I dont know what the hell people mean when they say that you played a RACE in aow1!

I ALWAYS used multiple races in aow1... all you had to do was build them an upgrade or 2 and they were more then happy to join your kingdom.

I WOULD like to see more actions effect race relations though, much more on a race to race (rather then alignment to alignment) basis.

i would also love to see a wizards off option, and a domains off option...
more options = better

I totally agree!!!

I like to play races against races not wizards against wizards. Why would it be so difficult to let there be 15 wizards and their races??? Especially on a gigantic map that would be so much fun!!!

When people say you are already allowed to play all races that is not true. I want to be able to pick any race to lead and fight against all the other races that are led by other leaders. Its fun to have distinctions and not always be fighting mixed forces of every race against each other.

But even more so it would be cool if wizards were more like heroes and were hirable and could fight and be killed. Have champions(the former heroes) and wizards for hire. Each wizard would have different strengths and abilities. The champions would be more of a fighter and physical attacker. This would also keep the computer alive longer if his wizard and tower were destroyed. Much more fun and more options!!! Not just stuck having to play the same way!!!

i play all races of the same alignment and maybe some neutrals.
i never play only 1 race except there are less races on the map.
but i don't play wizards
its not i don't like wizards, heck i prefere them in RPG games, but they are only passive administrators in aow2.
i think there should be at least 2 versions of a wizard.

1. the wizard we know the passive administrator of your empire giving bonuses to the kingdom, magic and units.
2. the active wizard, a battlemage that can gain levels, not hero levels, wizards levels that mainly improve the wizards abilities and magic in a transcendent, shapechanging creative way, imagine nekron turns into a bone dragon cause of using summon bone dragon spells too often, but loose adminstrator bonuses and auto-respawning in wizard towers.

furthermore i appreciate to have:
1. wizard off, heroes control the kingdom with one leader-hero.
2. leader and wizard off but heroes on like the leader off in aow1.
3. heroes and wizards off, the wizard tower is the leader,muahaha nevermind, leader off too here

oh....i would love to see wizards as battlemages and gaining levels in aow2:SM
if aow2 is meaned wizardVSwizard then they should improve the magic somewhat and make them active wizards! i also want to see wizard duels wizard, wizard only killable by wizard etc...more conditions, more magic, more creativity, more ways.

[This message has been edited by DarkMystery (edited 05-12-2003 @ 06:31 PM).]

I second all of Climber's suggestions.

Thanks Iceboy. I can now explain clearly what I meant by 'Playing Race'.

I want to devise a strategy on how I build my forces if I know that I can only get certain race(s) in this game, even before the game starts (i.e. Undead & Goblin in the example) Right now, I'd just take whatever race I've encountered in the map and try to build the most cost effective unit in those newly captured city. This is NOT fun. Too little thinking is involved.

I want, in somes games, I need NOT to fight with mixed forces of every races (alignment depending) against other players. Right now if you have evil alignment, you troops can have Goblin, Orcs, DElf, Neutrals and Undead; as long as you encounter them in the map. Thats what I meant by 3 Similar subset of units in the first post.

If #4 is implemented, you can have game that you know you'd only have Undead & Goblin; player need to find creative way to deal with that.

I can imagine in some maps you may only allow to build Undead and Archon. So as a player you have to choose to go with the dark side or not. FUN.

...

Actually I've found a flaw in my suggestion. Say if now you've captured a D.Elf city, you can still produce D.Elf, even if the mapmaker disallow you to migrate to races outside Undead or Goblin.

So I'd change the #4:
From: Disallow migration to Specific race(s) (per player)

To:
4. Each player have different unit production cost bonus% or penalty% for each Race (Very Low, Low, Normal, High, Very High, Prohibitive i.e. 50%, 75%, 100%, 150%, 250%, 500%)

This #4 setting should be displayed to that particular player only, before the game starts. Mapmaker set the defaults, but the player can override that.

