The Dominions 3: "Wishlist"

[PrinceofLowLight]

I really don't like the idea of increasing uniy costs for more-built units. Instead of creating an artificial handicap for units, just make under-used things more effective. There are plenty of suggestions in the thread to make Light Infantry and Cavalry more useful.

I have to echo the request for disbanding troops.

Either make unit AI better or increase scripting options. The desire for more control stems from silly things like your archers wiping out the back ranks of your army one too many times. Maybe certain commanders could unlock better strategies for units?

Multiple fort designs is a good idea too.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

PrinceofLowLight said:
I really don't like the idea of increasing uniy costs for more-built units. Instead of creating an artificial handicap for units, just make under-used things more effective.

Balancing hundreds of units perfectly is impossible, and if unit A is known to be only 99% as cost-effective as unit B, you'll never recruit A when you have the choice. Besides, this system isn't any more artificial than the current unit stat system, quite the contrary IMO: if you have two military academies, one that trains musketeers and one that train dragoons, never incorporating dragoons in your armies would certainly come at a cost.

I've seen this simple idea implemented in a couple wargames, and it worked like a charm.

[/quote]

[Argitoth]

CONTENT WISH: Artilary units for most, if not all nations.

[Chris Adams]

- True 3d battles - e.g. a flying unit shouldn't have to worry about units which don't have ranged weapons or magic, attacking uphill should be harder, some spell effects should flow downhill, etc.

- More targeting options. Just about every army in the history of time has recognized the value of targeting enemy commanders - it'd be cool if my archers and magic Users could do so as well.

- Combined-arms options - e.g. attack after this spell is successfully cast, attack the targeted units from multiple sides (which would be very useful with flying troops), or things like "follow behind the heavy cavalry" so you have a better way of dealing with different unit speeds. In particular I've been annoyed when storming castles when some units spend the entire battle trying to get in through the walls rather than the congested entrance.

- The ability to disband units. It'd be handy if you could automatically discharge any unit with certain wounds or simply do something with all those militia when you're in a low-supply province.

[Graeme Dice]

Chris Adams said:
- More targeting options. Just about every army in the history of time has recognized the value of targeting enemy commanders - it'd be cool if my archers and magic Users could do so as well.

This was purposefully removed, as the presence of this order in Dominions I made it a necessity to have a storms in virtually every battle, as otherwise your commanders were picked off in the first turns by flying troops.

[PrinceofLowLight]

Nagot Gick Fel said:

Balancing hundreds of units perfectly is impossible, and if unit A is known to be only 99% as cost-effective as unit B, you'll never recruit A when you have the choice. Besides, this system isn't any more artificial than the current unit stat system, quite the contrary IMO: if you have two military academies, one that trains musketeers and one that train dragoons, never incorporating dragoons in your armies would certainly come at a cost.

I've seen this simple idea implemented in a couple wargames, and it worked like a charm.

[/quote]

It's not about balancing hundreds of units, it's about making combined arms essential. I didn't mean Light Infantry and Cavalry as in the units Light Infantry and Cavalry, I meant that horse archers, fast lightly armored cavalry and javelin infantry in general should have a place in peoples' armies.

That'd contribute to nation balance too. Themes like Batbarian Kings, which have an advantage of good horse archers, suddenly get a needed boost in power. Suddenly, not having good light cavalry or infantry is a disadvantage instead of one less never-clicked sprite in the build menu.

[Cohen]

I'd like to see to a volounteer order of execution of commands too.

I mean, if in a turn I want to dispel a global and cast a mine, this shouldn't be random, my mages should coordinate to FIRST dispel and THEN cast the global.
Same as if I cast a ghost rider to cleanse a province, and then teleport in someone.
Same as if if I've some Master Crystal Matrix, first all my slaves cast communion slave, then the masters casts with benefit from first round from communion.
These are some examples.

I underline too the importance of stop the strenght of raiding, and the flying asset.

Enhancing the provincial building menu could be nice, and upgrading castle defences (like something that could do damage to besiegers, and vice versa for war machines). Indeed this could be put in better castles allowing for more upgrades. After all you pay more points from them, and actually they seems disadvantageous compared to the popular Watch Tower.

[Saber Cherry]

Hi everyone! Been a while.

As for Dom III, I'd love to see a few things:

First, a new combat engine would be nice, though kind of a major change. But for example... putting all stats in the form of low integer numbers has numerous drawbacks. To make a helmet with better protection than 1, you have to have protection 2... which is twice as good! Thus, there are only 3 standard helmet types: none, normal, and super-heavy. Many weapons come out very similar as well, because there are not many variations of small integer combinations (attack, defense, and damage).

An entirely new combat system that used floating point calculations could retain most of the existing numbers, and simply allow greater variation for new items or old ones that need tweaking (like giving a dagger 1.7 damage, a coral knife 1.2 damage, and a copper cap 0.6 protection and .1 encumbrance). Alternately, extant numbers could be reprocessed and multiplied by a fixed value of 2 or 10 (giving normal humans 20 or 100 HP rather than 10, and increasing strengths and weapon damages by a similar ratio) and altering the dice.

