[Saber Cherry]

Hi everyone! Been a while.

As for Dom III, I'd love to see a few things:

First, a new combat engine would be nice, though kind of a major change. But for example... putting all stats in the form of low integer numbers has numerous drawbacks. To make a helmet with better protection than 1, you have to have protection 2... which is twice as good! Thus, there are only 3 standard helmet types: none, normal, and super-heavy. Many weapons come out very similar as well, because there are not many variations of small integer combinations (attack, defense, and damage).

An entirely new combat system that used floating point calculations could retain most of the existing numbers, and simply allow greater variation for new items or old ones that need tweaking (like giving a dagger 1.7 damage, a coral knife 1.2 damage, and a copper cap 0.6 protection and .1 encumbrance). Alternately, extant numbers could be reprocessed and multiplied by a fixed value of 2 or 10 (giving normal humans 20 or 100 HP rather than 10, and increasing strengths and weapon damages by a similar ratio) and altering the dice.

Would this be worth the trouble? Yes, in my opinion. Due to the use of small integers, many units and items in the game are (statistically) nearly identical, and some are exactly identical. Others, like the series of armor types, may not be numerical duplicates, but leave no room for new additions without cloning current stats and simply renaming them. Furthermore, changing or modifying the combat engine would allow the perfect opportunity for a more advanced system, with (for example) locational protection and damage (for example, wearing a helmet would not protect you from taking an arrow in the leg, which would slow down a unit for the remainder of combat in addition to causing damage), damage type modifiers (like chain mail providing a bonus versus slashing damage, and an axe doing slash/blunt type damage, and skeletons being pierce resistant), and so forth.


Secondly... whatever the method, I wish light infantry and militia were useful, even in non-magical battles. A "Skirmish" command, a decrease in price (and increase in price of super-heavy HI), a decrease in maintenance/supply usage, possibly a battle engine change whereby encumbrance directly affects attack (and precision)... some combo of those might be helpful.


Third... there's still a problem with supercombattants. Unless you follow a specific anti-SC formula - and often, even when you do - a non-artifact-equipped SC can rip you to shreds.


Fourth... more indies are always fun! And having indy populations influence the local scales (hey, some people are better farmers, or better metalworkers, or just plain lazy...), or gravitate to certain special sites, or be easier to seduce into blood slavery... or even be violently despised by a given race and killed on site (for example, maybe Marignon cannot tolerate Amazons and their witchcraft?)

More dynamic indies might also be fun, with strong indy provinces (esp. Barbarians, Amazons, and horse-riding indies) launching raids on your undefended borders. Not raids of conquest, just to steal food, resources (production for a month), gold, and maybe a few people into slavery.


Fifth... redone scales would be interesting. Scales with 5 levels up and down, with variable cost (like +20, +20, +25, +30, +40 incremental cost for moving the productivity scale to +1, +2, +3, +4, and +5, respectively) would allow much more national specificity. Also, +5 / -5 could be off limits in scale settings, achievable only if (for example) you

chose a +4 cold race and then "Wolven Winter" was cast at your province, moving it temporarily to +5 cold.


Sixth... specifying ALL DATA in text files would be AWESOME!!! It would make modifying the game extremely easy. Some sort of CRC would be needed to ensure everyone was using the same data, of course.


Seventh... Allowing double-resolution critters with 4 action poses would be nice! Obviously, most of the critters could remain the same, and just be a little blurry, and use only 2 poses. But the crucial (most used, most seen, and most interesting) units, like Dragon pretenders, Nataraja, militia, archers, normal commanders, priests, and slingers could be redone in double resolution with, say, a "still" pose, "moving" pose, "about to attack" pose, and "attacking" pose.


Lastly, I like special sites. But I dislike games overflowing with gems. A gem cost or gem production multiplier (in game setup), distinct from magic site rarity, would be great. For example, with a cost multiplier, setting the multiplier at 110% would make 20-gem item forges cost 22 gems and 1-gem spells cost 2 gems (rounded up). Alternately, with a production slider, 70% would mean that a site that normally produces 3 gems would only produce 2.7 gems on average. Essentially, a 1d10 would be tossed for each possible gem each turn, and only tosses of 1 to 7 would yield a gem. This could affect blood slaves as well, or there could be an additional slider for them.


Great news to hear that Dominions III is in the works! I hope you guys have as much fun making it as we will playing it!


-Cherry