Suggestions for new patch
 

I would like to hear some opinions and suggestion on this matter. Here are the thing I would like added to some future patch, feel free to share your thoughts.

A command to transfer gems like blood slaves would be very nice. If you have 100 clams or blood stones it is very frustrating to move every turn.

I would also like to see a bigger magic treasury, if you're playing a 50 provinces map you have 50 spots for items same if you are playing a 500 province map.
Sure you can give items to commanders, but I often forget what I have on commanders, and there are always spells like fires from afar and murdering winter to ruin your day.

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

If your clam-carriers are in a province with a lab you just need to click on pool to get the gems. But maybe I'm misunderstanding you here.

Well, the only thing I'd like to see would be the ability to change the position of commanders in the unit queue. Just click on a commander portrait and shift-click on another and they change places.
Communions are such a cool feature, and the different behavior of slaves depending on casting order is nice, but it sucks that you can't control it.

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

Pool transfers ALL the gems from ALL the commanders, including the gems you put on your mages for spells and stuff like that, and that can be disastrous.

Edit: What I mean is you select the mages with clams and shift+z just like when you transfer blood slaves.

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

Having that would certainly expedite micromanagament. So instead of pooling just blodslaves from the commander, it might as well pool all gems in the same manner.

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

you've ever had 100 clams/bloodstones before? I mean like in a serious game? The time it would take you to get that many the game should have ended long before... around turn 50 clamming becomes potentially wasteful because the game might end before you would get a pay-off from each new clam. Well... at least around turn 50 in any game I would play in, but I try to avoid large maps, not to mention mega maps.

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

I've also suggested this some time ago in one wishlist thread.

I've had about 80 clams in a game on a small map with 8 players, so yes it is quite possible in a serious game. Clamming doesn't become wasteful in late game, especially if you put the forge up.

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

I completely agree with illuminated one. The ability to move commanders in the order sequence would be mondo. Yes, mondo. It would be so good it caused me to reach back in time and grab that word, as no modern word suffices. Even if it was very limited and didn't entirely solve the issue, even partial control over that stuff would be rad. Yep, rad.

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

If you hold down shift or ctrl when transferring gems, it transfers 5 or 10 gems at a time. This would save a lot of effort for players managing late game blood nations.

Also, when you transfer items, move the Laboratory to the top of the list rather than the bottom.

For the clams issue, I've had 100+ in a couple of games with 10-14 players and ~15 provinces per player. It is entirely possible to have to manage that many.

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

I too agree with Sombre and Iluminated one about changing the commander position.
Omnirizon, I'm in a mid size game with much more than 100+ clams, and another 5-10 each turn depending on the situation, so that's too much micromanagements, and the game is far from over.

I consider that clamming could become potentially wasteful because your not using those gems for GOR or items or spells and you might meet your end before they pay off.
And if you plan on clamming you need to start early and by the time you reach turn 50 you'll know if it's worth continuing to forge them.

Edit: Zhao has a good point about the laboratory, I'd also move the throw away button, one easily makes a mistake like that and doesn't even notice.

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

About the order affecting reverse communions, I feel I should remind you about a conversation of some time ago - where KO said it is possible that in future patches all the communion slaves will be busy catalysing the power of the master, and so be able only to fight if required, not to cast spell.

Nothing certain yet, but I can just agree with this solution, if you ask me. I've always found those a bit of weird.

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

Don't you just love it when something that developers didn't put there on purpose makes the game even better. I think I've used more reverse communions then regular ones so far.

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

I think there should be a switch to filter the commanders, whose gems should not be pooled, and even be automatically resupplied as far as they are in laboratory provinces and gems are available.

But for this patch, my pesronal wish is more summons and features for the war underwater. And how about new races like EA machaka or MA Bogarus?

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

Some units of Muspelheim giants :D

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

I would certainly like to keep that they can fight or fire bows, but I wouldn't have to much against it if they couldn't cast spells anymore.
However being able to change the casting order has some other benefits. If you're using a crystal matrix then you want all the slaves casting communion slave before the master in order to get a defensive buff or strong spell cast on the first round.
Also if you combine some mages without a communion it would be a good way to optimize scripting.
For example when an A4 mage casts Storm and A2 mages cast Storm Power after that or a priest blesses all mages before they cast their first spell.

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

I can see the transfer request since it should be fairly easy to just make Shft-Z work on slaves AND gems.

But the change of sequence on commanders would have to be temporary for that one turn or mean that the game would have to maintain a list of the preferred order. What is that now? 50,000 commanders?

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

9000 commanders per game, max. Still too much.

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

I would also support that. But even if that were true, it would be nice to be able to influence casting order.

