[mcv]

Originally posted by Miles:
Most of my problems with Dom2's endgame is the busywork. I think the endgame would be much improved if we could get rid of some of the busywork. This might include:

• A Continue Forging this item command.

I've read somewhere that you can do that with rituals, but it's not obvious from the UI, and I don't understand why they didn't add the same feature for forging. Or allow me to set a forge queue or something. It's not like I'm suddenly going to move them around or something.

[quote][*]A Continue recruiting this commander/units command. New units in this mode should automatically be assigned to the new commander.[/list]

Exactly! You can make a huge build queue for normal units, but you have to add the commander by hand each turn. I'd like to queue my commanders.
It would also be nice if queued units that won't be built this turn, didn't cost me money right away.

• A MoveTo a province command.

Or being able to set waypoints, so you can specify the exact route to take. In any case, movement should be easier, because moving large distances is really redious as it is right now.

• Being able to easily demote commanders (to unit).
• Being able to stack commanders (with their armys) under other commanders on the Army Setup screen. This way, multiple armies could be represented and managed by a single commander.

Both also big on my wish list. Armies, Groups, or whatever often consist of several commanders and mages, but they belong together and need to move and do stuff as a group. Allow commanders to be subcommanders under another commander. Let me group my 2 dozen sages, so I can move them if they're threatened, and I can find the occasional priest, mage or enchanter or huge army a bit easier.


The single player game also needs some massively overpowered toys to reward the endgame. Something like MOO1's mauler beam. Or MOM's 'Mastery of Magic' spell. Or XCom1's supervehicle.

These things would devastate multiplayer. However, they would be extremely rewarding in singleplayer.

Not necessarily. If everybody has access to the same super items, it can still be balanced. Just don't lag behind.
In Stars!, the end game hull, the Nubian, is way better than anything else. Being the first to reach it is a huge advantage. Fighting Nubians with Battleships is a lost cause. So everybody makes sure they don't lag behind, and suddenly everything is okay again. The same goes for weapons tech, actually.

It depends on what the tech/spell/whatever does, ofcourse. It doesn't have to be a "you win" spell, just something that lets me move my huge armies around a little faster. The Vanheim commanders are great for this, if you're on a watery map. Magic items, enchantments and whatever that would allow me to teleport/fly a huge army to any friendly province within a certain range, would be great.
Ofcourse all players should be able to do something similar, so it can't be just a single high level astral spell, the effect should be
reachable by different routes. Perhaps earth+construction allows you to build some sort of railroad, air magic allows you to forge something that can fly an army from A to B, perhaps a nature spell leads you across a hidden, magical path to a forest province of your choice. That sort of stuff.

There are a couple of things that do something like that already, but The Flying Ship is unique, making it inherently unbalanced if it actually increased your speed on the map (which I think it doesn't, does it?), Cloud Trapeze and Teleport work only on the caster, and not on an entire army (I think they arrive too early in the game for that), and Stygian Paths kills your army. (I'm sure there are more, but I had to search to find even these.)

So the idea is there, but they didn't dare to do anything with it, for fear of making it too powerful. However, at least travel through your own territory can get really slow and tedious on a big map, and making that a bit faster would only help the game. Civ has railroads that do this, MoO had stargates, Stars! has stargates quite early in the game, even, and it doesn't hurt the game a bit. I think something with a similar effect would keep the endgame of Dom2 a lot more playable.


mcv.