 was not well articulated. I didn't mean to suggest that Mages should cast spells and patrol, as defined by catching and executing dissidents, but rather to cast rituals (or preach, or sacrifice, or be empowered, etc)and be able to participate in combat within the province, but outside the castle. My bad.

OTOH...I can see a mage needing to move into the lab, which is inside the walls of the keep, in order to find the necessary bat's ears and consultation of the ancient tomes which are kept in the lab....inside the keep. Along those same lines, The Priestly types would be preaching inside the Cathedral which is inside the walls of the keep also.

But....I find it frustrating to have all that magic power in the province and
1. It is being wasted if you put the mage on patrol and no attack occurs, or;

2. He is going about his daily tasks assumedly oblivious to the battle going on just outside the castle doors where his provincial defenses are in dire need of his services.

Maybe that is the dilemma the devs wanted us to be faced with.

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

I did a quick scan but didnt see answers on the "allies crossing" thing.

A) its a benefit of some nations that they can move their armies thru your territiory (allied or not)

B) there are spells that allow them to move their armies past you (allied or not)

C) There is another way if you want it. Create a "gateway" province. You can just agree on a province that will have no defense and allow each other to keep changing its ownership as they move thru. Or you can build a castle but put no defense. That will help avoid your two armies fighting since yours can be in the castle and allow the other army to slip thru the province. It can work as a crossroads.

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

Don't forget the advantage to only having patrollers fight.

Your expensive mages and priests don't get slaughtered by the invading army. Instead they can wait for reinforcements and be deployed to break the siege as needed.

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

Things needed:

Vectoring.
Disband.
Site search coordination.
Long range movement.

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

It's not punishment. It's the logical consequence of your actions.

If you try to break into my place by punching your fist through the glass door and cut yourself, that's a direct consequence, not punishment. My following the trail of blood and beating you with a metal staff would be an example of punishment.

If you tell soldiers that you're suddenly going to stop paying them, during a war, when they're likely far from home, and the now-unemployed band happens to be fairly strong compared to anybody else in the local area -- they aren't necessarily just going to fade away. Hence, the unrest boost. This should be higher if the unrest is already significant and there isn't a remaining garrison that can compare to the newly unemployed.

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

Hello? Have I wandered into an alternate universe of fun-sucking vampires?

Would you have to take the soldiers back to their home province to avoid the disband penalty? Why can't we just assume that they make their own way home, like merceneries?

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

To look at it another way, if you tell soldiers who've been on campaign for several months, saw many friends killed, spent the time they haven't been fighting scrounging around simply for food and spent their nights attempting to sleep in a damp, windy tent to go home, I reckon they'd be gone before you finished the word home.

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

There's no disband option ATM. Disbanding would change the game. The change could be minor, or it could be major, but the idea behind disbanding increasing unrest is making the change have less effect due to disbanding having a drawback and thus being less effective.

I think it'd just make Call of the Winds/Wilds much more powerful due to them being able to severely raise unrest in any province they actually conquer. Chaff would also have a new role in being protected behind your army until you reached a rich enemy province in which they would be disbanded. It's strange how intentions and actual effects can differ from each other so much, isn't it?

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

Going home, robbing some shops and raping several women on the way isn't mutually exclusive.

About unintended consequences of disbanding:
only if you use stupid function. Chaff is pretty weak and unrest-disband function should count it as such. There could be other factors, too, like hostile dominion decreasing unrest from disbanding (on the grounds that hostile population is able to deal with marauders by themselves... to a degree). And so forth.
There could be other, annoying effects of disbanding, too. Soldiers disbanded in a province adjacent to enemy province... could join the opposing side in quest for money ! This would fix chaff convoys for good.

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

They quite possibly spent months getting there and might take months back -- if there even is a path that doesn't involve the use of magic they don't have. Given the era, they also probably don't have much savings other than what they're carrying. They certainly don't have months of dried rations for the way home. The villagers on the way home are likely scraping by under their liege's multiple forms of taxation, the soldiers themselves -- particularly ones with substantial training (gold cost) may feel themselves above helping out with farming... oh, and there's the issue of how the ex-soldiers might deal with the local peasant women, too. A local lord is also going to be concerned about the ex-troops overstaying their welcome and taking excessive liberties for a variety of reasons, and is not going to be happy with getting stuck with the bill, either.

Mercenaries are an interesting idea, but the teleportation issue should probably be dealt with at some point -- mercenaries wandering from province to province looking for employment, say, rather than manifesting somewhere at a player's whim. A group that organized itself as a mercenary company, however, should have a greater chance of remaining as a cohesive unit -- either looking for employment together, or doing the whole 'slaughtering the locals and setting themselves up in charge' thing that occasionally happened.

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

Vectoring... yes, would be nice. Thought it'd be easy at first, but then realized I was ignoring supply and similar issues.

