Wish List

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by Aetius:
I would like to see provinces that produce units which are costly in terms of resources have enough resources to produce at least one unit per two turns. There are few things more frustrating in the early game then conquering a feudal province which normally results in half of your army being anhilated to find that you can build one knight in oh ten turns.

But the advantage of some of the nations is their spys or information granting dominion which allows them to make better choices in that area

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Aetius:
I would like to see provinces that produce units which are costly in terms of resources have enough resources to produce at least one unit per two turns. There are few things more frustrating in the early game then conquering a feudal province which normally results in half of your army being anhilated to find that you can build one knight in oh ten turns.

Well, build a fortress there. That'll improve resource production. You can't build much of any independent unit if you don't have a fortress to improve production (except for commanders/mages).

Feudal provinces, in my experience, at least reliably have plenty of population, which makes them good for gold and supply even if they are resource poor.

You can also estimate the resource richness of a province by its terrain. Forests and mountains have more resources than farmlands or plains.

[wombatsSAR]

One of the things I see lacking with the stealthy armies is some equivalence to an ambush. Sure, one can try to sneak some army around behind enemy lines and then pop-up and attack, but the attack is just another set piece attack as any other. This is not how a stealthy army would attack. I would like to see would be some level of "ambush" capability. Basically, it would be similar to the "wolves from the woods" sort of attack that the ***** queen gets or it could be some number of moves during which the enemy army doesn't get to attack or maybe some combination of the two. This is not to say that it would be an automatic attack in this manner - the level of surprise should be moderated by ... the number of scouts with the army, the number of light troops/light cav - historically, that was one of their big jobs: being the screening force. For a prepared force, the ambushing army ends up in a setpiece battle - or maybe even counterambushed, or it just cuts down on the turns of inactivity by the prepared force.

For the more typical ICU/UC me battles, a stealthy force could be added either from the side, or again, a couple of turns of combat with no response (rather, in this case, I think I prefer the side attack option). If the stealthy army is spotted, it is either just shoved in with the other army or it gets attacked separately.

For a "pie-in-the-sky" implementation, the stealthy army could have an option to "raid" as an order, with a corresponding "brigands or raiders in province X" report on the message screen. Another additional order would be "Harass" wherein the stealthy army tries to pick-off stragglers from the opposition. This could be literally losing some troops or it could mean loss of supplies in a province. As a balance to these orders, I'd suggest the stealthy army be easier to counter attack when executing these orders - they have a higher profile.

[Slygar]

Lintman summed up just about everything I would like to see in Dom2 - nothing wacky or too far out, just a bunch of UI improvements and mod/option functions. I suggest the devs print that list he made and put it under their pillow, so all those things seep into their minds. It's a whole bunch of little irritations that do add up eventually.

As for this..: "
- If you select a ritual spell that you cannot afford, or which your mage cannot cast, the window closes without any warning that your selection was invalid. I believe this is also true for magic items you can't afford to forge. It'd be nice if there was a little popup warning you about this."

Just be glad you can directly target a province with a ritual now. I cant say how many times in Dom 1 I went to cast Seeking Arrow or something at a province, realized I forget to get the province number, exited and checked it, saw some army I had forgotten to move or something, went back to cast the spell, realized I'd forgetten the number, and so on..

Just to add my own bit to the wishlist, a "Forge Monthly Item" command would help me out a lot.

[ May 10, 2004, 21:51: Message edited by: Slygar ]

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Slygar:
Just be glad you can directly target a province with a ritual now.

I'd also like to be able to use the province number as well as directly clicking, since there are times when you want to send multiple spells at a province that will take a long time to scroll to.

[Gateway103]

Originally posted by Slygar:

As for this..: "
- If you select a ritual spell that you cannot afford, or which your mage cannot cast, the window closes without any warning that your selection was invalid. I believe this is also true for magic items you can't afford to forge. It'd be nice if there was a little popup warning you about this."

Not completely true. For example, Pollux the Arch Theurg with 3A1W3S4H attempted to cast Ritual Spell "The Wraith of God" (5S3A), which he obviously doesn't have the level for. A screen pops up when clicking on the ritual, saying "The ritual is too complex for this mage".

What is true is that no error is given if you don't have enough gem but have enough path. This applies to Item Forging as well.

On the other hand, if you do not have the level to forge an item, that item simply won't appear in the "Forge Magic Item" window even if you have the Construction level needed. E.g. you won't see "Boots of Quickness", a Construction 6 item, despite having Cons 6 researched, if you use the Forge command with a Mage without path in Water. The exception is with "The Forge of Ancient" global enchantment, where you can see and forge items that have requirement at most 1 level above the forging mage in each path.

So not having the path either gives an error message, or in the case of magic items, th\at said item won't appear in the list of forgeable items. No error is given, however, in both cases if insufficient gems are present.

-Gateway103

[ May 10, 2004, 22:14: Message edited by: Gateway103 ]

[Aetius]

Originally posted by Chris Byler:
You can also estimate the resource richness of a province by its terrain. Forests and mountains have more resources than farmlands or plains.

I was aware of that and I suspect that it may be part of the problem since it seems that most of the Feudal provinces are on grasslands, thus low resources. Of course this is only based upon my observations I have not tested this hypothesis.

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:
But the advantage of some of the nations is their spys or information granting dominion which allows them to make better choices in that area

Good advice. However my intent was to express that I think it is logical that provinces that are capable of producing resource costly units have adequate resources to do so. Not necessarily on a 1-1 unit per turn ratio but 1-2 or even 1-3 would be reasonable. What I object to are situations were you have 1-6 or greater ratio of units per turn to build a knight.