New Automation Features

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by licker:
The only problem I see with queueing commanders is that the gold is deducted as soon as you queue them, making it difficult perhaps to do with more expensive commanders. I'd rather that the game didn't deduct that gold initially, but rather at the start of the next turn, of course that leads to other problems with running out of money between turns and what units get funded and which don't...

I completely agree. But that would necessitate a complete production system overhaul. Again, I think that would be worthwhile in the interest of reducing micromanagement: Enqueue all you want for free. Then have the computer go from province to province, and in each province, produce as much from the queue as resources and gold allow. If you enqueue more than your gold income supports, higher-numbered provinces will not produce anything that turn.

-Cherry

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Not really an automated feature, but anyway one thing I'd REALLY like to see in Dom II: when a commander dies because of a Seeking Arrow or even worse, a global enchantment like "The Wrath of God" that anonymously kills leaders - please add a "show (dead) commander" control which, upon activation, displays the commander screen with her possessions, and if possible her orders for the turn. I don't want to have to load the previous turn just to check I actually lost my Staff of Storms bearer or that Sorceress I wanted to use to raise domes or whatnot. It's so easy to lose track of your leaders' roles when you have dozens of them. In Dom I you could use the "rename commanders" as a workaround to this problem, but if this feature has to go, I'd like to have something in exchange.

[Pocus]

Originally posted by Daynarr:
Well, your pain is gone.

You can delete Last unit in queue now just by clicking on units in queue.

thats good!

Daynarr, do you know if the devs have revised their opinions on absence of leaders renaming? It was an absolute 'no' from players, and the cheaters they talked about are perhaps not even existing in our blessed doms community

[ October 09, 2003, 07:23: Message edited by: Pocus ]

[Daynarr]

I think they like idea of name tags. Don't know about complete renaming.

[Jasper]

Nametags are a good solution, especially if they're only visible to the controller. Then you can store whatever information you like, but there's no sleazy renaming of leaders to trick one's opponent.

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by Pocus:
private tag : fine for me, if it makes its way some day.

Agree. And Yes I have hacked and abused things like the renaming. I often used it as a "notepad" but that was no good in human games where they could see it also. A tag would do the same but for me only? Great!

By the way, try hitting "esc" when naming a god. Or using the ^ character. Mine puts a graphic up-arrow. I have a god now named esc-esc-esc-esc which shows as 4 upward arrows.

Hope that the name lists will be externalized one day too (if a modding tool ever appears).

I totally second that emotion. I would quickly write routines to modify such lists each time I play. Such a feature would go great with random maps.

[ October 09, 2003, 17:11: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

[Saber Cherry]

Topic Drift Detected

I like the suggestion that a killed commander can be viewed from the "Ulrich Sebastian got shot in the heart by a seeking arrow" message - that would be really useful. And I hope enough automation has been added so that renaming commanders is unneccesary. However, I hereby forbid any further discussion of nametags in this thread, unless you want to propose an automatic "rename every commander every turn" feature

By the way, would any betas/devs mind updating us on the current status of gem/slave overflow? Which is to say, if a slaver is catching blood slaves, and fills up his gembox completely, do the extra ones automatically get sent to the lab, or does he just stop working like in Dom I? Or - better yet - can you have a slaver send slaves directly to the lab, and not put them in his gembox at all? I find blood slaving is tedious, because unlike gem income (which is micromanagement free, after the sites are discovered), slave income requires constant shuttling and unloading. But I seem to recall that a change was made to the system...

-Cherry

[PDF]

Nametags should be neat IF readily viewable (and not only in a subwindow 3 clicks away from strat map)

[johan osterman]

Originally posted by Pocus:

Daynarr, do you know if the devs have revised their opinions on absence of leaders renaming? It was an absolute 'no' from players, and the cheaters they talked about are perhaps not even existing in our blessed doms community

Sunray and PDF both said that they thought renaming was a valid strategy to confuse opponents, Gandalf Parker has also confessed to similar activities in the newsgroup. I participated in a multi player game where George McGinn would change the names of his commanders on the hall of fame more or less every singel turn, while I do not know if he did this to confuse opponents the very fact that his hall of fame commanders couldn't keep their name for two turns in a row bugged the hell out of me. So not only is strategic renaming present in the dominions community, it might very well be rampant. Also while I see why people like to rename their commanders in order to sort them, I would find it annoying to come up against a commander in a battle named a string of numbers and letter. All in all I think that the name tag is prefferable in several ways, but neither renaming or nametag will be in the gold Version, there is not time to add either.

[ October 09, 2003, 13:24: Message edited by: johan osterman ]

[Pocus]

private tag : fine for me, if it makes its way some day.

Hope that the name lists will be externalized one day too (if a modding tool ever appears).