What do you like most about Dominions (top 5 list)

[Saber Cherry]

My favorite part is, as mentioned by Jasper Phillips on the IBM strategic games forum, the adult treatment of mythology. The spell descriptions are wonderful, the battle wounds are annoying, nasty, and realistic, items have amazingly cool effects and imaginative descriptions - no Swords of +3 here!

Things have drawbacks - spells cause fatigue, armor adds encumbrance an lowers evasion, long weapons are unwieldy. Crossbows pierce armor, but destroy your own valuable heavy troops. Single, vast armies starve and get hammered by spells, small armies get defeated en detail, and blood hunting destroys your tax base.

Well, those are all nice. But what I really like is the epic, realistic feel, where a lone soldier is just a lone soldier, and all units risk death... not cute death by falling of the screen or being cartoon-flattened like mushrooms in Super Mario Brothers, but horrible, bloody death, the kind you read about in non-childrenized mythology, and non-super-happy fantasy or SF books.

There're no good guys or bad guys - religiously zealous Marginon can pillage as effectively as Ash Ermor or Pangea, and paladins can rack up as many human kills as undead unkills.

I think that as a mythology simulation, Dominions is ideal. If some improvements could be made to the strategic/tactical and economic components to make them deeper (without adding MM), and of course AI, I think it could be much better... to be specific, I think it is already the best strategy game ever, but it has the potential to become the perfect fantasy strategy game, rendering all others obsolete.

-Cherry

[ November 17, 2003, 20:50: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]

[RadiantFleet]

Choices, choices

1. Depth of customization between nations. I love how their are literally features available to each nation that no other nation has. No cheesy little stat rotation (though a little cheese on top is nice!), but honestly unique abilities and attributes.

2. Depth of economics. Blood, gold, magic, dominion, summoning, and more. Each impacts the other but is not wholy dependent on another economy.

3. A real strategic feel to combat. You can specify strategy and tactics but not actual choices on the battlefield. This is great! Almost no other game gives you a true feel of being the general for a military. You are not constrained to use whatever bargain basement salad shooter got through procurement as a standard weapon, you can choose to search out find the military mix that _you_ want for your armies. In fact, you may decide that salad shooters are good weapons, especially against vine men and treelords

4. The gee wiz/that's cool factor you get from the random independents and special sites. I love finding some really cool site and changing my grand strategy because of some plum/lemon that just dropped into my lap (Hmmm, mount chaining, maybe I _will_ persue summoned troops this game).

5. The exciting pace of the game. I get the fun of building up an uber empire, but I get to have fun along the way. One of the problems I have with games like Civ III is the tendancy to make it so you have to churn out the bare minimum of improvements while trying to maximize military and scientific production. In Dom you can ignore spell research if you want to, you can minimize military production (but don't do it too much, or you'll be singing someone else's hymns soon enough), you can build a really cool empire without constantly monitoring your progress versus an optimization curve to determine whether you are still competitive.

[licker]

Originally posted by Taqwus:
Forge costs, if memory serves, are based entirely on the path/level requirements.
Level 1 = 5 gems, each level thereafter doubles (thus an item which requires level 5 in some path needs 80 units of that magical resource. A level 3/3 two-path item would require 20 units of each of the two corresponding resources, etc.)
Certain units (Master Smiths, and the new Ulm Iron Faith priest/mages) get innate forge bonuses (25% generally), certain items give forge bonuses (25% for dwarven hammer, 50% ea. for Hammer of the Forge Lord, Hammer of the Cyclops IIRC), spells might as well (never tried Forge of the Ancients, but description suggests it would help.).

Actually I know this... I'd just rather it be explicit in the description. Saves me a small amount of mental power

[Prio]

Originally posted by Taqwus:
Certain units (Master Smiths, and the new Ulm Iron Faith priest/mages) get innate forge bonuses (25% generally), certain items give forge bonuses (25% for dwarven hammer, 50% ea. for Hammer of the Forge Lord, Hammer of the Cyclops IIRC), spells might as well (never tried Forge of the Ancients, but description suggests it would help.).

I've found at least one magic site that reduces forging costs for items forged in that province (bonus to Construction).

[PvK]

1. The whole package. The way so many details and game systems work very well together in many interesting and appropriate/logical ways, to create a very interesting and detailed game world that plays out with great variety and interestingness from turn to turn, and from game to game.

2. What Saber Cherry & RadiantFleet wrote.

3. All the great detail and flavor and variety and originality of the spells, units, nations, monsters, pretenders, items, magical sites, etc.

4. Nice details down to the individual man, his experience level and injury/fatigue status, as well as detailed equipment. This lets you try to keep your old experienced troops alive and uncrippled, and gives them some character. Gift of Reason is icing on the cake - it was great when one of my summoned Cave Drakes (for those who don't know, a Cave Drake is a slightly-comical-looking fat squat giant armored beast which fights with its clumsy big mouth but its best asset is it's really hard to hurt, so it makes a good battlefield anchor for your men to fight around) got up to level 3 experience, so I cast Gift of Reason on him and he got a fun name and I equipped him with a flying carpet, loaded with some other elite troops to become an elite behind-the-lines special forces team with extreme comic relief value. "Oh no! It's Podarkes the legendary cave drake flying in on a magic carpet with his elite squad! Run away!"

5. A nice mortal/realistic combat system with morale and fatigue, but more importantly that people have appropriate mortality and lethality levels. None of the "oh he's a hero so he can absorb 10x the damage of anyone else - you'd need to hit him 100 times with that battleaxe to take him out" nonsense found in D&D-inspired games.

And more.

PvK

[Dekent]

You can play a dragon......


Who breathes fire......

[Sammual]

1) Variety

2) Balance

3) The 'WTF factor' (The ability to be suprised again and again.....).

4) Play by Email.

5) Modability.

Sammual