The Dominions 3: "Wishlist"

[Endoperez]

Crazy_Bonvine said:
"squillions" of pretenders?you are reffering to the rather boring animals/statues/<instert boring random physical form choice here> yes??

Maybe you missed his point. It was that there are already too many pretenders, spells, and to less extent, nations that are not in par with the other choices. Magnate wants to have more choices, not by adding more units, but by making all the existing ones more interesting.

And even if you left out all the "similar" nations/themes, like Vanheim/Man:Last of the Tuatha (sneaky, sacred, high-def special units and commanders) and Pythium & Ermor: Broken Empire (same units, different magic), you are losing much. All the nations play very differently, especially when you consider what kind of pretender would help them. I'll use Last of the Tuatha and Vanheim as an example:, because I consider them the two nations that share the closest theme/idea in how they work:

shared abilities: high-def sacred units lacking good protection, mage-commanders with awesome defence, Air magic, human allies with few special elites
Tuatha: Nature, better human allies (knights and longbowmen), cheap temples, stealthy priests and spies, spell songs that can be used to boost morale in enemy dominion, forced scales (no Order/Misfortune for them)
Vanir: Dwarves, Earth, minor access to Blood and Blood Sacrifice, sailing, flying Valkyries, prefer cold (bonus points), glamour makes the Vanir undetectable by enemy scouts or spies

Because Vanheim already has Earth, Vanheim player won't probably go for Earth blessing. Rejuvenation does wonders for mages, although it would work better with ones cheaper than theirs, and would help Vanirs' protection. Water helps them very much, boosting the Vanirs' defence into absurd numbers. Vanheim doesn't have easy access to nature, because going for a bless makes new paths costly, and bless makes their special units and mages much better.
Last of the Tuatha, on the other hand, can very well go for Earth blessing. They could take Earth and reserach Enchantments, aiming for Enliven Statues and playing with Cloud Trapeze, Personal Regeneration, Haste, Faery Trod, Relief and even Flaming Arrows if they can access it in the meantime. The Tuatha can go for Water as well, and Fire gives them access to Flaming Arrows which makes their longbowmen even more devastating. Each of Water, Earth and Fire blessings can work very well with the Tuatha, and can double to form interesting combinations: access to anti-undead items, Dwarven Hammers, quickness, protection or rejuvenation in items or blessings; and/or Claymen, Rune Smashers (to use with Charm), unresistable Acid Evocations, access to both cold- and heat-based spells (and damage shields!) to play around enemies' weaknesses, Magma Bolts and later Magma Eruption, Charcoal Shields...

As for items, Dwarve Smiths can do wonders. Have you realized E3A1 Smith can take Bag of Winds and Winged Helmet a Vanadrott forged, and make an Elemental Staff? Those are great items, and enable Smiths to forge even more boosters for other elements.

And if one considers how Vanir and Tuatha differ as warrior-mages, both have good defense and access to Mirror Image and Mistform in Air Alterations. Vanir start with minor Mirror Image, and can get good protection with Smiths' Earth, while Tuatha have access to Regeneration and can use Eagle Eyes to boost their precision to absurd numbers. I wonder if a Bard with Bow of Botulf, ordered to Fire Rear, fires at the enemy mages... Of course, a Vanherse or even a Jarl with a Black Heart kills enemy commanders with much more deadly accuracy. While they cannot don Flying Boots, Flying Carpets and few extra Vanir might be enough to even take over weakly defended provinces, and quickly move over both seas and land. Unmatched paranoia!

[Nerfix]

EDIT: I have failed. Nevermind what was here.

[Zooko]

So I just heard that Civ 4 will include a feature which I have previously suggested for Dom 3: moddable AI using Python

http://pc.ign.com/articles/614/614551p3.html

Now actually I made two suggestions. The first one is to make the strategic AI fully moddable. This can be done very simply -- so simply that Illwinter can probably actually do it for Dom 3. The way to do it is simply to publish complete specification of the contents of the .trn and .2h files. Done.

The second suggestion was the make the tactical AI moddable. You can imagine making the tactical AI moddable in the same way: invent ".tactical-trn" and ".tactical-2h" files, have the game write out and read in those files in between every step of the battle. Obviously, that would be completely impractical. So where Python comes in (or you could choose a different scripting language -- Lua is popular and Io is very nice) is that instead of writing out a .tactical-trn file, you make a call to a Python function, passing all of the data as arguments. Instead of reading in a .tactical-2h file, you get a return value from the Python function containing all of the data.

