Problems in demo exist in regular game?

[TruePurple]

So a floating reference library? Does it access the files directly for the information or would anyone making a mod be required to make their own altered library file for dom3db that people would have to load?

----------------------

So these two guys/gals are rare shows who interact with and listen to the community minimally? Sounds discouraging.

Perhaps more interested in "cool new stuff" then meat and potatoes mechanics?

Like scouts being able to see everything by attacking and retreating(which by what you guys have said is too powerful, finding out what the enemy commanders are and such).. yet the game doesn't slowly center to average when you see indi unit numbers over turns. (yeah you can keep track of what you saw last turn and average yourself.. yah more work! ) Perhaps dom3db has such a feature?

Or the game allowing you to have two prophets by a number of corny methods yet you can't take take prophet status off a unit and simply give it to another unit after a number of days. Which is pretty unforgiving.

Or not allowing you to simply dismiss units.

More work for the gamer to play because the developers don't feel like doing the work of adding such effort saving etc features because they would much prefer adding content. Least thats what I've gotten the impression of. It shouldn't be work to play a game.

And everything in Dom3 seems so unforgiving. You never recover from disease naturally for example. Ways to deal with permanent injures are limited. Once a unit hit old age its dead in like 4 years without special measures. No option to autorenew contracts so if you forget you can be screwed. No option to save when you want.

[Edi]

TruePurple:

You misunderstand. The DB file is essentially still a spreadsheet (even though it will be made so that it can be converted to an SQL DB), it doesn't access anything from the game files themselves. It's all put in there by hand, but because it gives more information than anything else in an easily accessible format, it allows modders to look at what they like to change and to easily implement those changes. That's why it's mod friendly. But it's not an add-on program to the game. It's just documentation.

As for JK and KO, they are cool guys. They might not implement everything we want, but they do keep an eye on the forum. You also have a misplaced idea about just how much planning has gone to the mechanics. The manual is absolutely brim-full of mechanics and their explanations that are enough to make most strategy gamers' heads spin. There's more meat in Dominions even in that area than in most other games

As for your complaints about

1) Enemy numbers estimates: The way it's done in Dominions 3 is realistic. You get a rough estimate that may or may not be accurate, but you can't expect to have precise info. That is the REALITY of ALL battlefields throughout history. The estimates are never less than 50% or more than 200% of the actual figure.

2) Number of prophets: Enslaving or charming another god's prophet means that that unit became an apostate and switched sides. He used to be the holy figure of another rival god but has now seen the truth and changed sides. Arguably pretty damned inspiring from the common grunt's point of view, hence he remains a prophet. The reason why you don't also get to strip prophet status willy-nilly is the same thematically, it's not good for the peons to have their revered religious figures arbitrarily stripped of their status. Besides, there is an expectation that sooner or later prophets get killed. Then you nominate a new one.


3) Not allowing to dismiss units: There isn't a mechanism for that, which can be annoying, but the usual way to do it is use them for fodder or send them on a suicide mission. You've hired them and they'll stick by you, you don't just get to dump them in a ditch.

Arguably, AoW (the original) had a cool way of going about dismissal: all such units became independents, and they could be a real pain in the arse. In AoW2 and AoW:SM dismissal is instadeath, which was stupid. There's pros and cons to all of these approaches.

As for playing Dominions 3, it's not work unless you take it too seriously. No disrespect intended, but it seems to me a rather arrogant approach to come to the forum and just with your opening posts make a pretty hefty list of demands that the game be molded to suit your personal desires, especially when you take into account the character of the game and the number of people Illwinter has (2).

If this game is not something you enjoy, particularly if you've only tried the demo and already know it isn't for you, move on. Otherwise you should accept at least some of the main things about the game.

Edi

[PDF]

TruePurple said:
I know that but..

Not easily, since I have issues with the game where when it loads and I click it minimizes, I have to refocus to the game twice and then switch resolutions over and back and do this every time I alt tab and all that takes plenty of time. To do this ever so often.. So your solution is a hell of alot of work and waiting.

Try to just Ctrl-enter to get into windowed mode, make the copies or whatever (get email, send turn, .. ) and then Ctrl Enter back to fullscreen. It's much quickier this way

[PDF]

And another thing : with Sunray we've just updated the Dom3 Unit List Excel spreadsheet which is now complete for 3.04 !

It only include standard units, as all summoned creatures are in the manual (except the Lanka national summons that would be in but are not finished yet).

Go get it there :
http://www.freewebs.com/dominions2/

[Twan]

TruePurple said:Perhaps more interested in "cool new stuff" then meat and potatoes mechanics?

You well resumed the IW philosophy. UI or mechanics improvements are rare, they prefer to work on new nations, units, spells. It's sometimes sad, as this game would have the potential to be The best fantasy 4x for years with some work in the UI/mechanics area. But once you love dominions you may start to like some of the things making it different from other games in the genre.

In example the "lack" of save game feature often makes you think and find original strategies in situations you would never encounter with saves each turn, 50% of the interest of the game in SP comes from this non-feature (and if you really want you can still copy files to save, personnally I "save" about 1 time each 10-15 turns in SP, so I'm able to correct suicidal long-term strategies but not occasionnal bad luck, and it makes the game far funnier than if I save before each hosting -what I would be tempted to do with an "save" button-).

Not being able to dismiss troops is also among the qualities of the game for me as well, as it allows some vicious tactics to weaken economically an opponent, making his troops useless but still costing money (try a golem with an eye shield and scripted to attack 4 rounds then cast returning IE).

Some players also like the excessive mortality of ... mortals, and your incapacity to make choices about how they developp their skills (chosing heroic ability or stats improved with xp), as it gives you more the impression of being a god far from these considerations. Personnally I would have nothing against easier healing, true resurrection spells, more hp for heroes, etc... and would like a lot the ability to make choices for heroes progression, like in all but this one fantasy games. But it seems a large part of the public find perma death, uncurable illnesses and a very poor xp system thematic, so this game will never have the classical RPG charm of MoM/AoW. Just adapt of find another game.

As well, for very strange reasons, some fanatics of this game that features a lot of micro management speak like if they dislike "micro management" and use this arguement to justify the scripts limited to 5 orders, the absence of a "cast a kind of spell" final order for mages, of "fire and stay out of melee" order for skirmishers, of the ability to chose which spells your followers are allowed to use, of conditionnal orders etc... So the hope to see these things implemented is very small.

To resume there are minorities in favor of different changes including the ones you mentioned and some others, but these topics are dead horses as there isn't a consensus for any. Different players have found different sources for the Dominions charm, and these reasons often include some things other players percieve as lacking.

If you liked AoW a lot, your hope should be in a new game stealing the good aspects of Dominions and AoW more than in the Dominions serie itself. As Dom 3 is an unexpected success it's probable some bigger companies will look at it, steal good ideas, mix them with some more popular concepts from AoW, Heroes and MoM, and end with the product you are waiting for. As most indie games the purpose of Dominions is not to obey the wishes of the larger possible player base, but the vision of its authors, most players liking a part of it.

[Agrajag]

I missed a few posts before posting this message, but I'd just like to point out that someone already published a very simple "script" to be put in a batch file that backs up your save for a selected game. Combine that with the -preexec switch and you can get an autosave at the end of each turn before turn resolution in case you really need to load.
Personally, I'd rather just play the game, and occasionally manually save when I feel like experimenting.

[TruePurple]

edi said:
]Enemy numbers estimates: The way it's done in Dominions 3 is realistic. You get a rough estimate that may or may not be accurate, but you can't expect to have precise info. That is the REALITY of ALL battlefields throughout history. The estimates are never less than 50% or more than 200% of the actual figure.

You misunderstand me.

If the game kept track of the random number and gave you a average of that number.. Like lets say first turn the game says there are 20 troops. Next turn it gives and average of 70 troops. But because of the 20 troop figure the turn before it gives you an average guess of 35. Next turn it randomizes 50 troops figure. But because of the 20 & 70 numbers of the turns before it gives you a number thats an average of all 3 numbers.(additionally under the random number or in replace of it)

Such assumes the scout has an IQ number high enough to rub together and start a fire (2 )that he could work out averages. But makes sense in alot of ways both for game play and game reasoning (the longer you observe troops, the better you know their numbers) Yes players can keep track of and average these numbers but who wants to bother with that kind of work when playing?

edi said:
In AoW2 and AoW:SM dismissal is instadeath, which was stupid

The units don't "die" they go back to the population. Just like when you recruit units, your not bringing them to life. Your recruiting them from the population. So AoW2's dismissal is not "instadeath" and works fine. Not to mention being much simpler to program then them turning indie I figure. Better too IMO.

Speaking of, I like caring about my population and troops in a game. Dominions forcing one to go through the effort of putting units on suicide missions say if you want a new prophet because you got a much better unit a turn after you finally decided to put it on a more regular unit. Or because a unit is dreadfully crippled yet with all your powers you can't tell that unit "your fired" (like you see alot of cripples [aside from fresh cripples of course]on medieval battlefields.. or any battlefields for that matter)

Because of that dominion makes it much harder to reach that feeling. And so unforgiving & so much work.

As far as me sounding arrogant. Sorry about that. I lack social skills and I think thats naturally how I come off.

But I'm not making any demands. I like alot about dominions3, but these issues are driving me batty. They reduce the pleasure of playing for me alot. Yet they seem so simple in nature. So I list them and inquire about the possibility of their change/fixing. Any of them, not necessarily all. Seeing if they will be fixed or not and seeing how responsive developers are to issues and to the community(not much at all I gather) I'm also a sucker for a good debate and can easily get sucked into one, which is also a little of whats happening.

BTW, who ever mentioned the bug of the RMG where you run it twice in a row is right I think. The RMG has not given me a really twisted bad map since I now never run it if I've ran it before without closing down dom3 and reloading.

Also thanks PDF, that windowing trick helped alot. Now if I could only find out how to view those tips that flash by between turns. And why shift ? doesn't show me a list of hot keys (or do anything at all for that matter)

[Endoperez]

TruePurple said:
If the game kept track of the random number and gave you a average of that number.. Like lets say first turn the game says there are 20 troops. Next turn it gives and average of 70 troops. But because of the 20 troop figure the turn before it gives you an average guess of 35. Next turn it randomizes 50 troops figure. But because of the 20 & 70 numbers of the turns before it gives you a number thats an average of all 3 numbers.(additionally under the random number or in replace of it)

Such assumes the scout has an IQ number high enough to rub together and start a fire (2 )that he could work out averages. But makes sense in alot of ways both for game play and game reasoning (the longer you observe troops, the better you know their numbers) Yes players can keep track of and average these numbers but who wants to bother with that kind of work when playing?

This only works if the defenders don't change. Because the same algorithms are used for both independent provinces and enemy nations' provinces, approximation would mean that a province that had been empty for 4 turns and then had 100 troops passing by would show up as having 20 units. Furthermore, even independent provinces can have a varying amount of defenders in them. Events can add knights, vampires, trolls and various other things to independent provinces. These can double or triple the number of original defenders, and I'd rather be notified instantly. There is also at least one creature that moves from independent province to independent province without being part of any nation (Eater of the Dead once it becomes unfettered). It would be easy to mod it to be some kind of inquisitorial general and then add it to a map and give it an army, and in theory (I'm not sure if this would work) it would then move around the map with its army, going through independent provinces without harming them and rather randomly attacking human or AI players.

[TruePurple]

Yes I know the numbers can change, thats why I suggested a separate number for the average (current random, average #for the last 4 turns) If the current random is much different from the average you know somethings moved in/out.

But more simple approach could be, the average number resets every time the actual troop amount changes. (observer on the hill top: Damn, I think some troops left/arrived.. now I got to start over)

[Sandman]

Some players also like the excessive mortality of ... mortals, and your incapacity to make choices about how they developp their skills (chosing heroic ability or stats improved with xp), as it gives you more the impression of being a god far from these considerations. Personnally I would have nothing against easier healing, true resurrection spells, more hp for heroes, etc... and would like a lot the ability to make choices for heroes progression, like in all but this one fantasy games. But it seems a large part of the public find perma death, uncurable illnesses and a very poor xp system thematic, so this game will never have the classical RPG charm of MoM/AoW. Just adapt of find another game.

I agree. The harshness of the Dominions universe is a good thing, setting it apart in a genre where healing potions and resurrection are as common as bread.