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  #1  
Old August 26th, 2004, 10:21 AM
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Default Re: Dammit

Quote:
Boron said:
warcraft 3 was the biggest disappointment i ever had with a game.
That dubious honor, for me, is reserved for MOO3. MOO3 gets [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon37.gif[/img][img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon37.gif[/img][img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon37.gif[/img][img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon37.gif[/img][img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon37.gif[/img]

Other notable lemon awards for recent, disappointing, highly-hyped games go to:

Beyond Divinity - [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon37.gif[/img][img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon37.gif[/img][img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon37.gif[/img][img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon37.gif[/img]
Chrome - [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon37.gif[/img][img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon37.gif[/img][img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon37.gif[/img][img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon37.gif[/img]
Lionheart - [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon37.gif[/img][img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon37.gif[/img][img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon37.gif[/img][img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon37.gif[/img]
JA2:Wildfire - [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon37.gif[/img][img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon37.gif[/img][img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon37.gif[/img][img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon37.gif[/img]

Deus Ex: IW - [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon37.gif[/img][img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon37.gif[/img][img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon37.gif[/img]
Victoria - [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon37.gif[/img][img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon37.gif[/img][img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon37.gif[/img]

But WC3 does earn [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon37.gif[/img][img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon37.gif[/img][img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon37.gif[/img][img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon37.gif[/img]
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  #2  
Old August 26th, 2004, 10:49 AM
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Default Re: Dammit

Quote:
Arryn said:
JA2:Wildfire - [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon37.gif[/img][img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon37.gif[/img][img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon37.gif[/img][img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon37.gif[/img]
Victoria - [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon37.gif[/img][img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon37.gif[/img][img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon37.gif[/img]

oh what is ja2 : wildfire ?
i loved basic jagged alliance 2 and i even bought 1 expansion disk for it which was not too good but i don't remember the name .

what do you not like with victoria ?
i like paradox games but since i discovered dominions they now seem so inferior

i personally like victoria basically and think it is good but the revolution system is very unpleasant there and stopped me from playing it more .
conquering china is a nightmare
each day lots of revolutions for 10 or 20 years until nationalism is gone
1 division in each province is enough to kill all rebels but with the size of china that are 200+ divisions which are not so easy to achieve in victoria .

eu 2 is a really nice game but too simple and gets boring once you have 100+ provinces .

hoi is great but after researching all techs it becomes boring too and with the stupid convoy / supply system world conquest is hard work there not really enjoyable too .
it is easy but hard / unpleasant work

victoria has enough complexity but the revolution system is just stupid there with daily revolutions .


i am really looking forward to hoi 2 though because i hope it combines all strength of the paradox games .
a victoria without revolutions but dissent like in hoi i would really enjoy

hoi 2 seems to become a good combo of hoi + victoria
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Old August 26th, 2004, 10:53 AM
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Default Re: Dammit

p.s.

arryn how long did you play eu 2 , hoi , victoria ?
have you ever finished a wc in any of those 3 ?

i was always bored before i reached that . in hoi i stopped as germany after russia + britain were dead and the usa had no airforce left and was ripe to invasion .
in eu 2 i always stopped after controlling about 150 provinces ( about 2/3 of europe ) because i saw no further challenge .

victoria i haven't played so much because shortly after getting victoria i discovered dominons
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Old August 26th, 2004, 11:17 AM
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Default Re: Dammit

Quote:
Boron said:
arryn how long did you play eu 2 , hoi , victoria ?
have you ever finished a wc in any of those 3 ?
No. I haven't that much patience for something that's inevitable.

Quote:
Boron said:
i was always bored before i reached that . in hoi i stopped as germany after russia + britain were dead and the usa had no airforce left and was ripe to invasion .
in eu 2 i always stopped after controlling about 150 provinces ( about 2/3 of europe ) because i saw no further challenge .
In HoI, about the same point. In EU2, once I've knocked out 2 of the 3 major powers (Spain, France, and Britain) the outcome isn't in doubt and it's only a matter of time. I played EU2 just to read the passing event Messages. The game itself presented no strategic challenge in SP. I stopped playing the game because Paradox never fixed some rather glaring bugs (bugs other than the lame AI).

Quote:
Boron said:
victoria i haven't played so much because shortly after getting victoria i discovered dominons
I, too, discovered Dom 2 shortly after getting Vicky. Dom 2 saved me from wasting countless hours trying to work around Vicky's problems.
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  #5  
Old August 26th, 2004, 11:45 AM
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Default Re: Dammit

Quote:
Arryn said:
Quote:
Boron said:
victoria i haven't played so much because shortly after getting victoria i discovered dominons
I, too, discovered Dom 2 shortly after getting Vicky. Dom 2 saved me from wasting countless hours trying to work around Vicky's problems.
a question :
did you play all paradox games with the newest patches ?

they get more challenging this way.
i am not sure but i think you haven't perhaps .

in eu 1.08 you earn much less money and inflation is harder to combat . diplo sliders are much better too .
so it becomes a bit more challenging .

