Some more praise for dominions 3!!

[TheBigBlueBox]

I just felt I needed to post about how fun this game has turned out to be. I've played many strategy games, but this has got to be the deepest, most fun strategy game I've ever played.

Here's my scenario and why this was an epiphany for me...

I started as Early Age Atlantis on a large 200 province map with 6 normal defensive opponents. At first I thought okay, no tactical combat, no diplomacy... not much of a 4x game. Boy was I wrong. I eventually conquered all the independents on the water, and then the fun really began. I started to bring my troops across onto the land and battle the other pretenders.

I thought I was cruising, pretender after pretender fell to my mighty armies. Research was cruising along and I soon maxed out (I need set research to slower on larger maps with lots of magic sites). Then it was down to me, Atlantis and Caelum. I thought Caelum would just lay down and die, like so many AI opponents in so many strategy games, but this wasn't the case! I started getting complacent, thinking the AI would never catch up, but not only did it do just that.. this supposedly "defensive" AI started launching attacks and while at first it couldn't break through my province defense (best feature EVER in a strategy game such as this, taking micromanagement out of province defense is utter genius).

Sooner or later though, attacks increased dramatically and soon the AI not only stopped my advance but pushed me back... and then he launced a global enchantment that killed my pretender, who I buffed significantly and had amazing skill levels. Now I'm backed against a wall, Caelum is pushing me back (beating provinces with 125 province defense!), and my pretender needs to be called back. I just couldn't believe the AI could muster some of the armies that it did. I couldn't believe that it managed to handle it's magic use in such a way to really hurt me (and I had multiple global enchants going killing his heroes!) While part of the problem is Atlantis can't recruit their troops in land-based forts, it's really no excuse.

The point I'm trying to make is that in most strategy games, if you establish yourself AIs usually can't pick themselves back up. I got complacent and the AI made me pay.

Bravo Illwinter... I can't wait for what's in store with the patches!