For dom3?

[sachmo]

Very nice! I'm sure some sort of compromise wouldn't be too hard to do.

Wait, I'm not sure, but call it an educated guess.

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by sachmo:
Very nice! I'm sure some sort of compromise wouldn't be too hard to do.

Wait, I'm not sure, but call it an educated guess.

Maybe not TOO hard but if anyone REALLY wants it they can speed it up alot by doing some of the work ahead of time. If someone wanted to do a some small groupings of spells into types. Not the whole spel list since that would be too big to check easily. And an effort would have to be made to not favor one group over another (magic, research level, nation).

Probably keeping it to the lower research levels? Would it be better to have all of the defense spells for the first couple of research levels? Or a few defense spells for every level?
And the same for offense of course.

[ May 11, 2004, 22:01: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

[LintMan]

Nice. I had been thinking of some things along the same line. One idea I had that might fit in with this (or work independently) is if each spell had some checkboxes or some "radio button" options to select the spell priority. So for every spell, you could select how often a spell should be used. ie:

• Never (Never ever cast this spell!)
• Once (Cast this spell once at most)
• Sometimes (Use spell occasionally)
• Frequently (Use spell frequently)

These priorities would kick in after the script finished.

Ideally, if the spell was inapplicable to the battle, its priority would be ignored. (ie: dust to dust in a battle without undead). This would save you from having to tweak the battle orders quite so much based on the expected foes.

As I see it, this priority setting would give a huge benefit (without in itself requiring that radical a change): you could use the priorities to prevent your mages from killing your surrounding mages by casting Breath of Winter of Fire Shield, etc, or casting pointless buff spells you don't care about, or using low-end attack spells when better/preferred attack spells are available.

Edit: oops - I also meant to mention that I second/third Tricon's suggestion to add some options about gem/slave use. Maybe something like
Gems/slaves use:

• Never
• Minimum necessary to cast spells
• Standard usage
• Maximize gem usage to minimize fatigue cost

[ May 11, 2004, 22:23: Message edited by: LintMan ]

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by LintMan:
Nice. I had been thinking of some things along the same line. One idea I had that might fit in with this (or work independently) is if each spell had some checkboxes or some "radio button" options to select the spell priority. So for every spell, you could select how often a spell should be used. ie:

• Never (Never ever cast this spell!)
• Once (Cast this spell once at most)
• Sometimes (Use spell occasionally)
• Frequently (Use spell frequently)

Hmmmm the more a person flags his spells the longer it would take the machine to figure out what spell would be cast. It also would feel like its moving too much toward full control of the battle rather than a gods giving general orders.

OK I will toss in my own variation. A 10 point priority system. If all spells have a rating of 5 then you get to set certain spells as higher or lower, but only a small set. You can set a spell at 6, or 7, or 8 but only one spell in each slot. You cant assign 6 to 3 different spells. That would be easier on the code, and would give a feel of "my pretender REALLY likes it when I cast this spell" (10) and "my pretender REALLY gets torqued when I cast this spell" (1)

[NTJedi]

Excellent Display example Tuna-Fish !!

Hopefully we will see this feature in Dom_3.

[LintMan]

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:
Hmmmm the more a person flags his spells the longer it would take the machine to figure out what spell would be cast. It also would feel like its moving too much toward full control of the battle rather than a gods giving general orders.

Well, I can't imagine it taking very long to choose which spell to use, but in any case, as it stands now, the AI has to decide by choosing from the *whole* list - my suggestion would only *shorten* the number of spells to choose from!

OK I will toss in my own variation. A 10 point priority system. If all spells have a rating of 5 then you get to set certain spells as higher or lower, but only a small set. You can set a spell at 6, or 7, or 8 but only one spell in each slot. You cant assign 6 to 3 different spells. That would be easier on the code, and would give a feel of "my pretender REALLY likes it when I cast this spell" (10) and "my pretender REALLY gets torqued when I cast this spell" (1)

If you can only have 1 spell at each number, what about all the other non-numbered spells? Are they ignored or used whenever the AI decides? How often would that be, in relation to the numbered spells?

Other than that, it seems like your suggestion actually seems more towards full control than mine does: As I saw it, my system was also basically a "pretender likes this spell/doesn't like that spell" guideline, but I only had a range of 4 steps rather than 10.

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by LintMan:
If you can only have 1 spell at each number, what about all the other non-numbered spells? Are they ignored or used whenever the AI decides? How often would that be, in relation to the numbered spells?

They would all be 5. The same chances spells had before.

Other than that, it seems like your suggestion actually seems more towards full control than mine does: As I saw it, my system was also basically a "pretender likes this spell/doesn't like that spell" guideline, but I only had a range of 4 steps rather than 10.

But it seems as though you are sorting all the spells. Turning them all into use/not-use. The infantry folk will want the same comtrols.

[Slygar]

either way, some sort of spell exclusion/preference and gem usage control really needs to happen in dom 3, or 2 if the devs get really really motivated