The Dominions 3: "Wishlist"

[SurvivalistMerc]

I probably shouldn't keep adding things, but this one seems relatively easy and also a huge tedium saver.

How about letting us see a mage's random picks by putting them on his icon? This way you could pick out those blood sages to start a blood hunting group. Or that astral sage you want to make an amulet of luck with without having to scroll down and check each unit individually.

Anything that allows you to see information you would click to see in as few clicks as possible (zero where possible) is a good thing imo.

I still like Saber Cherry's idea of having the basic province defense information visible by just clicking on the province without having to click "province info."

[Agrajag]

Just do what I do, name the mages according to their paths as soon as you recruite them, still MM, but more effective.

[Edi]

SurvivalistMerc said:
Oh...how about keeping the ctrl-# commands the same from one game to the next.

Lots of folks try the same nation multiple times. And it gets annoying having to reprogram your favorite spell attacks over and over. It's just another tedium-reducing idea.

I'd rather that there were ctrl-# slots separately for each nation that carried over from game to game. Not hard to do, and it would seriously cut down on script reassignment.

And I most definitely second the suggestion about game music being made into a common format, preferably support for multiple formats if possible. MP3 being the most obvious, but I'd also like .it (I want my original Age of Wonders music, thank you very much, Battle Macabre simply rocks!).

Edi

[Gandalf Parker]

SurvivalistMerc said:
How about letting us see a mage's random picks by putting them on his icon? This way you could pick out those blood sages to start a blood hunting group. Or that astral sage you want to make an amulet of luck with without having to scroll down and check each unit individually.

I was thinking along the same lines. Even if a 1 pixel dot for each magic in that magics "color" would be very helpful. It might be hard to tell 1 fire 2 earth apart from 2 fire 1 earth, but it would at least tell me which ones to skip checking

[Chazar]

Color codes on top of a units icon is definitely a must-have! Customizable colour codes please!

[Psitticine]

If the magic color codes go vertically rather than horizontally for stronger power, it'd be easier to read. So an F1E2 would look like:

Code:

---

FE

 E

---

[Rainbow]

Script command / combat action: Rest
Allow commanders to spend a combat turn resting to recover fatigue. This will allow mages to act more sensibly by resting before falling unconscious. Being unconscious is a pretty bad idea when the rest of the army routs.


Spell scripting:

Show which spells are being scripted (as originally suggested by RedRover)
Players need to be able to see what has been scripted without starting over.

Set gem usage for spell script.
Allow the player to set how many gems are used for casting each scripted spell.

Show the estimated fatigue for the spell script.
For each scripted spell, show the fatigue from casting this spell, and the sum of the fatigue from all spells cast at this point in the script. Automatically update this if encumberance changes (due to equipment changes, chest wounds, etc).

Review spell script.
Allow players to review the spell script details, including information about spells, gems and fatigue, without automatically clearing the script.

Warnings/information.
Notify the player of important things, like situations where scripted spells will never be cast (for example because the caster does not have enough gems to cast the spell without incurring 300 points of fatigue => suicide). A mage may have the required gems one turn, but not the following turn. Highligt mages in the army list, who are unable to perform their spell script (any number of reasons could cause this, including added encumberance (chest wounds, heavier armor), lack of gems, lost both eyes, feebleminded, etc.)


AI spell casting:

Fatigue management
Do not let the AI cast spells which render the caster unconcious, unless the AI have good reason to think it is a very good idea. Instead the AI should let the mage rest (see script command suggestion above).

Spell selection.
Give the AI the ability to intelligently choose spells. For example, only cast air shield if at least X enemies have ranged weapons AND they comprise Y% of the total size of the enemy army. Only cast fireball if no friendly units without fire resistance are adjacent to the intended target. Etc.


Spell casting in melee:

Never force mages to melee.
There are some excellent spells with “touch” range, which are very rarely used, since mages are often either slain before they can use them (when enemies come into range) or because the mage is forced to do melee. Mages should never be forced to do melee when they have touch range spells available. They should be allowed to choose between their touch range spells or melee, whichever they think is the better.

Move and cast touch range spells.

Mages with touch range spells should be allowed to move up to half their normal movement allowance, and deliver a touch range spell to an enemy. They should only ever do this if the enemy can be reached in one move (ie., move and spell cast in same action / turn). Mages should still NOT be allowed to move and cast non-touch range spells.


Gem handling.

Alchemy.
Since alchemy does not require any time, but merely the presence of a mage at any lab, the alchemy command should be moved from being a commander option, to be a lab option in the gem review panel (F7). Simply disable the command with the information text that no mage is present to perform the alchemy if this is the case.

Commanders and gems.
For each commander, replace the gem slot with a single icon of each gem followed by a number showing how many gems of that type the commander is currently carrying. To transfer gems, change the number for the desired type of gem (this can transfer both to and from the pool as the new number can be higher or lower than the original number carried). This will save up to 30 tedious mouse clicks and give a better overview of exactly how many gems the commander is carrying. Add a button to force all gems from this commander to the pool.

