Magnate

Place to report bugs in MoM IME and suggest ideas for enhancements (please read rules before posting)
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Magnate
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Post by Magnate »

Just wanted to add my appreciation and encouragement to all the others here. I've been playing MoM since it came out, what, fourteen years ago or so, and I still play it today in DOSBox, because there's no fantasy TBS that comes close to it.
Implode wrote:
srw46 wrote:Perhaps you could make a thread asking for specific things to be stress tested or receive feedback on.
Yeah I rather have been doing that... a couple of folks have helped me check into things that aren't clear from the strategy guide. And very interested to hear input on diplomacy (since its an area I've pretty much got zero interest in and so have no preset ideas about how it should work).
Well, I prefer SP, so I think diplomacy is an area which could use major improvements. (Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that there will be MP support, but I don't get time to play MP games much - the joy of SP is you can play a few turns at a time with long gaps.)

First, I hope you will have the AIs treating each other the same as they treat the human player(s). In the original they just seem to ignore each other. In particular, they should trade with each other (money and spells), and even make NAPs/alliances with each other if the situation demands (or declare war if necessary). In the original game they all ended up declaring war on the human player, but without any kind of co-ordination. I hope your AI will be superior, so that two or more allied enemies will be a real challenge for a human player. Also, the AI should be more prepared to ally *with* a human player if it can benefit from doing so (e.g. protection, if the human is stronger, or tribute, if weaker).

I would like to see all the original options implemented: declare war/sue for peace, non-agression pact, alliance, spell trading, give or demand money. I'd like to see a monetary value put on spells so you can buy or sell them even if you don't have any spells to offer in exchange (this would dramatically increase the viability of no-book wizards). I'd also like to see the option to hand over or demand control of individual cities. It would be nice if you could set up regular trade agreements like MoO (I can't remember if you can do this in MoM) - or you could implement trade routes instead, or regular tributes (where the money only goes one way).

It would be very nice if the relations with AI wizards could be enumerated (0= total war, 100= total alliance/vassalage), with an estimated value of each transaction shown (you could make these inaccurate if you wanted to keep us guessing). Things like giving away a city would have huge value (up to +50, say, based on the max pop of the city, not current pop, with bonuses for gold, mithril, nightshade etc.). Agreeing to an uneven trade (e.g. trading a low level spell for a high level spell) would also affect relations (positively if you gave away the high level spell).

Finally, I would really really like to see borders implemented, with diplo actions to propose a border and accept/reject a proposed border. Moving a visible military unit (ie. not a trade caravan, if you implement trade routes) across an agreed border would automatically break a NAP (and give casus belli, if you wanted to implement that) - or at least lower relations a bit. But you could send invisible units to scout enemy cities and armies etc.

If you didn't want to let us specify borders manually you could implement "influence" like Civ3/Civ4, whereby each city "owns" squares around it depending on its size (one extra square radius per 5 pop or something), and these areas of influence define your borders.
srw46 wrote:It's not going to be usefull to inform you of 101 things that need doing when you probably already know about them.
Yeah I'm very glad that people aren't doing that... the stuff on the "to do" list isn't supposed to be a complete list, I'm well aware of 100s of things that don't work simply because I've not written them yet (especially skills like breath attacks, first strike, etc.)... the things I bother to list on the "to do" list are things that are a bit less obvious and so I might forget about otherwise. e.g. if when writing something I take a shortcut in how I write it or hard code the way it works, then I'll make a note that it needs reworking later.
Well, if you find the time I think it would be well worth posting an exhaustive list of features you intend to implement. It would stop people pestering for a particular thing (they could just check that it's on the list), and it would stimulate thought and debate about new features. (It would be helpful if the list was divided into those features found in the original MoM, and those which aren't.)

Best of luck - happy to help if you need anything specific (do you want a manual for the game, eventually?)

