What it will take for me to purchase Dom III

[Cainehill]

quantum_mechani said:

Upkeep cost is hard-linked to gold cost.

Yeah, I know. But asking a question seemed like it might generate more consideration than saying, "Upkeep is bad!"

[Zen]

I agree that summons should have an upkeep associated with their pathcosts as well as some national troops having upkeep possibly in gems but goldcosts as well.

The game can be better balanced with more options for upkeep, however this does not change the imbalance in combat vs cost vs magetime vs mobility. Any of those can be addressed many ways.

Though, like I said, I agree.

[Arameyan]

Hi everyone, it's my very first post on this forum.

I play Dominions for the last 2 months. I think that its one of the best strategy game ever.

I'm only concerned by what I'm reading here: It seems that national non-mage and non-priest troops become useless in late game, were summonning rules.

I think it's obvious that even trained Velites can't beat an Uber Arch Devil summoned directly from hell, but I also think that players shouldn't have to rely on summonning to win. To preserve diversity in term of strategy, I think many strategies have to be viable (by strategy, I dont mean just choosing a different path of magic to summon another NNE summon). A solution can be like this: in some other games, national Super-Elite troops (Devils, Dragons, etc...) can't be recruited at the beginning, you have to build expensives structures while having a strong economy.

I agree that this game is based heaily on magic (and I approve it), but I don't think that high level summoning should be the only viable option for very long games.

[Sandman]

What if experience was made more powerful (ten levels, say) and also restricted to national troops and other recruitables?

[ioticus]

Yeah, winning strategy seems to be too dependent on getting a SC (Air Queen, Ice Devil, etc.) or mass summoning certain things like Vine Ogres.

[Ygorl]

If you're talking single-player, perhaps. The computer AI isn't very good at handling different SCs. Human opponents, though, can usually come up with something to oppose whatever you throw at them. A single SC, in particular, is begging to be Charmed or Herald Lanced or Smashered or Moon Bladed or Maggotsed or Banefired or Mind Duelled or taken down by means of whatever weakness it almost certainly has. I really like the progression from wimpy things to awe-inspiring effects as the game moves, and I also like how that progression can be so different depending on your strategy.

[Agrajag]

Sandman said:
What if experience was made more powerful (ten levels, say) and also restricted to national troops and other recruitables?

And how would you expect to get those national troops more expirience when they are constantly fighting superior enemies (=summons)?

[Graeme Dice]

If you want to increase the relative power of national troops without making magic significantly more powerful then you should mod the amount of population needed for each unit of gold income. Increase the base income by 250-300% and the relative cost of troops compared to mages drops way down as the mages can only be built one per turn while your troops will show up everywhere.

[quantum_mechani]

Graeme Dice said:
If you want to increase the relative power of national troops without making magic significantly more powerful then you should mod the amount of population needed for each unit of gold income. Increase the base income by 250-300% and the relative cost of troops compared to mages drops way down as the mages can only be built one per turn while your troops will show up everywhere.

This also greatly encourages mad castleing, however.

[Graeme Dice]

quantum_mechani said:
This also greatly encourages mad castleing, however.

Sure, but you'll have more than three times as many troops, so you can hit your opponent in more places than he can defend.

The real solution, however, is to play multiple games on small maps, instead of a single game on a massive map.