The biggest problem with Dom III
 

In Dom II if you want to play ulm or another race, you have a couple of options. In Dom III, you are limited to playing the race in a certain age. This is all well and good-except for one thing.

If you want a greater challenge, you should be able to select
ermor death mode in the middle age. Ermor is not nearly the challenge in the MA as they used to be with their death dominion. I happen to like playing Pangaea MA, but would like to play against neifel giants, death mode ermor, and no i should not have to mod it.

I think the base game should allow you to select any opponents you wish to fight, regardless of what age you play. If you put random, then ok it will default to a race of the same age, but if you want to manually select Ermor EA or LA, you should be able to do so.

It is all about choice, and I think many options are removed by the limitation of your opponents to the ones in your same era.

Re: The biggest problem with Dom III
 

You can make a mod that accomplishes exactly that. You just need to change the era via modding command and then you can play a 7x nations game if you want to http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: The biggest problem with Dom III
 

Modding is a nice addition, but less than 1 percent of Dom III players read these forums or mod. This change should be included in the basic package for all dom III players.

I played dom II for years, with friends, none of whom ever modded, or went to read forums. So not every change should be met with, "you can mod this." Most people have no desire to mod. They work. They come home from work and want to enjoy a game, not work to make the game better themselves.

Things like improving the AI and giving players more choices are not specialized requests, but would benefit all players and should be done by developers in a patch.

Re: The biggest problem with Dom III
 

Good points Xietor. I have a similiar opinion.

The only difference is that i think easy to mod things that take not much time (= less than at maximum 1-2 hours) i prefer to mod myself to exactly my liking.

I would be very happy if especially the AI and the UI would get some additional improvements too http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

If the AI would for example build somewhat useful SCs or pick decent blesses and use them would be great.
Or waypoints and other features that decrease the micromanagement.

Re: The biggest problem with Dom III
 

Your idea of what should be done with patches and the developers' idea of what should be done with patches may differ significantly, Xietor.

The IW guys are not doing this out of some great monetary incentive, but because they wish to, so things are mostly going to get done their way or not at all. If their vision is a division to different ages, then you WILL be stuck with that division unless you can muster the effort to do something about it for yourself. If you want all nations in a single age, then make a mod to the effect of

#modname "Single Age"
#description "1 age, all nations"

#selectnation 1
#era 1
#end

Repeat for all nations and you're done. Using copy-paste for three rows is not beyond anybody's capabilities and making that particular mod takes less than 5 minutes. You do need to make sure to change names so that the various nations with the same names will differ somehow to get them all in, but that's not much more work.

Then you can pick whatever you want. You can even do three variants, one for each age, if you want some change in the types of indies.

You complain about work and limited free time, but did it ever occur to you that both Johan and Kristoffer have full time day jobs and they use THEIR SPARE TIME for making Dominions. Time they cold spend with their families, friends and significant others or just doing something else. Think very hard about that.

Re: The biggest problem with Dom III
 

Another game i play at times WOW, actually does a good job of reviewing forum suggestions, and implementing the good ones in patches. Obviously, with a game base that huge, there are numerous suggestions they disagree with and do not implement,
but the ones that they agree with, you see frequent patches tweaking the game.

WOW obviously has a bigger staff, and players pay a monthly fee, so their expectation to new content is a bit different.
Dom III players do not pay a monthly fee, so our expectations are rightly less, in terms of constant patches.

But the answer is, of course, you make the improvements, then sell an add on, so you can recoup some of your investment in time.

Re: The biggest problem with Dom III
 

Why hasnt anyone done the "play all nations at once" mod?
That way you can have a 1500 province map with 75 opponents.

Re: The biggest problem with Dom III
 

i see some of the early era races bit too powerful while middle era is more balanced, so many sacred units, high lvl mages and very powerful beasts in early age to recruit in home provinces and just take hellheim and vanheim. early age is a bit ridiculous so i wonder why mixing eras now. but i agree with making the game settings with AI more customizeable.

Re: The biggest problem with Dom III
 

That's a strange question to ask Gandalf. I mean Edi basically just explained how to make it and pointed out how easy it is. So my question is this: Why haven't YOU made it?

If it's because you don't actually have any interest in having all nations in one era, you've just answered your question as to why no-one has made the mod. No-one who can actually be bothered to get off their arse and mod wants to do it,.. so they haven't.

This reply could be given to any number of threads in this forum: You can spend a long time waiting for 'someone' to make the changes you want. Or you can just do it yourself in about 5 minutes.

Re: The biggest problem with Dom III
 

Well,

for the advanced player, you may want to play a MA race, and add some EA or LA empires to create more of a challenge. It would be an option, not a requirement.

So you play MA Pangaea, create a map and random opponents, and they will default be all MA races.

But, for those wishing more of a challenge, You can "select" empires from different eras to throw in as opponents for a greater challenge. So it would be completely optional. Also, you may have 1 player that is an "expert" and a friend who is a casual player, so you may want to let him/her play a tougher race to equalize things.

MOO2 had a race that was overpowered on large maps, that got to research every tree at once. Many times i would allow my friends to play this overpowered race, while I would play
a more limited race to balance out the game. There is nothing wrong in having some races be overpowered, as long
as it is intentional and everyone realizes that they exist to allow the more casual player to compete against more experienced players.

