Some Questions -- making up my mind, advice needed

[onomastikon]

Would anybody mind answering these last couple of questions of mine? I am still trying to decide when and if to purchase. I really liked Dom2, it is still on my machine, but since I WONT be playing much multiplayer (time constraints), my main incentive for getting dom3 (unlike most of you out there who need it to play with others, who will all be buying dom3) is different.
I currently visiting my brother in the US and would have a chance to get it shipped easier, hence the odd questions now....

Thanks much in advance.

- 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.)

- Balance.
1) I couldnt tell from the demo, since there was no info and it is very short, and you can't research past level 4, I was never able to make Life Stealing items: How does life steal work now? I heard it was different?
2) Summons. Like I said, the demo is very limited, I couldnt really tell if at higher levels Summons was just as (over)powered as in Dom2.
3) Economy. In the demo, on regular settings, it seemed I had tons and tons of cash, but the prices for units were similar to Dom2. The prices of buildings were much higher, however. Is this an "Age" thing? (Are buildings cheaper later, gold less common?) Is gold supposed to be so common?
4) Units. Well, I only got to see a couple of races, but I was a bit confused. Agartha said it is a race of poor amphibians, but all the ones I recruited were full amphibs. I could even buy PD underwater! And none of them need to eat?? Is there consensus that this is ok, or what's the deal? I also saw in that monkey race that I can buy an archer for 9 gold 3 recourses with a short bow and 10 precision, or a bigger ape archer for 20 gold and 4 resources with the same bow and less precision. I think the cheaper archer was also stealthy? Why would I ever want the more expensive one? Well I suppose all that is no matter, really, just confused me a bit....

- Buildings. Do starting forts have to do with your starting nation or the starting terrain? Some forts just seem so much better than others (I saw one with Admin 60, while a different one had Admin 20). I thought at first that I would build forts my nation started with, but it seems terrain-dependent. So is starting province terrain mean a whole random bunch of luck with which free fort you get at the beginning?

- 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).

- 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.).
(And it looked like Jason Lutes made that small map that came with the demo -- awesome map! I love his maps.)
Does the full version come with some more human-made maps? Or did I just have bad luck with the randomness dealt me?

- AI. Like I said, I will mostly be playing SP. I know this is an MP game, and MP Dom2 was awesome, but I found other games better in 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.
OK, it seems to make forts, but even these are put in the strangest of places, seemingly at random, without regard for strategic need.
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. I know that Stardock really tries to work on that for their GC2, but I doubt that JK and JO have time or interest for Dom3 (what with it being a multiplayer game and their RL jobs).
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.)

Well, thanks very much.

[Agrajag]

onomastikon said:
- 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.)
Well, checking the manual, there's no mention of a maximum dominion to which priests can preach, but if you did get the "cannot raise the dominion of this province by preaching", and that province wasn't already on max dominion, then maybe the limit is in. (which would mean the manual needs a small fix)

- Balance.
1) I couldnt tell from the demo, since there was no info and it is very short, and you can't research past level 4, I was never able to make Life Stealing items: How does life steal work now? I heard it was different?
IIRC: Life stealing weapons are capped at 4 hp. (They also give back damage/2 HP and damage*2 fatigue, don't remember how it was in 2
2) Summons. Like I said, the demo is very limited, I couldnt really tell if at higher levels Summons was just as (over)powered as in Dom2.
Well, I haven't tried all the uberstuff yet, but generaly, especially with the increase in abundance of money, SCs were weakened quite a bit.
3) Economy. In the demo, on regular settings, it seemed I had tons and tons of cash, but the prices for units were similar to Dom2. The prices of buildings were much higher, however. Is this an "Age" thing? (Are buildings cheaper later, gold less common?) Is gold supposed to be so common?
Yep, its supposed to be that common, its a major change from dom2, but I think it is a good one

- Buildings. Do starting forts have to do with your starting nation or the starting terrain? Some forts just seem so much better than others (I saw one with Admin 60, while a different one had Admin 20). I thought at first that I would build forts my nation started with, but it seems terrain-dependent. So is starting province terrain mean a whole random bunch of luck with which free fort you get at the beginning?
Forts depend on terrain, choice of forts depends on nation.