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

Changes a few days with the demo has made me want:


Open ended random magics for 10% chance paths, i.e. 1 in 100 should get +2 1 in 1000 get +3 (split rather than grouped, I would think) etc. Not important, just whimsical oe consistency.

Starting nation points should be moddable for both SP and MP.

A variant of ulm that has sacred black knights, just for funsies. (replacing black steel with the shroud is just silly.

Rare recruitable independents, that can heal afflictions... i thought witches fit the bill, but it was just flavor text.

--

Rabe who has the game but hasn't installed yet, for fear of having no life.

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

Both can be done via modding.

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

LA Ulm has sacred Black Templars (and Hochmeister commanders, and Black Inquisition). It also incorporates Black Forest theme of Dom2.

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

That would be kinda neat if Witches and Druids had maybe Healer (20). It's awfully low, would take a good handful of them to even hope to get Disease or Feeblemind off, but it would be a nice reason to actually purchase them. ;)

Also, Enchantresses should be able to Seduce. Meow. :happy:

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

The two changes I would like to see is: First, the ability to trade research, and steal it.(Like MoO2) Second: The ability for nations to co-exist in the same province, (using something similar to move and patrol) This order would be move and co-exist. Please note If both parties don't give the order to cooperate, They fight... :D

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

Sharing a province can already be done via castles. I use castles to allow allies to pass thru my territory.

Stealing research might be cool. Maybe make Spies more useful. But trading tech I think would be bad.

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

I like both Bwaha's ideas. Especially the second one. I'd like a system that makes alliances easier to implement. Perhaps to go with that would be an option to cede control of a province to others.
And at the risk of making the diplomacy simplistic I wouldn't mind a simple dimplomacy for the AI...
Something along the lines of "don't attack me" and "declare war on nation c" With referance to score graphs, gifts and diplmacy laready in place, perhaps even a way to stop an ai from being at war with you...

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

Maybe I'm counter-current but I always thought that the whole idea at the base of this game is RELIGIOUS wars. All of our units are more or less religious zealots, and the one who gives orders is a Pretender God which looks with EXTREME, UNCONCEIVABLE hatred to whoever is on the way to his goal of ascendance. While to reach that goal we have the need to create temporary pacts, peaces or even "let's go together against a common enemy", including something like coexisting and happily cooperating hand-in-hand, in the game mechanics themselves, doesn't appeal to me.

But I'm the one who pretty much always dislikes potential changes of this game and likes it as it is, so don't consider me too much :D

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

A simple solution that will fix most of the clam harvesting problem:

Any creature which generates gems either naturally or via items and is sitting in a province with a lab should transfer those gems to the lab.

This leaves only blood hunting (where you might not want to put labs in every province being hunted) that would need micromanagement.

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

Good point Tifone, maybe we shoud have a zealot tag for those types of troops that would just attack everyone else... but not all soldiers are zenophobic mad men even in relgious wars, and most of them are clever enough to do what their god(who happens to be there personaly)says. Hmm we couldn't have two pretenders in the same province either though...

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

I would very much appreciate it if, when you have a stealthy commander selected, their default move command was move instead of sneak. I can't count the number of times I've accidentally snuck with a commander that really needed to move to a province.

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

I think we could use a next increase in troops and commander limit. I am a bit worried about Kingmaker hitting 9k commander limit.

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

Speaking of defaults, I wish the default on mages was research. Which would of course fall to defend if there was no lab.

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

I'd like to see Blesses separated from the magic your Pretender has. Pretenders would still be built as they are, currently, but you'd pay a little less for magic paths and levels, and you'd pay separately for whatever Bless you want to give your Sacreds. Pretenders would have bonuses or maluses that would affect the cost you'd pay for that particular Bless.

Separating them out would allow more types of Blesses-even Pretender-specific ones-to be added to the game, without having to add whole new types of magic, and it would also make modding the Blesses easier, and maintaining balance easier too.

Furthermore, it would allow balancing between different types of Blesses, and more, and more interesting and/or powerful types to be added, but at the cost of design points, or force you to choose a specific Pretender type. And, ofcourse, it could be used to make various less popular types of Pretenders more attractive.

This would have the added effect of more closely relating Pretenders and their percieved domains of influence, so that instead of adding *any* Bless, relatively easily and cheaply, to any Pretender Chassis, you could still allow all the choice we have now in Pretender creation, but limit how their divine-now separated from magic-power reflects upon their sacred followers.

For example-a god of ice, the Niefel Pretender, for example, might not even *have* the ability to bestow a fire bless to his followers, but he could grant the Water bless, as well as-for instance-a cold weapons bless, or a bless that strengthens his followers' armour in cold weather.

