Dominions 2 Demo Review

[PvK]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
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Friendly fire is far too much of a problem in this game. Half of my troop losses come from my own archers and mages missing their targets far too often. The game needs a strategy that makes archers stop firing on units that are in melee combat with your own melee units. The fire 3 rounds and flee option is not good for this purpose at all. Neither is combining it with the "hold 2 turns and attack" option you can give melee troops. That is just a clunky solution that does not work well.

Generally agreed. This is about the only thing I find really disappointing in Doms I and II.

Mages miss way too often in this game. They need much higher precision scores. All of them. Unless right next to their targets, my mages tend to hit targets less than 20% of the time.

This should be tweaked in many, but not all, cases. Some of them are too inaccurate. In general, the effect of low accuracy (on both missile weapons and spells) shouldn't be to miss entire formations - it should just make it hard to hit specific targets at long range.

Some spells and casters are accurate enough, though.

The automatic casting choices are a bit strange. My mages will sometimes cast low level weak damaging spells, rather than higher level ones that can do a lot more damage. Sometimes they make smart choices.

True. Longer spell scripts would be nice. AI does pretty well in most cases IMO considering the staggering variety of possible spells, targets, and other factors.

Storming castles is rather strange as well. I attacked Pangaea's castle with 10 commanders (some mages, some priests, some chiefs) and nearly 100 troops while playing as Machaka. I had 60 archer type units, the rest light infantry or spiders (the expensive ones). The enemy had 2 troops (a minotaur and a centaur) and 4 commanders. I lost 20 troops and 4 commanders, they lost 2 troops. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. You'd think that repeated storms of arrows would do something to these guys, but apparently not.

I disagree. Storming a medieval fortification the hard way should be difficult and costly, even with only a few defenders. Firing storms of arrows at defenders high on a castle wall protected by narrow stone arrow slits generally has very little effect. There are many historical examples of very small garrisons holding off massive numbers of attackers. This is a large part of why anyone bothered to build them, despite the staggering costs and build times.

As for game balance arguments, there are many ways to overcome castle defenses in Dominions. But castles are supposed to present strong obstacles to many. However you can always just take the province and not storm the castle, and starve them out (assuming they are something that needs to eat...).

The mountain citadel is 100% useles. It is the same as the dark citadel in every way, except that it has only 10 admin instead of 20.

Untrue. See thread on subject. Dark Citadel is only available to some, and lacks any built-in firepower.

The way some of these units have costs scaled is not very well designed. Often, there will be very small increases in a few stats over the cheaper troop, for 3x as much gold and 2x the resources. Balance and a sense of scale seem to be lacking.
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Seems to me there is almost always a considered reason for the costs, even if it isn't obvious at first.

Battles tend to end after only killing a small amount of the enemy and then they just run away, even when they have roughly equatable forces. The morale system is more of a hindrance to this game than a benefit.

Maybe with low-morale units and fright-inducing effects (such as dead leaders, fighting monsters, etc), but that's intended. There are many spells, unit types, items, etc. which will very effectively reduce routing. I find the morale system extremely welcome and quite well-done. It would be a lot less interesting and less appropriate if everyone fought to the death regardless of circumstances. Terror and the ability to resist it is a major factor in war, especially when dragons and undead elephants are involved, etc...

The loss of the ability in Dominions 1 to target enemy mages and/or enemy commanders specifically seems rather strange...

Some would say that the ability in Doms 1 for units to see an entire enemy army and automatically determine whom the commanders and/or mages were and target them is much more strange. It makes much more sense that such targets would not always be immediately identifiable. It also makes for more interesting battles if it is not so easy to target just the few best enemy units with some of the more powerful attacks. Otherwise it can be an annoying weenie chase. Groups on "Attack Rearmost" give a nicely-unpredictable chance of hunting down commanders and mages hiding behind the lines.

PvK