Reasonable Update Suggestions

Hey there Everyone!

I just thought I would start this thread to gather reasonable ideas for future updates to DA. By reasonable I mean things that could actually be done in an update (as opposed to a full blown expansion), so please don't waste your time asking for tactical combat or multi-player. It ain't going to happen in an update.
Ideally these would be things that wouldn't take that much code/time to implement, and wouldn't require re-coding the AI to use a particular feature.
In no particular order here are my suggestions. They mostly change the user's set up options and consequently wouldn't affect the AI (at least I don't think they would).

1) I make a lot of Custom Opponents, but the default music for all of them on the diplomacy screens are always the Terrans. This gets kind of tiring when you have the Evil Blargosplats and it plays the patriotic, happy music of the Terrans. When creating a Custom opponent you should be able to select which race's music is to play when interacting with that race (Dregin, Altarian etc.)

2) Wouldn't it be cool when you tell the computer to randomize your opponents that you could also randomize the personalities as well? Basically this takes the name and portrait of a race and randomly links it to some personality AI of either the stock races or one of the many, many custom races you created. Then you wouldn't know whether an AI was martial, good or martial until you crossed swords with them! Sure the default descriptions of them would be out of whack for this particular game, so be it! Just don't read it!

3) When I get close or friendly relations with someone I can pretty much ignore them until I am ready to invade them. There is no tension since I don't have to second guess their motives. If there is a bunch of warships moving near my territory and I am Friendly or Close with them ... no problem. It would be nice to have an option that would hide this status on the diplomacy screens so I could only guess the status by interacting with them (from their tone etc). Additionally it would be really cool if when this Hide Relations option was enabled when you spoke with them they talked in a neutral option. Perhaps they have to make a saving throw based on their intelligence level to determine whether their true feelings manifest in this diplomatic exchange.

4) I really like the UPC meetings, but find they happen too infrequently. It would be nice if their frequency was a game option (i.e. Monthly, Quarterly, Bi-Yearly, Yearly, Never).

5) Similar to (4) I think the frequency of Megaevents should be a selectable option.

6) Personally I find the Super Spy ability to be tremendously underpowered compared to the other races. You get a free tech that is not that expensive for others to research, start with one spy and can spend faster to get more spies (they still cost the same). I think this power needs to either allow the player to get spies at some sort of discount and/or have spy actions be more powerful (for example halving the time it takes to get general Espionage levels and doubling the chances of snagging tech).

7) Like I said before, I have a lot of fun making Custom Opponents (incidentally if you make lots like me you will need a lot more logos to keep the new Opponents distinct. There are many excellent Logos that people have kindly uploaded to the Library on this site). Anyway, I think there need to be negative abilities as well (for example -10 research for -2 ability points). I have done this anyway by directly editing the AbilityBonus.xml, but others might not want to do this using such a brute force method.

8) Correspondingly giving a Custom Opponent no Super ability should net double the normal ability points. To help keep races from turning into jack-of-all-trades there should be higher levels of positive abilities to choose from. Again I have done this by directly editing the AbilityBonus.xml, but to give extra points for those Custom Opponents with no super ability (eg. Research +70%) I need to directly edit the corresponding customracexml which is kind of a pain.

9) Does the Farm Sabotage expoit still work? I.e. you can in a single turn kill millions of enemies by dropping Spies on a farm or two. This can be devastating especially right before an invasion. This death rate should be gradual (for example 5% of the current overpopulation - the supporatble population/week)

10) Spore tech shouldn't be capturable. It is worth going to war with the Korath just to snag this tech since when you do you basically have two Super Abilities.

11) There should be some sort of in-game documentation on the different AI personalities. So I have created the Slimy BlechoSproks that are completely evil, super aggressive and are Super Breeders. Which AI personality should I pick to bring this race to life? The Altarians? Dregin? Torian? Generic? Beats me!

12) It would be awesome if there was an ingame option for the game to handle territory colours for AI opponents. Like I said, I make a LOT of Custom Opponents. It gets really hard to remember which colours you have picked to denote territory, and when two custom opponents are selected with the same colour or near colour things get downright confusing. Furthermore I don't really care WHAT colours the AI uses to mark territory provided it is easily distinguishable from the others.

13) Okay ... I play an arms dealer in most of my games, but when I am selling ships to the AI I only sell particular ships (i.e. not the ones that are on guard duty). So when I have a pile of ships to sell I have to get out the pen and paper and right down the list of Ship IDs so when I am in the diplomacy screen I know which ships to sell. It would be super SPIFFY if I could point at a ship and press a key which would then Mark this ship somehow (perhaps with Italics or something) in the diplomacy screen.
That is all I have right now ... anyone else?

Dano

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Anyone else have any comments?

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I'd really like to see the UP get updated as you mention, just being able to select how often it meets would be nice. What I really would like are things like this - one another race has been met you both are in the UP, but lets say you then meet another race, you should vote immediatly to allow them to enter the UP or deny them membership. (This might not work very well as if you met two evil races in the beginning but you were good you would be at a big disadvantage). I would like if all the civs would put forth their own initiatives that would benefit their agenda, that is when it was your turn you could actually choose what to vote for instead of it being totally random and nonsensical. I'd like it if you could wheel and deal before the UP meets to get races to vote the way you want them to. Other things along those lines. Basically I think the UP could be one of the most powerful tools in the game, but as if now is too underdeveloped to be very useful.

Edit - Don't know if that qualifies as your definition of reasonable, as that may take signifigant code to implement properly.

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) When I get close or friendly relations with someone I can pretty much ignore them until I am ready to invade them.

I like the ideas... well thought out, however, I fail to see how your quoted statement above can be so. Playing on Normal diff my relations need constant attention, and I mean constant. I've seen a 'friendly' civ turn cool and then hostile within 10 to 12 turns, period. Even the Thalans, who were on the receiving end of many goodies from me as well as 100 bc a turn suddenly declared war on me after our relations went sour... why? I kept gifting and had some very good diplomacy all around as well as influence out the yin yang. Maybe it's just me, but I cannot get away with 'ignoring' the other civs without some serious repercussions.

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