What about interactive Tactical Combat ?

[AMF]

I also don't want to see interactive combat...but what I would love to see is a combat simulator, where I could pick and choose from my available forces, make an army, and then send them against another army I picked out, and then watch the otherwise regular combat ensure...this would help me, a lot, to learn how strategies work, what the strengths and weaknesses of units are, etc...

But...I fully realize that purists will say that half the fun of the game is finding out, in "real games" what the various units are really capable of, etc...

...and half the time I agree with that sentiment, alas!

[PhilD]

AMF said:
what I would love to see is a combat simulator, where I could pick and choose from my available forces, make an army, and then send them against another army I picked out, and then watch the otherwise regular combat ensure...this would help me, a lot, to learn how strategies work, what the strengths and weaknesses of units are, etc...

Interestingly enough, this (low-level, IIRC) simulator was in Dom:PPP (the first one), and for some reason was left out of DomII and not brought back in Dom3. Too bad, really.

But...I fully realize that purists will say that half the fun of the game is finding out, in "real games" what the various units are really capable of, etc...

...and half the time I agree with that sentiment, alas!

The thing is, if you really want it, you can set up mostly anything you want, by scripting a map and making some "test" game with enough filthy rich nations and whatever (although actually limiting spell availability would be more tricky, I think). It's just that it's boring as hell to do.

All this talk of "learn the hard way" is fine, but some people like to experiment in controlled settings. With an easy to use battle simulator, I'd probably run some tons of tests to see, say, how many of troop X or Y I need to beat such and such poptype - which, as I never manage to really pay close attention to troop stats and what it means, might help me get a better feel for which troops I should use in which situation. But as it's so boring to set up, I just don't.

[Graeme Dice]

I'd love to see a combat simulator that came with a fully featured input mechanism that would allow you to run hundreds and thousands of test combats based on an easily set up input file. I think that's just the researcher in me talking though.

[PhilD]

Graeme Dice said:
I'd love to see a combat simulator that came with a fully featured input mechanism that would allow you to run hundreds and thousands of test combats based on an easily set up input file. I think that's just the researcher in me talking though.

Hey, I don't want to turn experimenting in dominion into real work, but yeah, some automation would be nice. I'd still prefer manual setup (with a possibility of editing your last setup, say - that would be good enough; being allowed to copy things over from a game in progress, like an army and total research, would be gravy).

[Taqwus]

A combat simulator would be useful, provided it did include such things as research, gem allocation, a palette of items, scripting, et al.

Regarding orders, I'm still seeing some fairly silly friendly-fire -- ex. a death mage casting Soul Vortex when surrounded by living friendlies with no enemies anywhere near, and no real prospect that there -will- be enemies near (given the 'surrounded by living friendlies' instance). Wouldn't mind non-routing units also not playing Follow the Hydra, running straight into Clouds of Death, et al. *shrug* And nature mages are a wee bit happy with Touch of Madness... casting it on one's pretender seems slightly sacrilegious. ;p

[UninspiredName]

Another thing such a huge change would do is kind of slow down the multi-player. Seems like it would be a pain to need to wait for an opponent to input commands for every turn of a battle.

And I also like the current method. One cool feature would be to give units more commander-like choices for actions as they get more experience. And it wouldn't be that hard to make a 'Fire carefully' command, would it?

[Gandalf Parker]

The simulator that Johan uses is horrible.
Personally I found this to be easier
http://www.dom2minions.com/Mini.shtml

It gives you a mini map of just a few provinces and two test armies. You start an Era 1 game selecting the Mini map, start as Arcos and Ermor (human players on both), then have the armies both attack then empty province next to them.

Edit the .map file (its plain text) for different armies armies to try other simulations. You can use any units, give equipment, give gems, give spells, give experience. Prior to the combat you can set combat actions to try different tactics. This is a fairly easy way to test it over and over.

[NTJedi]

Gandalf Parker said:
You can use any units, give equipment, give gems, give spells, give experience.

Currently there's a bug with giving nations spells at the start of a game via map edit commands. Basically the spells are only available for the first turn... then PoooOF the spells are no longer available. This is probably effects battle spells too.