Wish-List for Dominions 4

[Endoperez]

sansanjuan said:
Capture and roleplay statistical anomalies during battle
e.g. a militia man inflicts massive damage and kills a Pretender just based on chance rolls. Capture the battle and promote the unit in some special way. Show a toe to toe replay of just that slugfest.


Lairs
Like sites but guarded specifically inside a province. Often contain magic items.

Quests


Map changing spells (certainly high very level)
Raise Land
Sink Land
Wall Province
Change Province type
Etc.


Tailorable magic items based on gem cost

Few comments:

Dealing the killing blow against certain types of units should be better rewarded. Actually, the experience you get from killing anything could be changed to depend on size of the killed creature: 2 points for humans, 3 for cavalry, 4 for Jotuns, etc. Killing prophets could net you a little bonus, and killing a pretender could give a little more, perhaps something like 25 points of experience. It shouldn't be too much, because otherwise your ally will keep on sending his immortal pretender to be killed by your champion.


Lairs and quests: these could both be done if sites could be made to disappear. There are already at least two sites into which you may enter to try and discover treasure; you'll probably face traps and fight horrors or undead, depending on if you enter The Forgotten City or the City of the Damned, but if you survive you come back with gold, gems or magic items. If these could disappear after a set amount of turns, or after the quest was completed, it'd be close enough. Some "quests" would be solved by magic (a nature site with "mage may enter for adventure", higher magic = better chance of success), by fighting capability, etc etc.


Dominions-type maps are static and can't change, because the map graphics can't change. Two of Illwinter's games could do this. Conquest of Elysium II was tile-based; the tiles based with seasons, you could burn down forests or craft golems out of mines or lakes, destroying them in the process. Dominions: PPP, the first one, had maps where provinces were pixel porridge. Every pixel marked a terrain of spesific type. Growth dominion changed the pixels into green (forest), heat into yellow (waste), etc. I don't think there were any spells that would change provinces' terrain, but it would have been possible. If the Dominions engine is too clumsy to be adapted, the next Illwinter game might allow for something like this.

Tailorable magic items are very easily unbalanced. At the moment, it's impossible to get all the good abilities on a supercombatant. Three immunities, luck and a two-handed weapon is only possible via spesific items: Amulet of Luck is the only non-hand-slot item for Luck, Rime Hauberk gives cold immunity, Ring of Tamed Lighting for shock immunity, Brimztone Boots for fire immunity. If you could just slap luck into Rainbow Armor and shock immunity into Wraith Sword, it would be worth it even if the price doubled, because now you could also give the combatant amulet of anti-magic and regeneration, or change brimstone boots to flying boots and a ring, or something similar. Custom items would be too good.