Wish-List for Dominions 4

[Endoperez]

sansanjuan said:
Capture and roleplay statistical anomalies during battle
e.g. a militia man inflicts massive damage and kills a Pretender just based on chance rolls. Capture the battle and promote the unit in some special way. Show a toe to toe replay of just that slugfest.


Lairs
Like sites but guarded specifically inside a province. Often contain magic items.

Quests


Map changing spells (certainly high very level)
Raise Land
Sink Land
Wall Province
Change Province type
Etc.


Tailorable magic items based on gem cost

Few comments:

Dealing the killing blow against certain types of units should be better rewarded. Actually, the experience you get from killing anything could be changed to depend on size of the killed creature: 2 points for humans, 3 for cavalry, 4 for Jotuns, etc. Killing prophets could net you a little bonus, and killing a pretender could give a little more, perhaps something like 25 points of experience. It shouldn't be too much, because otherwise your ally will keep on sending his immortal pretender to be killed by your champion.


Lairs and quests: these could both be done if sites could be made to disappear. There are already at least two sites into which you may enter to try and discover treasure; you'll probably face traps and fight horrors or undead, depending on if you enter The Forgotten City or the City of the Damned, but if you survive you come back with gold, gems or magic items. If these could disappear after a set amount of turns, or after the quest was completed, it'd be close enough. Some "quests" would be solved by magic (a nature site with "mage may enter for adventure", higher magic = better chance of success), by fighting capability, etc etc.


Dominions-type maps are static and can't change, because the map graphics can't change. Two of Illwinter's games could do this. Conquest of Elysium II was tile-based; the tiles based with seasons, you could burn down forests or craft golems out of mines or lakes, destroying them in the process. Dominions: PPP, the first one, had maps where provinces were pixel porridge. Every pixel marked a terrain of spesific type. Growth dominion changed the pixels into green (forest), heat into yellow (waste), etc. I don't think there were any spells that would change provinces' terrain, but it would have been possible. If the Dominions engine is too clumsy to be adapted, the next Illwinter game might allow for something like this.

Tailorable magic items are very easily unbalanced. At the moment, it's impossible to get all the good abilities on a supercombatant. Three immunities, luck and a two-handed weapon is only possible via spesific items: Amulet of Luck is the only non-hand-slot item for Luck, Rime Hauberk gives cold immunity, Ring of Tamed Lighting for shock immunity, Brimztone Boots for fire immunity. If you could just slap luck into Rainbow Armor and shock immunity into Wraith Sword, it would be worth it even if the price doubled, because now you could also give the combatant amulet of anti-magic and regeneration, or change brimstone boots to flying boots and a ring, or something similar. Custom items would be too good.

[sansanjuan]

E,
Thank you for the thoughtful responses.

I didn't think of the Immortal ally trick. Bet that would be a challenging scenario to reconcile for a roleplaying purist.

I understand the nuance of SC being very strong but not in an unbalanced way. Though I am very new I really like the way many "I Win" spells and conditions can be countered by former foes teaming up, sharing gems, etc. Very realistic and beautiful for roleplaying.

On item tailoring...I enjoyed that in the old Masters of Magic but that certainly could spoil the soup here.

You reminded me of perhaps the most important new feature which I forgot to mention (I'm sure a variant is in the long thread). A "Seamless Ally" feature where Dominion penalties don't apply to allies and unstealthy troops can move unhindered through ally lands. Then I could probably talk to wife into playing Dom4 as an ally and get lots of "Spousal Points" for later redemption. That's win-win.
Thanks again,
-SSJ

edit : fixed MoM sentence

[moderation]

Not sure if this has been mentioned, but something needs to be done about the number of idle commanders that is accumulated by mid to late game. Pressing 'n' to cycle through them is incredibly confusing and tedious.

Being able to queue up multi-stage movements for them would help, as would a special command like "idle" which would allow you to bypass them with 'n' and maybe select them with a special "find idle commanders" command, maybe by pressing 'i'.

A global recruit menu with distinctions for castles and "favorite" provinces (e.g. the ones that produce sages) would be great too.

[moderation]

Back / Forward buttons on the game creation screens would be nice too when setting up SP games.

[chrispedersen]

When you find a magic site,

Goto site - not commander.

[Tichy]

That has been the fond hope of many for a long time, myself included.

[MaxWilson]

I have modded all my maps to include the province number, so my messages look like, "Bob has found a magic site in Goat's Fodder (201)." Then I just go to the map and type #201 to jump to the site. Saves time and aggravation. I posted the script for modifying provinces on these forums a while back, and someone else improved it and re-posted.

-Max

[chrispedersen]

>: cycle through forts that don't have production orders.

[Tifone]

lol, here comes the old one: forge monthly

[Grottnikk]

Some of these have been mentioned before, but I'll mention them quickly again (perhaps the number of people requesting a certain addition/change gives that item more weight).

1. Unit formations - at the moment they're all squares. I'd like to make a line of archers or a wedge of cavalry without the need for 20 different commanders and half an hour to individually assign each troop their orders

2. Amazons! Amazons! Amazons! I like the ones that we get from individual provinces, and would like to see them made into a full fledged nation. Early age, I'm guessing. Or perhaps Middle Age, when Sauromatia is no longer around, the Amazons could make a comeback.

3. Custom Pretenders - choose the graphics, choose the abilities and stats based on a point system, write a description all your own.

4. The ability to view battles from lands where my spies are hidden.

5. The ability to choose your own starting location when in single player.

6. The ability to back off from attempting to assassinate a target. Many times my assassins have been killed because they picked the wrong target. Perhaps a better way to do it would be to have a list of potential targets in the region and let the player pick which one the assassin will go after. Perhaps for balance, no more than one assassin can attack any one character per turn? Another balancing option would be to have a random chance that the assassin just doesn't get an adequate opportunity to attempt an assassination and therefore no battle that turn.

7. I know someone will horror mark me for this one , but what about the ability to command units on the tactical level in a turn based mode, thus eliminating the need for orders and such? Maybe it could just be an option for those of us who enjoy micromanaging battles?

8. More spells and more research to do. Love the tech tree!

9. The ability to see and approve the random name generated for your Pretender before the game starts. This would avoid players getting unwanted names for their gods.