- 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).
That's a fade-in effect, its supposed to look cool
And a lot of people aren't happy with the new function of the 'e' button and End Turn in SP.
You can still quit with Save and Quite though

- 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.).
(And it looked like Jason Lutes made that small map that came with the demo -- awesome map! I love his maps.)
Does the full version come with some more human-made maps? Or did I just have bad luck with the randomness dealt me?
Random maps are always a good thing, but obviously they have a hard time against human-made maps.
Also, there are nine man-made maps that come with the game. 7 if you don't count different versions of the same base map.

- AI. Like I said, I will mostly be playing SP. I know this is an MP game, and MP Dom2 was awesome, but I found other games better in 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.
OK, it seems to make forts, but even these are put in the strangest of places, seemingly at random, without regard for strategic need.
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. I know that Stardock really tries to work on that for their GC2, but I doubt that JK and JO have time or interest for Dom3 (what with it being a multiplayer game and their RL jobs).
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.)
I play quite a bit of SP, but I'm not that good, so I don't think I qualify for comments in this regard.
However, just going by the feeling I get from reading the forums, most people are quite happy with the new AI, while there are still a few that don't think its any good.

[Nerfix]

1) Lifestealing items now steal max 5 HP/Fatigue per hit
2) No idea really. Elemental royalties are higher up. Banelords are supposedly nerfed. There are more counters against demons. Research is slower. To be honest I never got to research enough Conj/Blood to summon the big monsters.
3) Yes, there's supposed to be lots of gold around
4) The Agarthan amphibians might be a bug. Did you check out Agarthan's attack and defence values? Agartha is powerful but it has it's flaws, some of them can be fatal ones. Endo told me that the general concensus amongst the betas was that Agartha is weak.

The bigger apes have more HP. That's it I suppose.

- Starting forts are by your starting nation. But every nation gets a set of forts that can be built in different terrains.

- It's generaly agreed that the decision to change the turn-ending mechanic was a bad idea.

- I like it, but I play the preset maps more than I play with the editor.

- AI seems to be better, or at least they can handle cavalry now. I also saw something of a SC from them once, a Cyclops with Hydra Skin Armor. I'd say the AI is okay. Once you learn the powerful strategies of the nation you are handling you can trounce the AI. I have yet to learn to play with Yomi and Sauromatia beat me twice. Perhaps it was also my attempt to play Oni-style.

[Endoperez]

onomastikon said:
- 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.)

The manual tells how preaching works. Basically, 30% chance per priest level of increasing own dominion, or lowering enemy dominion, in the province the priest is at. If there's a temple in the province, all preaching priests are counted as if they had one more priest level for preaching. Enemy dominion lowers the chance of successful increase by 5% per level of enemy dominion.

This wasn't documented in Dominions II, so I can't tell if and how this has changed.

- Balance.
1) I couldnt tell from the demo, since there was no info and it is very short, and you can't research past level 4, I was never able to make Life Stealing items: How does life steal work now? I heard it was different?
2) Summons. Like I said, the demo is very limited, I couldnt really tell if at higher levels Summons was just as (over)powered as in Dom2.
3) Economy. In the demo, on regular settings, it seemed I had tons and tons of cash, but the prices for units were similar to Dom2. The prices of buildings were much higher, however. Is this an "Age" thing? (Are buildings cheaper later, gold less common?) Is gold supposed to be so common?
4) Units. Well, I only got to see a couple of races, but I was a bit confused. Agartha said it is a race of poor amphibians, but all the ones I recruited were full amphibs. I could even buy PD underwater! And none of them need to eat?? Is there consensus that this is ok, or what's the deal? I also saw in that monkey race that I can buy an archer for 9 gold 3 recourses with a short bow and 10 precision, or a bigger ape archer for 20 gold and 4 resources with the same bow and less precision. I think the cheaper archer was also stealthy? Why would I ever want the more expensive one? Well I suppose all that is no matter, really, just confused me a bit....

1) Life-draining weapons are weaker now. The life-drain only happens from the first 5 points of damage they deal. Natural attacks that drain life have been kept as-is. The manual lists Wraith Sword as Death 4 now. However, item prices have been redone, so it only costs 25 gems. The new costs are 5, 10, 15, 25, and perhaps 40, 65 after that.

