Some Questions -- making up my mind, advice needed

[Arralen]

onomastikon said:
Would anybody mind answering these last couple of questions of mine? .... So: Are there any SP players out there with any opinions from the full version? (Please, please, if possible, a critical view -- I know this is a fan site and everybody wants to support Illwinter (me too), but I am hoping for a tiny bit of objectivity, thanks.)

Now, I do most of my Dom playing in SP mode. And I am surely not known for my fanboyish attitude .. more for being overly negative, maybe

Would I buy Dom3 as it is now? Yes, I think I would.
(I don't have too, though .. I'm still playing the "go-gold"-beta-version..)

- Priests and preaching. Did Priests get nerfed? I *loved* the preaching element of Dom2, but Dom3 preaching seems nerfed, since priests all have 1 level lower. (I saw that priest spells are all lowered one level, makes sense, but I dont understand when you "cannot raise the dominion of this province by preaching". Obviously, the rules have changed, but the demo doesnt say how.)

This message was already there in Dom2 .. check Dom2 manual p.23 "9.1 Priests" - if you "hit the ceiling" with your dom in that province, any more preaching won't have any effect. Judging from the Dom3 manual, the dominions cap from priest level for preaching might has been removed, but temples are still +1 priest levels for preaching purposes.
Actually, the lowered priest levels might be more due to game engine issues or for aesthetical reasons then anything else.

- Balance.
1) life steal?
2) Summons.
3) Economy.Is gold supposed to be so common?
4) Units.

1. already answered
2. Still too good to be true, but most of them are harder to come by now. And in SP, you just needn't use them.
3. Yes. To make 'mundane' troops more common.
4. yes, its confusing. Balancing has only begun ... and sometimes its hard to tell if something is actually a bug or a balancing issue

- Buildings. Do starting forts have to do with your starting nation or the starting terrain?

Every nation has a fixed starting fort, which you'll get no matter what terrain you start in. However, some nations have a strong preference for a certain terrain in their home province, e.g. EA Yomi mostly starts in mountains, LA Atlantis in a coastal province etc. . Furthermore, every nation has it's set of forts it will be able to build, depending on terrain.

UI. When I click "view battle", my screen would go dark for about 5-8 seconds before playing. Is that normal? And "e" now automatically generates a turn instead of giving that secondary screen -- did everyone else *want* that? I can't see how far along a saved game now is (I think in Dom2 you could see "turn 30" or whatever, now I have no idea).

- going dark: no, thats not how it is intended. There should be a slow, fading zoom-in on the province, the a switch to the battle view. At least, thats how it works for me. Maybe you machine is a bit slow, or you're using an ATI card, or both ...
- there where some very vocal whiners who complained that every other game had an "end turn" button which takes one to the next turn .. now we have that button, and everyone else complains about it. Maybe you should have spoken up when that old discussion was about on the Dom2 forum Chances are not bad, though, that the button remains but the shortcut will be gone with the next patch .. it's all to easy to accidently hit the "e" key. At least, I hope so...
- turn number: no more turn numbers. you can still check the month, though, but clicking on that little graphic in the top right .. says "late summer of the first year" .. year has 12 month, and starts with early spring.

Random Map Generator. Does everybody like this? I thought it was a nice idea, but the maps I got were just no comparison to the good, human-made maps I had for Dom2 (strange borders, chokepoints, etc.). .. Does the full version come with some more human-made maps? Or did I just have bad luck with the randomness dealt me?

I think the RMG does quite a good job. If you mark "impassable mountains", you will get impassable border mountains in provinces, which will effectilvy create chokepoints.
And you can always copy over the old Dom2 maps - they'll work in Dom3 as well.

AI. Like I said, I will mostly be playing SP. .. Dom3 is supposed to have better AI. I couldnt see this in the demo. It still prefers chaff, it still flails about aimlessly without a real plan, and it still builds weird pretenders.

Yes, yes, and sadly, yes.

OK, it seems to make forts, but even these are put in the strangest of places, seemingly at random, without regard for strategic need.

Can't second this. In contrary, I've seen it fortify it's border quite effectivly at times.

Well I just goofed about without really trying much, and even with the 40-turn limit I trounced the "Mighty AI" easily. Maybe it was just luck, I don't know, but I don't suppose the AI will be upgraded in patches.

Sadly, to be realistic, there's little hope we see an AI that can really play Dominions within our livetime. Chess is rather simple, compared with Dominions, and that's giving the so-called AIs a hard time.
I have some ideas how to do a decent AI for Dominions, but that would maybe require more manpower and -years than the whole Dominion series from PPP to 3.