hoi in 1.06 the greatly improved the ai .
russia has there normally about 300 divisions in 1939/40 so the early victory with germany is not so easy anymore .
and the ai lands more than 1-2 units on beachheads .

it is still from good but a big improvement to all patches before .


finally curious about vicky :
with 1.03b the latest patch i played it it was quite good most bugs were gone .

i don't really get your point about the manual .
for victoria fans made wickyvicky or called similiar it is like the manual addenda from liga .
and the discussion on victoria board was good too so with victoria manual it is exactly the same like with the dominions manual it is ok but leaves many questions open .

the ai in victoria is probably the worst though still

what i hate with all paradox games that they only force you indirect to not grow too big too soon .
not the ai stops you but in eu 2 revolutions from different religions + really huge stability costs .
in vicky the same but more severe .


the real problem though is that they ALL lack depths :
everybody has the same armies when he researches all techs .
so it is simply getting a bigger army + using the right troops but thats really easy since there are only about 10-15 different types .

unfortunately you can reduce it to 1-2 types :
in hoi the light 12 speed tanks for encirclement + marines with artillery brigade .
in vicky guards , tanks/artillery for special purposes .

all disappointing [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/ooo.gif[/img]

the only game which comes close here to dominions 2 is master of orion 2 (perhaps space empires is similiar i haven't played it though because iirc it is realtime and i prefer turn based )
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Old August 26th, 2004, 12:12 PM
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Default Re: Dammit

Quote:
Boron said:
did you play all paradox games with the newest patches ?
Yes, I have.

Quote:
Boron said:
in eu 1.08 you earn much less money and inflation is harder to combat . diplo sliders are much better too .
so it becomes a bit more challenging .
Those are peripheral issues to other things that are fundamentally wrong with the game, the worst being the AI.

Quote:
Boron said:
hoi in 1.06 the greatly improved the ai .
I play HoI with 1.06c and CORE 0.84. CORE makes the game much more realistic and challenging, yet it still falls far short of being truly challenging in SP. Unlike Dom 2.

Quote:
Boron said:
finally curious about vicky :
with 1.03b the latest patch i played it it was quite good most bugs were gone .
My BF disagrees, and he still plays the game (unlike me).

Quote:
Boron said:
what i hate with all paradox games that they only force you indirect to not grow too big too soon .
not the ai stops you but in eu 2 revolutions from different religions + really huge stability costs .
in vicky the same but more severe .
There are some really ugly and ridiculously unrealistic/ahistorical things that happen in Vicky after the turn of the century if you're deemed by the AI(s) as a "threat".

IMO, Paradox is very good at conceptualizing / designing games, but not very good at implementing them. Their biggest shortcoming is a marked lack of usability testing, which would quickly reveal the numerous UI flaws in their games. They also desperately need someone with experience in AI (preferably neural-net AI). Of course, people with experience in AI are in severely short supply in the entire gaming industry. It's just that the games that most need good AI (ie: strategy games) are often the ones with the worst AIs. Probably has something to do with the genre's popularity and typical budgets.

Quote:
Boron said:
the only game which comes close here to dominions 2 is master of orion 2 (perhaps space empires is similiar i haven't played it though because iirc it is realtime and i prefer turn based )
SE4 is TB. So is GalCiv. You should try both.

The Last RT grand strategy game I played (prior to EU/EU2/HoI/Vicky) was Star Wars Rebellion. A game that should have been TB. RT brought nothing good to the game. Especially since the morons who made the game didn't allow for orders while the game was paused.
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  #7  
Old August 26th, 2004, 12:30 PM
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Default Re: Dammit

Cainehill gets today's Knight in Shiny Armor award { } for his valiant efforts at rescuing the damsel from the perfidious assaults of the vile Saxon ruffian [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon19.gif[/img].
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  #8  
Old August 26th, 2004, 01:25 PM
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Default Re: Dammit

Quote:
Arryn said:
I play HoI with 1.06c and CORE 0.84. CORE makes the game much more realistic and challenging, yet it still falls far short of being truly challenging in SP. Unlike Dom 2.

sorry but how can you say dom 2 is challenging in SP ? dominions 2 really shines in MP

but in sp it is like HoI and most other strategy games . perhaps slightly better but in sp if you chose special nations : ryleh , ermor , pan cw there is no challenge at all .
almost the same with abysia / mictlan when you use blood heavy .
after earlygame no challenge
to a slightly lesser extent true with all the magically extreme flexible nations like pythium / arco .
if you survive until midgame no challenge too just clamhoard + make lots of uberscs , battlemages with strong troops etc.


dominions 2 is only challenging in sp if you take first special houserules and second take the nation who does worst under this special houserules .
furthermore you have to forbid yourself the use of scs.


the only way i see is as tauren suggested to let Users mod ai scripts . this way i could perhaps make the ai use my own battlescripts for lategame if it is possible then everybody can make 1-2 scripts for his favourite nation(s).
then everybody sends them to illwinter or better somebody with lots of patience + insight ( like zen + gandalf ) and he choses 4-5 scripts for each nation which he thinks are extremely good .
then the ai always choses random one of these scripts and would probably play really good .


