The gems, the scouts, the purchase dilemma

[Tifone]

Just gonna throw in my 2 cents.

I originally bought Dominions 3, back in the day when I had to get a copy from the USA for about 70€, with that fantastic printed manual, and I played it night and day for years.

I absolutely applaud what I've read the devs have been doing with this series during the years, fixing bugs and exploits, introducing interesting mechanics, new nations, new units, new spells, and above all reducing the horrible micromanagement, like removing permanent gemgen items and allowing multi-turn movements, and much more.
On the other hand I am dubious at best about some changes, like introducing a new obscure mechanic which shifted the scales in confusing ways (it used to be Order=gold, Productivity= resources, Growth=age, population and supplies; now it's Order=recruitment points and a bit of gold, Growth=more gold? Why not just limited recruitment per turn?), keeping some nations very unbalanced and expecially greatly nerfing thugs and SCs, since summoning and equipping them was lots of fun, now I see most players think it's just wasteful.

While all of the above is certainly debatable, I'll frankly say what has kept me from buying Dominions 4 and now Dominions 5 is the unexplicable localized gem and blood slaves deposit, which are burned into my mind as the source of endless hours of boring, empty clicking, devoid of all strategy both in SP and MP games. Many better players than me have suggested using the same mechanic for gold and magic sites, being able to automatically send gems from labs to commanders, and harvested blood slaves to labs, if there's a line of provinces connecting the commander to the lab. This would immensely reduce the boring logistics of moving tons of scouts around every turn, would make a ton of sense and would sensibly streamline the gaming experience, expecially in lategame.

While I don't think or dare to hope that my post is read by the devs, or change their mind about a mechanic that maybe for some reason makes sense for them, I really wanted to share my ideas, hoping that one day this could become a reality, the game would become enjoyable for me again, and I could buy and suggest Dominions 5 (6?) to my friends, since with all its problems I still consider Dominions 3 the best game I ever played together with Crusader Kings 2.

Also I would love to know some other players' ideas about the matter...

[Zonk]

harvested blood slaves to labs

Having gem access to any province connected to a lab might make sense - as gems are sent to laboratories from sites anyway (maybe it's easy to transfer magical energy) - but blood slaves are meant to be less portable than actual gems, as they represent actual units.
Why you think blood slaves being 'localized' is 'unexplicable' when they are units and all other units are localized and cannot simply teleport (without taking a turn) elsewhere?

It's already silly that you are allowed to stealth and fly with them - though at least if taken underwater they will drown now (unless you have enough gift of water breathing to support them).

So while I understand how you and many others find this awkard, it makes perfect sense in context, at least for blood slaves.

[pkk]

Just being able to set a target amount of gems for a commander would be good - whenever the commander is in a province with a Lab, the gems would be refilled.
For defensive battles in provinces with Labs, this would automnate all the gem-handling.

[terve886]

At least I have already gotten used to the new scale system, where growth is arguable the best for gold, production is only taken by nations with high resource cost units that rely on their recruitted armies like Ulm and order is mostly for mations which want to get access to huge amounts of cavalry.
Althought I do agree there could be some improvements, especially when growth is considered by far the best scale and order can be sacroficed for more events if you are running luck scales. It would be nice to see the scale modifiers more significant in order and poduction in my opinion.

Thugging is not dead. It is still possible to make thugs or SCs that can take out hundreds of unit, or at least annihilate entire PD. Golem with vineshield and a brand is a decent thug, but a golem with vine shield, brand, armor of knights, astral skullcap and astral coin is a SC that can teleport to blast enemy armies with astral tempest if the enemy lacks proper counter against it.

The bloodmagic is so different from the other magic paths that a least I am fine with it having different ferrying mechanic. Blood is really strong late game magic and hindering enemy's blood slave supplies by targetting the provinces where the blood hunt happens is one form of counterplay.

[meglobob1]

Originally posted by terve886:

Thugging is not dead. It is still possible to make thugs or SCs that can take out hundreds of unit, or at least annihilate entire PD. Golem with vineshield and a brand is a decent thug, but a golem with vine shield, brand, armor of knights, astral skullcap and astral coin is a SC that can teleport to blast enemy armies with astral tempest if the enemy lacks proper counter against it.

SC's are far, far from dead. In my Dom 5 MP game, SC's are completely dominating 6+ Golems, 6+ Iron Agels, 2+ Arch Devils, Elemental Royalty - Earth Kings, Air Queens, Troll kings, Sea Kings...thats upto turn 66. Spread over 3 nations MA Ulm, Uruk & Pelagia, I am MA Uruk.

