What could we steal from other fantasy games...

[Aezeal]

I personally don't mind teh diplomacy in SP.. in all other games diplomacty is usually so easy to abuse and the AI so bad at it that as it is in dom 3 is to be preferred really.

[LDiCesare]

Diplomacy and scripted events are definitely what's most needed in my opinion.

[SsSam]

....There are several basic UI improvements that would make the game more accessible to newer players.

The first one that comes to mind is allowing the user to see what you can build in your national capital during pretender construction. Yeah after playing a game with a nation I won't need this, but that doesn't help me when I start. (What paths are available to my mages? what units are sacred? What kind of commanders/scouts do I have? What are my unit's strengths? What are capitol only builds?)

A system to save not only diplomatic messages, but maps and battle images for future reference. This would include messages to self as a reminder of what it was you were intending to do.

An editing system for in game diplomatic messages would be great for those of us who type like foo.

My mage has found a gem producing site by spell X. On a large map I now have to find my way to the nation screen and find the province and then mouse over what that site is. Ordering that province list would be a start. Hypertext from the message list would be even better.

I want to find that province that can produce wind riders....uh oh. Similarly, I want to find the non-castle provinces where I can build scouts. oops.

Simple path finding to move your stack/unit to province 31 would be a great boon, but I understand the objection, it would require some real coding.

[Dragar]

As a new player it is definitely the UI that I think could be improved, it can be very tedious handling a lot of the small things each turn. In turns of content and depth the game is great. Civ IV probably handles a lot of similar issues, if we’re talking about games to steal from. Maybe some better ways around them exist and I just don’t know how yet, but the repetitive tasks I’d love to avoid are:
• Movement – scheduling movement over a number of turns with waypoints, or alternately a pathfinding mechanism. Wouldn’t hurt to have someway of automoving troops recruited in a province to a different province, particularly where the place you are recruiting from is far from the battlefront. I understand there is an issue with commander requirements, but there must be a valid solution to it.
• Repeat build – setting a province to recruit the same units each turn until you change it.
• Repeat forge – as above, would be a great time saver with some of the mass produced items especially.
• Site searching – would love to be able to tell a mage to wander amongst friendly provinces and site search. Or even to assign his movement with waypoints but be able to tell him to search for a turn at each one. Could do the same with site searching spells, the caster casts the specific spell each turn on a province that hasn’t been tested for it before.
• Goto next active unit – I often find I forget to move someone. The difficulty I guess is units that have moved defaulting to Defend, so how would the computer identify active units you want to do something with? I’m sure there is an answer somewhere though
• Battle reports – More detail on the units present and numbers of each type killed, not just overall numbers. Watching every battle is time consuming, having enough summary information would reduce the number we need to watch. Also when capturing a fortress or an assassination fight, no detail is given at all in the sense of a normal battle.

I’m sure there are others – basic theme is to take mundane tasks out of the game to save more time for the interesting stuff! I’m sure it would make multiplayer games faster and more viable too.

One other is with regards to save games. At first I thought it was great not to have a save option, no incentive to cheat a little to go back. That is until I sent my Pretender alone into a fight a couple of hours into a game, not realising that the other commander with the army hadn’t:
- been selected,
- couldn’t fulfil the move but it wasn’t flagged when I click
- picked up all the troops sitting in the province due to a retreat or commander death

Those little mistakes that happen because you aren’t spending a heap of time checking everything can ruin a long game due to the save system. I fully understand having the ability to save as an option only, especially in MP, but I find the level of checking required in a SP game when I’m trying to learn pretty tiring. I want to spend my time making interesting decisions, not micromanaging detail. I can only imagine how much work there is playing larger maps – I’m only on medium so far!
That said, very interesting game with a steep learning curve, which is awesome. I’ve already convinced one other friend to buy so we can MP.

[MaxWilson]

"Goto next active unit – I often find I forget to move someone." Do you want something more than the 'N' key shortcut that currently exists?

[Dragar]

like i said, I'm sure some things exist I don't know about yet will try that tonight, cheers

[Edi]

Could do the same with site searching spells, the caster casts the specific spell each turn on a province that hasn’t been tested for it before.

Dragar, this has already been incorporated in patches. Set mage to cast monthly ritual with shift-m and select radar spell. The mage will keep casting until there are no more gems of that type left or there are no more provinces that have not been searched for that path OR all provinces left already have 2 or more sites in them. See the site searching threads linked from the strategy index for details.