POLL: How Do You Play?
 

POLL lets see what you think. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: POLL: How Do You Play?
 

I like polls http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: POLL: How Do You Play?
 

Huzzah for us 1.09% who play easy, because the monsters are scary!

Re: POLL: How Do You Play?
 

No, it's 1 person, which is 08% (presumably 9% when you wrote that).

Re: POLL: How Do You Play?
 

Oh me bad
I thought the dot was missing, not that I was the only one.. Whoops!

Re: POLL: How Do You Play?
 

I thought I was the only one.... Look at the percentage of finished games...
When I finished my first game I was disappointed that there was no victory mini clip animation or a inside game hall of fame or record keeping of your victories. I guess I should be exited of the simple fact that I won http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: POLL: How Do You Play?
 

Excellent poll. One of the best Ive seen. It covered the choices very well, wasnt worded in a way that made anything seem biased, and is very informative.
Thank you

Re: POLL: How Do You Play?
 

What i have missed whas an option for: What era do you play the most? That says i have no preferences.

Also the count of the percentages of games finished is 50% for me, but actually it is singleplayer 0% and multiplayer 100%.

Re: POLL: How Do You Play?
 

Well done poll, I look forward to seeing the results as more replies are given.

Re: POLL: How Do You Play?
 

Same same. The poll is great, but a splitting between multiplayer and single player thread should have made it even better.

Re: POLL: How Do You Play?
 

good poll! make more!

Re: POLL: How Do You Play?
 

The reason I did not split up the poll in multiplayer and solo is because this is a GENERAL thread.... It counts your overall preferences solo + multiplayer http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: POLL: How Do You Play?
 

Very good poll. I'm glad to see that I am not the only one who doesn't complete games anymore. I finished 3 or 4. Now when the turns take too long and my eventual win is reasonably certain, off to a new game. I like to save the unfinished games and when there are too many accumulated I dump them all. Of course I never returned to a single one of them either. Don't know why I save them, I'm well aware that I never go back to them, but I still save them.

Re: POLL: How Do You Play?
 

LoL Same Here http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I started playing smaller games now to avoid this.

Re: POLL: How Do You Play?
 

I was expecting more people to like immortality better than the other states... :S

Re: POLL: How Do You Play?
 

I think it's because the question isn't "which ability is most powerful" it's "which do you consider the most valuable state of your units" - for which the answer is probably holy, since for many units/nations/players the sacred/holy tag is extremely important. You're far less likely to actually run into immortality on your units.

Re: POLL: How Do You Play?
 

It's also such a situation dependent question, it's almost unanswerable.

Immortality is great for key units, like a pretender, but unless you're dominion pushing it's really only useful on defense. And only then if you can get the troops back to the front quickly. Does anyone really build strategies around Vanheim's Fay Boars?

Some Sacreds are great, others aren't worth bothering with.
Regeneration is great on high hp units, almost useless on normal humans.

Etc, etc.

Re: POLL: How Do You Play?
 

I think the poll will show us the spread more than decide what is or isnt a certain thing. I was pleasantly surprised to find that there are players who Stealth is their operating feature. And abit surprised to see Awe winning out over Fear.

Re: POLL: How Do You Play?
 

Same here... My personal preference is fear over awe.. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: POLL: How Do You Play?
 

Personally, I am amazed at the number of people that complete construction first. Why on earth would you want construction nine? Sure, as a few nations, the forge might be good, and ME agartha probably wants siege golems and irons dragons, but isn't eight enough for just about everyone else?

Re: POLL: How Do You Play?
 

I voted construction, but I only research to lvl 8. I consider construction 'complete' at lvl 8.

Why immortality as the no.1 fav ability? Its purely a defensive ability, no good whatsoever in attack. I went for flying here, stealth would have been my 2nd choice. Those 2 abilities are the best for raiding behind enemy lines.

I suppose its because I spend most of my time fighting in enemy dominion... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: POLL: How Do You Play?
 

Flying + Stealth + Etheral + Glamour + Barrier + Bless = http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: POLL: How Do You Play?
 

50% of people that participated in the poll DO NOT FINISH the games they start...

What recommendation can you give the creators of the game to counter this fact...?

Re: POLL: How Do You Play?
 

possibly micro reducers, but even then i doubt it. By the late/end game you have so many leaders, researchers, forgers, blood hunters... it just becomes too much of a pain.

Then there's the other side where its pretty much a sure victory and its not worth slogging through the grind.

