Wish-List for Dominions 4

[Shovah32]

And maybe giving mages a chance to increase their magical abilities when they naturally age(dont want any basic mages getting hit with decay and turning into gods here )?

[danm]

Jazzepi said:I did pay $50 for the game.

You do realize that that $50 is worth approximately 15 minutes of dev time for two developers, don't you? I'm pretty sure the existing product took significantly longer than that to create.

That their "day job" is teaching may help in the "expected wage" department but I'd be VERY (though happily) suprised if they were not volenteering (without pay) the vast majority of the time they've already invested, including all the copies they've sold.

They don't OWE us anything. The game as delivered is easilly worth the price we paid.

(that said, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE make a v4 with improved ai and interfase plz? hehe)

[HoneyBadger]

If they do make a Dominions 4, I volunteer to make/improve the manual. I'm not an experienced manual-designer, per se, but I do know a great deal about fantasy and mythology, as well as history, and I've got a long background of working with computers and designing games.

Naturally, I'd maintain the long-held and sacred tradition of enlisting the help and advice of the Dominions community.

[Cor]

Things that I want:
1) A "Do Not Cast" Spell List to stop AI from doing stupid things
2) Auto Forge. We have auto spellcast, now its time for auto forge.
3)a repeat Production button. In large games sooo much time is used up scanning and recruiting from castles and key provinces. Just give us a repeat button.
4)more battle scripting options
5)a Skermish script option so mounted archers don't suck
6) a use for leftover design points

and this which is bound to be contriversial
* I would like to see more building options for provinces.
I want to build a bazaar, so provinces make more money
a forge so they produce more, an improved farm so there are more supplies. In short I want to be able to improve provinces beyond just building a castle and temple.

I also want multiple levels of castles and temples. Why not have level 1 castles be quickly and cheaply erected forts, while level 5 castles would be nearly impossible to siege.
And the same for temples. It fits historically. Pagan gods had many temples throughout the land, some more important to their followers than others. The levels of temples would effect dominion spread, and possibly holy recruitment.

[Sandman]

I agree that what Dominions needs is more interface improvements, rather than more content.

* More mouse support; ideally the game should be fully playable without a keyboard.

* A more interactive map. Clicking on a province battle icon should take you to the battle, for example. Different-sized icons for different sized battles would be nice.

* A more robust in-game communication system. The current messenger is pretty crude.

* The pretender creation interface could easily be combined onto one screen. So could most of the laboratory.

[Xietor]

I think all he is saying, is since the game is not "free,"
he can reasonably expect the developers to improve the game where it needs to be improved most, not just where it is fun to do so.

I also have that expectation. Their personal lives, the fact they are great guys, work 2 jobs, is irrelevant to the average purchaser, who does not have a clue about anything except the product. In addition, I think there is likely a point of pride that they have produced one of the best strategy games ever. And Dominions is clearly one of the best ever.

If they ever tire of working on the game, and they may, I am sure a gaming company would buy the rights to the game and attempt to make it better. Though as we have seen from some other games, some attempts to improve another person's game, sometimes fail miserably.

[HoneyBadger]

hey now, let's not lose sight of our greedy, unreasonable desire for a well-nigh infinite amount of content. Better user interfaces/graphics/etc are all well and good, but I want 32 flavors and then some!

[Gandalf Parker]

Granted. We paid for the game. But the devs are grown men with lives and families. I dont mean that as an excuse. Im just pointing out that if $$$ isnt the driving force then its not likely that anyone will change their minds on it at this point in their lives. Ive found that they both react better to please-and-thankyous than dangling dollars.

As for it being picked up by a company, I suspect they would need to take the idea and start over. If its not written for understanding and sharing, and it grows in pieces, then it doesnt tend to pass-off well. The term "spaghetti code" is often used.

[Velusion]

Sombre said:
The problem is that for the Devs making new units and races and spells and whatnot is /fun/. Fixing bugs and improving the GUI is less so.

But I agree, Dominions doesn't really need more content. It mostly needs interface and AI improvements and more modding options (such as ability to mod AI etc).

Agreed, though I personally don't care about the modding aspects.

Heck I'd even pay for an expansion pack for Dom3 that improved the interface/ai.

[Loren]

Yeah, I forgot safe archers. An order Fire/Safe--it won't shoot if there's any reasonable chance of an arrow hitting a friendly unit.

Another one: An order "Close". It would always be followed by some other order. It would mean to get close enough to carry out the next order. If you were in range it would do nothing.

One little one that could easily be done with a patch even: Ask only once if you're attempting to move troops you can't. (Immobile, or land/water problems.)