Playability Wishlist

[Theonlystd]

Something id like to see is when in battle with a guy whos in the hall of fame. Some kind of indication to which guy it is. I kill hofers all the time and i dont even get to really see how they go down .

[Psientist]

well, as an extension of Theonlystd's comment...
You can always hunt and peck to find units of interest in the battle screen. But if you could color-mark or flag any unit of interest... similar to the "blue vs. red" discussion ... it might cover HOFers or any unit the player particularly wants to pay attention to.

For example, I just finished off a mega-battle (2400+), and wanted to track a few SC's I created (sea kings and golems w/ boots of flying, wraith swords, wraith crowns, stone armor, bear claws, lucky talisman) and a few supermages scripted to cast battlefield-wide spells... and it was very difficult to keep finding them to monitor their progress!

[rdonj]

How about having a way to mark commanders in the army setup screen to have your national flag attached to them in battle replays? It would mark units of interest without getting too graphically in the way of things. I guess colored grids would be nice for friendly/enemy designation but I think it would just be annoying having your units glowy....

I think the thing with selection issues is more along the lines of reanimated skeletons or armed soulless, where you gets several different weapon configurations for them and when you double click it only selects one weapon configuration of longdead/soulless instead of the whole bunch of them.

[RobO]

I'd like to have
- Grouping of commanders - carrying over into the army setup screen

You can do a multiple selection, and it does stick, so we're some way there. But this selection doesn't carry over into the army setup screen. So, if I have two of these "battle groups" in the same province, it becomes tedious to distribute units between them.

[DrPraetorious]

I've been keeping a list for dominions 4:
* Sort commanders by name, or magic skill, or gold cost, or really anything other than unit #, both in the strategic and tactical screens.

* An auto-disperse command in the tactical screen that spreads all of your commanders out, maybe something similar for troops?
It'd be even better if you could somehow save tactical configurations, or specify them as text files.
example of such a text file:
(commands1.txt)
TS1 :front spread: - #communion master, #falling frost, #falling frost, #falling frost, #falling frost, !cast
TS2 :middle spread: - #commion slave, hold, hold, hold, hold, !stay behind troops

We add a command which lets me load such a text file, I load it, the game engine parses it, and when I hit ctrl-1 on a commander, he automatically gets put somewhere in the front 33% of the grid with those orders.
The other painstaking thing is to set up skirmishers - small units of 5 or 6 troops spread out over a varge large area. The game has many units (markata, a number of light javelin troops) which are excellently evolved for this purpose, but it's a major pain to set up.

* Sort provinces in the nation overview. Highlight (with red background or something) units in the nation overview that need orders (see locked commanders below). Option to change what info is displayed in the nation overview (scales, dominion, terrain masks).

* Search levels displayed while picking the province to target with search spells.
Alternatively/in addition, when targeting any spell, if the brown window including a list of what all other mages where casting at the selecting province (and what they were casting) this would also be keen.

* I'd like to be able to "lock" commanders on a particular task, and have them repeat it exactly each turn whatever it is (forging the same item, mainly.)

Locked commanders should vanish from the tactical screen when you hit tab (just like researchers.)
Locked commanders should be skipped with you progress through your list of commanders with the "n" key. This way I could assign units to siege or to scout a particular tactically relevant province and still skip them with the n key.

* Insane commanders should automatically have their orders cleared when they regain their sanity.

* I'd like to be able to "lock" recruitment in a province, so that the province automatically recruits the same mix of units every month.

* On the nation overview, when I left-click on a commander, as opposed to a province, it'd be nice if it zoomed to the province instead of just exiting the overview.

* And the endless request to selectively pull blood slaves and/or other gems.

[Sombre]

I keep hearing about this 'tab to hide researchers' thing, but it seems like it only works in dom2, not in dom3. I can't get it working, anyway.

[WraithLord]

DrP's list is awesome.
I agree with all the items on his list but I think the nation overview sort and the commander lock are *the* most important.
For IW to give any one of them in a patch would be so kewl.

[Agrajag]

Sombre said:
I keep hearing about this 'tab to hide researchers' thing, but it seems like it only works in dom2, not in dom3. I can't get it working, anyway.

I don't recall any talk about 'tab to hide researchers' in dom3, but indeed it doesn't work in dom3. (And works in dom2, obviously).
I think its the change I hate the most between dom2 and dom3.

[SlipperyJim]

DrPraetorious said:
* Sort provinces in the nation overview. Highlight (with red background or something) units in the nation overview that need orders (see locked commanders below). Option to change what info is displayed in the nation overview (scales, dominion, terrain masks).

...

* I'd like to be able to "lock" commanders on a particular task, and have them repeat it exactly each turn whatever it is (forging the same item, mainly.)

Those two suggestions would totally make my day.

Other than that, I'd love for merc contracts to automatically renew. Or perhaps for a pop-up reminder when the contracts end? Whatever, really. I can't tell you how many times I've lost a useful merc because I forgot to renew the contract....

[Velusion]

WraithLord said:
DrP's list is awesome.
I agree with all the items on his list but I think the nation overview sort and the commander lock are *the* most important.
For IW to give any one of them in a patch would be so kewl.

Seconded! Locking commanders and recruitment are the biggest issues for me. If I could ask for anything - it would be that.