"How it started."

[Zen]

I thought since there seems to be more activity with the lure of Dominions 3 coming out in the foreseeable future and the tidbits that Kristoffer has given out to the changes that I would start this thread.

I was thinking back and wanted to ask other people who are currently playing or at the least are still very much are interested in playing the game Dominions and anticipate it's newest incarnation a question.

Do you remember when you realized that you really enjoyed playing Dominions (1 or 2)? If you do, do you remember how it started and will you relate it?

I myself decided to think back and I wanted to relate to everyone my own, since it would be unfair to ask what I myself wouldn't do.

For me the moment I thought Dom2 was one of the best TBS games I had played in a long, long time was back before the final release of Dom2.

I was still playing the limited demo before the release of Dominions with it's limited selection of Nations and Research. I had a hell of a time figuring out what exactly everything ment. I understood the concepts that were presented to me but I had no real idea how they all worked together to make the game. I had played a few game as different nations, they all sounded interesting and it felt as if each one held it's own mythology that I was creating. I was crushed quickly in those first few games. I had learned over the past few games to keep my Pretender, no matter what he was the hell away from combat. I had finally started looking in depth at the commands on my units as I was playing a game with C'tis. I was sneaking around with my empoisoners and actually killing most of the independants I was dealing with. My Pretender was at the head of the greatest C'tis army I had ever known composed of a few Lizard Kings, a Sauromancer and what I thought was a ton of troops, snakes, undead, poison slingers, animals that no army could destroy.

I was at the hind end of the magic, I had spent most of my money on building up my fortresses and amassing my huge army of destruction. It was on a big map with only 2 other AI, I had learned I was immediately in trouble with more than 4 or 5 opponents, since I didn't know what was going on and got smashed to bits. It was about turn 35 of the Demo so I knew it was soon over.

I wasn't ready when Abysia came in and declared war on me. He attacked with some lame force initially in a corner of my provinces, I drove over my superarmy and was about to smash into this force. I didn't notice that there was a huge block of enemies ready to reinforce because the province lines were hard to read. I sent in my army and it came to meet with a massive Abysian firefest of destruction. The AI had tons of Salamanders, Summer Lions, heavy black infantry with smoke drifting off them and smack in the middle was a red dragon. He had nearly as many troops as I did between all his own, plus he had some Warlocks and heroes.

I watched the battle and I saw my huge masses of troops get decimated by these salamanders. My lizard kings were keeping my troops moving forward and they just got crushed in the middle. When the Salamanders broke my units were fighting Summer Lions they didn't seem to be able to hit. The dragon was buffing and casting spells but the Warlocks, AnaSalamanders, and demon-bred were casting fireballs all over the place, imps coming out of everywhere as blood slaves were sacrificed.

Needless to say my army didn't last long after that point and not many escaped that day due to the Lizard King's insistant Fantatisim. My God had bit the dust too, not looking too damn impressive as he went down. His equipment of trinkets and some heavy armor didn't last long since he was very encumbered and fatigued, though I didn't know that at the time. The stragglers I did have were all over provinces and that enemy block looked huge and my capital wasn't very far away from it. I knew I had just been schooled I was pretty stunned. In a fog I clicked on my Lizard King , who had the sense to flee at the end, to see what I had left and my eye caught the command "Call God". I suddenly knew I had to be able to play this game more than 40 turns.
That is also when I knew that this game was awesome.

Any takers?

[OG_Gleep]

I remember how I heard about Dom2. I was actually really pissed. I read the last article in CGW, the one where they go head to head. That month, think it was last October, they played Dom2. It souned so cool, I went straight to EBGames.com and looked it up. Nada. Finally found the homepage and ordered it. I found out it had been out for months when I hit the forums. I had been fed up about the computer magazines for a while (I subscribe to 3), and their lack of proper coverage. Its often months before you see a review, even on big name releases.

At first I was lost, only after a settling on Ulm did I begin to make sense of the game. Half of the fun for me is smithing items and decking out commanders. The fact that Ulm has solid core troops helps out a lot also.

[djo]

It's a lot simpler for me. There aren't many turn-based strategy games one can play on OS X on a 5-yr old iMac (400Mhz G3).

I downloaded the demo and had great fun as Machaka, marching my spider armies up the "Iberian" peninsula on the Aran map. I had no idea what I was doing, and I remember being surprised and delighted every time my mages starting casting a new evocation spell on the battlefield.

On turn 39 (last demo turn), I figured I would see what a god could do in combat. So I sent my Ghost King against a big enemy army only to find...he sneaked!

Of course, by then the check was already in the mail for the full game.

[Gandalf Parker]

Started with "Conquest of Elysium"
Grabbed Dominions (one) early on and became a fanatical "fanboi" in the usenet newsgroups about it. Kindof strange actually since its not really "my kind of game". But that meant I explored facets of it that the main gaming group didnt.

Fought the changes in Dominions 2 for a long time. But finally developed a trust of the programmers even though I still wish some of the original features had been kept and builtup more rather than removed. Became just as fanatical about Dom2. Especially scripting random maps.

I will probably fight the changes in Dom3 but it will most likely be a shorter "battle" this time.

