META THREAD: Warlock Wishlist - Post ALL your Suggestions here...

[unmerged(506986)]

Organised information, more use to magic and terrain.

Hi all. For myself, these would be the things that actually bug me in gameplay, that seem like small things to fix:
1. Spell list is in the order you researched it... which is bad. I want my damage spells ranked by cost, my unit enhancements listed by effect type (all damage enhancements together; movement spells together; City spells listed together; etc). It makes finding things so much easier.
2. Spell effect icons on units to be listed in the same order, regardless of which was cast first. Much like above, scanning through a disorganized list of icons to answer whether a spell is on a unit or not sucks.
3. Tooltips of terrain effects.
4. Destructible buildings, even if I lose an entire city level to do it. I accept that there are gameplay reasons to leave this as is, but... I would like to be able to sacrifice to correct mistakes.
5. Ability to import wizard pics. If I can't have heroes, at least let me choose what I look like.

I also have a wishlist for new features, most of which are covered previously:
6. Terrain effects on buildings - farms on lava might not be so good as farms on plains ; alternatively, terrain affecting the city's overall efficiency (food produce improved each growing tile, decreased each lava, for eg).
7. Terraforming spells. This is one of the big ones for me, one of the ways magic could really be brought into the forefront. Spreading forests for your beasts, sweetening the terrain for your cities... this could really add a lot.
8. Roads. Seriously, I get that catapaults are slow, but they could move faster in my own territory, especially if I go to the effort of building a path for them. Roads outside of territory would also be good, of course.
9. Water improvements. In most games coasts are positives, but here they're terrible. The uniqueness has its own value, of course, but I would still prefer some value for water tiles.
10. Heroes would be nice, but to be honest not essential. Already my noble werewolves are precious enough to me . But an avatar, or unique units upgraded from normal units after certain conditions, would be nice.
11. Improving casting speed, regardless of the method used (buildings, researching a skill, quest reward, etc). Whatever the method, casting speed improvements will really add magic into the mix. Spells are already expensive enough to keep them from overpowering.
12. Random spells per playthrough, maybe a perk to improve (but never everything) and spell trading/stealing. This could seriously improve replayability, making every game unique.
13. A way to "archive" or hide those spells I really won't ever use from my spell list, so I'm not constantly scrolling across tiny firebolts looking for teleport.

I realise these are a lot of things people have already asked for. Just my 2 cents worth.

Thanks.

 

[Hassat Hunter]

9. Water improvements. In most games coasts are positives, but here they're terrible. The uniqueness has its own value, of course, but I would still prefer some value for water tiles.

I was surprised in the demo the first time I wanted to build a harbor it wasn't placed in the water, but next to it. Same with the fishing trap, and the shipwright. Both could be waterbased instead of land. Doesn't make much sense to have a huge harbor on land and then your warships are deployed on a few small fishing lanes that appear on the water with it...

12. Random spells per playthrough, maybe a perk to improve (but never everything) and spell trading/stealing. This could seriously improve replayability, making every game unique.

It's already random though... or I get your meaning wrong.

13. A way to "archive" or hide those spells I really won't ever use from my spell list, so I'm not constantly scrolling across tiny firebolts looking for teleport.

I was more thinking the opposite, that you could flag "favorites" and they would all appear in their own tab.

And now for my own suggestion, which has probably NOT been made yet, but I guess more people than me would like it;
* An option for 0 AI Wizard enemies. So it's just exploring, the monsters. A bit of Majesty in your Warlock . Also a perfect way to start a first game, learn the ropes, without unity or so ending it unexpectedly. Not to mention I find the monsters generally more difficult than the enemy Warlock. But that may be "normal" difficulty. The base for this gameplay is already there, just make sure there is no auto-win because 'all other warlocks are gone'...
This would also make an ideal Multiplayer co-op mode, where players share their LOS against the monsters. And if the newbie and the expert play each other instead of the newbie getting wrecked without knowing why, he can see what the expert does and learn, similar the expert can see the rookie and give some advice. Perfect for getting a new player/friend waywise in the way of Warlock.

I must really not be the only one who just wants to explore all the worlds, murder all monsters at their own terms?