2) Which summons in particular? Devils are weaker. Elemental Kings and Queens, as an example, are now higher in the research tree than they used to be. It takes a higher-level mage to summon a Bane Lord. Ghost Riders is more expensive. Expensive summons will still be able to kill lots of basic national units, of course.

3) Increased gold is one of the bigger chances. There's considerably more gold in the world of Dominions. And as you noticed, all buildings are much more expensive. Amount of gold doesn't change with ages AFAIK, but the amount of resources and magic sites does. The defaults can be changed, of course.

4) Even the smallest Agarthans are size 3. That means smaller units have easier time ganging up on them, and swarming works better in Dominions 3 because each attack after the first lowers defence by 2 instead of 1 it used to.
Agarthans have many strong abilities. They have Darkvision 100, they are amphibious and strong, and have some natural protection and higher than average magic resistance. They are also very long-lived, and all Agarthans have Siege Bonus, and they don't consume supplies. However, they have just one eye (so Eye Shields are deadly against them), they are cold-blooded and DON'T prefer hot lands, their precision is weak, and their attack and defence ratings are much worse than those of humans or other similar creatures. They are tough, yes, but that doesn't help if they can't kill their enemies.
Kailasa was your other concern. Atavi Archers are stealthy, yes, but it's just Stealth +0, and they have horrible morale of 8. Magic resistance is also weak, and they are animals and thus subjectible to few more effects than members of most other races, but that's a weakness they share with Bandar. Bandar Archers have Longbows, not Shortbows as you thought, and they have morale of 12. They also have good hitpoints, strength and attack, and are armed with maces instead of daggers, so they can kill any enemies that reach them. In later Ages, you can recruit armored versions of both Atavi and Bandar Archers, but Vanara Archers aren't stealthy. The armored Bandar Archers have a more spesific use as a dual archers/melee combatants, although I haven't gotten that spesific strategy work very well yet. With Bandar Archers, at least.

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

Manual lists the forts different nations starts with, and the forts they build in spesific terrains. They are different. A nation always starts with the same castle, regardless of the terrain they start in, but they often start in areas of spesific 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.

Instead of dark screen, you should see the map zooming in to the province the battle took place in, then fading out and changing into the battlefield. You can press Esc to jump over the fading. Something from the options also disables fading, but I'm not sure which fading and where. It might help.
Others have mentioned their dislike for the new "e" as well. The turn is, in theory at least, possible to calculate from the season icon in top-right corner of the main view.

- 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?

Random maps CAN'T be comparable to good human-made maps. Dominions 3 random maps are pretty good, as far as random maps go. But you are right, well-made maps are always better than random maps.

Full version comes with more human-made maps. Old DomII maps are also supposed to work with Dom3, but it seems all don't. Move your old DomII maps into appopriate Dom3 folder and see what happens.

- AI. Like I said, I will mostly be playing SP. I know this is an MP game, and MP Dom2 was awesome, but I found other games better in 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.
OK, it seems to make forts, but even these are put in the strangest of places, seemingly at random, without regard for strategic need.
Well I just goofed about without really trying much, and even with the 40-turn limit I trounced the "Mighty AI" easily.
Are there any SP players out there with any opinions from the full version?

I can't help you with this last question. I was part of the beta, and as such haven't played DomII in ages. There are various changes, though. As an example, AI has stomped some of my armies just by having some cavalry start on the sides of the battlefield and ordering them to Attack Rear. Finding out that AI can do that is a nasty surprise!

[Sindai]

Watching Agarthans try to fight anyone with high defense (like, say, Vanheim) is painful. They just never land a hit.

[Endoperez]

Nerfix said:
4) The Agarthan amphibians might be a bug. Did you check out Agarthan's attack and defence values? Agartha is powerful but it has it's flaws, some of them can be fatal ones. Endo told me that the general concensus amongst the betas was that Agartha is weak.

I doubt I said anything generally to you, but I think I have mentioned that the general concensus amongst the blitzers, or those regular to the #dominion irc channel, is that Agartha, especially as far as national units go, is weak. That includes some of the betas. I'm doing my best in arguing against them, but haven't been successful yet. I'm not that good a player, though.

My latest try with EA Agartha was with Alteration-based research. Adding some protection with various Earth spells should work, Earth Meld should work against high-def enemies, Oracles of the Dead can cast Blight... Lots of interesting things in there.

