Message from Abysia

[Meglobob]

KissBlade said:
Seriously, I've said this numerous times in the channel. Old Age: Dumbest mechanic ever. What is it for? Flavor? Annoyance? Adding in even more random factors for a strategy game? Lame.

Well said.

[Nerfix]

Besides, it's just a game, even if an exceptionaly good one. Shouldn't we enjoy it's good sides and take the occasional irritation as just a bit of a spice?

[Archonsod]

I quite like the aging mechanic myself. I just had a great run with an elderly prophet (lost both his eyes, an arm, had a never healing wound and a chest wound by the end) who still managed to lead our troops to victory over the infidel empire of C'tis.Just proves how inferior those heretic lizards actually are.
Ironically enough, he died when we discovered Inkpot End in one of the lizards' old provinces.

It would be nice if the afflictions possible were a bit more selective for old age though. It's rather amusing to see a mage who's never left the lab suffer a battle wound or similar.

I think balance might come into it though. The older mages could certainly gain from a little more magic or a research bonus over and above what they already have, to negate the fact that they tend to die in a couple of years (Disease seems to be a common affliction for age). On the other hand, you can always play a nation which doesn't have older mages, such as EA Ulm or Ermor.

[Boron]

KissBlade said:
Seriously, I've said this numerous times in the channel. Old Age: Dumbest mechanic ever. What is it for? Flavor? Annoyance? Adding in even more random factors for a strategy game? Lame.

Kiss, imho in turn based strategy games there has to be a random factor !!!
Otherwise they become a dull chess clone.

The random factor in Dominions 2 was imho just fine, 1 game out of 10 was very frustrating because of bad luck, but 1 out of 10 was also very rewarding because you had luck.

In Dom3 the random factor is about the same as in Dom2.

The problem is that if there would be no random factor in a turn based strategy game you could then plan the perfect strat. Do you really want such a game?

In a RTS if there is no random factor it is fine, there thanks to superior dexterity you can gain an edge. And in RTS you cannot do everything but have to focus on a "Schwerpunkt" with excessive micro or try to do excessive macro.
Anyways, in a RTS even if nothing is random because you cannot do everything because you are a human and not a machine this adds enough randomness.

But if you want a balanced turn based game with no random elements in it this leads to a game with identical factions, so something like chess and checkers.
Chess is a very good game, but such a game cannot get much more complex imho.
So for a turn based pc strategy game random elements are imho a must to keep it interesting.
The trick is just to make the game not tooooo random, so that skill usually wins over luck.

Dominions achieved that balance just fine in Dom2 and imho also achieves it just fine in Dom3.

[Taqwus]

Oh, no worries there. I don't think there's a known perfect strategy for Go yet, and Go is a 2-player game with no hidden information and at most 361 legal moves from any legal state.

Dominions offers up to 21 players, has mostly hidden information, and has a far higher branching factor combined with a degree of deliberate measure-countermeasure in (that is, there are specific counters to different approaches... but exploiting the counters has opportunity cost. Pure minimax says you're screwed.)

Dominions offers a fair bit of variability, but when you're dealing with armies of 400+, the law of averages is going to come into play. It's mostly the random events hitting early that can make a huge difference (imagine the 1500 free gold + an item event at the start... or losing 99.9% of the population of your capital to the Ancient Presence event), and IIRC some events are restricted as to how soon they can happen, and that probability can be reduced on game creation.

Randomness frustrates me more in Diablo (farming monsters for item drops is tedious) and Nethack (which is pretty much the embodiment of 'arbitrary'). Here, I would be annoyed if an SC died to a randomly lucky arrow or Soul Slay... but it does mean that it's actually possible to counter SCs without resorting to SCs oneself, and that's probably a good thing.

[PDF]

Hmm, I don't yet have any definitive position on aging (as I'm middle-aged ), but yet I'm somewhat surprised by the fact that "lose an arm" is an as much probable effect of old age as "limp"...
IMHO aging should give 95% of the time some "standard" affliction, such as limp, or chest wound (lung problems...), maybe crippled. Some new "eyesight loss" affliction (prec -4) should be fitting also, but others (like lost an arm) should be very rare. "Diseased" should even be banned, in Dom the "disease" is a killer, quasi-impossible to heal, and is never caught by chance or in battle (only via magic or spreading sites/creatures). I feel it should remain this way.

[Nerfix]

You know that Disease is supposed to represent death from old age right?

[KissBlade]

The fact that the affliction system is so random is a bit silly by itself. Mainly because apparently despite all the magic and such, no one knew what a doctor is =\.

[Nerfix]

Except those Arco peoples. They and dem priestesses.

[DominionsFan]

Hm anyways, I thought that there will be a command line option to remove aging from the game. [I think that someone has mentioned this some months ago.]