Dominions 4: Thrones of Ascension Announced

[Edi]

Illwinter Game Design has announced the development of Dominions 4: Thrones of Ascension.

Illwinter home page

18th June 2013 - Dominions 4 is under development
Dominions 4 is under development and it has now got a web page here that hasn't got any useful information yet, but it will come.

So not a lot of info there at the moment, but there will be. It does beat the crap out of Dominions 3 in practically every aspect, so if you like the series or turn based fantasy strategy in general, keep an eye on this. If you want more information, stay tuned to the official Dominions 3 forum at Desura and the Dom3Mods forum, as those are the most likely places to have new stuff posted.

You can also ask here, because I can divulge everything that Illwinter gives permission for. One of the benefits of being in the beta and working on the game.

[Zinegata]

I good single-player experience a goal, or is it still primarily a multi-player game?

[Edi]

Of course a good SP experience is a goal, but there is only so much improvement possible for the AI in such a complex game. So multiplayer will always be richer in terms of challenge and reward.

[Vehrec]

Will off-script mages cast more intelligently? Will the AI learn how to script properly and manage communions and other magic-heavy tactics?

[Edi]

Will off-script mages cast more intelligently? Will the AI learn how to script properly and manage communions and other magic-heavy tactics?

Off-script mages can be told not to use gems for anything that is not scripted, so they won't waste them.

Communions, unlikely. Those are fiddly things and usually needed to put up some heavy battlefield enchantments, so it's not just the AI knowing communion, but also knowing what it needs it for and knowing the other spell and when to use that other spell.

But the AI will be improved in some other respects. No more turmoil/sloth/death/misfortune (all at level 3) and an über bless on a pretender that is no use when the AI sucks at using sacreds.

[Vehrec]

Does that mean that the AI will be better at Sacreds and bless builds? You did say 'when the AI sucks at using sacreds'.

[Edi]

The AI generally sucks at using sacreds, period.

Yet in Dominions 3 you would routinely see something like a 125 point titan pretender on an AI with 2 paths at level 9, a third path at level 8 and perhaps a fourth with level 6 thrown in. Then the scales of his dominions would be Turmoil 3, Sloth 3, Death 2, Misfortune 3 and the AI would never get anywhere with it. It would not recruit sacred troops in the quantity required, would not group them together and does not know how to use them effectively, so the bless is for nothing. IF you started a single player game against ten AIs and seven of them were bless builds with piss and shit scales, they would be no challenge, except insofar as they dominion pushed the bad scales on you so you had to deal with that, but militarily they usually had nothing.

On the other hand, if the AI happened to pick a scales build with increased order, growth, luck, possibly also production, you would have a fight on your hands that you will be hard pressed to win conventionally, especially if two or more ganged up on you. Mind you, I never play anything less than impossible AIs, so when they decide to stomp you, the hordes are endless.

The problem with the scales build AI is that it recruits the useless chaff quality independent troops almost exclusively instead of using the national troops, which could accomplish something (well, okay, not the Mictlan nationals, but still). So you had to work around that with custom maps that had indies disabled (using too high invalid poptype numbers wipes the indie poptypes from the game but leaves the defenders intact) or recruiting the worst chaff indies disabled through prohibitive cost by mod (the Better Independents mod I made).

So, these issues have been addressed. The AI will no longer build über-bless builds with shitty scales because it doesn't know how to use them. It may have some bad scales, but not across the board bad and will be overall more balanced.

The chaff horde issue is also being taken care of, but let's not give away too much yet.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

I know it's probably beyond the scope of a two-person indie developer, but doesn't the technology exist to build AI procedurally by having it observe the alpha and beta players in multi and copying their strategies, or to run monte carlo simulations and figure out what works best by brute force? Why is AI still hand-coded given the tools that programmers have today?

[Edi]

Not being a programmer, much less an AI programmer, I'm not qualified to answer that in any way.

But it probably has something to do with the fact that AFAIK parts of the Dominions codebase date back as far as the old Atari systems way back when over twenty years ago and it may not be possible to retrofit a newfangled AI onto that.

Note that even that much answer on my part is basically shooting in the dark. You could ask that on the official forum at Desura and Johan K might answer that. Or not, can't promise you anything on that score.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

It's mostly hopeful speculation borne from experience with the nightmare that is trying to build working and competent AI for a mod of another made-in-garage strategy game (DJAS mod for Space Empires V, which also has ancient holdovers in the codebase).

[Covenant]

I would say that, no, the tech doesn't exist (especially for a small team) to have an AI behave that creatively when monitoring player behavior. Besides, it wouldn't really matter, beating a player is substantially easier than challenging the player in a meaningful and engaging fashion. Players don't just want an AI that is difficult, but one that they enjoy playing against.