.. but I doubt that JK and JO have time or interest for Dom3 (what with it being a multiplayer game and their RL jobs).

Minor flaws will be corrected, I think, but more than that is "out of scope" I fear.

But I have quite some fun playing SP dominions, nevertheless, by avoiding the more 'abusive' tactics the AI can't cope with, running very difficult research etc.

[dirtywick]

Arralen said:

This message was already there in Dom2 .. check Dom2 manual p.23 "9.1 Priests" - if you "hit the ceiling" with your dom in that province, any more preaching won't have any effect. Judging from the Dom3 manual, the dominions cap from priest level for preaching might has been removed, but temples are still +1 priest levels for preaching purposes.
Actually, the lowered priest levels might be more due to game engine issues or for aesthetical reasons then anything else.

The cap is still there as far as I've seen. A H1 priest praching where there's 2 candles or more will get that message no matter what the max dominion is.

[Endoperez]

From my earlier post:

Again from the manual:

Furhermore, preaching in a province can only raise dominion as high as twice the level of the priest doing the preaching.

[thejeff]

And that's the change isn't it. It's now twice the level.

[Daynarr]

2 * level of priest + 1 for temple if it's present in the province.

That means that level 1 priest with temple can preach up to 3 dominion strenght, level 2 with temple would preach up to 5, etc.

[PvK]

I play both SP and MP, and I find single-player very improved compared to Dom 2, where I also enjoyed it.

[onomastikon]

Thanks very much!

My confusion with Agartha wasn't so much a balance issue but a flavor one: Since there were no poor amphibians at all, I didnt really see the difference between "wet ones" and the others, so I miss their raison d'etre. Also, the intro info screen in the demo lists them as "poor amphibians". I just didnt see a difference between them and Atlantis, Ryleh or Oceana (those from dom2 at least), except that Agartha was even *more* flexible. Normally, "land" nations that are highly water-compatible can't build PD in water, but even Agartha can do that, so it just seems weird.
But it is no big deal.

And that's the change isn't it. It's now twice the level.

Thanks jeff. Since I don't have the manual, that was what I was missing. I think this is a nice change to priests.

Path requirements and item costs are still linked.

Ah pity, but I think this all makes sense. Looks like some nice changes were implemented. Can't really see in the demo, but what you say makes sense.

The black screen is a bug, then. Feel free to report your OS, graphic card and details of the bug in the bug thread.

OK I could do so, but since it was only the demo I don't think anyone will really care.
Notice that it happens when I hit "e" to some extent too: I played a game of five humans vs. each other, me playing all the nations, just so I could see who was what in the demo, and when I hit "e" to get me to the screen to select the nation, it doesn't black out but it does freeze and take about 8-10 seconds to get to that screen. If this doesn't happen for everyone, that's good, because I found it painful in comparison to Dom2, but it sure is strange since I havent had any problems with my machine otherwise.
Specs are: 1.86Ghz Pentium Mobile, 1gig RAM, ATI Radeon Mobility with 128MB (I think, cant see a way to see that right now), Windows XP Home w/ latest updates.
Are issues with ATI cards "normal"?

I play both SP and MP, and I find single-player very improved compared to Dom 2, where I also enjoyed it.

In which way?

[Archonsod]

You can check your graphics card through dxdiag. Start -> run -> dxdiag. It should be listed under Display. Wouldn't say issues with ATI cards are normal, though I think there's an identified bug with them & Doms 3.

As for the improvements in SP : The AI is much improved. Kind of. When it's good, it's very, very good. When it's bad it's pathetic (Monolith pretender, imprisoned and maximum bad scales. Dominion suicide by turn 3...)
Another improvement that hasn't been talked about much (although it goes for MP too) is that there are in effect more nations, hence a lot more variety. Even with the extensions of nations in later era's - MA Ulm feels a lot different to play or face than EA Ulm for example.
The ability to randomise the AI nations is handy, especially in combination with the random map generator. You can start a game not knowing precisely what you'll be up against, adding some interesting challenges (like suddenly finding out you have AE Ermor to go up against in turn 200...)
Most of the other improvements go for either SP or MP equally - new mechanics, more choice in the kind of game you play and similar.
The only real criticism I could make of the SP game at the moment is the flaky AI, but hopefully that will be sorted out in a patch. As I said, when it works right, it can be quite a challenge. However, it can suffer from bouts of stupidity, such as the already mentioned two turn dominion death.