Wish-List for Dominions 4

[HoneyBadger]

Dominions 3 is a wonderful game, but there are quite a few people lately (including myself) who have expressed ideas for the future of Dominions that go beyond the current form of the game. Rather than lose track of what people want when the time comes, I thought I'd establish a thread just for the purpose of posting ideas for the next generation of Dominions.

This thread is for the posting of ideas that go beyond patches, for things that would require major changes/improvements/renovations to the game.

Try to remember that it's a turn-based fantasy strategy game...No elves, no lazer beams, no saved games.

Let's stay focused! Eye of the tiger, people!

[Loren]

I think the biggest thing the game needs is things to reduce micromanagement.

Off the top of my head:

Routing on new production.

Pathfinding--order a commander to where you want him and he'll find the best way to get there.

A spell that increases the supply available in a province. (There are magic items that provide supply, being able to provide an increase to the province itself shouldn't be imbalancing.)

Work lists: Mark a province that you want <x> done. A commander may be given an automate order--he runs around doing all the <x>'s.

Get rid of the meaningless messages caused by insanity. I don't need a hundred messages telling me my insane commanders failed to find magic sites.

Magic item work list: You indicate what you want produced. Mages with a generic <forge> order produce things on the list.

A larger item inventory.

Repeat production orders--queue stuff and select repeat, it keeps being provided until you cancel it.

Remember your orders after insanity.

Spell inhibition--turn off spells you don't want cast. (You could still script them, though.)

A bit more control in the scripting--the ability to give the mage priorities. I really disliked having a high power mage completely unable to harm my opponents because he buffed himself like crazy then relied on low-level summoning spells until he routed at turn 50.

Get rid of the automatic rout at turn 50. I do agree there needs to be some sort of auto-rout to avoid infinite battles. This could be handled by looking at damage, though--compute the slope of the line graphing the number of hp's of real units (not counting summoned units that will vanish at the end of combat.) Go past turn 30 and you rout if the line ceases to be negative.

[HoneyBadger]

I'd like a severely expanded magic system including:

Spells and magic items that are only available for certain ages.

Summoning spells that are tied to terrain-types so that you can only cast a certain spell while in a forest province, for example.

Maximum spell-levels expanded to 15, to match maximum path-levels.

[Dakar]

I'd like more versatile scripting options. For example, something like "Close in, fire a volley of spears, attack" or "cast damage-dealing spells".

[MaxWilson]

It's been mentioned before, but I want it recorded in this list that I'd really like

1.) The ability to disband units (without having to round them up and suicide them) to reduce upkeep and/or clean up routed forces;

2.) Some way of reducing gem micromanagement (e.g. a toggle which specifies that the commander will ONLY use gems for spells he's specifically scripted for);

3.) A way to turn off spells I don't like (on a temporary, per-player basis), so they don't show up in the ritual/battle scripting UIs and aren't cast on the battlefield.

-Max

[MaxWilson]

4.) The option to arrange commanders and/or items in my laboratory inventory by something other than unit ID. Either alphabetically or by category, say.

5.) Moddable blessings and/or new spell paths.

-Max

[ajr]

Loren said:
Magic item work list: You indicate what you want produced. Mages with a generic <forge> order produce things on the list.

What I'd really like to see is as a UI improvement is a new order for mages, <pool> or something along those lines. Mages set to pool will, if there's nothing else for them to do, research. Somewhere in the UI, there are ways to grab a mage from the pool both to forge magic items and cast ritual spells; mages would be chosen such that all work is fulfilled and research is maximized. If work can't be done, the attempt to add the work item will fail. Solving these constraints may require which mages are doing what to change as more work items are added.

I'll admit it can matter where a ritual spell is cast, but other than for summons and a few other spells it won't matter the vast majority of the time; I would expect the main use for this to be site-searching and attack spells (you'd never send, say, teleport through the pool).

