What about interactive Tactical Combat ?

[markmarques]

Recently I downloaded and tried the Dom3 demo
but for my suprise one thing that is still missing
is the ability to interactivaly control the combats.

Someone refered that the game developers would read this forum.

Altough for multiplayer games the "interactive"
tactical combat would be a bit cumbersome, I think that
with that option for single player would enhance the entire game experience.

A small patch would make the following proposal workable.

A small option asking before a combat start or even as a global option would be nice.

I have several ideas to implement without being (I suppose...) to hard to code.

During the combat each turn every commmander/mage/ (pretender god) would be asked (simple Y/N option) which kind of action to take.
A small internal "stopwatch" could activated one of the options if the user did not noticed to choose any.

For instance each mage/ god would have the ability to select one of the available spells.
I know that each turn the AI would have to recalculate the complete stats of each group or unit.

Another idea would be the ability to simply decide if a group or unit would move or not.

When a group is rotted the ability to control it would be non-existent.

So those units/ groups within control would have the option to flee away with or away the rotted group...

So for some single player the depth brought by such options could revitalize and make more sense than sending a massive bunch of units only to see them dizimate or being dizimated in a small (beatiful) movie clip.

A small change like this could bring a more tactical game community to the wonders of Dominion.

[st.patrik]

Eh, this is one of those features that a lot of people bring up... Thing is, it's far from being a small change - it's a huge change that would basically mean an entirely different game.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it wouldn't be cool - just that it's a totally different game.

[markmarques]

But as I stated first the ability to maintain as it is for those "hardcore Dominion fans" would still exist.
The ability to activate the tactical mode would be a personal choice...
I suppose the combined gain of having it "On" would surpass the "classical" Dominion mode adding to more deep Dominion experience.

[Cainehill]

And the AI would perform even worse. And it'd be completely unusable in PBEM. So we'll almost certainly never see manual tactical in Dominions unless Illwinter does an RPG or an FPS.

[Taqwus]

Balance would be *completely* different if there's player-controlled targeting and movement.

[Gandalf Parker]

PLEASE I do NOT want to see interactive combat.
I play games that have it, and I do enjoy it. But there are many many of those games. There are so few good PbEM games that they tend to stay years and years on someones machine. There are many advantages to PbEM which I would rather Dominions pursued further.

Now if the devs want to do a different game then I would buy it. But I dont want to see this one turned into something different.

[markmarques]

Regarding PBEM games that would true so the tactical option is to be disabled in that kind of game.
But regarding balance the only thing that I talked aobut is decisions regarding "when" during combat to apply a spell nothing about movement or targeting...
For single player ONLY or even small MP , the Simple tactical option of choosing to "attack / spell or Defend" would bring a deep strategy to this fantastic game.

Of course this would change a LOT this game...
But for best I think ...

[thejeff]

It's not a trivial change at all.

Ignoring the balance issues, since many things would balance very differently depending on whether this option was on or off, this would be a massive rewrite to the turn processing code. Currently the same process handles MP & SP games. This would need a very different process for SP.

Making the SP game even more different from the MP game isn't a good idea. This will also handicap the AI, even more than it already is, making the game less challenging and thus less fun.

Not at all an easy thing to do. Not going to happen in a patch.
And the devs don't want it. They haven't even expanded the order scripting, which would be a step in the same direction and which has been asked for. They like it the way it is.

[Boron]

Just buy Medieval 2 if you want tactical combat .

In Dom tactical combat wouldn't fit too well imho, the current system is working well enough. Imagine all the MM you would have to do if you could control everything. I think Illwinter would have to make a completely new Dominions for that from scratch. I doubt that this redone new Dominions would be more enjoyable than than the current Dominions though because they would have to use an approach like CA for TW i think, otherwise it would be a MM nightmare.

Medieval 2 is great, but it cannot be compared to Dominions. Dominions is also great, but those games are two different subgenres, so they cannot be compared at all.
So just decide to your liking, or if you have no strong preference enjoy both games.

I am currently in gamers heaven with MTW 2 and Dom 3 .

[PhilD]

Actually, I kind of like that there is no option for manual tactical control - because if there was, I'd be using it in solo play, and that would make moving to MP that much harder. Yeah, I know, I've been saying the exact opposite (on the "save vs no save" thread), that additional options don't take anything away from people who don't want to use them - but then, coding what is being suggested would be much more work than coding a simple "save and backup" command.

Now, I still think the game could have many more tactical options, and this is the big thing that is missing from Dom3 to really make it a great improvement over DomII. Things like battle formations, some coordinating of orders, more scripting options would be real great; a better UI for setting the tactical orders (like, I don't know, moving little puppets on the battlefield, saving/loading battle scripts, whatever) would also be a great bonus (though I'm not holding my breath - the switch from DomII to Dom3 was the place to introduce such changes, not a patch).