Re: your thoughts on Dominions II
 

I love the demo so far!
I dont wanna talk about the AI yet. Check out the poll anyways, the votes are very interesting.

Re: your thoughts on Dominions II
 

The AI is poor. I am very pissed because of that. The game should be really decent, but with this AI....SP part is screwed. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

IW must upgrade the AI.

Re: your thoughts on Dominions II
 

You guys have really tried the AI this much? Were you beta testers or what?

I like the user interface and the new look.

I will start a demo with some hard AI's to see what you all are talking about.

Yo

Re: your thoughts on Dominions II
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I dont like if the AI is cheating. [Harder diff. level means that the AI is cheating.] </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I wouldn't assume that unless Dom tells you so. In SE4 for example, a Medium difficult AI actually has some of its features turned off- its stupider. The High difficultly AI is just the AI running with everything turned on- it doesn't cheat (well, any more than the other two levels, anyway)

Re: your thoughts on Dominions II
 

Hey, I think that in Dominions II. the > normal AI is the same, but it is cheating. It won't have a bigger brain, just more resources or something like that. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

The current AI is between below average and average if you ask me. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Re: your thoughts on Dominions II
 

Here's my mini-review of what I like and don't like:

key:
+ : this indicates a good thing
- : this indicates a bad thing

Thoughts:

+ Great main screen! I love the slowly scrolling landscape background. This is really cool.

+ The Sound is really good - the music is atmospheric, the sounds in game are a great improvement over Dom I

- The music, while being atmospheric, is perhaps not ambient enough - I had to turn it off after about a half hour. Maybe your mileage will vary.

+ Zoomable map. This is great.

+ By and large the map filters are really good too - I'm sure it will take some getting used to though. For example for a Dom I player it's harder (right now at least) to tell the dominion at a glance)

- very small point: the castle icon in the filter is unattractive; the one in Dom I was better. I think a simpler design would go a long way - all you need is for people to see it and think "castle"

+ Information about province scales and level of magic searching are great - very very helpful, and a most important addition

- highlight colour seems to be a bright red (for buttons this is), which doesn't look great. I think some kind of light-up effect would be WAY better.

+ On the battlefield the patch of light helping you find out info about units - much better than just an arrow. Nice detail.

- While I love the scrolling landscape screen, I feel pretty indifferent about the 'falling snowflakes' screen, and even less excited about the 'magical fireworks' screen. These look like they took time to put together, but aren't as aesthetically pleasing

- Names in the main map screen are at the top of the flag, which makes them not centered in the province. Sometimes this looks confusing. I think it would better if they were at the bottom.

+ "all" command is a toggle - meaning that all commands issued to one (vs. only 'move' in Dom I) are applied to all. This is a great micro-management reducer.

+ It tells you how many units you have in each squad in the deployment screen. This is another really helpful addition.

+ Another huge one: even if you're playing SP you have access to the 'host' and 'exit' commands. This is great for actually stopping a game http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif since it's always hard not to begin responding to whatever happened in the Messages. This is also great because you can get out of one game without quitting the program.

+/- Battle scenes look great: I love the 3d look. plus which the terrain is gorgeous. Downside is that it's harder to see what's happening at the far end of the battlefield than Dom I, but this is a disadvantage I'll gladly bear for the sake of the 3d effect. [BTW I do realise you can zoom in, etc., what I mean is that you have to zoom in fairly tight to see far away units as well as you see them in Dom I (without losing the big picture)

+ Particle effects! I haven't tried out a ton of spells yet, but what I have seen has been great.

- Transferring items between commanders still clunky - i.e. you can't just click on the commander, you get a list of names. Now one thing that is better is that the names are matched to portraits, so you know at least what kind of person each commander is. But it would be way better if you were able to click on the commander in the main map screen.

- Now here's the big one: The units in the recruitment screen (and the commanders in the main screen) are harder to differentiate between than they were in Dom I. It is noticeably harder to tell which unit is which, because of the extremely light-coloured background they are against. This is hard on the eyes, and makes the units look like blotches. I strongly urge the developers to change the background colour to a darker shade. Darker background makes it easier to see colours, whereas light background drowns out colours. It would be great (for all our eyes, if nothing else) if this could be changed.

I'm sure I missed some factors, especially positive ones. Feel free to add your thoughts everyone.

Re: your thoughts on Dominions II
 

One thing I forgot to add, that was a slight negative:

- The commander icons in the main map screen are very small, and thus hard to distinguish. This could be the background colour alone, but I wouldn't mind the commander icons being made just a bit bigger...
of course this is a pretty minor gripe.

*edit: one more thing:

- The distinction between the commanders and regular units in the recruitment screen isn't as clear as it was in Dom I. Minor issue, esp. since I'm used to the commanders being at the bottom.

[ October 27, 2003, 22:41: Message edited by: st.patrik ]

Re: your thoughts on Dominions II
 

The falling snowflakes and multcolored christmas balls did not take a lot of time to make, JK likes them though, as they reminds him of his home at the north pole. You can shut them off in preferences. I suspect most people will.

Re: your thoughts on Dominions II
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Can you shut them off without shutting off the cool scrolling landscape though?

Re: your thoughts on Dominions II
 

I thought of one more feature which I hoped would be implemented but wasn't: Having more than one pretender for each nation. This especially makes sense since you have different themes; I may want a certain pretender with vanilla Ulm, and a very different pretender for "Iron Faith" Ulm, but as it is, I'd have to write them down and re-make whichever one I wanted in order to create a game. It's not a huge deal, but it sure is a pain in the ***.

To qualify - the improvements are really great. I hope the various negative comments aren't taken as a general negative verdict - this is not the case at all.