[Cainehill]

Heh. Could be a lot worse. Missile troops with short range invariably run _ahead_ of other troops and get themselves killed - better for the mages to cast what might be wasted buffs, imo.

Example : Javelineers - fire closest, they won't sit still until the enemy comes within range, no they run up and get slaughtered. Another perfect example is Carrion Woods sacred archers - range of 15 means they always suicide, since there is no "Hold and shoot".

"Hold and Attack" - missile troops then charge into melee instead of using their missile weapons.

"Fire Closest" - missile troops charge forward trying to get into range.

"Guard Commander" - they don't do a thing until one of them dies, sending everyone into retreat if you try to an army of javelineers accompanying mage / archer commanders.

The _only_ effective way to use short range missile troops in conjunction with true range troops (mage, archers, etc) is to park the short rangers somewhat behind the archers / mages with no commands, so they get in front of the mages before the enemy butchers the mages - you hope you estimate enemy speeds, but on the other hand, you waste mage ability and troop ability both.

Now I've gotten back into the game for a few months, this has reminded me of one of the major reasons I left (other than WoW) : inanity in scripting options has made for some truly nutty situations, making it difficult to play as a semi-grognard or even as a drunken strategist.

In many ways Dominions 2 is _still_ a prince of TBS games, amazingly for its origions possibly a crown prince on the field. But I don't think Dominions 3 will be, unless the talent working on it is expanded - speaking as a former game designer, great ideas decline against the darwinistic competitors over time, unless they're constantly refreshed and renewed.

In my perfect world - the Dominions mechanics would be licensed by someone else while Johan et al received royalties in addition to the upfront payment. Wouldn't even need to be an exclusive license - multiple Dominions games could result, as other games have forked, with the original IP holders making money from all of them.

Hades - I could almost certainly come up with something between 4 and 10 thousand upfront myself, with a fair residual (5-10% scaling with units sold) on top. The core concept of dominion is ... awesome enough that a non-licensed clone wouldn't cut it, and something lacking dominion would feel 1 or 2 dimensional in comparison.

Maybe I'm wrong. But historical data tends to indicate that developers rarely fix fundamental flaws, prefering instead to add features and variety.