Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

So many threads of how nations and tactics suck. (Id be bothered by that more if there wasnt so much disagreement about these "facts"). I thought Id start another upbeat thread.

Is anyone having fun with this game? Forgetting winning and losing and balances for the moment. What nations are you enjoying? What maps? What playing style? (barbarian horde, defensive, researcher, armored armies, stealth, summoned armies)

Personally Im having fun with super large randomly generated maps. Playing early or middle Pangaea, and any other race that has stealth units. Also Caelum (making good use of large maps) and Jotunheim (on smaller maps playing defensively)

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

How couldnt yea have fun... Just wish meh friends copy would show up for some mp goodness..

Sauromatia is pretty fun..

And how couldnt someone like the La R'lyeh????

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I've been playing Abysia MA lately, it's been fun. I'm learning the ins and outs of blood magic, I didn't really play much blood in Dom 2, and I really like those Demon Knights.

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I am in DomHeaven. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
Have been playing EA Ermor on a large random map with all EA nations. Currently in a fight for life in the western oceans against Oceania, and trying to squelch Atlantis's dominion in a small grouping of seas in the east. At a standoff with several nations in the northern lands. Trying to let them fight it out until I can finish off those annoying fish & frogs. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

I’m having a blast, but I’ve only had the full game three days. Since I have always leaned toward necromancers in my RPG's I went with LA Ermor. Next I’m going to try something completely different – and something that wasn’t in the demo.

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

This stupid game is cause of many hours of sleep deprivation and failed exams. I wonder if I can weasel a lawsuit out of it ...

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

I'm playing more SP game with Dom 3 than with Dom 2 or any other PC games since Civilization (the first).
I like the difference between nations and I'm fond of testing some weird concept like transforming a sleeping Lord of War in SC.

YES ! Dom 3 is fun. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

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GP, you're kidding, right? This game rocks.

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It is the best game in its genre. No question. After patch it will be even better. Everything I liked about Dom2 I like about this one as well.

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Allow me to be the first to say that I'm not sure if I'm having fun with it. Too many things we had gotten used to in Dom2 (even if only through the CB & hero mods) were taken away (themes, filtering researchers, ability to view spell list during pretender creation, and I know I'm forgetting others at 1 in the morning), and too many irritations were added : maps shipped that didn't have the fixes that had been available for over a year, nations without heroes, the @#$#* aging system, pretenders that once again are unbalanced, and again, I'm forgetting things.

Then, we _still_ don't have even half baked battle reports for castle sieges, don't have proper battle reports that would tell which commanders died, how many of each troop type, still no way to keep people from uploading pretenders w/o passwords, no way to change passwords after creation....

I hope there'll be more fun after patches, and after equivalents of the CB and Heroes mods come out, but.... Right now, I tend to think Dom2 was a more enjoyable experience.

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

I'm having fun.

However I don't like the mudslinging by some poster(s) here lately.

Secondly, the new aging system needs to be patched a bit.
I don't have as much problem with Blitz bless strategies as I play MP mostly with real life friends, and we tend to start duking it out after turn 30 or so.

Anyone know if/when a new patch will be out? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

I'm having fun with it and I'm confident that through patches and fan content it will be a game of no equivalence in the strategy genre. The best of its breed!

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

I am having a blast, especially in MP http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I like atm most Pangae (nothing new from Dom2 there) and Sauromatia (playing first time with them in a MP and like them a lot). Dom3 is eating away practically all my free time, and the curse of "Just one more turn" is ever so horrible at 2 AM when you have to get up to work at 6 AM :p

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

I don't know if I'll have fun, for me the only fun is MP games, and only now I'm starting the first. This said ...

In contrast to the lot of features that are often requested all the fixes Cainehill points are things that are very easy to code and of great benefit. I'm hoping the great devs of this game are reading this.

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

I have had Dom3, 3 weeks now and am loving it, I have played it exclusively in that time.

Currently in 4 MP games which is fun, taking me back to my old play by mail days.

