Well, I'm through with the game

[Endoperez]

People still play the demo of Dom:PPP to avoid the turn limit.


Think about that for a while.

Dom:PPP's sprites are half that of DomII/3, and those sprites aren't nearly as well drawn. The maps are pixel-porridge that's nigh unlegible with the base colors of the maps that come with the game. Province info (magic sites, dominion, statistics) takes perhaps 1/3rd of the screen, and commander view (about 9 commanders at once) another third, while gems aren't shown until you go to laboratory. That means that you have less info visible at once, but it takes so much space that only one third of the screen shows the map, at once. I don't think you can zoom the map either. But I recently found a thread named Dominions: Priests, Prophets and Pretenders because the original demo HAS NO TURN LIMITS and wider selection of nations, and thus the poster played it rather than the later demos.

I found the thread from Dwarf Fortress forums, who are used to bad interfaces and not-so-good graphics, but it's still rather amazing.

[lch]

Endoperez said:
People still play the demo of Dom:PPP to avoid the turn limit.

Next thing you're telling me that there's still people playing Conquest of Elysium, too.

Endoperez said:
I found the thread from Dwarf Fortress forums, who are used to bad interfaces and not-so-good graphics, but it's still rather amazing.

Ah, those people. Masochists.

---

The idea of having pre-made pretenders for the AI is interesting. Or at least some templates that can get modified/mixed/mutated like in genetic algorithms. Very often you have problems where the initial task of finding a good/valid solution is very hard (time schedules for example) if you do it by random / trial-and-error, but once you have found a valid solution you can quite easily find other solutions by modifying that one a little, through point mutations (little changes to the initial concept). Other games like Armageddon Empires go as far as having a very good AI, but a collection of some couple dozen premade decks for the AI with some hints how it should use them, something like an AI personality of sorts if you want. If we'd ever see stuff like this in the Dominions series, it would be a major success I'd think.

[Edratman]

One change that (I think) would benefit the AI and is easily accomplished is to hard code the temperature to ideal for each nation and then hard code growth, luck and research to 3 (my preference)for all AI nations. Maybe reduce AI points somewhat, but not entirely, to reflect the scales adjustment.

This would satisfy KO's preference for random deities to give each game a different aspect, yet it would remove the glaring weaknesses of AI random scales selection and give it an edge in decidedly benefical scales.

And hard code Mictlan to an awake pretender so they don't die a dominion death in the first 2/3 turns.

[Rich]

I never play mp. The main reasons I bought this game is that it looks like fun and especially is advertised that it has a "challenging ai."

Haven't had much time to play it yet. Was about to really study the manual and do the tutorial again but now I don't think so.

It would be nice if publishing companies had some honesty in their advertising.

[Sombre]

Challenging AI?

That's a weird thing to advertise dom3 as having.

[lch]

Chicks. He meant he bought it because of the hot chicks. But he was afraid to say that. At least that's where the advertisement is true to the product.

[Rich]

LOL. Take a look at the game advertisement page. Down at the bottom. I kid you not. If it had said mediocre ai then I would have saved $50 because I wouldn't have bought the game.

[vfb]

Rich, I think it's a bit odd to complain about the game before you even try more than the tutorial.

I think SP is fun. Of course it's not as challenging or fun as MP, but I don't think you can reasonably expect it to be.

All 4X games can be beaten once you figure them out. So once you're having a bit too easy of a time, you impose self-limitations. With Dom3, usually I think the first one of these that people use is to not hire mercenaries. So if you're not seeing enough challenge, try that.

Play on a big map, against all the AI nations. The ones with crappy gods and/or scales will get eaten by the ones with appropriate gods/scales. I consistently lost against the (Normal!) AIs for the first few months I had the game, when I did this.