Dominions 2 Demo Review

[Fyron]

So after having played the Dominions 2 demo...

The addition of some global report windows certainly help this game out a lot. So is the ability to disable those unnerving fade effects for when windows pop up and go away.

The game's interface is definitely better than Dominions 1. However, it is still fairly clunky. It took me nearly 5 minutes to figure out how to issue orders to my commanders (other than moving). Click on the displayed order to change it? Odd.

The game still lacks a display of the name of the nation that owns a territory when you select that territory. It is rather annoying to have to have to go to the scores window to match up the flag to the nation name. Plus, this is very non-intuitive. Adding the display of the nations' name to the territories they control will help a lot. So would an option to display the exact number of commanders and troops in every territory you control on the map, instead of just a box that varies in size. The box is nice, but the numbers would IMO be vastly superior for gauging your troop strengths nation-wide at a glance.

Friendly fire is far too much of a problem in this game. Half of my troop losses come from my own archers and mages missing their targets far too often. The game needs a strategy that makes archers stop firing on units that are in melee combat with your own melee units. The fire 3 rounds and flee option is not good for this purpose at all. Neither is combining it with the "hold 2 turns and attack" option you can give melee troops. That is just a clunky solution that does not work well. Mages miss way too often in this game. They need much higher precision scores. All of them. Unless right next to their targets, my mages tend to hit targets less than 20% of the time.

The automatic casting choices are a bit strange. My mages will sometimes cast low level weak damaging spells, rather than higher level ones that can do a lot more damage. Sometimes they make smart choices.

Storming castles is rather strange as well. I attacked Pangaea's castle with 10 commanders (some mages, some priests, some chiefs) and nearly 100 troops while playing as Machaka. I had 60 archer type units, the rest light infantry or spiders (the expensive ones). The enemy had 2 troops (a minotaur and a centaur) and 4 commanders. I lost 20 troops and 4 commanders, they lost 2 troops. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. You'd think that repeated storms of arrows would do something to these guys, but apparently not.

The mountain citadel is 100% useles. It is the same as the dark citadel in every way, except that it has only 10 admin instead of 20.

The way some of these units have costs scaled is not very well designed. Often, there will be very small increases in a few stats over the cheaper troop, for 3x as much gold and 2x the resources. Balance and a sense of scale seem to be lacking. The game designers seemed to be far too concerned with having more types of units than necessary, while not paying enough attention to the purpose of all of the units, or the balance between them.

Battles tend to end after only killing a small amount of the enemy and then they just run away, even when they have roughly equatable forces. The morale system is more of a hindrance to this game than a benefit.

The loss of the ability in Dominions 1 to target enemy mages and/or enemy commanders specifically seems rather strange...

[edit]
Almost forgot... the game devs could have definitely chosen a better image pattern to make the basic game interface with. If you don't have an art budget, keep it simple.
[/edit]

I shall delay my final judgement on the game until after reading some responses...

[ January 11, 2004, 23:27: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[apoger]

What's really painful is that I like the game for what it does well, but must conceed that you have many good points.


>The game's interface is definitely better than Dominions 1. However, it is still fairly clunky.

Indeed.


>The game still lacks a display of the name of the nation that owns a territory when you select that territory.

Absolutely. It should be part of the info when you look at the province.


>Friendly fire is far too much of a problem in this game.

Always has been.
I must assume that this is a low priority for the developers, since a 'fire and hold' commmand would be fairly easy to do.


>Mages miss way too often in this game. They need much higher precision scores. All of them. Unless right next to their targets, my mages tend to hit targets less than 20% of the time.

This got much worse in Dom2.
I don't know what Illwinter was thinking.
"Perhaps the players will enjoy missing often?"

This singlehandedly made a host of spells near pointless.


>The automatic casting choices are a bit strange. My mages will sometimes cast low level weak damaging spells, rather than higher level ones that can do a lot more damage. Sometimes they make smart choices.

Always been a problem.

I have suggested many times that a simple solution woule be to have a 'repeat Last cast' command, that would have the mage simply keep repeating his Last spell. This would require no change to the AI, and wouldn't be a complex change, but would afford players some control of the mages actions. I'd love to see more, but I'd settle for this simple fix.

I understand that they are trying to simulate the choas of battle. However there is no reason for mages to get stupid.


