Playability Wishlist
 

Some items that would seriously increase playability, IMO:

1. "shirts vs skins" or "Red vs. blue" tagging via hotkey / shortcut key in the battle screen / tactical view: when a battle descends into melee, or summons start appearing, or mages start casting "control", "charm", and "enslave mind", it gets really hard to tell which units belong to which nation in battle. It would really help to be able to quickly color code or otherwise mark such units in battle... or at least, in the unit view screen.

2. Scripted Spell Redundancy Detection: When mages are in a battle and start casting battlefield-wide spells like "mass protection", the same expensive spell can get cast over and over and over by spellcaster AI. If the spell isn't stackable - it seems most aren't - it's just a waste and an irritation, and the only alternative is scripting micromanagement. It would be nice if once a nonstackable spell is cast and still in effect, it would not get recast. Spells like "fog warriors" which can get cancelled at the unit level might be allowed to be recast without restriction.

3. UNIT SORTING!!!!! When you are assigning units to commanders, and there are LOTS of different types of units, it gets REALLY LABORIOUS and painful to peck-and-hunt similar units to assign to groups. If only the unassigned units at the top of the screen would auto-sort so that similar units are grouped next to each other, it would help out immensely!

Maybe some of these things are implementable for the next patch?!?!?

Re: Playability Wishlist
 

3. I know this is an issue. What you can do is if you find a particular unit type that you want to gather into a group, double click on that unit. All the units of the same type in that single line of units will be highlighted.

Jazzepi

Re: Playability Wishlist
 

1. Would be handy. Maybe you could make the grids blue/red in the wireframe view?

Re: Playability Wishlist
 

I also think 1 would be nice.
2 I think is very important. I have seen many battles lost due to this irritating AI quirk.
3 is nice though double click a unit will choose all of the same type so this helps some.

Re: Playability Wishlist
 

1 should be doable. The codebase for red higlights for units' graphics exists already. It's seen when you hover your mouse over a unit in some screens, like the army selection. Adding a key that highlights all friendly units when a key is pressed might be easy to do.

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Unfortunately this sometimes doesn't work if there are hundreds of units there. Think freespawn races.

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I actually haven't ever noticed this fail even with hundreds of units. I've played LA Ermor, and LA R'yleh in quite a few multiplayer games.

Jazzepi

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I have had to do a weird "triple-click" when I have both many pooled units and also around a hundred commanders all with armies in the provinces. A double-click just leaves the unit hilited and also hilites the commanders and armies where the unit can be placed. But the "triple-click" selects all the units of the same type from the pool. Linux, windowed, if that matters.

Re: Playability Wishlist
 

Jazzepi, I'm not sure if it is what Loren meant, but, when you have a huge number of units in a province some units just get hidden because it can't show that many. You can't double click them if you can't see them.

Re: Playability Wishlist
 

Ah, okay.

I have had issues when casting gift of reason with the fact that too many units and they won't be displayed on the scroll list.

Jazzepi

Re: Playability Wishlist
 

Something id like to see is when in battle with a guy whos in the hall of fame. Some kind of indication to which guy it is. I kill hofers all the time and i dont even get to really see how they go down .

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well, as an extension of Theonlystd's comment...
You can always hunt and peck to find units of interest in the battle screen. But if you could color-mark or flag any unit of interest... similar to the "blue vs. red" discussion ... it might cover HOFers or any unit the player particularly wants to pay attention to.

For example, I just finished off a mega-battle (2400+), and wanted to track a few SC's I created (sea kings and golems w/ boots of flying, wraith swords, wraith crowns, stone armor, bear claws, lucky talisman) and a few supermages scripted to cast battlefield-wide spells... and it was very difficult to keep finding them to monitor their progress!

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How about having a way to mark commanders in the army setup screen to have your national flag attached to them in battle replays? It would mark units of interest without getting too graphically in the way of things. I guess colored grids would be nice for friendly/enemy designation but I think it would just be annoying having your units glowy....

I think the thing with selection issues is more along the lines of reanimated skeletons or armed soulless, where you gets several different weapon configurations for them and when you double click it only selects one weapon configuration of longdead/soulless instead of the whole bunch of them.

Re: Playability Wishlist
 

I'd like to have
- Grouping of commanders - carrying over into the army setup screen

You can do a multiple selection, and it does stick, so we're some way there. But this selection doesn't carry over into the army setup screen. So, if I have two of these "battle groups" in the same province, it becomes tedious to distribute units between them.

Re: Playability Wishlist
 

I've been keeping a list for dominions 4:
* Sort commanders by name, or magic skill, or gold cost, or really anything other than unit #, both in the strategic and tactical screens.

