Quote:
Originally Posted by BigDaddy
I agree that MP can get monotonous. Novel approaches don't always pay off in MP (I'm tempted to say rarely pay off, but you can get some done early and mid-game I think). You can successfully use them SP.
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One more perspective not yet voiced in this thread: I outgrew the single-player challenge explicitly offered by this game pretty early... but probably not before I'd gotten my $60's worth. I don't happen to be interested in inventing new challenges for myself in single-player Dominions 3 (although I've done that in other games in the past--Battleships Forever, for instance!) so I moved right on to the multiplayer mode.
And... in the multiplayer mode, I do nothing but fun exploration. Or "experimentation", as some might call it. Every few turns I invent some big new strategy for myself, in every multiplayer game I'm in. I've been doing this continually for years, and I still don't entirely know how to play the game. I haven't won a single multiplayer game yet, but I've given my opponents a good challenge, and I almost always have fun. I try to use magic items and spells I haven't used before. There are still dozens of spells whose effects I've never even seen! This game is all about invention and exploration, for me. I see others using strategies they seem to have copied from others. I don't read any guides, I make up my own plans, and as often as not, I win my fights. What happens if you forge and try to effectively use twenty of
this rarely-used item? What happens if you pour heavy resources into repeated casting of
this obscure spell? What happens if you cast
these three powerful, battlefield-wide enchantments at the same time? It is possible to be a player who regularly asks these questions in multiplayer, and gets answers, and has fun doing it, and doesn't totally suck as a result.
In other war games, you usually have to know and practice the "right" way to do things in order to be competitive. In Dominions 3, there is so much complexity even at the most basic level of play that continuous exploration itself seems to be a fundamental part of the "right" way to play, and would be so even if all any player wanted was to win. If everybody was required to attend a full-time, four-year training program to familiarize them with all the basic spells and combinations of spells and so forth before they could enter the multiplayer league, then making up all your own strategies probably wouldn't be a winning... strategy. But I can tell you, the players I've encountered (including me) are not that good at this game. Maybe some players here are, but I think most are not even close. This isn't Starcraft and if you think you know the perfect "build order" for a situation then I would be glad to try to prove you wrong. In multiplayer Dominions 3, there is plenty of room for messing around in the service of victory!