[Zooko]

Some games have known rules where the player can be expected to understand all of the rules. Others have intuitive rules where the player doesn't understand the details, but only develops a feel for the result. The former kind includes most turn-based strategy games, the latter kind includes most real-time strategies.

ckfnpku above is saying that he prefers the latter kind.

Dominion and Dominions 2 fall into an interesting middle ground. I've played many, many hours of these games, and much of that was in "intuitive" mode. Even today, most of my decisions are made by feel rather than by thinking about what the actual rules will entail. For example, do you really remember what the exact rules are for morale checks? I don't. I learned them once, but now I just move Battle Fraught units into separate squads and remember not to rely too heavily on low-morale units to stick it out.

I'm not sure if I really would prefer Dom3 to be a fully "known-rules" game, but I would definitely regret it if it became and even more "intuitive-rules" game than it already is.

But regardless of which way it moves, one thing that will improve it is more visibility of rules. I'm quite hopeful about this, because Illwinter has consistently improved this over time. Remember when some commander qualities such as Supply Bonus or Recuperation were not shown graphically, for example?

It seems like with each passing year more of the rules of the game become visible elements of the user interface. Hopefully the same will hold true next year.