The Dominions 3: "Wishlist"

[mac5732]

havn't read all the posts, but so if these have been mentioned already, I apoligize

Hot seat for at least 4-5 players
war screen to show who's at war with who would be nice
eliminate the graphs and use highest to lowest

[ologm]

How about having a unit do one simultanious counterattack on an enemy when attacked if it has enough movement left instead of the current repel rule.

That would remove the way entire armies get free strikes on enemies and would allow powerfull units to get overwhelmend easier.

[shovah]

a bit late, considering how soon dom 3 will be out

[Wick]

I was thinking about how I would like the Dominions movement rules to work and this is what came together for me.

Core change one - Sweep: Like Hide & Sneak, Defend & Move, Sweep becomes a moving counterpart to Patrol (replacing "Move & Patrol" with a sexier name -- and much more utility). Sweep does nothing about unrest or sneaking enemies, but see what Patrol now does below.

Core change two - Non-required MP costs: Movement points (MP) are used for several things. Fighting battles, entering rough terrain, sneaking, and moving to an adjacent province all cost MP but only the last requires that the force actually have the MP.

Everything else is either just making those work or tweaking for effect, but since this is a monster post there's a lot of it.

OPERATIONS:
In a operations phase, after the first battle round, all forces moving into friendly territory move, the move order of remaining forces is based on proportion of movement points (MP) remaining. Battles are resolved after every moving force has moved one province, or been pushed back or caught by pursuers while trying to. The process is repeated until no force has both orders and MP remaining, up to 10 rounds. Routing, but not retreating, clears orders.

Battles are first checked for patrolling (or sweeping) forces. If a patrolling force is matched then it falls back on a moving force. If a moving force is outmatched it withdraws into a castle. Defending forces always withdraw into castles. Indoor actions (e.g. Research) behave like defending forces and outdoor actions (e.g. Searching) behave like patrolling. A unit that cannot fall back participates in the battle. Province Defense (PD) and independents always Patrol. (So castles work for independents!)

TRIVAL DETAILS:
Since forces have a move path it is easy to have the much requested multiple turn orders.

Sweeping and Patrolling forces start battles with 2*melee fatigue.

All current move rates are increased by one, up to ten. This makes administrative marches faster.

Flying forces which have orders and MP and are not patrolling may not participate in battles.

Sailing costs all (10?) MP, sailing forces may not patrol, nor may they participate in battles while they have orders and MP.

Stealth is checked each movement round for all ten rounds after patrol battles but before regular ones (which a found sneaker joins). This, and equating independents with PD, require that each stealth check be much safer then currently.

Sieges & storming castles are done after the operations phase.

EXAMPLES:
Example one: A Tien Ch'i army consisting of a 40 Barbarian Horsemen sweep force and a 200 Footman and Archer moving force bumps into a Pythium PD of 10 and 100 moving Emerald Guards. The Pythium PD, being clearly outmatched by the horde, falls back and joins the Guard. The Barbs then consider attacking the Pythium regular force but decide they are also outmatched and join the Feet. The TC and Pythium regular forces, including the former patrollers, each spend a movement point and fight.

Example two: Ulm, eschewing its reputation as ponderous, has decided to strike two provinces deep in a single month. It's mighty force of Pikeneers is set to patrol and a group of Black Knights are using regular move to the target province. The Pikeneers will overmatch any patrollers and crush any regulars leaving the Knights able to pass through unmolested. That, at least, was the plan. Unfortunately, a flock of Black Hawks distracted the Pikeneers so they had no remaing MP to move at all. The Knights only encountered a few PD but the wasted time caused the plan to fail.

[Graeme Dice]

Wick said:
Example one: A Tien Ch'i army consisting of a 40 Barbarian Horsemen sweep force and a 200 Footman and Archer moving force bumps into a Pythium PD of 10 and 100 moving Emerald Guards. The Pythium PD, being clearly outmatched by the horde, falls back and joins the Guard.

How do you decide this? A single ice devil could probably kill both armies, but it clearly doesn't have numerical superiority.

[Wick]

With difficulty?

More seriously, the answer depends on how much accuracy people need to tolerate it. On one extreme the game could run the battle as a monte carlo simulation and use that to decide which is stronger. On the other extreme, simple counting, maybe people would enjoy a half dozen ewoks distracting the ID while the main force leaves them to their fate. It's certainly no weirder then SCs retreating because the PD ran away.

In between, there is probably a workable algorithm. Cost might work -- (20*gems+gold+resources) would have a lot of mundanes thinking a fully equiped SC shouldn't be their problem. I think the toughest case to calculate isn't SCs but rather mage teams. If a force that defeats a patrolling force without loss gets a free shot at the main force, would you prefer that? Or thats SCs need to bring along extra eyes to find the main army? I'm fine with either of those, so precise calculation is not a high priority for me.

A serious discussion of a force comparison algorithms wasn't my point so if that's what you would enjoy then please set up a target for us to shoot at. In the meantime, mine is up. :-)

[Gandalf Parker]

Someone can prepare for a HUGE project. As soon as Dom3 is out they will need to go thru this wishlist and copy everything not covered into a Dom4 wishlist

[Agrajag]

Thank god for the Show All button. Though even that won't help that much.

[Zuppa]

I imagine it's too late for any suggestions (although this is a perhaps a fairly simple one) but I asked a question in another thread that I think would be a good suggestion:

I would very much like to be able to have the province information screen (or somewhere) allow for descriptive text. I love D2, but always wanted to be able to make a more complete world when making my own maps. Can anyone answer if this will be possible in D3? I think descriptions are a simple way to add a tremendous amount of depth and storyline to the game.

Anything like: "Province X is an area of rolling hills on the west bank of the Lamza River. There are a series of abandoned ruins on a long ridge line in the west of the province. The land is only moderately valuable with sheep farming common in the rocky hills."

Anything like that would be great... it would allow for the addition of a lot of possibilities. You could have hints about magic sites, descriptions of why the province borders others (mountain pass, port, or such)... all sorts of things.

[weimaar]

Option IN THE CAPITAL ONLY to -for a higher price (double, triple)- CHOOSE which mage begins with what magical school (if capability exists). See it as a magical academy or something.

Market should exist in the capital. There, Magical items must be able to be BOUGHT for gold (for a high price).

Possibility to build buildings everywhere. More towers for the castles, a thieves guild, a mages guild, markets, magical academy, fighters guild (for bonuses when officers are recruited at the capital), Army training camp (every year of continouus training, +1 in any trait)