The Dominions 3: "Wishlist"

[Azhur]

Endoperez said:
Armor can already break down. They need to be weakened first (with Acid spells or Rust Mist/similar spells), and even then it takes a strong hit to actually break the armor, but it does happen. The armors are repaired when the units spend some time in province with spare resource points.

Magical armors (magic items) are immune to this, and there might be a flail/morning star having this effect in the magic item lists.

Strange that I haven't noticed this effect before.. well anyway I hope that equipment breaking will be more visible in Dom 3.

[Endoperez]

It is marked by a "Broken Sword" icon, but I haven't seen it either. It is quite rare. 'Desctrucion', Alter 4 and E3, destroys armor on AoE 6, no magic resistance roll. However, Ulm won't use it, Pangaea's mages can be used for more interesting things and they are very expensive (although this would work nicely with Maenad hordes), and Vanheim's Dwarves are limited by their capital-onlyness.

[Zen]

Any acid casting will show you the icon fairly quickly. Try playing TC and using a few battlemages with a few levels in evocation. You should see a goodly amount of Acid flying around causing havok with armor.

[FrankTrollman]

I was playing through Master of Orion 2 again recently and that is what we need. We need each province to have a separate population of every kind of basic humanoid in it. In the game so far, that's:

Ex-Imperial Humans (Marignon, Ulm, Arco, Pythium, Man, Ermor)
Norse Humans (Vanheim, Jotunheim - Utgard)
African Humans (Machaka)
Central American Humans (Mictlan)
East Asian Humans (Tien Chi)
Demons (Abyssia)
Caelumites (Caelum)
Hoburglings (Hoburg Alliance)
Jotun (Jotunheim)
Vaetti (Jotunheim - Iron Woods)
Tritons (Oceania)
Shamblers/Atlantians (Atlantis, Rlyeh)
Amazons (Themaskyra)
Barbarians (none)
Satyrs (Pangea)
Undead Hordes (Ermor)
Icthyds (none)
Woodsmen (none)

These should matter, and grow at different rates depending upon scales. Furthermore, these races should be required in a province to make specific troop types.

Thus, Caelum should go ape trying to grab Raptor provinces, because they are populated with Caelumites and allow the Caelum player to make troops they can otherwise only make in the capitol.

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And like MOO2, provinces should have a basic carrying capacity that should engender a certain level of growth until populations reach it. Growth scales should increase populations faster and increase the carrying capacity over time. Death scales should just kill population and do nothing to the carrying capacity (but even death 1 should kill people faster than base replacement rate).

You could have a little house diagram that was partially filled out in various colors on the main screen that would give your a proportional idea of how full the province was of various types of creatures, and then when you went to the hire troops screen it could give you an exact breakdown of how many people of various races are in the province.

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Finally, every race should put forward at least two nations that can use them, and every race should be represented on the world map with occassional provinces. Sometimes a waste should just have a bunch of Abyssians in it. Sometimes a province should be defended by vaetti. The Revenge of the Raptors should be a separate nation from Caelum so that the Seraphs and the Harab can do battle over the all important Caelumite populated provinces.

And even so, that's not enough population types! I want to be able to play a "Rise of the Vine Nation" nation, and that means that there should be Vinemen populated provinces. I want to play with Willard as my god, and that means that there need to be Rat infested provinces.

And there should be a few troop types that are set by population type, to the extent that when I conquer Abyssia, I should be able to recruit humanbred soldiers from the Smouldercone.

Finally, I want either a MOO2 or AoW style population "management" system, where I can purposefully genocide peoples whose religions aren't mine or settle desirable population around so where I want it. It's OK if it's time consuming, or even just not very good, in a game like this I think it's important that you be able to have sub-goals like "kill all the Abyssians" or "populate the entire planet with Van".

-Frank

[Molog]

Perhaps spells that help defend a certain province in battle.
A wall of fire that does firedamage to any enemy army trying to attack the province.
A flying fortress spell making a castle inaccesable to ground troops.
A Cloud of Shadow spell making all battles in that province under the influence of a darkness spell.


A way to sort commanders on magic paths or items would be handy.

