Machaka-What are they?

[Kristoffer O]

Of course we nerfed them too much No point in nerfing too little. We like nerfing.

Actually the nerfing is not on Caelum, but on the storm-flight-archer complex.

[Daynarr]

Originally posted by Pocus:
worshippers of a Spider Queen, which have pointy ears and a dark skin, and which use wrist attached poisonous crossbows?

not very original I would say. Hope thats something else?

Machaka is nothing like Dark elves and no spider queens or such in site. They just use spiders instead of normal horses. And they are very powerful indeed. I played them in Last game and I kicked some serious ... (censored ) with them. They have more then just those spider thingies with them. A large variety of spell casters that cover almost all skill in magic and (I think the only thing missing is blood magic) and special troops that wear spider armor and 2 weapons (spider warriors I think they are called, since they wear some sort of spider armor which is much stronger then normal armor and not as cumbersome as Ulm armor) - something like human Lord Warden commanders but more protection (and they are standard troops). Another thing is that they have access to almost cheapest shortbows in game, which gives them an early edge, and they DO have heavy infantry (protection 19) so they don't suffer from frontal melee attacks like Man does.

These nations themes seems really interesting. Just hope that Ulm will not draw the shortest straw once again with theses.

Don't know what problems Ulm had in Dominions I (didn’t play a lot of it, unfortunately) but if it's any indication in all games I play, Ulm is usually the strongest power there is. It even kicked the crap out of Ermor in one of those games (they did it alone, and Caelum only arrived at the end to pick the leftovers) and if you play without Ermor they are mostly 1st-2nd place.

[Nerfix]

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
Of course we nerfed them too much No point in nerfing too little. We like nerfing.

Actually the nerfing is not on Caelum, but on the storm-flight-archer complex.

Okay, i might be paranoid, but few things you have said imply that Caelum has been severely nerfed.

[Pocus]

Nerfix : We know that your love of Caelum render you partial. See they are so powerful that you wouldnt dare play against them I'm sure... anyway it is not our decision to nerf or not nerf, so we'd better take the adjustments philosophically...

Daynarr : The problem with Ulm is that they lack long standing power. Initially they are powerful, but will fold rapidly against any marginally competent magic using player.

We are all happy to have soon Doms II, but ... I have to raise 2 issues :

I dont want to be accusative, but to test play balance, you ought to test it up and including the end game, and with human opponents. It is easy to says that race are equilibrated, if test beds are made either against a computer, or with games which are stopped at turn 40. But I'm speaking of end game equilibrium here, the ones where you see armies of 150 summer lions, and scripting of your 100 mages into battles (any big map with 40% site frequency lead to that, nothing extraordinary in these settings).

Dunno if the beta team of illwinter tested much this, because this is the kind of thing which is not done over a week end. When you comes to these extremities of a game, then some flaws appears which are not perceived before. For example the hassle of having to script dozen of mages is perhaps not perceived so intensively by IW, because you need to play a game during 100+ hour playing time, against players which play competively to the point that not indulging yourself into micromanagment is certain death.

My point is ... does Dominions II performs better in the end game, speaking of game balance and mage scripting than Doms I (2 issues here) ? I never read on the dom 2 progress page anything about new interface dealing with the scripting of mages in battles for example.

[ September 19, 2003, 17:15: Message edited by: Pocus ]

[johan osterman]

Originally posted by Pocus:
Nerfix : We know that your love of Caelum render you partial. See they are so powerful that you wouldnt dare play against them I'm sure... anyway it is not our decision to nerf or not nerf, so we'd better take the adjustments philosophically...

Daynarr : The problem with Ulm is that they lack long standing power. Initially they are powerful, but will fold rapidly against any marginally competent magic using player.

We are all happy to have soon Doms II, but ... I have to raise 2 issues :

I dont want to be accusative, but to test play balance, you ought to test it up and including the end game, and with human opponents. It is easy to says that race are equilibrated, if test beds are made either against a computer, or with games which are stopped at turn 40. But I'm speaking of end game equilibrium here, the ones where you see armies of 150 summer lions, and scripting of your 100 mages into battles (any big map with 40% site frequency lead to that, nothing extraordinary in these settings).

Dunno if the beta team of illwinter tested much this, because this is the kind of thing which is not done over a week end. When you comes to these extremities of a game, then some flaws appears which are not perceived before. For example the hassle of having to script dozen of mages is perhaps not perceived so intensively by IW, because you need to play a game during 100+ hour playing time, against players which play competively to the point that not indulging yourself into micromanagment is certain death.

My point is ... does Dominions II performs better in the end game, speaking of game balance and mage scripting than Doms I (2 issues here) ? I never read on the dom 2 progress page anything about new interface dealing with the scripting of mages in battles for example.

You seem to be under the impression that we do not play dominions, or that we do not play competively. The scripting is more or less identical. We usually finish our PBEMs before turn 60, one way or the other. So the scripting problem is perhaps not as obvious to us as it is to someone playing the way you and your friends do. But the thing is illwinter is short on resources and manpower, most of the changes and additions are made from the perspective of our playing style, not because illwinter is evil and do not care about your opinions, but because lack of manpower forces us (in this particular and many similar cases JK) to prioritise between new additions, the additions and changes that win out are most often the ones that affect dominions 2 the way we play it, rather perhaps than changes that would improve the game for people playing single player games or games on huge resource rich maps. Now once again this is not done out of disrespect for your opinions but simply because the game wouldnt have been made if it wasnt fun to make and the changes felt relevant to the developers. Dom 2 is a game that is made to be enjoyable to us and our friends, with the hope that other people will share our tastes, and thus play and buy the game.

In short empire management is easier than it was in dom 1, battle scripting is much the same. Micromanagemtn is reduced in some areas, not significantly in all.

I'll hope you will enjoy it anyway.

[ September 19, 2003, 18:05: Message edited by: johan osterman ]

[Nerfix]

Ummm...
I considere the fact that i will have to produce less A4(papere) pollution a significant thing...
And yes, i'm talking about national overview.

[licker]

While the topic of Mirco has been brought up...

Empire management has been made easier you say, is there a place to see what the changes are? Or can they be quickly elaborated here?

Are there improvements to the army screen, in as far as assigning troops to commanders and setting up the orders/positions for the units and comanders?

Is there an overview of all comanders, sortable by magic/command/piety/...? This one would be of great use I'd imagine as once you get a decent sized empire you have so many commanders running around its hard to keep track of them all. It'd be even nicer if you could issue orders to the commanders directly from an overview screen, rather than having to go to the province they are in and select them there.

Is there any way to give sequntial orders to commanders? For example you have a new sage with different magic schools that you want to search 5 or 6 provinces. Can you set him to do so automatically? Can you give sequential orders so he will search/move/search/move/... without having to be ordered each turn?

Don't take these as complaints or criticisms, they are just questions or suggestions (though its a bit late for any new implementations to the code I'd imagine, short of future patches).

I really gave MoO3 and its Macro approach a long shake, and while in the end I turned away from MoO3, it wasn't due to the Macro approach (it had more to do with broken or missing features), I'd be really really happy if Dom2 added more macro abilities. The tediousness of keeping track of a large empire with potentially 100s of commanders is right now my only concern with Dom2, not to say I won't get it and enjoy the hell out of it, just that I think more Marco control is a good thing