A newbie question

[lillumultipass]

Hello everyone!

I have just started palying dominions 2, such that looking for dom2's forum, I also found this one. As I am an avid fan of the genre (loved Ascendency,MOO2, stars, even pax imperia...) here I am!!!
My first question is: does the game allow for a lot of race customization that matter a lot for gameplay??? For instance, in dom2, the customization of your god is awesome, you have so many possibilities, this is frightening!!!
My second question is: if I do start playing the game, what mods do I have to download???
Thanks for your answers!!!!

[Fyron]

Yes, you can customize your race quite extensively at game startup, and the things you choose tend to have a major impact on gameplay. Check out the demo.

My second question is: if I do start playing the game, what mods do I have to download???

You do not have to download any mods. Best to get bored with the stock game before you start playing mods in my opinion... It is quite rich on its own. Although, if you find the AI to be a little weak, you might want to get TDM Modpack, which is essentially a collection of heavily customized AIs that are stronger than the stock AIs.

[lillumultipass]

Thx imperator!
Will I have to download a patch???
I am currently checking the demo.
By what I have seen, you can mostly customize your traits, like, intelligence, strenght...but you don't seem to have much "special powers" that would allow you to do special stuff...am I wrong???

[Atrocities]

over at www.spaceempires.net there is a game guide that you can download that kinda explains the empire set up and such.
LINK

Look in the download section for the Game Guide v0.95

[Alneyan]

Be warned the regular Empire creation (in the unmodded game) is pretty much straigthforward, as there is only one rational choice and a couple of minor variations on it. It would be pretty much akin to only having the Moloch, the Prince of Death and the Ghost King in Dominions 2, which would then be superior to anything else, no matter what the settings are.

Fortunately, some mods do improve this field, and make Empire setup actually interesting and varied. Alternatively, a house rule or two could be used to spice up this phase of the game. Otherwise, it is clearly inferior to Dominions. On the other hand, you can customise everything related to your Empire, including biology, history and so on.

There are a few special powers (known as racial traits), which allow you to dabble in fields such as religion or temporal knowledge. However, they are mostly improved variations of what the "regular" races can do. Still, you should be able to deepen this area if you want.

[lillumultipass]

Thx Alneyan!!! You are present in every forum :-)
well, that's what I felt, above all after reading the game guide which more or less implied that there was only a few rationnal choices!
But something which is nice is the ships customization.

[Fyron]

Alneyan said:
There are a few special powers (known as racial traits), which allow you to dabble in fields such as religion or temporal knowledge. However, they are mostly improved variations of what the "regular" races can do. Still, you should be able to deepen this area if you want.

Most of the things that the racial tech traits such as Deeply Religions, Organic Manipulation, etc. give you are not avaialable to "regular" races.

Also, there is still room for a lot of variation in empire design... sure, if you want to reduce the game to its base level and find the optimal design to maximize winning, you can do so. But, you can do that with any game...

For the full game, you will need to download the latest patch. You can find it on the official SE4 web site.

[brianeyci]

http://www.spaceempires.net/home/mod...showpage&pid=1

http://www.spaceempires.net/home/mod...op=getit&lid=1

http://newbiefaq.spaceempires.net/

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/ubbup...ategyGuide.zip

And of course the mother
http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...b=5&o=&fpart=1

Have fun,
Brian

[lillumultipass]

Thx everyone!!!
So, the patch is a must-have, isn't it???
Does it fix lots of bugs???

[Fyron]

Bug fixes, new features, etc. It is definitely a "must have."