The Dominions 3: "Wishlist"

[SurvivalistMerc]

Ok...one more...I hope I'm not putting up too many....

When the spell "Mind Hunt" is cast, please have the message state on what province it was cast. This will let you know when there are not more commanders there. It will also let you know what provinces have astra magi capable of severing your silver cord.

(I really like Arco and Mind Hunt...heal...)

[nemo451]

I felt compelled to finally register on this forum to request that the developers consider tying unit building capability to different fortifications. For example, an expensive mountain fortress might allow you to build "capital-only" units whereas a wizard's tower would only allow you to build "cheap" troops. Just a thought that may or may not introduce a new, welcome element to game play.

[tinkthank]

Some more small stuff here:

In the rubrik "More", it could be nice to see more new "Special Dominion"s. Here's an example from me:

- New "Special Dominion" any nation may choose for 25 points, requires Death 1 and Magic 2: ELDRICH HAUNT. The lands of this dominion are eerie and unsettling, attracting spooks and unnatural fauna of all sorts, and filled with oddly shaped trees and bizarre vales. Horses become skittish from odd sounds, men imagine they feel the weight of unseen hands upon their necks. No living creature who does not believe in the dominion of the ruler god will set foot willingly in this land.
All enemy units experience -2 morale within this dominion; mounted units and animals take a -3 dominion penalty. (Mindless, lifeless, and undead beings are unaffected.)


More Small UI Tweaks which would be Worth their Money
- Currently, during "God Creation", one cannot exit without saving ("ready") once a Pretender is chosen. During "God Creation", let there be a button "Exit (without saving)", so that previous Newlords are not overwritten when experimenting.
- Make storing battle orders more user-friendly by letting us store also with shift-1 to 9 and/or alt-1- to 9, or perhaps let us map our own key settings with the (shift+ or alt+) f1-f12 buttons
- The Tactical Screen should also include, perhaps next to the "Give battle orders" buttons, a "Define Squad Form: Square, Phalanx, Line, Default" section, whereby "Default" can be defined by user

AI Improvement Continued:
I'd still like to see the SP Version of this game be more challenging.
The AI rarely forges items which help against starvatation. Why? If this is very difficult or impossible to change, then implement something similar to the following rule:
Easy AI: receives a 10% Supply Bonus per province (or: Net troop supply usage = -10%)
Impossible AI: receives an 85% Supply Bonus per province (or: Net troop supply usage = -85%)

[tinkthank]

Just wanted to concretize some of the ideas I had hastily sketched above with the various screens, this time concentrating on what I think could be a kick-butt GAME SETUP screen configuration. I think if the game were not set up this way, it would be difficult to implement a lot of the good ideas which the developers have hinted at. I envision something like this:

Code:

---

NATION		STATUS		HANDICAP	AI TYPE

Abysia		--		--		--

Arco		Human		+15		--

Atlantis	Easy AI		+150		Defensive

Babylonia	Difficult AI	+250		Aggressive

Caelum		Human		-40		--



Human Alliances Allowed		Yes

AI Alliances Allowed		No

Determine Preset Alliances	(click here)

---

In setting up a game, one would first toggle the "Status" button -- default is probably "not playing", which I have represented by "--".
"Handicap" would, I think, be exceptionally easy to represent and be a great boon in both SP and MP. By "Handicap", I mean simply a bonus (or penalty) to starting Design Points. Left clicking subtracts, right clicking adds, as we are used to. In SP games, the idea should work without a problem; human or AI nations will get an additional bonus (or penalty) to their build over and above any bonuses or penalties which a "hard" AI would get.
In MP games, of course, the Host will not be able to start a game in which one or more of the participants has sent a "bad" build (used a bonus handicap where none was allowed); the game would have to send a message of the appropriate type. Any ideas on how this could be worked out smoothly?
Under "AI Type" I imagine (at least) 3 types: A turtler (defensive), who only attacks back if attacked first, a random type (similar to what we have now), and an aggressive type, who will try to pick out the weakest and/or most accessible nation and systematically try to destroy it without trying to harm the others unless attacked by them.
The Alliance section below should be used in stipulating the rules for being able to join forces as humans or AI (where both nations' armies can fight side by side in the same battle and move through the friendly provinces without penalty).