Completed 1 SP game to conclusion and started/abandoned too many to account for (just getting a feel of the nations), the AI I find a challenge on difficult, Ermor recently fought me to a standstill, difficult AI, I was MA man, then the other AI's attacked and it was game over...

Sure I have a wishlist, who does'nt.

Sure there r a few parts of the game I dislike but overall I would rate Dom3 about 9/10 or 90%.

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

Apart from the aging system which I think is a wonderful counterforce to Arch Theurg spam and other mage phenomena but needs some tweaking (Abysia's mages...tis' maddness) I tend to agree.

I mean, they took Awe which was pretty much the only reason the use them and not much of a reason either from Sons of Sun pretender. We still have a 50 point Lord of the Gates who gets whopping D1 magic. That water Titan pretender who is not only inferior to Dagon, he is more expensive. And then we get humongously powerful Helheim for early era, making F9/W9 bless even more no-brainer. WTHex guys. WTHex?

Nevertheless I'm having fun with the game but I have a feeling that it would have needed two more months under development or a larger dev team would have done the game good. Some of the stuff that's haunting the game is OLD, like the vague battle reports.

After Dominions 2 I'm not buying the "this will get fixed in a patch". Dominions 2 did get a lot of patches and they mostly fixed bugs, which is good. But we never got those more detailed battle reports etc etc. Instead we got Conquerors of the Seas Marignon, Raptors etc. which were off-balance and had to be tweaked in patches.

I just wish IW would have sat down and fixed the old stuff like battle reports before adding more stuff to the game. Worse, Dominions 3 introduced a number of bugs ranging from the map oopsies to Astral Travel not working. And they removed useful functions like the hosting dialogue even in singleplayer and removing the researcher highlighting. WTHex guys, WTHex?

To sum it up, I really like the game but it has it's glaring problems that are old and never got fixed in past, thus I am sceptic of ever seeing them getting fixed. And that dulls down my enjoyment.

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

Needless to say that I love the game. Sure there are bugs, imbalances etc. but these problems will be solved sooner or later. Just be patient! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

I'm just a quite sceptic person by nature. If these things don't get fixed in the past I'm kinda doubtful that they will get fixed in the future.

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

Pick me ! Pick me !

I'm not having fun with this game. It's because I ordered it from Tuxgames on 17th October, and their website still says 'sold out. stock expected to arrive on 10th october'.

As for demo, I have a promising Arcoscephale (I can spell it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif) game. I just launched a coordinated attack on 3 Mictlan forts (but not capitol), while holding ground against R'lyeh(Wyrm seeks vengeance), Jotunheim, Sauromantia and Oceania to lesser extent.
And guess what, 40 turn limit hit.

----------------
About DOminions3 shortcomings:
What the hell were betatesters doing ?!

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

I remember someone asking for detailed battle reports (or any battle report for sieges) two years ago,so I'm not holding my breath.

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

Well maybe the imbalances won't be fixed by IW, but this is why we have powerful modding "tools". The community can fix the imbalance problems.

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

But the community cannot fix the battle messages etc etc.

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I am having fun, but I have to agree about the battles messages/summaries.

Way too early for me to say anything about imbalances (just testing Helheims "überness" in a semi-AAR on a medium map (125 prov IIRC) vs. 10 highest level AIs), but due to the ability to mod I am not worried about this one.

If I were to make a priority list for patches it would be like this:

1. fix bugs
2. remove the most glaring imbalances (not everybody wants to use a mod)
3. better reports
4. add more content

CharonJr

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

yeah I'm having fun http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I play nation with nature and death magic combined (Pangaea with carrion Dragon, Sauromatia, Ctis).

I'm also glad I convinced 5 more friends to play the game (those didn't play to Dom2) so our MP games become really fun!

I cant wait to see the first patch!

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

I am having fun with Dom3, it is a nice improvement compared to Dom2 Vanilla http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

But i think too that another some months development would have been excellent for Dom3. But i am confident that patches and community mods will fix most issues http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

If i would have to give ratings i would give Dom2 Vanilla 85%, Dom2 CB 92%, Dom3 Vanilla 88%, Dom3 Vanilla with some patches most likely >92%, and Dom3 with community mods probably ~95%.

