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

[unmerged(84406)]

I would like to see continents map type renamed as lakes - it is generally a single land mass with large lakes, not multiple large land masses separated by several seas.
plus a new map type - continents consisting of a small number of large landmasses in a single sea, each land mass would have two to five great mages.

As to the word being short and wide, that is a cultural view - in some cultures East is put at to top of the map and there the world is tall and narrow.
Plus if we don't know what the world looks like how come we know what shape it is?

 

[Grubnessul]

By "tall" you mean that North is up? HEHEHE it really depends which way you turn it when you look at it no? No, really, I think that they did that because in a cilindrical map you would have to travel more before coming to the starting point. Also since on Earth we have poles where little life is possible not being able to go to th top of the world or to its bottom probably makes more sense to us than if we had a cilindrical map where you could not cross sideways.

No, by "tall" I meant a continent (not world!) that has more hexes north-south than east-west. As far as I've seen, most continents are much wider than tall. I was not talking about the cylindric world, but about the continent.

 

[Skyhunteren]

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.

 

[LTK]

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 like this idea! Currently the local resources only serve three purposes: generate resources, give upgrades for gold, or give units for gold. It would be very interesting if local resources also gave you the ability to give upgrades for mana, aka enchantments, or summon units for mana. That would give you additional reasons for choosing to focus on generating either gold or mana. You have much more opportunities to be succesful if you are able to persist on a very low gold income when you have resources that give you advantages in exchange for mana instead of gold.

 

[unmerged(501863)]

The Planes

The major problem with the other planes is that they are completely unnecessary. Unless pushing this game up to the max difficulty results in an increase in the opposing wizards, but not in the wandering monsters; it will remain easier to win the game than to clear the planes. For the other planes to really work, they need to become useful... a way to help win, not something I put off winning to explore. This goes back to three differences between these planes and the alt plane in MOM

1. It was an alternate method of travel (as it connected at multiple points)
2. You could start there
3. Opponents could be based there.

Though I am torn on #1 (as I like the multitudes of planes... though imagine if they all overlapped and portals were between any two, not just the main and sub); I think #3 is almost a must.
An alternate plane is also a good place to put a powerful (as in over-balanced) race; balanced by the difficulty of getting them.

Diplomacy

It goes without saying that diplomacy is broken. I have yet to play a 4x game where diplomacy makes a lick of sense (in every one, including this one, I've offered something that was refused, only to have the AI offer the same thing the next turn). I've had wizards break pacts and immediately reform them when I offered. I've had wizards suing for peace turn down peace offerings. Etc.

War

In short: It's too easy to win. The defensive value of cities should be higher. A single high-level critter (say a modded blademaster with a vampyric weapon) can take everything, including capitals, alone.

Borders and Territory

Why can the guy that has no treaty with me send a settler through my land? Why don't I have even the diplomatic option to demand he leave? Why isn't that an act of war? In the alternate: why can't I kill trespassers without declaring war?

User Interface

I know one of these cities made Blade-masters: Why can't I find it <click> <click>

The game lacks good empire-viewing tools. Where are the bad-guys on the worldmap? Where can build what?

 

[unmerged(488533)]

This game needs two things done to take it from decent with problems.....to great.

1- City spam must be dealt with. Right now there are no disadvantages to creating a city every few hexes.
2- AI. The AI has to put up a better fight. Especially when attacking. It needs to use buffs better as well. Lets not forget diplomacy......the AI needs to know how to do more than threaten war and demand gold.

There are many other improvements and additions that will help a lot,....but these 2 must be fixed.

 

[unmerged(501863)]

Oh! And quests

A simple patch I would think: When there's a quest, I should be able to go to the spot on the map involved (the location of the city I need to capture, or monster I need to kill) from the quest pop-up. It can be a pain searching the map.

 

[unmerged(84406)]

A simple patch I would think: When there's a quest, I should be able to go to the spot on the map involved (the location of the city I need to capture, or monster I need to kill) from the quest pop-up. It can be a pain searching the map.

Click on the magnifying glass button on the quest.

 

[unmerged(502062)]

Four wishes...

Really enjoy the game on impossible. I find the AI pretty impressive given the complexity of the gaming system however there are some things I believe need to be corrected in order to improve the AI. Here's my requests...

