Incentives to patch the game?
 

I had bought Dominions 3 in June.

I don't have internet access from home.

I would patch it but I need a USB key to do it from work to home.

Can you guyz, give me all the good reasons for me to patch it?

I enjoy the 3.00 versions with his bug. And I got so lazy (or addict to the game) that I don't take the time to patch it (and buy that usb key).

Does the last 3.10 patch includes all the patches from 3.00?

What annoy me the most on the 3.00 is to search my commander in a lot of provinces with chaff.

Does the patch includes commander icon on the strategic map like the spy got? It is a nice feature to practice memory, but after a couple of day without playing (sometimes... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif, I find myself to seek all my province to find those commanders... and I miss sometimes a couple of the transit commander on their way to the front line. (or perhaps a next commander function could alleviate a bit of the PITA of searching commanders in remote province)

Regards,
Jourdelune

Re: Incentives to patch the game?
 

Why don't you just hit 'n' for next commander?

Re: Incentives to patch the game?
 

3.10 does include all the patches, so you just need one.

No commander icon, but there is a next commander function. Always has been, actually. 'n'

Re: Incentives to patch the game?
 

As for incentives to patch the game, at least five new nations have been added, a lot of new magic sites, events, icons for abilities that didn't have icons before, bug fixes obviously, balance fixes and so on and so on.

And yes, the only update you need is the latest one.

Re: Incentives to patch the game?
 

Pretty cool, I will try it tonight. I hope that the next commander function will only take the commander in Defense stance. Cause, a commander in research or in patrol or in construction don't appeal me for the used I want of it. (but could have use on search magic site stance)

Jourdelune

Re: Incentives to patch the game?
 

Just the major crash bugs fixed between 3.00 and 3.06 are worth it, never mind the additional nations and other stuff. For a list of what has been fixed just since 3.04, see the shortlist thread at the top of the forum. For the earlier fixes, see the patch download page changelog or the progress page.

Re: Incentives to patch the game?
 

'n' only cycles through commanders without orders (in defense or hide stance) and for some reason commanders that are maintaining a siege.

Re: Incentives to patch the game?
 

My favorite setup is 400 province 4 computers opponent. I go for epic wars. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif The crash, I am so used to them, that I crash less often. (doing alt-tab only after save game for instance)

The generations of turns had crash me a couple of days ago. I had to reload from my last save (I always save at end of turn http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif) to regenerate 4 times to continue the game.

I would love to have more magic items and spells to have more choices. On that regard, my feeling is, that only a couple of items are worth forging every time. If we can hove some items that can be equivalent to all those SC items, it could be better for equipping some diversity on SC. Same for spells... key spells are always scripts. But they are always the same along the path of research I find.

I can surely change that pretty easy, using another races. But I cannot go away from Pangaea. They are the first nation on 10 different test game I have done, that I had feel good about it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Jourdelune

Re: Incentives to patch the game?
 

I believe 'n' looks through anyone on "defend", "hide" or "siege".

I do wish there was a way to tell it, yes I'm leaving this scout on hide, don't come back to him this turn. Paging through the scouts trying to make sure I didn't miss anyone I wanted to move gets old fast. Minor nit pick though

Re: Incentives to patch the game?
 

It autosaves your turn whenever you hit e

Re: Incentives to patch the game?
 

You can also hit F1 and it will bring up all your commanders and a host of information about your nation.

Re: Incentives to patch the game?
 

All of this is in the manual of course...

Re: Incentives to patch the game?
 

In this vast world, we get two type of people:

Those who read the manual.
Those who don't.

For me, I got a lot more pleasure to discover by myself the features. The "n" command was unknown by me, but on the other hand I was wondering, if the patches give visual reference of where are my commanders on the maps.

People give me work around and answer my question.

I think that Illwinter should consider selling their game without the manual and with the manual. The difference in prices should be enough to let flow a lot of sales for the people complaining about the high prices for that game and for the other one who don't read that manual.

Jourdelune

Re: Incentives to patch the game?
 

Be hard to play the game if it was done that way, as the CD-key comes with the manual.

People who do not bother to read the manual are just going to have to accept that they are going to get the answer of RTFM to several basic questions from a lot of folks.

Re: Incentives to patch the game?
 

