your thoughts on Dominions II

johan osterman · #1 October 28th, 2003, 12:55 AM

The falling snowflakes and multcolored christmas balls did not take a lot of time to make, JK likes them though, as they reminds him of his home at the north pole. You can shut them off in preferences. I suspect most people will.

st.patrik · #2 October 28th, 2003, 07:07 AM

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Originally posted by johan osterman:
The falling snowflakes and multcolored christmas balls did not take a lot of time to make, JK likes them though, as they reminds him of his home at the north pole. You can shut them off in preferences. I suspect most people will.

Can you shut them off without shutting off the cool scrolling landscape though?

st.patrik · #3 October 28th, 2003, 07:52 AM

I thought of one more feature which I hoped would be implemented but wasn't: Having more than one pretender for each nation. This especially makes sense since you have different themes; I may want a certain pretender with vanilla Ulm, and a very different pretender for "Iron Faith" Ulm, but as it is, I'd have to write them down and re-make whichever one I wanted in order to create a game. It's not a huge deal, but it sure is a pain in the ***.

To qualify - the improvements are really great. I hope the various negative comments aren't taken as a general negative verdict - this is not the case at all.

Pocus · #4 October 28th, 2003, 09:22 AM

well improved interface, thats really a pleasure after doms I.

you know what? most often than not, I suprise myself in try to right click to close a screen - bad habit - bad !

I concur that darker background around commanders (main map) and production screen would be more pleasant and less agressive to the eyes. I have problem seeing the edge of some units as of now.

PhilD · #5 October 28th, 2003, 09:45 AM

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Originally posted by st.patrik:

+ Zoomable map. This is great.

Missed that one.

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+ Information about province scales and level of magic searching are great - very very helpful, and a most important addition

Agree totally with this one.

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+ It tells you how many units you have in each squad in the deployment screen. This is another really helpful addition.

Agreed, but I'd like to have a text reminder with the type(s) of units as well. "5 Light Infantries, 5 Archers". Something like that, both in the squad description and in the "commander description" in the nation overview. It's awfully hard to ditinguish these units by sight; imagine how it must be for a newbie like me, when the names themselves aren't immediately linked to a set of strengths/weaknesses...

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- Now here's the big one: The units in the recruitment screen (and the commanders in the main screen) are harder to differentiate between than they were in Dom I. It is noticeably harder to tell which unit is which, because of the extremely light-coloured background they are against. This is hard on the eyes, and makes the units look like blotches. I strongly urge the developers to change the background colour to a darker shade. Darker background makes it easier to see colours, whereas light background drowns out colours. It would be great (for all our eyes, if nothing else) if this could be changed.

Once more, the unit names should be printed as well as the unit icons.

Overall, while the UI is much better than the DomI UI, I still believe it's hard on the new player.

MythicalMino · #6 October 29th, 2003, 02:38 AM

hmmm....here are some more things (little details) that i have liked...

1. it rains during the battle sequences...or did i imagine it? I could swear that there was rainfall...and, if so, does that affect the battle in any way? or is it just for looks?

2. Again, i have to say i really like the main maps...These really do look great...my wife actually said yesterday that she thought the maps were beautiful...hehe...take that as a compliment coming from someone who really couldn't care less about computer games and all...

3. Just the openness of the info...I don't have to click click click like i did before to get info on the province...like, gold and all...especially concerning the overall empre gold...

4. The nation overview...to me, this was a HUGE step up. To be able to see who is in what province....great job...

5. Love the background for the battles...I ended up fighting in one where there was fog...thought that was a great visual affect....

6. Spiders spiders and more spiders...I really do like the Machaka race....Even though i hate spiders in real life...I do lilke the Spiders inthe Machaka race...

7. A great game made even greater....I tip my hat to you guys in this one...I liked Dominions I, but this one I think has become my absolute favorite game...

MStavros · #7 October 28th, 2003, 03:10 PM

My thoughts about Doms II. in 1 sentence:

Doms II. got the worst AI what I ever seen in strategy games.

[ October 28, 2003, 13:11: Message edited by: MStavros ]