Dominions 3 Announced

[Vicious Love]

NTJedi said:
5) Higher difficulty setting should have the computer opponents be more aggressive against human opponents as well. This makes sense since its the human player looking for a greater challenge when increasing the difficulty level.

Disagreed. I always hatehatehateHATEit when a game goes out of it's way to foil me, the player. You'd think those friggin' Darloks would accept my offer of peace, after all the free tech I've given them, especially considering my ability to burninate their space-cottages in the blink of an eye, but no, they're predisposed to hate me, simply because I'm Player_1. Makes everything seem less like a gameworld, more like a game.
To me, higher difficulty implies no more than tougher, cannier neighbors, not some sort of partisan, anti-human computer bias. I'm happy with the system as it presently stands. Tougher nations, greater challenge.

[Yossar]

Maybe I'm the only one who doesn't want too much programming time wasted on the nation AI (besides the developers, I guess). Dom3 could be a great single player game if it had great AI, but with the limited resources of Illwinter, I'd much rather they just cut their losses and focus on making another great multiplayer game. But maybe that's just because I view single player Dom2 as just a place to practice for multi.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Yossar said:
Maybe I'm the only one who doesn't want too much programming time wasted on the nation AI

Nothing could be more wrong

[Tumba]

Yossar said:
Maybe I'm the only one who doesn't want too much programming time wasted on the nation AI (besides the developers, I guess).

My opinion exactly. There are whole organisations creating AIs and still their robots bump into flagpoles and try to mate with rocks.

Considering the resources available for this project. I'd advice to do only the necessary tweaks to AI. Maybe try to improve the battlefield behavior of both player and AI troops a little bit. On grander scale, maybe some randomness into AI troop movements. I hate to be able to channel the AI to attack where I want it to attack just by tinkering with PDs.

A more random attck path would give a very impressive picture of the AI. A simple "not always attacking the most logical province"-rule would definitely result in some: "Whoa! The super-smart AI actually bypassed my trap!" -reactions.

[Chazar]

Yossar said:
Maybe I'm the only one who doesn't want too much programming time wasted on the nation AI (besides the developers, I guess).

I need to agree again: SP is there for learning, MP is for playing! I do not understand how a strategy game can be fun in SP. Its just some Maths and Randomness, but no clever design and hideous scheme behind the marching armies. And furthermore, the AI doesnt even bother if conquered by your ingenious plan...

[PhilD]

What I'd like to see (NOT real time battles, one way or the other):

More precise battle scripting

Player customizability of the interface (shortcuts) and of orders (like, being able to define battle scripts and save them for future games).

Also, there are lots of UI improvements that are probably a huge chore to code, but that would make life easier for me. Hmm, here's one at random: being able to "save" pretender designs, and "load"/change them, would be a nice in-game plus...

[Endoperez]

Ah, okay. I hadn't realized what Soapyrog meant. Sorry.

You know, I could like your idea... I would want to see it in effect first, though.

[Pocus]

more scripting possibilities, and something like 'cast spell x' as a standing order would be convenient too: more control, and less orders to enter.

[quantum_mechani]

The turn based battles seem fine to me, if it isn't broken, don't fix it .

Anyway, thanks for keeping a great series going.

EDIT: moved suggestions to wishlist thread.