[Graeme Dice]

UninspiredName said:
Ah, so what you want is humans to survive three-meter radius (give or take) orbs of fire. Besides, they rarely hit their intended square anyways.

I have little problem with somebody who's survived decades of combat against armies that routinely lob fireballs around being able to survive those hits.

At any rate, between 'assassin' spells and combat magic, magic is pretty much the bane of heroes. I don't deny that, it's just the way Dominions works.

The way that the system works though is that human combat mages can gather a couple of doezen kills over their career without any gem investment and with fairly minimal danger. A human commander is virtually never going to reach that goal.

First-off, I fail to see how Dominions 3 was 'dumbed down' compared to 2.

There are a number of reasons. The morale system is still broken and still autorouts commanders when their troops die, and still kills troops that don't have a province to retreat to, yet now it even affects beings that aren't even hurt by the attacks they are experiencing. Quickness no longer affects spells, so all those mages (and there are a lot of them) that cost extra gold for W1 no longer see any benefit from that extra path. Research is at the very difficult setting by default, so that pushing armies around the map, especially armies composed of undercosted sacred troops is the best strategy for the majority of the important turns of the game.

You sound like one of the players that would rather be playing Dominions 2 if it had an active modding community.

I would. Other than the obvious interface improvements and additional nations, I think that Dom2 was a better game than Dom3.

Many times you'll be fighting elite, possibly F9-blessed men,

Commanders are not just slightly more elite than your normal troops. They have such supposedly impressive abilities that you can only recruit a single one per month.

Expecting one elite soldier to fend off groups of three somewhat less elite soldiers for an entire battle might be asking too much.

If he can't, then there's no point in his existing in the first place. That's why people use independent commanders who are cheaper and just as good at standing behind the troops.

But you forget one thing, that commanders command. Commanders may be elite warriors, yes, but that's not what most people recruit them as.

That's a game mechanic convention, nothing else.

One can recruit battle mages instead of commanders, but then battle mages would be all you have.

I wasn't aware that recruiting battle mages prevented you from recruiting independent commanders to move your troops around, becaue that's what you're arguing here.

When it comes down to it, this entire argument is a matter of taste. The way I see it, human commanders aren't meant to be on the frontlines.

Then the elite versions might as well not exist for all the gameplay effect that they have. You get more survivability and more utility out of three independent commanders than a single black lord, and they both have the same cost.