Forthcoming patch notes

[NTJedi]

chrispedersen said:
I *hate* SC's.

SC's have existed throughout fantasy history... everything from the ancient story of Beowulf to Superman to even Lords of the Ring !! If the SCs are removed from these stories, there's not much remaining. If you prefer games without SC's you'd have to lean towards games which are purely military historical with not even a tiny spice of fantasy... yet these games still have thug types.

[chrispedersen]

NTJedi said:

SC's have existed throughout fantasy history... everything from the ancient story of Beowulf to Superman to even Lords of the Ring !! If the SCs are removed from these stories, there's not much remaining. If you prefer games without SC's you'd have to lean towards games which are purely military historical with not even a tiny spice of fantasy... yet these games still have thug types.

I didn't say I hated hero's and anti heroes, or characters.

I hate SC's. To be specific, Dominions(x) implimentation of battlefield heros.

Why? Hmm.. because there doesn't seem to be anything *heroic* about them. The game doesn't set up as a MMRPG; its more spreadsheet and battle tactics. Were it otherwise, I would strongly enjoy them. We argue whether frost brands are more effective than fire brands due to the 2 extra pts of damage....

Why? Because we have 8-10 army units - each supposedly crafted to reflect their nations strengths and tastes. And yet uniformly all but 1-2 of them are pointless in just a few turns.

Why? Games, like theatre, involve a suspension of believe.
We play in a certain fantasy world - with a certain map.
As part of those rules - we are told that these nations exist, and their militaries are primarily composed of these units.

You can imagine a history of military combats - of battles won and lost. Only you can't. Because those army units would never exist. Nations would have evolved SC's - not army units.

The logical disconnect - the loss of 'suspension of disbelief' is irritating. Its like interrupting the writing of Xanadu, or more prosaicly, someone interrupting your favorite TV show. Every time I play.

Now THAT would be an interesting Mod.
A Mod where there were no army units - only starting SC's, and starting equipment you could make. Starting spells.

[llamabeast]

Presumably the nation has been making do with mundane units and primitive spells before the pretender arrived to Inspire their research.

[Sombre]

Sounds like you'd enjoy a game set up with very hard research and no level 9 blesses allowed.

[TheMenacer]

I didn't say I hated hero's and anti heroes, or characters.

I hate SC's. To be specific, Dominions(x) implimentation of battlefield heros.

Why? Hmm.. because there doesn't seem to be anything *heroic* about them. The game doesn't set up as a MMRPG; its more spreadsheet and battle tactics. Were it otherwise, I would strongly enjoy them. We argue whether frost brands are more effective than fire brands due to the 2 extra pts of damage....

Why? Because we have 8-10 army units - each supposedly crafted to reflect their nations strengths and tastes. And yet uniformly all but 1-2 of them are pointless in just a few turns.

Why? Games, like theatre, involve a suspension of believe.
We play in a certain fantasy world - with a certain map.
As part of those rules - we are told that these nations exist, and their militaries are primarily composed of these units.

You can imagine a history of military combats - of battles won and lost. Only you can't. Because those army units would never exist. Nations would have evolved SC's - not army units.

The logical disconnect - the loss of 'suspension of disbelief' is irritating. Its like interrupting the writing of Xanadu, or more prosaicly, someone interrupting your favorite TV show. Every time I play.

Now THAT would be an interesting Mod.
A Mod where there were no army units - only starting SC's, and starting equipment you could make. Starting spells.

I always assumed that the empires that we were playing were literally composed only of their capital province (plus however many you set in the game settings). It sort of makes sense, they've got so much more population than their neighboring kingdoms that you could reasonably say that they're a world power. Indy provinces all have their own unique cultures and army lists, but we don't get to see them because they're all too insignificant in terms of the movers and shakers in the world. Plus they didn't have a pretender god come a'knocking and telling them to become aggressively imperialistic, seizing independent kingdoms and claiming their money and, more importantly in the creation of SCs, the magical resources lying inside of their territory.

[chrispedersen]

Regardless,

Dominions is supposedly a 'deep' game with hundreds of options. But I really believe it has hundreds of options - but only 2-3 of them are even remotely competitive in an MP environment.

I mean, when was the last time someone won a game soley through Dominion? Soley by his virtuoso economic performance?
Instead it comes down to Diplomacy, SC's and spell research, maybe toss in bless strategies.

I've no beef about the diplomacy. But even spell research really comes down to a few dominant themes: Tartarians. Wishes. Master Enslaves.

[Jazzepi]

chrispedersen said:
Regardless,

Dominions is supposedly a 'deep' game with hundreds of options. But I really believe it has hundreds of options - but only 2-3 of them are even remotely competitive in an MP environment.

I mean, when was the last time someone won a game soley through Dominion? Soley by his virtuoso economic performance?
Instead it comes down to Diplomacy, SC's and spell research, maybe toss in bless strategies.

I've no beef about the diplomacy. But even spell research really comes down to a few dominant themes: Tartarians. Wishes. Master Enslaves.

I don't feel like digging it up, but someone beat 4-5 other opponents in 2 turns on a large map by super dominion pushing with Mictlan.

Jazzepi

[Gandalf Parker]

There does seem to be some groups that play continually together on pretty much the same maps. Their results do tend toward certain standard endings. They seem to have fun with it though.

[Micah]

2 turns Jazzepi? That seems a bit much to swallow... even with temples in every province, H2 priests with jade daggers at each temple and 10 dominion that's still only 8 candles worth of dom spread per province he had...a whole heck of a lot, to be sure, but hardly enough to snuff out the entire rest of the map unless he controlled over half of the board. (And if he did have that much territory the specifics of the victory don't much matter, since he had the game won regardless.)

[Chris_Byler]

NTJedi said:
SC's have existed throughout fantasy history... everything from the ancient story of Beowulf to Superman to even Lords of the Ring !! If the SCs are removed from these stories, there's not much remaining. If you prefer games without SC's you'd have to lean towards games which are purely military historical with not even a tiny spice of fantasy... yet these games still have thug types.

None of those are anything remotely like the Dominions "take on 500 men by yourself" SC. Well, maybe Superman *could* kill 500 men by himself, but he probably wouldn't. And if the 500 men were armed with kryptonite, then he probably couldn't kill them by himself - he just has a better version of ethereal making him immune to the wrong kind of weapons.

Beowulf heroically defeated two opponents - one at a time. Dangerous monsters, yes, but there weren't hundreds of them. Given the amount of difficulty he had with one sea troll at a time, it's hard to believe he could have faced a single casting of Sea King's Court (let alone the kind of armies Dom SCs regularly solo).

Lord of the Rings - armies are defeated by other armies. Do you think the battle of Helm's Deep was won by *just* Legolas and Gimli, with no other friendly units? That would be like Dominions SCs - except that's not what happened in Tolkien, because it would be totally unbelievable. Heck, even Sauron is defeated by an army and has the Ring cut off his finger by Isildur (although this is ancient history and doesn't take place during the books).

If Leonidas had been a Dominions SC, he would have outright WON at Thermopylae. Personally killed half the Persian army and routed the other half and then gone home for dinner. That's not what happened.

Nearly every legend of a hero ends with that hero's downfall, often death. Sometimes from something as simple as a poisoned arrow. Generally, humanoid units in Dominions are quite faithful to this tradition of mortality. Some of the monstrous units just don't have a significant enough weakness, or it can be covered too easily by items.