Demo any good for multiplayer test?

[Innocence]

Hi

We've been looking for a substitute for Stars! for some time, and many people have suggested Dom2. But before we order copies for the entire group, we'd like to try a single game or two with the demo.
My question now is: Will the demo give us a good impression of what a Dom2 multiplayer game is like? What are the limitations of the demo compared to the full Version?
Also, if I download the demo now, is it patched to the 2.11 Versions (it seems a lot of bugs were corrected with the current patch.

[Gandalf Parker]

As far as I know the demo isnt patched. But then it is a stable Version. We had a few patches that broke a race, the next patch fixed it and broke another.

It has a 40 turn limit but the maps that come with it are fairly small so it should definetly give the right impression on game play. I would leave out Ermor and the water nations as AI opponnents if you plan to have any in your game. They require specialized handling to take them out so they can give a misleading impression of imbalance. An independent setting of 3 or 4 is good for new players that are all human. 5 or 6 is more human normal and is definetly recommended if all the players are human.

[Jondifool]

As the demo allows for every thing in the game
except playing half the races, taking more than 40 game turns and research past 4 level in any spell class, the demo is absolutly suitble to try out for a mp game.
And I dare to say it without having played a MP game yet

[ceremony]

You should get a good idea of how the game plays via m/p. Unfortunately, the research cap really gimps the game, so you won't get a good idea of all the possibilities. But to just see how the game plays, the demo is fine. It has a similar feel to Stars! I suspect that if you liked that game enough to be regular players of m/p, you'll love Dominions II.

[PhilD]

You can play a multiplayer game with the demo (in fact, my first MP game started as a demo game, though we all moved to the full Version rather quickly).

The possible problem is, the demo isn't (AFAIK) patched to the same level as the full game, so that if you play in MP using the demo, each player has to use the same Version - they may use the full game (and if so, will get more nation/research options), but everybody has to use the same Version (I think the demo Version is 2.08).

I don't know what were the main bugs that were corrected in 2.11, but I know there's a feature I'd sorely miss if I had to revert to 2.08: the fast battle replays...