I dunno, guys...

[deccan]

Imperator Fyron said:
I was refering to the lack of ability to choose what your troops have... Who is to say that I can't train troops with slightly less than optimal equipment to save time and money? Why does every soldier have to have the exactly specified equipment? Why can't I give a particular soldier better equipment if I can afford it? Sure, I can train overall inferior or superior troops, but the grades come in big chunks (in terms of abilities), without any option to go into the middle ground...

Hmm? I never played the demo so I don't know how it is different. But in the game, for Ulm for example, you get to choose whether to build infantry with chainmail (lighter, less resource intensive) or plate (heavier, more resource intensive), and you get to choose whether they carry mauls, morningstars, flails etc.

If anything, the problem with national troops is not that you can't choose how to outfit them, it's that it doesn't matter how you outfit them except in the very early game, because after that they will all get owned by magic and summons and supercombatants no matter what gear they have.

[Suicide Junkie]

I'm pretty sure Fyron was looking for a finer level of control than that, perhaps training in boot camp for 4 months instead of 6, say.

But if the details get stomped out by the big beasties, I suppose it dosen't really matter in most games.

If you were trying for a more conventional tech mod/map, with little to no magic available, I imagine the fine training detail would be useful though.

[PvK]

Suicide Junkie said:
...
But if the details get stomped out by the big beasties, I suppose it dosen't really matter in most games.

If you were trying for a more conventional tech mod/map, with little to no magic available, I imagine the fine training detail would be useful though.

The players who say things like that tend to be exaggerating, or playing certain styles of games. As in SE4, if you play low-magic sites and/or slow research rate, or if you play smaller maps or use an early conflict strategy, the mortal troops can be very important. Conversely, if you play with big maps, lots of magic sites, fast research, and/or wait till you have all the most powerful magic before starting to fight seriously, etc., then the magic can dominate and make mortal units seem fairly unimportant.

Many of the D2 forum posters though tend to get fixated and opinionated and will post massively overstated and often contradictory opinions about something being super-great or super-lame or broken or the best thing or whatever, because something worked well or badly in a specific instance. Generally, they just don't have enough experience and are used to simpler games that are much easier to analyze.

PvK

[deccan]

PvK said:
Many of the D2 forum posters though tend to get fixated and opinionated and will post massively overstated and often contradictory opinions about something being super-great or super-lame or broken or the best thing or whatever, because something worked well or badly in a specific instance. Generally, they just don't have enough experience and are used to simpler games that are much easier to analyze.

Ouch. It's one thing to claim that something is super-great in the sense that it's a guaranteed game winner. No one seriously claims that. On the other hand, as Zen's pretender and spell balance mods have indicated, there are clearly things (pretender chassis, SC chassis, battlefield spells) that are super-great in the sense that they render competing options of roughly equal resource costs / difficulty of obtaining invalid because choosing the super-great thing is such a no-brainer, in the same way that in stock SEIV choosing the beserker trait is a no-brainer (and that you've tried to address in your own balance mod).

I'm ok with your statement that the usefulness / uselessness of national troops depends heavily on game settings, but it would be nice if the army buffer spells were easier and less expensive to cast and resistance wards could stack properly.

[Atrocities]

I bought the game. It is a fun demo, but the game itself lacks a lot of the control that we enjoy in SEIV. I do hope the developers for Dominions take note of this lack of control and build in some master que and other unit managment and construction tools. Then again there are those who will argue that the game is better playd on the micro-managment level.

For me, having to tell each and every province what to do each and every turn was way to much. A master build que, or unit managment tools would have been god sends.

[Gandalf Parker]

I definately believe that its a game for SOME people. Thats why I dont recommend the game, I strongly recommend the demo. IF you can get past the learning curve, and be intrigued by the strange way of balancing the game, then buy it and I can pretty much gaurantee that it will live for years on your harddrive. Well worth the price.

As for comparisons to the demo, much of what is said might come in perspective if you were to compare it with the SEIV demo. No patches, no mods, nothing other than the starting races and files. ick

The developers are grat about using player suggestions. And they have butted up against many that were good ideas but just couldnt be put in. But they have already announced Dom3. Until then Id love to see some of the creativity here be aimed toward Dom2.

The balance thing is interesting and sparks alot of fire. people saying its broke but cant agree on what is broke if they havent really tackled learning the whole game. Instead of a unit-to-unit balance like chess, or a rock-paper-scissors balance on unit level like many deep strategy games, they do a rock-paper-scissors balance at nation level with very deep strategy layers. VERY difficult to balance but I love what it does to a game. When I play any nation I know that certain nations I come up against I will have a big advantage, and others I will need to get very defensive or change tactics for.

[Emperor Fritsch the Dense]

i DL the demo. while i think its a good game for people like us that dont seem to give a rats *** about graphics......at this time i dont feel its worth the price ive seen it going for. when i drops down to 20 bucks ill pick it due to the replay value. either way if it cost the same as SE id be playing SE over D2 any day. but like i said when price drops and im out of eye candy games (FPS) ill pick it up and enjoy my time consuming non eye candy game.
Emperor Fritsch the Underpayed