1. The "Unity" spell is a huge problem. The AI will try to keep casting it and since it can be dispelled, I can dispel it at the last turn. Either this you can't dispel the spell (it is the Unity spell after all), it could be removed, or the "value" for the AIR in casting it needs to be significantly lowered.
2. The AI will routinely send individual units across an enemies battle field to try and get some "loot" that they have seen. Reduce the "value" of the loot and increase the logic as sending individual units across a battlefield rarely makes sense for any goal.
3. The AI will create and put into the line of fire of enemy towers and cities their settlers. Should be an easy fix....waste of resources.
4. A common problem with AI's, which occurs in this game, is that the AI doesn't create large enough armies to surge on an enemy city. They'll throw 1-3 units at a city and either get slaughtered, or may even damage the city but nothing strategic is gained. This needs to be improved upon. Do not touch the monsters though...they are challenging enough, especially early in the game (and really add to the difficulty game from my view).

Given that the game turns move amazingly fast on my 3 yr old quad core, I think you could easy increase the complexity of the calculations the AI is using without interfering with the game play.

Thanks for a great game and look forward to seeing it improved further.

Nathan

 

[unmerged(502447)]

i only want two things.
1, move the 'An idle unit requires orders.' button to the left side of the screen. [and maybe make it a little bit bigger. [or maybe have this in options would be nice, so players can choose.]]

2, fix diplomacy since it is so, so broken. [when the computer gives me 10k gold at the same time he signs an alliance agreement... it makes the military win obscenely easy.]

 

[unmerged(493586)]

- Shareable save files. It's the next best thing to having mods or a map edittor. I've tried to upload files for other people to continue the game from, but it they couldn't play it. Especially when this is TBS - it just BEGS to have uploadable board layouts to try to win from.


And my two cents: I realize there's a bunch of discussion about securing games so they are more difficult to hack, etc. I also write games for a living, and I think it's vastly better to spend mindshare on the games themselves, rather than on making them hack-proof. Someone is going to hack them, just for the bragging rights. But a tangible impact is to have bragging rights on making more innovative game-play.

 

[unmerged(490380)]

Suggestion for diplomacy:
Right now there is no real punishment for breaking treaties.

The breaking of treaties should be an insult to whatever god the victimized wizard is closest to. (or to none if that wizard ignores religion, which should also boost interest in the religion aspect of the game: to get protection)

One of the most noticeable features of this game is the religious system, which is the best developed of all TBS games around. It should be developed as much as possible to make this game even more unique.

 

[unmerged(502169)]

holy cow, 13 pages! I beg your pardon not to read them all. And since the TO did not summarize them up in a condenced post, I'll just put my list down here.

My Wishlist:
- terrain types should matter, what can be build. Some races should do well on terrain, were others suffer! Teraforming should be available at high cost. terrain types should matter for the behavior of the troops of different race too, like just undead should be able to cross lava fields. That opens a way for tactical thinking!

- diplomacy must be at least slightly improved:
* breaking alliance or peace must keep troops out of territory of the other nation, it should be impossible, to place troops around a city, then break treaty and attack!
* for demands of other leaders, I need more options than "yes" or "war". They may just try a bluff, so I need the option to say a short "no".
* I need to make treats like "leave my country now"

-The good-system is nice, but won't work while random. I need the option to "choose" a religion and get missions from those lord only. Otherwise I never can trust on these spells since my ranking goes down when I have missions from the opposite lord. Further I need special buildings to warfare my lord and build trust.

- make water tiles usefull for city development! (fishing, whale hunt, seaweed farm ...)

 

[unmerged(493784)]

More suggestions:
- Improve the dispell-mechanics (or remove dispelling at all). Being in war with 2 or more foes leeds to constant (!) dispells of my spell. This means, you can't cast anything anymore unless its casting time is <1 round, making magic completely useless.
- Make the Unity spell undispellable, but spell casting time 40 rounds or so. After casting it, all other mages should instantly start war with that mage, so it's an all or nothing spell.
- the avatar killing quest to win the game should be manually startable after getting 100 rep with a god (and maybe another req so it's not achievable too early). So it'll be less random and a winning condition to go for more straight.

