Newbie's first impressions

[PCarroll]

Just finished another game. Played Man this time, with Ermor as an enemy (since somebody said the AI is best at playing Ermor).

Don't understand how the game ended. I won--somehow. Several turns back, I had stormed the Ermor fortress and demolished it, but the Ermor army took one of my fortresses, then another. I got my fortresses back, though.

At this point, Ermor was besieging two other forts of mine. I sent my God in with too small an army and tried to lift one of the sieges--but my God got killed in that battle. However, I guess Ermor failed to take the other fort, and suddenly the computer declared that I had won. My God who just got killed "ascended."

I guess that kinda makes sense somehow.

My impressions of the game at this point? Still mixed. I'm not sure I really like big, complicated games anymore. Too much to do every turn, and the game goes on too long. I used to like them because the size obscured my ineptitude: if I made a mistake or two somewhere, I could usually make up for it somewhere else. But now it just gets tiresome having to recruit new units every turn, keep track of mercenaries, and balance the various dimensions of the game (magic, economics, dominion, etc.).

And btw, I haven't yet seen dominion play a real role in the game. Maybe it has invisibly made my God stronger, but I haven't noticed.

So, I think I'm off to find a smaller, shorter, simpler game to play.

--Patrick

[Ed Kolis]

Hmm... if you like fantasy and wargaming you might like Land of Legends, or Battle for Wesnoth...

Dominion, BTW, is very important - for one thing, if you lose all your dominion, you're out of the game. Perhaps that is how you won your game - did Ermor run out of dominion? Also, you were correct in thinking that it made your god stronger - it directly affects your god's (and prophet's) hitpoints. In a +10 dominion province your god will have triple his normal hitpoints - but conversely, don't send your god out into enemy dominion if you expect him to get in a fight! Dominion also affects other things such as morale, too...

[quantum_mechani]

PCarroll said:

My impressions of the game at this point? Still mixed. I'm not sure I really like big, complicated games anymore. Too much to do every turn, and the game goes on too long. I used to like them because the size obscured my ineptitude: if I made a mistake or two somewhere, I could usually make up for it somewhere else. But now it just gets tiresome having to recruit new units every turn, keep track of mercenaries, and balance the various dimensions of the game (magic, economics, dominion, etc.).

You should try playing small map one-sitting blitz games. There the focus is much less on the micromanagment and magical 'economics' and more on tactics.

[NTJedi]

PCarroll said:
And btw, I haven't yet seen dominion play a real role in the game. Maybe it has invisibly made my God stronger, but I haven't noticed.

So, I think I'm off to find a smaller, shorter, simpler game to play.

--Patrick

The higher your dominion the higher your gods life while he's in that province.
If you enjoy fantasy TBS games then I recommend Heroes_3 and AgeofWonders:ShadowMagic.

[PCarroll]

If you enjoy fantasy TBS games then I recommend Heroes_3 and AgeofWonders:ShadowMagic.

I'm afraid I don't know what I like anymore; I seem to be hopelessly fussy.

I've played HoMM2. Liked it pretty well overall, but I found the game dragged on and on--and I hated it when a last enemy hero was wandering around on some distant part of the map and I had to spend a hundred more turns just hunting him down. The game was over by then, so it was just busy work.

I've also played AoW3:SM. Another good game. But it has too many "moving parts" for my taste these days. Too much fussing around with city improvements, production, resource guarding and harrassment, and so forth. And as often as not, I skip tactical battles because they get too big and long. (The stylized tactical battles of HoMM2 are more to my liking.)

A simple card game or classic board game might suit me. But then it's almost always abstract, and I miss the theme (be it fantasy, history, or whatever). Also, classic games tend to be very analytical; and to me, analysis is work, not play. I don't want to have to work at a game. Nor am I competitive. I play games for fun; competition is incidental.

Yet, it's a catch-22. I want a game to just be a pleasant escape, but I also want it to be worth seriously studying and getting good at. But I don't want it to be worth getting good at just so I can boost my ego by beating other players; I want it to be good for me--good mental exercise, stress relief, a way to exercise the imagination, or whatever. I also want it to suit my taste, and yet I don't want to whine and weasel out every time I run into something that doesn't quite feel right.

Lately I've been thinking of taking up a game like chess or bridge again. I do that periodically, but my discipline never holds out. I can happily while away hours studying at Chessmaster's "academy," but then I find it's really not much fun for me to play in actual games. Too analytical, too abstract, too much hard work.

But OTOH, I get restless when playing a just-for-fun game that has no real value other than just a break from the seriousness of day-to-day life. If a game doesn't somehow seem meaningful to me, I perceive it as a waste of time.

What a weird, tangled-up attitude I've delveloped toward games, huh?

--Patrick

[Alneyan]

PCarroll said:
What a weird, tangled-up attitude I've delveloped toward games, huh?

I pretty much feel that way myself (sometimes, at least), so perhaps I can make a worthwhile suggestion: Deadly Rooms of Death (DROD). In that game, you are a dungeon exterminator (a delver), hired to... well, clear up dungeons and their inhabitants.

The game, while not specifically strategy, still requires reflexion: it is a pretty much "old school" puzzle game, quite different from some recent games in that genre. Once you have figured out what you should do, you have to do that yourself, so the game does have a fun execution part - unlike Dominions, where you cannot direct battles yourself, and can only think about them. (That makes the game better strategically, but also reduces its fun factor for me)

Since it is a puzzle game, you will get that "Aren't I bright?" feeling after having beaten a tough room, and you can compete with other players to see how efficient you are (that part is purely optional). Throw in the level editor, and you have a pretty fun game that will last for a long while.

Their webite is at http://www.caravelgames.com . There are currently two editions of the game: Architect's Edition, available freely, and the superior Journey to Rooted Hold sequel. DROD was formerly a commerical game, known as Webfoot DROD back then, so you might have heard about it already.

[Zen]

Try Phantom Dust on the Xbox.

[PDF]

PCarrol, did you try something like Combat Mission (if anything else exists that is "like" CM ) ?
Games are rather short and fast paced compared to Dom2 et al., and it requires some "battlefield tactics" sense more than analytical brains - surely that's why I suck at it, I was able to make strategy articles on it then get blasted by one of my readers that managed to apply it, while I couldn't !! .
Also it's graphically more rewarding than top-view 2D strat game as it's in full 3D with free camera, even if now it's not really up to date graphic-wise ...

[PCarroll]

Alneyan said: I pretty much feel that way myself (sometimes, at least), so perhaps I can make a worthwhile suggestion: Deadly Rooms of Death (DROD). In that game, you are a dungeon exterminator (a delver), hired to... well, clear up dungeons and their inhabitants.

Thanks. Just tried the demo--or rather, a similar demo the company offers now. It was hard to tear myself away. I usually don't like puzzle games, but it was pretty fun.

[PCarroll]

PDF said:
PCarrol, did you try something like Combat Mission (if anything else exists that is "like" CM ) ?

Yep. I played the demo several months ago. It's apparently one of the most popular games around, but I didn't care for it. The 3D graphics that impress everybody else are a turn-off to me. I don't like things looking that realistic.