[johan osterman]

Originally posted by Pocus:
Nerfix : We know that your love of Caelum render you partial. See they are so powerful that you wouldnt dare play against them I'm sure... anyway it is not our decision to nerf or not nerf, so we'd better take the adjustments philosophically...

Daynarr : The problem with Ulm is that they lack long standing power. Initially they are powerful, but will fold rapidly against any marginally competent magic using player.

We are all happy to have soon Doms II, but ... I have to raise 2 issues :

I dont want to be accusative, but to test play balance, you ought to test it up and including the end game, and with human opponents. It is easy to says that race are equilibrated, if test beds are made either against a computer, or with games which are stopped at turn 40. But I'm speaking of end game equilibrium here, the ones where you see armies of 150 summer lions, and scripting of your 100 mages into battles (any big map with 40% site frequency lead to that, nothing extraordinary in these settings).

Dunno if the beta team of illwinter tested much this, because this is the kind of thing which is not done over a week end. When you comes to these extremities of a game, then some flaws appears which are not perceived before. For example the hassle of having to script dozen of mages is perhaps not perceived so intensively by IW, because you need to play a game during 100+ hour playing time, against players which play competively to the point that not indulging yourself into micromanagment is certain death.

My point is ... does Dominions II performs better in the end game, speaking of game balance and mage scripting than Doms I (2 issues here) ? I never read on the dom 2 progress page anything about new interface dealing with the scripting of mages in battles for example.

You seem to be under the impression that we do not play dominions, or that we do not play competively. The scripting is more or less identical. We usually finish our PBEMs before turn 60, one way or the other. So the scripting problem is perhaps not as obvious to us as it is to someone playing the way you and your friends do. But the thing is illwinter is short on resources and manpower, most of the changes and additions are made from the perspective of our playing style, not because illwinter is evil and do not care about your opinions, but because lack of manpower forces us (in this particular and many similar cases JK) to prioritise between new additions, the additions and changes that win out are most often the ones that affect dominions 2 the way we play it, rather perhaps than changes that would improve the game for people playing single player games or games on huge resource rich maps. Now once again this is not done out of disrespect for your opinions but simply because the game wouldnt have been made if it wasnt fun to make and the changes felt relevant to the developers. Dom 2 is a game that is made to be enjoyable to us and our friends, with the hope that other people will share our tastes, and thus play and buy the game.

In short empire management is easier than it was in dom 1, battle scripting is much the same. Micromanagemtn is reduced in some areas, not significantly in all.

I'll hope you will enjoy it anyway.

[ September 19, 2003, 18:05: Message edited by: johan osterman ]