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

Yeah, the messages/reports are quite uninformative.

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

I both agree and disagree. While ideally it would be nice to see them sand down all the old roughnesses, Illwinter have always had a tendency to work on the stuff they were interested in and entusiastic about. While this does mean that we get to keep the old annoyances that aren't fun to fix, I rather suspect that a game like Dominions plain can't be made in any other way.

If it's a question (as I believe it might be) about having entusiastic developers or having them work on "boring stuff," I'd rather have them enthusiastic (and I really want better battlereports and GUI) because it's that enthusiasm that's made Dominions Dominions.

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

I agree with that. I understand the devs want to do things they like to do with the game, and that's propably the way I would work on games. It's just that running into stuff like the vague battle reports & all dampens my enjoyment of the game.

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

I'm a long time lurker here but I've been playing the game since release like an addict.

It's a great game imo.

Will be interesting to see if it can get even better through patches and player added content.

Looks to me like there is alot of potential for new custom nations, etc..

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

Maybe Illwinter earned enough money with Dom3 that they could try to employ a third guy who has to do the unpleasant stuff like bugfixing, coding features etc..
Then for their next game we could have the best of both worlds, illwinters awesome creativity together with up to date micromanagement reduction features and UI "copied" from other strategy games which excel in these categories http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

Never played any DOMs before and I am having a blast with this one. My biggest complaints are (1. having to manually save every few turns, (2. continually losing to Normal-Standard AIs (lol). More detailed reports would indeed increase the involvement and enjoyment of the game! Have not played enough to have a clue about balancing.

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

In-bloody-deed. Around turn 30 I usually start to think like there's no point in doing anything anymore, since the game will end soon anyway, and I pretty much either just press e repeatedly or start to mount a attack with all the troops I have, and, just like with B0rsuk, the game ends the same turn I get the army to attack.

I will repost in this thread when I get the game from Tuxgames and have played it for a couple of days, and describe my boundless enjoyment. Expect to hear from me again around Christmas.

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

Im tempted to close this thread (I started it, I should be able to end it for hijacking). As I said there are ENOUGH gripe threads and its giving the WRONG impression IMHO. At least offer some upbeats with the down stuff.

As to lost life, thats what long hostings are for. In the large games thats the only thing that reminds me to consider eating, crapping, and sleeping.

As for not good enough reports, its a linux-written game. Have you turned on logging and looked at it? There are like 10 levels of logging and I can get a game to generate a gig of data in a couple of turns. Eventually more of it might sneak into the game as a menu option for the windows people to find (sorry, just had to slam it abit there) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Gandalf Parker
--
Did you know that 9 out of 10 Windows users cant find their ascii with both hands? (now available as a shirt)
http://www.cafepress.com/oddthotz/589239?pid=2837642

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

I tell you, if there is one thing missing from that game, it's a feature that would have it refuse to run after 12 consecutive hours of play in row so that, this week-end, maybe I can do something else than play just one more turn on and on and on and....

Bottomline: you bet I do find it fun... but girlfriend and dog don't!

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

To play the devil's advocate, negative feedback is better than positive in the long run for the game since it gives patches and cb mods a good idea of what to fix. There are people who are very spoiled by dom II's cb mod as well as the patch. Obviously compared to those and certain other dom II features (tab researchers), dom III still falls a little short. That's good though, there was a lot of expectancy for dom III because the dom line is a very good strategy series. As a whole, I love playing the game but I don't see the need to be excessively fanboy about it since it'll be very fake.

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

100% Agreed.

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

However, both is needed, and this thread was explicitly started for the latter.

Yes, I'm having a lot of fun with Dominions 3, for the moment as much with fiddling with stuff outside the game as actually playing it.

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

I am enjoying the game thoroughly.

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

I'm having fun - trying to figure out strategies that might work, and then when you test them and (sometimes) they work - this is fun.

also I'm enjoying finding little things that I didn't know about - even though I've been playing for quite awhile I still find things I didn't know about that are kinda fun.

and of course I love MP games, so I'm enjoying the 4 or so I'm in a lot.