Would this be worth the trouble? Yes, in my opinion. Due to the use of small integers, many units and items in the game are (statistically) nearly identical, and some are exactly identical. Others, like the series of armor types, may not be numerical duplicates, but leave no room for new additions without cloning current stats and simply renaming them. Furthermore, changing or modifying the combat engine would allow the perfect opportunity for a more advanced system, with (for example) locational protection and damage (for example, wearing a helmet would not protect you from taking an arrow in the leg, which would slow down a unit for the remainder of combat in addition to causing damage), damage type modifiers (like chain mail providing a bonus versus slashing damage, and an axe doing slash/blunt type damage, and skeletons being pierce resistant), and so forth.


Secondly... whatever the method, I wish light infantry and militia were useful, even in non-magical battles. A "Skirmish" command, a decrease in price (and increase in price of super-heavy HI), a decrease in maintenance/supply usage, possibly a battle engine change whereby encumbrance directly affects attack (and precision)... some combo of those might be helpful.


Third... there's still a problem with supercombattants. Unless you follow a specific anti-SC formula - and often, even when you do - a non-artifact-equipped SC can rip you to shreds.


Fourth... more indies are always fun! And having indy populations influence the local scales (hey, some people are better farmers, or better metalworkers, or just plain lazy...), or gravitate to certain special sites, or be easier to seduce into blood slavery... or even be violently despised by a given race and killed on site (for example, maybe Marignon cannot tolerate Amazons and their witchcraft?)

More dynamic indies might also be fun, with strong indy provinces (esp. Barbarians, Amazons, and horse-riding indies) launching raids on your undefended borders. Not raids of conquest, just to steal food, resources (production for a month), gold, and maybe a few people into slavery.


Fifth... redone scales would be interesting. Scales with 5 levels up and down, with variable cost (like +20, +20, +25, +30, +40 incremental cost for moving the productivity scale to +1, +2, +3, +4, and +5, respectively) would allow much more national specificity. Also, +5 / -5 could be off limits in scale settings, achievable only if (for example) you

chose a +4 cold race and then "Wolven Winter" was cast at your province, moving it temporarily to +5 cold.


Sixth... specifying ALL DATA in text files would be AWESOME!!! It would make modifying the game extremely easy. Some sort of CRC would be needed to ensure everyone was using the same data, of course.


Seventh... Allowing double-resolution critters with 4 action poses would be nice! Obviously, most of the critters could remain the same, and just be a little blurry, and use only 2 poses. But the crucial (most used, most seen, and most interesting) units, like Dragon pretenders, Nataraja, militia, archers, normal commanders, priests, and slingers could be redone in double resolution with, say, a "still" pose, "moving" pose, "about to attack" pose, and "attacking" pose.


Lastly, I like special sites. But I dislike games overflowing with gems. A gem cost or gem production multiplier (in game setup), distinct from magic site rarity, would be great. For example, with a cost multiplier, setting the multiplier at 110% would make 20-gem item forges cost 22 gems and 1-gem spells cost 2 gems (rounded up). Alternately, with a production slider, 70% would mean that a site that normally produces 3 gems would only produce 2.7 gems on average. Essentially, a 1d10 would be tossed for each possible gem each turn, and only tosses of 1 to 7 would yield a gem. This could affect blood slaves as well, or there could be an additional slider for them.


Great news to hear that Dominions III is in the works! I hope you guys have as much fun making it as we will playing it!


-Cherry

[Chris Adams]

Graeme Dice said:

This was purposefully removed, as the presence of this order in Dominions I made it a necessity to have a storms in virtually every battle, as otherwise your commanders were picked off in the first turns by flying troops.

I just think that's the wrong way to solve the problem as it's too obviously an arbitrary restriction; I'd prefer less blatant approach like giving commanders more defense options and making bodyguards smarter. It seems entirely reasonable that an army with flying troops should be able to have them attack the enemy's command structure - it's such a time honored, proven tactic. The answer could be protective gear and better bodyguards (e.g. perhaps a commander gets a certain number of "ablative henchmen" who increase his defense value and take the damage from an attack which would otherwise have hit the commander - basically the secret service guy taking a bullet for the president).

This would also open some interesting role-playing options - e.g. some commanders could have stealth/disguise options ("nobody here but us militia") which another would reject as dishonorable or cowardly and the effectiveness of the ruse would depend on the quality of the attacker's intel (a "suborn bodyguard" attack would be pretty cool, too) and nature of the attack (e.g. a mage couldn't fool another magic user for very long). A beloved hero or religious figure might cause their bodyguards to become fanatical - increased attack / decreased defense because they're too quick to die a martyr's death, etc.

[tka]

My list:
1) More dynamic indies, like Saber Cherry and others suggested.

2) More nation specific items/artifacts.

3) More national heroes.

Well, I think I like whatever you decide to chance/add in Dom III. Keep up the good work.