I'm glad to hear another Dominions game is coming out, I had a lot of fun with Dom3, though I never managed to keep my nation intact. I was also terribly depressed reading about how the nations end up in the third epoch, and the gradual loss of magic, and so forth. It may be silly but I'd enjoy having a few more up-beat and optimistic choices.

[Edi]

From Illwinter's website:

Dominions 4 improvements

Here's a short list with the most important changes compared to Dominions 3.

• Teamplay, one pretender and one or more disciples per team.
• Thrones of Ascension. Claim thrones to gain extra powers and to win the game eventually.
• Many sprites have been redrawn and the 3d terrain is also improved.
• Many user interface improvements.
• Formations like line formation or skirmish formation.
• Improved random map generation with wraparound maps, caves, rivers and mountain passes.
• Rivers that can only be passed when frozen, mountain passes that can only be passed by special units and when it's warm.
• Pierce, slash and blunt weapons have slightly different quirks. E.g. don't shoot arrows at skeletons.
• Darkness and dark vision plays a more important role. Notably in deep seas, caves and sometimes during assassinations.
• Range restrictions on magic rituals and items and spells that can be used to boost ritual ranges.
• Improved network support, turns can be resumed from any computer and turns can be marked as only half finished.
• Global random events
• Can build castle improvements like extra towers or extra supply storage
• Province Defence dependent on the local population and some nations have easier or harder to organize it.
• Improvements to AI and to modding.
• Many new monsters, spells, magic items, sites, random events and some nations too.

So, fairly big changes, as you can see.

[Zinegata]

Edi->

New question: Will there be better tools for test games? One constant frustration of mine in Dom 3 is that I had to use mods or the clunky edit battle thing.

Is there a better battle editor in the works? Preferrably one that you can access off the game and where you can adjust researched spell levels? I'd like to be able to test out SC and Thug build BEFORE they are massacred horribly in the actual game (which is one of the major cliffs in the learning curve)

[Edi]

That sort of tools are not on the table at the moment. They are not a priority since you can set up any combination of situations with mods and scripted test maps and any time spent on such would be away from developing other aspects of the game that actually involve playing rather than testing. Illwinter does not need them and there is only so far they will go to accommodate cutthroat MP min/maxing.

[Covenant]

Speaking as someone who has trouble with the game on relatively normal settings, one of the things I'd like is a good in-game guide to making a competent faction and a decent army capable of holding its own against the AI.

What I would recommend is a simple "Pick this dude, this faction, and make these items on him" kind of thing. Recommended build stuff would be nice.

I can find a lot of this elsewhere, but even when I know where to look, I have a freakishly hard time getting my monsters to be anything approaching "good at killing stuff." I end up tanking all my national settings and take the big angry bull hero, or tanking all my pretender stats (an Obelisk or something, a fountain, etc) to have a nation capable of expanding without instantly collapsing inwards economically.

As a fellow game designer, I'd consider a convenient front-end or tutorial to be a big way of expanding their market share. That and graphics. I made my own faction graphics pack and it was a blast, so I can't imagine it is super hard to do a smidge of updating on the graphics. We've gotten offers for super cheap contract work that they could avail themselves of and have some really nice looking aesthetics.

I think I'll buy a second copy of Dom3 and vote with my wallet.

Edi, have they considered going Kickstarter or any of the indie funds in order to finance development? You can contract out for new art, if nothing else. They'd surely end with a bucket of cash if they just say "Master of Magic Successor done right" and can show what they've done, and Dom3 is the closest thing that I've ever seen or played to that. If they're not overly ambitious with their stretch goals (just say what they want the money for, and put stuff like "new art" and "expanded music" and that kind of stuff on the stretch goals) they should be able to generate a nice boost.

Also, have they considered getting on Steam? We could publish it for them. Desura is a fine service but I'm positive they'd make a pile of dollars if they had a steam release for a promotional version of D3 and then came out with D4.

[Edi]

Covenant, thank you for the excellent suggestions and feedback.

There is going to be a tutorial scenario, with the tutorial written into the manual, that will walk you through how to design your god and start to play. It will use one of the new nations, because it will also be able to introduce many of the newer mechanics (formations etc).

It may well be worth it to also give some generic advice on what nations to try out first so that it is easier to learn the game. Mostly that means the nations that may not be the magically most powerful, but which have a good mix of military that can tale on even the tougher independents, as well as recommending some settings on independent strength (higher than standard helps player more than AI while lower settings allow AI to expand so fast that it will roll over you).