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

I'm having lots of fun. I love Dom3 multiplayer. One thing I like is that it isn't a time consuming game. I can take my turns and be done with it for the day.

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

Hey, I hate this game. Can't stand it. I'm only playing it several hours a day because I'm a masochist...

(:))

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

I can't imagine what some of you gripers think about things you actually don't like. If you're playing as much as it seems you are, it seems pretty obvioius what you think about the game.

I just wish I had as much time to play as I do reading this board http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif Maybe when I quit my job http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

I occasionally get accused of being a malconent just because I rarely praise stuff that works fine (and doesn't need fixing). In general, Dominions3 is very fine game, and I decided to buy it because it gets me more bang per buck than Dominions2.

That being said, in mainstream gaming communities Dominions3 would be named 'Dominions 2 deluxe' or 'Dominions 2 expansion pack'. I don't need fancy graphics (I play roguelikes regularly), but for me Dominions3 offers a bit too little as far as gameplay innovations go.
One thing that could've been easily improved without much effort would be getting some high quality sound effects. I really appreciate good sound effects in games, sometimes even more than music (I listen to music A LOT). I don't know how much does it cost to license/buy _good_ sound effects, but good sounds really improve atmosphere. It would be mostly battle effects in Dom3, but still. I mean, you don't have to rewrite a lot of code to get better sound effects. But I'm pleased with more music, and can't wait to check extra music from full versions. What's interesting is that Dom3 music seems to get less praise than Dom2 music did. I understand that Illwinter had to name the game like this (Dominions3 instead of Dominions2.5) because it sells better this way, I presume. I can't blame them.
I still think the game is worth the money.

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

Having tons of fun here! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

I am having fun, I am writing a D&D adventure based in the middle era and am playing some mp games.

However, I am a little irritated about some of the balance things in the game. But it is no biggie as I am sure patches will fix the problems

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

As I said there are plenty of gripe threads. I wont say they shouldnt exist. Im just trying to fix the impression that the game sucks. Particularly with so many players working their way thru the way that the game works (and eventually discovering that many of the "broke"s arent really broke). Suggestions are great but too many ***** threads arent going to get anything fixed if they kill the game instead.

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

I'm definitely having fun. Soon as next payday, I plan on buying.

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

I'm having fun.
Not as much as I hoped as I'm having trouble finding time to play Dom3 (mainly because to get a game set up I need a really long time, to plan strategies before the game starts among other things).
If I would've answered that question during the weekend then I would have probably left out the last part http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

I agree with all of Cainehill's gripes, but i am having a blast with it anyway. Rough edges on niche game made by two guys who have day jobs? Of course! Since they made not one, but two games that are on my all time favorite list, i forgive them.

Perhaps this is an age thing. I remember the days when it was foolish to buy a 'puter game before you played someone else's copy because many of them did not work *at all*! I played a terrific game called VGA Planets for years despite the fact that the hostile paraniod hermit who made it never bothered to make functioning interface- you had to use a third party add on! The hobby has come a long way since then, and standards are much higher, but it's easy for me to overlook little flaws if there's a great game underneath, and with Dom there definatly is http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif Three cheers for IW and Shrapnel!

ps (i think that they will fix some of these things in the patchs too)

Re: Is anyone having fun with this game?
 

Love Dom3, the random map feature is awesome, and like how the game tools has moved out to a separate menu option, along with random map and other tinkering features...

There a few disappointments -- IMV, the battle reports I wish were more detailed, at least at commander level - i.e., which commanders dies, which routed, how many fallen/wounded for each commander... ...and the F1 screen, which I was hoping for improved UI enhancements - namely, ability to sort (and/or filter) by troop totals, magic, income, resources, etc....

Overall, very pleased and stuff like game balance doesn't bother me as given Dom2 history, patches will no doubt address the blatant and obvious balance issues. Like stated, the biggest problem is finding enough Dom3 time... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif