Dammit

[Boron]

Arryn said:
I play HoI with 1.06c and CORE 0.84. CORE makes the game much more realistic and challenging, yet it still falls far short of being truly challenging in SP. Unlike Dom 2.

sorry but how can you say dom 2 is challenging in SP ? dominions 2 really shines in MP

but in sp it is like HoI and most other strategy games . perhaps slightly better but in sp if you chose special nations : ryleh , ermor , pan cw there is no challenge at all .
almost the same with abysia / mictlan when you use blood heavy .
after earlygame no challenge
to a slightly lesser extent true with all the magically extreme flexible nations like pythium / arco .
if you survive until midgame no challenge too just clamhoard + make lots of uberscs , battlemages with strong troops etc.


dominions 2 is only challenging in sp if you take first special houserules and second take the nation who does worst under this special houserules .
furthermore you have to forbid yourself the use of scs.


the only way i see is as tauren suggested to let Users mod ai scripts . this way i could perhaps make the ai use my own battlescripts for lategame if it is possible then everybody can make 1-2 scripts for his favourite nation(s).
then everybody sends them to illwinter or better somebody with lots of patience + insight ( like zen + gandalf ) and he choses 4-5 scripts for each nation which he thinks are extremely good .
then the ai always choses random one of these scripts and would probably play really good .

Arryn said:


IMO, Paradox is very good at conceptualizing / designing games, but not very good at implementing them. Their biggest shortcoming is a marked lack of usability testing, which would quickly reveal the numerous UI flaws in their games. They also desperately need someone with experience in AI (preferably neural-net AI). Of course, people with experience in AI are in severely short supply in the entire gaming industry. It's just that the games that most need good AI (ie: strategy games) are often the ones with the worst AIs. Probably has something to do with the genre's popularity and typical budgets.

strategy games are with shooters the most popular genre .

blizzard with starcraft or microsoft with age of empires 2 had surely a huge budget .
especially the starcraft ai was not bad .
but it is easy with only about 25 units in total . if you have this in mind the ai was VERY poor once you had mp experience .

in a game with a friend we 2 won always against 6 ais on the hunters .

alpha zentauri has imo a quite good ai though .
in magic the gathering the ai used their decks quite well too given that it is almost as complex as dominions ( about 800 different cards i think with both extensions ).
these 2 games are positive examples for a quite good ai .
a third one is heroes of might and magic 1-3 .

Arryn said:

SE4 is TB. So is GalCiv. You should try both.

The Last RT grand strategy game I played (prior to EU/EU2/HoI/Vicky) was Star Wars Rebellion. A game that should have been TB. RT brought nothing good to the game. Especially since the morons who made the game didn't allow for orders while the game was paused.

what is your impression of starcraft ?
i think it is still the best true RTS game .

i have star wars rebellion myself but with pause like the paradox games it is basically TB . star wars rebellion was not as good as master of orion and the star wars bonus was not enough to compensate though i love starwars .

i was interested in trying Galactic civs but i heard that it is not deep and too simple and according to reviews / screenshots i believed it .

i will give space empires probably a closer look though

[The_Tauren13]

Boron said:
especially the starcraft ai was not bad .
but it is easy with only about 25 units in total . if you have this in mind the ai was VERY poor once you had mp experience .

in a game with a friend we 2 won always against 6 ais on the hunters .

lemme guess... BGH, not the real hunters. what do you expect? of course the AI sucks on lame *** money maps; that was not the way the game was intended to be played. you could never win a 2v6 on any REAL map ( unless you exploit the problem with them chasing you all over the place with their workers at the beginning if you attack them, but that is no better than cheating ).

i hate how the starcraft community does nothing but play those [censored] up maps with endless money [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/mad.gif[/img] [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/mad.gif[/img] [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/mad.gif[/img] really screws up the game and now it isnt fun to play any more

[Boron]

The_Tauren13 said:

lemme guess... BGH, not the real hunters. what do you expect? of course the AI sucks on lame *** money maps; that was not the way the game was intended to be played. you could never win a 2v6 on any REAL map ( unless you exploit the problem with them chasing you all over the place with their workers at the beginning if you attack them, but that is no better than cheating ).

