Move Along, Nothing to See Here

[Fyron]

After having played the demo (edit: of Dominions 1! Oops! ) a bit...

Dominions is too complicated in areas that should be simple, and too simple in areas that should be complicated. The interface is one of the worst offenders. Most of the game's information is not presented in a very well designed manner. Too many times am I left wondering "what the hell just happened," "what the hell does this do?" or "how does this work?" There are no global reports to be found, at all. There is no way to tell a territory to repeatedly build some units. You have to click many many times to do so. I have no idea at all how the tax incomes are figured out, and there is nothing in the game to indicate how such is arrived. It seems loosely based on population, but that is obviously not all there is too it. I also have no idea why they seem to vary from turn to turn. The resources my territories have vary over time, for no reason that I can see. Often, I will have some territories that NEVER recruit any units, no matter how large of a gold surplus I have. And yes, they do have some resource production. A lot of the log Messages the game sends are lacking in useful information. There is no way I can figure out to match the name of a nation to its territory, flag, or anything it possesses. This is just poor game design. There should at the very least be a window you can access that displays all empire names next to their flags. Starting a new game just to figure out which empire is which is an absurd solution. Even with maximal useage of gold income and as much expansion as can be done, the AI still manages to ammass several times as many units as I ever can. Even when I manage to defeat their forces that are attacking me, they just bring in 2-3 times as many as they just lost, in the next turn or two. I am thinking it has hidden cheating bonuses to income and such so over used in games... The unrest level of territories doesn't seem to be very consistent. There are too many undefined options for the orders for your troops in combat. There is no simple indicator telling you whether you have troops in a territory or not on the map. There should also be a separate indicator telling you whether you have heroes or not there. I could go on, but I shall stop here. All in all, Dominions 1 come up lacking to me. It does have some nice ideas, but the game seems rather unsophisticated.

[ January 07, 2004, 03:09: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[SurvivalistMerc]

Fyron,

Many of your concerns are in fact addressed as you become more familiar with the game. But I will be the first to admit that there is quite a learning curve. If the documents were good, they would have all the nations with units listed with their flags in color, right? Well...the documents aren't that good...but the in-game help is at least acceptable.

I will have to concede some of your points on the interface. But information like what troops are in an enemy territory will probably be put into the basic province info in the patch as multiple players have mentioned this. Well...one can hope.

Tax income is simple...just add all the incomes of all the provinces you control plus all the gold-generating structures you possess. Why does it vary from turn to turn? Dominion, positive or negative. From your favorable dominions of order, growth, and productivity you will get additional income. Lucky events can also add to your income for a particular year or subtract from it if you are unlucky.

Resources also vary with dominion. There are moreover some really, really bad events that cost you population on a permanent basis.

What information would you like to see in log Messages? Just curious. A number of additions which would not be all that difficult (I wouldn't think) have been proposed by various players.

To correlate nations with flags...this is easy...just go to "score graphs." Hover your mouse over the flag you are interested in in the graph legend. And you will see what flag corresponds to which nation.

The AI will often amass cheap units that aren't all that great in large number. Especially Ermor. The other AIs don't know how to deal with Ermor, so I would just exclude that nation from SP games. If you are building resource-intensive troops and your enemy is building non-resource intensive troops it will be easy for them to amass more of an army than you can. Also, if they have many more territories than you do...well...they will have more income and more centers of troop production. I disagree...I don't detect any hidden cheating bonus. Keep in mind that troops may be summoned as well as bought.

There is a very simple indicator of whether you have troops in a territory. Look at the territory (assuming you own it). If you have troops there, you will see a blue rectangle of one size or another. The size corresponds roughly to the number of your troops.

You are the first person I have ever heard call dominions unsophistocated. I beg to differ with this assessment.

[Lord Hammer]

Funny, when i first stumbled upon the demo i thought it was a tad overwhelming but i had nothing to do so i stuck with it for a couple days. I then realized...Wow, there is so much variety and just as i got good at the first race i played, the demo ended . I needed more! I spent time learning the rather unintuitive interface and surfed this site for help and "Game Over?". So i bought it LOVE IT! I'm still learning and i don't know if it will ever get redundant. The Last time i almost overlooked a game due to it's apparent over-complexity was also a game put out by an independant publisher that is STILL on my hard drive...Space Empires IV Both games IMHO are very sophisticated .

[PvK]

Ya, the game is not unsophisticated, but the interface and game systems are neither immediately intuitive, nor transparent and simple. (If tax were a direct function of population, _that_ would be unsophisticated.) It just takes some learning to figure things out. Then, almost everything Fryon mentioned is addressed pretty well - he just hasn't found or figured out many things yet.

The AI "level" determines the build bonus. Use Easy if you want to have a good chance as a newbie. I believe "normal" is the non-cheat level, and anything above that gives the AI a bonus.

