Remove Curses and Horror Marks?

[jscott]

If the game contains a single player component, it should contain modern conventions on saving. Its that simple. To argue that people shouldn't be able to save and reload because they should have to live with their mistakes doesn't make sense. If you dont' want to save and reload your game, that's your decision. I respect people who have the patience (and, more importantly, the free time) to struggle through trial and error type mistakes and play games to their conclusion whatever the result.

I don't have that kind of time, plus I'm trying to learn the game and I don't want to put 40-50 turns into a game only to find out that a decision I made on turn 10 was disastrous. I have to restart enough because of silly pretender designs. I don't really think its necessary to force me to restart because my pretender dies on turn 15 after having been asleep and I'm hopelessly behind in expansion.

Again, I respect people who play the multiplayer and enjoy the great challenge offered by this game. I like the game as is. But I do think that the game could stand to offer the CHOICE to be a little less harsh and challenging. It would keep new players interested longer and allow them to appreciate the depth of the game. Everyone I've introduced the demo to so far has abandoned the game because of the steep learning curve and the difficulty of the game (random events that kill an early hero, deaths of pretenders in battle, things that a reload feature could minimize, are common complaints from people I know who have tried to play the game). There's just no reason for the game not to feature real saves and to limit its appeal to only the hardest of the hardcore strategy gamer.

[Darkstone]

I'd argue that it isn't about living with mistakes, it's about realistically considering your choices. Playing fast and loose with a pretender (unless you're a very experienced player) tends to result in a quick death of that pretender. SP games vary significantly in difficulty based on the settings you use, and if the game is too difficult, simply tone down the AI.

I confess that at first I found the concept of not saving pretty discomforting and a little scary. So I manually copied and pasted saves for my games, for probably the first 3-4 months of playing. Eventually, I started saving less and less, and then finally stopped. I still used a crutch of playing with an immortal pretender for a while, but eventually got over that as well (I think I've played with a Lich more than 15 times).

Anyway, the reason I eventually stopped isn't because I mastered the game or something, it's because it's actually more fun to think things through, and feel like my choices have consequences even if I make a wrong one.

Obviously, I can't tell you what would be more fun to you, but I can advise you that turning down the difficulty or playing with an immortal, (and not getting too attached to prophets, who come and go) is preferable to the feeling of fearlessness & carelessness that you get with a save/load game.

[NTJedi]

jscott said:
If you dont' want to save and reload your game, that's your decision.

If you choose to save and reload your games, that's fine and your decision, but you'll need to download tools or manually copy the save folders. The game was designed without the save/reload crutch for a reason and won't change at this late phase.

jscott said:
There's just no reason for the game not to feature real saves and to limit its appeal to only the hardest of the hardcore strategy gamer.

The reason is because gamers use the save/reload as a crutch to avoid consequences of making bad choices. Poor computer opponents NEVER have a chance against the human opponents who NEED the let me always win save/reload option.
Your options...
1) manually save the required folders as backup and choose to give yourself an unfair advantage over the AI opponents.

2) use a tool to save the required folders as backup and choose to give yourself an unfair advantage over the AI opponents.

3) play another game which will have the save/reload option which will provide the cheating edge you desire.

4) toss in the towel and start a new game.

5) continue fighting to the bitter end... win or lose you keep fighting down to the last man/creature/thing.


** If you play any games with friends or family I guarantee they would all want their ally to be someone who chooses option #5 .

[jscott]

Your arguments are incredibly far out of the mainstream.

I can rebut most of your points by simply saying that being a human player I have a massively unfair advantage over the AI opponents.

The game should feature a save/reload system. I know how to save and reload the game by copying the folders. I rarely use it, but I'm not going to lose a 70 turn game because of a bug (which happen all the time and have permanent consequences), a flukish event (pretender being killed by her own archers while pursuing routed enemies), or some other silly event.

I've just purchased Dominions 3 and played only three games deeper than 50 turns (none to completion, because a 100% victory is just tedious), and I've only been challenged by the AI very briefly and this was without any save or reloading.

And only people with abo****ely unlimited free time can afford to play a Dominions 3 game to the end when you are clearly going to lose. I don't have unlimited free time and I doubt my friends and family care how I play in single player.

Again, your response is bizarre and its hard for me to believe you were completely serious.

Edit: I also consider it very likely that the reason there is no save/reload feature in the game is because of the over-emphasis on PBEM and multiplayer. I find it hard to believe that a game that completely neglects its AI to the extent that Doms3 does is attempting to make some broader point about single player gamers being too soft because of excessive saving and reloading. I think the lack of this feature is more a result of lack of emphasis than some kind of ideological purity, but I'm sure the developers appreciate their fans ascribing this level of sophistication to their motives and results.