Gem pooling.
Have two commands for gem pooling. One command will force all gems from all commanders at labs to be pooled (as per Dom II). The other will only pool gems from commanders who are flagged to allow gem pooling. (ie., the first command overrides no-pool flags, where the second command does not).


Taxes and unrest.

Tax / unrest handling panel.

Create a panel for handling taxes and unrest for your nation. Allow the setting of a tax policy based on unrest levels. Allow individual provinced to use the nation’s tax policy or not by flagging. Include known sources of unrest (sites) in the tax / unrest province list, and specify exactly how much unrest is generated by these sites. Inlcude any relevant information on the dominions order / turmoil level.


Army setup.

Army panel (T)

The army panel shows the garrison as a jumble of troops. Many troops look very similar, since there are often small variations on national troops. Cleaning the garrison display up as suggested by Taqwus might be a good idea.

Army parade / display.

Allow players to review the army setup on an actual battlefield. This way the player can check that his units are positioned exactly as he wants, and admire his glorious army (before it is crushed utterly). It will allow players to check that those astral mages are adjacent to the units they want to cast body ethereal on (range = 1). It will allow players to see how that heap of 12 commanders plus 50 bodyguards that are all heaped on top of each other actually deploy on the field, and make adjustments if desired. It will probably be necessary to be able to flag commanders or squads to be part of the review or not (so units that are not supposed to go off with the army when it moves do not displace the units that make up the intended army).


Combat

Horse archers and other skirmishers

Add commands and AI to make these types of units viable. For example, allow a skrimish command where the unit will attempt to engage with ranged weapons, but will move away from the enemy at up to half speed, while staying within maximum range of their thrown or fired weapons and attacking. Javelin equipped light infantry, slingers, horse archers, etc. would become viable, especially for hit and run tactics. Only allow skirmishers to move away by moving towards the rear of their own side of the battlefield. This way we know that they will eventually be caught and pinned, and melee will ensue, even if the skirmishers are twice as fast as the enemy.


/Rainbow

[Edi]

It'd be nice to be informed of what units exactly got wiped out by spells like Beckoning, Lure of the Deep and other similar. Getting a message of "X units succumbed to spell Y" when the affected units cannot in any way be identified is bloody annoying.

Edi

[Aetius]

I definitely agree with having a greater variety of Independents. I think that choosing a fortress should be removed from the game. I think each nation should start of with a unique national capital that is specifically tailored to that particular nation/race. In other provinces you should be given a choice of what type of fortress to build perhaps, there should be restrictions that only certain races can build certain types of fortresses and there should be geographically limitations (i.e. mountain fortress only in mountains).

Using Ulm as an example, since Ulm is a 'builder' type nation. Ulm would have the choice of building the following fortress types: citadel, castle, hill fortress, mountain fortress, watch tower, or fortified city. I think of the castle, citadel, and fortified city as being medival in nature. It would be nice for Arco or Pythium if there was a city-state, or something more metropolitan but in theme with Greco-Roman times. I realize of course that Byzantium was at one time one of the most heavily fortified places on earth so maybe the fortified city is good enough, just does not look right graphics wise for Greco-Roman.

[kukimuki]

Just popped in here, sorry if what i have to say has already been discussed and discarded as stupid. I'm a new player, this may be bad because i don't know the game very well and good because the game itself hasn't shaped my expectations yet. Anyway, glad to see that many strat game problems that have always disturbed me have finally been solved and implemented sucessfully in this game.

First impression

* The very first impression of the game was that the first menu panel looked nice and music was good (or positively different from most games), and the landscape on the background could have been softer in shape and colors to match the nice menu. In the pretender creation it would have been better if nation and avatar selection were in the same panel as the dominion-magic-castle.

* In game selecting things like provinces with right mouse button wasn't much of a problem to get used to, but nevertheless it attracted attention as non-standard way of doing things. I would expect selecting with left mouse and opening the province info with right mouse. When looking at provinces it might be better to open the info frame at place, instead of moving the mouse and eyes away to the edge of the screen and back all the time. At that point i felt somewhat intimidated by having to learn both unusual interface and unusual game mechanics.

* 2d graphics of dom1 were quite nice. If reasonably improved, dom1 2d graphics might look much better than 3d landscape with unit size perspective graphics of dom2 imho. Maybe even better than whatever 3d graphics there could be for dom3. 2d often produces better usability (more clear overview, e.g. Starcraft compared to Warcraft3). With such long micromanagement games i am scared to think about wishes that all those tiny units should be 3d in dom3, looking slightly different at every angle. Many units often look almost identical already, it would make recognizing them even more difficult. I wonder what could be the reason for 3d? Enabling larger battlefield? Maybe an alternative could be units being able to stand closer together like Groups of people were depicted in many old paintings. Ok, i guess this time i'm just getting to extremes and full 2d dom3 isn't going to happen anyway.

* Battle afflictions is a nice feature, but maybe the removal of the pain of micromanagement it causes would be even nicer? Maybe even battle formations would become something to consider more seriously if we didn't have limps.