In my example, Undead & Goblin will have Normal 100% for that player; while all other races will be 500%. So you can still create a Halfing EagleRider in the elven city you have just captured, but now you have to pay 5 times the original production cost. You will only want to do that in some rare extreme condition, otherwise it's effectively means you are prohibited to produce any Halfing. So capturing a Halfing city meants you'd eventually raze or migrate it to Undead/Goblin

...

DMystery, you know I want wizard off too. But since devs have already rule that out, I think I have find a way to achieve similar effect, even if the Wizard is keep constantly in the map. That's done by my combined #1 & #2 suggestion.

Is my combined #1 & #2 suggestion too complicated? Check here

...

Greenmonster, what are you talking about??

...

Thanks everyone for replying! And any comment?

The new #4 is a great idea I imagine it would work pretty well, just as intended. Of course, on XL maps in late-game when players may have money to burn one can afford a Leprechaun or two, even with 5x the regular cost.
Maybe the same setting should apply to unit upkeeps as well.

Another crazy idea I just had is to be able to disallow buildings/uinits in a town based on the owner. Meaning that per every town the mapmaker can decide which players can produce anything and which ones can't. In Climber's above example, if you captured a Halfling town you wouldn't be able to build anything there, although you could benefit from the existing buildings (Wizard's Tower, Farcaster, Teleporter *shudders* ), and the town would still produce income. So you could keep it the way it is or loot/raze/migrate it.

karmic, it's great that you like it. The suggestion you've mentioned in your 2nd paragraph is fun too, but I am not that greedy to really ask devs to make that (because I have more wishes to come)

...

To continue the saga of enhancing 'Playing Wizard'....

5. Ring of Respawn (X use)
- Respawn & teleport to closest WizTower when ringbeared is slain

6. Ring of Wizardry
- Ringbearer is responsible for SpellResearch, Upkeep mana for existing spells/summon, Extend Domain ranges from WizTower/Relay/himself, Tele-cast spell in combat

7. 'Non-Transferable' item
- Any item may has status 'Non-Transferable'. 'Non-Transferable' items cannot be teleported/removed from the unit once worn/pickup from ground, and is destroyed when the ringbearer is slain
- This allows giving tons of powerful items to AI/Indie Wizard/Hero, but if they are killed by a player, the player don't necessary get all those nice items, which could unbalance the game.

#5,6,7 works together, to cope with absence of Wizard Off in AOWSM.
In this context, a normal AOW2 Wizard owns these 2 rings from start, both of them 'Non-Transferable' and have a high X use. The Wizard him/herself do not gain any XP, which is the only major difference compared with a hero.

The twist is, mapmaker can give the rings to a normal hero instead of the AOW2 wizard. Ring of Respawn control how Immortal the ringbear is, for balance reasons. While, Ring of wizardry makes ANY hero(fighter or Caster alike) or Wizard become the AOW2 Wizard.

Mapmaker can instead make them 'Transferable', then they'd become a very valuable magic item. Player'd fight for them. Mapmaker can simply make maps that centred on the struggle of the 'RING' (e.g. LOTR maps)

For the Ring of wizardry, devs can Optionally put some status like 'WizTower Domain Range 0,I,II,III,IV', 'Reduce FireSpell cost etc by 50%' to make each ring varies in power. (Well, not that important but fun to have)

Combining with #1 Wizard/Hero As Leader & #2 Leader On/Off; it will provide amazing variety of gamestyle. The original AOW2 Wizard gameplay can be retained completely, because everything suggested here are Option in disguise.

But now you can have any hero carrying the Wizardry Ring, fighting around. The 'Wizard' now does not necessary have to be struck in the tower. You may lose the game if that hero is killed, depeding if the hero is a leader and/or if leader is on/off and how many Ring of Respawn it have. And when the hero is killed, the Magic aspect maybe disturbed completely, depending if your Ring of Wizardry is 'Transferable' or not. If it's 'Transferable', some other hero have to pick it up from the ground etc.

DarkMystery, your battlemage wish is hidden somewhere in my suggestion too.