This could almost be implemented entirely on the client, but a "pool" flag for each mage would be required to really make things work. It would also be helpful if newly recruited mages went into the pool...

[Sombre]

Nice suggestion. Sounds do-able too.

[Kristoffer O]

> Exactly, I wish the devs would have spent whatever time they did on making the two new races on UI improvements instead (and fixing the awful temple dominion rate spreading bug). Every hour they spend fixing one thing could have been spent fixing something else.

As Gandalf said, we have different roles. JK is the code-guy and I make sprites and descriptions etc. I can fixe smaller bugs and change stats, but I can't code one bit (almost true). So every hour spent on new nations I could have spent on reading my students work or at quaffing beer .

> I personally would get infinitely more value out of a better UI then two more races.

That's OK. I personally like nations and content more than UI, but I have given up on games with lousy UI's. I would probably not get into dominions unless someone helped me. When I was 20 I wouldn't mind, but I think I'm growing ever more lazy.

> That isn't to say that Dom 3 isn't a great product. I think it was worth the money I spent on it, but I still bought it. I expect the game to receive support just like any other software product. Bug fixes, revisions to the code and interface.

We do fix the game occasionally with patches, but it is a matter of time and engagement. JK works full time as a computer engineer and I wouldn't expect him to work hours when he returnsd from work. After release we were a bit tired and prefered not to think about dominions too much. Important bugs must be fixed of course, but a bit of vacation from dominions was needed. Now we work on weekends when we don't have anything special to do, so It is mostly a matter of priority. Should I see my friends or should I add a new nation. At times friends get the longer straw, and vice versa.

> I read somewhere that the devs didn't know what to do with the income they were getting off the game. Well I have a suggestion. Hire someone else to help them code the parts they really don't want to. I think it would be easy enough for them to partner with a third party (who could be located anywhere internationally with the miracle of the internet) that could help them with the drudgery of UI improvements, while they focus on maintaining and improving the core of the game.

We don't get enough money to pay a full time job for one of us, so it unlikely that we will find another free programmer willing and able to get into the quite jumbled code of 10 years of ongoing programming. I don't think the cost of hiring a new programmer would be covered by possible sale increses.

About not knowing what to do applies to my normal salary as well. I sort of dislike money and don't like to do much, apart from games that is. I'm quite content with what I have.

I wouldn't mind to see a dominions totally remade by someone else (paying me for it perhaps). It would be fun (and possibly agonizing) to se a graphics heavy simplified RTS version of dominions

> Jazzepi

So it is unlikely that there will be big and ongoing UI-changes, but there might pop up things from time to time.

It might have been fair to go to greater lengths to let you and other customers know that we are a small company that have limited resources. Many on this forum and old dom2 players are probably aware of this, but new players might not know it and expect quick and ongoing work on the game. I think there is some info on the matter on shrapnels site, but I'm not sure if what is said there translates to how much ongoing support you percieve that you recieve.

Hope you are OK with this.

KO

[lch]

Didn't we have a wish-list thread already?

Oh well, I'm with the "better interfaces" crowd here, I have two requests which are very much needed and shouldn't even take too much energy to get implemented:

1. The ability to load a previously created pretender in the pretender creation phase. While starting a new game and in the game settings. You should be able to just load what you have saved and then be able to still edit the pretender. I understand that this hasn't been done this way currently because of multiplayer/PBEM games and password security, I guess. Fine, then ask for the password if somebody clicks on "edit pretender" or something and otherwise just assign it to that nation like it is now. It will be "just" a few new dialogs, but it would help things tremendously, especially if you are using a pretender that you created some time ago and you haven't written down what your designed pretender looked like.

2. The ability to read messages that you sent out this turn. I don't even want some history/log feature where you can follow the conversation you had with somebody else, I just what I sent out to whom this turn so far. At the moment, all you can do is see how many messages you have sent out at all, and delete them all if you think you made an error there somewhere. Hardly satisfying.