Its actually have SC's or your nothing....

So far I have killed a fully kitted out Air Queen & Golem, lost none of my own SC's yet...losing SC's don't seem to put nations off pumping them out.

Armies & mages are largely fairly helpless bystanders to be slaughtered...

[Tifone]

Originally posted by terve886:

Blood is really strong late game magic and hindering enemy's blood slave supplies by targetting the provinces where the blood hunt happens is one form of counterplay.

I absolutely agree about this, I am not against the player needing local mages to collect the blood slaves. I am just saying that unless you manually assign them to keep some slaves or there is no connection to a lab (or even a mechanic needing a lab in a 2-3 province radius, so you could target that instead), the game would be much more enjoyable and fast without having to ferry the slaves themselves to labs via dozens of scouts in a late game empire. At least for me.

Originally posted by Zonk:

Why you think blood slaves being 'localized' is 'unexplicable' when they are units and all other units are localized and cannot simply teleport (without taking a turn) elsewhere?
It's already silly that you are allowed to stealth and fly with them - though at least if taken underwater they will drown now (unless you have enough gift of water breathing to support them).

Thanks for your input. I think that since they go to the gem bar and are treated as gems for a ton of uses, including the ones you said and also the Blood Vortex spell, I think there could be space for a quality of life change about how they're handled.

Lore aside, I am just speaking about a possible QoL improvement I would be enthusiatic about, since from what I've read the devs have made an AMAZING job at reducing micromanagement over the years. Right now, thinking about managing tons of scous ferrying gems and blood slaves around as I did for years is the only thing keeping me from buying Dominions 5, personally :(

Originally posted by terve886:

Thugging is not dead. It is still possible to make thugs or SCs that can take out hundreds of unit, or at least annihilate entire PD. Golem with vineshield and a brand is a decent thug, but a golem with vine shield, brand, armor of knights, astral skullcap and astral coin is a SC that can teleport to blast enemy armies with astral tempest if the enemy lacks proper counter against it.

Glad to hear that; on the other hand since Dom4 came out I've read plenty of posts stating how wasteful thugs and SCs are now, with gems being less common overall, more counters to lone units, and the opportunity cost of giving all those gems to mages for powering up battle spells. On the other hand I still play Dom3 only so that's just theorycrafting and second-hand infos :\

[Tifone]

Originally posted by meglobob1:

SC's are far, far from dead. In my Dom 5 MP game, SC's are completely dominating 6+ Golems, 6+ Iron Agels, 2+ Arch Devils, Elemental Royalty - Earth Kings, Air Queens, Troll kings, Sea Kings...thats upto turn 66. Spread over 3 nations MA Ulm, Uruk & Pelagia, I am MA Uruk.

Its actually have SC's or your nothing....

So far I have killed a fully kitted out Air Queen & Golem, lost none of my own SC's yet...losing SC's don't seem to put nations off pumping them out.

Hey, IIRC I remember your from the days of the old Shrapnel forums! Good to hear about your experience on the matter! That's nice, thanks a lot.

[Zonk]

Originally posted by Tifone:

Thanks for your input. I think that since they go to the gem bar and are treated as gems for a ton of uses, including the ones you said and also the Blood Vortex spell, I think there could be space for a quality of life change about how they're handled.

But this "QoL improvement" would make them much more like literal gems and thus reduce their unique flavor.
Something that *would* reduce the enjoyment of the game for some players who do like how Blood magic is different.
If blood slaves move to labs automatically, then why have them instead of 'blood gems'?

It sounds like you have not played Dom4, by the way - do you know there is a now command (V) to pool all blood slaves in the province on a single commander now?

[LDiCesare]

I agree with OP.
It would be great if, after spending gems/slaves, mages automatically resupplied gems/slaves from the lab provided there's a connection between the province they are in and a lab.
It could even be linked to a checkbox in the commander orders (replenish after battle) so you don't get your gems wasted if you don't want. That would counter the technique of sending magic attacks on opponent armies to make them waste gems, but I think this would not be a net loss.

That would alleviate the need for scouts, indie commanders and whatnot accompanying troops, discharging gems, which is pointless micro.
The Z shortcut and others have made things easier for bloodhunters, but it's still a PITA to have to ferry all those gems around.

[terve886]

I forgot to mention it earlier, but blood magic also has the advantage that it can be "resupplied" in almost everywhere during an invasion towards enemy army by simply stopping to hunt for a turn. Blood is also a fast research tree to research because blood magic onlky needs construction and blood research to reach all the required blood related spells and items.