* An auto-disperse command in the tactical screen that spreads all of your commanders out, maybe something similar for troops?
It'd be even better if you could somehow save tactical configurations, or specify them as text files.
example of such a text file:
(commands1.txt)
TS1 :front spread: - #communion master, #falling frost, #falling frost, #falling frost, #falling frost, !cast
TS2 :middle spread: - #commion slave, hold, hold, hold, hold, !stay behind troops

We add a command which lets me load such a text file, I load it, the game engine parses it, and when I hit ctrl-1 on a commander, he automatically gets put somewhere in the front 33% of the grid with those orders.
The other painstaking thing is to set up skirmishers - small units of 5 or 6 troops spread out over a varge large area. The game has many units (markata, a number of light javelin troops) which are excellently evolved for this purpose, but it's a major pain to set up.

* Sort provinces in the nation overview. Highlight (with red background or something) units in the nation overview that need orders (see locked commanders below). Option to change what info is displayed in the nation overview (scales, dominion, terrain masks).

* Search levels displayed while picking the province to target with search spells.
Alternatively/in addition, when targeting any spell, if the brown window including a list of what all other mages where casting at the selecting province (and what they were casting) this would also be keen.

* I'd like to be able to "lock" commanders on a particular task, and have them repeat it exactly each turn whatever it is (forging the same item, mainly.)

Locked commanders should vanish from the tactical screen when you hit tab (just like researchers.)
Locked commanders should be skipped with you progress through your list of commanders with the "n" key. This way I could assign units to siege or to scout a particular tactically relevant province and still skip them with the n key.

* Insane commanders should automatically have their orders cleared when they regain their sanity.

* I'd like to be able to "lock" recruitment in a province, so that the province automatically recruits the same mix of units every month.

* On the nation overview, when I left-click on a commander, as opposed to a province, it'd be nice if it zoomed to the province instead of just exiting the overview.

* And the endless request to selectively pull blood slaves and/or other gems.

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I keep hearing about this 'tab to hide researchers' thing, but it seems like it only works in dom2, not in dom3. I can't get it working, anyway.

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DrP's list is awesome.
I agree with all the items on his list but I think the nation overview sort and the commander lock are *the* most important.
For IW to give any one of them in a patch would be so kewl.

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I don't recall any talk about 'tab to hide researchers' in dom3, but indeed it doesn't work in dom3. (And works in dom2, obviously).
I think its the change I hate the most between dom2 and dom3.

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Those two suggestions would totally make my day. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Other than that, I'd love for merc contracts to automatically renew. Or perhaps for a pop-up reminder when the contracts end? Whatever, really. I can't tell you how many times I've lost a useful merc because I forgot to renew the contract.... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/redface.gif

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Seconded! Locking commanders and recruitment are the biggest issues for me. If I could ask for anything - it would be that.

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If I had one wish....

Locking numbers of gems on a commander so that they draw from labs each turn to fill that number, and that Pool Gems commands don't take their gems. They'd also auto-drop gems into the lab if they are locked at 0.

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K:

If we are talking about that - I would want a limit of gems commanders can use per battle. I would like that 30 gems to last more than 1 battle, especialy when he needs only 3 for spells I want.

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(1) The ability to set a default action to a unit. You could make any change and it would do that action and then go back to the default (really handy for researchers that suddenly need to forge an item).

(2)When the "Generating new turn" screen comes up, I'd like to know what phase (1=recruit through 28=scouting) it is in, rather than just seeing "Resolving battle (turn #)" so I have some idea how much longer it will be.

(3) I like LA Ermor, and it is impossible to deal with thousands of troops. I have to send all my freespawn commanders in to remove the chaff so I can select what I want. What good is casting "great lamentation" if you have no access to the gals later. There needs to be a button for a full-screen view of troops so you can select them, and then go back to the "normal" view. Tartarians disappear in the chaff as well.

(4) The "Scripted Spell Redundancy Detection" as suggested by Psientist. Once my Arch Bishops finish their scripts all they do is cast "protection of the sepulchre" which only works once, instead of "anathema" or "unholy command".

Re: Playability Wishlist
 

hnchrist3:
(4) Protection of the Sepulchre is easily resisted by MR. Casting it once is very unlikely to effect most of your troops. It's probably better to use the regular Unholy Protection on any troops with good MR. Alternatively, anything that improves penetration would probably help significantly.

Re: Playability Wishlist
 

I don't think this is the way to go about it.

Rather, what I would like to see is a +/- up by the unit list, in + mode it would look like it does now, in - mode it would group all identical units in a vertical stack. Clicking the unit on the line would select all units in the stack. Clicking elsewhere in the stack would select 1 unit per click--doubleclick would simply be two clicks and thus select two units, it would not be select all matching as you could do that by taking the unit on the line.

If this were done internally as well as in the interface it would allow for far more units in the game without bogging it down. There's no need to treat the units individually other than in combat or when resolving starvation or the like.

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there can be other view where you only see 1 icon of each unit type on garrison and a number that indicates how many of them, like in Heroes of M & M.

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Is it a thread where we can post what we want for future patches or dominions 4? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I could make a really long list, but not everything would fit into playability...

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We are getting a patch soon, hopefully, any day now... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

6 patches within 16 months of dom3 coming out, now thats after sales service.