[Unknown_Enemy]

AI troop building :

The AI should follow 3 paths for troop building :

Early game (when all research path are between 1-3)
AI builds mostly cheap troops, and a few good ones.

Medium game (when 1 or 2 research path are between 4-6)
AI builds a mixt of cheap and medium troops.

Late game (when 1 or 2 research path are between 7-8)
AI builds mostly elite troops.

To achieve that, you would need to have race specific AI files, which would include unit ID and a building probability. A good idea would be to put these settings in text form.

An important parameter to code for a commander would also be :
Build a castle if the nearest one is more than xxx provinces away.

Anyway, it would be very important to have race specific AI in text files. Look at SE4 : all AIs have been re-writen and fine tuned by the community. No out of the box SE4 AI can stand its ground versus the community AIs.

[SurvivalistMerc]

One more wish...that no one's archers on default will have a mass of twenty or more archers firing at a single heavy infantry that isn't near anything else when there are "better" targets.

I think a "value" (perhaps recruitment cost? with an arbitrarily high number given to pretenders) could be assigned to units and Groups and archers could use this value to decide what to fire at.

[sushiboat]

I would like a way to mark the map with various symbols that would serve as reminders. For example, in the early game I might mark an independent province with knights and crossbowmen with a red circle to indicate that it is relatively well protected. If my scout discovers an enemy capital, I might mark it with a black diamond. What the symbols mean would be left up to the player (and might even change during a game as needs change), so the symbols should be abstract enough not to have any strong prior associations (or at least none close to the game concepts). Also, the symbols would have to be visually distinct from the ones already in use (e.g., sun for heat, clover leaf for luck, etc.). Each province should have room for at least a few player-marked symbols.

[SurvivalistMerc]

sushiboat,

That is a great idea. An alternative would be to have the game itself keep a record of where enemy capitals etc are so that they can be seen on the overhead map.

As things are now, you somehow forget exactly what magic sites are in a province when you lose control of that province. And you can't recall what was in the province your scout or spy just left. (I hope the devs think this change would fall under the "less micromanagement and paper notetaking" sort of change.)

[Taqwus]

Virtual Post-It notes would be nice and generic. Perhaps use color-coded thumbtacks to indicate their existence, and for MP use allow sharing them (individually).

For that matter, so would symbols dedicated to indicating the current (or, perhaps the Last known -- in a shaded form, that is) location of enemy pretenders and prophets.

[tinkthank]

I also like sushiboat's suggestion very much, perhaps in the survivialistmerc Version too.

Here are some more UI suggestions:

- Some more UI functionality:
Hitting "H" while on the Tactical Screen selects all units which are hungry; hitting "h" selects all units in a highlighted squad which are hungry.
Hitting "W" while on the Tactical Screen selects all units which are wounded; hitting "w" selects all units in a highlighted squad which are wounded.
Hitting "E" while on the Tactical Screen selects all units which are experienced; hitting "e" selects all units in a highlighted squad which are experienced.
Hitting the "backspace" button lets you deselect such highlighted units without having to put them somewhere or manually reclick them (as is currently the case).

Perhaps the default arrangement of troops within one squad should be: The more afflictions, the further to the right; diseased counts as two; hungry counts as one-half. The more experience, the further to the left. Afflictions are weighted first. Thus afflicted units to the right, the left of these being those with fewer afflictions and more experience, to the left of these units are those unafflicted in ascending order of experience. (How is the squad ordered currently? I can see no plan.)

- Allow us please to determine how commanders are ordered, both in the map view and the tacitcal view (alphabetically by name, by type, by experience, by magic path, by number of units being led, by orders given, etc.), and allow us to set the default ourselves too.