[Endoperez]

onomastikon said:
- Priests and preaching. Did Priests get nerfed? I *loved* the preaching element of Dom2, but Dom3 preaching seems nerfed, since priests all have 1 level lower. (I saw that priest spells are all lowered one level, makes sense, but I dont understand when you "cannot raise the dominion of this province by preaching". Obviously, the rules have changed, but the demo doesnt say how.)

The manual tells how preaching works. Basically, 30% chance per priest level of increasing own dominion, or lowering enemy dominion, in the province the priest is at. If there's a temple in the province, all preaching priests are counted as if they had one more priest level for preaching. Enemy dominion lowers the chance of successful increase by 5% per level of enemy dominion.

This wasn't documented in Dominions II, so I can't tell if and how this has changed.

- Balance.
1) I couldnt tell from the demo, since there was no info and it is very short, and you can't research past level 4, I was never able to make Life Stealing items: How does life steal work now? I heard it was different?
2) Summons. Like I said, the demo is very limited, I couldnt really tell if at higher levels Summons was just as (over)powered as in Dom2.
3) Economy. In the demo, on regular settings, it seemed I had tons and tons of cash, but the prices for units were similar to Dom2. The prices of buildings were much higher, however. Is this an "Age" thing? (Are buildings cheaper later, gold less common?) Is gold supposed to be so common?
4) Units. Well, I only got to see a couple of races, but I was a bit confused. Agartha said it is a race of poor amphibians, but all the ones I recruited were full amphibs. I could even buy PD underwater! And none of them need to eat?? Is there consensus that this is ok, or what's the deal? I also saw in that monkey race that I can buy an archer for 9 gold 3 recourses with a short bow and 10 precision, or a bigger ape archer for 20 gold and 4 resources with the same bow and less precision. I think the cheaper archer was also stealthy? Why would I ever want the more expensive one? Well I suppose all that is no matter, really, just confused me a bit....

1) Life-draining weapons are weaker now. The life-drain only happens from the first 5 points of damage they deal. Natural attacks that drain life have been kept as-is. The manual lists Wraith Sword as Death 4 now. However, item prices have been redone, so it only costs 25 gems. The new costs are 5, 10, 15, 25, and perhaps 40, 65 after that.

2) Which summons in particular? Devils are weaker. Elemental Kings and Queens, as an example, are now higher in the research tree than they used to be. It takes a higher-level mage to summon a Bane Lord. Ghost Riders is more expensive. Expensive summons will still be able to kill lots of basic national units, of course.

3) Increased gold is one of the bigger chances. There's considerably more gold in the world of Dominions. And as you noticed, all buildings are much more expensive. Amount of gold doesn't change with ages AFAIK, but the amount of resources and magic sites does. The defaults can be changed, of course.

4) Even the smallest Agarthans are size 3. That means smaller units have easier time ganging up on them, and swarming works better in Dominions 3 because each attack after the first lowers defence by 2 instead of 1 it used to.
Agarthans have many strong abilities. They have Darkvision 100, they are amphibious and strong, and have some natural protection and higher than average magic resistance. They are also very long-lived, and all Agarthans have Siege Bonus, and they don't consume supplies. However, they have just one eye (so Eye Shields are deadly against them), they are cold-blooded and DON'T prefer hot lands, their precision is weak, and their attack and defence ratings are much worse than those of humans or other similar creatures. They are tough, yes, but that doesn't help if they can't kill their enemies.
Kailasa was your other concern. Atavi Archers are stealthy, yes, but it's just Stealth +0, and they have horrible morale of 8. Magic resistance is also weak, and they are animals and thus subjectible to few more effects than members of most other races, but that's a weakness they share with Bandar. Bandar Archers have Longbows, not Shortbows as you thought, and they have morale of 12. They also have good hitpoints, strength and attack, and are armed with maces instead of daggers, so they can kill any enemies that reach them. In later Ages, you can recruit armored versions of both Atavi and Bandar Archers, but Vanara Archers aren't stealthy. The armored Bandar Archers have a more spesific use as a dual archers/melee combatants, although I haven't gotten that spesific strategy work very well yet. With Bandar Archers, at least.

- Buildings. Do starting forts have to do with your starting nation or the starting terrain?

Manual lists the forts different nations starts with, and the forts they build in spesific terrains. They are different. A nation always starts with the same castle, regardless of the terrain they start in, but they often start in areas of spesific terrain.

- UI. When I click "view battle", my screen would go dark for about 5-8 seconds before playing. Is that normal? And "e" now automatically generates a turn instead of giving that secondary screen.

Instead of dark screen, you should see the map zooming in to the province the battle took place in, then fading out and changing into the battlefield. You can press Esc to jump over the fading. Something from the options also disables fading, but I'm not sure which fading and where. It might help.
Others have mentioned their dislike for the new "e" as well. The turn is, in theory at least, possible to calculate from the season icon in top-right corner of the main view.

- Random Map Generator. Does everybody like this? I thought it was a nice idea, but the maps I got were just no comparison to the good, human-made maps I had for Dom2 (strange borders, chokepoints, etc.).
Does the full version come with some more human-made maps?

Random maps CAN'T be comparable to good human-made maps. Dominions 3 random maps are pretty good, as far as random maps go. But you are right, well-made maps are always better than random maps.

Full version comes with more human-made maps. Old DomII maps are also supposed to work with Dom3, but it seems all don't. Move your old DomII maps into appopriate Dom3 folder and see what happens.

- AI. Like I said, I will mostly be playing SP. I know this is an MP game, and MP Dom2 was awesome, but I found other games better in SP. Dom3 is supposed to have better AI. I couldnt see this in the demo. It still prefers chaff, it still flails about aimlessly without a real plan, and it still builds weird pretenders.
OK, it seems to make forts, but even these are put in the strangest of places, seemingly at random, without regard for strategic need.
Well I just goofed about without really trying much, and even with the 40-turn limit I trounced the "Mighty AI" easily.
Are there any SP players out there with any opinions from the full version?

I can't help you with this last question. I was part of the beta, and as such haven't played DomII in ages. There are various changes, though. As an example, AI has stomped some of my armies just by having some cavalry start on the sides of the battlefield and ordering them to Attack Rear. Finding out that AI can do that is a nasty surprise!