PvK

[Dekent]

I always thought it was pretty obvious, or at least easy to learn which flag=what country....

I mean...Abyssia is red with a fire on it...they are fire people...

Atlantis is blue with a trident on it...seems obvious if youve ever seen 'the little mermaid' hehe

Ermor has a bloody SKULL on it...skull...undead?

Ulm has the moon, night....dark, black, Ulms armor =)

Caelum has snow..Ryleh has astral (mind flayers anyone?)...and so on...other then the new countries they are easy to learn once you play a little bit.


Some of your other concerns are valid however, and I belive (hope to god) they are being worked on in the new patch, especially the click click click obsession.

[licker]

Woah Nellie!!!

Not to be rude Fryon (but it'll come off that way...) but did you actually take any time at all to check the filters and the different screens for national information? There is a screen (F3?) that shows nation, god, and flag. There is a filter to show the presense of troops and comanders on the main map. F1 will also allow you to see provincial information in more detail, and link you to the province you want to look at more closely, and too any commander you may want to issue new orders to.

Anyway, there is a level of micro, though its a far cry from the micro found in other games. I'm not sure why it bothers people that they can't calculate their income or resources quickly and easilly since it really doesn't matter all that much, the values are clearly shown, and since the unrest level and scale level effects them changes in those areas will impact the values from turn to turn. I will grant that the documentation for the demo is poor, and that even the manual with the full game is barely adequate, but its not really that difficult to figure it out, or read one of the new player threads here.

If you care to I suggest you take another look at the game with a more open mind and a more rigerous approach in using all the filters and info screens, the info is there, and fairly easilly accessed once you find the appropriate hot keys (my Favorites are F1 and F5...).

[Fyron]

Tax income is simple...just add all the incomes of all the provinces you control plus all the gold-generating structures you possess.

Erm... I was talking specifcally about in individual provinces, not globally. *note that this is now obseleted by later complaints of poor interface design*

What information would you like to see in log Messages? Just curious. A number of additions which would not be all that difficult (I wouldn't think) have been proposed by various players.

I do not recall off the top of my head, but there were a lot of log Messages that lacked anything specific about the event, just stating that it occured.

To correlate nations with flags...this is easy...just go to "score graphs." Hover your mouse over the flag you are interested in in the graph legend. And you will see what flag corresponds to which nation.

That is a poor design choice. The name of the nation should be shown in many locations, not just a score graph. It should especially be shown when looking at their territory. As it is, you have to memorize every flag with the nation name. This is unecessarily complicated.

The AI will often amass cheap units that aren't all that great in large number. Especially Ermor. The other AIs don't know how to deal with Ermor, so I would just exclude that nation from SP games. If you are building resource-intensive troops and your enemy is building non-resource intensive troops it will be easy for them to amass more of an army than you can.

They still amass large numbers of resource-intensive troops, and it doesn't matter if I build resource-cheap troops.

[quote]Also, if they have many more territories than you do...well...they will have more income and more centers of troop production. [/qoute]Well of course. I am not talking about a huge empire compared to a small one, but equal sized empires, even when they have worse provinces.

I disagree...I don't detect any hidden cheating bonus.

I certainly do.

Keep in mind that troops may be summoned as well as bought.

These were not summoned troop types.

There is a very simple indicator of whether you have troops in a territory. Look at the territory (assuming you own it). If you have troops there, you will see a blue rectangle of one size or another. The size corresponds roughly to the number of your troops.

Umm... I said, on the map itself. So you can see the relative levels of troops in ALL territories at once, not have to clumsily select all of them at once. SE4 suffers from this as well, though it is not as big of an issue there because the system map is the game, whereas there is no territory map at all in Dominions.

You are the first person I have ever heard call dominions unsophistocated. I beg to differ with this assessment.

"Unsophisticated" was the most polite term to come to mind when writing that... perhaps you would prefer "unpolished" or "unweildy." At least it is not as bad as MOO3...

Ya, the game is not unsophisticated, but the interface and game systems are neither immediately intuitive, nor transparent and simple. It just takes some learning to figure things out. Then, almost everything Fryon mentioned is addressed pretty well - he just hasn't found or figured out many things yet.

Funny, hardly any of the things I have mentioned sound like they are address well at all (if even addressed) from the responses so far.

(If tax were a direct function of population, _that_ would be unsophisticated.)

The problem is that the game seems to use some randomness in determining it, which is silly.

The AI "level" determines the build bonus. Use Easy if you want to have a good chance as a newbie. I believe "normal" is the non-cheat level, and anything above that gives the AI a bonus.

Hmm... so it does have cheating bonuses... Anyways... it sure doesn't seem to play fairly at the normal level.

I always thought it was pretty obvious, or at least easy to learn which flag=what country....

