The Dominions 3: "Wishlist"

[Sandman]

They tolerate clamming, though.

[Endoperez]

Oceania is known to change Clams to W2N1, and as Oceania is a preview of DomIII clamming is at least limited. Possibly Fever Fetishes and undead stop working together.

[silhouette]

This is 1 big idea for fort variety which I will recommend stealing from other games like Majesty and Sim-${var}. Instead of having just a single all-or-nothing fortification plan for each nation, have an expandable design plan of forts available. Put them in lines of development, so if you buy a certain fort plan, you build type A, then you can later upgrade a fort type A to a type B by spending time/gold again, and then maybe to type C later. The nation design can still be important if you create different specialized lines of development (with A -> B-> C), which is what you buy at nation creation, instead of one fixed design.

I imagine it like this as an example: suppose there are 3 levels of each fort design, the initial level-1 and 2 levels of "upgrade". One nation wants to focus on high Defence, and buys a category of forts which has a lvl-1 Tower (admin10,def150), lvl-2 Fortress (admin15, def250), lvl-3 Citadel (admin20, def350). When you build a fort you get a Tower, then you can expand the Tower later into a Fortess (pay time/gold again, get +5admin,+100def), and if you want, then later expand to Citadel (pay time/gold again, ++ again). You can't upgrade to any other fort types, because these are the only ways you can evolve an existing design into a bigger one.

Another buys the "High Admin" design line which has these 3: lvl-1 Pallisade (admin30,def50), lvl-2 Walled City (admin40,def100), lvl-3 Fortified City (admin50,def200). Even if this nation expands a fort as big as possible, it will never have as good a defense as the first nations lvl-2 forts, but the admin is always way better.

Another nation (all you MP players) wants a fast-building fort, so they choose the Hasty-build line of designs which has lvl-1 Outpost (admin15, def0), lvl-2 Hold (admin20,def75), lvl-3 Stronghold (admin30, def150). This line of designs builds faster at each level, and is in between the first two in admin/def. As an additional penalty, the lvl-1 design has 0 defense (Ghost Rider vulnerable, insta-breach), so although it builds in only 2 turns it doesn't provide any protection until upgraded to a Hold.

Then there is the default line which costs the least design points and is in between the Citadel and Fortified city lines also (like the Stronghold), but builds in 3 turns instead of 2: lvl-1 Watchtower (admin20,def75), lvl-2 Keep (admin30, def150), and lvl-3 Castle (admin35, def250).

You can choose how large/sophisticated a fort you develop at each location, but it is still limited to the flavor you selected at the start. Largest forts take a long time and gold to build, but you only expand where you need it, and if you really need to defend a location you can do something more than just pile militia and summons into the fort. Imagine an attacking force coming to seige a Keep, and see it upgraded to a full Castle (extra def and supply) just as they arrive. Maybe a Pallisade province is taken by defenders just 1 month before the completion the Walled City, and then the seiged have to drive the attackers away just long enough to (continue) complete the construction.

Every nation starts with their level-2 as their home fort, so it is bigger then the lvl-1 forts they will start building elsewhere. But it still has upgrade headroom for later in the game or if they think there is an early rush coming and choose to beef up the home fort first instead of expanding with a new fort. Maybe require a lvl of construction research before being able to upgrade forts to lvl-3. It also provides another good investment to spend money on for those longer games where I always have extra cash.

You see... this is what happens when you stay up late reading about history of fortifications and how defences evolve at specific sites over time?

Sill

[FrankTrollman]

Absolutely. Further, I would like different fort plans to cover different things at the different levels.

For example: if you spend out the points for "magical fortresses", your forts protect the magic sites with just a level one fort. Otherwise you need the level 2 or even level 3 fort to do that. Contrarywise, if you spend out the points for the "city walls" archetype, you get a big admin value even on the level 1 fort.