Possible suggestions, some obviously not feasible

1. Add an upgrade option for units - so instead of purchasing a new mage I can buy +x research points as an upgrade at a slight discount. Penalty of having less mages means less forgers and more vulnerable (lose 1 highly upgraded mage and instant suckage) vs reduced cost of upgrade and upkeep (plus less clutter, micro). This could be translated many ways (more leadership, experience levels, etc) but I doubt it would work to ever upgrade paths beyond empowerment. Overall goal - less commanders, less orders

2. Allow the AI to "go AI", if faced with severe insurmountable odds have them swear quit or swear fealty to the one with the most kills vs. Have it be a toggle-able option at game creation. Possibly to the highest dominion score in game, might not be you and if you continue you've declared war.

3. Allow the player to "go AI", manually host, and then reset to a player. Slogfest? Just AI and see if you win, periodically checking or changing. Good for testing builds as well. Ever play the old computer version of risk, put everyone to computer and see who wins? Sadly enough, yes I did. A whole multiplayer game could be done in an afternoon, everyone set up a build, set to ai for 20 turns, play a turn, AI for 20, play, etc till done.

4. Previously suggested micro reducers - monthly forging, allowing sacrificers to auto draw from a lab, hunters auto dump to a lab, improved site searching equation, etc.

5. Add a scoring system/ranking system/statistics. After micro has been reduced, give a reason for winning (or at least a quantitative one).

6. Add short mini-movies for a victory, or even one of those dynamic text based things - "name of god" defeats x,y,z and goes off to do 1,2,3 possibly determined by the random god name, paths, or type of victory. As it stands now victory is pretty much anti-climatic. Possibly make it so there are "rare" combos depending on pretender chassis, paths, victory type (possibly the aforementioned stats as well).

Edit:
7. Reduce forts, sieging can really lenghthen a game. Add "barracks" or something where you can recruit units but not have a castle. Put a max # on castles, or drastically increase the cost. Have it all be selectable at game creation.

8. Have a max # of orders given per turn (much too complicated unless dropped down to like 20 orders/turn), everyone else is passive. Again at game creation. Most games would be infinite, but you could have games where it doesn't make a lot of sense to buy more mages - works well with an "upgrade" option.

9. More and varied victory conditions

10. Allow the pretender creation process to be modded or allow restrictions to be placed on god creation. Single path games, all negative scale games, etc... some options would shorten games/micro others may lengthen it.

It really comes down to the fact that there is no reason to win in SP, and MP kind of takes care of itself....although winning MP is still a "whoo"...thats it?

Re: POLL: How Do You Play?
 

Is this a "Dom4" kind of question?

I could think of some ways.
Force the players to build up "Support networks" in their provinces, whatever this means. So, in order to have decent support/income/resources in his provinces, some provinces need to be knotes, that - should they fall - be a fatal blow to the whole region.

Likewise - the home province - the capitol: In the early game capturing someone's capitol seriously hurts this player. Later on it's no major thing. That should be diffrent, imho. Think of the Civilisation games: You have one capitol - you can change this for some ressources and time, but if you are caught without one, you you will have economical (and maybe moral) problems untill you reconquer it or set up another one.

And last, large armys are not useful in late game, which could be altered: Make large armys able to conquer/control more then just a single province. Alter the way remote army attack spells like "fires from afar" work, to allow protection against it (like protective mages).

Re: POLL: How Do You Play?
 

What, nothing about paths in the poll? This poll is useless!!!

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Link to MY poll

Re: POLL: How Do You Play?
 

When playing Big Maps the late game gets overwhelming. It gets increasingly tedious to control your 40+, 60+ provinces and your 500+, 800+, 1000+ army and your 50+ 70+ Commanders and your...... You get my point... :S

Re: POLL: How Do You Play?
 

Hell I play small maps and i still dont complete 60 or 80% of the games.. : )

Re: POLL: How Do You Play?
 

BTW great great great post Jutetrea!

Re: POLL: How Do You Play?
 

When I create a game I often choose victory conditions that I will be able to finish. Like capturing three AI capitals.

Most games I play I just play a couple of turn to try a multiplayer build. But I did not count those.

Re: POLL: How Do You Play?
 

Doing that wont let you experience the middle late game, which in my opinion is were th fun is http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

Re: POLL: How Do You Play?
 

In the minds of those who do not finish most of their games, as is the case with myself, once victory is certain, you have already won. There is little point to playing through to the end if it is simply a matter of micromanaging the logistics of it. I do not care to put up with the truly daunting amount of button clicking when there is no longer any challenge.

