Had my first Crash
 

The game crashed on me at around turn 15. I was lucky as I had just started it. Man the manual is a thick one, with over two thirds being dedicated to spells. It took me a good long time to read.

Question: Is modding the game hard? The reason I ask is I had some ideas for adding new units. Right now I have no plans on modding the game until I get a better understanding of it. But later I would like to try my hand at it.

Also I noticed the neutral ai's are a lot tougher in the full game than in the beta. I have already lost my first few battles to them. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Ahhhh the learning curve is a painful drive for us newbies.

Re: Had my first Crash
 

You had a crash? It is pretty rare that the game actually crashes. The game is relatively easy to mod, though new units most of the work is of course, artistic.

Re: Independants. Yes, with the patches there has been some improvement to the spell and normal orders to a degree. I myself tried playing a 2.02 game a while back then changing to 2.12 and saw the incredible difference. Harder Independants are a good thing http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif Eventually they will become pretty consistant and you'll be able to take them relatively easy.

Re: Had my first Crash
 

I do have some small artistic ability and was thinking of making new unit images. I noticed the ones are scaled from very hard to see to ok size. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I don't know yet what I want to do, I just want to learn what I can do. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Had my first Crash
 

Modding is a bunch of .tga graphics files, and a text .dm file which says what the subdirectory is that the graphics are in. Not much different than SEIV except that there is only one text file. The images are small and not extensively worked. The game does smoothing and image touchup inside the game to make them look better. Each unit has 2 images only, 1 for standing and 1 for animation. As far as I understand it though since mods is an area I havent played with yet.

You will find more ability in the area of maps than SEIV seems to have. The map can create full opponents, special provinces, starting positions, resources, etc. You can layout as much as you want or just do a little bit and leave the rest to random. That I have played with.

There is still room to do a map/mod together for a full game effect.

Re: Had my first Crash
 

I've seen assorted flakiness and bugs, but full crashes are very rare - I can only recall maybe a handful of them in 5-6 months of play. You say you were lucky you had just started the game - do you mean just started playing that turn, or is that whole game now lost and unplayable?

And the scary part is that the manual probably only has a tenth of what you'll eventually want to know. Arryn's site has a bunch of good reference docs you can download, which are very helpful:
http://www.dominions-2.org/files.htm

Re: Had my first Crash
 

In addition to LintMan's suggestion, you should also go to my links page where you'll find a link to Sunray's site, which has yet more docs you should read.

Re: Had my first Crash
 

I wonder, is there an Online .pdf of the game manual?

Re: Had my first Crash
 

No. That would encourage piracy of the game.

Re: Had my first Crash
 

Makes sense =P
Just wondering for convinence purposes...