Game suggestion

[Endoperez]

It would be nice if spells had subcategories, like damage, summon, buff, debuff and such. Besides the obvious, it'd allow some mages to be better (fatigue reduction) at damage spells and buffs, but poor at others kinds of magic.

It would also be nice if I didn't remember seeing this discussion about once a year for a long time. I'm sure if I dug deep enough, I could find someone saying Dominions: Priests, Prophets & Pretenders (Dom1) would be better if the scripting options included "repeat this spell". It probably wouldn't have suggested that the "attack magic users" and "fire commanders" battle orders are removed. I not going to check, though, because more likely than not it was me making the suggestion. :P

[Illuminated One]

That plans do not last is reflected by the impossibility to know what you are up against.
5 actions only scriptable just means that a working plan cannot be executed.

[Ironhawk]

The 5-turn limit is frustrating but neccessary. First and foremost to reduce MicroManagement. If there wasnt a limit to what you could script, power players would spend HOURS on every script and everyone else would have to as well, just to keep up.

[Omnirizon]

Originally Posted by AdmiralZhao

Or you could view it as a chess game where you allowed to play the first 5 moves, and then after that an AI takes over.

Seriously, it is frustrating, and I'm not sure that it becomes less so once you've mastered the combat and scripting system. The problem becomes even more galling with CBM, as you have dozens of viable combat spells to cast, but no way to get your mages to repeatedly cast them. Personally, I see it as the biggest flaw left in the game. If they were to fix this and call the resulting game Dominions 4, I would buy a copy.

chess isn't a perfect comparison, but to the extent that it is: the comparison doesn't begin with the start of battle, but rather with the turns leading up to it. Scripting and placement constraints figure into the chess-like strategy in the decisions as to what armies/units to prepare and send into a battle, what spells to think about using with them, and how to equip them.

The probabilistic influences are the greatest difference between chess and dominions, but it is whims of the RNG and unpredictability of the AI that make dominions battles fun.

Originally Posted by Ironhawk

The 5-turn limit is frustrating but neccessary. First and foremost to reduce MicroManagement. If there wasnt a limit to what you could script, power players would spend HOURS on every script and everyone else would have to as well, just to keep up.

Also, it is a sort of buffer to prevent certain spells from becoming imbalanced. If players had perfect control over actions for the entire battle, entire new strategies would emerge in which certain (even fewer than now) spells would become extremely powerful due to some little trick they allowed. Currently, the unpredictable behavior helps to reduce any spell from being extremely powerful because the player can't really script exactly how it is used (at least until late-game when there are lots of battle-field wide spells that avoid most of the unpredictability in spell usage, assuming the AI decides to cast them

Another reason not to have more involved scripting is that perfect management of battles without interactive order giving would require lengthy if-then-else trees, and that mechanic is an entire game in and of itself (like robot battle games), and not what this game is supposed to be about. Thus really, the way it is currently done is -close- to the best way to do it given the aims of the game-play experience. Certainly there are minor additions that could be made and implemented that would improve battle resolution. But really, they wouldn't improve it that much: certainly not enough to justify the time needed to implement and play-test any additions to scripting.

[Illuminated One]

Originally Posted by IronHawk

The 5-turn limit is frustrating but neccessary. First and foremost to reduce MicroManagement. If there wasnt a limit to what you could script, power players would spend HOURS on every script and everyone else would have to as well, just to keep up.

I understand that a 50 spell limit would be quite mad.
But just adding a (repeat last spell) option would not increase MM the slightest.

Originally Posted by Omniziron

Also, it is a sort of buffer to prevent certain spells from becoming imbalanced. If players had perfect control over actions for the entire battle, entire new strategies would emerge in which certain (even fewer than now) spells would become extremely powerful due to some little trick they allowed.

But really, they wouldn't improve it that much: certainly not enough to justify the time needed to implement and play-test any additions to scripting.

Well, for example I tried the following strategy - earth mages spam destruction and earth meld on the front line where cheap troops then kill the defenseless enemy elites.
Perfectly viable from a thematic view, perfectly workable from what's inside the manual. With a catch, though - the AI won't do it.
Balance is no concern since it is much more easily countered than Air Magic for example.

[ghoul31]

SC's are currently overpowered because all they have to do is sit in the back row for 5 turns. Then they come out and one 10 hit point SC can slaughter all 100 mages, cus the mages aren't smart enough to cast the correct spell to kill the SC.

SC's usually have only one weakness. So there is only one spell that will work on them. And the computer is too dumb to know this.

[quantum_mechani]

Originally Posted by ghoul31

SC's are currently overpowered because all they have to do is sit in the back row for 5 turns. Then they come out and one 10 hit point SC can slaughter all 100 mages, cus the mages aren't smart enough to cast the correct spell to kill the SC.

SC's usually have only one weakness. So there is only one spell that will work on them. And the computer is too dumb to know this.

Now, I'm of the opinion that the 'sitting in the back 5 turns' technique is widely underestimated, but that analysis is pretty flawed.

First off, there are very good reasons 10 hp commanders are almost never SCs, any significant battle and they are likely to run into a bit of bad luck and die.

Also, almost any SC has a number of weaknesses (though MR is usually the easiest to go for). Getting all elemental resists plus high mr and everything else a SC needs is almost impossible. Further, while there are usually better ways of going about it, but you can order your mages to move forward for a few turns before casting.

... however, if your point is SCs in SP are ridiculous I have to agree. Changing human scripting options doesn't change that though.