And have some problems with tree lovers, who can't accept those trees died for nothing.

Re: Incentives to patch the game?
 

If nothing else, the manual is really great when you want to try a new nation
(hmm, MA Ulm... page 136... Order and Production, Nature and Death magics, build lots of arbalests, Master Smiths and castles)
or when you want to refine your strategy
(so, what should these Master Smiths cast in battle, pg 242 onward... Alteration has nice buffs. Oh, Evoc levels 4-7 have nice damage spells, and Earth/Astral and Earth/Air spells my Smiths can get randoms in. More Alteration goodness... wow, Weapons of Sharpness! I'll focus on Alteration and Evocation for combat spells, and get Construction to level 5 when my troops have trouble dealing damage!).
The lists for summon spells, globals, battle spells and items can all be used this way.

Re: Incentives to patch the game?
 

The game is close to unplayable without the manual. I allways look up different items and spells that are of interest to me.

The patch does not make you see more commanders. But the hunter of heroes bug existing in the original is far then enough incentative to patch.

I have no idea why you need a USB key or what that is, but I guess you do not have internet at home. But surly you have friends with USB memories or just a CD burner that can hand you the patch.

I know I'm somewhat of a patch fanatic , but I allways want the latest patch to be able to play games the way they are suppost to be played.

Re: Incentives to patch the game?
 

RTFM isn't a fair answer when the manual is wrong about several key things though.

I'd use it a lot more if I actually trusted it, but it seems almost every time someone starts quoting from the manual on here like it's gospel they turn out to be wrong.

See retreating from forts, dominion spread checks etc.

Re: Incentives to patch the game?
 

The manual obviously does have some errors, some of them fairly significant. Most of those are related to complex mechanics that are not transparent to the user or to behavior that could be classified as bugs (see section on movement and especially siege-related movement and other siege issues in the shortlist). It is rather unfair to expect the author of the manual to be able to know that the mechanics he was told apply are broken or suffer from unusual behavior, especially beforehand. Doubly so since he did not have access to the code so he could verify such things in the writing phase.

For such elemental basics as "How do I cycle through my idle commanders" a snarling "RTFM" is a completely justified response.

Re: Incentives to patch the game?
 

Except of course, that wasn't the question. It was the answer, but that's different.

The OP was hoping for a way to see which provinces had commanders in them, like you can with scouts and armies. Not an unreasonable thought. But not one likely to lead to the hotkeys cycle section of the manual.

I've had "RTFM" snarled at me on software problems after 4-5 hours poring over various manuals, because I didn't know what to look for. Once someone pointed me at the right section I could usually figure it out, but it's not always clear where you need to look.

Re: Incentives to patch the game?
 

I like using the Nation Overview in the Statistics page myself. All my commanders show neatly listed there, I can easily see their skills and what they're doing... Just that if I want to see them on the map, I need to press the province's name rather than just click the name of the commander in question.

Re: Incentives to patch the game?
 

I didn't mean to "snarl" at anyone. If that is what I wanted I could have written "RTFM".

Instead I tried to subtly point the OP in the direction of the manual because I got the feeling he hadn't opened it yet and therefore had loads of similar questions.

I did this not because you MUST read the manual but to save him some time. Time better spent in a Dom3 MP perhaps.

So if I offended anyone I apologize.

Peace http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Incentives to patch the game?
 

It's too late Dedas you've offended me.

We must settle this like gentlemen.

Brutal sword fight to the death? I'll go first -stab-

Re: Incentives to patch the game?
 

Now look what you've done! He got a chest wound! How's a Twiceborn'ed undead going to get that healed, eh? Because playing Dominions is based on spellcasting encumberance, he's now worse off than he was alive! Think of the blitzes!

Next time, use poison. When the stabs are timed right, it provides a steady flow of 1hp damage, keeping the chance of afflictions down.

Re: Incentives to patch the game?
 

The poison won't do any damage to the undead, unless he's first casted invunerability or wearing the robe of invunerability thus causing his poison immunity to vanish.

Re: Incentives to patch the game?
 

I was trying to imply that poison is a good way to kill of a human that has cast Twiceborn without causing him afflictions.

Re: Incentives to patch the game?
 

I am not offended. And I didn't want to start some fight over there for that.

