Forum and manual interaction

[Saxon]

The manual is great! It saves me a ton of time and most of the answers I need are there. I think it was a good move to publish it. One thing strikes me though. The forums tend to be quieter. I think that most of us suspect that the answers to the questions are usually in the manual, so we hesitate before posting. The discussions tend to be short “The manual says…” and there is a lot less mystery. It reminds me of the original Dungeon Masters Guide, which was fun to read, but an organizational disaster, while the new edtion rules, which are very organized, don’t have as much spark. Perhaps I am just getting older and nostalgic for the “good old days” but I am curious if others have felt the forums have a different feel to them now

[Endoperez]

Actually, there are still threads about how spesific in-game mechanics work. Shields against missiles? The manual formula is either incomplete or wrong, because shields aren't as good in deflecting missiles as it implies. Then there's Air Shield - does it protect from Blade Wind? What about magical aimed "missiles" like Frost Bolt? What about arrows from magical bows (it should)?

The difference is, this time we more often get the actual answers and the actual formulas, and furthermore, I think many more people are willing to use some of their time to test one of these remaining mysteries. I was proved wrong in blindly believing arrow deflection formula, and I'm very happy that happened.

[Twan]

Some basic mechanisms like the effects of temples on dominion spread, are wrong in the manual according to my games (but not exactly as in dom2, it seems in some cases -temple checks- base dominion is used, in others -pretender, capitol ?- actual dominion ; this or some temples "blip" are lost instead of spreading out of high dominion provinces). I would like to see an official page with the real formulaes.

[Kristoffer O]

I thought the manual explained the correct formulas. They are explained by Bruce in the manual as we believed they work when explaining to him. If something is strange with the spread it is not intentional.

[Twan]

Kristoffer O said:
I thought the manual explained the correct formulas. They are explained by Bruce in the manual as we believed they work when explaining to him. If something is strange with the spread it is not intentional.

So there is probably a bug.

I've made a little map file to test it (attached). The test is to be made with Arco EA.

In the west 10 Arco provinces 9 of them having a temple in the version 2, none having one in the version 1.
In the north east a group of 8 provinces (not linked with the others), 3 of them with a Arco temple.
In the south east a group of 7 Arco provinces (not linked with the others), including starting position.
An ermor capital not linked with any province (just to avoid arco immediate victory).

I've then tested using the version without temples and a dom 3 Arco pretender and the version with temples and a dom 1 Arco pretender (having a current dominion of 3 due to all the temples).

In my first test in the turn 11 the results are :

- temples in the west (v2) + dom1 pretender :
in the north-east region (temple spread) total of 3 candles.
in the south-east region (capitol+pretender spread) total of 21 candles since turn 9.
- no temples in the west (v1) + dom3 pretender :
in the north-east region total of 7 candles
in the south-east region total of 21 candles since turn 9

In a second test I have :
- in turn 5 with the natural dom 1 pretender having dom 3 due to temples, 0 candle in the north east
- in turn 11, 6 candles in the north east
- 21 candles in the south east in turn 11

- in turn 5 with a dom 3 pretender 3 candles in the north-east
- in turn 11 11 candles in the north east
- 21 candles in the south east since turn 10

It seems for temple checks a natural dom 3 dominion is about 2 times more efficient than a natural dom 1 + a sufficient number of temples to have dom 3, but capitol and pretender spread are about the same.

I couln't be 100% sure as with these low level dominions the spread is very random, so I've made a new test using a dom 8 pretender & temples and a natural dom 10 pretender. With the dom 10 pretender I have 33 candles in the north east in turn 11 (the logical +1 candle/temple/turn), with the dom 8 pretender only 20.

[calmon]

I reported this in the bug thread and i tested with 45 temples which should give a 100% increase chance with dom1. But it still gives only a ~10% chance.

Some coments from developer would be good. Its definitly not like the manual said.

Additional: Its not like the temple information in the game says. There are the same values like in the manual so its definitly a bug.

[PhilD]

Kristoffer O said:
I thought the manual explained the correct formulas. They are explained by Bruce in the manual as we believed they work when explaining to him. If something is strange with the spread it is not intentional.

Well, some time ago there was a thread about "live" testing to actually determine what the real mechanisms of dominion spread were. My suggestion was that, while it was very clear that "normal temple" checks don't get the 10% increase per 5 temples that is described in the manual, it's possible that this increase is actually true for the home province (and maybe prophets).

Maybe someone with actual access to the source code could check this?

[Folket]

I remember Kristoffer commented on the dominions spread in dominions 2. According to him, amount of temples only affects the spread from prentender, home and profets, temples was allways using start dominion.

Could be that this has not changed.

[Gandalf Parker]

Saxon said:
The manual is great! It saves me a ton of time and most of the answers I need are there. I think it was a good move to publish it. One thing strikes me though. The forums tend to be quieter. I think that most of us suspect that the answers to the questions are usually in the manual, so we hesitate before posting. The discussions tend to be short “The manual says…” and there is a lot less mystery. It reminds me of the original Dungeon Masters Guide, which was fun to read, but an organizational disaster, while the new edtion rules, which are very organized, don’t have as much spark. Perhaps I am just getting older and nostalgic for the “good old days” but I am curious if others have felt the forums have a different feel to them now

Everything has its pros and cons. Even things you think are great. Actually you are seeing something that there are psychiatry papers on. Some of the best were back in the days of MUDding (early multiplayer online gaming).

Some of my favorites were about classifieing different player types and laying out different ways to get more of the types you want to visit your game. One that I remember was the effect of detailed help files. The "social" player liked to help newbies, form adventuring groups, expain how things worked. The problem was that they tended to create large help files that they made available to everyone, and then disappeared from the public channels because they didnt like how the player base changed. Detailed help files cut down their satisfaction and led to more of types such as the more solo "explorer" and more verbal challenges from the "player killer" type. To get more social players in the public channels it was recommended to leave large holes in the help files.

Fun reading but almost impossible to actually do since it involved basic human nature.