That latter one is harder to implement so I'm not suggesting that Illwinter attempt it for Dom 3. (Maybe for a patch though?)

The former one obviously raises cheating concerns, but as we have seen, a secret 2h spec does not prevent cheating, it only makes it harder and less widely known. Whereas a server that verifies the fairness of all moves and a published 2h file spec would completely prevent cheating and also enable strategic AI mods.

Adding that "verification of fairness" is more work that might interfere with the timeline that I've proposed. One option would be to go ahead with Dom 3 plus strategic AI mods, and then add fixes for any cheats that are discovered in subsequent patches.

I don't have much time to spare, but for a tiny tiny sliver of a royalty, I will spend a few hours a week consulting to help you guys (Illwinter) implement this and make sure that it is safe. (A sliver of a royalty of Dom 3 is much less than my normal fee for this kind of consulting work -- I would do it only because I love the game so much and it would be fun.)

[WraithLord]

When user clicks the 'e' button a confirmation window is opened.
This is good for the rare scenarios when one is the last player to submit his turn in a TCP/IP hosted MP game.
Otherwise that player will lose his turn.

hehe, although rare, I still remember the few times it happened to me, for I seem to have a knack for it

[Olive]

Got an idea for the castles (don't know if it has been said before). Instead of choosing one castle type and making the same kind of castle for all the game, why not building custom castles ?

There's one basic castle type (i.e. : admin 10, 20 supplies, 20 defense...) When designing the pretender, the player could use design point to get knowledge of different improvements. During the game, the player builds the basic castle structure. And if he's got the right knowledge, he can spend extra gold improving the castle. Like building a better admin center or putting ballistas on the walls to defend during an assault.

I see these domains :
- Warehouse (increases admin)
- Granary (better gathering of supplies)
- Masonry (increases defense)
- Ballistics (putting crossbows, ballistas, etc... on the walls)

It would allow the player to build small castles where he doesn't needs big ones, and, if he's got the knowledge, big ones where he needs. And the ability to build good castles would still cost design points, to keep the same balance for pretender design.

It seems nice and balanced (???)

[Turin]

Allowing more kinds of buildings to build would turn this into more of a civlike game.
Most often building all those improvement buildings turns into a micromanagement nightmare(for example you´d almost always want to build warehouses, since more admin==more gold==even more warehouses etc) and that distracts from the wargame aspect.

I´d like to see a flexible castle design system in the pretender creation part though, with similar functionality to the scales system (higher admin costs points, longer buildtime gets you points etc).

[Olive]

> more admin==more gold
Admin increases only resources.

Don't know if it will add more micromanagement. As far as you build castles only in specific places (strategic places or to recruit indep units), the micromanagement will be limited. Afaik, it should take less time than moving armies and giving orders.

Don't know of the time ratio it should take to make custom castles. If it'is too high, then having an only castle by nation as you suggest is better... don't know.

[Sandman]

The thing about economy boosting buildings is that whilst they would turn the game into a micro-management fest, they'd still be fairer and more fun than clams, which are effectively the same thing.

[Turin]

Olive said:
> more admin==more gold
Admin increases only resources.

admin increases the gold you gain from the province by half the admin value. So a castle with admin 40 increases the goldincome from a province by 20%.

It´s a difficult decision if the game should be made more of a buildergame like the civ series or AoW. Those games are a huge success, but I feel that the builder aspect almost always becomes tiresome.
In addition the comparison with clams is accurate. Most people don´t like to play with clams in multiplayer because clams encourages a defensive hoarder style. More improvement buildings would have the same effect and a game where the best strategy is to bunker up tends to get boring quickly.

[Aeshi]

Note to Endoperez:

"Pythium & Ermor: Broken Empire (same units, different magic)"

The therugs are the only goddamn things they both have!

"I'll use Last of the Tuatha and Vanheim as an example:, because I consider them the two nations that share the closest theme/idea in how they work:
shared abilities: high-def sacred units lacking good protection, mage-commanders with awesome defence, Air magic, human allies with few special elites"

Excuse me for not falling on my knees with awe...2 Boring human empires have something in common for your reasons and because their both empires of homo sapiens...so what?got any pictures of pigs flying???