Christmas Wish List of Features! Dear Kriss Kringle ;)

Dear Illwinter and Friends,

I would hope during the season of forgiveness and understanding we could put aside whatever grudges or misunderstandings we have had in the past and give you, a clear list of Features that we, the players, would like to see and hopefully implemented in the (hopefully) near future. By no means is this a rant or slap in the face of the incredible game you have already given us, but a clear definintion of what we feel would improve the game.

Yes we do understand that some of these may or may not be possible for our circumstances; but we the player base would like you to know clearly what we would like.

Some of these you may recognize from another thread; but I felt that thread too abrasive and accusatory and any feedback of inability to do any of the following is appreciated.

Also if you have a Wish List of the player base, please inform us so we might know what we can do to help with anything you may feel we could give input for.

For me; personally.

� Darker colours/textures in unit displays [to make sprites easier to see/look better]
� Alignment of stats in unit info screens [i.e. in a column]
� End/quit/save/host button remake [so that 'end turn' takes you directly to next turn]
� Line between commanders and regular units in recruitment screen
� Titles in recruitment screen for unit section and commander section
� More details on exactly what different effects mean (e.g. exact benefits of mountain/forest/swamp survival, etc.)
� When selecting commander from F1 screen, have the commander be highlighted when it jumps to him
� Message in top left when Commander is killed in battle
� Show undead and magic leadership in unit info screen (e.g. 25/0/10)
� Link from nation overview (F1) to recruitment screen in each province
� Show resource usage in nation overview [so that you can see at a glance which provinces aren't being used to their full potential]
� Warning colours in nation overview (e.g. red for supply usage when higher than supply availability, etc.)
� Allow finer adjustment of map richness levels
� Add "Cast Monthly Ritual" to commander orders list
� Battle results (i.e. list of casualties) when storming a Castle
� Research point 'lock' for schools of magic
� Ability to rename commanders, or at least add epithets
� Ability to close screens without having to scroll down or press ESC (e.g. Windows-style [x] or 'Exit' button below instead of at the end of scroll-lists)
� Names of units in addition to icons in recruitment/deployment screens
� Detailed lists of losses (most importantly commanders)
� Right-clicking commander in main screen gives you list of troops under his command
� Build queue for commanders (even though there is only one recruitable per month)
� Build queue doesn't charge you for units which won't be built that turn
� Ability to enter new subscreen (F1, recruitment, etc.) without ESCaping out of the current one
� Ability to toggle on/off battle grid in squad positioning screen
� Ability to scroll lists with arrow keys instead of mouse
� Expanded gem-transfer screen to include all commanders within the province or if unable to do that; create a "Put all Gems in Labratory" hotkey akin to "Z" for Blood Slaves.
� Increased battle replay functionality (various speeds, etc.)
� Ability to store more than one god for each nation
� Items/Gems visible for Commander Selection screen.
� Enabling/disabling spells [being able to indicate which spells your mage should pick from]
� Archer friendly unit behaviors.

[Karacan]

My personal wish list is much smaller.

• The ability to easily alchemy huge amounts of gems without clicking huge amounts of time.
• Battle-replay adjustable speed.
• Detailed battle-results in short for all battles witnessed (forts, witnessed battles, special events).
• Ranged attackers taking more care of friendly units.
• Ranged spell scattering having the chance to hit...
• Less disastrous bad luck events with high luck scales.
• More monsters, more nations, more items, more spells, more random events, more... (well, as long as we're wishing.

Well, perhaps there's a christmas miracle coming up, and everyone of us is going to get what he wants (not what he deserves ).

[ December 13, 2003, 17:37: Message edited by: Karacan ]

[HJ]

My wish list would be something like this:

• AI building forts and national units, and maybe some more interesting indie units such as mages as well
• "fire and attack" and maybe "fire and hold" unit orders which take into account how many times unit fires, not just turns
• ability to select more than one unit, gem, etc. when recruiting etc. (such as shift-click)
• research point 'lock' for schools of magic
• more details on exactly what different effects mean
• detailed lists of losses
• enabling/disabling spells [being able to indicate which spells your mage should pick from]

The first two are the most important for me, while the latter ones have already been mentioned by Zen.
Thanks.

[ December 13, 2003, 18:26: Message edited by: HJ ]

[Gandalf Parker]

Mine might be the shortest list yet. I think the modding is going to add plenty to the game.

What I want is a random map generator. Or some helpful smaller moves in that direction.

[SurvivalistMerc]

I will pick one from Zen's and two from HJ's as being most desirable to me.

I would like archer friendly unit behaviors. I'm not totally sure what Zen meant by this, but I would love it if my magi and archers were to consider the relative odds of harming my own units and compare that with the odds of harming enemy units...and NOT FIRE if they don't have at least twice the chance of helping as they do of hurting. Too many times I see my archers firing into my own units when there are about 20 of my units and only about 3 or 4 enemy units, each one of which is inferior to every one of my 20 units. Once I had a mass of Ctis light infantry...and it rather destroyed itself with inaccurately thrown javelins. Different folks may have different preferences here. For me, it makes no sense to hurt your own troops with friendly fire in order to kill off retreating independents, which is something I have seen happen.

From HJ's list, it would be wonderful to have a detailed list of combat losses in the battle summary. Perhaps even listing the commanders by name...Hunerik the Master Smith...etc. They could be detailed by icons if that would be easier to program.

It would also be great to enable/disable certain spells. There are some spells which are so inaccurate early in the game that their casting generally does more harm than good in my estimation.

My Definition of Archer Friendly behaviors is:

Archery Cavalry using their Archery to it's advantage based on orders. Things of this nature could be a "Fire and Run" command only usable my mounted archers of specific or non-specific nations. What this might encompass is the Horse-archers will fire their bows until they are approached a certain (closish, like 3 'hexes' or something) then they will move at full speed to the back of the map and fire their arrows until they are approached in that radius again, if so, they move back (this might only need to be something that happens once, depending on the speed of the unit, they will be at the 'wall' their first 'retreat') and fire their arrows. *IF* they get closer than 3, and can't go nowhere or run out of arrows, then the unit will charge the nearest enemy.

That may or may not be possible or too much work; I don't know if it is or not. That might be too complex for the engine (away would be better but might be too overpowering) but I don't know if the movevment is based on 'forward/backward' as much as 'left/right', whatever. What I would like is an effort if they are going to do anything at all, to make it 'semi-realistic' instead of blanket.

Another "Archer Friendly" issue would be Archers that are targeting a routing or within a radius of your a troops (hopefully the same priority checklist as placed below) (3 or whatever) army changes targets to the fartherst, largest cluster of units (maybe even put in a priority AI of tareting first Largest, next Non-Shield, next Farthest) type of scenario to imitate commander in battlefield order changes.

Common sense things.

Or maybe just put a little checkbox somewhere that says "Friendly Fire" that will tell your troops that if their is a friendly fire situation they don't fire. I can see some instances or army types where you don't care and that could support that. (Normal Archers and Infantry of Ulm for example, Shortbows can't do anything to them so they might as well shoot half at them and half at the enemy).


I know these things are sporatic and kind of jagged, but they are just ideas.