terrain altering spells?

[jaif]

The biggest lack that I see in the game, and maybe this is a dom 4 thing, is the lack of terrain altering spells. Grow a forest, turn a wasteland to farmland, maybe flood a coastal province and make it an underwater province...I think all of these and others would be great additions to the game.

So if there's any way to add, you have my vote! :-)

-Jeff

[Endoperez]

There's no way to change the map's graphics to suit the new province type. The way maps are done, it's impossible. Long games in large maps become unplayable if a Water race can create several "inner seas" that can't be seen until you try to move your forces around...

It could be done if we had Dom:PPP like maps where the maps were just pixel porridge, every ugly pixel representing one type of terrain. There heat scale changed the map yellow and cold scale spread white, but at least I and probably many others played with the map turned off (only borders, red for land and blue for sea, visible), or with the dominion overlays activated (high positive or negative dominion would brighten/darken the province so that you can't see details like terrain. The maps were too ugly to be useful, even though it was a terrific idea.

The other way to do this would be to make Dominions maps tile-based. That'd make it easier to create maps that look the same, but harder to make maps that look different. It would probably also mean that it's harder to make maps that play different. If we get a tile-based game from Illwinter, I'd rather have Conquest of Elysiun III.

[Zylithan]

i wouldnt be so down on tile based map making... ive seen some very cool tile based stuff... especially if the community could add to the tiles.

[Endoperez]

I've got no real experience with tile-based mods and modding. I just thought that the modder would have to do several tiles of the same building/whatever to suit the various things that could affect it, like seasons and such.

Conquest of Elysiun had a really nice tile-based system. Seasons changing, forests burning down, mines depleted to create golems, all kinds of fun stuff. Something based on that could be very good. I'd very much like to see a vastly improved Conquest of Elysiun.