combat
 

I played the DOM 2 demo and was quite intrigued enough to consider purchasing DOM 3.
My question is: Do you have any control over combat? I mean, I would love to have some control of the tactical battle like Age of Wonders.
In DOM 2 I could only replay a battle and watch which, to me, is rather lame - why waste the time after a few viewings.

Re: combat
 

No, combat is automated but there are many things you can do to affect the comat. For instance, you can set your units to do specific tasks like guard the commander etc. Formation also plays a critical role in combat so it's good to get acquainted with it.

The reason I watch all my combat replays is to see where I went wrong if I lost and try to fix that.

I hope you can overcome the lack of interactivity because there's a whole lot more to the game besides that and it's a shame if you skipped all that just because of the combat.

Re: combat
 

You will notice there is some control over combat in dominons (enough that strategies are built around it).

First of all, there are tactics in squad mixing, as archers with infantry will not fire unless commanded to (which would cause the infantry to just sit there). Also, while larger squads have more morale, smaller squads can create longer fronts, and thereby inflict more casualties.

Also, in the squads menu, you can click on the green, white, and red colored block to position a squad's starting position. The white block is the squad, the red block is other squads under the same commander, and the blue blocks are other friendly squads.

You can also click on the squad's orders (next to their name) and change them. For troops, possibilities include "guard commander" (making them bodyguards for the commander in case of an assassination attempt), and various forms of attack, with optional targets. For commanders, you can also script their first 5 turns of combat, especially usefull for mages, before giving them similar general commands.



Anyway, I consider this enough control, and any in-battle control would not work with the game's P(lay)B(y)eM(ail) multiplayer.

As for watching battles, I sometimes need to (possibly from my niavity - is that spelled right?) to see how the enemy wooped me. I also enjoy the movie-ness of just having to watch the battle, without any involvement.






Besides all of this, if you got this far, I know of no plans to drastically increase combat control. A little more leeway has been requested, but I am not sure how much will make the cut.

Re: combat
 

Heh, yeah. I do that too sometimes, especially if I won and I just get to watch my army stomp all over the other and in my head I'm hearing Braveheart screaming "FREEEEEEEDOOOOOMMM!"

Re: combat
 

I also happen to like not having total control over everything, because that is how things would be in reality. The general commanding the army issues orders and the troops will execute them if able. The general does not control each soldier individually like puppets, which is the case in AoW.

Not to say that AoW is bad or anything like that, I liked the original even if the sequels weren't as good, but it's a rather different type of game than Dominions in many respects.

Edi

Re: combat
 

Dominions is extremely limited compared to real life. Just think about it.

Re: combat
 

Age of Wonders style tactical combat is impossible in Dominions. Why? Because in AoW you had a couple of units in a battle. I think the max size of an army stack was 8? You can attack from multiple hexes there, but that means, that there was like 9x8 = 72 units on the battlefield maximum if Im correct, but it was hella rare. Typical AoW battle had like ~32-40 units.
In Dominions there are hundreds of units in the battlefield, sometime 1000+, it would be impossible to control a tactical battle. Also tactical battles are giving a hard time for the AI again. ["exploits"] This is why theres no tactical combat in GalCiv 2. AFAIK for example.

Re: combat
 

Well, that could be fixed by simply controlling large groups and not just single units, but I feel that making combat manual would shift the focus away from the rest of the game and as a result it'd feel less "Dominions-y" to me.

Re: combat
 

The only addition to the combat I would like to see is the possibility of direct control on characters, especially priests and mages. Kind of makes sense that you could tell your prophet what to do http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
As it is, as soon as your spellcasters revert to AI control you get something of a mixed bag. Sometimes they'll cast some useful spells, other times you'll end up with a level 10 mage, full fatigue and plenty of gems wasting his time casting some low level missile spell or similar ad naseum, or casting various shield spells despite the fact that they are nowhere near the fight.
It might just be me though http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif If not direct control, I'd like to see some kind of targetting for scripted spells. It would be nice to tell your mage to target the big beasties with the uber damage spell, rather than going for the nearest militia.

Re: combat
 

The biggest annoyance I see are the weak 10 hitpoint mages casting fire shield or astral shield. Such a waste considering the mage will die 99% of the time from one strike anyways.
It would be nice if we could tell our mages ahead of time what battle spells they are banned from casting.

Re: combat
 

*watches point whoosh past Argitoth's head*

That's one of those "Ya think, Sherlock?" Captain Obvious comments you just posted there. Doesn't affect the damned point at all that the Dominions combat model is, in the control of the battlefield aspect, much more realistic than e.g. the tactical combat in Age of Wonders where the commander can use all of his units like puppets down to the last step they take.

