Master of Magic 2 Wishlist For Slitherine

[Blake00]

oh yes Seravy! That's a big one for me too. Having build queues that stop/reduce the endless building completed msgs when you have a big empire would be wonderful.

BTW Glad to see this thread has gone back to something productive with interesting suggestions and discussions.

[Seravy]

As far as I remember this wasn't discussed yet, but they want to know so... https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/show...p?tid=9762

[Arnuz]

Speaking of numbers of units I've just discovered that aow 1 happily resolved, in '99, the problem of selecting and moving multiple units at the same time despite different speeds on a grid...

That'd surely lessen the pain.

[JustOneMoreTurn]

One option I'd like to see is avoidance of the temptation to 'reroll' (reload and try again) random treasures and heroes. It's just too tempting to reroll lairs until you get something good. Click on button on setup, and the temptation is gone, but it's still an option for those who enjoy that style.

What triggered this thought is having substandard heroes volunteer, and turning them down because accepting them reduces the chance of better heroes showing up. Either balance them better, or not have a penalty for accepting lesser heroes. Maybe the list of heroes that you could get in a particular game is set at the start, so you have no reason to decline certain heroes because you're waiting for <whomever>, because <whomever> simply isn't on your list for that game.

[MrBiscuits]

With heroes I always imagined a system where you all know which are available at the start and how much fame/money they need to hire. 

Then you can only hire heroes if you have enough fame to cover all the heroes you have. So if the first hero requires 10 fame and the second 15, if you hired the first one then you're require 25 for the second.

Then you can make more tactical decisions about which heroes to hire or not.

[asw3]

There is no way in this genre for the AI to remain competent unless they rely on numbers...

Already refuted:

Edit: One more thing to note when comparing Heroes and MoM is the AI. The strength of the AI has rarely if ever been an issue for Heroes II/III, especially not the overland AI (battle AI has its quirks, but even when exploiting them you can only go so far in most cases), and the game does it without letting the AI cheat. On higher difficult setting (above Normal) it gives it more starting resources, and reduces yours, but the AI doesn't get any other bonus, his mines don't produce more resources compared to yours, he doesn't get more growth in his dwellings etc. Sure the AI is not without it's flaws, but its more than serviceable, even with decades of player experience against it, and some aspect of it people think are too strong even now (like him targeting your shooters relentlessly), so I don't get why people think good AI in a strategy game is some sort of myth, or it has to cheat to be good...

Also, map design has shown us that the the overall systems and mechanics of a strategy game and how they are arranged in each specific game has a more meaningful impact on the difficulty of the AI opponents than their intelligence itself. Even if you don't go to extreme examples like Wayfarer or even the far simpler Fire War Campaign map (both H3), the vanilla H2 Pyramid map is a prime example of ancient stupid AI from '96 being extremely difficult even for veterans to beat without "numbers advantage," or any other hugely disproportional advantage of any kind (or at least not as disproportionately huge as the AI has to been pumped in M/CoM to be made challenging, really making it more annoying than challenging in the process, though maybe for MoM specifically there may be no other way, who knows, though I personally have my doubts).

[zitro1987]

Battles should have very fast animations and pretty yet small 2D graphics that look fine if sped up. Combat should resolve pretty quickly, with small space and unit limits per stack. Added mechanics like flanking, multi-ranged attack system of AoW would be very welcome to reward mobile units yet kept simple enough for battles to resolve quickly

Units should have strengths and weaknesses at times based on concrete abilities, not (150% against cavalry). Caster of Magic excels on this

The Feature of letting turns get to 25 (and neutral ai escaping when protecting lair) should not be in sequel. Since they are starting fresh with code, it would be preferable to grant additional tactical benefits to these mobile tactical units if AI can be taught

Auto combat should be an option prior to any battle. Auto algorithm, visible but ai-controlled battle with spell usage, ai-controlled without spells or manual combat.  Auto algorithm should be Much better than what we have of MoM

Towns should be scarcer yet more involved with less repetitive micro. Add non-magic research system available to all but slightly different according to wizard selection. Keep towns advancing over time economically and military (less so) and settled towns starting more advanced depending on research (see civ5 or modern master of orion). Also, provide a distinct town interface where you see the town grow with new buildings as well as quantity of houses.  This is immersion that was lost in AoW3 where town had no character nor distinction

Number of spells and units should be restrained so it wont crumble under its own weight for both player and AI sake. 8-10 units per race ( half of them standard units) and 40 spells per realm is plenty

[vicwaberub]

Battles should have very fast animations and pretty yet small 2D graphics that look fine if sped up. Combat should resolve pretty quickly, with small space and unit limits per stack. Added mechanics like flanking, multi-ranged attack system of AoW would be very welcome to reward mobile units yet kept simple enough for battles to resolve quickly

Units should have strengths and weaknesses at times based on concrete abilities, not (150% against cavalry). Caster of Magic excels on this

The Feature of letting turns get to 25 (and neutral ai escaping when protecting lair) should not be in sequel. Since they are starting fresh with code, it would be preferable to grant additional tactical benefits to these mobile tactical units if AI can be taught

Auto combat should be an option prior to any battle. Auto algorithm, visible but ai-controlled battle with spell usage, ai-controlled without spells or manual combat.  Auto algorithm should be Much better than what we have of MoM

Towns should be scarcer yet more involved with less repetitive micro. Add non-magic research system available to all but slightly different according to wizard selection. Keep towns advancing over time economically and military (less so) and settled towns starting more advanced depending on research (see civ5 or modern master of orion). Also, provide a distinct town interface where you see the town grow with new buildings as well as quantity of houses.  This is immersion that was lost in AoW3 where town had no character nor distinction

Number of spells and units should be restrained so it wont crumble under its own weight for both player and AI sake. 8-10 units per race ( half of them standard units) and 40 spells per realm is plenty

As I wrote before: Fast combats are very important! MoMs design says "research early and test your research often against a lot of enemy combinations". But it need the "Three-Strikes-Rule" from AoW2 to disable "Stacks of Doom". In AoW the "Adjacent-Hex-Rule" (all units in the near are fighting in the battle too) was nice, but a little bit impractical. The possibility to flee from the battle on the battlefield borders is nice, it would be great if the defenders has the same option (perhaps after some turns).

Please look at "Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes" for a good city build system. It is very funny to build buildings directly on the map. 

BTW: http://www.big-game-theory.com/2020/01/t...iency.html discuss some design flaws in 4X games. I hope for a win by solving a master quest.

[Blake00]

Thanks guys, I've passed on the latest wishes to my big wish list thread over at Slitherine forums.

[Arnuz]

The most important resource being time, it would be great if tactical combat wasn't close ended - 25/50 rounds then retreat - but could instead play over several turns, continuing on the next day where troops finished in the previous.

Then each combat could be shortened, perhaps to 10 rounds, so that late game becomes less boring.

Units designed to last long such as gargoyles would then be able to occupy stronger units for more turns then worth. A totally new dimension of opportunity cost would arise!