[Tifone]

Originally posted by Zonk:

It sounds like you have not played Dom4, by the way - do you know there is a now command (V) to pool all blood slaves in the province on a single commander now?

Yes, I know about shift+V and shift+Z and it's surely an already good improvement. As I said, while I still only play Dom3 i kinda obsess about the forums and the patch reports and stuff ^^

Originally posted by Zonk:

If blood slaves move to labs automatically, then why have them instead of 'blood gems'?

Well collecting them would still require mages being in a province and hunting for them, itwould still cause unrest and poploss and require patrollers, slaves would still appear on the battlefield, their main use would still be rich of flavour as in they get sacrificed in labs and battlefields for summoning demons and rains of bloods and toads and horrors etc ^_^
Just talking about the ferrying mechanic after all, for the same reason you don't have one about bringing arrows around for archers...

[Zonk]

Originally posted by Tifone:

Well collecting them would still require mages being in a province and hunting for them, would still cause unrest and poploss and require patrollers, slaves would still appear in the battlefield , their main use would still be rich of flavour as in they get sacrifice in labs and battlefield

Once you make them teleport to your laboratories instead of being units that require someone to lead them, they feel more like standard gems than actual people.

Just talking about the ferrying mechanic after all, for the same reason you don't have one about bringing arrows around for archers...

The implication is that archers can resupply between battles using the province's natural resources.

How would you explain blood slaves teleporting to laboratories when other units taken from the local population (consider militia) can't?

[meglobob1]

Also, btw in Dom 5, ALL nations pretty much have more gems then in Dom 4 now as the default site % got raised (was it 10%?), which was needed. Indeed from my (so far) very limited experience of 1 Dom 5 MP upto turn 66, I was very pleased with the magic sites I found. Got a good mix of all gems and special sites seemed more frequent (got 3 which give special mages), in Dom 4 those were ultra, ultra rare, like you would be lucky to see 1 in 3 entire games.

Originally posted by LDiCesare:

I agree with OP.
It would be great if, after spending gems/slaves, mages automatically resupplied gems/slaves from the lab provided there's a connection between the province they are in and a lab.
It could even be linked to a checkbox in the commander orders (replenish after battle) so you don't get your gems wasted if you don't want. That would counter the technique of sending magic attacks on opponent armies to make them waste gems, but I think this would not be a net loss.

I will 3rd this, great idea and forcing opponents to use there gems was always abit 'cheesy' to me so no loss at all.

quote=Zonk;1696040635907178329]How would you explain blood slaves teleporting to laboratories when other units taken from the local population (consider militia) can't? [/quote]

Easy...an internal provincial infrastruture is pretty much assumed to be in place in every province, even alot of random events refer to your province governor who raises PD on his own or recuits troops independently. So this infrastructure transports / guards / escorts the slaves to your Fort / Labs / slave cells.

[Tifone]

Originally posted by Zonk:

Once you make them teleport to your laboratories instead of being units that require someone to lead them, they feel more like standard gems than actual people.

Lore-wise, for all we know they would covertly march in one turn for the 1-2 provinces to the nearest lab, obediently by themselves or lead by the mage servants but not necessarily requiring my clicks and time in a 200 provinces empire.
On the other hand, they already teleport between labs with no problem, since i can put 50 of them in a far-away lab and then instantly summon them to my capital to be sacrificed for a demon or turned into an item ^_^

Originally posted by Zonk:

The implication is that archers can resupply between battles using the province's natural resources.

They resupply underwater and in wastelands, deserts, swamps and caves, also without actually touching the province's resource pool. It wasn't really about arrows, it's just about realism in logistics. More realism, more clicks, more realism, longer and potentially more boring turns. There could totally be some unit that you have to ferry around that make arrows and resupply your archers, but I guess you don't want that ^_^

[terve886]

Originally posted by meglobob1:

I will 3rd this, great idea and forcing opponents to use there gems was always abit 'cheesy' to me so no loss at all.

That is funny, because I would find it 'cheesy' if invading enemy army could resupply gems everywhere while invading my borders. Those gems win battles you know!

[meglobob1]

Remember a turn in dominions is a month of real time, so less 'teleporting' more assumed logistics / infrastructure that operates independent of your control that transports / marches stuff around. I mean alot of trade / merchants traveling the lands, normal provincial life is going on, its just not represented in game (other then via gold, supply etc...) because that would over complicate things.