>The mountain citadel is 100% useles. It is the same as the dark citadel in every way, except that it has only 10 admin instead of 20.

If you fought one you'd see the difference.
They are much stronger from the wall layout and arrow fire (the DC has no fire).

On the other hand I agree that it's not a very useful fort for the players. Illwinter has overestimated the value of defense and underestimated the value of economics.

Honestly, I don't think anyone is happy with the forts costs. Illwinter seems particularly stubborn about changing it, so don't hold your breath.


>The way some of these units have costs scaled is not very well designed.

Agreed.


>The game designers seemed to be far too concerned with having more types of units than necessary, while not paying enough attention to the purpose of all of the units, or the balance between them.

The light cav and light inf are still a waste of time. If they produce the mod utility I will come out with a mod with units that have better balance. I'll fix the mage precision as well. Yes I know... how arrogant of me. It'll happen though, if the tools get released.


>Battles tend to end after only killing a small amount of the enemy and then they just run away, even when they have roughly equatable forces. The morale system is more of a hindrance to this game than a benefit.

This is one place where I disagree.
The games morale systems is awesome.
I suggest playing more.


>The loss of the ability in Dominions 1 to target enemy mages and/or enemy commanders specifically seems rather strange...

I'm still not sure if I like or dislike this.


>Almost forgot... the game devs could have definitely chosen a better image pattern to make the basic game interface with. If you don't have an art budget, keep it simple.

Without doubt.


>I shall delay my final judgement on the game until after reading some responses...


Even with all it's failings... it's a great game.

Play it.

[ January 12, 2004, 00:00: Message edited by: apoger ]

[PvK]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
...
Friendly fire is far too much of a problem in this game. Half of my troop losses come from my own archers and mages missing their targets far too often. The game needs a strategy that makes archers stop firing on units that are in melee combat with your own melee units. The fire 3 rounds and flee option is not good for this purpose at all. Neither is combining it with the "hold 2 turns and attack" option you can give melee troops. That is just a clunky solution that does not work well.

Generally agreed. This is about the only thing I find really disappointing in Doms I and II.

Mages miss way too often in this game. They need much higher precision scores. All of them. Unless right next to their targets, my mages tend to hit targets less than 20% of the time.

This should be tweaked in many, but not all, cases. Some of them are too inaccurate. In general, the effect of low accuracy (on both missile weapons and spells) shouldn't be to miss entire formations - it should just make it hard to hit specific targets at long range.

Some spells and casters are accurate enough, though.

The automatic casting choices are a bit strange. My mages will sometimes cast low level weak damaging spells, rather than higher level ones that can do a lot more damage. Sometimes they make smart choices.

True. Longer spell scripts would be nice. AI does pretty well in most cases IMO considering the staggering variety of possible spells, targets, and other factors.

Storming castles is rather strange as well. I attacked Pangaea's castle with 10 commanders (some mages, some priests, some chiefs) and nearly 100 troops while playing as Machaka. I had 60 archer type units, the rest light infantry or spiders (the expensive ones). The enemy had 2 troops (a minotaur and a centaur) and 4 commanders. I lost 20 troops and 4 commanders, they lost 2 troops. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. You'd think that repeated storms of arrows would do something to these guys, but apparently not.

I disagree. Storming a medieval fortification the hard way should be difficult and costly, even with only a few defenders. Firing storms of arrows at defenders high on a castle wall protected by narrow stone arrow slits generally has very little effect. There are many historical examples of very small garrisons holding off massive numbers of attackers. This is a large part of why anyone bothered to build them, despite the staggering costs and build times.

As for game balance arguments, there are many ways to overcome castle defenses in Dominions. But castles are supposed to present strong obstacles to many. However you can always just take the province and not storm the castle, and starve them out (assuming they are something that needs to eat...).

The mountain citadel is 100% useles. It is the same as the dark citadel in every way, except that it has only 10 admin instead of 20.

Untrue. See thread on subject. Dark Citadel is only available to some, and lacks any built-in firepower.

The way some of these units have costs scaled is not very well designed. Often, there will be very small increases in a few stats over the cheaper troop, for 3x as much gold and 2x the resources. Balance and a sense of scale seem to be lacking.
...

