The possibility of partnership.

[Meglobob]

I would love to see a partnership between Stardock/Illwinter, I am a big fan of both GC2 and Dom3. The only reason I bought/knew about Dom3 was Brad Wardell giving his personal recommedation to try/buy Dom3 on the Stardock website.

It seems to me from what I have read on this forum and Stardocks that those two companies would complement each another very well with a partnership.

Kristoffer and Johan seem to really enjoy creating, putting new content, features into the Dom3 series more than anything else. They also seem to do it mostly from the enjoyment of doing it than from huge finiancial gain.

Brad on the other hand loves doing AI, he has been called one of the best AI creaters in the games computing industry and he is a out and out capitalist who wants to make a good product that will make loads of dosh.

So a partnership between them could bring a excellent game like Dom3 to the 'mass market', by this I mean if put on the shelves of retail outlets I think Dom3 would sell over 200,000 units if done right. The game would have both excellent AI for SP play, I could see Brad developing 10 seperate AI's, then assigning 6 nations (with small variations, like GC2) to each. Also excellent content/depth/gameplay/MP that Illwinter have already created. I also think Stardock would considerably improve the graphics/sound/music in Dom3 as well.

Of course all this is unlikely to ever happen but we can dream can we not?

[Gandalf Parker]

Ive actually known of GalCiv for longer than Ive known about Dominions. Persoanlly, Im not that thrilled with what GalCiv has become since it went windows/eye-candy. Im still waiting for it to catch up to its original OS/2 version.

Anyway, some problems I see with a partnership are...
A) they dont program in the same language
B) they dont program on the same OS
C) they dont speak the same language when discussing the programming projects. (Brad=english and Illwinter=finnish I think)
D) Brad isnt all that big on partners.

As for shelfware, there are alot of drawbacks to shelfware. It MIGHT be possible that Illwinter can now aford to test the marketing/shelfware methods but I kindof doubt it.

[Endoperez]

Gandalf Parker said:
C) they dont speak the same language when discussing the programming projects. (Brad=english and Illwinter=finnish I think)

Swedish, actually. "Något gick fel." etc.

[calmon]

Maybe as an european i know more about sweds then someone from US. From my experiences they speak a better english than many americans. They don't use bad slangs and learn english from childhood on (most of the films are in english with subtitle)

[DrPraetorious]

Shelf space in gaming stores is at such a premium at this point that it's like radio airtime - the thing that the major publishers control is access to shelf-space, and they subcontract the work of actually making the software.

So unless J+K wanted to sign themselves over to Atari or something, Electronic Boutique simply won't carry their software.

Does anyone know how many copies of dominions 3 have shipped?

[Gandalf Parker]

calmon said:
Maybe as an european i know more about sweds then someone from US. From my experiences they speak a better english than many americans. They don't use bad slangs and learn english from childhood on (most of the films are in english with subtitle)

I know this is true of europeans (in fact ther eis a funny joke about americans based on it). But I know that the games innermost circle, basically the alpha team, prefers people who talk their home toungue. Im not sure if a cross collaboration would be all that comfortable. Of course it would also help if they were all talking the same programming language, and the same operating system also.

[Gandalf Parker]

DrPraetorious said:
Shelf space in gaming stores is at such a premium at this point that it's like radio airtime - the thing that the major publishers control is access to shelf-space, and they subcontract the work of actually making the software.

Its also a big difference in publishing companies. The "shelfware and advertising" companies vs the "online and publicity" companies. The first one involves extensive pre-pay of funds by the publishing company which have to be paid back before anyone gets a profit check. Sometimes that can take years. The second one tends to be better for indie game developers IMHO.

[PhilD]

I don't think Shrapnel want to divulge that kind of information - they sold more of Dom3 than they sell of most of their games, but they don't typically say how many that is.

[PvK]

tromper said:
Welp, not that it matters much, but I completely disagree with Pvk, and concur with HoneyBadger.

As a single-player sort, over the course of weeks/months now, on the larger maps sort of guy. And not a moron. I appreciate the depth and the beauty that the designers have brought to the table.

But I don't appreciate finding myself reading a hundred posts about how screwed up Vanheim is. Nor being doinked by that nation, in single player games, time and again, in single player games. I'm not casual by any means, but the hardcore junkets many of you fly should give some ground for us middling folks that want to kick it with some excellent strategic AND MYTHOLOGICAL/HISTORICAL noise now and then.

Stardock's made money. Stardock doesn't rape. Brad's a nice guy. Speak to them and square away the balance and AI for those of us that don't play a bazillion hours per day.

I think you may have misunderstood. I don't see any reason to think that the people who made GalCiv (who chose a hugely simplistic and abstact combat system with pretty generic unit abilities) would have any special ability to improve the AI for Dominions (which has an extremely complex and detailed combat system and an extremely detailed unit database). Seems to me GalCiv has success with AI because they designed a less complex game with very different kinds of things the AI needed to do.

Now, it does seem that IW perhaps hasn't focussed its efforts on improving and tweaking the AI. If IW felt like adding resources rather than do that kind of work, I think a good match would be someone they could work with who is an AI programmer and a fan of Dominions who would be motivated to work on it on the same terms IW is.

But even though I see many ways that an Dom 3 fan AI programmer like myself could probably tweak the AI that would be really nice, on balance I think the AI in Dominions is remarkably good, considering all it has to deal with. And as a Dom player for years who has enjoyed playing single-player as much or more than playing multi-player, AI issues have rarely interfered with my enjoyment of the game in SP mode.

I'm also puzzled by the comment about Vanheim, since I have not seen the AI be so super-powerful as Vanheim. In fact, limitations on the ways the AI thinks prevent it from focusing on taking advantage of Vanheim's strengths. For example, I've played many single-player Dom 3 games and I've only seen Vanheim get particularly strong in one of them (but in that game, Oceania and I (as EA Ulm) were both stronger). And I've seen AI Pangaea dominate the map while AI Vanheim was locked up in a stalemate war.

As for reading hundreds of posts about how X, Y, and Z are atrociously imbalanced and horrendous... well, these Shrapnel Dominions forums have always (since Dom 2) been full of ridiculously exaggerating critics who rant and rave between their avid play sessions.

PvK

[Gandalf Parker]

Actually Brad Wardell has long been considered to be one of the top programmers for AI in games. Or at least one of the most mentioned for well over a decade. He was doing multi-threaded AI on the OS/2 operating system a long tieme ago and any mention of games AI in an ai newsgroup or magazine tended to mention him. WinXP was supposed to be the first Windows that finally caught up to being able to handle his AI programming altho Im not all that impressed with the windows version of his game. But his AI is excellent, and his method for incorporating it into games is as expandable as Dominions Modding.

Getting him to work on the AI for this game would be great (just the AI, and maybe the diplomacy options). But I dont think its likely to happen anymore than Brad would be likely to ask Illwinter to help him improve the balance and challenge in his game.

As for Vanheim, like I said I have never seen a problem. But then that might be because I am likely to play on large maps, with sneak nations. And on MP games with victory points.

Gandalf Parker