Hm. It's theoretically easy in the basic case, but if we start throwing in constraints like "don't choose routes that cause starvation because multiple groups chose the same intervening province", it gets harder to optimize. Not only do different groups of commanders and their troops move at different speeds in different areas of the map, and they only impact supply when they're actually in a specific node.

Relax that constraint, work more on a capable UI for it than multiple-simultaneous-pathing (so that it shows the routes that the armies would take and when they'll arrive, and lets the user adjust the waypoints if the thinks that there'll be supply problems, an excessively tasty target for an army-blasting spell, or a move through a province that seems to have a hidden unit-hurting site) and maybe it's doable).

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

What does this have to do with making the game more fun?

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

Some of us actually enjoy realism. Would you prefer a game which ignored morale, fatigue, maintenance, inaccuracy, friendly fire, the ability to do pre-battle order assignments... like nearly every cookie-cutter RTS out there?

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

If you're talking about realism, you've also got the same problem with unrest being generated by the simple presence of your armies in a province, regardless of whether they've been disbanded. Dom3 is actually pretty minimal on the province-management thing, being more of a wargame than a Civilization game, and you could easily take this idea about soldiers and unrest far enough for it to be a tedious micromanagement detail. Morale and inaccurate fire add a lot of fun to the game because they add new tactical dimensions that you can exploit, but I'm cautious about adding a new detail to the world model purely for realism's sake. In the real world, your population should be fluctuating slightly even without a Growth/Death dominion or huge drought/blizzards/immigration, but it's nice to have that detail abstracted away because otherwise I'd feel compelled to pay attention to it, even though it hardly matters. If the unrest from disbanding were small I'd probably feel that it was a needless hassle.

-Max

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

Weren't employed soldiers quite keen on rapine and pillage in mediaeval times too? I don't think making them unemployed would necessarily dramatically increase this.

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

If you make disbanding cause unrest all that will happen is people will either not use it or feel forced to move all their guys to one sink province in order to disband them. Is that realistic? Is that fun? Does it satisfy the people who are asking for the disband command in the first place? No on all counts.

Dom3 isn't even a realistic game. It's far more arcadey that a lot of 'risk' inspired strategy games. I mean this is a game with simple recruitment, economic, political, religious, diplomatic etc systems. If you want extra annoyances based on 'realism' then feel free to roleplay that your commander got drunk that day and failed to lead his army to attack or that your troops are unable to march during winter due to a lack of adequate blankets, or that they'll all go back to tending the crops during the summer. Why should everyone else be forced to deal with extra pointless micromanagement?

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

Just wanted to point out that if we had an API for .trn and .h files we could do this ourselves by pre-generating a .h file that continues "scheduled" movement and then just doing a "Continue where I left" on that.

There are a lot of nice things you could do if you could write .h files from a standalone app. External AIs for one, which would also let you set a player to AI temporarily and then come back as a human. Imagine a scenario where the AI fights until your dormant pretender awakens, and then you have to clean up the mess...

-Max

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

This has nothing to do with realism and everything to do with imagination. I could just as easily write a ton of paragraphs 'justifying' why disbanding shouldn't cause unrest. The decision is arbitary, and should err on not punishing the player for doing something entirely normal.

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

Ah...the old debates are the best, do you want realism vs playability/enjoyment. Its a matter of personal preference really.

Just for the record I prefer playability/enjoyment in a game rather then realism/micromanagement, so I am with the sandman on this disbanding with no strings attached.

This is a fantasy game as well with powerful magic, so there is no 'realism' anyway, nations with magic at there disposal would soon do away with 'realism'.

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

Adhering to the spirit of this thread here are the two things I'd most like to see added.

1. Improve the arena death match. Give better, randomly selected prizes, like money/gems/good items and xp. Add a new death match for squads, i.e. one commander and all the troops he can command.

2. Add, maze/labyrinth/dungeon type of sites, ala MOM magic nodes. Those sites are protected and their defenders must be defeated prior to the benefits of the site can apply.

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

Isn't that modeled in as provinces with special sites and special defenders? Two Cyclops skilled in Earth and Death, one wielding Hammer of the Cyclops with 50% Forge Bonus, that mountain or hall or forge or whatever Of The Cyclops (death, earth gems)... or something like that. I don't remember the details any more.

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

I have not come across this particular example but it could be just very rare. That's the problem really provinces with special sites and defenders are incedibly rare, I would prefer them to be uncommon not rare. At the moment 80% of provinces are really virtually the same and thus boring and bland. The only differences between them are income/terrain, wether it produces a nature gem or fire gem or whatever. In order to spice things up you after mod the map/game or set special sites really high.

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

I haven't seen them myself, but according to a thread a while back there are some 'dungeon' sites. A commander can enter these and possibly find treasure, but he might get attacked or hit by traps.
They seem to be super-rare though. I think someone put up a map file with some pre-placed.