Any comment? Since lots of people is not very happy with Wizard in the forum, I expect a bit more response...

New addition
8. SpellCasting hero can cast their own spell in combat, regardless of the Wizard condition
- Still allow very limited magic when a player does not have Ring of Wizardy

Modification:
6. Ring of Wizardry
- Ringbearer is responsible for SpellResearch, upkeeps mana for existing spells/summon...
Why: SpellResearch is allowed, even when a player does not have Ring of Wizardy. Useful for games that have no Ring of Wizardy (i.e. No Domain), or the supply is very limited

[This message has been edited by Climber (edited 05-15-2003 @ 01:48 AM).]

Climber, I disagree with your 1-st Post - we do need Wizard - it was great step forward (probably mine idea of Wizards who shall get involved in convinctions form AoW1 forum had favourable ground to be implemented). as concerns to me, I was completely satisfied and enjoyed with the way this idea was realized. Thanks a lots to the developpers.
But I completely agree with you in the last post. I was disappointed by the mere fact that heroes cannot cast the spels by themselves- global at all, combat without the Wizard when it is in the void. The same concerns to unit enchancement.
And also I was badly surprised what now the alignment of the Wizard depends of the races which are the majority in his domain. Thus it leads to anecdotic cases when Juila or O`Neron sometimes bacame Evil and the Elves or Syrons unit rebelled against them. The alignment is inherent to each Wizard isn`t it? However many good AoW1 units like Ranger, Lady of Pain, Giant simply disappered -they could be left just as independent units, IMHO. Succubus granted to Dark Elves wasn`t good idea- Harpy would suit them better. And so on. And that Wizard couldn`t get experince -probably this is a not right way to keep the game balance - becuase it it is to easy to defeat the wizard now - they should get some experience if they fight theyselves (for killing units hand by hand for example or in their own city during the siege -probably more hardly then the heroes but they should get some additional abilities).
And Wizard isn`t doing absolutely nothing in the Tower- he supports hism troops and heroes by magic - it changes the outcome significantly. Once I kept a cityn with 2 riders and 3 swordsmen against shadow demons for ages due to the mere fact that it was inside my domain. It`s cool sometimes.

most importantly in order to allow more active wizards and magic wielding heroes, we must get back limited magic range in combat.

i would really appreciate wizard classes. and more bonuses for spell specialisation, or handicaps for cosmos wizards.
if you are a pure water wizard all unit should have water walking...for example.

What I would like to see is our wizards being aprt of our race like in aow1. For instance if I make a dwarven wizzard I want him to be able to cave crawl, ect. If the wizards draconian he should get flying, or a breath weapon, or maybe even regenerate. That way you can have 2-3 of the same wizard on the map but all of them would be slightly different.

WonderR, my whole suggestion should be read as a whole.

It merely suggest killing a leader will end the game. However, the leader can be any hero, which can level up. So if you are brave enough you can use him as a normal hero.

However this 'leader' is a bit special, because usually he'd have a 'ring of respawn' when will auto teleport him to the nearest Wizard tower. This ring of respawn have limited charges, though.

This is a very flexible system. It can even make a game work like AOW1, AOW2. But the default game mode will allow a level up wizard, while the wizard himself can be any hero.

Hm... It's kind fun to see such a old post show up again... and I still like my suggestion very much

Climber, actually the mere fact that you can end u[p the scenario buy simply killing the Leader made me sometimes annoyed. I even suggested the "Heritage" option that the best hero becomes the leader and inherites the fallen empire neraby of the fallen Capital and receiaving the cities that are nopt behingd the ennemy lines. The wizard`s immortality is a step forward. But fighting the same personbalities from scene to scene is also boring. Now I play the last scene for Syrons and when I met the same persons of Traitor Circle-zounds - that hell they are doing there? Hope the devs will uinvent the new concepts -the wizard can die - if harvester swallow him like it happened with Phobius im my game - or he gets in the void or smth like this. It`s interesting how the immortal spirit can be hampered to live again.