Gandalf Parker

[Truper]

I knew Dominions was cool before I played it. Really. I used to read the comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic newsgroup a lot, back before it became mostly porn spam. Dominions generated the most interesting discussion I'd ever read. People debated which troops had an edge against which others, which Pretenders made sense for a particular strategy, discussed the merits of the various nations (which there seemed to be an amazing number of), chortled with joy over a particular spell combo they'd discovered - and I was hooked. It was apparent that the game had a lot of detail, and what's more, a lot of depth. Some games have a lot of complexity that doesn't add to variety, but not this game. I've been playing it for years, and it still surprises me. Then there's the premise - design a pretender god and battle it out, physically, magically, and dominionally (see! we even need new words to talk about it!).

[Nerfix]

I remember that I read a short strategy guide to Dom I in the local gaming mag.

I downloaded the demo, started a game as C'tis on the Old World map and I was sold.

I was pretty confused at start of course but I had an expectionally low age for a Dominions player anyway.

[Endoperez]

Gandalf Parker said:
Started with "Conquest of Elysium"
Grabbed Dominions (one) early on and became a fanatical "fanboi" in the usenet newsgroups about it. Kindof strange actually since its not really "my kind of game". But that meant I explored facets of it that the main gaming group didnt.

Fought the changes in Dominions 2 for a long time. But finally developed a trust of the programmers even though I still wish some of the original features had been kept and builtup more rather than removed. Became just as fanatical about Dom2. Especially scripting random maps.

I will probably fight the changes in Dom3 but it will most likely be a shorter "battle" this time.

Gandalf Parker

Almost the same for me. Except that I was maybe 14 years old when I played Conquest of Elysium, and never ordered it. It was still fun...

I was really into fantasy at that point, and Dominions was "cool". I had no close friends with which I could really talk about fantasy, I spent too much time on my computer, and then used too lot of time playing Dominions.

I haven't felt the same kind of exploring feeling with DomII, because I already knew the nations and units so well. But I never thought it wasn't worth the price I payed, or the wait of half a year. I didn't even notice the fact that maps were static at first, but it's understandable, and the news maps were beautiful. I miss the old "story" maps much more. The Coven is much better than the Eye, IMO.

[Chazar]

More than two years ago, as I did often at that time, I was travelling back home for the weekend in an InterCityExpress train in Germany and started the demo of Dom2 on my laptop. I had been greatly disappointed by WarlordsIV, which I had anticipated for soooo long, and someone on the Warlords forum had recommend Dom2. This led me to download the demo before I went on the train, so that I had some amusement during the four hour train ride. Little did I know about what awaited me in this file...

The amazing music and the cool descriptions of the pretenders kept me immediately spellbound. I was captivated by the non-tolkienesque mythology and read each pretender's descriptions with delight before playing at all. My first steps then as clusmy Ulm were quite pathetic, but I liked the interface and the graphics of the Aran map. It was all so refreshingly different! So deep! There was always more to explore and behold! I also liked the simultaneous PBEM turn concept: I had tried PBEM with WarlordsIII with my friends who also liked strategy gaming, but it was hopeless since it took to too long for a turn to return to oneself (I also despise the awful mixed realtime-yet-turnbased network play of WarlordsIII ). Now Dom2 was at last a fantasy strategy game that could be succesfully played against my friends. Hence I immediately decided to order the full game...

When it eventually arrived I was at first disappointed by the lack of additional music tunes and the crappy manual (Who needs all those stupid item descriptions anyway, where you cannot find anything you are looking for, if you can have Zen's formidable MagicItemQuickReference document?!). However, my tries as Caelum became fruitful. Caelian magic suited me well. With the help of the scribes of this forum, my power steadily increased. Spell after Spell was researched and mastered. Eventually, my Blood-Fountain incarnation lead a Frozen-Blood-Caelum to utterly defeated my enemies (five strategy-gaming friends I had recruited meanwhile). Even their Alliance right from the start of a game could not defeat the electric wrath of my caelian storm troops! Ascencion was mine...BUWARHAARHAAARHAAAAR!


PS: Nowadays, I do not like that bloody GUI of Dom2 anymore. I also play without music. However, sometimes I like to put on the Falsobodorne CDs that I now own and revel in the memory of that train ride through a dark rainy afternoon, where everything was flavor and not just stats and probabilities...

[WraithLord]

I used to play MOM back at 95 and I have enjoyed this game so much that many years later I was looking for a fantasy TBS in it's caliber.
I think I've probably tried most of the fantasy TBS created. Be them freeware, shareware or commercial, but I didn't find that one game that has depth and character as MOM had.

That is until I d/ld dominions-I demo. I've heard about it in a MOM fan site and decided to check it out.
I've installed the demo, didn't understand what was going on, closed it and didn't look it again for six months.

When I did try it again I was willing to put more effort in understanding the game. My first nation was atlantis on the old world map. I remember being so frustrated with not being able to recruit the top troops and mages... Since then I was and still am ensnared in the dominions universe

[Agrajag]

Chazar said:
I had been greatly disappointed by WarlordsIV, which I had anticipated for soooo long, and someone on the Warlords forum had recommend Dom2.

It might be worthwhile to mention the fact that the one that recommended Dom2 was quite an annoying person and flame-warrior. In fact, he recommended Dom2 as (this isn't a quote) "A game that kicks the **** out of WarlordIV you lamorz".
Atleast, if we're talking about the same guy.

Anyway, my memory is pretty bad, so not only do I not remember much of the days of WarlordsIV, I also don't remember my "early days" with Dom2.
I do vaguely remember the flame-warrior having a Diablo avatar and being called something with UN, and being a cheater (that got caught, with his hacked dwarf Wodan). Or maybe I'm confusing him with the Warlords: Battlecry 2 flamer...