Move Along, Nothing to See Here

[licker]

Woah Nellie!!!

Not to be rude Fryon (but it'll come off that way...) but did you actually take any time at all to check the filters and the different screens for national information? There is a screen (F3?) that shows nation, god, and flag. There is a filter to show the presense of troops and comanders on the main map. F1 will also allow you to see provincial information in more detail, and link you to the province you want to look at more closely, and too any commander you may want to issue new orders to.

Anyway, there is a level of micro, though its a far cry from the micro found in other games. I'm not sure why it bothers people that they can't calculate their income or resources quickly and easilly since it really doesn't matter all that much, the values are clearly shown, and since the unrest level and scale level effects them changes in those areas will impact the values from turn to turn. I will grant that the documentation for the demo is poor, and that even the manual with the full game is barely adequate, but its not really that difficult to figure it out, or read one of the new player threads here.

If you care to I suggest you take another look at the game with a more open mind and a more rigerous approach in using all the filters and info screens, the info is there, and fairly easilly accessed once you find the appropriate hot keys (my Favorites are F1 and F5...).

[Fyron]

Tax income is simple...just add all the incomes of all the provinces you control plus all the gold-generating structures you possess.

Erm... I was talking specifcally about in individual provinces, not globally. *note that this is now obseleted by later complaints of poor interface design*

What information would you like to see in log Messages? Just curious. A number of additions which would not be all that difficult (I wouldn't think) have been proposed by various players.

I do not recall off the top of my head, but there were a lot of log Messages that lacked anything specific about the event, just stating that it occured.

To correlate nations with flags...this is easy...just go to "score graphs." Hover your mouse over the flag you are interested in in the graph legend. And you will see what flag corresponds to which nation.

That is a poor design choice. The name of the nation should be shown in many locations, not just a score graph. It should especially be shown when looking at their territory. As it is, you have to memorize every flag with the nation name. This is unecessarily complicated.

The AI will often amass cheap units that aren't all that great in large number. Especially Ermor. The other AIs don't know how to deal with Ermor, so I would just exclude that nation from SP games. If you are building resource-intensive troops and your enemy is building non-resource intensive troops it will be easy for them to amass more of an army than you can.

They still amass large numbers of resource-intensive troops, and it doesn't matter if I build resource-cheap troops.

[quote]Also, if they have many more territories than you do...well...they will have more income and more centers of troop production. [/qoute]Well of course. I am not talking about a huge empire compared to a small one, but equal sized empires, even when they have worse provinces.

I disagree...I don't detect any hidden cheating bonus.

I certainly do.

Keep in mind that troops may be summoned as well as bought.

These were not summoned troop types.

There is a very simple indicator of whether you have troops in a territory. Look at the territory (assuming you own it). If you have troops there, you will see a blue rectangle of one size or another. The size corresponds roughly to the number of your troops.

Umm... I said, on the map itself. So you can see the relative levels of troops in ALL territories at once, not have to clumsily select all of them at once. SE4 suffers from this as well, though it is not as big of an issue there because the system map is the game, whereas there is no territory map at all in Dominions.

You are the first person I have ever heard call dominions unsophistocated. I beg to differ with this assessment.

"Unsophisticated" was the most polite term to come to mind when writing that... perhaps you would prefer "unpolished" or "unweildy." At least it is not as bad as MOO3...

Ya, the game is not unsophisticated, but the interface and game systems are neither immediately intuitive, nor transparent and simple. It just takes some learning to figure things out. Then, almost everything Fryon mentioned is addressed pretty well - he just hasn't found or figured out many things yet.

Funny, hardly any of the things I have mentioned sound like they are address well at all (if even addressed) from the responses so far.

(If tax were a direct function of population, _that_ would be unsophisticated.)

The problem is that the game seems to use some randomness in determining it, which is silly.

The AI "level" determines the build bonus. Use Easy if you want to have a good chance as a newbie. I believe "normal" is the non-cheat level, and anything above that gives the AI a bonus.

Hmm... so it does have cheating bonuses... Anyways... it sure doesn't seem to play fairly at the normal level.

I always thought it was pretty obvious, or at least easy to learn which flag=what country....

It is the very fact that you have to do that memorization to even think about interacting with them that is the problem. There is only one hidden screen that shows the correlation. It is not any fun to get Messages from an AI and have no idea which empire it is that sent it on the game map because there is no good way of figuring that out. Not even showing enemy troops or engaging in combat has the enemy's name! Just a flag. Ridiculous.

Some of your other concerns are valid however

All of my concerns are "valid." They may have answers (and I hope they do, in fact), but they are still perfectly valid concerns. I take offense to your insinuations.

Not to be rude Fryon (but it'll come off that way...) but did you actually take any time at all to check the filters and the different screens for national information? There is a screen (F3?) that shows nation, god, and flag.

Sorry, hitting random function keys to figure out which race has which flag never occured to me. As I said before: "Not even showing enemy troops or engaging in combat has the enemy's name! Just a flag. Ridiculous."

Actually... none of the function keys do anything for me. No info screens pop up at all. So no, I did not check any info screens, as none are accessible to me.

There is a filter to show the presense of troops and comanders on the main map.

That purple and red box? Rather silly icon for a button if you ask me. There is no way to know what that is trying to show you unless you want to take hours figuring it out. This is a disturbing trend in this game, and makes for a rather poor demo.

F1 will also allow you to see provincial information in more detail, and link you to the province you want to look at more closely, and too any commander you may want to issue new orders to.

And I am supposed to know these magic hotkeys how? I see no in-game help of any sort, anywhere. I have no desire to spend my time reading a 60 page pdf manual for a demo. A demo should be easy to use, to show off the game. It should not be confusing! There is not even a basic tutorial to get you going. Unsophisticated, unpolished, lacking.

Anyway, there is a level of micro, though its a far cry from the micro found in other games.

No, there is no level of micro. There is only tedium where there should not be. You can not do any micromanaging. The kind of stuff you do is not approaching micromanagement.

I'm not sure why it bothers people that they can't calculate their income or resources quickly and easilly since it really doesn't matter all that much, the values are clearly shown, and since the unrest level and scale level effects them changes in those areas will impact the values from turn to turn.

Planning ahead? Not having to react? Being able to know how many troops you will be able to support and build _easily_ without having to guess? Having a feeling of being a part of the empire you are in control of? There are many reasons.

Scale level? Are you referencing the various empire attributes?

I will grant that the documentation for the demo is poor, and that even the manual with the full game is barely adequate, but its not really that difficult to figure it out, or read one of the new player threads here.

Yes it is. If it were easy to figure out, I would never have written this post. Being forced to read Online sources just to figure out how to do the basics of a demo is again not what a demo is supposed to be like at all. You should be able to just sit down and start playing, and have a decent chance at surviving. Illwinter has a lot to learn about how there is beauty in simplicity.

If you care to I suggest you take another look at the game with a more open mind and a more rigerous approach in using all the filters and info screens, the info is there, and fairly easilly accessed once you find the appropriate hot keys (my Favorites are F1 and F5...).

That is another indication of a very poor interface. There are no buttons for any of these, no menus, nothing. Just phantom links waiting for hotkeys without reference. At the very least there should be a "game" menu that has "links" to all of those screens.

There are not very many filters (4 in fact), and half of them are not even useful filters for gathering more information. The only useful filter is the troop size one, which doesn't look anything like what it does. At the least it should have a picture of a troop, not just a purple and red box, as its icon.

So overall... my complaints boil down to (mostly) one thing: this game has an extremely poor, unpolished (dare I say unsophisticated?) interface that makes it much harder to get into than it should be. Very elementary mistakes were made in designing it that give it a very unprofessional feel.

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:

So overall... my complaints boil down to (mostly) one thing: this game has an extremely poor, unpolished (dare I say unsophisticated?) interface that makes it much harder to get into than it should be.

Sucks huh.

Still best computer strategy game I've ever played so you can't be to picky.

If you like really deep, challenging, highly imaginative games with a deep logic to them its worth the effort.

Cheers

Keir

[Fyron]

Oh dear... that was the Dominions 1 demo, not the Dominions 2 demo... boy is my face red. Guess I should get the Dominions 2 demo now... pretend I said "Dominions 1" everywhere I said "Dominons 2"... lets hope Illwinter has gotten their act together in the second incarnation... I still don't see what the big fuss was over Dominions 1...

[Saber Cherry]

Hahahahahaha.... Oh, man... that was funny! I was wondering why the "F" keys didn't work, and the red/purple box button, and so on... it was almost like you were playing a different game.

Edit: Which is not to say that Dominions II seems slick and professional, or that its high points are interface and intuitiveness, or even that it has an in-game tutorial yet. And the designers still expect you to sort of "know" certain things, like how a god's magic levels, scale settings, and dominion strength will affect the game. But it is certainly much better than Dominions I in terms of giving the player feedback... well, I hope you like it!

-Cherry

[ January 06, 2004, 06:53: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]

[Saxon]

Fryon,

I remember you from my SEIV days and know that you really like the system that SEIV has in place. I found it ok, but not great. Everything was so clear cut and the people with the best spreadsheets won; I ended up finding it very dry. In the case of Dominions, it is more of a touchy feely game and I really love it. The very ambiguity makes it fascinating, makes it more like a real world where you do not know the statistics of people, you have to make a best guess. You are not impressed by the game, which is your right. I suspect that you will never really like this game because it is quite different than the more clear cut kind of game which I believe you like.