Thejeff got it right. He resume at best what was the situation. English is not my main language, in that regard it could be hard sometimes to express myself with the right words.

I have read a lot on those forums (all that time should have been better read the manual for my dominions productivity...), I have read some pages of the manuals, but not all of it and surely not before experimenting. It is the way I like playing.

I don't mind MP because I don't got internet at home. And I don't feel the surge to do it.

Just to give you me feelings toward the:

"Go read your manual answers."

I think forum and community are there to help people. I think those communities are rich when everybody share their views on something. When a new member of a community join and it is refer constantly on the manual, it is really counter intuitive about the community feeling.

When a noob join a community and it is turn off like that, my guess is the community don't want to grow. Don't want to share theirs views. Don't want to help. Don't know how to warmly welcome newcomers. (but here... It is not adress to people who didn't do it... it's not everybody on this forum that constantly refer to manual, and even those who does, don't do it systematically)

Edi:
"For such elemental basics as "How do I cycle through my idle commanders" a snarling "RTFM" is a completely justified response."

Go back at my first post, I never ask how to cycle through idle commanders. This is a workaround answer.

So, now that I know that we cannot see our commander on the maps, it could be called a desired features.

Dominions is a really nice game. But by not implementing the simple mechanics that a lot of successful x4 had implemented, it's like saying: Domonions is not mean to be played easily, with the access of all the informations you need to play the game. Even game that have all the in game information to be played, those game can be hard to master.

When a game need a manual to be played, you can surely ask why all those informations was not put in the game. What should be the effort to give in game hint about the turmoil level need for pangaea ? Tooltips are really easy to do, they are done by a lot of people, even a webpage maker can put them easily.

Anyway, I don't whine about it because it's the way I like to play a game. I love to experiment and discover by myself. It's like having some exercises on my learning skills.

And yes, I had played a lot of unsuccessful game. I am not a hardcore who think I can beat dominions in all the game I play. But, each time I learn something new. (and when I don't, i try a new races) And that is refreshing from any other game that I played since 2000, where watering down gameplay was the answer to try to take the console gamer on their pc game.

Anyway, my feelings about that dependency of a game manual:

It is mean to put away any people copying the game and playing it without paying for it.

It's like a cd protection system, but without using it.

And some people on this forum, prefer to don't take chance about piracy and refer to the manual the noob on their forum, hurting the general grow of the community.

And the consequences? Dominions cater to a niche market. And I surely don't need to mention civ, total war, heroes of might and magic, age of wonders ... all those 4x games have been successful in bringing those dev team the freedom to continue what they love to do: Make video game.

When players are put on a negative mold because the dev try to reduce the piracy, it's simply don't make it. Surely, you got less pirate, but you got less players that would have been interested by the game. The negative mold here is go read your manual. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif In Vanguard it was go back to WOW. Those too are niche market game with negative mold to protect something that don't need to be protect. Protection restrict expansions...

Galactic Civilization 4 got the same CD-Key restriction by patches but with 0 cd protection software. (same probs, I cannot update it from home, and worse, I need to update it with the computer the game is installed on) So, when I had bought the game and I had no way to patch my game at home, without internet... what I had think about that game? I had been cheated. I had paid for a buggy games that I cannot update because I don't got internet. That in the industry is a "evil" plot to reduce piracy... but in my eyes, is robbery of my money for a game that got intentional bug to protect them self from piracy. And so again, the people doing piracy are simply encourage to continue their ways. While for any internet user it's nice, but for those 5.9 billions people that didn't got it, that's don't make it. (so people cater on console game that don't need to be patch because first version is intentionally bug to not be played by pirate.)

Heroes of Migh an magic standalone expansion (Tribe of the East), don't got any cd protections... The game industry start to understand the principle: When you try to protect something, your fear and the mechanics put in place stop the growing and progression of your creation. When you love your creation, you give everything you can to it (even if the coding job is boring!), progression and expansion arise surely.

I really would like to see a Dominions 4, with a real great 3D engine, with a lot of more polish (informations need to be displayed where it need to be to help the players love their game -> and don't forget to put a switch off for those tooltips for the one who are like me:)) and the tools (like the pretender tool) to create units, spells, items and maps by the community. A lot of game simply give map editor, they surely can go farther and give to their players community a real easy way to mod their game (Dominions is great so far, but for anything on this world, it could be better). A Dominion 4 that could sell millions of copy­. But to have it, a lot of love should be give to the game. And I am not sure Illwinter would dream and give enough love (and money) to make it a reality (even if some 3D artist can be more cheaper than you think).

