Quote:
johan osterman said:
Sopyfrog:
I would say that players have to make difficult decisions. And more importantly adopt and modify their strategies to the circumstances they find themselves in. I am not sure what you mean by devalued here, are you saying high end summons are not effective thus lack value or that they cost to little in the long run? I guess the second reading is the only one that makes sense taken with your other opinions, but then I do not quite see what you mean by that the game does not scale as your economy grows. Would you care to elaborate.
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Although I'm sure that soapyfrog will respond to this differently than I am about to, I'd like to respond to this question.
First off I'd like to say that one of the best things about Dom2 is how well balanced it is. Dom2 is not the best balanced game of all time, but complexity and game balance are in direct opposition. After all, Go is nearly perfectly balanced, and if balance is all that you want, you should look for a game with very simple rules. However, if you were to devise two measures one of game complexity and the other of game balance, and call game quality the product of the two, I would say that Dom2 has the highest game quality of any game I have ever played
Secondly, soapyfrog is clearly correct in saying the value of magic sites is devalued in the endgame, if players use clams (and the like) a lot in the game. For example, if the total gem income at turn 100 is 75% due to clams, then clearly losing a few magic sites is not much of a problem any longer.
Thirdly (and what this post is mostly about), I believe soapyfrog is misguided in objecting to exponential growth. I mean every kind of bootstrapping game since the beginning of time (with recent, relevant examples being Civ, MoM, MOO2, et al) has featured exponential growth prominently.
Perhaps the real objection is to unconstrained exponential growth (maybe soapyfrog is already saying this, and I've misread). There are various ways to impose constraints, but one common method is to include maintenance costs (which Dom2 does, but only for recruited units).
Most turn based strategy games, especially those that try to give a sense of reaching epic proportions, include maintenance much more broadly than Dom2 does. In games where maintenance is not included, I think it is commonly (but not always the case, Dom2 being a notable exception), that optimal strategies devolve into races to produce the best monster/weapon of all time before anyone else does.
Now I know that maintenance for magic has been brought up before (where Boron did an excellent job of discrediting the argument for all time
- apologies in advance, Boron
), but either way, it's clear that introducing maintenance is a gigantic change and IMO would require a ground up rewrite, and is not in the cards for a patch, and probably not even in the cards for Dom3. Also it is abundantly clear to me (and quite obviously to the large number of people actively playing the game, and actively debating in this forum), that maintenance is not required for Dom2 to be fun, and well balanced.
But I do believe that the lack of maintenance is what gives me the sense of the Dom2 magic economy not scaling. I know that Dom2 is a fantasy game, but there are certain basic elements of the real world, that when carried into a fantasy game help give the game depth, and a sense of realism that aids in the suspension of disbelief. One of those elements is a sort of "Conservation of Energy", or "There's no free lunch", kind of principle. And, clams, soul contracts, fever fetishes, and the like violate this princple and at least for me, break the suspension of disbelief.
I think for many of us newbies, coming into the Dom2 world after having played the more commercial games, the lack of maintenance cost in Dom2 does contribute to a sense of unrealism. And I think soapyfrog is right in some sense that the economy does not scale. However, I just don't see that it is all that critical for the economy to scale. After all, who really wants to play to turn 300? As things stand, based on empirical evidence, it is 100% clear that many people play Dom2, many people get to end games that are interesting and exciting, nobody has solved this game. Therefore, the game is balanced. Therefore the game is fun.
All that said, if it should ever happen that the Dominions devs are ever in a position to undertake a rewrite, I would love to see maintenance costs incorporated, from the ground up, for all continuing magic and physical effects. If done in the context of a rewrite, I think this could be very clean, and would ultimately support a system that is more easily balanced, not less. Such a system would feel more natural, and more real, and would as soapyfrog says, scale better. Also, for those that fear the game becoming mundane, there's no reason whatsoever that this would have to be done at the expense of lategame magic being dominant, and omnipresent - you just have to know that that's your target at design time.
Short of a rewrite, I am in agreement with those conservatives that don't want to see the system dramatically changed. The game is clearly working, and has an extraordinarily large following, given it's non-commercial nature. To argue that the game is broken, or dramatically unbalanced is ludicrous. It flies in the face of the fact that so many smart people are playing this game, and so few can agree on what constitutes an optimal strategy.
- Thufir
PS
Apologies for the long post - it's a result of a character flaw and can't be helped.