 

[unmerged(170187)]

The game could do with opening up the size of these portal maps and allow other wizards to start in the maps.
Personally I would like to see at least 2 portals going to each region, thereby giving people the ability to fight over another “realm” and the add another frontline.
Rather than different worlds, could these be different regions of Ardania i.e. the pirate islands, the northern ice wastes, swamp of the dead, lava pools etc.
Therefore asking the player to adapt to the requirements of the region and potentially fighting a wizard for has some slight advantages for that regions ice, fire, death magic etc.

Since the realms are so small it does make more sense that they have a theme, one tied to an element, and it should be easy enough to come up with 6 different ones so there won't be any duplicates. They don't really even need more tiles they have have now. Fire would have lots of lava and Volcanoes, Ice with tundra and snow mountains, Death with dead forest and swamps, Life with Jungles and forest, Water be a bunch of small islands, Earth be hills and muddy terrain, and etc.

As for 2 portals I think there should be more than that. I'd like to see 3 portals where one returns to Main map and the other two to other adjacent realms. That way you can go through the realms clockwise or counter-clock wise (when look at the realm map icons that is).

An idea to make the other planes more interresting could be to link them to the weapon enchants. Make life, fire, ice, vampire and other enchants be linked to a specific resource you can only find at specific planes. As an example Firecrystals on the fireplan enable you to upgrade your troops with a fire weapon enchant.

I was gonna suggest the same thing. If the realms are tied to an element then having a resource of that element only in that realm which gives a bonus could lead to some interesting strategies. Using existing enchantments as the enhancement would also lead to a huge savings on Development time as you don't have to come up with a bunch of new power names, icons, and etc.

This also leads me into something I've been thinking a lot about in regards to unit upgrades. Enchantments are mostly limited by casting time so you can only get so many on your units over time where as city based ones can all be purchased at once if you have the gold. There is also the fact that city based upgrades have no upkeep cost while all the enchantments have a fairly steep upkeep cost, often more then some units base upkeep. This isn't really a problem since there is nothing else to spend mana on so tossing a lot of upkeep through enchantments doesn't dent your mana income that much. So if you get also unlock enchantments for mana cost similar to other resource upgrades as well as perhaps making some of the city upgrades (Nevril and Adamantium for example) have some upkeep cost since they are fairly powerful it would go a long way towards making mana more useful and curbing the over use of fully upgrading units which would then cost a lot more to maintain.

 

[unmerged(170187)]

Cities can use all the tiles in their range and your borders.

What I mean by this is if you have to cities who's borders overlap which ever one of them grew first claims the land and the other city can not use it. For example take the following city setups:

Cities: A B
Tile in border: > <
Unclaimed Tile: 0
Resource: R

Setup 1: A>0<B
Setup 2: A>>R<<B
Setup 3: A>>>0

Setup 1 is a bit more common then Setup 2 due to encouragement of city spam but both have the same problem. Which ever city expands first claims those tiles and no other city can use them. This makes city planning a real pain as you have to keep growth in mind as well. In setup 2 say that city A is focused on Gold production while city B is focused on Mana. The resource in between them is Gold Mine which is obviously better suited for city A which has +% gold buildings in it. However city B is larger and will end up growing to 3 tiles out before city A meaning it will claim that tile. So you will suffer a major efficiency hit because of this as the gold mine will only produce a fraction of what it could if you could of built it in city A.

Next is setup 3 where the open piece of land is the new potential site for a city. This type of setup happens more late game as your cities have grown to larger size. The problem here is if you place the city on that open tile much of the land won't be available to it because it's already claimed by city A. The option to space the cities out more may not be possible as the open tile might be near water, mountain range, enemy border, or etc. And you often want to close they gaps in your land since I've often had AI drop cities in them. Problem is because of the City A hogging all the land and bad terrain around the other side of where City B will go you end up with a city that has maybe half a dozen viable build spots even once it expands it's borders to 3 tiles out.

The ability to build should work similar to the way placing Citizens to work tiles does in the Civilization games. Any tile that is in your border and in range of the city can be worked regardless of if it's in range of another city or if that city expanded first. However once a city is working that tile any other cities in range of that tile can not work it. This way if two cities overlap, especially on resources, you can choose which one gets the resource.

The current setup has size 1-4 cities taking up 6 tiles, size 5-9 taking up 18 tiles, and size 10+ taking up 42 Tiles. Since size 11-12 are pretty rare given how SLOW cities grow after 10 that means most cities won't even use 1/3 of the land they claim. This is horribly inefficient and actual promotes city spam. It promotes city spam because now that you know that land will become useless if you don't expand quickly and build cities properly for long term growth then you will loss out.