[ioticus]

How about a toggle that lets you specify the maximum number of gems a mage will use in any given combat? The AI may decide to use less, but at least this way you can be sure you won't use your full inventory of gems in one battle.

[Endoperez]

FrankTrollman said:
Ex-Imperial Humans (Marignon, Ulm, Arco, Pythium, Man, Ermor)
Norse Humans (Vanheim, Jotunheim - Utgard)
African Humans (Machaka)
Central American Humans (Mictlan)
East Asian Humans (Tien Chi)
Demons (Abyssia)
Caelumites (Caelum)
Hoburglings (Hoburg Alliance)
Jotun (Jotunheim)
Vaetti (Jotunheim - Iron Woods)
Tritons (Oceania)
Shamblers/Atlantians (Atlantis, Rlyeh)
Amazons (Themaskyra)
Barbarians (none)
Satyrs (Pangea)
Undead Hordes (Ermor)
Icthyds (none)
Woodsmen (none)

Ex-imperial humans is a bad category. There are just generic people, and there could be Ulmish, Marignon etc. populated-provinces.

There are Tribal Cavalry, who could belong to the "barbarians" category, and personally I would put Woodsmen to Pangaean/Vine Men/treehuggers category.

Did you read that thread of mine (reading maps from .map files) about map-inhabiting program that could handle areas of few provinces that would contain units with similar themes? A list like this would be of great help if I ever get the program to work. Would you be interested in doing your own list of themed province defender types (barbarians, tribal cavalry, tribal archers+warriors or HI, x-bow and shield-spear-leather LI or even vine men, satyrs, woodsmen), I would be very grateful.

These should matter, and grow at different rates depending upon scales. Furthermore, these races should be required in a province to make specific troop types.

I don't like the "required to make special units" part, but that might just be me. I don't have experience from this kind of population effect.

[FrankTrollman]

Ex-imperial humans is a bad category. There are just generic people, and there could be Ulmish, Marignon etc. populated-provinces.

I'm actually with you here. Unfortunately, right now "humans" are mostly interchangeable. I want that to change, but even in the backstory the people of Pythium and Marignon and Ermor are all the same people.

I agree that I'd rather see provinces populated by Ulmites, who all had extra hit points, strength, and reduced encumberance. That would be cool. I would also like it if the "Knight" provinces were all in the Maignon or Man style and had occassional Chalice Knights or Avalon Knights to back things up.

Did you read that thread of mine (reading maps from .map files) about map-inhabiting program that could handle areas of few provinces that would contain units with similar themes?

Yes. That's a really good idea, but I don't actually program except in html and bbcode, so I felt that I had nothing useful to add.

Would you be interested in doing your own list of themed province defender types (barbarians, tribal cavalry, tribal archers+warriors or HI, x-bow and shield-spear-leather LI or even vine men, satyrs, woodsmen), I would be very grateful.

No problem.
http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...&Number=346553

I don't like the "required to make special units" part, but that might just be me. I don't have experience from this kind of population effect.

The idea is that this would supplement the "capitol only" properties, allowing for an intermediate range of elite troops that are only available in limited amounts, but which with proper management and economic investment or luck you could find elsewhere.

It would be kind of like the AoW deal where you needed cities of a certain size to make more powerful units. Or the Warlords III deal where you could buy the ability to build your home units in distant cities.

-Frank

[Chazar]

I disable/enable a "Staff of Storms" by transfering it to/from an accompanying sneaking scout. This is somewhat messy...

Commanders should have some servants at their disposal to carry unused items (enable checkbox?). Furthermore they should be able to ship magical items to laboratories without carrying themselves. Of course, there should be time penalty and maybe some gold cost, but requiring explicit scouts is a bit troublesome.

On the other hand, this would preclude the interception of enemy carriers, which might be desireable. Maybe some scouts could be turned into instant recruitable units: Pay some gold (maybe deduct resources) and you get a crappy (maybe non-sneaking) 0-command commander just to carry things, which can be disbanded as easily?

(It should not alter much of the game, but I think predicting the need for carrier-scouts is just micromanaging...)

[ioticus]

Here's another wish: Please run all text through an English spell checker! But you're not through yet; didn't think I'd let you off that easy did you? Have all text proof read by an English professor. I'm sure many would do it for free even!