You could still give him fire magic though, and you'd still pay more for it than for the water path.

You'd be able to pick and choose the blessings your Pretender granted, from whatever options are open to that Pretender (some Pretenders might grant less expensive, or more unique "innate" blesses, starting at various levels of power, that you could then improve upon in Pretender Creation, while others would have to pay "retail" for Blesses from a pool of common choices), without having to pay a ton of design points for a path that it doesn't make a lot of sense for your Pretender to have, so that he/she/it can grant a power that it doesn't make a lot of sense for your Pretender to grant.

You still might end up paying a lot of design points if you want a good Bless, but the investment would make more rational sense, and involve less min/maxing alchemy.

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

I don't think it would in any way eliminate min/maxing (it's a much larger problem than Dominions can solve ;)).

BUT, I do think that's a great idea. It would take a bit of work to implement, but wouldn't be all that hard, since the blesses are determined at pretender creation, so are encapsulated into a small segment of the coding.

It's probably a lot to ask, but would be so cool. ;)

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

I doubt you'd need a list of the preferred order.
The commanders have to be stored now allready in the turn files (of course) - I suspect in some large structure.
All that would be necessary to change the order would be to change the fields of the commanders in that structure which should be doable without need for extra RAM or complicated coding.
Well, of course I might be mistaken with the history of affliction and heroic skills each unit has got, but I'd be willing to try and make an external programm for that if it doesn't make it to the patch and the devs have nothing against it.

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

As I understand, the developers are currently modifying Yomi/Shimuyama/Jomon. So, some changes it would be nice to see:
1)Yomi demons need some sort of hp/prot/def increase, or something else to make them more powerful.
2)A bit of a power-up for Jomon infantry, something like less encumberance maybe?
3)Remove old age from Jomon priest, who is currently quite useless
4)Mages should be able to cast most of the national summons(with boosters, at least). Maybe some sort of dark sorcerer to summon Yomi can be added?
5)Also, Kitsune should be able to Seduce, obviously.

Oh, yes, and it would be great if the bug with typing capital letters would be fixed.

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

Sorry, but no thanks. Expecially for mages with random picks, I want to be able to search for the newly rectuited ones and look what I've got new just with the "n" key, not trying to remember all my previous mages :D Also, If I was recruiting this mage for a specific task, better to find him with "n" instantly or so, instead of having to remember that and search him in my countless provinces and researchers :D

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

I would like to see a few interface enchancement.

*F1 should remember where you scrolled last time, so you do have to frustrately scroll down everytime.
*PageUp/PageDown should work in F1 screen.
*Add a sort ability on F1 screen. For an example, you can sort province by name, or income, or unrest, and you can sort all mages by earth magic and so on.
*Expand filter ability on F1 screen. You can filter commanders to show/hide those who are idle or doing particular things, like research, or those who have items.
*Show castle/lab/temple on F1 screen.
*Recruit directly from F1 screen. (maybe with right click on the province)

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

Heck, if the up and down arrows worked on the F1 screen I'd be happy.

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

Illuminated One:

Commanders are sorted by ID, so now to change their order on screen you'd need to change unit ID. And that is not an easy job.



There is very very small chance Illwinter will do anything we suggest here. It is just next spam topic with wishful thinking, we had plenty of them already. And most of them would require serious rewriting of the code [so dom4, which ain't happening soon].

Festin:

Yomi should get a Demon Gate, smth like R'lyeh one, but well, with demons.

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

Now that's a nice idea. More summoning gates like R'lyehs but with different summons would be a great thing to see. It would be nice and thematic if LA Marignon had one, too.

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

An evangelist gate?


An unexpected event has occurred in Hybernia.

Tammy Faye Baker appeared and swallowed 20% of the inhabitants of the province. Most of the rest died of fright.

:angel

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

I also think it would be really useful to have an in-game troop/commander/province count for your nation. Probably in the Nation Overview screen. It would be much less mind-breaking than trying to count them all by hand and calculator on the occasion you might wish to :) I don't know about anyone else but there are times I find myself wishing I was playing sp games on the llamaserver to have more access to that sort of data.

Also, about Yomi- Being used to the idea of demons being associated with human sacrifices etc, it feels very weird that Yomi, the only actual nation of demons in the game, doesn't have any blood magic or demonic summons iirc. I suppose it's probably not as thematic with japanese mythology as it is with others, I admit I have a pretty poor knowledge of japanese mythology.

