I am way overdue for this but...
 

Here it is: Part One of my Dominions 3 Impressions.

Enjoy!

Re: I am way overdue for this but...
 

Nice read. I'd be interested to hear more about the castle system they now use, because I'm also a bit disappointed they ditched the pre-game castle selection.

Re: I am way overdue for this but...
 

Don't worry, you'll hear A LOT more about that in the next section. The reason I split it in two parts is that I wanted to get at least something out because the part I'm doing now is pretty damn big and is taking a long time. It's better to get something solid out the door then keep my fans waiting, eh?

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Fans?

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Oh sure. You should see some of the emails and obscene photos they send to me.

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I'm delighted to see we have a Japanese faction. I've always been interested in Japanese culture and mythology. Please tell me we can build an army of Shoguns!

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Well, technically you cannot have the exact unit "Shoguns" but if you play as Jomon (late era, only) you'll be able to fight with ninjas, samurais, et cetera. Neat stuff.

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The Shogun was the supreme military commander, so I would not expect to see a unit of them (you can't field an army of american presidents, thank god)

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"...Learning new magic costs points points depending on how much..."
You wrote "points" two times in a row, fix that! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif
Otherwise, great article.

Re: I am way overdue for this but...
 

Good good. I suppose I can link to this too, right?

Re: I am way overdue for this but...
 

I have spotted some things which are either fundamental changes which haven't been mentioned in the devs log nor in the forum, or are errors on your part ?!

A WHOLE NEW ERA

"Mictlan priests can utilize potent blood and water spells, but their infantry uses weaker, archaic weapons. Plus, the Pretender God must be sated with blood sacrifices which are difficult to undertake."

Does this mean they don't use the standard spear #1 any more, but there are more specialised weapons now? (bronze-, iron-, steel tipped spear, or something like that?)
Isn't it the Mictlan dominion that must be kept up by blood sacrifice, not the bodily form of the pretender? O.c. he'll vanish without dominion, but your statement is somewhat missleading .. unless something has fundamentally changed?


Magic comes in 8 flavors: Fire, Air, Water, Earth, Astral, Death, Nature, and Blood (Which, along with Death, is banned by some countries).

Does this mean those nation cannot buy indipendant mages with those pathes, or have them on the pretender, or summon creatures which have them? I don't think so, but again ... .


Dragon forms will focus on fire, ..

Fire (Red) Dragons have a hard time getting some competence level with magic other than fire, but blue, green etc use other magics. Don't they?


As you put more ranks into a magic, you gain bonuses: Topping off Astral magic with a max of 9 ranks will net you +3 magic resistance along with upgrades to the spell Twist of Fate.

AFAIK the max skill a pretender can have in a path is 10. And this aren't spell upgrades etc, but the bless effects for prophet and holy troops (if blessed by a priest). Additionally, every mage with astal magic will get +10 magic leadershiüp per skill point - at least it was that way in Dom2 ...


You have seven criteria to min/max, each with a max of 3 ranks: Initial dominion strength;

There are 6 scales which you can min/max, and the dom strength which can range from 1 to 10. But your pretender starts with a certain strength which you can't lessen any more - and you'll have to buy up to at least strength 4 or you'll get dominion-killed rather soon. Therefore you normally will have to spend design points on dominion, and you'll never be able to get points from lowering it.


Growth/Death: Growth gives you +2% income, +15% starting supplies,

It's not starting supplies. Supplies are generated each turn in every province and every castle, and spread out from castles to surrounding provinces. They are used on that turn by every unit (depending on size) and can't be stored.

Re: I am way overdue for this but...
 

All are probably errors on my part. I'm somewhat of a Dominions noobie.
I haven't played Mitclan in-depth yet, but from what I've seen it means their weapons are just generally weaker than other nation's.
From the nation overview: Since the dawn of the kingdom, blood has been spilled in temples of the capital to feed the waning powers of the hungry god.

Like I said, I haven't played around with Mictlan that much. If you'd like, I could start up a new game with them and get back to you with the info.

I think you still can because Late Era Ulm bans all magic, yet you can still have a Pretender with magic skills. Although you have no research points so you can't really go anywhere.
That should've been written as "will focus on the elements." My bad.
Perhaps. I think I ran out of points when I was putting in ranks and didn't notice.
Thanks. Didn't know that.
Good to know, but I was just covering the Pretender God aspect of it. I'm gonna go over individual units and such in the next section.
Yeah, I know. It was just badly worded on my part. Sorry.
Yep. Don't know why I wrote it as "starting supplies."

Anyway, thanks. I'll fix all those soon. I probably should've had a Dom vet from the forums proofread it first so I don't look completely clueless. Heh.
Yep. Go right ahead. Just remember proper linkage etc.

Re: I am way overdue for this but...
 

Nice work Naked! I hope that you gonna make impressions part 2. very soon, I cant wait to read more informations about the game. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

Re: I am way overdue for this but...
 

No idea when it's gonna be out but it'll be before Dom3 is released. I'm going away for the next two weeks so I'll have a lot of time to chillax and write it up. Probably won't finish it, but I'll get a signifigant portion of it done.

Re: I am way overdue for this but...
 

Never mind how "overdue" it is, better late than never!

Dominions 3. The game just sounds better and better. The castle system's going to be interesting.

Re: I am way overdue for this but...
 

I totally agree, Dominions 3. gonna be a blast. I am already a worshipper of the god Illwinter. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

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Re: I am way overdue for this but...
 

Naked Lunch, could you tell me if they left the search mechanic intact or did they change it to automatic searching? There was some debate on this before and I really hope they left the search command in the game.

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From the progress page:

30th sep
* Search spells defaults to a useful target province. Monthly casting possible.

But nothing about normal sitesearching. Guess they havn't put auto-movement into the game for player units, and without that automated sitesearching wouldn't work very well. Same is most likely true for waypoints ...

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I have a question, each nation has a theme associated with it.

Golem cult, age of man, etc. Can you customise that, is it random, or dose each nation have its own theme.

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It's by era.

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I think each theme *is* a nation now, with one incarnation per era. Does anybody know if any nation appears more than once in an era? I kinda doubt they do, although one could always mod in a new version/theme.

Re: I am way overdue for this but...
 

It's one nation per era, though they change over eras in signifigant ways. For example, late-era Ulm bans all magic outright.

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So they have no mages at all? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif

Re: I am way overdue for this but...
 

He probably means some variation of Iron Faith.

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Some article feedback (since I'm not interested in registering in RPGCodex)...

The article was great for someone that had never played Dominions before, but I wish there were more impressions rather than "I like it". Other than the nice screenshots and the thing about tooltips, there's not much more than I could find from the official Shrapnel page. Like... how do you like the Awakening feature? Are the new races unique and fun?