The Dominions 3: "Wishlist"

[Stossel]

A few things on my wishlist, some of which I'd bet would be ridiculously unpopular but, of course, they're my wishes.

Nation-based items

These would come in two flavors. Items that can be produced in great numbers but only available to one nation (gainable through trade and battle by others) and items that every nation can make but can only make 1. This way, you can gain more than 1 of these items but only through trade or battle.

Items of the first type would be like "abysian longswords" or "Ulmian necklace" which provides element resistences.

Items of the second type would be gem-producing items. My wish (and I'm sure that's all it will remain) is that gem-producing items be more expensive but produce more. I think that it'd be better for something like a clam to cost 100 pearls and produce 20-40 a turn and be semi-unique (1 per nation) than making commanders for sole purpose of producing gems. If all a commander is doing is being an item wearer it seems to me he's not really much of a commander, but that's really fore a whole different thread. Anyways, I think these big items would add to gameplay considerably without gem-producing getting out of hand.

The return of aim/target mage

This was mentioned much earlier in this thread and I wanted to come at it again. I think that this could be implemented a lot more safely. Perhaps the bodyguard could be increased in size for battle purposes, or perhaps the bodyguard could share in the effects of protection spells the caster casts initially.

To my mind, spellcasters should be powerful but troops should be a major checking force. If you want your mage to get off those nasty spells, they need to cast some protective spells and be guarded. Weakness of body has classically been a mage's balancing factor and I think that it needs to be maintained. It doesn't seem right that I can't target directly the beings which are completely destroying my forces. If protective spells need to be increased in effectiveness to compensate, then fine by me, but spellcasters in battle need this check IMO.

Make trinkets and lesser magic items cheaper and/or produced in numbers

Make the cheap weapon + armor items something like 1-2 gems or be able to make 3-5 of the item if it costs 5 gems. This way you can outfit mediocre commanders with mediocre eq to make them decent commanders, but for minimal gem cost.
I'd actually prefer the second system of being able to produce several of the trinket in one turn, else the cost of wasting a forgers time for a 1-2 gem trinket would be too costly.

Spells that take multiple turns to cast

Whether you add spells of this nature in or make some existing spells like this, I think this would be a good addition. If you have a spy in the province with a mage who's doing this, you get a chance to see if he begins, and then you can take action with spells or assassinations. Of course, assassination would be easier on a mage who's using all his energies on a large spell...

Chance for scouts to not reveal nation or reveal faulty nation

This is one of my favorite wishes. Give scouts a chance to not reveal their nation if they're found out. Then perhaps special national scout units can reveal faulty allegience, or another variety of scout would be one with only a mediocre stealth but NEVER reveals his nation. Looking at the unit in battle would help the player somewhat, but it wouldn't be a sure bet. I think it would add to the political flare to the game in MP.

More items and spells that strengthen troops

Heading says it all, though more healer mages would be cool as well.

Famous Troop Bonuses

This one is pretty far-fetched and would seem hard to implement. If you could get the ability to lock a group units so that they could not be separated from each other, then they could gain notoriety as a group, leading to these bonuses. You wouldn't be able add units to this squad but if the squad got famous they'd have a chance (maybe an order?) to attract followers (of a similar make and model of the units inside) to replenish the units numbers. Pretty far-fetched idea, but would be very neat to my mind.

[NTJedi]

A game feature which always seems in great demand for TBS games is smart computer opponents. Very often we see computer opponents develop predictable patterns and/or little strategy. I've listed some suggestions below to make the Artificial Intelligence more challenging for Dominions_3. I've listed some of the more important ones below.

1) Don't make computer opponents send their pretenders into the death match. Any human player knows this is never a good idea.

2) Allow some type of alteration/adjustments for AI via scripts or editor. Then 6 months after the release there's bound to be two or three challenging/different AI.

3) Don't make computer opponents suffer from starvation when they're not even aware of the danger. It's sad to see their huge armies quickly flee because of starving units.

4) Don't have computer opponents purchase the super weak "militia". Anyone who has played more than 3 games would not purchase these units in mass numbers... so please adjust the choices it makes for purchasing units.

5) Verify the computer opponents will consider casting all types of spells which become available via research. Currently they don't cast some of the more powerful spells such as Flames_from_the_Sky, Elemental Kings/Queens, DemonLords, GhostRiders, etc,.

6) Guide them to use mages in searching for magic sites and researching. Even with an Impossible setting within Dominions_2 I always toast the computer opponents on researching and magic sites. Perhaps some on/off option for allowing all computer opponents to start with research finished for all paths at X level... then the player could move the X variable from 1 to 9 accordingly for a different game experience.

7) Provide the computer opponents some long-term wisdom by focusing on human players when one or more human players become the overall strongest on the map. It's sad watching two dying computer opponents kick and spit at each other while the powerful human player swallows them.

[Chazar]

FM_Surrigon said:
Nation-based items
My wish (and I'm sure that's all it will remain) is that gem-producing items be more expensive but produce more. I think that it'd be better for something like a clam to cost 100 pearls and produce 20-40 a turn and be semi-unique (1 per nation) than making commanders for sole purpose of producing gems.

