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  #261  
Old January 5th, 2005, 08:17 AM
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Default On AI, and Mercs

Now on to AI -- this time concretely about AI thoughts when dealing with Mercs, with which the AI has great problems, and which also brings me to how Mercs are handled in MP too.

First, the idea for improving Merc fun both in MP *and* SP: Please include in each Merc bid a d6 OE.

- Additional idea for AI merc-handling Tweaking: Make Standard AI get a small bonus to Merc bids, Difficult AI an even higher one, and Impossible AI an even higher one. (The current AI bids too low.) That is, let the computer make its standard bid, but it should get a bonus to its d6 roll.

Additionally, an algorithm should be set up for AI merc bids, whereby the value of a non-mage merc band decreases dramatically in accordance with the band's current size compared to that when fully stocked. Mercs with magic abilities may retain slightly more value.
Perhaps as an additional function: Non-mage Mercs who have lost all of their troops have zero hire value by AIs.

- PLEASE make an option in Game Setup to turn Mercenaries OFF. (If simply a way to make SP more challenging if the above cannot be implemented).
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  #262  
Old January 5th, 2005, 08:27 AM
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Default Minor Tidbits

This is totally minor, but still I would like to mention it:

If the blessing and path system is kept much as it is now in dom3, can the Blood-9 blessing please be changed to something more appealing? I think something like Blood Vengeance (-4) or such would be much more in theme.
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  #263  
Old January 5th, 2005, 10:27 AM
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Default Three Simple Things

I wish for three simple things:
  • Simultaneous Victory Conditions: I want to play games which are won by either a number of provinces, victory points, domininon and research points. Probably not all at one time, but I imagine that having 2 or 3 such conditions simultaneously allows for much more diversity among the strategies employed by the players of a game.
  • Victory Margins:I'd like to specify a margin for the victory condition, i.e. a player has won when he has more than a 200 dominion score and more than 30 points more than any other player. I do not like it if someone wins by just one point (dominion, provinces, research, etc.)
  • Dominion Dependant Clerical Power:Spells like "falling frost" benefit from excess magical paths. Likewise, high-level priests are more powerful at banishing like their low-level fellows. I would like it if dominion would also affect the power of clerical spells (maybe just like having additional points in holy/unholy for the spell power. It should not affect the available spells, i.e. a 2-lvl priest in 10-dominino should still only be able to cast 2lvl spells (but at 10th level power).
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  #264  
Old January 5th, 2005, 03:29 PM
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Default Re: Three Simple Things

I haven't checked the wishlist for a long time so my apologies if lots of my suggestions were made before already .

The UI is imo the only part where dominions really needs improvement . Here my current wishes

- Make it possible to select a group of 5 , 10 and 25 troops at once in the armysetup screen .
This will make the building of guard squads and other squads much easier .
Atm if you want to build 2 squads each 50 devils e.g. you have to select manually 50 devils ... .
- Scripts for recruiting which a player can do and change , like the build orders in civilization games for recruiting .
They are saved for every turn until the player changes them , he just selects then build 1 black sorcerer , 2 sages , 6 spiders , 20 archers each turn .
The unit highest in the buildorder is built first , then the 2nd highest etc. until no money is left or until left money reaches xxx , which the player can select .

This would reduce a lot of micromanagement as well because i myself build e.g. 1 arch theurg and 5 theurgs every turn in midgame when i have the money .

- Include waypoints for traveling and allow setting the end destination to everywhere , this way you can then e.g. easily bring your soul contract generated devils to the front or your scouts to the domed hoard province .

- Include lots of selectable automanagement functions .
Especially a customizeable tax manager , where you just select a simple condition , e.g. if unrest is >10 , reduce tax by that amount that without events in the next turn unrest = 0 again . If a player changes taxes in one province manually this overrides for this turn though the tax manager anyways ( the player would do that if he knows e.g. that there is a spy in this province instilling unrest ) .

Second i would wish for the following option : Autoassign hoard items to scouts/black servants by default , and the player can add other unit types that are considered hoarditem mules .
Do this by numbers too , example :
1. scouts
2. black servants
3. mage type a , e.g. theurgs
4. spectres

Then if you forge e.g. 10 clams , the game autoassigns the clams to free scouts etc. .
It just has to check a few conditions :
condition 1 : Free miscslot ?
If yes check condition 2 : is the unit already wearing a clam ?
If yes proceed with the next unit until a free unit is found .
Condition 3 : ( only for fetishes ) is the unit undead / demon ? If no proceed and find another unit for that item .

