On the cusp...

[MythicalMino]

ok....maybe Dominions just isn't for you. Illwinter took care of a lot of the things that the fans of Dominions 2 (not Pretenders 2) disliked....

That being said....

1. Random Map Generation works just fine in my opinion. That it takes a few extra minutes to make one really isn't that big an issue. If they didn't have a RMG this time around....then I would have a problem. But the generator works pretty good, I think.

1.2 Pretender Generation. Not sure why you want it all on one screen....That would be a lot of info on just one screen. Physical appearance, what magic and levels of magic, dominion and scales...all on the same screen? ok....

2. there are short cut keys to get rid of the troop movement arrows (if that is what you are talking about). Actually, there are short cut keys to take away a lot of the map icons. 1 = toggle off flags and forts; 2 = toggle armies; 3 = toggle dominion icons; 4. toggle resources/income; 5 = toggle temples/misc; 8 = toggle neighbors; 9 = toggle province names. It is pretty customizable as to what information and icons you can see at any time.

3. I can agree with, I think. There are still hang ups with the UI here and there....but it is better than it was.

4. Would be interesting....maybe you are looking for something that Stardock is doing with their story generator feature in their expansion for GalCiv2. Something about that though....it is interesting, but Brad Wardell (I am sure I have read) has said that if he didn't already commit to it, he would not be adding it. It takes a lot of time to do. I know I have read that in one of his dev reports on the game....Like I said, it would be interesting, but not sure if it is really viable for a dev team of 2 who works other jobs elsewhere.

Overall, the game is a big step up from Dom2 (and Dom2 was a step up from Dom1). There are things I wish that they did...like movement orders that would take more than one turn. BUT, I did notice last night, that there is a small icon that lets me know where my stealthy units (scouts being one of them) are located at. That really helps. I also wish that they would have added mouse roll-overs of some sort on the map screen when I put my mouse on one of the commander icons to let me see what he is holding, and what units are in his army. The RMG is something that I really like with the game....I love hand-drawn maps and all....but I also love the idea of random maps. To me, that really expands the single player games. It really didn't bother me too much with how long it takes to load it, though (honestly, it didn't).

One thing though about the game....the manual is really more a reference guide. It hearkens back to the day when the strategy guide was more included inside the manual. I remember my Civ2 manual from years ago...this manual reminds me so much of that one. The manual really does make the game easier to play and understand what is going on.

I am not saying that your complaints and gripes are not worth anything....but I think overall, IW did a great job with Dom3.

Chris

(Edit: At least you didn't complain about the price...which is the #1 problem ppl seem to have for some reason)

[Chazar]

...when I created my first random map with the demo, I was surprised by the long time it took (due to graphics problems, I can only run Dom3 on a 6 year old 700Mhz desktop). I immediately thought to myself: "Wow, they really spent some thought about how to generate usable maps - the result might really be usable!"

My Dom2 games with 4-6 players usually lasted 5-10 months. Most time was spent to adjust taxes and waiting for other players to submit their turn. I could not care less about turn processing times or random map creation. 3 hour turn-processing on turn 20 would be perfectly fine with me, since it is truly insignificant for the time scale of an MP game!

And although I am a follower of the MP-only faith, I also bet that many of those heretic SP-players would welcome one hour turn processing if the AI would act accordingly clever.

[Nerfix]

I just realized I haven't touched the tax during the time I've played Dom 3. At all. D:

[thejeff]

I agree about the maps. Even an SP game is likely to last many hours. Waiting a few minutes on start up is no big deal. If it's a concern about demonstrating it to new players, who might be turned off before getting hooked, start with an existing map.

I do think the animated map arrows are silly. Turning them off isn't an answer. You need to see where the troops are going, but there was no need to animate them.

More detail in battle reports would be nice. Being able to see at a glance which commanders died and whether you lost any good troops or just the arrow fodder.

And I do still touch taxes. Mostly because the minimum (50%) is too high. If a province has high unrest, say 50+, I want taxes to 0, to get it back up quickly.