My problems with the demo

[Archonsod]

tinkthank said:
- Pretender building: while having fixed castle types does seem to make sense, I did miss the option in pretender building. What I really missed most, however, was the miscellaneous options (such as restless worshippers). Were they deemed unfit?

For the most part they're now incorporated into the nations. For example, IIRC EA Abysia's domain spreads heat.

- the pale ones are all amphibian; the nation overview listed in nation choice indicates that they are "poor amphibians", which makes sense. As it is, they seem to be at least as aquatic as atlantis, and that seems very out of place. Either that, or there is no differentiating between poor amphibian and amphibian.

Not sure if this is a bug or not. Pale One's are amphibious, and they can recruit an aquatic troop (wet one's). I don't know if they're meant to be poor amphibians, or whether it's referring to the fact that they only have one true aquatic troop available (barring indeps)

- I really miss Machaka -- but perhaps they will make an appearance as a later form of one of those races I can see in the demo...?

They're available in the Middle Era. Don't think they have a predecessor or sucessor.

This is my main point: If Shrapnel were really worried about people abusing the demo instead of purchasing the full game, they should have restricted its use to 3 or so nations FOR ALL AGES, but removed the research level cap and increased the turn cap to at least 60.

I kind of agree. To my mind, they should have either opened up all nations and kept a turn and research cap, or restricted it to 3 nations (perhaps one in each era?) and a research cap. Restricting both turns and the nations doesn't really give you much sense of the game, especially if your a returning Doms 2 player. I guess for a newcomer you can get a sense of how the game works, but even then it's somewhat limited.
It's back to the niche market thing I guess. With the demo restricted as it is, your looking at an audience who are looking for precisely this sort of game, and just need the re-assurance of the limited demo to see that Dominions is just the type of game they're looking for.

[tinkthank]

Well, thanks for those replies. Of course I did not expect a slew of them, especially considering my slightly sceptical view (and probably no one remembers me anyhow).

> "What I miss most is the "i" key, which used to give me province information. While I do get a pop-up window with some province info now without that key, I get no information on that province terrain"

I'm glad that's what you miss the most. All info from that screen is available on the main screen instead. Dominion and province terrain have icons in the top left box. Personally I find it much more convenient to see it without having to open the 'i' window.

One point I must correct: I SEE NOW (and for the first time) that there IS terrain information on the map, it is that tiny little icon on the main info window! Christ, I missed that. So now I miss the "i" button much, much, much less.

Still, although I am sure your game is a good one, I will have to wait a bit, as the demo version 3.00 (called "ascension wars", btw!) did not do it for me for the reason listed above.

[DominionsFan]

Well I sorta agree with the OP. Maybe 3 nations / 3 eras / 60 turns limit would be the best settings for an upgraded demo, if there will be a new demo release. That way the "Hm...I try out the demo before Im gonna order the game" lads would've been more satisfied.

[BigJMoney]

I'm sure in a patch there will be a return of the "hide researchers" hotkey, because showing the names of the nations with [tab] is redundant; the [8] key does the same thing!

As for the AI, I have not noticed any improvements other than the ability to build castles, however I have also not run across any really stupid spell-casting except with regards to astral mages and communion master/slave. That spell should be DISABLED for the AI, please. When a lone astral mage chooses to communion master or slave (let alone, both!), something in the algorithm is broken.

Manual is fantastic, even with quite a few typos.

Ages system is very cool, but I'm not sure what you think you're missing. The nations are very different from age to age. Just knowing that there are another ~50 nations out there that you haven't played yet should be enough knowledge that the game has an extreme shelf-life. The only exception I've run across is early and middle Mictlan who are copies of each other, except that middle age spreads dominion with temples and prophet like other nations. It's like someone ran out of ideas when working on Mictlan.

Why do you need to get your hands on all the new spells? I'm sure there are some new spells available in the demo. Just knowing that there are n more spells than in DomII is telling enough. If you want to use all the spells in the game....buy the game. I will tell you that I haven't noticed any revolutionary spells added, like what people saw between DomPPP and DomII. It seems mainly that summoning was made a lot more fun and unique depending on which nation you play, sans Broken and Ashen Empire who are just like before (if it ain't broke, don't fix it).

It's really inter-relationships between all of these nations (new content made this possible) in the ages that makes the game worth it. For example, you wouldn't notice from playing middle age right away that it's different from early age. However, once you get deeply into a game with a bunch of middle age opponents, it will feel very different in perspective. In this way, it is nothing like DomII. I would say it's like playing Axis & Allies on a new game board with different nations, but mostly the same rules (maybe a few streamlined updates across the board). If you liked DomII, you won't dislike Doms3. Maybe your expectations are just very high because of all the wish-list compiling you've done in the past. I've done a similar thing with other games, and it ruined those games for me.

=$= Big J Money =$=