 

[nattai]

I have just had a skim through and haven't seen this, so apologies if I repeating an already discussed topic.

In my most recent game my nearest neighbour declared war on me relatively early (through the usual means of demanding x resources). I marched all of my units on his capital. However, since I imagine it was still early on, he did not produce one military unit, instead kept sending out settler units every few turns, which I destroyed of course. Took me a while to reduce his capital, and I killed about 5 settlers. This includes saving the game, quitting and then reloading, in the hope it might reset the AI onto a war footing, but it continued to build settlers.

Thought I would just post as a heads up in case anyone has noticed.

 

[The Apprentice]

Another spell suggestion: A city buff the increases research. A more effective divine version from Lunord would also make sense.

We can already tweak food and mana production, so this seems like a logical extension. I don't see a balance concern because resource placement is already so variable (a good thing for replayability). Some games I've had 3 Ancient Ruins within 12ish hexes of my capital. Other games I don't see any research special nodes until much later in the game.

 

[Brahemian]

My biggest want for this game would have to be some sort of ending screen, would love to view the whole map at the end of the game. Also some graphs and such.
Also improved diplomacy in any way would be awesome.

 

[Hassat Hunter]

Cities can use all the tiles in their range and your borders.

Ehm, it doesn't really happen as you say I noticed. If 2 cities overlap both can use the tiles. So in your example don't build the gold mine with city A (mana city) but instead wait till city B expands (money city) and then build it for him.
If the tile is used, yes, you cannot use it. However if the tile is not, it can be build upon even if another city claimed it "first"...

 

[unmerged(38508)]

First of all I LOVE THIS GAME! I've put many hours into playing it already. Thanks Devs, for creating it.

Second, I want to make it clear I always play on Impossible, and I pretty much always win. That's a problem for me. I'm seeking a challenging game with variable strategies for the win.

EZ Solutions:
1) It is a little too easy to spam out cheap settlers and units early and overrun the map. Would suggest slower production rate on settlers in particular (4 turns). Probably add a turn to the basic combat unit production rates, too.
2) Give us a unit editor, so we can tweak costs, or just balance them out more yourselves. In general, the higher level units are not worth the price/effort. (I'd rather have a crowd of archers vs. an Elder Vampire). The early units should probably go up in price/time to build.
3) AI needs help, but at Impossible it can be challenging. I know that is hard to fix, so I'm not going to list it here. Unit balance is a much easier route, and recommended.
4) You might consider making cities buildable 4 apart, not three, so there are less of them to manage on a big map. This could be an option.
5) The higher level worlds/planes seem like more trouble than they are worth to colonize (especially on impossible). Would be nice to see player/enemy positions there, maybe powerful ones as an option (like old MOM). I generally ignore them, and that is a shame. They should be a key path to victory, and could be very cool. Maybe up the resources there and lower the resource rate on the main map.
6) Reconsider the perk list when building a custom wizard. The +20% to gold and mana are overwhelmingly powerful, vs. the rest.
7) This game needs hotkeys...badly.
8) Multiplayer would be great, but not if the game is this easy. (I like to teach people by playing against AI).
9) Make another race and release it as an expansion. I'll buy it immediately!
10) Beasts faction are probably a little overpowered as compared to the other two, largely because of the better movement speed. It's not a huge difference, but it is definitely there. Ghost ships die like flies, also, as compared to Trolls. Again, unit tweaking is needed.

 

[CaptainKen]

1. Please make the victory conditions selectable by the player. Tis Unity thing is a real downer - play your heart out, only to have another mage cast Unity, no one counter it, and me not have the counter spell - takes all the fun out.
2. Make units cycleable, like civ
3. To the extent possible, make more actions available with one click of the mouse.
4. Mkae the spells more tech-tree-like; so I can choose the game I want top play - if i want all banes - or buffs - or damage-dealing, then let me choose them. Random is fun, but if I can't get the counterspell, them I will definitely lose. Is that really your intent? Luck of the draw?
5. Add another complete race. I would buy the expansion in a heartbeat, but not if tis unity thing doesn't get fixed.

 

[unmerged(170187)]

Ehm, it doesn't really happen as you say I noticed. If 2 cities overlap both can use the tiles. So in your example don't build the gold mine with city A (mana city) but instead wait till city B expands (money city) and then build it for him.
If the tile is used, yes, you cannot use it. However if the tile is not, it can be build upon even if another city claimed it "first"...