[llamabeast]

Meh... there are arguments in favour of saving being a faff. It's like ironman mode in an RPG - where once your character dies they never come back. Personally I like it, but I can see why people sometimes get annoyed about it. If it bothers you though, it's easy to either save manually occasionally (if you play in windowed mode - which I highly recommend - it's the job of a few seconds), or even write a little batch file/script to do it if you are inclined towards programming. If you are so inclined then I'm sure people here would be willing to give help or even write the thing if you really wanted.

[llamabeast]

Also I don't really get many/any bugs (apart from quirks in the game like graphs disappearing for dead players etc) - what kind of thing do you get?

[jscott]

llamabeast said:
Also I don't really get many/any bugs (apart from quirks in the game like graphs disappearing for dead players etc) - what kind of thing do you get?

I've twice had my Prophet die in the winter and not be able to create another for many, many turns. I'll admit that I didn't reload on the second occasion (because replaying the 7 turns I let run hoping the bug wouldn't recur was less appealing to me than simply being without a prophet indefinetely), but that option should be present.

I've also noticed other tiny bugs related to random events that I would prefer to simply avoid by reloading the previous turn and avoiding the event altogether.

[Endoperez]

The prophet bug comes from disease damage being applied twice in one spesific month, IIRC. You had very bad luck getting that bug twice while playing relatively little.

What kind of event bugs? Do you mean the way events don't take sieges into account? Or hailstorms/whatever inappopriate things in caves? The shortlist of known bugs only lists three event bugs, and the third is underwater-only so you probably didn't see that.

[chrispedersen]

I get bugs in virtually every game I play - and some days I quit playing for a few days or weeks because of it. I have had a few calls - but the number of times it has occurred has been truly annoying...

Whether this was the abysal, infernal furnaces, the armor of returning, blesses on area affect weapons, besieged by skeletons when I conquered a terrritory or whatever.. there are LOTS of bugs in the game.

As for AI being challenging - I find that you can do more to make a game challenging by the AI's you put in the games and the behaviours you ascribe to them.

So for example, choosing 6-8 strong nations and make them aggressive will give you a tougher fight than early age ermor, abysia, bandar log and making them impossible.
Increase starting strength to 9, decrease special occurence - I routinely get games that are enjoyable into 80 turns...

[NTJedi]

jscott said:
I can rebut most of your points by simply saying that being a human player I have a massively unfair advantage over the AI opponents.

Human players do have a strong intellectual advantage over the AI opponents... this does not justify using a save/reload to cheat in the game!
You brag about being smarter yet still need a crutch when your pretender, prophet or important mage dies.

jscott said:
I'm not going to lose a 70 turn game because of a bug (which happen all the time and have permanent consequences), a flukish event (pretender being killed by her own archers while pursuing routed enemies), or some other silly event.

Using a save/reload because of a game bug is not cheating behavior and worthy of redoing ONLY actions related to the bug.
Using a save/reload because you had some bad luck and a poorly equipped pretender get shot and killed in the back by your own archers is cheating.
Using a save/reload because a "silly" event such as Bogus Independent Thugs arrive and kill your pretender or main army is also cheating.

To clarify... using a save/reload because of a game bug is acceptable and considered fair gaming, but using a save/reload because you had bad luck is cheating.

jscott said:
I've just purchased Dominions 3 and played only three games deeper than 50 turns (none to completion, because a 100% victory is just tedious),

Play the games using victory points... otherwise it will be very very time consuming to finish large maps.

jscott said:
and I've only been challenged by the AI very briefly and this was without any save or reloading.

Unfortunately Illwinter only have two developers and those developers have full time careers outside of making this game.

jscott said:
And only people with abo****ely unlimited free time can afford to play a Dominions 3 game to the end when you are clearly going to lose. I don't have unlimited free time and I doubt my friends and family care how I play in single player.

Playing a game even when you are losing allows you to learn strategies you otherwise would not have learned. The player who uses the save/reload "cheat" allowing himself to always win is not playing a game, but merely playing a storyline which will always have a happy ending. It's the same as playing video blackjack and giving yourself a winning hand anytime you place large bets... it's still cheating.

jscott said:
Again, your response is bizarre and its hard for me to believe you were completely serious.

Bizarre because you've always played your games with the always let me win option of save/reload. On the same note I see it bizarre why someone would play a game against a computer and cheat because he/she needs to always win.

jscott said:
I find it hard to believe that a game that completely neglects its AI to the extent that Doms3 does is attempting to make some broader point about single player gamers being too soft because of excessive saving and reloading. I think the lack of this feature is more a result of lack of emphasis than some kind of ideological purity, but I'm sure the developers appreciate their fans ascribing this level of sophistication to their motives and results.

Programming a computer AI is one of the most time consuming tasks which is why there are so many games with poor AI opponents. Considering this company only has two developers they did a great job with the AI.