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I'm still only playing the demo (still waiting on the postie to deliver my game - so don't know if this is already possible) but if one could see the total amount of own units per province, like you can when viewing an indy or enemy province, it would cut down on one click having to then go into the army screen to see what numbers are actually there.

Edit to add.. Ah, it seems if I use the supply number I achieve the same outcome - fancy that!

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About the sorting, could there be any use for a way to select all your diseased units? I mean when you notice your army has starved for long you might want to know how many will be dead in the next few turns. Its goos you can sort the wounded and that helps lot but the disease is a lot more important affliction than for example weakened.

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The level 3, battlefield wide protection of the unholy sepulchre spell gives its targets a MR check to resist it - with a +4 bonus. This means that there will usually be some guys left unboosted, resulting in more castings.

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It would be nice if you could designate "major" afflictions (crippled, battle fright, diseased, lost a limb, etc.) and select only those units, but not the more mild ones (weakened, limp, chest wound, never healing wound, etc.)

But it's not near the top of my list firstly because I don't think it would be that much of a time savings, and secondly because there might be dispute over which of the injuries are major.

I'd also like to see a "lost a head" Injury that two headed units get the first time they are feebleminded http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

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Here are some simple playability/GUI enhancement requests for me.. Should be simple enough to be included in a patch. Note that I play solely on SP.

1. Allow for a cancel button in the Design Pretender Gods menu. Currently, there is no way to cancel the selection until the Game Settings menue.

2. Differentiate between the Mountains and Border Mountains icons. Currently the two icons are the same. The user needs to click over the icons to tell the difference.

3. The order menu for sneaking units moving to an enemy units have two "move" commands. Change either one to "Sneak" or "Move and Attack".

4. Allow for Nation Info summary (like the ones in Pretenders of the World menu) access to Nation Overview. This is mostly for the role playing purposes.

Re: Playability Wishlist
 

Here's my interface improvement wishlist, created by distilling ideas from one week of intensive playtesting http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif:

• Simple battle results: Wether the player won or lost a battle should be shown in the battle message topic, not only in the message body.
• Simple magic-site results: Simple magic-site search topics (You found x number of magic sites in province X OR You found no magic sites in province X) would increase interface accessibility in the message window.
• Gems always shown: The list of magic gems in the rituals list should "follow" when scrolling through the spells, as opposed to being stuck at the top.
• Monthly production: To produce a certain set of units and/or commanders every month, like monthly rituals. Would be a great addition!
• Lock research: Being able to lock schools when managing research points would be of great help.
• Typing in numerical fields: Being able to type in numbers in the Tax and Mercenaries bidding fields would greatly decrease chances of headaches and blistered fingers.
• Message filters: This is my single most wanted interface addition. To be able to filter out certain message types (eg. X-army is starving, Y-mage has cast Z-spell, Q-commander has patrolled W-province) would make my day!

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Sandro:

You forgot about getting results of storming castle. You now only get info about capturing the fortress, without details about lost troops.

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I think being able to rotate through all the castle production queues in castles would be real nice (next, previous between castle unit production screens).

Re: Playability Wishlist
 

I'm new here. (Hi.)
My biggest problem in the game at the time is that it's too easy to forget a commander when I, for example, want him to go from one province to the another without an army, or to search for magic sites. After the first few steps I usually forget my commanders. (Especially my spies who aren't even visible.)

- It would be nice when I could be able to cycle through all my unmoved commanders with a "next commander" button or so. It would be even better when I could flag my commanders to make him selectable or not by this button (so avoid the researchers' every-turn selection for example)

- I'd like to have a "goto" command for the commanders. I give this order, I pick up the goal country, and he moves to that without me to move him step by step. Maybe even a message when he arrives.

Other things:

- I would like to suggest you that don't give a dark background color neither to the recruiting screen, nor the commanders' background squares (on the map view), or any surface when an unit have to be visible on it. With most of the units being dark too, the unit doesn't show up cleanly, the little details are almost undistinguishable. Far better with the light recruiting-screen-backcolor of Dominions 2.

- Another vote to locking commanders on a particular task, I would be able too to forge the same thing every month.

- It would be nice when I would be able to assign a commander to another's army with all his squads. (One "level" of this would be enough, just for multiple commanders easier to move together and, especially, for the teleporting spells (for ex. gateway) to have mages who can bring armies to far provinces, without having the armies' commanders left behind.)


Thank you and keep up the good work! (And please excuse me for my bad english, not my native lang http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Playability Wishlist
 

Uh, I almost forgot it: It would be sooo nice having a "goto province" link in the magic site searching results message! (The "goto commander" isn't enough when a mage is searching in far provinces with a spell. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

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Doesn't the 'N' key do what you want?

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Yes it does, thanks. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I will be happier if I could select the commanders on whom it cycles through, but it's a great relief now, thanks http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

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I don't know if someone said it, but:

- 'forbidden list' for mages! I want to set them a list of spells they are NOT ALLOWED to cast. I have lost 16 mages to Phoenix Pyre in last turn of battle...