It happens exactly as I said, everytime. Which ever city expanded it's borders first over a resources claims it regardless of if you build on it or not. After your comment I did several test just to be sure they hadn't patched it without me noticing, since I don't tend to build city that close anymore anyway.

When a city expands it's borders all tiles are then locked to that city. Any city that expand their borders to those same tiles after that will still not have access to those tiles.

If you really think it works as you say and not as I do then I want proof in the form of a save and screen shoots of two cities near each other both covering an unbuilt resource and the screens of their build list showing the resource building as a viable option to build. Because if it does somehow work like this for you and not me there must be a difference in our versions, even though I've verified I have the most recent patch on steam.

 

[Hassat Hunter]

Maybe it's just for cities that are captured, not build. Since I remember seeing it, but indeed for my own made cities it does seem to be as you say it is...

 

[unmerged(510496)]

I was more thinking the opposite, that you could flag "favorites" and they would all appear in their own tab.

The game needs that favourites thing. Maybe a hotbar. I mostly use the same spells again and again. I meta-teleport, i make units levitate, I use whatever high damage spell I have, I vamp spell, I heal, and I use whichever god spells are useful. Most of the spells rarely or never get used.

And now for my own suggestion, which has probably NOT been made yet, but I guess more people than me would like it;
* An option for 0 AI Wizard enemies. So it's just exploring, the monsters. A bit of Majesty in your Warlock . Also a perfect way to start a first game, learn the ropes, without unity or so ending it unexpectedly. Not to mention I find the monsters generally more difficult than the enemy Warlock. But that may be "normal" difficulty. The base for this gameplay is already there, just make sure there is no auto-win because 'all other warlocks are gone'...
This would also make an ideal Multiplayer co-op mode, where players share their LOS against the monsters. And if the newbie and the expert play each other instead of the newbie getting wrecked without knowing why, he can see what the expert does and learn, similar the expert can see the rookie and give some advice. Perfect for getting a new player/friend waywise in the way of Warlock.

I must really not be the only one who just wants to explore all the worlds, murder all monsters at their own terms?

I'd love that too. I enjoy fighting the monsters much more than I enjoy the city state warring. I play like that already in my games. I have two or three units slowly annex nearby cities whenever they declare war because I'm camping on their land then quickly declare peace again and have the rest of my units exploring the world and conquering other planes. The other cities don't even tend to kill their monsters spawn points, they leave them there for me.

It'd be nice to have some monster enhancements too, made optional. Maybe have multiple enemies spawn when a building dies, maybe have monster units try to get to your cities, an increased spawn rate as the campaign went on (though some tweaking perhaps needed for elemental portals since they like to camp the portal). All the features that were in majesty. None should be hard to program and they'd substantially enhance the value of the game for me and other majesty fans.

For a DLC, I'd like to see super enemies. Mega units that would try to annex your empire when you conquered them. Alpha vampires, crazy mages, abominations monsters like that. I'd totally buy that. More stuff to kill.

 

[unmerged(494828)]

It's difficult to reply to other suggestions, sorry. My list is:

1. Multiplayer and maximum work on AI (dispel and better focus on stronger units). As I understand, these things are already in work.

2. Fixing exploits with building disabling and diplomacy. As I understand, these are in work as well.

3. Improve UI - large screens with list of cities, units and spells; disabling victory conditions; unit names; hall of fame, stats and graphs. These are needed regardless of other things.

4. Stronger ships, slightly stronger flying units. I think this part of the balance is quite clear.

5. Additional buildings on resources to produce something valuable. Especially for rare resources - it's quite sad what second Nevril is annoying waste of hex, instead of target for hunt.

The rest of the functionality depends on actual multiplayer testing. This includes AI priorities, balance, etc.

Speaking of what I wouldn't expect:

1. Non-resource tiles with different functions. There are already several factors for city and building placement - resources, roads, water, attack (for towers). One more will not make the game more fun, just will simplify things.

2. Other planes as starting places for other mages. This decrease their value as unique loot source and allows inadequate defenses around portal.

3. Diplomacy improvements before multiplayer. I personally like war-based diplomacy here, it's fresh. AI needs to have more reasoning before demanding resources, but that's minor.

