New Automation Features
 

New day, new suggestions - I'm doing MY part to delay the game, are you? At any rate, these are abilities that I suspect are present for the AI, and it would be nice if humans had access to them as well. If they are NOT present, it seems they would be useful AI subroutines, anyway.

1) Commander Go-To Command.

Click on a commander, change orders to "Go To Province", click on target province. The commander travels there along the shortest route, keeping the "Go To Province XXX" command until one of 4 things happen: a) you change his orders, b) he arrives and clears his orders, c) the path becomes blocked and he clears his orders, or d) he cannot progress farther without entering a province that has inadequate supply, so he clears his orders. I'd like this a lot, especially when the front is far from my homeland.

2) Auto-Search Command.

Issue to a mage or priest, who will keep the Auto-Search command until you change his orders, or he runs out of provinces to search. Each turn, the commander selects the closest province in which his magic levels would allow greater searching (from the new site-searching list). He goes there, searches it, and then selects the new closest valid province. When no more are valid, he clears his orders.

3) Auto-Site-Search Spell Command

Select a mage in a lab, choose a site-searching spell, and the mage will auto-target it at a new friendly province each turn, that has not been searched to level 4 in that element yet. When he runs out of provinces or gems, he'll clear orders. Ideally, if 2 mages are set to auto with the same spell, they should not target the same province on the same turn, but hey - I'm human, and I do that sometimes:)

4) Scout/Spy/Scry Results List

Not really an automation, per se, but it would be really useful if the most recent scouting results were saved in in a list so you don't have to write them down. Kind of like Stars!, looking at information about a province would say "This information is 3 turns old" or "...from turn 27".

And yes, I know none of these are perfect... but they would tend to reduce micromanagement for humans, and possibly make the AI more powerful / easier to program, depending on how it is designed. Any suggestions for improvements are welcome!

-Cherry

Re: New Automation Features
 

I like all these suggestions http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

One other thing I'd like to see is a way to queue orders for commanders, mostly to allow you to set up a mage or two to search provinces in the order you designate, rather than the auto feature as described below (ugg, usually its above...)

It would also be nice to somehow automate commanders picking up and dropping off troops from one (or many) province(s) to another. Seemingly these tasks will be easier than they were in Dom1 as one can use the Empire Screen, but a little more automation or scripting, or whatever wouldn't hurt http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: New Automation Features
 

5) Commander Queue

One commander/turn/province is fine, but if you want to make a priest EVERY turn in a province, it is tedious to have to enqueue one every turn. A commander production queue (even a short one, of 5 units) that still only produced 1 commander per turn would be a godsend.

6) Multi-unit Enqueue

In Total Annihilation (the king of RTS anti-micromanagement features) you could shift-click to enque 5 units instead of 1. That would be REALLY useful when enqueueing militia, slingers, lobo guards, and other cheap units. A "Repeat" order would be nice, but would require modification of the game engine.

7) Enqueued Resources Counter

Want to know how many resources of units you have enqueued in a province? I always do. Why not add a counter, so people don't accidentally go over the max (and enque things that can't be produced that turn)?

8) Production Dequeue

Sometimes, when my buget is tight, I go one unit over the max that can be produced in a turn... and I have to clear the entire darn queue to get it just right. The ability to dequeue the Last unit would be very helpful to people who like to perfect their queueing.

-Cherry

Re: New Automation Features
 

Maybe Messages about construction completion could also be handy? I know that 2/3 of construction is done in next turn, but it would be helpful if I can click-snap to the province to give new orders to commander. Also, it would eliminate the need of constantly checking upon the castle construction.

Re: New Automation Features
 

5 and 6 look really good and easy to implement. 7 and 8, if I understand correctly are already in. Remind me - in Dom I you could not remove Last unit from queue but only delete entire queue?

Re: New Automation Features
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Correct, which bugs me cuz it seems like you lose some resources when you delete at the start of a new turn with some resources already spent on the unit.

Its a pain when you want to make a correction to your build list anyway...

Re: New Automation Features
 

Well, your pain is gone. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

You can delete Last unit in queue now just by clicking on units in queue.

Re: New Automation Features
 

Goody! 2 down, 6 to go http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: New Automation Features
 

I'd say both 5 and 6 sound good...especially 6. It always hurts the fun of a game when you want to queue up 50 *insert cheap unit name* and you have to click 50 times. Plus you mentioned total annihilation which gets you bonus points.

Re: New Automation Features
 

The only problem I see with queueing commanders is that the gold is deducted as soon as you queue them, making it difficult perhaps to do with more expensive commanders. I'd rather that the game didn't deduct that gold initially, but rather at the start of the next turn, of course that leads to other problems with running out of money between turns and what units get funded and which don't...

Still I think queues in general are a good idea, as would be the ability to transfer units from province to province without a commander, give them a 1 turn arrival delay or something or make it so that only newly built units can be vectored to new provinces, heck limiting it to only adjacent provinces would help out some.