What could we steal from other fantasy games...

[weimaar]

...implement it in this game in order to make dominions 3 even better? How about an item forge where one can choose the ingredients based on ones magic tech a la Age of wonders shadow magic and pay for it with gold/magic gems?

[moderation]

Let's steal the peasants from Warcraft 2.

[NTJedi]

1) The ability to create and change events

2) The ability to setup planned events for a map

3) Allowing for a scriptable AI allowing the community to make the AI opponents more wise.

4) Improved diplomacy settings and official in-game agreements

5) Introduce a changing black market for the buying and selling of items lost in battle, gems, slaves, beasts, and secret spells.

6) Advanced Game Setting to increase/decrease battle turn limits. *important as computers continue to become more powerful*

7) Advanced Game Setting to increase/decrease unit and commander limits. *important as computers continue to become more powerful*

[Renojustin]

Um Weimaar, we already have a very comprehensive magic item forging system.

[johan osterman]

weimaar said:
...implement it in this game in order to make dominions 3 even better? How about an item forge where one can choose the ingredients based on ones magic tech a la Age of wonders shadow magic and pay for it with gold/magic gems?

Not having designable magic items is a design choice.

[Ironhawk]

I dont really think that adding the ability to design items/units to a game really adds anything, anyway. In the end, everyone ends up building basically the same thing just due to the demands of the game.

[Meglobob]

Does dominions really need to steal ideas from other fantasy games?

I think its the other way around really, other fantasy games need to look at dominions and embrace originality and individuality which dominions has in vast amounts.

[moderation]

Seriously though, Dominions could stand to steal a number of UI improvements from other games that would make units easier to manage. For instance, being able to create "stacks" of commanders a la Warlords II that you could easily reorder would help a lot with mid and late-game micromanagement nightmares.

[MaxWilson]

Mid- and late-game I start renaming my commanders to their job titles. An indy priest who's supposed to go to province #49 and build a temple becomes "Build 49". The first thing I do on a turn after checking battle outcomes is to cycle through the commander list and do all the pre-determined moves. Build 49 moves one province closer to province #49, Forge-Boots forges another Earth Boots, Shuttle Fom moves a stack of units one step closer to my Fomoria stack, etc. All of this is done mindlessly before I start making hard strategic decisions like where to move real armies.

-Max

[moderation]

Yeah, I've started renaming my pretenders that way as well. There's a few things I don't like about this system though. The first one is that it makes can spell out your intentions to other players which can be a bad thing. But the bigger problem is simply that you can't display that many characters from the strategic map. Also renaming your commanders every turn to keep things straight is a bit annoying since I also rename my mages according to their random picks. Finding a better way to organize all the various bits of information: magic picks, orders, battle groups, communion configurations, etc. would make the management part of the game more enjoyable.