Seems to me there is almost always a considered reason for the costs, even if it isn't obvious at first.

Battles tend to end after only killing a small amount of the enemy and then they just run away, even when they have roughly equatable forces. The morale system is more of a hindrance to this game than a benefit.

Maybe with low-morale units and fright-inducing effects (such as dead leaders, fighting monsters, etc), but that's intended. There are many spells, unit types, items, etc. which will very effectively reduce routing. I find the morale system extremely welcome and quite well-done. It would be a lot less interesting and less appropriate if everyone fought to the death regardless of circumstances. Terror and the ability to resist it is a major factor in war, especially when dragons and undead elephants are involved, etc...

The loss of the ability in Dominions 1 to target enemy mages and/or enemy commanders specifically seems rather strange...

Some would say that the ability in Doms 1 for units to see an entire enemy army and automatically determine whom the commanders and/or mages were and target them is much more strange. It makes much more sense that such targets would not always be immediately identifiable. It also makes for more interesting battles if it is not so easy to target just the few best enemy units with some of the more powerful attacks. Otherwise it can be an annoying weenie chase. Groups on "Attack Rearmost" give a nicely-unpredictable chance of hunting down commanders and mages hiding behind the lines.

PvK

[void]

> Adding the display of the nations' name to the territories they control will help a lot.
Thers a option in map-fliter,just have to press 9,8,7....till u found it.


> The game needs a strategy that makes archers stop firing on units that are in melee combat with your own melee units
some cheap way to avoid friendly fire:
Air Magic: Aim,Wind Guide.
Nature Magic: Eagle Eye.
in the other hand,i hope a "Fire and hold" order appears in the new patch 2...

> I don't know what Illwinter was thinking.
"Perhaps the players will enjoy missing often?"

maybe,just a guess,
"We should force them to forge EYES artifact."
^^"

> The automatic casting choices are a bit strange. My mages will sometimes cast low level weak damaging spells, rather than higher level ones that can do a lot more damage. Sometimes they make smart choices.

120% Agree.
Their Favorites is to cast "Caster Protection" magic.Personal Luck,Astral shield,Mistform,Barkskin...
Hope devs add a "Banned-battlefield magic" list later.
'repeat Last cast' is a good choice too ^^

>I shall delay my final judgement on the game until after reading some responses...

Even with all it's failings... it's a great game.
Play it.

say sorry for my poor english. my first language & second are not english...

^^

[Arralen]

@Imperator Fyron :

So you played the Demo .. twice? Or three times?
You did read the newbie guides and FAQs available here?
So you really know what you're talking about?

No, you don't - or at least you're sounding like it. But than again you're talking 'bout DOM1, as if you played that, too.

So I wonder, what the purpose of your rant is?

Basically, the combat system is the same as in DOM1, and it works well for years now. Storming castles is ment to be costly (as it was historically, as someone already mentioned). Obviously you even didn't notice that different castles have different layouts, and that there are "build-in" archers/ballistae/slingers in those turrets, numbers and placement depending not only on castle type but on the nation as well.

Concerning the targeting I must say I wonder if a bug has crept into the range formula - sometimes spells that have multiple effects "spray" all over the battlefield as if fired at max range, while they are in fact aimed at a much nearer squad (judging from the average range at which the effects appear). Found this especially true with spells of 0 or less accuracy, what is a good hint that there's a bug in the calculations. But that's not of great concern - the developers are known for their willingness to support their product. The first patch is due in short time and might already fix this issue. Until then, use mages with prec15 or more, eyes of aiming and spells with high precision (3+)

Speaking of spells - there are spells which give improved accuracy to mages and troops for the length of battle, as well as morale-boosting ones which will make your troops fight much longer, as well as the opposite.

In contrast to most, if not all similar games out there, most of those toops, respectivly troop types, actually are different from each other, have a purpose and are quite well-balanced. In fact, most of them have been taken over from DOM1, and the developers did a good job integrating the new types.

And the interface isn't "clunky", it's only different. Therefore it takes some time to get used too. I would agree, though, that there are some minor improvements to be made ... .

I don't want to go too much into detail here, but e.g. the boxes are quite o.k.. Why? Because they give a hint at army strength, not numbers (at least they are suppose to I think). Giving a single number for commanders/soldiers each would be absolutly useless, as there are so much different types of each with much different combat strength. (Milita vs. IceDevil ..)

