3d battle scenes are looking horrible! :(

[Pocus]

side topic : Where you do see **who** voted for you?

To be fair with Mortifer, it is true that the AOW2 team (at least 3 devs , 4+ artists and surely more persons, all this full time for 2 years) has surely made the game costly to produce that dominions.

but in our society, thats not the amount of works which is of importance, but the end result. For example Master of Orion III is a flop, and the sells are low enough to prevent any hope of MoO IV... still the game asked far much in manpower than AoW II.

Daikatana also, the infamous game, was a black hole in money, and was total failure (from a selling stand point, I never played it).

so I dont think we should use the amountofwork-o-meter as a measure to the selling price of a game. I prefer to have the price in accordance with the pleasure we get from it. True, AoW II graphical engine is a pleasure to behold. But I prefer in the end the gameplay, and simultaenous multiplayer ability of Dominions.

no need to start a flame war about the fact that dominions do not deserve 45$. Your milleage may vary as the proverb says. I have paid 45$ for the ugly graphics of dominions I, because, as I have played it several hundreds of hours, the price paid is small compared to the pleasure it gave to me. The most beautiful scenes of any game are in your head.

[MythicalMino]

I totally agree....AoW2 totally sucked....then, Shadow Magic came out, and everyone on the Boards said that it fixed everything in AoW2...so, I bought it...30 bucks down the drain...meanwhile, a gem called Dominions was waiting for me to discover it.

Personally, I think that illwinter has pulled off something harder than the folks that did AoW...just compare the size of the teams involved...

Sure, Shadow Magic might be pretty, but that only gets you so far (at least with me)...gameplay is what matters...Shadow Magic i played, but every game seemed the same....gameplay to me sucked....really really really bad....

Dominions, the gameplay is infinite....(or near to)...and Dominions II only builds on that....no, I would pay 50 dollars for Dominions II (hell, I would pay 40 or more for Dominions I, now that I know what the game has to offer)...If I could go back in time, I wouldn't give a nickel short of dollar for it...

[PDF]

Bah,
Entertainment economy doesn't work on a "quality price" basis, crappy movies and books cost as much as good ones !
It's just a matter of Return on Investment : how many copies will sell regarding development effort.
Dom2 costed something like 2-3 man/years, and will sell maybe 5,000 : that's only 250,000 bucks for Shrapnel and Illwinter to reward their work. not that much. Before that Illwinter sold the games but didn't expect to make a linving of it.

OTOH, a big hit can sell 1,000,000, and so generates 50M money : even if half of that is going to the retail stores, there still is 25M for publishers and devs ... That's more than enough even for a 2-year 20 devs teams !
AoW2 falls somewhere inbetween, I don't have the sales figures, maybe in the 100,000 range or more.

Anyway, Mortifer, I gave you 3 stars

[Mortifer]

cpbeller - you are very unique I must say. I know like 40 players who cannot stop playing Shadow Magic, because it is so good. To me Shadow Magic is lot better than Dominions, but that not means that I wont play Dom II.

[MythicalMino]

i just didn't like AoW2, or Shadow Magic...everything in the game(s) pointed to that I would enjoy it...but I never did...and couldn't force myself to play it for very long...It does have good production values and all...but for me...the game is just too boring...

[Mortifer]

Its all cool! We are different in every way, that is making the world wonderful!

[licker]

AoW 2 cost $50 or more didn't it? AoW SM cost significantly less, as it was more of an addon to AoW 2, even though it is a stand alone product. I'm a big fan of the AoW series though, I've played them all, but I have to say that AoW 2 was seriously flawed in many ways, and SM, while correcting alot of the issues that 2 had, still seems to be lacking in some regaurds. Of course its all personal opinion, if you want the more epic feel Dom is the direction to go, if you want a more beer and pretzels game AoW is still the best in its class.

The big issue for me is and always will be SP, as I really don't have the time for MP, and PBEM is too slow for my tastes, though in Dom it is less of a problem as the turn mechanics and overall pace seem a better fit for me. SP in AoW SM is ok for a while, then it rapidly decends into utter boredom as you are forced to micro your cities and armies to a horrible extent. Dom may not be much better, but hopefully Dom2 will fix some of the micro hell that Dom1 contains. Another problem bedeviling AoW SM is the lack of variety in composing your armies. Most races have 3-4 units that simply never get built ever, and once you pass a certain point in the game lvl1 units are never built either (other than the occasional ranged unit for garrison duty). Eventully even the lvl2s are never built. That is a failling of many games though, not having a place for every unit in the game. Dom seems to do better at this, though I'm sure there are some units for some nations that are rarely built.

The gfx and sound for AoW are excellent though, and the game does deserve credit for that, no matter how unimportant it may be to some individuals. The reality is that a game with excellent game play but poor gfx will remain a cult classic, never gaining the acclaim it deserves. Sad to say that perhaps, but what can you do? There is always a crowd that can't get past the gfx, and they are a larger crowd than the grognards who value gameplay over eye candy.

I think that Dom2 looks quite good (much improved over Dom1), and though I can't comment on the sound or music, I don't really care (I normally turn it all off anyway). Hopefully Dom2 will get the praise and sales it deserves, in the end only the total quality of the game will determine what that should be