Ouf... all those lines simply because I had the feeling to be crush by a "protecting community mold" about a manual not implemented in the game. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Jourdelune

Re: Incentives to patch the game?
 

> But to have it, a lot of love should be give to the game.

A lot of love has been given the game http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif, but there are just two of us, and only one programmer, so regardless of how much love we will put into the game it will not be enough to fullfill the needs of a bestselling game.

> And I am not sure Illwinter would dream and give enough love (and money) to make it a reality

No, we dont dream of making a million sales dom4. Our funds are rather limited and we both have full time jobs (teacher and computer engineer). We arn't very interested in money, but we've earned a bit on dominions. We make what we like and if others like it as well we are pleased. Currently I'm more interested in making another game than working on a new version of a game I have developed for 10 years. It gets boring, at least the less creative parts such as interface etc.

I feel more gratified by positive feedback of a few people I like and respect, than with vast sale numbers of a game I do not like, or haven't made myself.

> (even if some 3D artist can be more cheaper than you think).

Since we can't give ourselves full time jobs as game developers it is not an option http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Incentives to patch the game?
 

Well, I must say that I can't really share the "omg it looks sooo baaaaad and the gui suuucks" sentiment of some people who have it on D3 because I used to be a huge fan of Dominions 1. ;p

Now THERE'S a game that had the most counter-intuitive GUI and the ugliest graphics I had seen in a long, long while. And it was still awesome. There's just a few things I miss from D1... And they're the lack of crazy bless effects, 100% resistances for elemental magics and the map's graphics changing when you had high growth/death and populace growing/diminishing in a province (a forest-y province turned into a wasteland and so on, it was awesome), and how hot/cold provinces really started to show that they were hot/cold... I guess it would've been impossible to do with the new map system that was introduced in D2, but still, that was awesome.

But GUI-wise and graphically, Dominions 3 is godlike compared to Dominions 1. Sure, it's no Dawn of War, but you can't make new units and mod other stuff too as easily in DoW than you can here! ANd you know, I did try playing Dominions 1 just to check some old things but it was so awkward to play and the lack of research pool started to irk me really fast - and the size of the map which shows at any given time was so small too that it just wasn't fun.

Re: Incentives to patch the game?
 

Jourdeloune, why would you like Dominions 4 to have spesifically great 3d graphics instead of great graphics, leaving the choice of 2d/3d to the developers? The latest Shrapnel Games' FRAG! newsletter (not available online, but I can provide the particular article if you're interested) discussed the necessity of 3d.

In short, there's no reason to use 3d for graphics, as far as the GRAPHICS go. It can be used to allow various gameplay elements in FPS or RTS games, and provides some problems with camera control, but 3d doesn't necessarily look better than 2d. Good 2d graphics look better than bad 3d, and while it's hard to make good-looking humans that are just 32 pixels high, it would be even harder to make good-looking humans when you have just few polygons to work with - not to mention complex forms with small animated parts such as hydra's heads, or a scorpion king (8 legs, 2 hands, a prehensile tail... it adds up). Furthermore, Dominions combat system can't use most of the 3d changes, because the lay of the land doesn't affect battles; only the dominion and scales, and sometimes the terrain of the province, have an effect in the battlefield. With no elevation bonuses and no line of sight, what could 3d be used for?

Re: Incentives to patch the game?
 

"Meant to put away" or "Mean to put away"? A fairly big difference between the meanings there. I presume you meant the first option. I don't understand the CD protection comment, since the Dom3 CDs themselves don't have copy protection that I know of.

We've had our share of pirates here and most often they get caught because they ask obvious questions that would have been answered by reading the manual. Manual referrals generally are not mean-spirited here, though sometimes you do get people snapping at you. Especially for obvious things.

As you said, Dom3 is a niche game. It's not going to get significantly more (in the sense you're talking about) players even with pirates, and pirates also happen to use bandwidth and other resources that somebody (in this case Shrapnel) must pay for if they come to the forums. There's another word for pirate, and that's "parasite". It's a fact of life that people will resent those who just try to sponge off and since most of the pirates who have been caught here have been caught precisely because of the manual or obvious lack of one, "go read the manual" is not in fact a negative answer. Just skimming it can give you a lot of info.