Ok, that doesn't leave much of the points you mentioned, and I have other things to do ..

A.

[Fyron]

>The mountain citadel is 100% useles. It is the same as the dark citadel in every way, except that it has only 10 admin instead of 20.

If you fought one you'd see the difference.
They are much stronger from the wall layout and arrow fire (the DC has no fire).

Then the layout needs to be made painfully obvious when selecting your castle type while designing your "player."

I disagree. Storming a medieval fortification the hard way should be difficult and costly, even with only a few defenders. Firing storms of arrows at defenders high on a castle wall protected by narrow stone arrow slits generally has very little effect. There are many historical examples of very small garrisons holding off massive numbers of attackers. This is a large part of why anyone bothered to build them, despite the staggering costs and build times.

Hmm... they were not even close to the wall, but well behind it in the court yard. There were other hidden troops at the wall firing those arrows at me... That is too much of a stretch for me. So is the fact that seiging only seems to open the gate, not scratch the walls.

As for game balance arguments, there are many ways to overcome castle defenses in Dominions. But castles are supposed to present strong obstacles to many. However you can always just take the province and not storm the castle, and starve them out (assuming they are something that needs to eat...).

Or if they have a commander with Nature magic... each level feeds 5 units per turn. Of course, starving them out is not very practical when you have a 40 turn limit in the demo.

Other than flying units, how do you overcome castle defenses?

Seems to me there is almost always a considered reason for the costs, even if it isn't obvious at first.

For some units, yes. But there are several Machaka and Jotunheim (the two nations I tried) units that increase in cost too drastically for what you get compared to the next weaker troop they have.

Maybe with low-morale units and fright-inducing effects (such as dead leaders, fighting monsters, etc), but that's intended. There are many spells, unit types, items, etc. which will very effectively reduce routing. I find the morale system extremely welcome and quite well-done. It would be a lot less interesting and less appropriate if everyone fought to the death regardless of circumstances. Terror and the ability to resist it is a major factor in war, especially when dragons and undead elephants are involved, etc...

But when you have no units with terror, they still route far too quickly...

> Adding the display of the nations' name to the territories they control will help a lot.
Thers a option in map-fliter,just have to press 9,8,7....till u found it.

Nope. None of those got the nation name. There is an option to display the territory name, but not the name of the nation controlling it.

[sergex]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron: Then the layout needs to be made painfully obvious when selecting your castle type while designing your "player."

I agree with this too. I don't have a problem with hidden information and self-discovery but this info is too important to leave out. It's dumb to make a critical error before the game even starts because of poor documentation.

Other than flying units, how do you overcome castle defenses?

I find that just using extrodinary amounts of numbers works fine. 100+ units should do fine in most cases before turn 40, but you are at the whim of the morale checks. If their god with Fear is inside the castle you most likely aren't going to have much success. Maybe capturing all the land around the castle and starving out the god's Dominion will make him weak enough to conquer. When I played the demo I just massed up for a final assault on turn 40 since the game was over anyway.

I don't think the demo was supposed to give you a complete game so this isn't really a fair criticism.

quote:

---

Seems to me there is almost always a considered reason for the costs, even if it isn't obvious at first.

For some units, yes. But there are several Machaka and Jotunheim (the two nations I tried) units that increase in cost too drastically for what you get compared to the next weaker troop they have.

---

I agree too. I play with abysia, and I do fine with just hordes of the weakest infantry. Having huge numbers of them makes it easy to route the enemy and to keep their own morale which outweighs the added morale of the units that cost 3x as much. Only problem is starving when in enemy territory, but I usually don't hang around in one province with a huge army for long.

But when you have no units with terror, they still route far too quickly...

Again, I think having all your guys into one or two really big squads helps with this. Only time my infantry route is when they get torn up by crossbowmen, but by that time, the second line of infantry (or fast troops like salamanders or nightmares) have reached the crossbowmen and have routed the enemy frontlines already. Number of units is the key thing in early game I have found after a couple dozen games. Later on, huge summoned creatures like Iron Dragons totally destroy all infantry so that strategy goes out the window If you play a nation like Jotulheim that uses small amount of troops, you rely on priests to keep casting Boost Morale, which doesn't seem to really help all that much, so you're screwed IMO when going up against huge armies of weak infrantry.

And, I agree about the GUI and graphics, but I don't think it takes away from the gameplay enough to worry about it. I just discovered the F1 screen and it really helps with managing the Unrest/Tax situation.

Pretty good review, but you really need to read a LOT of forum Posts to learn the hidden info to make truly informed opinions about many features.

[sergex]

Originally posted by Arralen:
@Imperator Fyron :
Concerning the targeting I must say I wonder if a bug has crept into the range formula - sometimes spells that have multiple effects "spray" all over the battlefield as if fired at max range, while they are in fact aimed at a much nearer squad (judging from the average range at which the effects appear). Found this especially true with spells of 0 or less accuracy, what is a good hint that there's a bug in the calculations. But that's not of great concern - the developers are known for their willingness to support their product. The first patch is due in short time and might already fix this issue. Until then, use mages with prec15 or more, eyes of aiming and spells with high precision (3+)

Speaking of spells - there are spells which give improved accuracy to mages and troops for the length of battle, as well as morale-boosting ones which will make your troops fight much longer, as well as the opposite.

This is really confusing to me about missile attacks and magic attacks. For example, is a Fireball a missle attack that uses the caster's precision stat OR does it use another formula to determine hit/miss? I assume level of the caster matters, like Fire9 mage should hit more with his fireball than a Fire2 mage right? Or does that just let him cast more fireballs in one battle?

The manual and in-game documentation isn't too clear about how to make your mages connect more often with their long-range attacks. I thought precision only matters for archers?

In terms of archery, I find the friendly-fire too much of a drawback that I don't even use any kind of archers or crossbowmen at all. Just hordes of infantry from now on, and I'm doing great with it. I hardly ever lose a battle with just ranks and ranks of infantry with some fast mounted troops and magical creatures that tear into the enemy line before the enemy archers have time to kill too many of my guys. Fast melee units seem to be the key to beating archer armies, and if you don't use any archers yourself, your casualities will be pretty low in general.

Friendly fire usually does more damage than good in my experience, so I don't even waste the resources on building ranged units. I use Abysia because their armies are immune to fire, so they don't get harmed by stray fireballs or poorly placed Clouds of Fire by my own casters

If they patched it so friendly fire isn't as MUCH of a drawback as it is now, then I'd change my strategies around that, but with the current implementation, I find it more effeicient to totally leave out missle troops from my armies.

[ January 12, 2004, 03:45: Message edited by: sergex ]

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
For some units, yes. But there are several Machaka and Jotunheim (the two nations I tried) units that increase in cost too drastically for what you get compared to the next weaker troop they have.

Between Machaka hoplites and Spider warriors/knights? Or between hoplites and normal warriors? For the spiders, it's because that spider comes with a ranged web attack, is fast, has two normal attacks, one of which has death poison. Then when the rider gets killed the spider hangs around for the rest of the fight. For the black hunters you get a spider that is blessable and hangs around even riderless for many turns. Spider knights are also almost twice as fast as infantry, which lets them outflank their enemies.

Machaka hoplites on the other hand are excellent heavy infantry, with both good morale, excellent protection, a defense of 14 against arrows, a hgih damage weapon, and escellent attack and defense skills. Remember that a single point difference can have a very large effect with the rolls as seen on the charts in this thread.
Die roll charts

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by sergex:
This is really confusing to me about missile attacks and magic attacks. For example, is a Fireball a missle attack that uses the caster's precision stat OR does it use another formula to determine hit/miss?

Every targeted battlefield spell is treated as a missile attack that always hits a target in the square where it lands. Some spells have a precision boost of 100 which means that the mage will essentially always hit the target they aim for. Spells use the mage's precision stat as the basis for determining the spread as they travel. A precision on the mage of 15 is pretty much necessary to make spells like fireball useful, which indicates that the effects might need to be looked at a bit.

I assume level of the caster matters, like Fire9 mage should hit more with his fireball than a Fire2 mage right? Or does that just let him cast more fireballs in one battle?

That just affects the statistics that have "+" or "-" symbols after them in the spell description, as well as the penetration bonus to overcome magic resistance for those spells which can be negated by such.