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

There aren't that many special provinces like that, and I haven't seen all of them myself. They are very, very rare. However, if they were any more common, they'd be boring because we'd all have seen them many, many times now. In that respect, without more unique provinces being added to the game, the special provinces can't really be made more common.

Thankfully we now have a program (Ballbarian's SemiRandom) for making random maps with randomized province features chosen from a player-made list. It doesn't have that many provinces yet, mainly the special provinces from Edi's Faerun and perhaps some other maps and some rather random provinces.

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

I disagree, I have played over a 100 games of Dom3 now and I have not seen this special province, that is far, far too rare. There is no point in having something in the game if it never turns up or the chance is 1 in a 1000 or higher. Making them uncommon would keep such provinces special and spice the game up more.

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

I think there IS a point to it: the game can throw something totally unexpected at you even after you've played over a hundred games. It'd be nice if there were enough unique sites, mainly those of mediocre rewards and mediocre defenders, to make these provinces just uncommon instead of incredibly rare, but that isn't the case.

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

Shame the vast majority of players will have stopped playing Dom3 before this happens thou.

The best solution would be leave it upto the game player to decide, by giving the gamer the option when setting up the game. For example, Special Provinces which you can set from common, uncommon, rare, very rare, none.

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

I think that might have been a discussion on how such sites could be done with map commands

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

thejeff:
Yes, this is a good point. I was thinking more in the line of another option. Like being able to perform Alchemy and it doesn't cost an action.....i.e. the mage may still do something else. Having an action like "Defend Territory". And once that is clicked, have that option change to "Defend Castle". That way, you could decide whether or not to retreat to the castle or stay outside to fight the abominable hordes that wish to see you dead.

Gandalf, your points are well taken, but still miss the point. Changing ownership is not a good option. How does this work when you are building 70 percent of an elephant per turn. Who gets the elephant when ownership changes...or does it disappear? Either way....

If you don't have a spell researched that does what you suggest or if you don't have stealthy units, or the units aren't stealthy that you want to allow....that won't work. I like the castle idea, but costs a lotta money, and leaves that province at risk.

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

It wasnt really meant as a good option. Id love to see more ally stuff in the game. But it was meant to point out that some creative options have been created by other players if someone needs a method now.

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

Leaving aside the fact that this is very rare, I was referring to something more atmospheric. Maybe an example will help:

Your army enters province X and defeats the indie defenders. your water mages search for magic sites and find a layer of a blue dragon, the site is "locked" i.e. you don't get the gems from it or whatever other benefit it has. The site has an option "enter site" that is added as a possible command to commanders in the province. You order your army to enter the site. The battle then takes place in a scenery of a giant icy cave with very cold temperature against a blue dragon that is equipped with items and commands an army of say humanoid slaves. Only after you win the battle does the site become functional for you. That's my suggestion.

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

I use both Jack's site
http://dominions.realites.org/

and ballbarians tool occasionally to spice up my SP games. I generally use Jack's site and jack it up to 50% + starting provinces. So random commanders, buildings, and items sprinkled about the map...some so dangerous that they're still indy after 6 years of gameplay http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I also love having the starting province be randomized, so the AI and myself get a free commander, maybe some low level items, and a few extra troops. It can occasionally prove messy when one AI gets a really good pull and beats everyone else up...but that's the fun of it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I agree the game needs:
disband
some form of diplomacy
Hold and Fire command
Site search coordination

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

I'm not sure that I've ever seen a special defender with lootable magic items, other than Bogus, in my limited time so far playing the game. I think the difference between the current situation and MOM is that in MOM you're aware of roughly what the reward is for taking a node, whereas even if there's an automatic site in a province you don't know about it until you actually take the province. Plus, there's no map filter for sites.

I'm adding that one, actually.

3. A map filter for magic sites.

-Max

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

FYI, just in case you didn't know--Alchemy doesn't cost an action. It happens instantaneously.

-Max

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

Oh those are fairly common, when you come across a province with mages in, look at there stats, they sometimes have magic items on them. They are hard to get beause you after kill the mage before they retreat from the battlefield. Then you after be lucky again that one of your commanders/mages finds the magic items.

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

Oh, there are. Quite rare, but they exist... special groups of monsters, with pre-selected equipment (some of it unique and non-forgeable) and in some cases magic sites. There's a Paladin named Solaris with unique armor, helmet, sword and shield, for instance. One group includes three Cyclopses, if memory serves.

Might be noted that, unlike monsters hiding in a MoM node, they're vulnerable to remote spells. There's also no special 'one-time bonus' beyond the equipment, that's equivalent to an extra book or two of magic. :p

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

Play with independent strength set to 8 or 9 and you'll find a lot more specially defended provinces.

Re: 2 Things this game desperately needs
 

Here's something that I would find useful in the game:

I'd like it if you could use a tool like the Battleground Editor to actually place two opposing armies on a battlefield, hit a 'go' button, and watch a simulation played out (like Kohan).

Or is that supposed to be part of the learning curve here http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif ?