Quick bits of feedback after about 100 hours of play

[diamondspider]

Just to be clear up-front: I love Dom2!! So please don't take my suggestions as gripes. I also suspect that these ideas have crossed the developers minds, so maybe just count these as "votes" for raising the priority on any of these ideas that are deemed to be good.

There are currently only four things that "frustrate" me at times while playing:

1) Load game. This is a minor one since there is an easy work around. I can obviously back-up my .trn and ftherlnd files each turn before hosting but it would be SO nice to have a "revert" feature to undo the Last turn. For me, if the AI does a great move and rolls me back I have no problem with this.

The problem is that there can be 100s of orders to give before hitting host and if I stupidly forget to, say, take my 10 full units of Werewolves/wolves out of sneak during a castle siege and therefore kiss my entire "big stack" goodbye, it is really a pain in the neck.

I just find it tedious to do the back-ups over and over but it is even more tedious to throw a game away due to forgetting a single important and trivial chore.

2) Target switching. This was talked about in another thread. In that thread it was noted that when a faster unit closes on a unit that if firing the firing unit won't switch to the newly close unit but instead keeps trying to attack the unit that was closest at the time the battle started.

I do find that annoying, but even more annoying, and similarly, I really hate when a huge unit of mine breaks a small and fast one early in the battle and then tries to pursue it all the way off the board instead of changing targets.

This should be very easy to fix in that it could just, maybe, pick a random number between 0 and 3 and pursue for that many rounds then switch to the closest target at that point.

3) Starting placement. This is minorly annoying in single player games, but would be TOTALLY annoying in a multi-player game (haven't done one yet).

As is often the case in these sorts of games, being in a corner is a huge advantage compared with being surrounded by enemies. Yes, many features help like aquatic races, wrap-around maps, and the fact that one often starts near an "edge".

STILL, while I haven't played with the map editor enough to know if it is possible, or if this is already implemented on maps, but it would be GREAT to for the map designers to specify where the players can and cannot start.

I'd feel very uncomfortable starting a large MP game if I had started in some of the positions that I've been placed on the Aran map (still playing it since I like smaller maps even after my copy of the game arrived).

I mean, I'd basically resign if I was surrounded by enemies knowing that I was at about a 50% disadvantage to those starting on edges or corners. And, I'd feel terrible about resigning having promised to play.

All I know for sure is that, on that map at least, I can predict how hard the game will be nearly immediately based on my map placement and I'd hope that it would be skill rather than luck that determine game outcomes.

The rest of the many luck factors I have no real problem with. The luck setting helps enough, along with lucky enchantments, that if a player fears unlucky events and such there is at least a recourse that they have to help protect them.

4) Firing at enemy commanders. Yes, it is true, the AI is targetting my commanders with missle fire in very unrealistic ways. I saw another thread regarding the fact that they AI might still be doing this since it was a feature in Dom1 (if I understood the post correctly).

Well, the upshot of this problem is having a huge impact on my game. So many times a large group of AI controlled crossbow troops are given the order to fire at my commanders that, practically speaking, there is no way for me to survive these battles apart from given 10 Air and blessing them or spending all of my resources creating etherial/lucky/armor items for ALL of my commanders.

This drastically reduces the flexibility of the game since I'd love to explore the vast other number of possibilities that Dom2 offers!


That's it! Pretty short list for such a complex game Thanks for listening and happy gaming!!

[Arryn]

Originally posted by diamondspider:
4) Firing at enemy commanders. Yes, it is true, the AI is targetting my commanders with missle fire in very unrealistic ways. I saw another thread regarding the fact that they AI might still be doing this since it was a feature in Dom1 (if I understood the post correctly).

Well, the upshot of this problem is having a huge impact on my game. So many times a large group of AI controlled crossbow troops are given the order to fire at my commanders that, practically speaking, there is no way for me to survive these battles apart from given 10 Air and blessing them or spending all of my resources creating etherial/lucky/armor items for ALL of my commanders.

Have you tried moving your commanders to the far back of the field, rather than having them behind the troops at the front line? Works well for me. The only thing that can target my commanders that far back are spells, and the AI tends to prefer hitting troops that are closer.

[diamondspider]

Originally posted by Arryn:
QUOTE]Have you tried moving your commanders to the far back of the field, rather than having them behind the troops at the front line? Works well for me. The only thing that can target my commanders that far back are spells, and the AI tends to prefer hitting troops that are closer.

OF COURSE! My commanders are always kissing the back wall.

I had several cases in my Last game where Pythium won battles that I had probably double the number (and power) of troops by moving about 20 Xbows up until they could hit my main commander and raked it over and over.

That's good news for me. The computer is inept as far as firing on my commanders Maybe you just got unlucky.

[Targa]

Originally posted by diamondspider:
...but even more annoying, and similarly, I really hate when a huge unit of mine breaks a small and fast one early in the battle and then tries to pursue it all the way off the board instead of changing targets.

Yes, I also find it annoying when my heavy-hitter spends his time chasing a single routing militia off the back of the field rather than helping the rest of my guys who are getting their butt kicked.

This should be very easy to fix in that it could just, maybe, pick a random number between 0 and 3 and pursue for that many rounds then switch to the closest target at that point.

