If I spend $49.99 on this game....
 

Please tell me I will get printed manuals??? If the manuals are PDF's I wont buy this game...


Thanks for the info...

p.s. How many manuals come with the game by the way?

Re: If I spend $49.99 on this game....
 

You will get a (one) printed manual. It is 134 pages long and includes all spells and items.

Re: If I spend $49.99 on this game....
 

There are a lot of things the manual does not have. It does not give a detailed list of military units by nation. It doesn't have an index for the spells, so you can't decide, for instance, "I'd like to look up blade wind" without knowing what school it's in. For blade wind, the school is obvious, but for some spells the school is far less intuitive.

The magic items are listed by the power of the item, not by name or what magic picks you need to make the item.

If you played the demo, you probably figured out how important the magic sites you find are to the game. These are not listed by their difficulty of location anywhere in the manual.

The information in the manual, except for the first 20 or so pages, is for the most part duplicated from the in-game help you get playing the demo.

If you are like me, you will find yourself using this site and sites like Sunraybe's a lot more often than you use the manual. Just remember that it is where your CD key is. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: If I spend $49.99 on this game....
 

The manual serves to introduce you to the game mechanics quite well.

Also, you'll find yourself sitting in the subway, studying spells and items. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: If I spend $49.99 on this game....
 

Just ordered it... Thanks all for your info...

Re: If I spend $49.99 on this game....
 

I do remember staying up late at night reading about spells and items.

One thing I like about the manual: It is written in such a way that it hints at certain powers of items and does not give full details of the spells. This can be quite frustrating to some players, but it makes discovering what things do quite enjoyable.

I actually somewhat agree with Karacan that the first pages of the manual are essential reading. It covers province defense quite well. And it discusses certain attributes of fortress defenses by race.

I know my first post was relatively negative about the manual. It really could be much better, but the first 20 pages do provide as good an introduction to the game as could be provided in that much space. Things just aren't that easy to find.

Re: If I spend $49.99 on this game....
 

The manual sucks bad given all there is to do in the game and the complexity of the combat and magic system.

More than half of it is item and spell descriptions. And the descriptions more often than not dont tell you exactly what a given spell or item does. Just a vague description that gives you a general idea of what something does, but very little in the way of details.

The documentation is the game's biggest shortcoming.

olaf

Re: If I spend $49.99 on this game....
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well luckily you are here. We have mostly decided that the documentation is best done by us Users anyway. Feel sorry for the people who cant find their way here.

But I might mention that after you read here awhile you might realize that good documentation for this game would be a set of encyclopedias.

Re: If I spend $49.99 on this game....
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That is a rather lazy cop-out.

Re: If I spend $49.99 on this game....
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That is a rather lazy cop-out. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Lazy? Lazy for who? For us? I think most of us enjoy filling in the blanks. I was just offering it as an alternative, not an excuse.

If you mean lazy for the developers then you are jumping to conclusions. For one thing they are a couple of guys with jobs and families outside of creating this game. For another thing they have programmed a great game and I can tell you from experience that programmers make ROTTEN documentors. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Even they admit that the docs and tutorial are sparse.

One of the things I like about this game. They are here discussing the game with us and actively patch in things we suggest.

Re: If I spend $49.99 on this game....
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Perhaps, but I'd be more than satisfied with a list of all the formulae relevant to the economy and combat, and words like "some" and "many" replaced by actual numbers or formulae.

It's not an encyclopedia of information, but all that's needed to obviate all that tedious not-fun testing ...

Re: If I spend $49.99 on this game....
 

>But I might mention that after you read here awhile you might realize that good documentation for this game would be a set of encyclopedias.

While there is validity to that, it's no excuse to produce the sad documentation they did. They could have easily dumped the spells and items which are easily viewed in-game, and instead put in some serious game discussion.

The games complexity is greatly aggravated by the lack of good documentation.

Re: If I spend $49.99 on this game....
 

Yeah, but that's a good thing in this case. A game whose vastness can't be covered in a 134 pages http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif . Some of the fun is learning on your own but it can be frustrating at the start...BUT...it's so darn fun you'll forget about everything else...EVERYTHING http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif .

Re: If I spend $49.99 on this game....
 

Pros and Cons. No answer will please everyone. Personally I hate manuals full of formulas. Finding neat little useful tactics on my own is something I enjoy. Im not saying the docs couldnt be better. Even the devs agree with that. But putting all the formulas and factors into the docs is a different decision that would have to be made.

[ January 09, 2004, 03:23: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

Re: If I spend $49.99 on this game....
 

I like the manual. Ya it doesn't include many details, but this game has an unbelievable number of details, and learning them during play, continually, even after months of addiction, is one of the best parts. It also makes it practically impossible that it could ever all be explained, and it'd be silly to try. Really it should just be an introduction to the game so you can get started, with some references for things that are useful and hard to find elsewhere, like the tables of blessings and defensive units by nation, passive magic, etc etc.

The manual could be better and more complete, but I think it's quite useful as is, and in fairness, deserves an overall label of "good," at least for my own purposes.

PvK

Re: If I spend $49.99 on this game....
 

I think that we are falling again in the old battle between wargamers and no-wargamers ... if I play a wargame (and I think that Dom2 is very close to be a wargame) I need to know what is the chanche of success of an action (exactly what happens if I put 80% taxes in a province like that ... and so on), so I need formulas ... after that I make my decision and look what happens ... anyway it seems that we have no hope to get these formulas since one of the designers, in a past topic, says that some of the formula sare so hard coded (and old coded) that they didn't really remebre how them are ...

so we just try to get close to the "truth" sharing our informations on that forum ...

For me the lack of formulas and detailed manual is a really bad things, but the game is anyway so nice that I can really enjoy playing anyway!