The Dominions 3: "Wishlist"

[Graeme Dice]

kukimuki said:
* Battle afflictions is a nice feature, but maybe the removal of the pain of micromanagement it causes would be even nicer?

What micro? The only one I'd ever consider worrying about would be battle fright. Any other affliction, and the troops can just be left alone.

I understand that the hydra is already hyperpowerful as it is, but shouldn't it have the recuperation ability?

Hydras aren't really that powerful. They are easily killed by many times less than their cost in throway units like militia.

[kukimuki]

Graeme Dice said:

What micro? The only one I'd ever consider worrying about would be battle fright. Any other affliction, and the troops can just be left alone.

Meant
1) Having units represented individually.
2) If the armies are larger there are usually many units with different kinds of wounds, havn't figured out how to select battle frighted units only.
3) And mainly having to check your armies after every battle which is more or less every turn, all this little checking sums up to big micromanagement in my eyes, taking a considerable proportion of playing time.

I think some other afflictions are also uncomfortable, but if you say 'battle fright only', then is the

excitement bonus that your army may randomly rout now and then so that you can have fun reassembling it from neighboring provinces

worth the excitement penalty of having to regularly check your army for wounds?

Graeme Dice said:

Hydras aren't really that powerful. They are easily killed by many times less than their cost in throway units like militia.

interesting, my hydra often flees from militia. 1..3 hydras in the center with a mind burn theurg in back corner looks like a nice newbie strat to me, keeps expenses low. the only problem is that hydras figure out this fleeing tactic all by themselves in most surprising situations without any afflictions or casualties on my side.
so, if this is really an ineffective strat, it would be nice to have hydra with at least 3 head slots and recuperation

[Aetius]

I would like dominion to have an effect on terrain. Using Abyssia as an example as your domain spreads it should change other lands to wasteland. Similarly for C'tis I would see either swap or if playing Tombkings desert should spread.

Another thing that I would like to see change is currently in the game all of the population dense areas tend to have low productivity due to low resources. This is particularly true of the provinces with knights. Somehow I think production needs to be tied into population density.

[Endoperez]

Dominions 1 had pixel-based maps, in which 9? colors were defined for terrains (waste, mountain, forest, borders, capital, sea...), and dominions actually changed these pixels! You could quess that Abysia was in that corner, because it was becomeing more and more yellowish every turn, etc. Unfortunately those maps were very ugly. IW team had said that it was a great feature, but IIRC they didn't know a way to implement it in the game.

High population -> low resources is not always true, but there is very good reason behind the trend. Farmlands have high population but very low resources. Knights only appear in Farmlands. Other kinds of terrains affect population/resources/ chance of magic sites differently. Mountain has low population, high resources and lots of magic sites, forest is similar but not as much, plains is general, waste and swamp just bad but have more magic sites.

[Zooko]

I wish that in Dominions 3, players will be able to answer questions about game mechanics simply by playing the game.

Whenever the devs read this forum and see players asking a question about game mechanics, the devs should think "Could dominions be changed so that the player answered that question by playing the game instead of by asking the forum?". For example, I just posted some questions about Communion:

more communion questions

The question about where the fatigue goes can be answered by playing the game, pausing after a spell is cast, and examining which mages got increased fatigue. The question about how much of a boost is given cannot, because the communion boost is not visible in the game.

If the communion boost were visible to the user, then that question too could be answered this way.

(P.S. I could infer the boost level by summing the aggregate fatigue imposed, subtracting the fixed spell-casting encumbrance of each mage, and then figuring out how much of a boost would have reduced the fatigue to that number, but this doesn't count as being "visible".)

P.S. Adding the facts to the manual isn't a good solution. It would be too huge, and it would be too hard to find what you want to know in the manual, and anyway I don't want to spend my time reading a tome of rules, I want to spend my time playing.

[Aetius]

Endoperez said:
High population -> low resources is not always true, but there is very good reason behind the trend. Farmlands have high population but very low resources. Knights only appear in Farmlands. Other kinds of terrains affect population/resources/ chance of magic sites differently. Mountain has low population, high resources and lots of magic sites, forest is similar but not as much, plains is general, waste and swamp just bad but have more magic sites.

I think you missed my point, I am of the opinion that the areas of high population density should be the best manufacturing/production areas. Currently, in the game it is the areas where there is the greatest amount of resources (i.e. raw materials) that are the best production centers.

The admin value/bonus of fortress does a nice job of abstracting the flow of raw materials to a population center. However, if you are a nation that has capital only units that are expensive in resources, if your starting location is lousy in terms of resources you are out of luck.

Thus far I have been unable to think of system that does not add more micromanagement, of which there is already too much in the game.

[kukimuki]

Aetius said:
The admin value/bonus of fortress does a nice job of abstracting the flow of raw materials to a population center. However, if you are a nation that has capital only units that are expensive in resources, if your starting location is lousy in terms of resources you are out of luck.

Thus far I have been unable to think of system that does not add more micromanagement, of which there is already too much in the game.

Sounds like fun..

What if getting resource from neighboring province added to price in gold?

You have 3 provinces, p1, p2, p3, placed in a line, each produces 10 resources.
1 point of local resource costs 0 additional gold, 1 point of resource from neighboring province costs 1 additional gold.

You build in p2 for 10 resources and in p3 for 20 resources.
In this case, the system must understand that building in p2 does not use local resources but uses the more expensive resources from p1, so that you can build for 20 resources in p3.

Resources used would cost 10 additional gold in p2, and 10 additional gold in p3, totalling 20 additional gold.

But suppose p3 purchases resources from p1 for 2 additional gold per resource point? That would cost 0 additional gold in p2 and 20 additional gold in p3, totalling 20 gold which is the same as above.

The complication is that we can get resources from neighboring provinces only, and this is a nice feature imho, because it makes you feel you don't have railroads and the like.

Seems that it can be done, writing about further details would take longer than i expeted, though. The problem would lie in representing the unit price change to the player while indicating max resource available. It could get as bad as
10 resources for 0 additional gold per resource (local resources)
10 resources for 1 additional gold per resource (unused resources from neigboring province)
10 resources for 2 additional gold per resource (provided you are building in neigboring province and the neighbor of the neighbor has free resources)

Might help with resource luck a little maybe.
_______
I hope that resource production in a mountain province still depends on population of the mountain province.
Interestilngly, fort construction takes gold only, what if it's build time would depend on resources available? I guess that's another topic.

[SurvivalistMerc]

Edi,

Your idea of having the scripts stay the same for each nation between games unless reassigned is better than my origninal idea.

[kukimuki]

Post deleted by kukimuki

[SurvivalistMerc]

Kukimuki,

I find the correspondence to "squares of troops" to actually be useful. I would of course prefer for it to give me a rough idea of army strength. (Black plate infantry should produce a bigger square than militia perhaps.)

Using squares of troops rather than troops gives a better idea of how powerful the force is. Because one Jotun is significantly more powerful than one regular-sized unit. That is true for most of the larger units.