This does not mean that I have something against you. In fact, now that I look back on the thread, I can understand why you felt that way, but the comment about snarling "RTFM" was meant more generally rather than at you specifically. I admit that is not quite clear from the context. Apologies for that.

Vanguard is irrelevant here. Krisoffer also gave a fairly good direction as to where the game is going. Dom3 expansions are going to happen along with patches (such as 3.10, which added enough content to be an expansion on its own). The protection scheme on Dom3 does not have any problems restricting adding content to the game. It does make life hard for those pirate Dom3.

What's the relevance here to Dominions 3? This rant in a Dom3 context puzzles me, since updating Dom3 does not require an active internet connection during the process. The patches are simple executable files.

As for the evil plot, I have no experience of GalCiv, but from the sound of it, the patching issue is done differently from Dom3, so is not relevant here. It is a fact of life that the gaming market is mainly aimed at first world countries where internet connections are common and game design decisions can reflect that. It is usually also said on the box if a connection is required rather than just recommended. With Dom3, it is not even required for anything, since patches can be downloaded elsewhere and transported.

Re: Incentives to patch the game?
 

In Fantasy General, in battle, you could "possess" unit to do battle!

I know the PBEM status, but the option to have active battle on/off switch is not a problem. ( look at Age of Wonders implementations )

Giving the possibility to take control of a UNIT to do any thing you like in the combat... 3D help terribly. With 3D you got first person / isometric view / top down view without redrawing every sprites you got.

The script then play it, should give new breath to the genre. In that regard, script it and play it give some RTS combat a new feel to the game. A lot of people have bought Total War for the RTS feel of battle and TBS feel of strategic development.

The combat engine could permit it, without redesigning it a lot. (simply adding the "possess" command on a unit choices (commander only or every unit possible).

Now, you can do something new... and less boring! Give unit moves or combo, or a lot of abilities that require skills and timing to be more efficient. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif (developing a new game in the old one -> Edi http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif )

3D help to for the zoom in and zoom out model. While zooming in, you can see pretty cities and fort and so on, while zooming out we can have our old school strategic map has well.

Dominions got a nice engine (i don't know the code behind it, if it is OO (oriented object) with design pattern, it is simply easy to bring new features) you can add something new for the infinity.

I had played 2 years of Birthright : Gorgon Alliance. It was a blast. A kind of RTS tactical... (yeah it could be possible) with a nice 3D (false 3d, doom like) that give the possibilities to your heroes to do quest and dungeon crawling to get unique artifact.

That was really fun to change of pace of the game... TBS can be boring if they are always the same, night over nights... So, a 2 hours dungeon crawling for the sake of your Kingdom is even better...

And 3D... guess what... unfortunately, the gaming world sell on good looking game.

Re: Incentives to patch the game?
 

Edi:

I don't know the difference between meant and mean... :S I should look into it.

To answer all of your questions about my other post:

"Ouf... all those lines simply because I had the feeling to be crush by a "protecting community mold" about a manual not implemented in the game. "

For a newcomer (even if I lurk since June at job downtime), it could be a bit harsh to be welcome with a look into your manuals statement. And my question cannot be answer with that, because the 3.00 version don't come with commanders icon on strat map and my manual is a 3.00 version. I don't think that the manuals got a lot of updated even with all the change since 3.00 to 3.10.

And at that starting "feeling", I had expand a lot about those on the "protective mold" bring with the dependency of the manual to play the game.

While a big manual is always nice to have (a lot of game simply sell their strategic guide separately), it should not be a must to play a game. (even to counter piracy because, a dependency to play a game with a manual affect all your potential users)

It was completely a IMHO post about some incoherence of a community. While I express them, feel free to show me other way to view it, like you had done.

All in all, I don't have bad feeling toward it, since I had express myself and I have not been flame by those different point of view.

Dominions is by far the best Fantasy War Game on the market. But IMHO, it got a lot of flaw that could be addressed to be a better and perfect game that could sell millions of copy.
(control panel for spells that we don't want to be cast by our mages is a really nice features... a lot have been suggest on that forum to bring Dominion to a greater game)

Even if it is not for the money, the desire to expand a successful implementation of a fantasy war game to bring more people into it.

