Are we paying more for less?

[Taqwus]

Might be noted that if you're playing at extremes in the dominions scale or there's a big difference in temples / preaching / Skeptics, it's possible for the dominion leader to not be the leader in military power.

[Cainehill]

Someone has previously posted that this time, cumulative victory point conditions are supported. IE, if 4 provinces have a single VP each, and 100 cumulative VPs are required, holding all 4 provinces for 25 turns would win; holding 1 for 100 turns would also win, if no one else accumulated VPs as quickly.

Expect it'll add quite a bit of strategic considerations, not to mention helping to propel a much quicker game pace. Currently, games get into wars of attrition - if 3 nations remain, each with 12 VPs, and 30 are required to win, the game situation can get stagnant, and could still continue another 100 turns with no winner in sight.

With cumulative VP condition, every turn someone has VP provinces brings the game nearer to the conclusion, and can force attacks : I have 12 VPs, he only has 10, _but_ he only needs 19 VP points to win and I need 25. If I don't take some of his VPs _now_, he wins.

[Talleyrand]

Well, my thread has been hijacked lol and I think we've hammered this beast to death. Thank you all for the discussion and handling an opposing viewpoint in a mature way. I'm still not entirely sold but I'm definitely more open to the possibility of paying a little extra for a good, niche game if it's worth it. I'll just try the demo when it gets released and make an informed decision then. If anything I hope this thread has made the upper brass at Shrapnel rethink their business model, if even for a second, because in my opinion (and as ill-informed as that may be) a niche game only reaches a niche market if you let it. With the Dominions series there is much room for growth.

Cheers.

[DominionsFan]

Mltdwn said:
OK answer me this, what features and abilities does Dom3 add that M2TW doesn't? I'm trying to compare the two and decide which I should invest my money into because other than the "magic" aspect I really can't see what Dom3 brings to the table that is different or better... From what I understand the diplomatic functioning is much more limited due to being primarily a go to war with everyone game, the politics aspect is largely non-existant due to the nature of the game (as opposed to having to deal with the Church, the various other nobles, Crusades, Jihads, Briberies, assassinations, etc.), and the combat is largely more of simply choose the right groups and outnumber the enemies hoping for good enough "rolls" rather than being able to use actual tactics like flanking, luring, ambushes, etc.

Basically what makes Dom3 "better" in terms of features and gameplay?

How can you compare Doms 3. with M2TW??
These games are totally different.
Btw I will buy M2TW also.

[Warhammer]

Mltdwn said:
Or I could simply wait one more month and getting Medieval 2: Total War which is largely the same thing, sans magic/random maps but has far better graphics, and realistic ground battles with 10k+ men on the field per side which you can actually control that takes everything into account just like in real life (with some exceptions with playability). And a relativly deep political/diplomatic interplay (compared to the Dom series) between all of the nations allowing you to turn nations against one another, play all the sides, etc., rather than simply "must destroy everyone" like in Dom3. AND pay only ~$40 for them. Not to mention the mods which will add the fantasy elements to it, like the already released Middle-Earth mod for R:TW.

And as for discount games, yes I bought EVERY single TW game when they hit the bargain bin and I STILL play all 3 of them and their expansions to this day on a fairly frequent basis. M2 is going to be the first I buy on release day because of CA's production values.

Wow....

That is all I can really say.

First, most of the battlefields in any of the TW games are not realistic based upon the scales that they are representing.

Second, commanders in any of the timeframes that TW models had very little effective control over their troops once the battle was joined, the only exception to this might have been Shogun.

Third, it still amazes me that people think that the battle results or the diplomacy in any of the TW series are realistic. I never had a game of TW where at anything on their most difficult level became anything OTHER than me against the world.

After the first Shogun, which really was a good game although there were plenty of "features" which ruined the game for me once it got to the end game, the other games in the series were not that great from a gameplay standpoint. They looked pretty, but I never played either R:TW or M:TW much after the first week.

