Poll: Should Dom3 allow automatic site searching?

[FrankTrollman]

I would like it if the searching happened automatically if your mage was set to "defend". So if you just forgot about your mage for a turn it would automatically searh if it had any paths that hadn't been searched for.

That seems like a good compromise between management and mage time.

-Frank

[Endoperez]

How unbalancing would it be if mages found all sites of (skill level - 4) automatically? That is, level 5 mage would find all level 1 sites automatically. That would mean 8th fire mage would find ALL fiery sites with just walking through the province.

[Oversway]

That would take away from the site searching ability of rainbow mages. Do we really want free sitesearching as one more reason to pick an SC pretender?

[Graeme Dice]

SC pretenders typically don't take high levels of a single magic path, but instead spread their picks out to gain the buffing spells that they need. Bless effect pretenders and monster types are the only ones that are likely to have high single level paths.

[alexti]

FrankTrollman said:
I would like it if the searching happened automatically if your mage was set to "defend".

I think that's the best way, but I'd prefer to have it extended:
If commander order is defend, then he should:
1) search, unless the province is searched up to his skills
2) research, if he can (has >0 RP and there's a lab)
3) preach if he can

That would reduce some micromanagement.

[quantum_mechani]

alexti said:

I think that's the best way, but I'd prefer to have it extended:
If commander order is defend, then he should:
1) search, unless the province is searched up to his skills
2) research, if he can (has >0 RP and there's a lab)
3) preach if he can

That would reduce some micromanagement.

Of course, this would mess up scrolling through commanders without orders. Though, you could always restructure the system a bit and make it work.

[Dhakhan]

I think sushiboat and Sabre Cherry are on the right track.

[Saber Cherry]

quantum_mechani said:

Of course, this would mess up scrolling through commanders without orders. Though, you could always restructure the system a bit and make it work.

But what if... when a turn ends, and a commander has no orders, it does something intelligent? For example (these are in order of priority):

1) If a mage has no orders, it searches or researches.
2) If a holy has no orders, it searches or preaches.
3) If a unit that can "summon allies" has no orders, it summons allies.
4) If an unholy unit has no orders, it searches, summons the highest-level undead it can (excluding ghouls), or preaches.

...the above all assume that those commands are available - a unit set to "hide" in an enemy province would obviously not be able to search or reanimate.

These would never be reflected in the units' orders, or change the units' orders. Rather, between turns they would [b]act as though those orders had been commanded[b], even though during the turn and during the next turn their orders say "defend." There could be an "Activate automatic orders" toggle for players, if they want this to occur. The examples I listed, as far as I can tell, can never have any drawbacks, and have no effect other than allowing players to accelerate their turns and avoid micromanagement. In this situation, pressing "n" will still cycle through commanders that you never gave orders, since the orders will still be listed as "Defend."

[quantum_mechani]

Saber Cherry said:

But what if... when a turn ends, and a commander has no orders, it does something intelligent? For example (these are in order of priority):

1) If a mage has no orders, it searches or researches.
2) If a holy has no orders, it searches or preaches.
3) If a unit that can "summon allies" has no orders, it summons allies.
4) If an unholy unit has no orders, it searches, summons the highest-level undead it can (excluding ghouls), or preaches.

...the above all assume that those commands are available - a unit set to "hide" in an enemy province would obviously not be able to search or reanimate.

These would never be reflected in the units' orders, or change the units' orders. Rather, between turns they would act as though those orders had been commanded, even though during the turn and during the next turn their orders say "defend." There could be an "Activate automatic orders" toggle for players, if they want this to occur. The examples I listed, as far as I can tell, can never have any drawbacks, and have no effect other than allowing players to accelerate their turns and avoid micromanagement. In this situation, pressing "n" will still cycle through commanders that you never gave orders, since the orders will still be listed as "Defend."

So, you're saying that if they have the option, they would do all of the above? For instance a mage-priest set to defend would preach and research at the same time?

[Chazar]

quantum_mechani said:
So, you're saying that if they have the option, they would do all of the above? For instance a mage-priest set to defend would preach and research at the same time?

I sure cannot speak for SC, but I thought what SC meant to say was that a commander set to defend should be assigned to any one of the unit's available tasks which are guaranteed to do no harm by the server when hosting instead of allowing commander to simply stand idle...

I often issue a "search" command for priests which are waiting for other armies to arrive and that cannot preach for a higher dom-strength anyway. It usually avails nothing, but even a slight chance for a site is better than no chance of anything useful.

It might be one of the reasons why I need hours to complete a single turn. So as long as these commands cannot no any harm (i.e. preaching, searching, researching as opposed to blood hunting, patrolling, hiding...) it would save me the trouble to check all idle commanders (which is a trouble because I usually have stationary scouts on most bordering enemy provinces...)