[magnate]

Well, it's about 27 pages since I first contributed my wishes to this thread, and reading everybody else's has given me a pretty good idea of what's important to me. I'll try not to go on too long - it seems to me that there are only three really important principles here:

1. Information, in as few clicks as possible. So make the main map screen show terrain types, site search status, age of latest intel etc., with no more than one click. Ditto for wounds, experience, items, food status, waypoints on units. Battle reports should name dead commanders and list exact numbers of unit types killed. Basically, my view is that if you need to implement the "post-it" note system that some have suggested, then you haven't provided enough paths to information. I shouldn't have to make a manual note on the map that there is a library here or a bunch of indie knights there, I should be able to see this in a pop-up or with a single click. Perhaps map overlays are the answer.

2. Flexibility - never underestimate the diversity of the user population. Some love randomness, some hate it. Some love precision/exposure of formulae, some hate it, etc. Try to make as many settings as possible configurable and/or moddable, yet without cluttering the setup screens. A single master config screen (the current Game Settings) is enough, with some possible additions in this thread (turning off mercs etc.) and the rest configurable in text files, for AI modding or themed games etc. For example, I would like to be able to specify which theme the AI plays when it plays a certain nation. I'd also like better scripting features - I accept the argument for limiting the amount of scripting, but stuff like spells not to cast, gems not to use, conditional retreats etc. Also more variety in victory conditions - multiple VCs, cumulative VCs etc.

3. Micromanagement, reduction of. In a game of such vast possibilities you can never get this exactly right, but lots of the suggestions here are helpful - shortcuts for cycling through types of commanders, tax management, gem management, research, forging, group movement etc. Someone's idea of virtual taskforces (ie. a user-chosen set of commanders who need not be in the same province and can be given orders as a group) would be really helpful in long games.

The combination of these means reworking the F1 display and the army screen to show items/wounds/etc. without having to click down into individual units. Some people will want to see provinces listed by income, others by garrison size or army size, others by type of castle., others by spells paths or holy levels etc. etc. This is what I mean about the combination of info and flexibility - every info screen must have plenty of different ways of being formatted/presented. User-programmable tax heuristics are a must - please DON'T create an auto-tax function that follows an unchangeable formula. Ditto forging orders, ritual spells and other repeatables.

Anyway, all this is effectively about improving the Dom2 interface and assumes that Dom3 will be at least similar. I've not said much about actual content changes, largely because I think Dom2 is so fantastically rich that I will repeat my plea not to have yet more of everything just for the hell of it. I particularly and vehemently disagree with Dr Wotsit who did the big summary a while back and wanted 10x as much of everything or Kristoffer's head on a plate ... as any experience of roguelikes will tell you, more stuff leads inexorably to more junk, and the debates about light cavalry and other national units will tell you we don't want more junk. Some more types of helms & boots would be good though, there are so few compared with weapons & miscs.

In spite of that, there are some content suggestions I really like: more building options, specifically taking castles out of pretender design and having them race- and terrain-related - hey, and how about path-related - buildings only buildable by a mage with specific paths ...
er, where was I ... balancing SCs by changing the routing rules so that they can use troops and not have to go in alone, introducing more anti-buffs etc. I also really like the suggestion of moving from whole-race-knows-all-researched-spells to individual spell learning, so you can focus mages on specific suites of spells for different types of battles or for other purposes (blood hunting, forging, castling, etc.). There would obviously need to be some interplay between the two, for global enchantments etc. This would need quite a lot of thought. As would Saber Cherry's decimalisation suggestion, but I like that too.

Finally, one big and potentially quite simple improvement for the AI: basic diplomacy. Currently you can specify alliances for the AI in the map file at the start of the game, but you can't change them, right? Well, if the AI could be coded to make simple strategic decisions on war/non-aggression/alliance with other races it would make SP immediately a lot more interesting. In an MP game people naturally ally against a leading player (esp. if graphs are on), but the AIs never do, even when there are two of them left and I control 90% of the map. I know it would be quite a lot more hassle to introduce human-AI diplomacy, but surely it wouldn't be too much to have the AI make (and break) alliances with each other. It would be particularly neat if your scouts could find this out ...

Ho hum. Back to work. Well, back to thinking about my next turn ...

CC