[PDF]

Leif_- said:
Dominions 3 is basically Dominions 2 supercharged, so if you prefer the Total War games to Dominions 2, I don't see why you're even asking the question. Skip Dominions 3 and buy the next Total War game instead.

I'd just be doing the reverse, fed up with TW, whose motto could be "more whizbang less interesting gameplay with each iteration" !

[Humer]

Talleyrand: I say take a dive and buy it instead of trying the demo. Take your money's worth out of it and if you decide the game's not for you - sell it. I don't think you have any trouble getting rid of your copy, the retail price being on the high side.

That's what I did with Dominions:PPP. Well, except the part that I didn't want to get rid of it. They would've had to pry it out my cold, dead fingers to get my copy. Same thing with Dominions 2.

Oh, and you get a top community to go with your game.

It's just not the same with only a demo.

[Neophyte]

Part of the value (for me) that Dom3 comes with is multi-platformability without loss of features (iirc, Oblivion was "dumbed down" to accomadate the console people). Granted, I have other hobbies than computer gaming and do not have the most current knowledge of the computer gaming industry. However, I feel safe in thinking that Dom3 is in the vast, vast minority of games that get released with Win / Linux and Mac distributions at market release all in the same distribution. Dom2 even had a Solaris executable.

To this end, I bought Dom2 before being sure I liked it to support Linux gaming development. (Please don't tell KO that I am currently playing Dom2 on Windows... )

This multi-platformability is way more than the big manufacturers provide with their supposed bigger and better resources. And when the big mfg's do provide multi-platformability, they often force the consumer to buy a separate instance of the game for each platform. Why should I have to buy a separate copy of a game to play on my Linux machine when I already possess a license to run the game and will only be playing on the Linux machine xor the Windows machine? In this respect, multi-platformability, Dom3 has the bigger mfg's beat hands down.

I do agree that the pricing for Dom2 could have come down a bit, especially after Dom3 development was announced.

As for graphics, I want be able to play the game on my notebook, which does not have graphics upgradability. I got stiffed on this by Civ4. A turn-based strategy game, in my opinion, should at the very least have an "ugly mode" to allow for dated graphics cards. Civ4 has nowhere near the price per unit time spent playing value (for me) as games with limited replay such as the KOTOR series for just this reason.

[Unwise]

I find it interesting that no one has really brought up the one aspect of the Dominions games that have made it such a long-running favorite with my buddies and me: the fact that we don't have to be on-line at the same time to play it.

Seriously -- my pals work different shifts (occasionally on different continents), and the ability to download the data from the server, plan out your turn on a bus or airplane somewhere and then upload it for the nightly turn-running is absolutely spectacular. There is no way that any significant number of us could get on-line daily and resolve a RTS-style battle... at least not on a long-term basis.

We've had Dominions games that have lasted months. Actually, I don't think we've had a game that has NOT lasted at least a month. We send elaborate messages to one another spelling out in horrific detail what we will do to someone's lawn if they even *think* about taking that coastal province from us, and on at least one occasion a $50 bottle of scotch was the bounty for a joint sneak-attack on Vanheim.

No way we could do that with a 'Total War' game.

[BigJMoney]

I also cannot believe M:TW is being used as a comparison. I won't even go into how much the developers are screwing up THAT strategy game (although, now that I've read some of Tim's posts here, I can maybe see that they are trying to save their necks, financially), but I will mention the glaring fact that game doesn't even support strategic multiplayer. I will say this again, M:TW is not a multiplayer strategy game. Dominions is a very good single player game, but at the heart of it is a very, very, very good multiplayer strategy game.

By the way, when you get M:TW2 can you come here and discuss it some in an OT thread? I'm curious about that game, but not curious enough to shell out $$. I fear those developers missed their chance to cater to niche players and are forced to make their games more mainstream compliant with every succession.

=$=