[kukimuki]

Just popped in here, sorry if what i have to say has already been discussed and discarded as stupid. I'm a new player, this may be bad because i don't know the game very well and good because the game itself hasn't shaped my expectations yet. Anyway, glad to see that many strat game problems that have always disturbed me have finally been solved and implemented sucessfully in this game.

First impression

* The very first impression of the game was that the first menu panel looked nice and music was good (or positively different from most games), and the landscape on the background could have been softer in shape and colors to match the nice menu. In the pretender creation it would have been better if nation and avatar selection were in the same panel as the dominion-magic-castle.

* In game selecting things like provinces with right mouse button wasn't much of a problem to get used to, but nevertheless it attracted attention as non-standard way of doing things. I would expect selecting with left mouse and opening the province info with right mouse. When looking at provinces it might be better to open the info frame at place, instead of moving the mouse and eyes away to the edge of the screen and back all the time. At that point i felt somewhat intimidated by having to learn both unusual interface and unusual game mechanics.

* 2d graphics of dom1 were quite nice. If reasonably improved, dom1 2d graphics might look much better than 3d landscape with unit size perspective graphics of dom2 imho. Maybe even better than whatever 3d graphics there could be for dom3. 2d often produces better usability (more clear overview, e.g. Starcraft compared to Warcraft3). With such long micromanagement games i am scared to think about wishes that all those tiny units should be 3d in dom3, looking slightly different at every angle. Many units often look almost identical already, it would make recognizing them even more difficult. I wonder what could be the reason for 3d? Enabling larger battlefield? Maybe an alternative could be units being able to stand closer together like Groups of people were depicted in many old paintings. Ok, i guess this time i'm just getting to extremes and full 2d dom3 isn't going to happen anyway.

* Battle afflictions is a nice feature, but maybe the removal of the pain of micromanagement it causes would be even nicer? Maybe even battle formations would become something to consider more seriously if we didn't have limps.

* If you can't issue commands during battle, what's the point of keeping battle turn-based instead of real-time? There are nice examples of real-time battle games. My wild guess is that transferring just the random seed might solve the possible problem of larger multiplayer data transfer.

* Somewhat uncomfortable to determine what spells are affecting a unit, maybe just a list of spells would be nice?

* Maybe the long time players have got used to that, but to me the friendly fire situation was and is annoying to such extreme that i discontinued using shooters and mind burn became my favourite combat spell for beginning game.

Battle orders

* Setting morale or wimpy level for stacks and heroes lower than max value or setting conditions for routing like you choose 'Cast a specific spell' would be nice.
* If retreating was what you ordered your troops to do, they shouldn't disperse. Maybe they even shouldn't disperse if enemy isn't closely chasing them, or maybe there could even be 'rear' part of battlefield where fleeing units would have time to stop and reconsider unless closely chased.
* In order for troops to flee, there should be non-fleeing enemies on the battlefield.

* 'Repeat' battle order and 'Alternative' battle order in some form if what you primary order cannot be executed. Putting the orders to be repeated between '[]' in those examples and each battle round on separate line.
Example 1:
(quickness)
[(numbness)]
Example 2 (setting preferences by '>'):
(quickness)
[(cold bLast) > (attack one turn)]
Example 3 (skirmish; assuming you move to sufficiently close range if you fire):
[(fire)
(retreat one turn)]
The problem is that there's too much unnecessary galloping back and forth if the opponent isn't advancing. Maybe there should be 'Avoid melee' order:
Example 3.a:
[(avoid melee) > (fire)]
Example 4 (setting equal preference by '=' to let the AI decide):
[(sermon of courage) = (banishment) = (smite demon)]
This may be my strictly personal opinion, but with this little detail of added control it looks simpler than the current system to me. You can just give the commands in a little bit more natural way instead of trying to take into account all possible battle situations and script a large number of 'just in case' spells that turn out useless and ridiculous most of the time.

* Maybe removing the 'attack rear' might be worth considering if it's sole (intended) purpose is to 'attack closest' from the side. It could be replaced by an algorithm that finds the path to the enemy even if it's behind a friendly stack. The fleeing units also look funny when they stubbornly try to move strainght through an enemy heavy cavalry or even a wall.

MISCELLANEOUS

* Cainehill: 'Saber Cherry : In some ways that's a nice idea, _but_ it winds up leading to some very ... cheesy tactics, where very burly high strength units wind up using tiny high speed weapons, which just doesn't seem right.'
Saber Cherry: 'Resulting speed = ((base speed) - (inertia / strength)) rounded up'
It would be more or less like (base inertia -- bare hand):
attack time = (base inertia + weapon inertia) / strength * fatigue
fatigue cost = (base inertia + weapon inertia) / strength
Maybe strength and base inertia could be incresed by e.g. 1/3 if you wield the weapon 2-handed, so that a giants might be able to wield heavier and longer weapons with shield in the other hand.
Maybe allow a really heavy hit to continue to the next target with some weapons if it killed the first one to make heavy weapons more attractive for giants.
continued hit damage = (hit damage - first target full health) / 2

* Option to disable mercenaries or set their cost higher when creating game

* All kinds of castleing madnesses should imho be better countered by other means than by limiting the castle types you can build to 1.

* Intercept enemy movement if enemy is attacking a province. This could be done by counting enemy battle rounds vs your battle rounds, if your battle rounds entering the enemy province are less than enemy battle rounds attacking the other province, you catch the enemy before it crosses the border of the province it attacked. So, if there's no militia in the enemy province nor has the enemy left any troops behind to slow you down, and there's militia or a few troops in the province the enemy attacks, then the enemy is caught. If you have faster troops, you can probably conquer the enemy token distracting troops before the enemy can conquer the token militia of the province it attacks. Just another alternative that i didn't see mentioned in this thread.

* Maybe unrest/loyalty could be somehow connected how to morale and leadership works, like commander with awe or maybe even fear should be better at decreasing unrest.

* I guess there's some reasoning behind the 'staying in hall of fame increases the special ability over time'. For a while I naturally thought that it would depend on exp, until i found a hint to the time instead. Which, of course, made me wonder why it was arranged that way. The problem is that it wasn't readily visible and i still don't have a clue, maybe just writing a few words of explanation somewhere where it can be noticed would do the trick.

* if there are strange events causing superstition in people, there would be a higher chance that some more radical event occurs in that province soon (maybe it's like that already).

* Interesting that hydra doesn't have any head slots while wyrm does. I understand that the hydra is already hyperpowerful as it is, but shouldn't it have the recuperation ability? and shouldn't tritons have recuperation?
* Oracle could have some prophesy skills, e.g. predicting some random events, maybe some Version of it could be available with astrologers. Meaning hints like 'finding a treasure 3 turns after a hero appears'.
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thanks for reading, wish you all the success at creating a game that will hopefully start a new generation of strategy games.