In Dom II, ermor was overpowered. And I often allowed a friend to play ermor while i played ulm or some other race.
It created an even game that would not have been possible if my friend would have played a race other than ermor.

Re: The biggest problem with Dom III
 

Ahh, Moo2. The overpowered custom options of that game were great fun- the best race that I remimber creating was the huge production bonus one with Feudal, + a few other picks that I do not remimber. It could crank out colony ships so quickly right out of the gate that I would often control most of the galaxy before P2 even reached their 3rd world. Fun!

Also amusing was the challenge to create the worst Moo2 custom race possible, then have your friend try to last as long as they could in a small galaxy with impossible opponents. The creator of the most pathetic custom race was the winner!

Re: The biggest problem with Dom III
 

i have moo2 still installed http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif i agree research race was insane so i looked for a more fun race and that was silicodis... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

hehe and not using customization at all + hardest game setting was still too easy for advanced players, that know what to research first and so on.

Re: The biggest problem with Dom III
 

Apologies to Edi. I did miss that excellent post. We were a few minutes apart (my connection isnt the fastest today) so I might have been typing

@Sombre
True enough. But thats not what I do. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
Mods are a whole territory unto themselves. I spend more than enough time in the territories of server and maps. And since such a mod would be simple. It would be a good mod for someone who might just be curious about doing mods.

(Actually if I wanted to I could cheat horribly. We had such a mod in the beta area that I could copy). But if someone wants to put their name on such a mod, it would be one of the only mods Id consider putting up on the server for a game. 75 players would be a blast. Id also like to see portable nation mods so we can have a game of 23 Ulms, or 23 Vanheims.

Re: The biggest problem with Dom III
 

Xietor,
Not that I disagree with everything you say, but how do you reach the conclusion that "less than 1 percent of Dom3 players read these forums"?

Re: The biggest problem with Dom III
 

Just a guess. It is like that with most sport's fans, and of the numerous gamers i know that play several games, none read message boards. Personally, I played DomII for years and never visited a forum.

Given the the game was sold to a few hundred thousand or so,
and you see less than a thousand posting, it is just an educated guess.

Re: The biggest problem with Dom III
 

Most forums find that to be about right. At most you can expect 10% of players to visit a forum, and 1% of players to post.

Even in the Dominions IRC channel not all of them visit the forums. And there tends to be discussion of Dominions in places like the strategy newsgroups, AI newsgroups, other gaming forums, which show that many of those people know and like Dominions but dont tend to visit here.

Re: The biggest problem with Dom III
 

There's plenty of ways to give yourself a challenge without actually needing to alter the Era system. Try imposing some rules on your own pretender build or similar (no bless, no SC and the like). I'd argue that this would be way more effective, since the challenge of another era nation depends heavily on other factors (for example, EA national troops tend to have lighter equipment, and would likely struggle to expand in a late era game).
The same applies to multiplayer games. Turn the site occurence to minimum and let your opponent pick a nation less dependent on magic (like Ulm) while you take one heavily dependent on it (Caelum).

Re: The biggest problem with Dom III
 

> Given the the game was sold to a few hundred thousand or so,
and you see less than a thousand posting, it is just an educated guess.

It was? Wohoo!!! Heh! I mean: HUNDRED THOUSNAD! WOHOOOO! I'd better visit my bank and go to Bahamas http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Cya in a couple of years http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: The biggest problem with Dom III
 

If you want a challenge, try playing the game with all defaults. I mean ALL defaults. Dont answer ANYTHING.

I think you have to choose era, and name the game. Maybe map (choose the top one which the game should probably default to). After that just hit OK on everything without selecting

Re: The biggest problem with Dom III
 

The game, even though it could be improved, is still one of the best ever, which is why I have played it for years.

That said, there can be improvements to any game. one of the things the AI does to pythium that always dooms it, is to kill its own troops with hydras. One way to fix this problem, which appears simple, is to give hydras to ctis, which has units with poison resistance. hydras seem a natural for swamps.

Of course balance is a sticky thing, but i think some races should be tougher than others by design, to provide a challenge.

Re: The biggest problem with Dom III
 

Hmm Im not sure if hydras fit outside of the pythium theme

Re: The biggest problem with Dom III
 

The units for Pythium should have high poison resistance or immunity... otherwise it's easy to cripple large AI armies when the computer is using Pythium.

Re: The biggest problem with Dom III
 

And i do not think the developers owe any obligation to keep improving a game after release(in the absence of a monthly fee), unless there are actual bugs that need fixed. But I would love to see some of the better ideas put together and sold as an add on.

Re: The biggest problem with Dom III
 

Yeah the pythium situation isn't great. It could be partially fixed with a mod though.

Re: The biggest problem with Dom III
 

Hmmm lately Ive come across an even bigger challenge. Playing as Gath or Formoria. Bare starting army, bare set of pretenders to choose from, no national sites or recruitables or gem income. You have to turn them on with a bare script mod but it is interesting.

Re: The biggest problem with Dom III
 

I tried out a map with no indy poptypes and it actually seemed to work out better for the AI, since the player makes more use of them. The AI also likes to build forts, which fits in perfectly.

I suggest other people do give it a go. You still get some interesting indies via sites as well.