[HJ]

As I said, I won't pretend that I can argue with people who are actually involved in designing the game, and think that I know better than they do what their game should look like. I do however have an opinion on some things, and if they are a bit critical about certain aspects of the game, so be it, that doesn't mean that they are malicious in their intent.

Originally posted by johan osterman:
If you are saying what I think you are saying, that the randomisation in the combat in dominions makes all units perform pretty much the same, you you are obviously way off base. If you have played the game it will be abundantly clear to you that there is a huge difference between the performance of a knight and a militia. The random dice enters comes into play in many situations so that it would be a very rare occurence indeed for 20 knights to get whipped by 20 militia, I even doubt it would happen very often that 20 knights route from 100 militia. The costs of most units reflect how they perform, there are occasional statistical abberations of course, but dominions isnt chess.

I am saying that by simply viewing the unit stats, you cannot have a good idea about that unit's preformance due to the proportionally huge random variable involved in it. I'm not particulary concerned about the obvious differences, such as the difference between an iron dragon and hoburg guards, but between a what seems to me a huge spectrum of very similar units in the middle range. From your example, it doesn't matter much whether the knight in question wields a broadsword or a morning star, while I would like to see that it does make at least some difference. I said several times that I am for distinctive shades of grey, not black and white and not uniform blur. What my perception is, and I emphasize the word "my", is that blur is prevalent, and I would rather see that it isn't. That's all.

I do not think that anyone considers tactical and strategic decisions as micromanagement per se, but it is not entirely obvious that the slash/crush/pierce additions would result in decisions that will have a meaningfull impact on gameplay that outweighs the additional micromanagement it would result in. This also pertains to the more general discussion on what level of abstraction combat should occur, it is not a given that the most realistic and complex combat system makes the best game. Dominions has allready gone quite a far in modelling induvidual combat compared to most games in the same genre, it is not necessarily a good thing to reduce the abstraction even further, although it might be. Other ideas in this vein has been to model hit locations etc., although hitlocations would not even potentionally add much of strategical or tactical decisions.

And besides the issue of potentional micromanagenment there is the difficulty of implementing it in a balanced way that works well with the rest of the current system.[/QB]

Now, this is purely up to your own discretion. I wasn't saying anything about difficulty of implementation, or time vs. benefit for gameplay. Mostly because I find it silly when people who won't be putting that time in speak in the name of devs: "it's going to take long to implement" or "it will only take a second" as if they're going to be the ones that are going to do it. If IW decides it's not worth the time, that is different than some end-user saying the same thing, and that's something I have a hard time digesting as an argument unless it comes from the person responsible for doing the work. Those who are will actually decide where that time will be spent anyway.

In short, if it was my game, I would welcome this suggestion. Since it's yours, you make the calls. I never disputed that. I was merely a)expressing my point of view and b)providing counterarguments for reasons I see as unfounded.

No hard feelings,
HJ

[ October 14, 2003, 19:47: Message edited by: HJ ]