The Dominions 3: "Wishlist"

[tinkthank]

Ah ok thanks, that makes sense.

Well, here is a tad bit more:

Castle Selection Improvement:

Allow in God Creation for the selection of variable castle types.
For example, one could imagine that for
- X points, a player will receive a Type Q castle in his home province, and all further castles will be type Q.
- X+20 points, a player will receive a Type P castle in his home province, and all further castles will be either of type Q, Type P or Type R.
- For X+40 points, a player will receive a Type A castle in his home province, and all further castles will be type Q, X, B, or D.

If a player may choose between castle types when building, selecting the "Build Fort" option will show an additional screen: Build Fort A, Fort B, Fort C).


AI Improvement idea:

I have seen the Impossible AI (!) choose completely implausible builds, such as high turmoil with misfortune 3; the rest of its very many points are squandered on exceptionally high magic paths on pretenders, with which the AI tends to do nothing well. The Impossible AI may sometimes, however, choose instead of exceptionally idiotic scales some mediocre ones, but then tend to choose a pretender and give him or her Path-A-7 Path-B-5 Path-C-6 Path-D-3; although these are usually choices which tend not to be synergetic, the AI often cannot do anything interesting with them even if they were -- not even search properly.
So my suggestion would be to encourage the AI to take better scales:
- Forbid the AI >easy to choose certain scale combinations (e.g. Turmoil + Misfortune); if it plays a theme such as TC S&A with forced turmoil, it may not choose misfortune.
- Forbid the AI >normal to choose any non-forced "bad" scales; that is, allow it to play themes which require death or turmoil etc., but then not to choose additional "bad" scales. (Exceptions could be: Drain with Ulm, Turmoil or Sloth with dead Ermor, etc.)
- Make some schematics or "kits" for god generation from which the AI could choose a few. That is, for each nation, give 3+ blueprints per God from which the AI can choose randomly and build up from these; that is, per theme and per choosable God, the devs must select each God and spend, say, half of the points available, the AI may distribute the rest randomly if that god gets selected during game creation. This would give the AI some "kits" from which to choose. This may require the devs to generate 100 new god half-builds per theme, but this is quickly done and fun anyhow.

An unrelated suggestion: Give the harder AI the following bonuses as well:
- research bonus
- ritual spell casting bonus (impossible AI *could* be, say, 50% reduction in cost)

[Edge]

At the server logon screen for network play, I would like to see a list of favorite IP's, with the most recently used at the top of the list. Ditto for port.

[FarAway Pretender]

Going along with tinktank's suggestions on better AI pretender design, I don't even think it would be that hard to create various "flavors" of spend.

You wouldn't need more than 8 or 10 different "combos" to get a good cross-section of dominion choices that the AI would be likely to benefit from. The random selections just aren't the kind of thing the AI can do well, and Pretender magic choices don't often have much impact. Flavors might include:

Order +3, Prod +1, Misfortune -1
Turmoil -1, Growth +2, Fortune +2
Prod +1, Death -1, Magic +3

If an AI doesn't have 120 points to spend, you just pick the most important ability and start rounding up/down one point, then go to the next, then the next. Just thinking out loud here, you get the idea.

[Azhur]

Someone might have said this suggestion before or then it was merely a dream I had.

All nations should have three different dominion types, which are all based on your effort. After numerous turns of "Cultural research", nations would evolve into the next age. E.g, Pangaea could have this kind of a system:

!! The following dominion types aren't equal to the ones in Dominions 2 !!

------------------------------------------------------------

(Weak) Early Age: Carrion Woods (The time when the forests grow wildly and the nature isn't under Dryads control.)

Requirements: None

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(Average) Middle Age: Pangaea (The time when the supplies are plenty and wealth can be found all over thick forests.)

Requirements: 500 CP (Cultural Points researched), 70 recources and 500 gold.

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(Stong) New Age: New Era (The time when Pangaea is civilized and thus learns the way of steel.)