Quote:
Arryn said:


IMO, Paradox is very good at conceptualizing / designing games, but not very good at implementing them. Their biggest shortcoming is a marked lack of usability testing, which would quickly reveal the numerous UI flaws in their games. They also desperately need someone with experience in AI (preferably neural-net AI). Of course, people with experience in AI are in severely short supply in the entire gaming industry. It's just that the games that most need good AI (ie: strategy games) are often the ones with the worst AIs. Probably has something to do with the genre's popularity and typical budgets.

strategy games are with shooters the most popular genre .

blizzard with starcraft or microsoft with age of empires 2 had surely a huge budget .
especially the starcraft ai was not bad .
but it is easy with only about 25 units in total . if you have this in mind the ai was VERY poor once you had mp experience .

in a game with a friend we 2 won always against 6 ais on the hunters .

alpha zentauri has imo a quite good ai though .
in magic the gathering the ai used their decks quite well too given that it is almost as complex as dominions ( about 800 different cards i think with both extensions ).
these 2 games are positive examples for a quite good ai .
a third one is heroes of might and magic 1-3 .

Quote:
Arryn said:
Quote:
Boron said:
the only game which comes close here to dominions 2 is master of orion 2 (perhaps space empires is similiar i haven't played it though because iirc it is realtime and i prefer turn based )
SE4 is TB. So is GalCiv. You should try both.

The Last RT grand strategy game I played (prior to EU/EU2/HoI/Vicky) was Star Wars Rebellion. A game that should have been TB. RT brought nothing good to the game. Especially since the morons who made the game didn't allow for orders while the game was paused.
what is your impression of starcraft ?
i think it is still the best true RTS game .

i have star wars rebellion myself but with pause like the paradox games it is basically TB . star wars rebellion was not as good as master of orion and the star wars bonus was not enough to compensate though i love starwars .

i was interested in trying Galactic civs but i heard that it is not deep and too simple and according to reviews / screenshots i believed it .

i will give space empires probably a closer look though
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Old August 27th, 2004, 12:40 AM

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Default Re: Dammit

Quote:
Arryn said:

They also desperately need someone with experience in AI (preferably neural-net AI). Of course, people with experience in AI are in severely short supply in the entire gaming industry. It's just that the games that most need good AI (ie: strategy games) are often the ones with the worst AIs. Probably has something to do with the genre's popularity and typical budgets.


When I'm not playing Dom2, I spend my time thinking about data mining and machine learning. (Yeah, it's my job.) So, I'm curious what you mean.

When you say "AI", you do mean "machine learning systems" or "decent software to play games"?

Why do you think neural nets would play Dom2 well? I work with a neural net guru, and the problems he takes on are far simpler than playing Dom2.

I agree folks who write games don't know a lot about how to get software to play them, but I'm not sure the problem is just lack of money. The problem is hard. Or at least, I think the company I work for would pay could good money for any software that could play Dom2 well, cause it could do lots of other hard things well, too.
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Old August 26th, 2004, 11:09 AM
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Default Re: Dammit

Quote:
Boron said:
oh what is ja2 : wildfire ?
i loved basic jagged alliance 2 and i even bought 1 expansion disk for it which was not too good but i don't remember the name .
An expansion pack for $20, which is essentially a buggy-as-hell and unsupported-by-anyone mod. You'd do much better, by far, to download the excellent mod Urban Chaos from this site .

Quote:
Boron said:
what do you not like with victoria ?
The list is long. It begins with the massive lack of documentation for a game that is very complex (much more complex than HoI) and not at all intuitive. It continues with the enormous number of major bugs the game continues to have. And it ends with the fact that underneath it all is the lame Paradox AI which is in all the EU-engined games and that cripples SP play in EU2, HoI, and Victoria. I've condensed my gripes into 3 brief sentences, but the depth of my dislike for the game is much more detailed and lengthy. This isn't the forum for airing such, so I'm trying to spare disinterested readers a long rant on it.

Quote:
Boron said:
hoi is great but after researching all techs it becomes boring too
It's too easy as a human to conquer the world in HoI SP, even with pathetically small nations, nevermind military/economic powerhouses like Germany. As Germany, I have won "WW2" by the end of 1939, by the end of 1940 I have an empire that would have been the envy of Imperial Rome or Alexander, and by the end of 1941 there is nothing to stop me from total world conquest long before the game's deadline (or anyone else's possible development of atomic weapons, not that even atomic bombs could stop me). The AI is just not even remotely up to the task of handling a game this complex. But to Paradox's credit, they've at least exposed the AI to user modification, which has turned a game that I otherwise would have shelved 2 years ago into something that still resides on my HDD. I wish that IW would do likewise and open up the Dom 2 AI to user modification.
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