Automation vs Micromanagement

[Gandalf Parker]

Pnakotus said: Of course if I'm in the minority here there's no point in maintaining any interest in D3.

[old wise man sayings]
Nothing is impossible, but some things are not worth the time and effort.

Everything has its Pros and Cons.

There is something to be said for "look at all the others doing it". There is also something that can be said for "that niche is covered, dont bother going there"
[/END old wise]

There are many things suggested for Dominions which are not bad ideas. And there are good justifications for doing it. And often they can point at other games which have managed to do it well.

But at that point I start feeling nervous. Dominions is a top game, in a specific market niche. The multiplayer Play-by-EMail structure comes with pros and cons built into it. I myself have things I wouldnt mind seeing changed but only if it doesnt affect where Dominions sits in the gaming world. If the developers decide that they want something abit more action, more graphical, more solo play, fewer opponents and smaller maps and faster games.. then I would rather that they leave Dominions in its position and create a new game. (by the way, have you looked at Conquest of Ellysium which is Illwinters solo-play game from their site? Have you looked at StarFury which is a game available at ShrapnelGames.com also?)

On the other hand I feel that there are some advantages to MP PbEM style games which could be expanded in Dominions. Part of the advantage is SUPPOSED to be that "hosting" the turn does not have to be fast. That is supposed to allow for more opponents in one game, deeper strategy, larger maps, more choices in every aspect of the game, and better AI. I know that they are trying to balance such things in so that solo play doesnt become impossible but I think that as long as few players on small maps plays quickly, that the ceiling on the other things could stand to be raised.
Just IMHO

[Duncanish]

My own 2 cents:

I think certain things could use a bit of automation, but for the incredibly vast majority, I'd say not. What I would like, automated wise, is gem-restocking and a way to gather units.

A way to replenish gems quickly for a mass of spell users would come in very handy, at least for me, since I tend to give most of my mages generally the same gems. Not to mention, it would help Mictlan out immensely (I swear, that nation was designed for an OCD player). Maybe even a way to give the same command to more than one commander at a time. Shift+Right click on each commander, give order via key command. All commanders able to use that order do it. Handy for when you have to Call God and then go back to Research or Patrol.

I'd love to be able to set a gathering point or something. Toggle one province and any stray units (those without a commander present) in adjacent provinces migrate there automatically. Useful for gathering up those militia for the next suicide run.

[Taqwus]

There is at least some room for automation which shouldn't entail writing a detailed AI assistant or changing the flavor of the game, because they're highly repetitive tasks with fairly stable criteria.

Tax policy, for instance -- if the default were 'Auto' which set it on a sliding scale based on unrest so as to bring it as close as possible to 0, if one could also set it manually if desired for the rare case where 0 unrest is either not a goal or not an important one. Perhaps even 'Default' where 'Default' might either be 'Auto' or a specific value configurable by the nation (often 100, but 200 may make sense for Dead Ermor etc).

The site-searching spells perhaps could be automated -- right now, a spell can be set to monthly, but it'll target the same location every time. If the site-searching spells could be used to probe different provinces every turn, that'd be good. I would suggest searching in order of acquisition, breaking ties by preferring the province with the lowest number of known sites, then by presence of fortress, then by total hp of defenders, or something like this. If the devs prefer not to design a heuristic for this, another way would be allowing the user to select from the map -- but blacking out provinces which are either ineligible (not owned by the caster) or otherwise not useful targets (already searched to level 4+, has four known magic sites) and perhaps having varying levels of shading for levels 1, 2, 3. Or let each search spell go into a pool (so in a particular turn you might have 2 searches for death, 1 for astral, 1 for water which all expire that turn) and in the province summary screen (which does list search/sites) let one allocate the contents of that pool -- e.g. by clicking on the part where it specifies the previous searches for a province. Basically I'm looking for a way to have less swapping between screens for figuring out where these need to be cast.

Mictlan priests set to Sacrifice should not deposit slaves in the pool; or, they should automatically pull them from the pool; or blood hunters should by default deposit them in the pool if there's a co-located lab. Unless this has changed lately, managing this was a pain.

It might be useful if mages could be assigned a template gem allocation, and that whenever in a lab and below what the template specifies they'd attempt to draw that gems to meet the template. If there are too few, allocate proportional to deficit. In this case, I would recommend that spellcasters set on Monthly do not completely erase their orders if the gem pools are too low, but merely pause them (perhaps with a warning message) until there is enough left.