It is the very fact that you have to do that memorization to even think about interacting with them that is the problem. There is only one hidden screen that shows the correlation. It is not any fun to get Messages from an AI and have no idea which empire it is that sent it on the game map because there is no good way of figuring that out. Not even showing enemy troops or engaging in combat has the enemy's name! Just a flag. Ridiculous.

Some of your other concerns are valid however

All of my concerns are "valid." They may have answers (and I hope they do, in fact), but they are still perfectly valid concerns. I take offense to your insinuations.

Not to be rude Fryon (but it'll come off that way...) but did you actually take any time at all to check the filters and the different screens for national information? There is a screen (F3?) that shows nation, god, and flag.

Sorry, hitting random function keys to figure out which race has which flag never occured to me. As I said before: "Not even showing enemy troops or engaging in combat has the enemy's name! Just a flag. Ridiculous."

Actually... none of the function keys do anything for me. No info screens pop up at all. So no, I did not check any info screens, as none are accessible to me.

There is a filter to show the presense of troops and comanders on the main map.

That purple and red box? Rather silly icon for a button if you ask me. There is no way to know what that is trying to show you unless you want to take hours figuring it out. This is a disturbing trend in this game, and makes for a rather poor demo.

F1 will also allow you to see provincial information in more detail, and link you to the province you want to look at more closely, and too any commander you may want to issue new orders to.

And I am supposed to know these magic hotkeys how? I see no in-game help of any sort, anywhere. I have no desire to spend my time reading a 60 page pdf manual for a demo. A demo should be easy to use, to show off the game. It should not be confusing! There is not even a basic tutorial to get you going. Unsophisticated, unpolished, lacking.

Anyway, there is a level of micro, though its a far cry from the micro found in other games.

No, there is no level of micro. There is only tedium where there should not be. You can not do any micromanaging. The kind of stuff you do is not approaching micromanagement.

I'm not sure why it bothers people that they can't calculate their income or resources quickly and easilly since it really doesn't matter all that much, the values are clearly shown, and since the unrest level and scale level effects them changes in those areas will impact the values from turn to turn.

Planning ahead? Not having to react? Being able to know how many troops you will be able to support and build _easily_ without having to guess? Having a feeling of being a part of the empire you are in control of? There are many reasons.

Scale level? Are you referencing the various empire attributes?

I will grant that the documentation for the demo is poor, and that even the manual with the full game is barely adequate, but its not really that difficult to figure it out, or read one of the new player threads here.

Yes it is. If it were easy to figure out, I would never have written this post. Being forced to read Online sources just to figure out how to do the basics of a demo is again not what a demo is supposed to be like at all. You should be able to just sit down and start playing, and have a decent chance at surviving. Illwinter has a lot to learn about how there is beauty in simplicity.

If you care to I suggest you take another look at the game with a more open mind and a more rigerous approach in using all the filters and info screens, the info is there, and fairly easilly accessed once you find the appropriate hot keys (my Favorites are F1 and F5...).

That is another indication of a very poor interface. There are no buttons for any of these, no menus, nothing. Just phantom links waiting for hotkeys without reference. At the very least there should be a "game" menu that has "links" to all of those screens.

There are not very many filters (4 in fact), and half of them are not even useful filters for gathering more information. The only useful filter is the troop size one, which doesn't look anything like what it does. At the least it should have a picture of a troop, not just a purple and red box, as its icon.

So overall... my complaints boil down to (mostly) one thing: this game has an extremely poor, unpolished (dare I say unsophisticated?) interface that makes it much harder to get into than it should be. Very elementary mistakes were made in designing it that give it a very unprofessional feel.

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:

So overall... my complaints boil down to (mostly) one thing: this game has an extremely poor, unpolished (dare I say unsophisticated?) interface that makes it much harder to get into than it should be.

Sucks huh.

Still best computer strategy game I've ever played so you can't be to picky.

If you like really deep, challenging, highly imaginative games with a deep logic to them its worth the effort.

Cheers

Keir

[Fyron]

Oh dear... that was the Dominions 1 demo, not the Dominions 2 demo... boy is my face red. Guess I should get the Dominions 2 demo now... pretend I said "Dominions 1" everywhere I said "Dominons 2"... lets hope Illwinter has gotten their act together in the second incarnation... I still don't see what the big fuss was over Dominions 1...

[Saber Cherry]

Hahahahahaha.... Oh, man... that was funny! I was wondering why the "F" keys didn't work, and the red/purple box button, and so on... it was almost like you were playing a different game.

Edit: Which is not to say that Dominions II seems slick and professional, or that its high points are interface and intuitiveness, or even that it has an in-game tutorial yet. And the designers still expect you to sort of "know" certain things, like how a god's magic levels, scale settings, and dominion strength will affect the game. But it is certainly much better than Dominions I in terms of giving the player feedback... well, I hope you like it!

-Cherry

[ January 06, 2004, 06:53: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]