what about the future?

[Lizardo]

How much time is necessary for the program to evolve? It's been ten years.

And, the goal here was never to move from hobby to money-maker.

That mean I get my 50 back?

Besides money, how can I motivate a change to the UI to make it less painful and more helpful?

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If they are not interested in evolving a D4, would they turn it over to another development group?

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This isn't a feasible game design decision (ie the resulting mess ...

That's an exaggeration. Mages would be more focused, but more effective in their specialty.

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How far is their office from the Paradox office?

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally Posted by Lizardo

How much time is necessary for the program to evolve? It's been ten years.

I think it evolved great. Your little personal gripes seem very minor compared to where it came from. Also keep in mind that it goes real job, family, self time, hobby work on little game thing.

That mean I get my 50 back?

Well they are giving away their first game for free now. Which isnt really a bad little time killer. But no I think that the cost of outsourcing limited pressings has the cost of Dom3 fairly frozen.

Besides money, how can I motivate a change to the UI to make it less painful and more helpful?

3rd party programs, macro recorders, etc.

Or if you mean getting Illwinter to break off of their latest fun project to drudge back into the Dom3 code, didnt your mommy ever teach you about please and thank you? Some people here have a knack for reviving the devs love for certain nations or game aspects and then casually mention a slight irritation while praising most of the game. Others have a habit of insulting the game, the developers, the publishers, and then whining about things dont ever get changed. Its not too hard to trace back thru the games progress page and compare it to the threads that got things done to see.

If they are not interested in evolving a D4, would they turn it over to another development group?

Im not sure why they would want to do that. Generally that creates a bad taste to the original developers or authors when they see what a new company does with it.

But we arent sure they arent interested in a D4. Maybe the new project is one (I personally doubt it) or maybe they will swing back that direction down the road.

How far is their office from the Paradox office?

Illwinters? No real "offices" but it operates mostly in Lund, Sweden

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

But no I think that the cost of outsourcing limited pressings has the cost of Dom3 fairly frozen.

.... what?

Cost of the disc: <10 cents. Ok, its probably ~1 cent (a disc is a disc, they can buy in bulk and use them for multiple different titles) but we might assume they don't order enough discs total to get quite that good a price. But *I* can buy writeable discs for <10 cents, so a game publisher certainly can.

Which leaves the manual, which honestly, they could just put the pdf on the disc and reduce their materials cost/unit to the cost of the disc. However, the manual itself can't cost them more than a few bucks to print.

Most of a cost for a game is to account for development time. After a while (usually a year or less for computer games) the price starts dropping because the publisher understands that if more units move, then they'll see more total income and thus more profits, since the development cost/unit is not a fixed amount. (Rather, its a total that needs to be made up by all sales). Basic economics teaches us that reducing price increases sales.

That dom3's price hasn't moved is pure stupidity on Shrapnel's part.

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Re: "Dom 4". Now, IANAL, but, at least in the US, game mechanics aren't copyrightable or patentable. The description of the mechanics (in the manual or game help) is copyrightable, but not the mechanics themselves. So if someone wanted to make a Dominions 3 clone, they very well could. Of course, the creative content that is original to Dom3 is all copyrightable, so that couldn't be reproduced, but since much of the source material is mythological, factions derived from the same source material are perfectly permissible.

Of course, you wouldn't even want to use Dom3's exact mechanics, since that's where a lot of the problems are. So what you end up with is a game that's inspired by Dom3. What you lose is the factions that have the most creative work put into them - Abysia and Agartha (not the names, but the nature of the factions) for example. Other factions are pretty much straight up conversions of myth to faction, so while there would be changes, a Vanir inspired faction would still be recognizably Vanheim for example. And various gradations in-between.

The magic system's divisions are, for the most part, stolen straight from D+D (1st/2nd ed. AD+D specifically), so that's not a problem. The gem spending mechanic seems to be derivative of MoM in form (which would be the only arguably 'creative' aspect - function being the mechanic itself which is not copyrightable). The actual spells would need changing in many cases (although 'fireball' is certainly not intellectual property, some of them certainly are).

Not that Dom3 is without legal problems of its own... (Illithids and Aboleths are WotC's intellectual property, and used without permission afaict.)

Now, obviously it couldn't be *called* dom4...

[theenemy]

Originally Posted by Lizardo

If they are not interested in evolving a D4, would they turn it over to another development group?