i hate how the starcraft community does nothing but play those [censored] up maps with endless money [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/mad.gif[/img] [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/mad.gif[/img] [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/mad.gif[/img] really screws up the game and now it isnt fun to play any more

no it was NORMAL hunters .
on bgh i could win myself against 4-5 ais easy .

we 2 vs the 6 ais on normal hunters was challenging but not too hard .

we both played protos , builded 10-20 photon cannons on the entry to our base + 10-20 berserks .
this holded off the ai long enough .
then lots of scouts + some corsairs and we took one ai after the other out .

only the initial rush is a problem and can fail if you are very unlucky . but against 6 random ais we won most of our games .


one of my friends got internet later then me . he developed a special berserkerrush where he could win against 7 zerg ais alone .

[Arryn]

Boron said:
what is your impression of starcraft ?
i think it is still the best true RTS game .

i have star wars rebellion myself but with pause like the paradox games it is basically TB .

I had a great deal of fun with Starcraft years ago. And with the expansion pack for it. I've even occasionally reinstalled and played it over the past few years -- when I'm feeling nostalgic and super-bored.

Fans of Kohan would argue with you over which game is "best". And I'm sure that some C&Cer would chime in if their game(s) weren't mentioned (though C&C isn't even in the same league as Starcraft or Kohan).

SW Rebellion isn't "basically TB" using its pause, since you cannot issue orders while paused, unlike with the Paradox games. I no longer will play RT games in which you cannot issue orders while paused. Rebellion wiped out any tolerance I had for that.

[Boron]

Arryn said:

I had a great deal of fun with Starcraft years ago. And with the expansion pack for it. I've even occasionally reinstalled and played it over the past few years -- when I'm feeling nostalgic and super-bored.

Fans of Kohan would argue with you over which game is "best". And I'm sure that some C&Cer would chime in if their game(s) weren't mentioned (though C&C isn't even in the same league as Starcraft or Kohan).

SW Rebellion isn't "basically TB" using its pause, since you cannot issue orders while paused, unlike with the Paradox games. I no longer will play RT games in which you cannot issue orders while paused. Rebellion wiped out any tolerance I had for that.

oh i have so far only heard of kohan but never played it

is it a good mp game too ?
i jugded starcraft mainly on mp .

i think still no rts game with really different races is as balanced as starcraft when played in mp .


age of empires 2 / empire earth were good too but they have the same units for everybody so it is easy to balance .


from the viewpoint of user interface the c&c series is very good . but from the viewpoint of balance .
i haven't played c&c generals but in c&c 3 which i wishfully awaited i was disappointed too .


balance was horrible there :
gdi had the grenadierrush .
later nod had the overpowered artillery .





now a positive list :
my first rts game was dune 2 it was good at its time
c&c 1 and 2 were nice too .
starcraft was almost perfect and occasionally i too play it sometimes even now
in sp i liked lords of the realm 2 quite much though it had serious flaws in ai .
master of orion 2 was really great too but the ai there is extremely bad
heroes of migth and magic 1-3 were really good ,
aow 1+2 too but now with my knowlegde of dominions they are just boring

magic the gathering i still play occasionally

other strategy games that are good but have severe issues are :

missionforce cyberstorm ( bad ai ) , mech commander 1 ( no saving during missions ) , mech commander 2 ( too easy / short ) , shogun/medieval total war ( too simple / boring ) and the paradox series where i agree with you on bad ai too .

then imperialism 1 ( buggy though + you win to quick with the diplomatic vote )



i ordered myself now civilization 3 for sp but i am not 100% sure if i will like it i liked master of orion 2 + alpha centauri but civilization 1+2 not really [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/ooo.gif[/img]




the only other turn based game which i still like extremely and where the knowlegde of dominions didn't influence this in a negative way is still the steel panther series , mainly SP WAW .

but this is a quite different game to dominions though and has only turn based in common

looking really forward to :

-total war : rome
-hoi 2
-world in flames

and of course dominions 3