Player controlled battles???

[Daynarr]

Originally posted by Nerfix:
Can the AI be...evil?
*evil cackle*

Computers are evil. Games are evil. How can AI not be evil?

[Psitticine]

The AI can definitely be evil!!!

Did it do the "rampage" thing in Dom I? In Dom II, if it realizes it can't hold secondary territories against you, it will abandon them and charge into yours, tearing down your temples, pillaging and looting, and generally demolishing your infrastructure. You're forced to chase the rampaging armies down, and they're building up front-line troops and defence levels in the meantime. Eesh! It's enough to make a Pretender Parrot weep!

Sometimes I've "counter-rampaged" and charged into their territory to mess it up while trying to stop them from what they're doing to mine. I've yet to be able to press a full assualt in the face of having my interior demolished, however. The AI seems to be able to find any hole in my defenses and slip through!

[Mortifer]

OMG, I really want to see this AI now!

[Daynarr]

That’s not all! If AI decides to go at war with you he will place his troops before that and strike at ALL your provinces he can reach simultaneously. I was attacked like that two times so far by Panganea and Atlantis (from sea!). I'll tell you, AI is BAD boy.
And even that is not all. I thought I have figured him out so when 1 of his provinces borders 2 of mine and I have army in one of them while other is undefended (only local force), I would move that army to undefended province and intercept his attack. But noooo! Now he attacks BOTH of my provinces with just enough troops to take down one of them if only my local force is defending. I’ve lost lots of provinces nearly by surprise (more like shock) that way.

Basically AI is teaching ME how to play.

[Nerfix]

And you even aren't noobs!

[WraithLord]

I really like the tac combat of DOM-I.
It's great to be able to script your forces and watch your army of hundreds of units fight a huge battle in less the 2 minutes.
I played HOMM,AOW series and such games and sure enough battles can be tedious and boring. In AOW-SM I sometimes has 20 minutes siege battles

Truth is DOM-I is the fantasy TBS game I always wanted. Only drawback is micromanage. That fixed (at least to some extent) I am sure DOM-II would be my all time favorite.
can't wait to see the new AI in action
The old one was a bit too easy, once you learned it's patterns.

[st.patrik]

If you could control your troops directly it would be a fundamentally different kind of game - RTS [Real Time Strategy] rather than TBS [Turn Based Strategy]. I personally enjoy both genres, but they are incredibly distinct. The fun of a RTS (for example, Warcraft III) is to try to micromanage your army to maximum effect, using about 6000 mouse-clicks a minute

On the other hand, the fun of a TBS is scripting a battle by giving orders ahead of time, and then seeing how well your best effort at guessing the opponent's tactics does against his best effort at guessing your's.

The two are mutually exclusive - you can't have the fun of planning how a big battle will go down if you have the fun of micromanaging your army on the spot. And they are both fun.

I would probably enjoy a RTS game which had the same units and abilities as Dominions, but it would be a completely different experience from playing Domionions itself.