No real need for that. Someone could just make a dom-like(but improved) game, change a few things here and there and call it something else. Just a thought.

Also could someone link me to the thread where that guy(who got banned) proved that "manual piracy"(whatever that is) exists?

[Valerius]

Originally Posted by Lizardo

That's an exaggeration. Mages would be more focused, but more effective in their specialty.

Actually, this seems quite fun to me. Maybe somewhat more than 10-20 mages, but not too much. I find that adding mages and troops adds to my enjoyment of the game up until somewhere in the midgame. At that point, each additional unit detracts from my enjoyment - more micromanagement, less fun. But I can see how some people would find this too small a scale: more like bickering petty kingdoms than vast empires battling to decide the next pantokrator.

But I think this touches on a key issue relating to micromanagement: that as the number of units and resources you need to manage grows, so does the micro. A good UI is of course very helpful (especially when it comes to streamlining how resources are handled) but I don't think you can get around this fact.

Ideally I'd like to see a system that reduced the escalation in the number of units in play. So instead of having a hundred times more units in the end game you'd have ten times more. And of course ideally this would be adjustable so that people who enjoy (or at least can tolerate) managing huge numbers of units would have that option.

[Lizardo]

If it's any help on the combat, here's an interesting discussion of AI development.

[Lizardo]

10 of the 80.

"Defend" is an activity. And in a province with a castle it is a choice between patrol the province or sit in the keep. So it really isn't indicative of whether you want that commander to continue doing what he's doing or not.

There's a monthly command for the mages casting, that's it. You can't say cast 'x' for ten months and wave at me for new instructions.

I need to mark those commanders who need orders next turn. And I need to find them too.

Again, whether a commander is defending or not, has nothing to do with if he needs a new order. That may be his order. That may be exactly what he should be doing.

I need to find the guys who need orders. Next turn or next week.

The 'I need attention' status could be manual or a default status at the end of some directed activity such as spell casting. You could even specify when it is the default. It is a status, not an activity. Defending is an activity.

You could search for other status's too, like find all commanders with a disease. Etc.

[Gregstrom]

So... you want to manually specify 10 of the 80 one turn in advance? I like the idea that it could occur at the end of a fixed-duration activity though.

[thejeff]

I have to agree on the Next commander thing. Commanders on defend, siege and hide stay in the rotation, which is good because those are the default orders in their situation, but it's bad because when you have a lot who should be doing that it makes it hard to find the ones who should be doing something else. Scouts are the one that drive me crazy. It would be nice to have a way to specify, "I'm done with this guy. I want him to stay hiding/defending/seiging and not show up again." Even if it's just for a turn. That way I know I haven't missed anyone when 'n' doesn't cycle anymore, not when I think there isn't anyone in the cycle but the ~50 scouts.

As for individual mage research, that sounds neat but ridiculously complex. In a good size game, you may have hundreds of mages, with dozens of different path combinations. You want to have each of them learn spells individually? And keep track of who knows what when you're sending armies out? And new summoned uber-mages have to spend months studying before they can cast anything useful? Was Dom1 really like that? Or am I misunderstanding you?

Most of the other micro issues are well known and generally agreed on. The game is micro hell.

[sansanjuan]

Originally Posted by thejeff

I have to agree on the Next commander thing. Commanders on defend, siege and hide stay in the rotation, which is good because those are the default orders in their situation, but it's bad because when you have a lot who should be doing that it makes it hard to find the ones who should be doing something else. Scouts are the one that drive me crazy. It would be nice to have a way to specify, "I'm done with this guy. I want him to stay hiding/defending/seiging and not show up again." Even if it's just for a turn. That way I know I haven't missed anyone when 'n' doesn't cycle anymore, not when I think there isn't anyone in the cycle but the ~50 scouts.

As for individual mage research, that sounds neat but ridiculously complex. In a good size game, you may have hundreds of mages, with dozens of different path combinations. You want to have each of them learn spells individually? And keep track of who knows what when you're sending armies out? And new summoned uber-mages have to spend months studying before they can cast anything useful? Was Dom1 really like that? Or am I misunderstanding you?

Most of the other micro issues are well known and generally agreed on. The game is micro hell.

I propose a lvl 10 blood ritual called "micro hell" that disables cntl-n, f1 and other key shortcuts for the other players.
ssj