What the hell is up with Dominions 3???

[Evil Dave]

Thanks, PDF!

Seems Lace didn't do half-bad.

[alexti]

Saber Cherry said:
But Stardock is an indy company, and their constant info trickle (aka "hype") netted a massive community and incredible launch...

Stardock is not really an indy company. Games are just not their main focus. So they have existing customer base from non-game products. This makes it hard to compare Stardock with purely game companies...

Saber Cherry said:But all together, they worked very well... since the world has been craving 4x-ish games recently. CivIV largely satisfied the Civ fans, GalCiv2 largely satisifed the Master of Orion fans, and now there are just the Master of Magic / Age of Wonders fans looking for a deep Fantasy TBS... especially when HOMMV has Starforce, and only a 50% chance of being good; and isn't quite in the same genre.

Maybe Dominions 3 can fill the void and become huge, with enough hype.

I don't think so. Dom2 is (and thus, I suppose Dom3 will be) hardcore strategy game while Civ4 or GalCiv2 are more like "strategy light" games. They have sandbox aspect (like building large cities, developing them and seeing the empire grow) which attract casual players. Dominions is much more strategy-centric which probably is interesting for much fewer people. So I would think Dominions is very much a niche game (and I like it to stay that way - as a strategic game it is much better than Civ4 or GalCiv2 :> )

[Nerfix]

Hmmm, nation and spell modding would be nice, but oh well.

Sounds good so far.

[DominionsFan]

PDF said:
Here's the full, uncut original version of the interview granted by Kristoffer O. for Cyberstratege, the French strategy game mag (go see us at www.cyberstratege.com !).
With kind permission of Kristoffer and Théophile Monnier, Cyberstratege founder/chief redactor

Screenshots to come soon !

Cyber - On the other hand Veterans rumbled about the AI weaknesses : poor recruiting choices (hordes of cheap ineffective troops starving eventually, no castle building), reliance on buffs and cheap summons in tactical battles : did you improve the AI ? One thing that I would have seen is the possibility to give specific AI advantages (x% more gold/ressources/design points/supply...) on a "game" basis without having to resort to map editing

KO : There have been some changes. The AI now builds castles. I'm not sure what other changes are implemented.

How come that Kris aint sure that what AI changes has been made?
This should take a very important part in Doms3, I mean a reworked AI. We all know that the MP part is very important, but regardles, even myself was playing a lot against the AI on the hardest settings, but the challenge what was offered wasnt enough there sadly, after a period at least. Imho a decent AI castle building/recruiting/summoning algorythm is what was missed in Doms2 first of all.

[Endoperez]

Nerfix said:
Hmmm, nation and spell modding would be nice, but oh well.

I think you meant ITEM and spell modding. Nation modding was said to be "more developed".

Thanks for that, PDF! I quess I should thank KO and Théophile Monnier as well. Theophile is an interesting name, BTW, if 'théo' is the same as 'theo' in 'theology'.

[Nerfix]

Ah, yes, indeed. Item modding.

[Kristoffer O]

> How come that Kris aint sure that what AI changes has been made?

I don't program the AI.

On the other hand JK is unaware of some of the new monsters and nations.

Our ignorances completes each other. We are certain that there are always thing we cannot answer. If we talk we might conjure a picture of a special feature or mechanic, but it will probaby be only partially right. Therefore we have betatesters. They might give us answers to some of our questions. They both play the nations and fight with the mechanics.

[DominionsFan]

Ah ok, I see Kris.

[PDF]

Endoperez said:

Thanks for that, PDF! I quess I should thank KO and Théophile Monnier as well. Theophile is an interesting name, BTW, if 'théo' is the same as 'theo' in 'theology'.

Yes, it's the same "Theo", and if you know your Greek somewhat note that the second term of "Théophile" is derived from "philos", meaning "loving".
In fact his name means "God loving"... But I can tell you he sucks at Dom2 !

[Nerfix]

PDF said:Screenshots to come soon !

So, what about those screenshots?