Wish-List for Dominions 4

[Dectilon]

Santa! This is the Wish-List, not the reasonable suggestions-list.

And

Originally Posted by nordlys

And who's going to shell out some $5 millions on modelling and animating two thousands of creatures, Illwinter or Creative Assembly?

As for HOMM4 vs HOMM5 I prefer HOMM4 myself. I didn't like how long the turn-time became in HOMM5, and even with see-through terrain objects it was still hard to see what stuff was a lot of the time. Balance wasn't really a concern for me since I never played against anyone decent.

A graphical upgrade can be made without being cluttered or confusing, and a dom3-fight modeled in TW would probably look very similar to how it looks now.

And I personally think that commanding all the units, summons, mages etc on a real-time battlefield would be completely awesome. It'd be a completely different game, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be great.

[Gandalf Parker]

Such upgrades have killed some games in my opinion. It would trash all the mods, and most of the ability to mod. Im not sure the payoff would balance out.

And again, to even consider it, it would need to be Linux. Not Windows. To have a Windows company and WIn engine do it would probably mean that the whole game title would be sold off which would not end up being what we want then. IMHO

[Dectilon]

You're all so negative! Since when are wishes made of whining? Imagine the best-case scenario instead!

[nordlys]

My number one wish for all game developers is "don't break it". Almost universally, it goes unheeded.

[Eximius Sus]

My view of the best case is radically different than yours. One of the critical things that makes Dominions special is the inability to micro manage battles and rely only on preplanned battles with limited commander control. That's pure genius and any suggestion to replace that with direct control is a huge fail in my opinion. There are plenty of strategy games out there that let you shoot the bow of each unit independently exactly where you want them to shoot. Fun, but utterly unrealistic in real battle conditions.

So suggestions that turn Dominions into something like a Total War clone fail big with me.

[thejeff]

Direct control over battles would also drastically change MP. No more email turns, everyone would have to be simultaneously online to fight each battle.
Scheduling anything but duels and very small blitzes would be impossible.

[Eximius Sus]

Those things make sense. I hadn't fully thought through the implications for MP.

[Dectilon]

I'm being too unclear I think. For dominions 4 I agree, I'd prefer it to stay turn-based but with a completely overhauled UI and improved graphics. But, I would also like a new game with similar complexity where battles happen in real time. People throw around "clone of..." too much. A game with all the spells, summons, global enchantments and monkeys of dominions would not play like a total war game at all, but like something no one has ever seen before.

[Eximius Sus]

I believe I understood you were interested in a real time game. In general, I dislike real time strategy. There are a few exceptions. Real time strategy is not strategy.

A game using the Total War engine seems to me to clearly be another Total War clone. And it's not like they haven't made quite a few of them. Change the setting and you get another Total War game.

Taking the content of Dominions 3 and putting it into another form of strategy like real time does not interest me. The content is not why I think Dominions 3 is a great game. By content I mean the nations, history, and mythology.

Using the Dominions 3 type model of game play for other content such as science fiction greatly interests me.

There have been a few fantasy real time strategy games. There's that classic if I remember correctly. Oh yeah, Warcraft.

[Gandalf Parker]

Thats kinda my take on it also. I dont mind people wishing for variations.

But something I will step into is if they feel Dom3 should be changed into some other type of game. Especially when they base it on something like "look how well xxxxxxx has done". If other games have done so well with it, then there are other games. We dont need to lose one of the few really good ones in a limited territory in order to gain alittle in an already busy one. Whether thats losing the turn-based method, or the pbem support, or being a linux game, or easy modding, or multiple OS support.

(But I do think it would be world shattering if they came out with it as an iPhone app)