Or just code it so that when an enemy unit is routing, if any are still non-routing, switch to them, otherwise continue pursuit. It's common sense really. For example, you and 5 friends are (god forbid) in a street fight with 6 opponents. Even matchup. You hit one guy in the nose, and he runs away. Would you chase after him, or help your friends deal with the remaining ones? Giving chase to routing opponents while the rest of your army is still engaged in combat is not a reasonable (or logical) combat tactic.

3) Starting placement. This is minorly annoying in single player games, but would be TOTALLY annoying in a multi-player game (haven't done one yet). --snip--

STILL, while I haven't played with the map editor enough to know if it is possible...

Yes, I believe you can specify either exact provinces or have it choose from several that you designate as starting provinces.

[diamondspider]

Originally posted by Zen:
That's good news for me. The computer is inept as far as firing on my commanders Maybe you just got unlucky.

I thought that was the case for a while Zen. Then I had the following situation occur.

The computer had a unit of ONE crossbow troop. I had 6 commanders on the field. By chance, the one crossbow guy was left unharried in a huge and important battle.

What did that guy do the ENTIRE battle? He shot at my MAIN commander over and over (about 6 time) and finally killed him thereby winning.

No way was that luck. My commander was surrounded by about 20 units and was also summoning skeletons by the bushel.

Also, Kriss or Johan did confirm that he thought this might be the case in another thread (I can dig the quote up if you want).

So, YES, I think you are just getting lucky or maybe it is Pythium specific somehow.

[ January 29, 2004, 03:42: Message edited by: diamondspider ]

[Arryn]

Originally posted by diamondspider:
OF COURSE! My commanders are always kissing the back wall.

I had several cases in my Last game where Pythium won battles that I had probably double the number (and power) of troops by moving about 20 Xbows up until they could hit my main commander and raked it over and over.

Then split your forces and be sure the one to the side of the field has orders to target enemy archers. The center force should then engage the enemy infantry, while the side force will go look for those pesky archer types. Archers tend to have low morale so they should rout quickly and your problem will then be over. This tactic should work even better if the archer-hunters have their own leader with a horror helm or other such fear-inducing item or ability.

If you outnumber (and outpower) your foe there's little reason why you should allow the enemy archers to get free shots at your leaders. If you engage the archers, they'll be too busy to shoot things you very much don't want to see killed.

[diamondspider]

Originally posted by Arryn:

quote:

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Originally posted by diamondspider:
OF COURSE! My commanders are always kissing the back wall.

I had several cases in my Last game where Pythium won battles that I had probably double the number (and power) of troops by moving about 20 Xbows up until they could hit my main commander and raked it over and over.

Then split your forces and be sure the one to the side of the field has orders to target enemy archers. The center force should then engage the enemy infantry, while the side force will go look for those pesky archer types. Archers tend to have low morale so they should rout quickly and your problem will then be over. This tactic should work even better if the archer-hunters have their own leader with a horror helm or other such fear-inducing item or ability.

If you outnumber (and outpower) your foe there's little reason why you should allow the enemy archers to get free shots at your leaders. If you engage the archers, they'll be too busy to shoot things you very much don't want to see killed.

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I have to disagree with you here. The range of crossbows makes it VERY easy to just put them behind serveral melee unit close to the front and do MANY hits on my commanders by the 2nd round of combat.

There is no defense against this except getting high air blessings, using magic to lower the power of missile fire, or giving crazy amounts of protection to all commanders. Also, I suppose that IF I had fliers I could tell them to hit the archers and hope they selected the same unit that was targeting my commanders.

However, the MAIN issue is that the computer is CHEATING!

[ January 29, 2004, 03:47: Message edited by: diamondspider ]

If it's cheating, it's allowed

I don't think so though, in all the games that I've played (which is quite a few) I've never had some single crossbowman gun for a commander (though I wish they would).

Though my common practice isn't to put my commanders near enough of a mass of troops to warrant a type 'closest, rearmost, cavalry' etc. They have enough space that if a random arrow flies off and hits them, its their just deserts, but it's very hard to directly target a command position.

Like I said, maybe you were unlucky. The game is filled with variables.

[Arryn]

Originally posted by diamondspider:
I have to disagree with you here. The range of crossbows makes it VERY easy to just put them behind serveral melee unit close to the front and do MANY hits on my commanders by the 2nd round of combat.

There is no defense against this except getting high air blessings, using magic to lower the power of missile fire, or giving crazy amounts of protection to all commanders. Also, I suppose that IF I had fliers I could tell them to hit the archers and hope they selected the same unit that was targeting my commanders.

However, the MAIN issue is that the computer is CHEATING!

I agree that the real issue is that the AI cheats since humans cannot target commanders. That said ...

I haven't been having this sort of problem, even in the rare battles when the enemy has crossbow (rather than regular bow) units. Of course, since my preferred nations are Jotun or R'lyeh that may have more than a bit to do with why I haven't seen what you describe. It may be that in the AI's targetting priority scheme it looks for "closest large enemy" in preference to "enemy leader" and almost all my units are "large", so they shoot the guys in the front. Which is more than fine by me as they can take the hits (well, the guys in the back can too, and even more so as they have more HPs than common troops).

What nation were you playing as when you were being victimized by the nefarious snakes? And what sort of leaders were you having killed (their HPs, magic types/levels, etc.)?