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Caseus said:
What about the part where I said:
The actual fun parts of the game -- the huge variety of spells, magic items, and units -- are lost in the intense competitiveness of multiplayer. "You can't do X, that doesn't work in multiplayer!"
Am I wrong about that? Is Dominions 2 multiplayer free of rabidly aggressive, hypercompetitive players who destroy any semblance of fun in the game?
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You might try a couple MP games and see if that's your experience. Or, try reading through this
game's thread. (Yes, it's a tremendously long thread, but skip around the pages a bit; page 15 and 16 for example. A lot of the first and Last pages were about setting up the game, and then talking about setting up another one.) Does that sound like a bunch of rabid hypercompetitive players?
Also, unlike games like Quake or Warcraft and the like, Dominions games go long enough, are slow paced enough, that even a couple of hypercompetitive types don't ruin the fun of the game. (Unlike some of the realtime ones, where you're shot/dead/crushed inside of a few minutes of frantic clicking.) I've had a lot of fun in games where I was doing quite poorly, in part because I was trying out wacky ideas and strategies that were based on my limitted options (troops, forgings, spells researched, mages, etc).
I've played a _lot_ of MP games. My only win thus far was an allied win, and with 3 players and a mutant setup (0 magic site settings, VD research, tiny map, and you couldn't add any magic to the pretender chassis) that didn't count for much. Now I think I have ... 3 games out of about 10 in which I may have a decent chance at a win. Even if I don't win, I get a
huge kick out of some of the battles, even ones I lose (or "lose", defeated but with a net gain).
SP got tedious - the AI isn't much of a challenge, I didn't have to work very hard (ie, didn't have to learn and expand my tactics / strategies), and it doesn't mean anything - I could quit a game or restart as soon as it lost my attention. Going against human players, you see a much wider range of strategies and forces that you have to contend with, since the AI tends to do pretty much the same sorts of things.
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Do you have to use only certain key strategies or you might as well not play? Your own Posts seem to indicate this is the case.
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Nope, there aren't certain key strategies you have to use. There
are certain strategies you have to learn to counter though - what to do about SCs, what to do about wrathers, how to try and deal with armies of almost invulnerable troops (such as those produced by Enliven Statues). And there are certain things you have to keep in mind - if you don't work on your research, or don't
use the results of your research, you will lose. Even that can be modified, by playing on smaller maps, with research more difficult and, more importantly, fewer magic sites.
*shrug* If you're having enough fun with SP, great. But to many of us, the MP games are a lot more interesting and unpredictable, and therefor more entertaining and fun for us.