 

[unmerged(170187)]

1) Lower tier support/caster options - The current caster/healer units run 120-200 gold which make them mid game units. Then when you factor in that they don't actually hold up to other mid-game units I end up finding them fairly worthless fielding maybe 1-2 for every 10 units in that same price range. The problem is other 120-200 price units often get good Melee/Missle resistance while caster/healer units get little to none while also having high unless resistance like 100 Life. What the heck does life damage?!? The 3 most common damage types are Melee/Missle/Death. A lot of monsters use Elemental and only the players casters and spells tend to use elemental. It would be nice to see these units get a buff and maybe add some Apprentice type characters in the 20-40 gold range to fill out the damage types as it's nothing but Melee and Missle early game which is not that interesting.

2) Turn Timer - I know MP is in the works so don't know if this is going to be in it but the option to have a turn timer would be nice. That way you can keep the pace of the MP game moving, it always sucks when you have one person who always takes 20 minutes to do their turn even though they are the smallest player and everyone else was done 10 minutes ago. I speak from experience in other TB MP games.

3) Disable Diplomacy Option - This is again something for MP. Right now the AI Diplomacy is broken and not sure when it will be fixed. People con the AI out of thousands of gold pieces in the Diplomacy screens and in the interest of preventing this in MP it would be nice if you could just disable diplomacy all together. That way you can still have AI players in your MP games and everyone is simply at a state of constant war. A last man standing free for all mode if you will. It will also be nice to just have the FFA War mode so you don't have to worry about the AI bugging you constantly with demands.

 

[unmerged(500730)]

Forts in general seem so much wasted space. losing the bonus of having another "real" city tile is huge compared to getting a unit that cannot move and has less defense/ attack ability than just purchasing a base unit. Against the AI does not seem a big deal, just never build any, and the AI seems immune to the detrimental effects of passing on production buildings. <But> if multiplayer rolls around some things are going to have to change. Here are some suggestions;

1) Increase the hp of forts across the board.
2) Let the damage fort/ cities do not be reduced by damage to those units.
3) Let Forts/ cities share any defensive buffs of units garrisoning in them (this is a big deal as mid/end game damage can be huge against a unit with no defensive buffs)
4) Let Forts (probably not cities here) share any offensive buffs of units garrisoning in them. (this may not seem like a big deal, since we are shooting at AI units that are usually vastly underbuffed, but against real human opponents the measly damage forts do will again be negligible).
5) Allow construction of an "upgrade" city tile instead of a regular tile build. The "applicable hexes" would be only spaces already containing forts, they would upgrade to fortresses with greatly increase capabilities.
6) Have mage forts increase population growth in their city.

Mix and match as you see fit, but Forts in general are going to need a buff in the PvP patch.

 

[unmerged(510496)]

5. Additional buildings on resources to produce something valuable. Especially for rare resources - it's quite sad what second Nevril is annoying waste of hex, instead of target for hunt.

A simple addition, if they were too lazy to add new buildings, would be to have the cost of the perk scale down with the number of resources you hold. If you hold more Nevril you can field a Nervil armor unit cheaper.

3. Diplomacy improvements before multiplayer. I personally like war-based diplomacy here, it's fresh. AI needs to have more reasoning before demanding resources, but that's minor.

I really think they should just scale down the demands but make them more frequent. Often they'll demand something crazy like 700 gold from me then accept peace the same turn for thirty gold (and then pay me 7000 gold for a non aggression pact the next turn). If they had more reasonable demands people might actually agree to their wishes.

 

[Tiltowait]

Lots of great ideas.

My take for a DLC add-on: more races. I also would like to see a eldritch themed race.

 

[The Apprentice]

When you have a melee unit defending a city, sometimes you don't want to attack with it because wiping out the enemy unit would mean abandoning the city hex (making it easier to take over).

If there is not a game design reason, I suggest a "sortie" button/toggle. The melee unit can attack units in the surrounding tiles, but will not leave the city hex even if it wipes out an enemy unit.

 

[LTK]

How's this sound: A city blessing that prevents other Great Mages from casting damage spells and banes inside its boundaries. A Spell Shield. That'd be cool, wouldn't it?

When you have a melee unit defending a city, sometimes you don't want to attack with it because wiping out the enemy unit would mean abandoning the city hex (making it easier to take over).

If there is not a game design reason, I suggest a "sortie" button/toggle. The melee unit can attack units in the surrounding tiles, but will not leave the city hex even if it wipes out an enemy unit.

That's kind of the point of risking an attack. How are you going to kill the enemy with your warriors inside the city walls?