Someone made the suggestion of allowing you to turn on the AI switch for your empire just to let the game run it's course at that point. That sounds to me like a darn good idea.

Re: POLL: How Do You Play?
 

Can the AI be trusted with your game? I've seen big AI-controlled nations go down the drain by another smaller one :S what if in the end it is not a for sure victory... :S

Re: POLL: How Do You Play?
 

It would be great if you could turn AI control on and off for your nation. Let it do the donkey work, you the god mastermind it all from time to time.

Re: POLL: How Do You Play?
 

I think the devs liked the idea also. Particularly I pushed for it as a host switch as another option to handle players suddenly having to take a break.

But if I remember the conversation there is something about going AI which makes changes that are almost impossible to undo afterward. Too much rewrite and moving around of code to get it.

On the other hand, I have kindof done it in some games. Overfill certain provinces building queues. Set everyone for re-occurring actions so that they will at least do something. Then host for a few turns, rinse, repeat. It gets me to the next important change to the game (usually a magic research that Im in a hurry for)

Re: POLL: How Do You Play?
 

I really like that, especailly a text-based one. It would give a reason to actually finish large single player games, especially when the outcome is clear only towards the end. Won't help games where I put up the nexus on turn 35 and then realize the computer will never dispel it, but if it's just a matter of pushing through the last few provinces to the computers capital, it'd be a great incentive. Ideally, make it moddable, so people could add to the list of possibilities...

How much code would that take? It wouldn't be a whole lot, would it? Especailly if it were based on your god, and NOT his actions, since that would require logging them, and I don't believe the game tacks previous turns to any great extent...

Re: POLL: How Do You Play?
 

Im with you http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: POLL: How Do You Play?
 

I have to admit that this is one of the few suggestions Ive seen that seems like it could happen. It probably wouldnt take much to have the "end of game" line in the code jump to something that plays a movie thats in the Dom3 directory. And it wouldnt bog down the game since the heavy piece (the movie) would be separate.

PLEASE NOTE! I have said that its a good idea BEFORE I fell to my bad habit.

Hmmmmmmmm (I understand that some people have started hating it when the see me start a Hmmmmm section). We could do something without waiting for the devs if we wanted to.
If logging is turned on the the log file does announce the end of game. It looks like this....
checkcrc: /home/domgames/dominions3/savedgames/bl_selectmen/late_ctis.2h
checkcrc done. len 157609 crc 31424 readcrc 31424
get 2h data for player 60
The true God has ascended!

A view of the directory shows the other player files, and the last date that player turned one in. Such as (linux version)
-rw-r--r-- 1 domgames domgames 4432 2007-08-10 19:51 late_agartha.2h
-rw-r--r-- 1 domgames domgames 2945 2007-08-23 14:41 late_arcoscephale.2h
-rw-r--r-- 1 domgames domgames 12508 2007-08-27 12:39 late_jomon.2h

The scores file can give the final count of provinces, armies, and how many turns the game ran.

Althogether it would be pretty easy to write something that said In the Spring of the 20th year of the Ascension Wars, the god of C'tis is recognized as the ONE TRUE GOD having defeated Agartha followed by Arcoscephale and finally Jomon.

Your icon for running the game can check to see if there has been a win, then do all that (postexec switch).
Host servers could do something like that pretty easily and make a webpage out of it.
With some of the tools on my server (ImageMagick) I could even select images, add text, create animation, and save off a movie based on all of the info. I think I can get the image number of the god the player chose. And the titles if I grab it from the very first log in each game. But the name of the god seems the hardest to get.

Re: POLL: How Do You Play?
 

That would be good, but could it be taken a step further.

Can the status of the god or even better the initial stats of the god be checked? Chassis type?

Have it do a quick mad libs check relating to the paths, xp lvl and chassis just for flavor text. Possibly using phrases from a file relating to the random god titles you get at pretender creation.

I would assume it could be coded similar to how the random titles are generated in the first place.

Example
John, god of everything, mover of mountaints, cyclops, 9e4n

0-3e = a,b,c (title, generic action, final action)
4-6e = d,e,f
7-9e = g,h,i
4-6n = j,k,l
cyclops = m,n,o

Titles are similar to creation titles but more volume or even just adjectives.
generic actions would just be aggressive verbs or small phrases
and final actions would be closure verbs or small phrases.

There's got to be some sort of mad lib program out there where you can create lists to the choices or link to other data.