Cheers,

CC
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Implode
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Post by Implode »

I moved your post here since it had a bunch of ideas in it that'll get lost in the other thread!
Magnate wrote:Well, I prefer SP, so I think diplomacy is an area which could use major improvements. (Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that there will be MP support, but I don't get time to play MP games much - the joy of SP is you can play a few turns at a time with long gaps.)
Me too, with a 2-and-a-half year old running around my only real time on the computer is when he goes to bed, so unless I can arrange an MP game to start right then its tricky for me. I just don't see diplomacy as that big of a deal in SP either since I'm usually in the "kill everyone!" frame of mind :D
Magnate wrote:First, I hope you will have the AIs treating each other the same as they treat the human player(s). In the original they just seem to ignore each other. In particular, they should trade with each other (money and spells), and even make NAPs/alliances with each other if the situation demands (or declare war if necessary).
Yes, yes and yes.
Magnate wrote:In the original game they all ended up declaring war on the human player, but without any kind of co-ordination. I hope your AI will be superior, so that two or more allied enemies will be a real challenge for a human player.
Co-ordination is one of the harder things to do... even for a player to co-ordinate their own units in a sensible fashion (the original does poorly even at that, stuff just attacks you almost randomly). I have some ideas planned out for how to write the AI... only time will tell if it ends up actually being any good or not.
Magnate wrote:Also, the AI should be more prepared to ally *with* a human player if it can benefit from doing so (e.g. protection, if the human is stronger...
Wouldn't you ally with the other weak players to gang up on him? If you ally with a strong player, they still end up winning when they cast the spell of mastery.
Magnate wrote:I would like to see all the original options implemented: declare war/sue for peace, non-agression pact, alliance, spell trading, give or demand money. I'd like to see a monetary value put on spells so you can buy or sell them even if you don't have any spells to offer in exchange
Like that idea :)
Magnate wrote:this would dramatically increase the viability of no-book wizards
How? You'd still need e.g. 3 chaos books to "buy" a very rare chaos spell (2 for rare, 1 for common/uncommon).
Magnate wrote:I'd also like to see the option to hand over or demand control of individual cities.
Sure why not, trade my city for your Crusade spell? Interesting idea :)
Magnate wrote:It would be nice if you could set up regular trade agreements like MoO (I can't remember if you can do this in MoM) - or you could implement trade routes instead, or regular tributes (where the money only goes one way).
MoM already does have trade routes, you just can't see them. It calculates a gold bonus from trade based on whether you're near water or connected by road to neighouring cities. Not really sure what else you could do on top of that without changing the game too much...?
Magnate wrote:It would be very nice if the relations with AI wizards could be enumerated (0= total war, 100= total alliance/vassalage)
They are in the original - you just can't see the value (except by the colour of the gargoyles' eyes).
Magnate wrote:with an estimated value of each transaction shown (you could make these inaccurate if you wanted to keep us guessing). Things like giving away a city would have huge value (up to +50, say, based on the max pop of the city, not current pop, with bonuses for gold, mithril, nightshade etc.).
Not sure about that, wouldn't it just make diplomacy TOO predictable? You always want the chance that someone you've been sucking up to and giving all kinds of gifts to is going to take advantage of your trust and attack your capital when you least expect it! I would... :twisted:
Magnate wrote:Agreeing to an uneven trade (e.g. trading a low level spell for a high level spell) would also affect relations (positively if you gave away the high level spell)
I've read that the original actually works like that - they get annoyed at you too if you get a decent spell from them and give them a crappy spell in return :)
Magnate wrote:Finally, I would really really like to see borders implemented, with diplo actions to propose a border and accept/reject a proposed border. Moving a visible military unit (ie. not a trade caravan, if you implement trade routes) across an agreed border would automatically break a NAP (and give casus belli, if you wanted to implement that) - or at least lower relations a bit. But you could send invisible units to scout enemy cities and armies etc.
My ideas for AI pretty much rely on calculating borders, but I'd seen them as being just that, calculated... like in Civ CTP (and maybe other Civ games)... being able to propose that borders are moved sounds complicated, especially to make the AI work like that.
Magnate wrote:If you didn't want to let us specify borders manually you could implement "influence" like Civ3/Civ4, whereby each city "owns" squares around it depending on its size (one extra square radius per 5 pop or something), and these areas of influence define your borders.
Oh... yeah ok I should have read ahead :D

Thanks for all the ideas, will be re-reading all this when I start to think about diplomacy.

Implode.
Iluvalar
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Post by Iluvalar »

I'm pretty sure other wizards where trading each other spells pretty often ( just like we trade spells with other wizards ) . I recall a game I tryed with no color setting and even if i had the summon champion spell REALLY fast , after I have traded with the first wizard , it didn't take that much time before the others learned it to .

I'm pretty interested with the principle of trade caravan :) with trade route . It could add a special interest in territorial defence especially over water since there is no much action on the ocean in MoM .
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