johan i was unfortunately hindered to finish my world war 2 excursion to make a comparision with dominions because of a heavy storm
now i finished my arguments .
please don't misunderstand me . i am so critical because i love dominions so much .
you made such a damn great game .
i am just convinced that the upkeep mechanism is a bit "broken" . once you have to pay upkeep for your summons , especially scs dominions is just even greater .
as it is i just get the sad feeling though that the only strategy you do is to try to get your overpowered things quicker than your enemy .
upkeep would balance that definetely though in my opinion .
johan have you or kristoffer ever played either starcraft or age of wonders 2 shadow magic with the latest patch ?
to make a Last starcraft example :
in starcraft if you rush to carriers e.g. which noobs often think are overpowered even if the experienced player doesn't rush you but just builds 120 marines with 30 medics or 150 hydraliks which cost about the same like carriers worth 150 supply and about equal in material costs too the lategame carriers get defeated by the earlygame marines / hydralisks .
in dominions though all kinds of national troops don't win against the lategame troops once you have them .
so they are useless after a few turns .
but it is only because of the different treatment of upkeep .
the few summons who cost upkeep ( though gold , the trolls + water trolls ) are not very popular .
maenads e.g. since they cost no upkeep as one of the few national troops at all though are because of this always useful as fodder .
so the different treatment of upkeep is afaik quite unique in dominions i know no other strategy game where an upkeep mechanism is included and about half of the troops cost upkeep and the other half doesn't .
so finally again i think just the different treatment of upkeep is the point .
as it is dominions is very entertaining and fun but unfortunately not well balanced .
with this change though i am sure it would become well balanced .
perhaps this is a reason why so many noobs are deterred from dominions .
it is so complex but a few things , mainly the routing system without army as panther said in the beginning and what was the topic of the thread before AND the upkeep are both just :
non-intuitive and they ruin the balance .
you say that nations are balanced within each other this is quite true but :
if you take for 2 nations a pretender like a oracle and the same scales .
most nations would be then :
they win easy against 3-4 nations , lose easy against 3-4 nations and are about equal to the rest .
this is a sign of good balance i admit .
but now take e.g. atlantis :
they will win against no other nation in this test i am SURE as long as they are not very lucky with their found sites .
i put this effort into this because i love dominions but i think the upkeep issue has to be fixed to result in a fairer and more balanced dominions .
the reason why some nations/themes are so unpopular ( atlantis , tien chi base + barb kings , golden arge arco , new age pan , iron faith ulm to mention a few ) are my above mentioned arguments .
if they have equal conditions and take all the same pretender they will rarely win because their troops + mages are not good alone .
you surely can take paths on your pretender but your enemy can take another nation and doesn't need that much because he can do more with his troops / mages .
so he has better scales and again an advantage against you .