Requirements: 2000 CP (Cultural Points researched), 200 recources and 1200 gold.

------------------------------------------------------------

This way you could decide between magic research and cultural studying, which certainly gives a nice twist to the game. While some might count on their precious spells, the others may try rampaging with their elite class forces. Of course you can again have better mages, with a newer dominion type...

[Endoperez]

Kristoffer wrote this to the FRAG! of January. I'm eagerly waiting for February just to see what they have come up with this time...

All nations and themes have been reworked
and placed in one of three eras. Until a few days ago it was not meaningful to play games in the early or late era. The middle age is more or less the default themes and has not changed that much. So when I started to play a game of the early Version of Ermor I had a bLast.

also

Sauromatia? What?, you say. Before Christmas we begun a remaking of themes that will make things easier. Both changing stuff and modding at a later date. Each theme is now made as a separate nation. This makes it easy to add, remove and change nations. This also removes the need for a nation to exist in a given era. There was no Pythium before the break from Ermor, but another nation lived near the marshes of Pythium. There are hydras in Sauromatia, but the theurgs have not yet come. Witch kings, enaries and oiorpata rule the steppes.

This is decided before the game starts. Remember that even games of 100 turns last only 9 years game-time.

[Azhur]

Endoperez said:

This is decided before the game starts. Remember that even games of 100 turns last only 9 years game-time.

Good point.. well more nations means more options. Hopefully the balance is at least somewhat correct, when Dom 3 will be released.

[PvK]

I've mentioned before that I'd like to see magic clothing and armor require magic resources in proportion to the size of the wearer, and be required to be the same size. Looting Black Steel Plate from human-sized Ulmites won't let you protect your Titans with them, and forging full magic armor for giants would require giant amounts of magic resources. This not only makes sense and is an interesting detail that introduces more choices and restrictions, but would be a natural balancing force against huge supercombattants.

(Mounted units would be an exception, but hopefully this could be handled by another change, where riders and mounts were seperate units that were combined to make a mounted unit, and each would be tracked for damage and equipment individually.)

In addition, it could be extended to other spells as well. There is already a precedent for some of this in specific examples (Wind Ride resisted by size), but it could be an underlying system which again would tend to help balance against huge supercombattants. Teleporting, fireproofing, or making a dragon ethereal would be much harder than doing the same tricks to a dwarf. Too be fair, though, the fatigue scale would want to take this into account too. Net effect would be that a giant could buff himself as easily as a human, but a human trying to buff a giant would find it harder than buffing himself.

Another unrelated idea, which might already be part of the game that I've forgotten (?), would be a bonus to stealth ability for units in their native terrain types (perhaps as shown by survival skill).

Similarly, I think animal units should be stealthy in their own habitats at least. Bears and wolves in the desert won't be stealthy, but they would be in the woods.

PvK

[Sandman]

Better commanders:

Make commanders have more effect on the troops they lead, by creating more 'standard' type abilties. For example, an archer commander would increase the precision of troops under his command. To encourage realistic commander placement, the archer commander would also have to be near the troops he is commanding. It works pretty much like the 'auras' in Warcraft 3.

At the moment, most non-mage commanders are generally just a transport device for armies that are too big for a mage to 'carry'. With this system, choice and placement of individual commanders can make a difference to the outcome of battle.

[The_Tauren13]

More unholy nations. I love unholy nations. So much fun.

[Kristoffer O]

What is an unholy nation?

If we go with the opinion of the average pretender its every nation but one.
If we go by consensus of pretenders its probably somewhat less than half of the nations.
If we go by modern majority its probably those who disturb the dead or kill people in the name of their god.
If we go by fantasy consensus its probably nations that uses 'unholy' priests or blood sacrifices.

You'll get more of the first kind. The second and third one as well. You will probably get less of the fourth one (the 'unholy', not the blood sacrificing ones). The distinction between unholy and holy priests is slowly dissolving. More grey zones so to speak.

BTW wich nations do you consider unholy in dom2?