* If you can't issue commands during battle, what's the point of keeping battle turn-based instead of real-time? There are nice examples of real-time battle games. My wild guess is that transferring just the random seed might solve the possible problem of larger multiplayer data transfer.

* Somewhat uncomfortable to determine what spells are affecting a unit, maybe just a list of spells would be nice?

* Maybe the long time players have got used to that, but to me the friendly fire situation was and is annoying to such extreme that i discontinued using shooters and mind burn became my favourite combat spell for beginning game.

Battle orders

* Setting morale or wimpy level for stacks and heroes lower than max value or setting conditions for routing like you choose 'Cast a specific spell' would be nice.
* If retreating was what you ordered your troops to do, they shouldn't disperse. Maybe they even shouldn't disperse if enemy isn't closely chasing them, or maybe there could even be 'rear' part of battlefield where fleeing units would have time to stop and reconsider unless closely chased.
* In order for troops to flee, there should be non-fleeing enemies on the battlefield.

* 'Repeat' battle order and 'Alternative' battle order in some form if what you primary order cannot be executed. Putting the orders to be repeated between '[]' in those examples and each battle round on separate line.
Example 1:
(quickness)
[(numbness)]
Example 2 (setting preferences by '>'):
(quickness)
[(cold bLast) > (attack one turn)]
Example 3 (skirmish; assuming you move to sufficiently close range if you fire):
[(fire)
(retreat one turn)]
The problem is that there's too much unnecessary galloping back and forth if the opponent isn't advancing. Maybe there should be 'Avoid melee' order:
Example 3.a:
[(avoid melee) > (fire)]
Example 4 (setting equal preference by '=' to let the AI decide):
[(sermon of courage) = (banishment) = (smite demon)]
This may be my strictly personal opinion, but with this little detail of added control it looks simpler than the current system to me. You can just give the commands in a little bit more natural way instead of trying to take into account all possible battle situations and script a large number of 'just in case' spells that turn out useless and ridiculous most of the time.

* Maybe removing the 'attack rear' might be worth considering if it's sole (intended) purpose is to 'attack closest' from the side. It could be replaced by an algorithm that finds the path to the enemy even if it's behind a friendly stack. The fleeing units also look funny when they stubbornly try to move strainght through an enemy heavy cavalry or even a wall.

MISCELLANEOUS

* Cainehill: 'Saber Cherry : In some ways that's a nice idea, _but_ it winds up leading to some very ... cheesy tactics, where very burly high strength units wind up using tiny high speed weapons, which just doesn't seem right.'
Saber Cherry: 'Resulting speed = ((base speed) - (inertia / strength)) rounded up'
It would be more or less like (base inertia -- bare hand):
attack time = (base inertia + weapon inertia) / strength * fatigue
fatigue cost = (base inertia + weapon inertia) / strength
Maybe strength and base inertia could be incresed by e.g. 1/3 if you wield the weapon 2-handed, so that a giants might be able to wield heavier and longer weapons with shield in the other hand.
Maybe allow a really heavy hit to continue to the next target with some weapons if it killed the first one to make heavy weapons more attractive for giants.
continued hit damage = (hit damage - first target full health) / 2

* Option to disable mercenaries or set their cost higher when creating game

* All kinds of castleing madnesses should imho be better countered by other means than by limiting the castle types you can build to 1.

* Intercept enemy movement if enemy is attacking a province. This could be done by counting enemy battle rounds vs your battle rounds, if your battle rounds entering the enemy province are less than enemy battle rounds attacking the other province, you catch the enemy before it crosses the border of the province it attacked. So, if there's no militia in the enemy province nor has the enemy left any troops behind to slow you down, and there's militia or a few troops in the province the enemy attacks, then the enemy is caught. If you have faster troops, you can probably conquer the enemy token distracting troops before the enemy can conquer the token militia of the province it attacks. Just another alternative that i didn't see mentioned in this thread.

* Maybe unrest/loyalty could be somehow connected how to morale and leadership works, like commander with awe or maybe even fear should be better at decreasing unrest.

* I guess there's some reasoning behind the 'staying in hall of fame increases the special ability over time'. For a while I naturally thought that it would depend on exp, until i found a hint to the time instead. Which, of course, made me wonder why it was arranged that way. The problem is that it wasn't readily visible and i still don't have a clue, maybe just writing a few words of explanation somewhere where it can be noticed would do the trick.

* if there are strange events causing superstition in people, there would be a higher chance that some more radical event occurs in that province soon (maybe it's like that already).

* Interesting that hydra doesn't have any head slots while wyrm does. I understand that the hydra is already hyperpowerful as it is, but shouldn't it have the recuperation ability? and shouldn't tritons have recuperation?
* Oracle could have some prophesy skills, e.g. predicting some random events, maybe some Version of it could be available with astrologers. Meaning hints like 'finding a treasure 3 turns after a hero appears'.
________
thanks for reading, wish you all the success at creating a game that will hopefully start a new generation of strategy games.