One of the best reasons Dominions is an awesome game!

[PvK]

Why am I hooked on Dominions? Why is it such an awesome game?

One of the best reasons is that not only does it have thousands and thousands of units and spells and all sorts of other stuff to discover, but that practically all of the things in it are interesting, creative, and well-done. There are not only many different units, but many different game systems at work (things like effects of heat, morale, supply, different kinds of undead, equipment effects, experience, battle afflictions, etc), and those game systems all work together very well. Maybe not always perfectly, but generally in ways that make sense, and are in good and interesting proportion to each other, for the most part.

The result of all those systems working well together, is a game world where things happen for a reason, and the reasons make sense, and can be surprising and interesting, leading to an interesting game because you always have a different and often new set of toys to play with, and all sorts of ways to try putting them to use.

A great example just inspired me to write all this gushy praise:

I have been playing my first game as Mictlan against the AI, which I described a bit on Keir's half-hijacked Mictlan thread. I set myself up on a small map with many Difficult AI opponents - enough that I had two within three barren provinces of my start position, leaving me with only a few very poor provinces to capture, and I was at war with both of them by about turn 6, IIRC. So it's been a tough game so far. C'tis has a miasma dominion, which causes disease on most regular units who come near it.

I been trying to make good use of my blood magic, and doing pretty well at that. I started using flying demons and blessed flying Eagle Warriors as a rear-striking air force, which let me at least fight off my enemies effectively. I had a great stroke of luck (I took a positive Luck scale) when someone found a Soul Contract, which is a very costly item which damns one loyal subject's eternal soul forever, in exchange for a loyal Devil showing up each turn. Devils are powerful flying creatures which emit heat around them. They work rather well with my Demon/Eagle Warrior air force, although I do make sure to start them out in different parts of a battlefield, so the Devils don't fatigue the Eagle Warriors with their aura of heat before the battle begins.

Why am I rambling on about all these details? Because they all are actually important to the remarkable story that just unfolded in my game, which could happen in no other game, but which makes sense in this one, and inspired me to gush about how wonderful this game is!

(Mictan spoiler - those who like to play to discover things, and don't want to know things they'd rather learn by playing, might not want to read the following.)

Story? Yes, this is about a story that is just one logical part of this one play of this game. Enter the main character. Mictlipoctli the King of Legends. He's a wonderful Mictlani hero, who brings some very unique abilities to Mictlan. He's a mummified ancient Mictlani king during the Era when Mictlan sacrificed the most people, and therefore he has some very unique abilities, which includes the ability to lead a large number of undead, or demons. Also, like all undead, he can't be diseased. Thus he was a natural choice to lead my army of demons, devils, and undead (all of which are immune to disease), to try to finish off miasmatic C'tis. Isn't it great when a plan comes together and suddenly a solution to a difficult problem emerges from an ancient crypt?

All was going well. I won a couple of major battles against the hordes of C'tis, losing almost none of the devils or demons. I was proceeding to what would probably be an easy battle, with Mictlipoctli leading an army of about 50 undead, some diseased volunteers, a force of about half a dozen demons and Eagle Warriors in one corner, and about sixteen demons in the other corner, when I got too clever for my own good, and made a tragic mistake.

I decided to protect Mictlipoctli against unexpected attacks my starting him out amidst the devils' starting corner. Since he's undead, he need not worry about fatigue from the heat from the devils auras. The battle was joined, against a handful of C'tisan lizard men, and I was watching the front. My devils and demons swooped in and devastated all but a couple of the lizards... and then my flying corps flew away, my irregulars ran, and my undead stood around and were chopped up by the remaining two lizard warriors. Defeat! What had happened?

No doubt some of you veterans have guessed. My Mictlipoctli is no more. Yes, he is immune to fatigue (I think), but standing amongst the sixteen devils, the weakness I had overlooked, proved fatal. He spontaneously combusted! Mummies are susceptible to fire, and all that heat was too much for him, and he caught on fire, collapsed, and burned to cinders! ARGH!!! So heartbreaking, but so comical too! My own darn fault. This game is wonderful. I already have a plan B... I'll get those miasmatic C'tis yet!

PvK

[MythicalMino]

lol....love stories....pvk...you ever read my story about Bernlad the Green Knight?

Check it out if you want to (it is actually from Dominions I, but...)

http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin...=000014#000000

[PvK]

Yes I had read about Bernlad - a nice story! Your story was where I learned what that spell would do to a fallen hero. I have a game where one of my goals had been to build up to that spell to try to recover one of my heroes who was untimely smashed by a Jotun. Now I'm thinking I might rather let that particular hero rest in peace. I wonder what would happen if I tried to bring back Mictlipoctli the already-mummified-and-incinerated...

Yes, I really enjoy the character-story aspect of Dominions. Another thing that's great about the game is that it's always bittersweet when they die (and they almost always do eventually), and yet I always accept it and carry on the story - there are always other opportunities and other characters who can have their moments of fame, and it would just detract from the whole experience to try to undo it.