The same is true of real world battlefields, commanding officers give orders and the troops execute them to the best of their ability, but the CO is not there hovering over each individual soldier's shoulder telling them "Step there! Fire on that enemy NOW, sprint there, fire some more, now hold position until that particular enemy goes there" etc.

Edi

Re: combat
 

I think Dominions has it more correct than most games I play.

I am not playing a commander, I am playing my pretender. So I can give my commanders general orders such as "Goul's horsemen should charge up and fire, then retreat leading them thru your positions. So Arnig and Boldu are positioned on the flanks and should hold, then attack the rearmost. I want Westhold's archers to concentrate on cavalry if any show up."

Such instructions are good for about 5 events into a battle and then they just need to wing it. And all Im going to get is a play-by-play report of the battle afterwards.

True, if I take my pretender into battle then I should maybe get more control. But the limits of a PbEM game kick in then. Maybe they should offer the pretender a longer commands list.

Gandalf Parker

Re: combat
 

Actually, I think that dominions has more potential to be one of those games where you control every single unit, thematically that is.
Unlike most fantasy games, you get to play a god. If you want to, you should use your omniscience to view the battlefield and your omnipotence to telepathically control your units like puppets.

Scifi games, and near-future games can explain it away with advanced sattelites and communication systems.

Re: combat
 

But there's the rub: You're not a god yet, or not an omniscient, omnipotent one at least. You're trying getto that point, but in the meanwhile you're still stuck with some limitations like not being able to zombify your units with mental domination.

Edi

Re: combat
 

If you can't send telepathic messages, then how can you run an entire multi-nation kingdom?
Even the month it takes to make a turn is not enough to get a message to attack all the way from your capitol to your borderline provinces.

Re: combat
 

Sending messages via telepathy != total mind control puppeteering.

Edi

Re: combat
 

Sending messages via telepathy == The ability to instruct individual soldiers during battle.

Re: combat
 

Nope - that would require omniscience, to know and understand the situation of hundreds of individuals and send them instructions all at the same time?

The pretender would probably be catatonic, if not from overload then from the amount of agony/pain/fear coming along those telepathic links to all the soldiers.

But in any case - it's _still_ going to be a PBEM game. HTF do you propose to instruct all the individual soldiers in a battle as you watch it going along?

Re: combat
 

There are games that do both but they are setup so that you have to select at the beginning of the game. Basically, you are selecting PbEM (Play by Email, save a turn, send it, its hosted, turn comes back) or doing it as a direct interactive game.

As far as I know, programming that means you program in two complete ways of handling the game. Its not a simple switch. Its a full module to run the game one way, and a full module to run it another way. That might be ok for some corporate team of programers but not fun for one guy Im thinking.

Maybe (a BIG maybe) if Illwinter programs a direct-action game next, then they might down the road do a version of Dominions with both.

Re: combat
 

The original AoW and the sequels had a system where you could do a PBEM game where combat between players was automatically auto-resolved in quick combat but you could whack indies in normal tactical combat as much as you pleased. Of course, it didn't have simultaneous turns for PBEM, but the old fashioned turn structure where things happened in sequence.

Dominions can't be made to run that way without massively changing the simultaneous turn structure, which is a rather damned important cornerstone in the architecture.

Edi

Re: combat
 

*joygasm* Holy crap! That's awesome! I don't have to hope that my archers will kill the enemies before the "Hold" part of "Hold and Attack" wears off!

The only thing I could ask for, compelled by the human impetus to emote regardless of the relevancy or impact, is that spies could relay the positions of soldiers back to you. (It'd be a guess, of course. The enemy could switch up his army positions the turn before the battle and the spy couldn't report real-time changes like that.)

Re: combat
 

Then at the very last you should be able to command a single "leader" unit on the battlefield that will dinamically send your instruction and share combat progress.

(And I don't propose to instruct all the individual soldiers in a battle as you watch it going along, I'm just saying thematically it makes sense)

Re: combat
 

Thematically, the best I could see would be a more direct (but still not perfect) control of the action IF you send your pretender into the combat. But even then Im not sure how it might be done in a play-by-turns game (and I REALLY do NOT want the game to be changed from PbEM). Maybe if the pretender could do more than 5 commands to reflect his "on the battlefield" position

Re: combat
 

I'm parroting what's been said in previous threads on tactical control... but the more control you have over tactics, the more difficult it becomes for the AI to compete. I'm assuming that the players that demand more individual control could care less for multiplayer since simultaneous turns are inherent to what makes this game work, so...

