Game Modding for Buildings

Edi · #1 June 6th, 2006, 02:51 AM

Ah, another suggestion to turn Dom3 into pure micromanagement hell (because there'll be plety of micro already despite the streamlining from Dom2) and remove the uniqueness of quite a few of the specialties that some nations have.

Let's see:

Healing units, previously only for Pangaea and Arco until Faerie Court was researched, now for everyone
Marketplace, giving enough extra respurces to turn any nation into an Ulm-like industrial powerhouse and neatly removes any penalty for low admin forts (not as much of an issue if fort selection is removed, but an issue nonetheless).
Athenaeum: Let's remove the biggest incentive for choosing magic scales so those points can be used for something else. Right...
Training Grounds: Yes, let's really make the sites Academy of War and The Ancient Master completely useless and worth exactly zilch when found, because we can just build our own wherever we want. And we'll also toss in some freespawn units as well. Really good idea there...
Armory Hall: Who cares about the +20 to defense value and ballista accuracy, but giving +1 castle defense to all units is really going to increase the specialty value of units like Guardians of Ulm, Tower Guards and other such. Oh, wait...

And then I look at who the thread author is and am not surprised at all. Yes, the criticism may be harsh, but have you put any thought at all into what you suggest? Any consideration on what it will add vs. what it will remove, and how massively all this (most of it badly thought out crap) would increase the micromanagement. We all saw what happened to Age of Wonders between the original and AoW2, and the single biggest problem with that was the massively increased micro that turned it from a wargame to an empire management game once you captured enough cities. If the comtents of the opening post were to be implemented as is or even in diluted form, we'd see exactly the same effect.

The only suggestion I liked was the Statue of Hero, because it doesn't have such a huge impact, but it's still too much micro, and would presumably also be destroyed whenever a province with one is conquered. After all, the invaders are hardly going to let the statue of a poster boy for some heathen faith stand so the locals don't get any ideas of resistance.

Edi

DominionsFan · #2 June 6th, 2006, 06:34 AM

Actually, I think that ntjedi was talking about that what buildings would he add to his own mod, not to "release these buildings" with the vanilla game.

I think we all have our own ideas for buildings and its all good...afterall we are talking about mods, not some CB mod, which was a slightly modified version of the vanilla game / balance. If we talk about "total conversion" mods, the "add building/edit existing building" modding feature would be awesome.

Edi · #3 June 6th, 2006, 07:03 AM

Humm, so it seems. But I still stand by my assessment of what the effects of such buildings on the game would be. I wouldn't touch the mod with a ten foot pole because it takes too much away without adding anything but micro hell. Especially in MP, which with the crowd here is competitive in the extreme.

I do agree with your point about the total conversion mods, but how common are those realistically going to be? The biggest gripe about nation modding so far has been the inability to mod the starting magic site properties, which is a different beast altogether.

Edi

DominionsFan · #4 June 6th, 2006, 08:25 AM

Well Edi I dont know. Total conversion mods are only good, if they are perfectly bugtested and playtested. There are total conversion mods for RTW for example, and almost everyone using them, and they skip the vanilla game.
..people are creating these mods so others can have some fun...not all mods are perfect but the players can help to the modding team with ideas/suggestions always.
Im very happy with the modding support of doms. Im pretty sure that we gonna see some nice mods for the game, and maybe many people will play with them, if they will be decent.

Edi · #5 June 6th, 2006, 01:55 PM

I don't have anything against mods per se (as should be obvious from my participation in the CB mod project). It's just that I do have enough experience with Dominions so far (from both PPP and AW) to recognize when an idea won't work. The OP idea was one of those.

Now, if you had a different building for each nation and restricted to that nation, e.g. something that allowed you to build some special units in your castles also outside the home province, that I'd be fine with, or something else in a similar vein that will not work to simply equalize and flatten things for everyone.

I'm not opposed to the idea of buildings as such, as long as they're not overboard and are kept limited in scope.

Edi

Sandman · #6 June 6th, 2006, 03:05 PM

I like the purity of the Dominions building system - lab, temple, fortress. That's it. I might possibly be amenable to splitting the economic and military duties of the fortress, but otherwise, no.

DominionsFan · #7 June 6th, 2006, 04:20 PM

i think that having more builds / ability to mod them would be really good like I said, especially for MP games.
However Im not sure that the AI could "use" these new buildings very well or not. Example the AI would build a specific new structure to recruit units from it? Im not exactly sure that the AI could handle the situation, but who knows.
Also keep in mind, that NTjedi talked about mods. If IW would add this modding feature [adding buildings and editing them]...well I cannot see anything bad about it, in fact the modders would be happy with it. If some people wouldnt like to see more buildings in mods...well they wouldnt be forced to use the mods afterall, am I correct? Theres the vanilla game for everyone.