What do you like most about Dominions (top 5 list)

[RadiantFleet]

Choices, choices

1. Depth of customization between nations. I love how their are literally features available to each nation that no other nation has. No cheesy little stat rotation (though a little cheese on top is nice!), but honestly unique abilities and attributes.

2. Depth of economics. Blood, gold, magic, dominion, summoning, and more. Each impacts the other but is not wholy dependent on another economy.

3. A real strategic feel to combat. You can specify strategy and tactics but not actual choices on the battlefield. This is great! Almost no other game gives you a true feel of being the general for a military. You are not constrained to use whatever bargain basement salad shooter got through procurement as a standard weapon, you can choose to search out find the military mix that _you_ want for your armies. In fact, you may decide that salad shooters are good weapons, especially against vine men and treelords

4. The gee wiz/that's cool factor you get from the random independents and special sites. I love finding some really cool site and changing my grand strategy because of some plum/lemon that just dropped into my lap (Hmmm, mount chaining, maybe I _will_ persue summoned troops this game).

5. The exciting pace of the game. I get the fun of building up an uber empire, but I get to have fun along the way. One of the problems I have with games like Civ III is the tendancy to make it so you have to churn out the bare minimum of improvements while trying to maximize military and scientific production. In Dom you can ignore spell research if you want to, you can minimize military production (but don't do it too much, or you'll be singing someone else's hymns soon enough), you can build a really cool empire without constantly monitoring your progress versus an optimization curve to determine whether you are still competitive.

[licker]

Originally posted by Taqwus:
Forge costs, if memory serves, are based entirely on the path/level requirements.
Level 1 = 5 gems, each level thereafter doubles (thus an item which requires level 5 in some path needs 80 units of that magical resource. A level 3/3 two-path item would require 20 units of each of the two corresponding resources, etc.)
Certain units (Master Smiths, and the new Ulm Iron Faith priest/mages) get innate forge bonuses (25% generally), certain items give forge bonuses (25% for dwarven hammer, 50% ea. for Hammer of the Forge Lord, Hammer of the Cyclops IIRC), spells might as well (never tried Forge of the Ancients, but description suggests it would help.).

Actually I know this... I'd just rather it be explicit in the description. Saves me a small amount of mental power

[Prio]

Originally posted by Taqwus:
Certain units (Master Smiths, and the new Ulm Iron Faith priest/mages) get innate forge bonuses (25% generally), certain items give forge bonuses (25% for dwarven hammer, 50% ea. for Hammer of the Forge Lord, Hammer of the Cyclops IIRC), spells might as well (never tried Forge of the Ancients, but description suggests it would help.).

I've found at least one magic site that reduces forging costs for items forged in that province (bonus to Construction).

[PvK]

1. The whole package. The way so many details and game systems work very well together in many interesting and appropriate/logical ways, to create a very interesting and detailed game world that plays out with great variety and interestingness from turn to turn, and from game to game.

2. What Saber Cherry & RadiantFleet wrote.

3. All the great detail and flavor and variety and originality of the spells, units, nations, monsters, pretenders, items, magical sites, etc.

4. Nice details down to the individual man, his experience level and injury/fatigue status, as well as detailed equipment. This lets you try to keep your old experienced troops alive and uncrippled, and gives them some character. Gift of Reason is icing on the cake - it was great when one of my summoned Cave Drakes (for those who don't know, a Cave Drake is a slightly-comical-looking fat squat giant armored beast which fights with its clumsy big mouth but its best asset is it's really hard to hurt, so it makes a good battlefield anchor for your men to fight around) got up to level 3 experience, so I cast Gift of Reason on him and he got a fun name and I equipped him with a flying carpet, loaded with some other elite troops to become an elite behind-the-lines special forces team with extreme comic relief value. "Oh no! It's Podarkes the legendary cave drake flying in on a magic carpet with his elite squad! Run away!"

5. A nice mortal/realistic combat system with morale and fatigue, but more importantly that people have appropriate mortality and lethality levels. None of the "oh he's a hero so he can absorb 10x the damage of anyone else - you'd need to hit him 100 times with that battleaxe to take him out" nonsense found in D&D-inspired games.

And more.

PvK

[Dekent]

You can play a dragon......


Who breathes fire......

[Sammual]

1) Variety

2) Balance

3) The 'WTF factor' (The ability to be suprised again and again.....).

4) Play by Email.

5) Modability.

Sammual

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by Sammual:
1) Variety
2) Balance
3) The 'WTF factor' (The ability to be suprised again and again.....).
4) Play by Email.
5) Modability.

I very much agree with your list. I was also pleasantly surprised by the music (I usually turn music off in games)

AND I just had a WTF which I really liked! I had a province full of sages all doing research. Nice added feature of hitting 'a' to select them all and then setting one to research which sets them all to research. But then I tried hitting 'a' and selecting making an item. WOW. It went thru them one at a time letting me select the item for each one to make! What a nice speed-up.

I wonder if I can do that with a spell cast also. If I have a bunch of little astral mages can I select a bunch and choose astral window then go thru each one selecting targets? Way cool. Thanks Illwinter.

[ November 18, 2003, 16:26: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]