I am glad there is no real "return to a saved position" feature - those have undermined the gameplay and the design of many other games, which devolve into "oh I died - I'll just say it didn't happen, since there's not much I can do now". In Dominions, there are practically always other things to do to carry on after a defeat. I don't want to "erase" the (generally unique and interesting in Dominions) history of what happened - I want to go forward and see what happens next!

Case in point is the Mictlipoctli story below. It was like a Hindenburg event - ARGH! I cried when it happened! Oh no! Oh my depraved gods! But it was also really hilarious, and a classic event! No way I'd want to say it didn't happen! In fact, some other awful unexpected backfire events occured that turn, but the challenge is a great and interesting one to overcome them.

PvK

[ January 22, 2004, 00:02: Message edited by: PvK ]

[Arryn]

Originally posted by PvK:
recover one of my heroes who was untimely smashed by a Jotun ...

Hero-squashing is a not-much-spoken-of pasttime of Jotuns. Well, it's not much spoken of by non-Jotuns; Jotuns themselves delight in telling such (usually graphic) tales whilst downing mugs (more like kegs with handles) of ale and scratching the ears of one of the many cute puppies (better known as Winter wolves) that always seem to be underfoot in any such festive gathering of Nordic largesse. You can usually find the nearest such gathering by following the trail of blood that drips off the impaled humans, since the giants tend not to bother with cleaning their weapons until after they've had a good night's carousing.

Remind me sometime to tell you stories of R'lyeh's Version of the Vulcan mind-meld ...

[Coffeedragon]

THE DEVILS OF VIRTUE

/short AAR of my first Newbie game

I was playing Man against half a dozen AIs on Reemergence of Urgaia. My Goddess was Virtue the Virtue with restless followers.

I was under big pressure from Ermor. One day a peasant found an old document and brought it into the palace. It was an unused Soul Pact! It was decided that a Commander of Virtue´s Army should sign and get the Devils.

At first all went well. With the help of half a dozen Devils, the Virtuous Army dispersed the Undead. Soon the Dark Citadel of Ermor was in sight. After a short siege, the walls were breached and the final assault was beginning.

At this very moment, a Horror appeared and ate the Commander who had signed the pact. Having lost their commander, his Devils sat around doing nothing, while undead magicians with highly developed spell technology demolished the Virtuous Army.

It was the total annihilation of the Heroes, the Monks, the Crone of Avalon, the Prophet and of Virtue.

THE MORAL:

-An attack on the Capital of Ermor should be well-prepared.
-Research should not be neglected.
-You cannot always trust the Devils.

[Norfleet]

The devils themselves are fairly reliable. It's that you gave them only one commander, the one who was prone to being randomly eaten by a horror. Had you assigned the contract to an expendable commander, and used someone ELSE as the leader, or used a leader which was not as susceptible to being eaten, things would have worked out much better.

[Targa]

Originally posted by PvK:

I am glad there is no real "return to a saved position" feature - those have undermined the gameplay and the design of many other games, which devolve into "oh I died - I'll just say it didn't happen, since there's not much I can do now".

Yep, I totally agree. Recently I was playing alot of Medieval: Total War, and reading the message Boards I would constantly run across the comment, "And no savey-loadey-savey-loadey" when you play your game!" in reference to people just loading up the Last save when something they didn't like happened. I recently played as Pangaea, and had a beautiful, heroic, experienced, Dryad Prohpet who also was lucky enough to have a great-sounding name. She was preaching in a province and had only a handful of militia with her when it was overrun by enemies and she got killed. That really pissed me off! Labs getting destroyed by earthquakes, etc... these are all things that other games allow you to 'load your Last save and pretend it never happened'. Clearly the way to get the most enjoyment out of any game is to "suck it up and get on with your life". Save/load is the road to an easy win, and not for hardcore gamers.

[Coffeedragon]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
The devils themselves are fairly reliable. It's that you gave them only one commander, the one who was prone to being randomly eaten by a horror.

I know. The seeming unreliability of the Devils was poetic licence for storytelling. It just so happened that the Devils behaved as devilishly as you would them expect to.

[PvK]

Originally posted by Targa:
... Clearly the way to get the most enjoyment out of any game is to "suck it up and get on with your life". Save/load is the road to an easy win, and not for hardcore gamers.

Quite. Sadly, many games are so designed for the "die and reload" mentality, that they are almost impossible to survive on the first try, and/or not interesting at all to replay, so that they can't really be enjoyed in "suck it up" mode. If you "suck it up" in many CRPGs, you're dead and can't do much else except replay from the beginning, in which case you notice that almost everything was scripted and not very interesting to play again. But "die and reload" practically reduces the whole exercise to an endurance test.

PvK

This is why I am glad there is no save feature in Dominions. If you do something stupid, you pay for your mistake and have to try to make up for it.

I hope that Illwinter doesn't put in a save feature, since there is already a script out there for people to 'save and reload' that is 3rd party for those who don't enjoy playing any other way.