If you have e.g. only 5 scouts with free slots but forged 20 clams , then just give a msg. in the turn summary : Not enough horders found , 15 clams were not assigned by the hoarding automanager .

- Enable Montly forging and enable forging with a customizeable list , e.g. :
turn 1 : forge starshine skullcap
turn 2 : forge jade armour
turn 3 : forge blood thorn
turn 4 : research ( if you select research the unit just continues to research until you select something else for it )

- Change the summonspells this way , that they are customable . You have just to assign per unit costs , and then the player selects how many units he wants to summon .
Example : Devil , price 7 blood each .
The player can chose to summon e.g. 10 devils with his mage , then he has just to pay 70 blood .
Would reduce the micro also a lot because you wouldn't need to select dozens of mages in lategame for summoning .

- option to turn off random events + luckscale completely for competetive games , i.e. battlefield ladder games .

- An editor with good UI like the age of wonders or civilization editor , and make really everything( like themes , magic weapons etc. ) moddable and with a good UI .

- Make Modded Nations be addable as further nations , this way you wouldn't need to remove existing nations and if you are crazy enough could play a 40 nation game on a 800 province map .

General gameplay ideas :

- Make more individual scales for nations and make them editable also , like deathscale with abysia or income for Ctis Miasma .
My other idea would be that you have more choices for pretender design and pick special abilities ( skills , traits etc. ) from a construction kit . Basically like MoM but with many more options .
You can then e.g. also buy the skill great summoner for your pretender , and then you get x % discount on everything summoned out of the conjuration school .
Another trait could be e.g. kind god . This gives your troops + x morale and lessens your upkeep / recruiting costs by x % .
There are lots of possibilities .
So you could include about 50-100 different traits , some general available , some nation specific etc. .

- More province building options , some nation specific .
Better national creatures require stronger buildings .
Some buildings are capitol only .

The building speed for the buildings is no longer x turns , but xx resources , so in a high resource province a castle can e.g. be built within 1 turn while in a poor province you need 5 turns .

- Resources and admin :
I would prefer the following model :
1. Extra admin from a castle no longer leeches the resources out of a neighboring province .
2. Extra population gives also extra resources . Resources are to my understanding mainly work resources while raw materials are neglectable . 1000 men normally built at average 10 times more goods ( armours , swords etc. ) more then 100 men .

- National troops + supply :
They require a 3rd resource , manpower . But supply is completely removed .

1 population = 1 manpower .

A militia requires e.g. 3-5 manpower , while a knight requires 50 manpower and a giant or dragon 200 .

Manpower is abstract for the logistic organisation + workers that provide important goods for your army .
In an army normally 5 or 10 non combatatants are needed to supply 1 combatatant with the needed goods , especially ammo + fuel + repairing services .

This way the problem with starving AI would be solved , it would be more realistical and would make growth scale a bit more attractive as well .

- A new kind of upkeep for summoned creatures . This could be in gems or a new resource like divine mana is added .
This new resource is calculated out of e.g. :
(Sum of : Y x dominionstrength for all provinces) + a sum for all your magic gem income / blood income + a bonus by the might of your god ( impressive gods like a dragon get more ) + boni for impressive summons like Air queens , Arch devils

- Include a disband option .

- If you can't pay your upkeep for 5 turns nothing happens but after 5 turns of no upkeep as many units desert until you make a surplus again .
You can let the computer chose automatically or select the troops you wan't to disband manually .
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  #265  
Old January 5th, 2005, 03:48 PM
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Default Re: Three Simple Things

I think it would be a good idea to do no printed manual but only include it as a PDF .

I e.g. always play dominions with opened MIQR , SCQR , Magiboost.xls , Unitattributes.xls and units.xls .
Sometimes a few more rarer needed additional documents .


So the PDF would serve 2 goals :
1. searchable documents , so you find the info you need easy . A book has just no searching options so a long printed manual is inferior to a PDF or similiar with good searching options .

2. This would decrease the costs for producing dominions 3 . I don't know how much the dominions 2 manual costed but my guess is that it costed at least 5 times more then the CD .

This way you could hopefully offer dominions 3 for 40� and not for 50� . Then more ppl will buy it and you will make a bigger profit as well .

While i e.g. bought RTW instantly for 40� i considered much more if i should buy Battle for Middleearth as well which costed 55� .

