Please help me to love Dominions 2!
 

I keep trying, but I just can't seem to get into the game.

Maybe its the general misunderstanding of the strategy element, and maybe it's something else.

But could some of you tell me how/when you came to adore this game? Thanks so much!

Re: Please help me to love Dominions 2!
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I loved it the second I fired up the demo. Honestly. It's only gotten more rich and rewarding the more I've played. But it clearly isn't for everyone, since individual tastes vary so much. Could you elaborate a bit more as to what your general problems are?

Re: Please help me to love Dominions 2!
 

Well, I'm always running out of funds for recruiting units, and am quickly defeated by my neighbors...

Re: Please help me to love Dominions 2!
 

Start on easy difficulty and maybe set the world to "rich" in the starting options. Otherwise take high order scales, when creating your pretender.

Go and attack something to squander your army and gain new income. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Please help me to love Dominions 2!
 

japinard,

I had that problem at first, too. You need to aggressively expand early on. Try to play the Aran map with 5 or so other nations. That will give you some room to expand before immediately encountering other nations.

The reason I didn't do well at first was that I was recruiting the wrong units. Tell us please what nation you are playing and what your general strategy is. If you're trying to initially learn with a weak race, that may be a big part of the problem. I can recommend something like Ulm, Pythium, or Arco to get started.

Try that and let us know where you falter. We need to have some idea of what you are doing to give recommendations. But a common mistake is concentrating on weak, low-morale units or perhaps not reasearching sufficiently. I'm far from an expert on this game.

Re: Please help me to love Dominions 2!
 

If you have the latest patch installed, you can (and probably should) start with more provinces. 5 or 6 will usually give your home castle more income to work with. Also be advised that the starting army for many nations is pitifully weak compared to emidiate neighbours (indies) Their strength depends heavily on the independant strenght setting (duh!). If you have proplems with them reduce their setting.
(They're usually no problem if you have a supercombatant as pretender, but if you go for rainbow it is no shame to build up your army a bit, before teaching those infidels.)

Re: Please help me to love Dominions 2!
 

Oh , and the love for the game came when an oponent brought about 30 bloodslaves with them on the battlefield and started casting spells.

It was a definite "You can do that?.....Wow." moment.

Another was seeing 6 elefants and 4 chariots waltz through countless militamen/light infantrymen.

Re: Please help me to love Dominions 2!
 

I'm rather into blood sacrifice, blotting out the sun, freezing the ocean surfaces, and filling the sky with lethal pathogens.
More seriously, 'tho, this game basically has "more". The magic system is enormous, the amount of detail in units is rather crazy (down to how many eyes a monster has remaining... if this were a board game, there'd have to be more counters than in _Flat Top_), and more options in rather different nation/theme combinations. Hey, you can play a benevolent deity blessing the world with superb health, great harvests, and phantasmal servants; or you can try for far, far nastier styles, or much in between.

Re: Please help me to love Dominions 2!
 

I'm playing with "Man" and have been recruiting a balanced army of spearmen axemen and archers.

I've had the Arch-Druid as the Pretender. I'd like to stick with Man since the units are easier for me to identify with.

Re: Please help me to love Dominions 2!
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'd rather fill the sky with lethal pigeons, personally, and I'm somewhat indifferent to blood sacrifice or freezing the ocean. Totally with you on blotting out the sun, though. Stupid frickin' sun.