Jourdelune

Re: Incentives to patch the game?
 

All ideas don't work. I could go into more detail about most of yours, but that doesn't benefit anyone.

1) Player-controlled battles would make multiplayer, except perhaps 1vs1, impossible. If it was a game option, we'd have two entirely different games that couldn't both be balanced. As an example, anything with good range and good precision could be used to kill 2-3 enemy commanders, and BAM you win. White Centaur with its bow and incredible speed, any S3 mage with Mind Burn, commander with flying and 5 flying bodyguards...

2) The graphical detail is in the map image. It doesn't change with seasons, between games, etc. For there to be anything to zoom at, the game would have to use maps that incorporate magic sites, forts, army sizes, events, pillaging, seasons and all that into the map itself. That would be nice, but would mean that maps would need predefined sprites/models, and as such would need a spesific editor, which would make mapmaking harder. (Yes, it would. Illwinter editors are hard to use, and map editors of other games can be used to make Dominions maps. Just add white dots!)

It would be nice to have Dominions with unique, movie-quality 3d models and maps, down to the little C'tissian running lizards moving the tax carts and the immigrants between the massive pine forests of the Jotunlands slowly being turned into mangrove swamps by the Miasma dominion. The battles would look awesome. I doubt Dominions will ever be there, though, and I know it'd make modding almost impossible. How could you add a Vaetti Archer if you'd have to create, texture and rig a 3d model? At the moment, anyone can change the 4-pixel spear into a 4-pixel bow. It won't look good, but it will work.

Re: Incentives to patch the game?
 

3D would put a real kink in the ability to mod. I have games where the next version added 3D and the good of it was way low compared to the modding that it killed.

Re: Incentives to patch the game?
 

I agree with Endoperez, I remember when I first starting playing Dom2, I was very disappointed about the lack of strategic control over the battles. I was used to Age of Wonders and games like that. But now, I don't miss it at all anymore, and in fact, I think lack of strategic control makes Dominions much better! If there was control over battles, the game would just take forever and balancing the units would be very difficult.

Re: Incentives to patch the game?
 

Getting back to the original post... and, perhaps, this is now irrelevant because Jourdelune has perhaps already patched:

I can understand that buying a USB key is a costly solution to allow patching without internet at home. But, I suspect that you (Jourdelune) probably have a friend who already owns a USB key that you could borrow. After all, you only need it for a day. I'd be happy to lend you mine, but you're probably too far away. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Incentives to patch the game?
 

Oh, sorry. English is not your first language. I tend to forget that with people, probably because it's my second language as well, but I'm as fluent in it as my native language. More so where vocabulary is concerned.

I'll explain:

• The word 'mean' as a verb is the same as 'intend' in some respects, to give meaning in others. E.g. "I mean that you should do <x>" or similar. The word 'meant' is the past tense, i.e. things that have already happened.
• As an adjective, 'mean' is the same as nasty, unpleasant, malicious. E.g. "Cheating on her was a mean thing to do" or similar.

That's actually why I asked about it, because depending on which usage of the word you read into those sentences of yours, the outcome is very, very different. Either "Meant to deter piracy" or "being mean to pirates", and the latter interpretation (which, looking at it now, would obviously be incorrect) would make your words come across as sympathetic toward pirates. This is about as good an example of the pitfalls possible with language barriers.

Re: Incentives to patch the game?
 

That post made me chuckle. Your main interest is probably to give some feedback to improve the game, but you have no idea how much work there is involved to get something like that. Remember that this is, programming-wise, a one man show. Most of the current users would probably not like something like that (which is kinda pointless in a turn-based game, anyway, it's just some gimmick) or even it won't work on their low-end systems, and people that are not users yet still wouldn't care at all. To me, a feature like that has never been real successful, or let's say: useful, in a game. First that comes to mind is Dungeon Keeper. I have recently seen some game where this seems moderately useful, a game which started as some FPS TeamArena clone and then had a RTS game added on top of it ("Commander Mode"). If you want a game like that, I suggest you should try playing it. But the FPS/RTS genre mix always seems lacking to me. Concentrate on your strength instead of producing an undefinable soup.