I like most of your ideas, but I dislike the above cited suggestion of yours as much as I dislike clamming. I've found EarthBloodStones and Clams to be very helpful to equip on my battle mages in order to reduce micromanaging their supplies via scout ferries. Taking them away would make things awakward again!

The mechanism to limit the number of times certain powerful spells can be cast by a mage with gems in addition to fatigue is pretty convincing to me!

My suggestion against Micromanagement(tm):
However, maybe one could allow mages to order their gems automatically by mail or magic pigeons: You choose a standard gem pouch for each mage and a priority (a two digit number). As soon as a mage's gem pouch is depleted, he orders new gems from the nearest laboratory, provided that there are gems available after higher-priority mages have been served first. The pigeons delivering the gems might take a turn or two depending on research levels - or preferably depending on the distance to the nearest lab (instant if colocated).

To avoid total gem depletion, the lab gem overview screen should show a second column (like the gem transfer column showing two commanders in the existing game), and only one of the columns is used to serving mages via magic pigeon mail order. Maybe adding a priority number for each type saying that only mages with high enough priority are getting served would suffice as well to prevent the gem stock being depleted by greedy mage tramps...

[Agrajag]

My idea would be a special forgeable pouch that is eqipped at the same slot clams occupy and is refilled with magic gems at the rate of one/turn (or more, for more powerful pouches).
The thing is, you can't take the gems out of the pouch and into the lab, so it can only be used as a way to increase a mage's power in combat with gems.

[Taqwus]

Chazar --

Definitely agree. I'd like to see some form of memory wrt gem expenditure / replenishment.

I'd also like to see less micro involving blood slave harvesting -- e.g. any blood slaves harvested go into the pool, unless the harvester has actually expended them and still neds replacement or there's no lab.

[Graeme Dice]

FM_Surrigon said:
It doesn't seem right that I can't target directly the beings which are completely destroying my forces.

The problem with this order is that what it actually accomplishes is to make a staff of storms required for any group of mages.

[Stossel]

Graeme Dice said:
The problem with this order is that what it actually accomplishes is to make a staff of storms required for any group of mages.

While this may be true in Dom2, this need not be true in Dom3. A buffing of anti-arrow spells mages have access to might help, as well as other changes, perhaps allowing bodyguards to soak up arrow damage.

The removal of this order removes a valuable check on powerful units like mages. This is one reason I think national and "mundane" troops are at such a disadvantage (and why you often see armies with little or no mundane units at all). They can't be ordered to be effective, and thus can't be effective.

I lost my taste for Dom2 multiplayer because games were ALL about mages and summons and whatnot. There was no focus at all on mundane units, which I think is a shame. It's an aspect of the game I'd love to see get played up a bit more in Dom3, so I think that in order for mundane units to be worthwhile, the user needs more control over them than they currently have.

[Cainehill]

FM_Surrigon said:
I lost my taste for Dom2 multiplayer because games were ALL about mages and summons and whatnot. There was no focus at all on mundane units, which I think is a shame. It's an aspect of the game I'd love to see get played up a bit more in Dom3, so I think that in order for mundane units to be worthwhile, the user needs more control over them than they currently have.

That's why I'd love to see an option to limit magical research, a la the demo : If you limit research to 2 or 3, national troops are pretty much the main focus of the game. Limit it to 4-6, the troops are important but not necessarily the only option. Best of all, it'd require minimal coding effort ( especially since it's already been done for the demo) and doesn't get into the complication of mods.

( Such as players not having the right version, mods not being uploadable to mosehansen, mod vs mod conflicts, etc. ) I believe someone actually did a mod that facilitated removing all the spells and constructed items, but I think it had to be editted to get the exact level of magicality desired, and then distributed to all players.

[Molog]

This is an issue with money giving sites.

Currently money giving sites(like gold mines) are affected by taxes, unrest and population.

The problem is most noticeable with carrion woods where you have a low population killing dominion. You get the situation where you get no money from money giving sites when a couple of hundred people are still living in the province, but when you pillage to kill those last people off you can suddenly put taxes to 200% without a problem and get 100% of income from money giving sites. It's kinda unlogical.

I'd prefer it if money giving sites worked independently of other factors.

[Alneyan]

Cainehill said:
I believe someone actually did a mod that facilitated removing all the spells and constructed items, but I think it had to be editted to get the exact level of magicality desired, and then distributed to all players.

Actually, these are two mods to do that, but you can merge them without any problem. They are SC's Null Spell mod and my own Null Item mod; paste all the contents of one of these mods into the other, and remove everything with a research value higher than what you need (Find and Replace all in a text editor). It will, of course, conflict with any other mod changing spells and items, most notably Zen's Balance mods... unless you feel like converting Zen mods in the Null mods format.

On another note about money sites and no population: maximal unrest from taxes is equal to population/10 or 500, whichever is lower, so you can set the taxes to 200% if you only have 200 population or so. That will kill them faster, and will not lower your income. However, 200% taxes does not mean 200% of the site income, oddly enough: the actual figure seems to vary, but I don't know why it is so.