[General Tacticus]

Erm... I was talking specifcally about in individual provinces, not globally. *note that this is now obseleted by later complaints of poor interface design*

Well tax income is determined by land terrain (farmland is the best), population, presence and type of a fortress, and unrest. Oh, and additional gold producing structures, like a gold mine... Plus the dominion effect affecting the province, specifically order, productivity, heat/cold, and growth. Perhaps size of the territory as well, but I am not sure.

I do not recall off the top of my head, but there were a lot of log Messages that lacked anything specific about the event, just stating that it occured.

I find the reports adequate, but no more. They are full of "a handful", "many", "some", or "one fifth" (as in "one fifth of the population there"). In fact, I have taken to reading one message, going to the province, figuring out how bad (or good) it was, and going back to read the next one. Easy with keyBoards shortcuts, but time consuming.

They still amass large numbers of resource-intensive troops, and it doesn't matter if I build resource-cheap troops.

On the other hand, they almost never build a fortress. And those huge armies of them are usually 80% militia, led by the cheapest commanders : not just cheap, but dirt cheap and nearly worthless. I suspect that in the first turns the AI is putting all its gold in recruiting militia wherever it can. They can easily outnumber you 2 or 3 to one that way, with the same budget.

Umm... I said, on the map itself. So you can see the relative levels of troops in ALL territories at once, not have to clumsily select all of them at once. SE4 suffers from this as well, though it is not as big of an issue there because the system map is the game, whereas there is no territory map at all in Dominions.

It is on the map. If you don't see it, go to map filters and chack "show troops". It will show, on the map, the rectangles giving you ary size. Of course, you only see yours, and the enemy when it is at your frontier. Or if you have a scout in the province.

It is the very fact that you have to do that memorization to even think about interacting with them that is the problem. There is only one hidden screen that shows the correlation. It is not any fun to get Messages from an AI and have no idea which empire it is that sent it on the game map because there is no good way of figuring that out. Not even showing enemy troops or engaging in combat has the enemy's name! Just a flag. Ridiculous.

Well, for combat at least, if you click on the message, you get a losses report witch clearly tells who attacked whom, and where. Of course, you need to figure out the name of your neighbors, but if you keep playing a little it will soak through. And wathcing the battle replay also gives you the names.

Actually... none of the function keys do anything for me. No info screens pop up at all. So no, I did not check any info screens, as none are accessible to me.

Are you by any chance using a fancy keyboard with "alternate" functions on the function keys ? In which case there should be a small button next to them to put them back to their original value ?

That purple and red box? Rather silly icon for a button if you ask me. There is no way to know what that is trying to show you unless you want to take hours figuring it out. This is a disturbing trend in this game, and makes for a rather poor demo.

I don't know... a big square that gets bigger when you recruit, blue for your troops, red for the enemy. The symbol is even the NATO symbol for infantry (but you do need some experience in wargaming to know that). But everybody agress with you : it takes time to learn that game. By the way, there is a walkthrough available, which should take you through all the steps to help you learn. There is a link on illwinter's page...

No, there is no level of micro. There is only tedium where there should not be. You can not do any micromanaging. The kind of stuff you do is not approaching micromanagement.

Yes you can, you just haven't found it yet. You can set taxes in each province, you can put your army in neat little formations and give lots of orders to your commanders, including which spells to cast and in chich order. May I recommend the walkthrough again ?

Scale level? Are you referencing the various empire attributes?

He is. Order for exemple gives you a 7% gold income bonus, per level. But only in provinces where your God's influence (the candles) is strong enough for your empire bonus to take effect. And so on...

That is another indication of a very poor interface. There are no buttons for any of these, no menus, nothing. Just phantom links waiting for hotkeys without reference. At the very least there should be a "game" menu that has "links" to all of those screens.

All those "F" things are also available via the Menus (icons) on the right of the screen, most notably the "statistics" and "magic" ones. Using the hotkeys just saves you two clicks...

There are not very many filters (4 in fact), and half of them are not even useful filters for gathering more information. The only useful filter is the troop size one, which doesn't look anything like what it does. At the least it should have a picture of a troop, not just a purple and red box, as its icon.

I think you misunderstand. That red box is not an icon, it is a representation of troop strength. When you click on it, you actually click on the province under it, which brings all the details for the province, including the army list. In an enemy province, the "province info" button gets you a more detailed report of enemy troops, as far as you know them.

So overall... my complaints boil down to (mostly) one thing: this game has an extremely poor, unpolished (dare I say unsophisticated?) interface that makes it much harder to get into than it should be. Very elementary mistakes were made in designing it that give it a very unprofessional feel.

That was one of my first impressions : the interface is not what it could be. On the other hand, in my experience, The game with the most fancy interface are seldom the most interesting. And wirh experience, you'll see that the interface is adequate. Even if it still has some rough edges.

OOpsies, by the time I put this together, you posted again... Ok, half of my answers are probably off the mark

[ January 06, 2004, 06:56: Message edited by: General Tacticus ]