Re: combat
 

Indeed, this is very true. Tactical combat is giving the human player a huge advantage. Take AoW for example. The tactical AI was good, but ofc not good enough, so it was possible to beat a stronger AI army with a weaker human usually.

Re: combat
 

That's not necessesarily a bad thing. I.E. America technically had a "stronger" army than the Vietcong yet we still got beat (note: generalization). The problem I see with tactical combat in the Dom games is one of focus. Tactical combat is cool, yes, but I think it would draw too much away from the rest of the game. Take Medieval Total War for example. It has a great strategy portion of it, but the main bulk of the game is tactical combat with most things geared towards it. I'd rather have future Dominions games stay as they are, with their hand in each pie equally.

Another point is that it does give the game a sense of yes, you ARE the ruler of this nation because you're somewhat detached. In real life, George W doesn't go out and personally command the troops and lead them into battle. He and his cronies just give the orders and down the chain of command and so on and hope they get carried out, which all depends on morale, leadership etc which is exactly what Dom models.

Re: combat
 

I like it as it is, but if I could change anything about combat, it would be an extension of scriptable turns (ie 10,15 or 20 combat rounds) and the ability to 'turn off' certain spells from a given mages arsenal. In my games I avoid many research paths just so that my mages cannot cast a bunch of buffing spells after their scripts run out.

I realize that the effect becomes exponential in terms of system resources when dealing with large numbers of commanders, but... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

While I am on the subject, being able to script independent mages in indy provinces as a part of map editing would be fantastic. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: combat
 

Yeah, hopefully we gonna have more scriptable turns in Doms 3., this is a must have. Kristoffer or the playtersters can give us a hint about this maybe? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

Re: combat
 

Well, if it's any consolation I'll be writing rather in-depth about the combat in my impressions (which, coincidently, is going to be posted as an article at Tcancer) but I don't get what you mean by "scripting." Sorry if I sound n00bish but is that like choosing the orders you want and stuff like that or am I missing something?

Re: combat
 

What I would like to see in combat system is ability to have different scripts for different situation. I find Dom2 system flexible enough to achieve desired behaviour in particular battle. The problems start when you're about to storm enemy castle. Typically, you expect to be attacked by Ghost raiders, then by something like wrathful-skying sortee and finally you'll be storming the castle. Obviously, the battle plan in all 3 encounters is very different. Unfortunately, the one and only script will be applied. This makes the planning really nightmarish as you need to make sure that despite using the same plan you get different behaviour in different battles. This doesn't seem very logical. Army should be easily figure out whether it is storming the castle or dealing with sortee and apply corresponding battle plan.

Re: combat
 

Applying combat orders for a commander:
Hold, Blade Wind x2, Attack Closest, etc...

(Looking forward to your article btw!) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: combat
 

How about a less restrictive script system?

Rather than dictating a set script (hold, cast x, attack) you have a more flexible system. For example, keep the orders, but have 3 settings : Always, Sometimes and Never. You get the same orders, but rather than stating exactly what you want the unit to do, you tell it how often you want it to do something.
If you set a unit to Always attack cavalry, then if there are cavalry present they will attempt to attack them. If you set them to sometimes attack rearmost enemies and sometimes attack archers, then the unit has a 50% chance of attacking either unit if they are present (if the enemy had no archers, then this would revert to 100% chance of attacking rearmost). If you tell a unit to Never attack cavalry then they will never attempt to engage cavalry.
A similar system could be applied to spells. Rank spells from 0 to 10. A spell at rank 0 will never be cast by the mage under any circumstances. Rank 1 has a 10% chance of being cast if possible. A Rank 10 spell will always be cast if possible.
It would allow for more flexible strategies to be employed, without affecting the PBEM side of things. You could even tailor it to achieve the same as the current system if you wished to.

Re: combat
 

Scripting is giving the commanders and units orders for the battle. An Ulmish Master Smith's script can currently be:
[Earth Power][Blade Wind][Magma Bolts][Magma Bolts][Magma Bolts]

I think the 'improved scripting' is mainly for commanders and spells, so that they would be able to e.g. script some Astral 3 mage with Boots of the Messenger to:
[Power of the Spheres][Hold][Hold][Hold][Astral Healing][Astral Healing][Astral Healing]

Or have one mage continuously casting Relief, or spam other spells.