I think especially in the PC gaming market 40� is a magical border and there is another , more eLastic aggregate demand formula for prices >40� then for prices <40� .
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  #266  
Old January 5th, 2005, 04:31 PM
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Default Re: Three Simple Things

A way to set the deployment and battle orders of the province defense would be handy. I wonder if it would make more sense to restrict how it can be raised -- e.g. instead of allowing somebody to (probably foolishly!) plunk down a large chunk of change to raise PD from nothing to substantial in one turn, perhaps commanders could be ordered to train PD, with the rate of training based on Leadership ability with a bonus if any commander participating in the drill is native to the province.

For that matter, perhaps a high-leadership commander should be able to drill his troops in a way that grants slightly more experience than the normal per-turn allotment, up to some cap (e.g. 1 or 2 stars).

Should people be able to build unfortified supply depots/administrative centers, which would have admin supply/resource/recruitment effects but none of the defensive value of a castle?

Minor oddness: Gift of Reason perhaps should either also remove the Mindless flag, or be slightly renamed.
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  #267  
Old January 5th, 2005, 04:32 PM
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Default Morale

PDF manual would be good. Make the game downloadable too, at least after initial sales have peaked. Anything that saves shipping costs and time is good.

I would like to see a change to morale. It really irks me to see a winning army turn tail and run. There should be a "prospects of winning" variable based on obvious signs of the tide of battle: relative numbers, enemy routing, commanders killed, etc. If this prospects variable ranges from 0% to 100%, a very high value would bypass the morale check. A moderately high value would give a bonus for the morale check. Low values would give morale penalties.

For example:
76-100% = bypass morale check
61-75% = morale +1
41-60% = regular morale
25-40% = morale -1
11-24% = morale -2
1-10% = morale -3
0% = automatic rout
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  #268  
Old January 6th, 2005, 09:17 AM
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Default Good and Simple UI tips

I still think that new features (such as full alliance building, improved AI) will truly make dom3 a *new game* (as oppossed to an expansion pack), but I think the UI suggestions will certainly help.

Here are some more good ones, I think, which I believe would be relatively easy to implement:

- The Ctrl-p (or some other hotkeyable key) cycles through all commanders set to "Preach".
- The Ctrl-m (or some other hotkeyable key) cycles through all commanders set to "Cast Monthly".
- The Ctrl-r (or some other hotkeyable key) cycles through all commanders set to "Research".
- The Ctrl-f (or some other hotkeyable key) cycles through all commanders set to "Forge Monthly".
- The Ctrl-u (or some other hotkeyable key) cycles through all commanders who have forged an item Last turn.
- The Ctrl-b (or some other hotkeyable key) cycles through all commanders with a forge bonus.

- The ctrl-f1 to ctrl-f12 and shift-ctrl-1 to shift-ctrl-12 keys can be set to these up to 24 selected commanders; the f1-f12 and shift-f1 to shift-12 keys can then be used to as hotkeys to jump-select these. (One could to imagine that the current Overview, Lab, etc. buttons are set to 1-8, and that the Map Filter flags are set to shift-1-8 (personally, I use these map filters almost never once they are set, I rarely change my settings, so I wouldnt even need these hotkey, dont know about you. I find I need commanders more frequently than filters.)
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  #269  
Old January 7th, 2005, 07:32 AM
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Default Another simple thing...

Seeing thinktank's post, I forgot a fourth simple thing (and a fifth not-so-simple-not-so-complex thing) with respect to my previous post:
  • "Leave me alone"-order:This new order is essentially equal to "Defend Castle" or "Hide", except that hitting the "n" key will never bring up a commander with the "leave me alone"-order. I really hate it to cycle through all my scouts over and over again, after manually clicking at someone else! The "Leave me alone" order should revert to "Defend" or "Hide" after hosting.
  • A simple single non-magical research branch: At every level researched, the player gets some random immediate nation wide bonus, i.e.: +10 Defense Points to castles, +1 admin point, -1% production cost, -10GP to castle building, -10GP to temple building, ... , +3 archers per defense tower, +1 protection to national troops' armour, etc. So it should be something simple to spend excess research points on, with more than 10 levels. Most of these goodie should be allowed to stack a few (limited) times.
    Another idea would be to allow these non-magical goodies also at pretender generation, but I am not so sure that this would be a good idea...
I wonder if we could have the option for simultaneously active victory conditions like described in my previous post already in a patch for Dom2...
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  #270  
Old January 7th, 2005, 08:00 AM
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Default Re: Another simple thing...

Hey Chazar, I really like your idea as well. I was thinking about that a lot too, since it has a lot of the flavor of "research" from other types of games, which are usually called *"technology"* or some such. This would certainly be a very interesting addition, and one which would require a lot of balance testing. I would hope, however, that this "technology" branch would not be available at pretender creation.
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