Suggestion: How\'s aboot a viceroy?
Before I begin, I think a preemptive apology is in order.
I've been awake for thirtysomething hours straight, about half a dozen of which were spent on my first Dom II full Version game. Consequently, this post may not be all that lucid or relevant. I'll have to check it out when I'm fully awake.
BEGIN AIMLESS MICROMANAGEMENT SPIEL
The actual point is way below this
Anyway, my experiences with the demo, the aforementioned six hour game, and these fora have led me to one painfully obvious conclusion: The micromanagement on this game is atrocious.
Which is a shame, because every other aspect of the game(Except meaningless piffle like graphics, I mean) is simply outstanding, worthy of the same sort of acclaim spiritual predecessors like Master of Orion/Magic received in their time.
Honestly, every aspect of the game is sheer, unadelterated, incomporable bliss, until the point at which it finally bogs you down with so much repetition and drudgery that each 20 minute long turn becomes 90% chore and 10% gameplay. Not that good a description, I know, but I really am too semiconscious to turn a better phrase than that. Besides, you already know why micromanagement sucks. Ingrates.
Now, I've heard it said that this is chiefly because the game is PbeM oriented. Understandable enough, single player probably shouldn't be the focus for this sort of thing. Hell, I was just tiding myself over and testing the learning curve with tonight's solo game. Still no excuse, though.
Micromanagement is usually considered permissible in PbeM for two reasons:
Firstly, because a good game of Dom, MoM, etc is like a fine game of chess, with hobbitses and fireballs and multiple mana types. To get the most out of the experience, each turn must be assessed from every possible angle, each detail accounted for, each dilemma savored.
Secondly, because multiplayer is all about pwn1ng the other players, and complete control over every minute detail is necessary to keep your strategic edge.
Both above assumptions ignore the possibility of, simply put, casual games . So simply put, in fact, that I don't think I need to linger on this point any further.
And so, without further ado(Damn, I'm long winded when I'm exhausted):
END SPIEL, BEGIN ACTUAL SUGGESTION
So, how about a viceroy? I'm referring, obviously enough, to a MOO/Civilization/Whatever style AI micromanager, to handle the odds and ends of your empire for you.
Plenty of control/"delegation" schemes might work for something like this. For instance, the crudest system I can imagine would just have you be able to hand units and resources over to the viceroy, who would use them as though it were running your empire.
For instance, you would give your viceroy a dozen or so troops you don't feel like handling yourself, 8,000 gold, 40 air gems, and a "salary" of 3 air gems and 200 gold per turn. The viceroy would use these pretty much as an AI-controlled nation ordinarily does(Well, not in the strictest technical sense. There'd likely have to be a buncha changes made to the AI, bbut I'm talking ends, not means).
Naturally, your build queues'd take precedence over the viceroy's, meaning it'd only be able to actual put its gold to use in provinces you aren't using.
This frankly unwieldy basic concept can be polished in dozens of ways, each of which'd take more work than the Last. To name a few:
1. The viceroy could be given general priorities or attitudes on how to spend its funds and gems, IE "Expansionist", "Never pillage", "20% gold defense, 10% espionage, 20% castle construction, and so on, 20% gems empowerment, 20% give to mages, 60% rituals, and so forth", "100 gold/round cap on missile units", "max 400 units".
2. And then you start specifying. "Don't build sauromancers", "
3. Plenty of province specific flags, such as "do not construct castle", "do not invade", "invade, priority 2", "fortify, priority tango lime eskimo", could narrow things down further.
3. If you've missed the point and really want to micromanage your macromanagement, build queue hijacking could be allowed, either globally or province-specifically, IE "get first dibs on 20% of production, only use remainder after I've built my troops".
And so friggin' on. In retrospect, this is all amazingly obvious.
I suppose, the four actual questions at hand are:
A) Am I the only one who thinks this might be a good idea?
B) Will I still think it's a good idea once I actually wake up?
and
C) Would this be that hard to implement, either in patch, mod, or sequel? Some bits seem straightforward, others seem tricky.
D) Hold on, rewind a sec, assuming the answer to A is "no", what sort of viceroy do we actually need? Some of the higher detail levels mentioned above seem pretty superfluous, and the basic "give resources to computer and let it manage bits of your empire" design seems catastrophically incomplete. I think we should at least have some idea of what we want before we start firing off questions like C.
*steps back*
That was a lot of post for four simple questions about a pretty obvious suggestion. I suppose I feel so strongly about this because, as already mentioned, so much about this game is spectacular, and yet micromanagement seems to make it simply unplayable, once it reaches the scale where things get the most interesting.
Short of just keeping games small or short via maps/victory conditions, I really see no other solution, though that's probably fatigue-induced myopia.
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