Re: combat
 

OT, but:

This might not be a good analogy even as a generalization, as I understand that the U.S. won every major tactical engagement, and that the war was lost on the strategic level, especially once the U.S. pulled out and the South Vietnam army collapsed.

That would be more like winning all your tactical battles vs. the AI, but getting Dominion killed by the computer player.

Re: combat
 

Ah, okay. Gotcha. Haven't really tooled around with those much, I usually set commanders to hold and cast.
Yeah, I was just reaching around for a good military analogy and when in doubt, go for 'Nam.

Re: combat
 

Ye olde Battle of Agincourt works well for showing the advantage of tactics and discipline over numbers and resources (and clean undies). http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/Sick.gif

Re: combat
 

whoops, misread that

Re: combat
 

NakedLunch, are you setting mages to hold and cast?
Because that would be a mistake. It is much better to script all five moves, and for mages there's often no reason to give a (hold) command, they can cast some buff in the first round if they are too far to use any other spell.

Re: combat
 

Thanks. Like I said, sorry if I seem noobish and all, but it's been a while since I played Dom2 when I picked up Dom3 and the lack of documentation is rather hurting. Anyway, the article will be up sometime this weekend.

For Tcancer I'm trying to get it so we have an "article" template so to speak, like how Gamespy has their Games of the Month, Download This! that kind of thing. I'm trying to make it so each new game that I can get a hold of goes through article stages, i.e. preview (general overview basically), impressions (a more in-depth preview with new info and that kind of stuff), if the game has an online mode I can do a Tom vs. Bruce sort of thing and then finally a review. I'm wrapping up the impressions right now, so I'm trying to get the Tom vs. Bruce thing set up. I have no idea what this has to do with the combat in Dom3 but eh, any takers for an online game?

EDIT: Beta testers or whatever only, of course. NO FREEBIES FOR YOU

Re: combat
 

Famous last words?

Besides that... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif I mean, http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif. Everyone here, more elsewhere, everyone.

Re: combat
 

Well I liked AOW:SM (which was the best out of the Age of Wonders series, in fact it is the only TBS game that I keep coming back to) and the Tactical combat was the best part of the game. It is a shame that DOM3 gives you none of that thrill. I do have a question though, is the combat similar to the Total War games or it combat just hands off?

Re: combat
 

(Oops! Sorry for the double post but I thought the first one did not go through.)

So is the combat like the Total War games. (I have never played any of the Dominion games. I play TBS games like AOW:SM, Total War series and the Civ series to name a few. I am currently playing and moding AOW:SM a lot and am looking for a new Fantasy TBS game.

Re: combat
 

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif The combat in Total War was real time. In Dominions combats are automatical. You give orders to your commanders/mages, and the AI is playing the battles.
Like I said before, tactical combat wouldnt be a good option in Dominions. In AoW: SM you played around with a small number of units, here you play with thousands sometime.

Re: combat
 

The automatic combat in Dom gives me just as much thrill, if not more so, than the tactical games. Tactical combat in which you control every unit simply would not work in Dom for obvious reasons.

Re: combat
 

True but in Total War you also had a Turn based stratgic portion of the game which allowed you to manage your empire as well as allowed the RT batttles with out becoming a click fist like most RTS games.
So do you just give each army (or what ever) a script and hope for the best. And do you only give this script at the begining of each turn or can this be done at any time?

Re: combat
 

Essentially your troops have their orders given for any tactical engagement. Those orders, that you set and edit in the army setup menu, will stay unchanged from battle to battle unless you edit them. You set the orders before the battles actually happen, and you change them on your turn according to what you think you'll be going up against.

EDIT: Waitasec, are you asking about the new game? 'Cause my mind blanked and I was typing like I was on the dom2 forum explaining the basics to someone new to the old game.

Re: combat
 

Don't worry, it works pretty much the same for Dom3.

Re: combat
 

Its working like this:

1. You recruit/summon troops/monsters
2. You recruit commander[s]. Commanders are units with leadership. Reguler troops dont have leadership.
3. The commanders can control a certain number of units, it all depends on their leadership
4. You assign the troops to your commanders
5. You are using battle scripting on the army setup screen. Here you give orders to your troops and commanders that what to do in the battles.

Re: combat
 

Ok thanks for the answers. So if I get dom2 will this give me a good feel for the new dom3 do you think? Or is the new game going to be so much different from dom2 that I should not bother and just wait for dom3?

Re: combat
 

Trying the demo won't harm you. Dom 3 will most likely be easier to grasp for a beginner though.