One thing that would be really nice is if the kuro-oni could be made sacred. They seem like they're supposed to be somewhat more 'special' than the other recruitable demons, and what would be a good bless for them is certainly not one of the more standard bless strategies. They would probably have to cost a little more, but I really think they would make for fun sacreds. Plus iirc the Jomonese nations never have a very good chassis for a bless strategy, so it would add more diversity to them :angel.

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

Great post! We've had many wishlist threads, but these tend to suggest things that are hard to implement. Congrats on being the first poster I remember to have actually suggested something for the NEXT patch, instead of "some patch way to the future, right before Dom4". :up:

On 4 - some national spells are meant to be almost forgotten or hard to cast for other reason. See LA Ulm for an extreme example (Vampire Counts at B3D3). A national hero is more likely than a new recruitable.

I'd like to see some kind of dragon-slayer hero for Jomon. The wikipedia article on Japanese dragons gives several good ideas, already.

Jomon Priests could be given some kind of anti-undead ability since Japan supposedly has and has long had lots of ghosts. Is that Tien Chi-spesific, or do Jomonese have it too?


Restarting the game should help. If you can reproduce it consistently, report it in the bug thread.

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

Not happening anytime soon. The current limits replaced the old limits in patch 3.20 and I don't see another increase coming immediately afterward.

Limits right now are 9k commanders and 140k units and people are just going to have to live with them. This means avoiding freespawn nations (mainly LA Ermor & R'lyeh) on massive maps.

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

Thank you. Of course I have lots of suggestions for new Yomi/Shinuyama/Jomon units and summons, but I tried to restrict the list to the things that the developers can actually include in a patch with almost no effort.

LA Ulm has a single national summon, which is quite expensive, so you won't usually be summoning more than one Count in a turn anyway. Plus, this unit is very important for LA Ulm, as its main strategy is built around it. Finally, with Skull Staff and Brazen Vessel a Count can summon more Counts. This means that LA Ulm just takes a D3B3 pretender by default, and the problem is solved.

Jomon, on the other hand, just has lots of (quite average)national summons, and almost no way to use them. I still think that a sorcerer with Death and some random magic can make this nation much more attractive. It's easy to add too - after all, developers can just repaint an Onmyo-ji sprite into some darker color, I don't think anybody will object :)

I'm not really sure what can be done to improve priests. Maybe add a random magic pick, or even a Summon Allies ability that summons some minor spirits(Kami)? Of course, this would make them more expensive to hire.

Also, I think that giving Seduction to Kitsune is important. Currently it is just an overpriced Nature mage summon. It is reasonable with Shinuyama, where it can boost its stealthy armies, but almost useless for Jomon. It's too expensive to be used as a spy too. Giving it Seduction would make it a powerful unit, as it also can cast Charm. Jomon is really underpowered right now, so it will not be unbalancing, while giving players an intersting and fun strategy to use. It is also thematic.

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

Actually that data is available to you. The game creates it in the games save directory if you ask it. Just add the switch --scoredump to your desktop shortcut that opens Dom3 for you. If you want a ton more info (such as watching the AI think) then also add -d up to -dddddd for how much debug data you want written to a file.

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

Hmm, I'll give that a try. But I'm not 100% sure I understand the format. Do you mean it should look like this ("C:\Program Files\dominions3\dom3.exe" --scoredump)?

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

Exactly. Switches are outside of the quotes.
The quotes are just there because the space messes up Windows reading of the command. To make C:\Program Files\dominions3\dom3.exe a single command, it has to have quotes.

There are also lots of other great switches. Changing the defaults for things like magic sites, indepts, turning on renaming. Or changing the defaults for map colors and amount of water or mountains. Or turning off music, fades, the credit screen at the end. Changing the volume of things like those mouse clicks.

http://www.dom3minions.com/docs/CommandLine.txt

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

Thank you, that is very useful to know.

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

I´d like it if the effects of spells cast by a specific mage were dispelled if that mage died or retreated, as is the case now with battlefield spells.

For example a s1 mage etherealizing two elephants, kill the mage and the elephants lose ethereal.

It would open more and funnier tactics in late game. If you could strip army of lead, fog warriors etc by managing to kill the caster.

There are lots of spells where this would not make sense of course, and those should be left as is.

I´d also like it if all (regardless of order) communion slaves could still cast, but didn´t get reduced fatigue for their own spells. But I´d like o keep the buffs cast by master affecting slaves. This could enable a more reasonable form of reverse communions, but prevent the current which is IMO a bit to weird.

Re: Suggestions for new patch
 

Casting communion slaves don't get reduced fatigue for their own spells. The benefit to the reverse communion comes from using the master's path boosting spells, particularly PotS & Earthpower, to buff the slaves.