OT - Dominions: Preists, Prophets & Pretenders

[Pocus]

Alneyan :
About auto-combat :

Actually the main point about auto-combat is that Dominions is designed strongly to be played in parallel turn processing, like the simultaneous mode in SE IV, so direct combat control is impossible. You can argue that SE IV sports also a tac engine in which you can controls directly your units in solo play. I would counter-argue saying that Malfador spent time to devise this dual system, whereas Illwinter spent time to allows precise scripting in auto-combat mode

I must says that I was rather frustrated by auto-combat in SE IV. Direct command in solo play is really funny, but in the other hand having your ships behave correctly in pbem is quite a problem (most of the people dont know how not to glass a planet and capture it instead in pbem). Well I'm not very experienced in pbeming with SE IV, but what held me a bit was that (and the fact that the game is darn too slow).

Dominions in pbem is fast paced enough, and this is a boon for the pbem community. Generally speaking a very mature and old empire is an empire which Last 50 turns (and games can hit the 100th turns if opponents are the resources to recovers from the blows).

As Nerfix said also, Dominions games are geared toward the control of several hundreds units. It is not rare to have formations of 200 pikeneers for example. Imagine the mess of having precise control of that bunch in solo play

About lack of control when reviewing the battle :
Can it be that you dont use the pause key (space bar). When the game is paused, you can see to your heart's content the current values of your troops. And this is where SE IV lack : in recorded battles, SE IV ships only shows the nominal statistics, not the current ones. In Dominions VCR, you see the actual values of each units, round after round !

I'm dont want to start a silly comparison SE IV versus doms. This is not my point. I just want to point out that Dominions can stand proud in the little pool of turn based pbem with simultaenous turn processing (which is the only mode IMO that enables true multiplayer).

Last one about tac combat : there is 10 speed at dominions. 9 is very very fast, 1 is the default, and 0 is the step by step. You should be able to view correctly the doms battle with these infos. Frankly I never had a problem understanding what happened in a recorded battle. Perhaps you feel lost because the game is incredibly rich when it comes to spell effects and combat parameters. It really beat AOW 2 to the ground with that.

just an example for the ones which never played dominions : you can cast an overland spell against a province which reduce drastically the temperature. If you engage in battle, you will see that your cold blooded foe (lizardmen for examples) fatigue much faster. On the other hand, winter wolves spirits are stronger, and their frost aura is deadlier.
Just one example amongst perhaps 200, about the richness of this game.

Pocus - dominions addict.

[ September 12, 2003, 08:07: Message edited by: Pocus ]