Poll: Should Dom3 allow automatic site searching?

[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...)

[quantum_mechani]

Chazar said:

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...)

hmm, I see. I suppose such a system wouldn't hurt but I doubt I would use it much. There are too many cases were you do not want the commander taking the default action, that I would probably end up going through them all anyway.

[Endoperez]

Could you please ginve an example? I can't see the harm in preaching, or searching for sites, if the other option was doing nothing. Auto-defaulting research might make efficient researching a chore, but you wouldn't accidentally lose any research points either. And telling mages to research (to see their RPs added to the pool) wouldn't be any worse than it would be now.

[Oversway]

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.

I was thinking that but then I thought about cyclops, son of nifel, titan, etc. and I've seen them do double duty as bless effect and sc.

[quantum_mechani]

Endoperez said:
Could you please ginve an example? I can't see the harm in preaching, or searching for sites, if the other option was doing nothing. Auto-defaulting research might make efficient researching a chore, but you wouldn't accidentally lose any research points either. And telling mages to research (to see their RPs added to the pool) wouldn't be any worse than it would be now.

I'm not saying that the system would harm anything, simply that I would be ordering my commander to use a specific action every turn anyway. So, I see no problem with it being in the game, other than the effort to implement it.

[Reverend Zombie]

It would also be nice if a spellcaster set to cast a site searching spell monthly would automatically pick a new site each month that had not been searched by that spell before.

[Saber Cherry]

Reverend Zombie said:
It would also be nice if a spellcaster set to cast a site searching spell monthly would automatically pick a new site each month that had not been searched by that spell before.

Quite true; that would be extremely convenient.

[Saber Cherry]

Chazar said:
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...

Yes, that's what I meant. Conceptually, if you have a mage / priest / necromancer in a province with no orders, they have to do something during that month. Will they sit around and pick their noses? A sage at a lab would almost certainly start reasearching on his own volition, and a priest would probably try to convert people. And adventuresome druid would wander around the woods looking for magical forest glades. But there's no special advantage - a unit can still only do a single action.

The only time this system could ever be a problem is when you are not actually playing the game for real - e.g., hosting a supercombattant tournament where you want to keep magic research below level X. Which is why a toggle would be nice. But in a real game, I can't imagine why a person would not like it.

[ioticus]

I agree there should be a default action to search, research, etc. I think that would help micromanagement and at the same time keep searching as a separate action.