How to explain Dom3 to a 5 year old?

[Knai]

Originally Posted by Chazar

However, the drawback with Wesnoth is the unintuitive graphics: they are cute, but much harder to understand than those found in the battle replays of Dom3. In Wesnoth, every unit is drawn same size and you do not see a difference between an archer and a knight attacking. The animation is pretty much the same. If you cannot read, you do not understand the advantages and disadvantages of different units. In Dom3, you easily see that a Tarrasque is a huge mighty monster, how an archer shoots his arrows from a safe place in the far back, or that a mage's lightning bolt is pretty destructive force. It's not only impressive, but there is no reading required.

Wrong. Not only are the animations different in an obvious way, but there is a size indicator - higher level units are bigger, for the most part, and certain skirmishers and certain thuggish units break this. Trolls, for instance, are quite large, Saurian Skirmishers (small lizards that can basically ignore a mechanic called zone of control) are small. As for unit advantages, if you know which numbers are bigger, you can understand the basics, particularly as concerns terrain - moreover, its quite intuitive. Cavalry don't handle forests particularly well, most humans have issues with marshes, Dwarves like mountains, so on and so forth.

Then there are the obvious special abilities, which tend to have graphical indicators. A net, for instance, has a net icon in attacking, and like a net should, slows people down (it also reduces damage). Wesnoth is really intuitive, reading or no, once you get used to it. Plus, there is always experimentation, which kids tend to be able to work with, he won't be studying every units movement costs, terrain defense values, attacks, special abilities minutia, or vulnerabilities and resistances, but experimentation can give a basic idea.