What other games complement your Dominions 3?

[Taqwus]

For explosive nostalgia, I recently installed Xscorch on my Gentoo set-up. It's one of many clones of Wendell Hicken's "Scorched Earth", one of the first and more well-known of the 'artillery' games.

[Dragar]

Scorched earth was awesome... although the guidance systems killed it a little, it was much more satisyfing to land your heavy napalm just thru angle and power.

For the Civ IV players out there, try the Fall from Heaven 2 user mod. That was my staple for months before finding Dom3. Still the same combat system, but it is a very rich fantasy setting, huge differentiation between civs and religions, plus lots of magic All while maintaing pretty decent balance. It is supported amazingly well by the development team.

[chrispedersen]

I do remember the game, but it wasn't the best game ever bit for bit.

A loooooong time ago, there was a competition to make the shortest game ever.

The winning entry was a one line program that used self altering code. It was a screen racing game. It was only OK as games go, but as it was one line... it was cool.

Of course assembler or mc probably has that beat...

[Linraen]

My favourites:

Fallout (1 & 2)
Planescape: Torment
Wizards & Warriors

Not a fan of newer games, but I've recently been playing Bioshock, and find it quite to my liking, it's simplier than System Shock 2, but with better graphics and the same atmosphere. And, The Witcher. That one has made a lot of noise here in Russia, and to my taste, is a very decent game.

Also, waiting and hoping for Fallout 3.

[HoneyBadger]

chrispederson: There's a lot of definitions for 'Best': How many of those games has a world-wide cult following 25 years later? Or inspired one of the most popular and long-lasting genres in the gaming industry (Dungeons of Daggorath is considered the grandfather of all first person 3D shooters, and for that matter, isn't very dissimilar to the original 'Doom' or 'Diablo'), or had so many innovations in sound, graphics, and atmosphere?

For that matter, how many of those games would I, personally, enjoy playing 25 years after they were made (I don't need the best graphics in the world to enjoy a game, but I have my limit as to what I can stand, and DoD doesn't trip that limit)-or having played them 25 years ago, had so many fond memories of?

And it's a game I can validly bring to these forums, in the expectation that others here might reasonably feel the same way about. It's impressive that your racing game was build with only 1 line of code, and I congratulate whoever built it on their success, but as you yourself say, it's just an average racing game.

8 kilobytes might actually be a lot, compared to however many it took to make that game, but it gives back a lot for those 8 kilobytes.

Yes, it's my 'personal opinion' that Dungeons of Daggorath is the best, but it's an educated opinion, and I'm a fanatic, so good luck convincing me otherwise

[lch]

Originally Posted by Epaminondas

While Stardock decided not to pursue the MoM license (...), the company is making a MoM clone right now designated "Not MoM."

That "Not MoM" label might have to do with my irate rebuttal on another forum where somebody created an "oh look, this is gonna be MoM 2" thread. And I don't think any company would have interest in developing a real clone of the game. They'll make something inspired by it, but we all know from Hollywood how well it can work out if something new is made based on something popular.

I do look forward towards whatever fantasy TBS they're going to release in the end.

Originally Posted by Dragar

For the Civ IV players out there, try the Fall from Heaven 2 user mod. That was my staple for months before finding Dom3. Still the same combat system, but it is a very rich fantasy setting, huge differentiation between civs and religions, plus lots of magic All while maintaing pretty decent balance. It is supported amazingly well by the development team.

Yeah, I've played it and it's indeed very very good, particularly because they spent a lot on the ingame lore. They even won a $25k price for "best mod" for it and donated it to Unicef, like all the other money they receive.

The good, it has all the nice stuff: Mages, spells, summons, mana nodes, different factions with three alignments (Good, Neutral, Evil) and so on. The gameplay is pretty awesome for a Civ setting. The bad: In SP, the AI is not really up to the task to make use of the things offered to it, it's like a lobotomized Civ4 AI that can't make any real use of the spells. So you can actually play about 2-3 AI levels higher than you use to do under normal Civ4. Maybe that's because some game mechanics can be exploited too much by a human player, too. But worse is that MP gaming isn't really possible at the moment, because you'll get out of sync errors whenever an event occurs, which is a main storyline device in FFH. Like in Dom3, events may occur randomly, but even when you rob a graveyard, for example. In case they ever get to fix the MP issue, it'd be an interesting choice.

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

chrispederson: There's a lot of definitions for 'Best': How many of those games has a world-wide cult following 25 years later? Or inspired one of the most popular and long-lasting genres in the gaming industry (Dungeons of Daggorath is considered the grandfather of all first person 3D shooters, and for that matter, isn't very dissimilar to the original 'Doom' or 'Diablo'), or had so many innovations in sound, graphics, and atmosphere?

For that matter, how many of those games would I, personally, enjoy playing 25 years after they were made (I don't need the best graphics in the world to enjoy a game, but I have my limit as to what I can stand, and DoD doesn't trip that limit)-or having played them 25 years ago, had so many fond memories of?

And it's a game I can validly bring to these forums, in the expectation that others here might reasonably feel the same way about. It's impressive that your racing game was build with only 1 line of code, and I congratulate whoever built it on their success, but as you yourself say, it's just an average racing game.

8 kilobytes might actually be a lot, compared to however many it took to make that game, but it gives back a lot for those 8 kilobytes.

Yes, it's my 'personal opinion' that Dungeons of Daggorath is the best, but it's an educated opinion, and I'm a fanatic, so good luck convincing me otherwise

I have no problem whatsoever with saying DoD was a *much* better game. I agree with you .. of course.. I also remember when they added *color* to games. = P

Laughin' it was just when you said Kb for kb (or something similiar that I had to chime in.

If ya say the fun score of Dod was 100.. and the fun score of racer game was 20

100/8092 << 20/.25

[HoneyBadger]

Color hell, my first gaming platform (a generic version of Pong) came in a wooden box the size of a coffee table

[Dragar]

You're spot on, the two main issues with FFH2 are in ability of the AI to cope with all the added complexity, and out of sync errors in MP.

That said, when i stopped playing a few months back they were really starting to work on the AI andit as imrpving. I wonder how much it has improved since? Likewise they were trying to sort out the OOS problems, but they did drive menuts and were a main driver for looking for another game - hence I found Dom3

Originally Posted by lch

Yeah, I've played it and it's indeed very very good, particularly because they spent a lot on the ingame lore. They even won a $25k price for "best mod" for it and donated it to Unicef, like all the other money they receive.

The good, it has all the nice stuff: Mages, spells, summons, mana nodes, different factions with three alignments (Good, Neutral, Evil) and so on. The gameplay is pretty awesome for a Civ setting. The bad: In SP, the AI is not really up to the task to make use of the things offered to it, it's like a lobotomized Civ4 AI that can't make any real use of the spells. So you can actually play about 2-3 AI levels higher than you use to do under normal Civ4. Maybe that's because some game mechanics can be exploited too much by a human player, too. But worse is that MP gaming isn't really possible at the moment, because you'll get out of sync errors whenever an event occurs, which is a main storyline device in FFH. Like in Dom3, events may occur randomly, but even when you rob a graveyard, for example. In case they ever get to fix the MP issue, it'd be an interesting choice.

[llamabeast]

100/8092 << 20/.25

You reckon that racing game was a quarter of a byte, i.e. two bits? That's some skilled programming then!