@ ceremony:
I found the first paragraph particularly interesting in regard to:
".... the game designers did not pursue the possiblity that this [spreading of dominion] could be done through polite discussion.... Instead it can be done militarily ... or through a more abstract mechanism...."
Actually, building temples and preaching are pretty much, indeed, going from door to door and represents the "abstract mechanism" that need not be violent.
This interests me since I often like to explore non-military Versions of wargames. For example, the economic based scenarios in the Stronghold game. Or, more generally, a "war of ideas".
I was just thinking it would be fun to set the victory conditions to "Dominion" and disallow direct combat except for rituals that don't involve melee.
So, while it is true that the game has a huge military component, the flexibility of the settings allow a non-violent Version to be played based only on preaching and sly usage of the gods power through his/her/its followers.
Chalk another point up for Illwinter and for the flexibility they built into D2 so that a game could actually be based on a "conVersion/economics" approach instead of combat, albeit indirectly since the game wouldn't enforce the "no melee" rule.
What would make this fully possible is if, at a certain very high level of dominions (say 9+) the indies would convert and join you
[ January 26, 2004, 16:43: Message edited by: diamondspider ]