Set Battle Orders : More Options
 

Some of the highly empowered commanders have too many spell options and many(or most) of the time they dont choose the best spell for the ocation. A good way to counter this would be to give us some more flexibility in the way we "program" the caster. With some more focus the could have deepeter strategy.

It would be great if we could choose a magic Specialty when choosing Battle Orders. Say for example you want your caster to cast Evocation Spells Only or Enchantment Spells Only.
Another variation could be to make a focus by the gem type. Something like Fire Spells, Dead Spells, Astral Spells, or such.

Re: Set Battle Orders : More Options
 

I'd like a "skirmish" order for units, where if archers with ammo were closed on sufficiently by an enemy (say, 8 squares) they would move backwards instead of firing. It would be up to the player to make sure his archers were fast enough to evade the incoming melee troops, mind. I mostly think this would be nice to make horse archers a little more effective for their cost.

Re: Set Battle Orders : More Options
 

I would like a stand ground order, where your archers wouldn't move forward to shoot at enemy, but wait until they got in range and your melee units would stand in front of archers and guard them, not run forward after two turns.

Re: Set Battle Orders : More Options
 

A skirmish option would be very useful, especially for all those javelin carrying unarmored troops. The current "fire and flee" is practically useless as you have to gather the fleeing ones from all adjacent provinces after the battle. It would be much more useful if they would fire and then stay back (behind your other troops). As those two orders already exist, it would just be a matter of putting them together.

Re: Set Battle Orders : More Options
 

It would be nice if there was something related to morale that could model squad cohesiveness. I know in a rout, units are just turning and fleeing, thus the -4 defense bonus, but I think a high morale squad (or potentially a low one with good rolls) should stay under the command of its commander.

It would model fear effects nicely since a lot of units exposed to fear would lower the morale of the squad.

Jazzepi

Re: Set Battle Orders : More Options
 

Yes, it would be nice if a unit that does a controlled retreat from a battle didn't scatter. However, with a bit of preparation you can leave commanders in all provinces the army can flee to, or just have enough commanders in battle so that random chance distributes them to all necessary provinces. In theory you should be able to pick them all up again and send them in for more hit-and-run attacks, although they might get very piecemeal and it will become steadily harder if they scatter over more provinces.

I'm not sure if I've got the mechanics right on this but...

I think the movement order is semi-randomised. If you had 5 armies with fire and flee attacking an army trying to move into your territory, you should have a good chance of engaging that army in the province it is coming from as at least one of your armies hopefully should move before the target army. Therefore it won't go anywhere. If he can't kill your archers fast enough, potentially you can stop the enemy army and do plenty of damage to it for a few turns.

Re: Set Battle Orders : More Options
 

Movement order doesn't work as you suggest. But you still have a chance of stopping him with your approach.
Assuming one of your 5 armies is coming from the province he's attacking, there is a decent chance they will fight in his starting province. Your other armies will have no effect on his movement, but if the fight does take place in his starting province they will join in.

Movement between friendly provinces takes place first. Then all movement into hostile territory takes place simultaneously. When armies would pass each other (A->B and B->A) there is a chance they will fight in either province or a smaller chance they will miss each and swap provinces. These chances appear to be based on the size of the armies.

Re: Set Battle Orders : More Options
 

Fire and hold would be nice for archers, especially for Sauromatia so you don't poison your troops, instead of hold and attack and let all your archers get slaughtered.

Re: Set Battle Orders : More Options
 

Both Fire & Hold (e.g. Sauromatian androphag archers) and Hold & Fire (javelinists) would be useful. The Stand Ground order would be problematic, because if two armies faced each other with those orders, presumably nothing would happen until the turn 50 autorout.

Re: Set Battle Orders : More Options
 

Any orders which make units hold position extensively or move backwards instead of forwards just dont have a place in Dominions combat. While they seem reasonable to you and I, in the real world, they break the model of dom combat which is that it always progresses forward without ceasing. And I believe it does so with good reason - as Edi points about above, if you give orders which hold back or wait excessively you end up just having armies sit around and see how long they can stare at each other. This is a battle! The armies need to get in there and fight and resolve it.

To get this thread back to what the OP was about tho: I think Atredi's suggestion is a great one. Others have suggested spell lists, and selecting spells which the AI should never cast, but these are too much MM. Having a really rough tool like this tho could give the player more flexibility without much Micro.

Re: Set Battle Orders : More Options
 

I would like a "Cast this spell over and over no matter what happens" command. I second the skirmish one, too.

For that matter, it would be nice to be able to set some prioritary spells of our own...

Re: Set Battle Orders : More Options
 

+1. It's really boring to watch my s1f4 mage waste his time to body eternal instead of falling fire.

Re: Set Battle Orders : More Options
 

I agree entirely with the stand ground problem. Although you can possibly do sort of do that by setting a commander to stay behind troops and giving his unit guard commander orders. If they are archers, they may even fire if enemies are in range - I can test it over the weekend if no-one else does.

I was pretty much assuming for a "skirmish" order the unit would move forward initially, start firing/retreating, and then move forward again once ammo was expended (or couldn't retreat any more as the back of the battlefield got in the way).

Hold and fire would be nice. Although I guess with good placing you could put your archers far enough behind the frontline that they'd move up for a few turns and then start shooting when the enemy got in range which would be a bit like hold&fire.

Re: Set Battle Orders : More Options
 

Maybe if you could program your commander to give retreat order, and all troops under his command would retreat to the same province, avoiding the scattering. This would make all kinds of fire and flee tactics more useful.

I've always wanted more scripting options to make battle tactics more interesting.

Re: Set Battle Orders : More Options
 

Yes--if a commander retreats his troops haven't routed they should come with him.

Re: Set Battle Orders : More Options
 

I actually thought of making the same suggestion, it would make mobile archers a lot more useful. As it is now they rout to any number of different provinces and its a pain/disadvantage for using hit and run tactics.

But maybe this is WAD: think of how easy it would be to have constant skirmish battles where you have, say, 40 crossbowmen fire off a damaging volley and flee, arriving intact in a neighboring province only to repeat over and over again.

My suggestion would be to give (if possible) this ability to retreat+reform only to FAST archers like horsebowmen and maybe some fast skirmishers but not to every unit and certainly not to mages.

Re: Set Battle Orders : More Options
 

I would like the order -

Don't kill your Communion Slaves by casting Blade Wind at fleeing barbarians.

<3

Re: Set Battle Orders : More Options
 

How likely is it for the devs to script new orders?

Re: Set Battle Orders : More Options
 

Not very.

Re: Set Battle Orders : More Options
 

As Edi wrote... it's very unlikely.

It would be nice if troops had orders the same as commanders allowing 5 specific orders before a general order is followed.

Re: Set Battle Orders : More Options
 

That sounds even more unlikely. :(

Re: Set Battle Orders : More Options
 

Improved scripting would have to be the number one gameplay improvement left in Dominions, I reckon. It is so frustrating to have units doing stupid things, and while there is an artform to having your units do what you want them to, it poses a massive barrier to new players.

To be honest a complete overhaul of the scripting system, blacklist, and army AI would be enough to justify a Dominions 4 just of itself, I'd happily pay the price of a new game if that improved substantially.

Re: Set Battle Orders : More Options
 

As long as we're on hypotheticals here, I wouldn't mind seeing a way to employ a non-square formation for a squad (in particular, a row formation would sometimes make much more sense).