[cthulhu]

This is my first post in this forum. Hello.

I was a big fan of Master of Magic. A few months ago googling MoM I happened across some post by a GalCiv developer mentioning Dominions II as a sort of successor to MoM, so I downloaded the demo and started become a big fan of Dom2. Ordered Dom2 and preordered Dom3 after playing the demo for a week or so.

current self-imposed rules:
no gem-producing items (aka clam-hording)
no wising for Doom Horrors

favorite nations so far:
Jotun, Van, Pangaea, Abyssia (not R'lyeh despite my name)

favorite pretenders so far:
Ghost King, Great Enchantress, Vampire Queen, Wyrm, Great Mother

favorite spells so far:
Curse Of The Blood, Awaken Vine Ogre, Juggernaut Construction
(an infinite stream of immortal units w/ 0 upkeep for 55 blood, quite good units for only 1 nature, and a temple on wheels so that you can re-enact the tiananmen square massacre while increasing your dominion)

favorite items:
dwarven hammer, rainbow armor, chainmail of displacement, lucky coin, starshine skullcap, shield of the accursed

favorite national heroes so far: Angerboda

biggest complaints so far:
1 no way to easily access information from previous turns that is still useful
2 combat seems fairly buggy. also the relationship of combat to strategic things also seems somewhat buggy
3 combat summary reports omit important information, and are too... static. should have a simple report (that includes more info than the current report, like seperate numbers for #s of units that survived but ran away or respawned at your capital) with the option of requesting more complete information (like number of units that acquired afflictions, or a breakdown of deaths by unit types, etc)
4 strategic AI seems incapable of playing late-games
5 combat AI seems suicidal for many important units. seems like it ought to be easy to fix
6 routeing mechanics seem quite arbitrary