I'll talk with Bruce Geryk about this, since he is writing the game manual. I'm doing the rest of the documentation (mapmaking, modding).

The game is getting new sprites for most monsters (Kristoffer's work), especially the older ones and the appearance of the 3D terrain in combat has been substantially improved. The user interface is also much better than in Dominions 3 and more informative (tooltips are much better this time around, for one). If you want to see what the Dominions 4 user interface looks like (mostly), you can try out the Conquest of Elysium 3 demo. It will show you what kind of graphical elements there UI has, while the layout in Dominions 4 is still the same as in Dominions 3.

The project is too far along to start going on Kickstarter now and I'm not sure if they ever considered it as an option. Given that both halves of Illwinter have day jobs (Johan K as a sysadmin, Kristoffer O as a high school teacher) and they do their game development on their spare time, I don't know how viable that would be. Kickstarter projects, from what I've glimpsed, require a lot of communication and interaction with the community, something which is directly away from the time spent on development. In the current situation, I've been doing most of the promotional and other PR work for Illwinter and I'm strictly an amateur without a whole lot of knowledge about the game industry or much in the way of contacts. I also have a primary job, so this is done on my spare time.

Regarding Steam, Illwinter published Conquest of Elysium 3 on Steam. It took sometime to get it on there, so at first it was only available through Desura and Gamersgate. They're attempting to get Dominions 3 on Steam too, but it has been languishing in the Greenlight process for months, being passed over every time. There are around 900 comments there right now, the overwhelming majority of them positive, but it has been no go so far.

In that light it is practically a certainty that Dominions 4 is intended to be published through these same three channels. If you work for Steam, I'm certain they would be interested in talking with you. If you have a Desura account, just a send Illwinter a private message and it will reach both Johan and Kristoffer. It'll also reach me, since I'm practically part of their organization now because I run all their forums.

[Covenant]

Okay, I'll get in touch. I don't work for steam, but my game company has a steam rep and we could publish Dom4 with Illwinter and they'd be able to avoid the entire Greenlight nonsense. We both make fantasy strategy games so there's a bunch of demographic overlap as well, so it seemed like a good fit. If Dom4 does well then Steam would probably just pass Dom3 through the greenlight process automatically anyway. We'd also help with promotions and all that stuff obviously. Anyway, SDN's not the place for business stuff. The Dominions games are great and I'd love to see them getting the attention they deserve.

[Edi]

Check your PMs and stand by, Covenant.

I'll introduce you.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

One simple improvement that could shallow the learning curve is to standardize Attack, Defense, Precision, Morale, and Magic Resistance around 0 instead of 10. When I first encountered the series with Dom 2, it took a long time before I understood how significant was the difference between, say, Defense 8 and Defense 13. They look similar to the untrained eye. Defense -2 and Defense +3, however, would look drastically different and new players would intuitively grasp that large but crappy troops like Jotun militia are relatively inferior despite their higher HP and Strength. No changes would need to be made to the game's formulas, only the visual presentation on each unit's info card.

[Edi]

Dominions 4 is now available for preorder.

The forums aren't up yet, but will be once a few things get sorted out.

[Melchior]

I'm buying it anyway, but is there any chance for retina/HiDPI support?

[Edi]

I'm buying it anyway, but is there any chance for retina/HiDPI support?

This is presumably for Macs? I don't have one, but Kristoffer has a Mac and I think so does Johan K, so it may well be. I can ask, but I don't know. Support for stuff like that may appear later in a patch if it doesn't appear at release, but I really cannot promise anything in this regard.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

We should get an SDN Dom4 multiplayer game going when it comes out.

[Edi]

I'm certainly open to that idea. The previous beta MP I took part in was a blast and the second is just in the early stages yet.

There have been a bunch of preview videos posted (linked from here). There was also a thoroughly execrable alpha preview by James Allen from Out of Eight, but that was such outright crap that I won't link it.

There is also a more interesting thread that is still just getting started, where one of the beta testers (not me, but Sombre) is going to do a Let's Play of one of the new EA nations. It will feature some serious discussion about stuff the preview videos have overlooked and since it's aimed at the veteran audience, it may be of interest.

[Melchior]

This is presumably for Macs? I don't have one, but Kristoffer has a Mac and I think so does Johan K, so it may well be. I can ask, but I don't know. Support for stuff like that may appear later in a patch if it doesn't appear at release, but I really cannot promise anything in this regard.

Yes, for macs (specifically, retina macbook pros) - Apple offers reasonable tools to support it without much pain, but it depends on the structure of the specific software that is being adapted; my concern was mostly for nice font rendering.