What the hell is up with Dominions 3???

[Alneyan]

The thing I was wondering about is, why had Shrapnel not officially announced its involvement in Dominions III? While a full blown section may not be feasible at the moment, a mention in a press release (or the Release Schedule) would have been enough to make sure that Dominions III *is* going to be a Shrapnel game (alternatively, a post on the forums like Tim's below, or a mention at Illwinter's site). Or did I miss an official announcement from Shrapnel prior to this thread?

I know I care quite a lot about the publishing part, even more than about the developers for sequels. It was Shrapnel's publishing Dominions II that made me hear about the game again (even though I already knew the game), and a change in publishers could have made me drop Dominions altogether. And of course, the publishing area should never be taken for granted: Stars Supernova comes to mind here.

With Shrapnel's involvement in the game officially known, I will sleep tight now; additional information can always come from Illwinter or third party websites. Then again, perhaps I'm in the minority who actually cares about who the publisher is, and who will drop a game solely because it is published by, say, [Insert your most disliked publisher here] (Ubisoft, EA, you name them).

[Tim Brooks]

Or did I miss an official announcement from Shrapnel prior to this thread?

We announced our involvement over a year ago.

A few notes:

Computer Games Magazine, in their February 2006 issue, listed Dominions 3 (half page write-up) as one of the Most Anticipated Games of 2006.

Word of mouth. A number of you in this thread mentioned word of mouth as an important marketing tool. It is THE MOST IMPORTANT marketing tool. Every game we have had that has had a huge following, has gotten there not by advertising, reviews, interviews, etc, but by fans word of mouth. It is the most effective form of promotion. So talk up Dominions 3 and Dominions II!

You must remember we are still selling Dominions II and although there has been a slow down in recent months, it is still usually one of our top 3 or 4 sellers. Selling Dominions II is the best way of promoting Dominions 3. No?

Much more coming v-e-r-y soon. Awakening soon...

[DominionsFan]

I am very excited about Doms 3. I was playing Doms 2 with a few of my friends, like 20-30 hours all week, however I wasnt playing on the net with you guys. We gonna change for Doms 3. Me and my friends will all buy Doms 3, needless to say, and will play on the net as well. The only thing why we was not playing Doms 2 on the "net", thats because PBEM is kinda slow, if you dont know the rest of the players very well. Is there a possiblity for Doms 3, to add additional MP part? Like a game lobby, and the ability to host games from there? I know that doms 3 will be a slow paced game, like Doms 2, its like chess. However the same is true about Civilization 3-4, 1 turn can take 3-6 mins even, or more if the game is big. There you can save the MP game, and all players just load it back, and continue playing.
So all in all a game lobby -> hosting/reloading games directly would be a better option then a PBEM system. I am pretty sure that it would work flawlessly. Tim or anyone can post some opinion about this, also may I ask, that in the vanilla game we only gonna have PBEM MP system like in Doms 2?

[Cainehill]

DominionsFAN said:
I know that doms 3 will be a slow paced game, like Doms 2, its like chess. However the same is true about Civilization 3-4, 1 turn can take 3-6 mins even, or more if the game is big. There you can save the MP game, and all players just load it back, and continue playing.

May I point out that with Dom2, turns sometimes take hours? The civilization games, all you do is build a tile for each city, pick a unit to make, move your units, bang you're done - I can't imagine a Civ turn taking more than 5 or 10 minutes, ever, and that's mid-to-late game - the opening turns are more like ... 5 seconds.

Dom2, I've seen people take 10 minutes a turn in the first 5 turns, and by turn 15 or 20, there's always someone taking 15-20 minutes, and occasionally half an hour or more. Scripting and positioning mages, determining items to forge, what to research, watching at least some of the battles, changing the scripts for 5-20 mages, etc.

And this is in the blitzes organized on IRC, where everyone is defintaly there and present. If you're one of the ones who can manage to get a turn done in 5 turns (perhaps because it's a turn of all the mages researching), it's no fun waiting 25 minutes for everyone else to get their turns done.

This is why a fair quantity of the blitz-players get antsy by around turn 15-25 - the amount of time sometimes required to do a turn, and the amount of time conversely required to wait, both get to be too much, unlike the 24 hour server & pbem games.

[DominionsFan]

Cainehill said:

May I point out that with Dom2, turns sometimes take hours? The civilization games, all you do is build a tile for each city, pick a unit to make, move your units, bang you're done - I can't imagine a Civ turn taking more than 5 or 10 minutes, ever, and that's mid-to-late game - the opening turns are more like ... 5 seconds.

Dom2, I've seen people take 10 minutes a turn in the first 5 turns, and by turn 15 or 20, there's always someone taking 15-20 minutes, and occasionally half an hour or more. Scripting and positioning mages, determining items to forge, what to research, watching at least some of the battles, changing the scripts for 5-20 mages, etc.

And this is in the blitzes organized on IRC, where everyone is defintaly there and present. If you're one of the ones who can manage to get a turn done in 5 turns (perhaps because it's a turn of all the mages researching), it's no fun waiting 25 minutes for everyone else to get their turns done.

This is why a fair quantity of the blitz-players get antsy by around turn 15-25 - the amount of time sometimes required to do a turn, and the amount of time conversely required to wait, both get to be too much, unlike the 24 hour server & pbem games.

Yes you are right, it can take enormous amount of time in certain games. However on small maps the games are much faster, imo those could be hosted nicely from a game lobby rather then playing those games PBEM.

[Alneyan]

Tim Brooks said:

We announced our involvement over a year ago.

Browsing through the Archive of Arcane Lore (okay, so it was Google), there was indeed a press release to this effect back in October 2004. Well, I guess I was sleeping back then.

I stand corrected and withdraw my point. What Shrapnel should do is, really, imprint souls so that information isn't overlooked (or, worst of all, forgotten!).

[shovah]

i would just like to remind some people of something: there is a large number of people who follow this game and dominions 3 on these forums that dont talk to us

[NTJedi]

Tim Brooks said:
Word of mouth. A number of you in this thread mentioned word of mouth as an important marketing tool. It is THE MOST IMPORTANT marketing tool. Every game we have had that has had a huge following, has gotten there not by advertising, reviews, interviews, etc, but by fans word of mouth. It is the most effective form of promotion. So talk up Dominions 3 and Dominions II!

I agree, but besides the recent foreign interview us fans have received very very little information. As a result when friends and relatives gather then someone tosses the question: "Hey any new games coming out?"....... the gamers haven't heard or seen anything new about DOMINIONS_3 and thus no word of mouth.

Tim Brooks said:
You must remember we are still selling Dominions II and although there has been a slow down in recent months, it is still usually one of our top 3 or 4 sellers. Selling Dominions II is the best way of promoting Dominions 3. No?

Well it shouldn't be your only way of promoting... within the last 10 months there has been very little promotion for Dominions_3. Since Dominions is one of your top selling games it should definitely have an advertising strategy which grows upon getting closer to the release date.

If you want WORD OF MOUTH to work... give those future customers "continously new info" to use for spreading the word. The ohhh lets do advertising only the last 3 months is definitely not the best method.