The basic no-frills set-up would be something like:

Watch Tower (low admin, covers your Lab and Temple)
Castle (medium admin, covers your Lab and Temple and Magic Sites)
Citadel (High Admin, covers your Lab and Temple and Magic Sites)

but other progressions should certainly exist (and cost points):

Warrior Monastery (low admin, IS your Temple, covers Lab)
Shiro (Medium Admin, IS your Temple, Covers Lab and Magic Sites)
Dark Citadel (Medium Admin, IS your Temple, Covers Lab and Magic Sites)

Fortified Estate (Medium Admin, Covers your Lab and Temple)
Walled City (High Admin, Covers your Lab, Temple, Population and Magic Sites)
Fortified City (Very High Admin, Covers your Lab, Temple, Population and Magic Sites)

Wizard Tower (Low Admin, Covers Lab, Temple, and Magic Sites)
Magic Castle (Medium Admin, Covers Lab, Temple, and Magic Sites)
Floating Fortress (Medium Admin, Covers Lab, Temple, and Magic Sites)

-Frank

[Nerfix]

I'm not so sure about covering magic sites. They could be hundreds of kilometres apart within the province...

Other than, well, I don't really have an opinion.

Oh yeah, I'd like to see the possibility to make a "mutating" dominion which alters the recruited unit's stats randomly within given parametres. So a units HP could be affected within the range -6 to +8.

I know it's not really relevant but the weird nation plan I cooked up today after playing Kamband would really need it to work. And magic site modding. And magic sites generating random gems.

*slaps himself -bad Nerfix, be less selfish* *sticks his head into chaos mist*

[FrankTrollman]

I'm not so sure about covering magic sites. They could be hundreds of kilometres apart within the province...

In Dominions II, every castle covers the lab, temple, and magic sites. It does not cover the populations, and is a separate building from both the lab and temple.

Strategically, I would like it to cost a bit more to defend magic sites. Right now any old Watch Tower will do. I do not think that I am ready for it to be impossible to defend magic sites with fortifications.

-Frank

[SurvivalistMerc]

I might wish for an option to allow your blessing to change upward or downward depending on your current paths in the various magical powers. Not sure how hard it would be to code. And it's not too important. I tend to go rainbow and want to acquire blessings in my SP games.

It might also be nice to have an Option, not automatic so that folks who do things differently need not be bothered by it, to assign newly ordered troops to the largest squad of such troops on the commanders present at the recruitment site. This is because I spend too many clicks assigning troops too often when I'm just making one large group on a particular commander.

The other thing I thought of is a command to "Go to province x as a group in as few moves as possible." So you wouldn't have to move your stacks manually every turn.

Just a couple of thoughts.

[Endoperez]

A Rainbow mage who equips Staff of Elemental Mastery, Robe of Wizardry, Flaming Helmet, Ring of Wizardry, Skull of Fire would net +5 Fire. I think 60 Fire (empowerment from 3 to 4) gems is quite a cheap way of getting Fire 9 bless, and that would mean that I get Fire 9 in any game that lasts long enough. I don't like that.

However, if only EMPOWERMENT and unboosted magic skill were counted in, it might work... It would make bless pretenders more risky, or more expensive if one bought level 10 in case.

[Nerfix]

Endoperez said:
A Rainbow mage who equips Staff of Elemental Mastery, Robe of Wizardry, Flaming Helmet, Ring of Wizardry, Skull of Fire would net +5 Fire. I think 60 Fire (empowerment from 3 to 4) gems is quite a cheap way of getting Fire 9 bless, and that would mean that I get Fire 9 in any game that lasts long enough. I don't like that.

However, if only EMPOWERMENT and unboosted magic skill were counted in, it might work... It would make bless pretenders more risky, or more expensive if one bought level 10 in case.

He said "an option"... Make it a non-default option.

[Argitoth]

Well I personally feel blessing troops were pretty underpowered. I never used em and they would only be used in conjuction with a powerful spell combo anyway... so... like... yeah... and... all...