 

[unmerged(455856)]

There are tons of nice-to-have features and minor bug fixes, but none of them matter at all, unless the AI in particular, and gameplay in general, are fixed to pose a challenge. One of the more glaring AI problems, is the inability to deal with flying units (which can't be attacked by non-flying melee units). Another serious problem is the AI's inability to handle strong neutral creeps. A single greater fire elemental can contain an AI indefinitely. Even one of the 100% poison spiders is enough to cripple the AI.

Gameplay wise, the 'impossible' difficulty is so easy that playing is not at all interesting. This is in large part due to the rudementary AI, but also because of overall gameplay, such as the inability of AI's to defeat each other, which in a game like Civilization would create a race-against-time situation for the player, to avoid being faced with a over powerful opponent later.

Please prioritize developing the AI above everything else, and get into the Dwarf Fortress mentality when setting difficulty levels: Losing is fun!

 

[Czin]

Ok I can't recall anything like what I'm about to suggest, so here it is.


Some way to "comunicate" and interact with the deities would be great. For example, asking for quests from a certain god or even protection! Protection could work as a perk-only thing like making other players who are taking an offensive towards a protected player, would make the attacker lose favor toward the protector god. Of course there should be some sort of counterbalancing the pros with the cons of interacting with the gods. Maybe tougher quests with greater penalties if failed/refused also taking a feature from Age of Wonders' "religion" there should be more unique requests for each god.

 

[LTK]

Ok I can't recall anything like what I'm about to suggest, so here it is.


Some way to "comunicate" and interact with the deities would be great. For example, asking for quests from a certain god or even protection! Protection could work as a perk-only thing like making other players who are taking an offensive towards a protected player, would make the attacker lose favor toward the protector god. Of course there should be some sort of counterbalancing the pros with the cons of interacting with the gods. Maybe tougher quests with greater penalties if failed/refused also taking a feature from Age of Wonders' "religion" there should be more unique requests for each god.

This is a good idea. Right now, religion anywhere but the endgame is a pointless affair, except maybe for a few god spells you get from a favor. Finding a Holy Ground to build a temple on is also mostly up to chance, and the quests you receive for a god seem to be pretty much random as well. Without a god's favor, it's impossible to make an early, concerted effort towards gaining favor with one god short of building temples as fast as you can.

Making an attack on a mage who has a god's favor lose reputation with that god is really an excellent suggestion. That would make the 'religion' affliation between two mages actually mean something, because if they go to war with each other, they both risk losing their god's favor. Plus, you can try to gain favor with a god by attacking its rival. Just the implementation of this suggestion would make for a substantially better game.

 

[unmerged(84406)]

An option to rest for 1 turn - I often press the rest/heal button and then immediately reselect the unit, give it movement orders and cancel them just so it will be an idle unit next turn. This is essential if the unit is in a semi exposed location or has regeneration so be a few points short of maximum isn't a problem.

A way of telling if a unit as 1 1/2 movement points left or only 1.

A way to turn own unit movement off - so you don't have to click to skip the animation every time. plus an option to do the same for other/enemy movement. I really don't need to see a neutral GM reposition his 10 identical ships on the 20 hex lake - especially when they usually end up in the same 10 hexes.

The buy perk and upgrade buttons on the unit pane to be dimmed if you can't afford any of the options.

 

[unmerged(504352)]

I think its essential to incorporate simultaneous turns into multiplayer to some extent, simirarly to Civilization V.
Having a turn by turn approach makes it very time consuming already if you have more than 2 people, essentially spending 2/3 or more of your game time waiting for the others.

I understand that the system is not perfect and sometimes people with the fastest "clikking skills" have a big advantage. What we did with our friends is that we agreed that each part of the map where combat was going on (essentially where a front was opened) was handled in a by move format. This means that the attacker moves with one unit, then the other player with his first one, then the first player with the second one and so on. Then if another battle was going on somewhere else on the map we would follow the same process. If you want to program (so include it in the game by definition) this the success mostly depends on how you define a battle and which units are being part of that battle. These units should be handled separately and could only move one after the other as described above, while other units on the map (outside the battle) could follow the standard process.

Good luck with the development, looking forward to a great MP experience!

Best Regards,

G.

 

[Eggenberg]

In no particular order:

Hotkeys

Turn off Unity spell

"Move Through" friendly units, particularly at sea.

Improved diplomacy interface - a biggy in my book!