Agartha also has access to Earth 4 mages, even the occassional Earth 5 mage. The same IRC crowd says that Blade Wind is one of the strongest damage spells in the Early Age, especially with Earth 4 or more mages... Earth Power makes Agarthan capital-only mages even more powerful, and happens to be at Conjuration 3, where Agartha gets two nice national summon spells. At Conjuration 5, Agartha can summon life-draining ethereal creatures that could be described as Agarthan Wraiths. At higher Evocation, Agartha gets Magma Eruption. There's also their ability to scry with their starting site.

[onomastikon]

Wow, that was fast, thanks for those replies.

Especially @endoperez: Thanks for that preaching info. My question is, however, related to the MAXIMUM candle count by which a priest can still preach. In dom2, standard vanilla priests were level 2. IIRC they could
have a chance to raise the dominion by 1 via preaching if the current domionion in their province was 1 or lower, 2 if there was a temple present.
Now, they are level one, and everybody else is lower respectively. Does that mean that they can only effectively preach when the dominion is 0 (1 if temple present)? THat is the nature of my question, since it would greatly affect those priests' roles who do not have mage or fighting ability.
(In the demo, I got conflicting messages: Once, I noticed that my priest of level 3 (I think it was my prophet) was able to raise the dominion of the province, although there were 4 candles in it. Well I dont know if he did raise it, but I did NOT get the messsage "unable to raise dominion by preaching" when I hit "P".

Do temples, labs, and forts all cost the same amount of gold and build time in all the different ages?

Are you saying that gem cost for forging and path requirements are now decoupled? (So that path-1 could be 5 gems or could be 10? I think I saw a Lucky Coin shield cost 10 gems, but maybe I was mistaken.) That would be very nice IMO. But maybe I misunderstood your post.

And when I hit "view battle", the screen *does* zoom in from map to battlefield in a blend-in kind of way, but it goes black for some time before that. (So if 10 battles happened per turn that I can view, I sometimes decided not to view quite a few out of impatience)

Anyhow, thanks for the replies. If I understand you all correctly, however, then the main point (AI) still seems to be quite shaky. Good to know! thanks

[Endoperez]

onomastikon said:
Wow, that was fast, thanks for those replies.

Especially @endoperez: Thanks for that preaching info. My question is, however, related to the MAXIMUM candle count by which a priest can still preach. In dom2, standard vanilla priests were level 2. IIRC they could
have a chance to raise the dominion by 1 via preaching if the current domionion in their province was 1 or lower, 2 if there was a temple present.
Now, they are level one, and everybody else is lower respectively. Does that mean that they can only effectively preach when the dominion is 0 (1 if temple present)? THat is the nature of my question, since it would greatly affect those priests' roles who do not have mage or fighting ability.
(In the demo, I got conflicting messages: Once, I noticed that my priest of level 3 (I think it was my prophet) was able to raise the dominion of the province, although there were 4 candles in it. Well I dont know if he did raise it, but I did NOT get the messsage "unable to raise dominion by preaching" when I hit "P".

Do temples, labs, and forts all cost the same amount of gold and build time in all the different ages?

Are you saying that gem cost for forging and path requirements are now decoupled? (So that path-1 could be 5 gems or could be 10? I think I saw a Lucky Coin shield cost 10 gems, but maybe I was mistaken.) That would be very nice IMO. But maybe I misunderstood your post.

And when I hit "view battle", the screen *does* zoom in from map to battlefield in a blend-in kind of way, but it goes black for some time before that. (So if 10 battles happened per turn that I can view, I sometimes decided not to view quite a few out of impatience)

Anyhow, thanks for the replies. If I understand you all correctly, however, then the main point (AI) still seems to be quite shaky. Good to know! thanks

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.

Path requirements and item costs are still linked. If Lucky Coin costs 10 gems, it requires Astral 2. Many items have been changed slightly. Especially path boosters can be harder to come by. Winged Helmet and Bag of Winds are both Air 4 now, or 25 gems. Manual lists all items, their path requirements, and has its own list for path boosting items.

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

If you want to test the AI, try playing a small random map against one AI. I played Kailasa against EA Ulm. I conquered their capital, they had built another castle, they took their capital back, and eventually I forgot to rebid on a mercenary and they got it, and I wasn't comfortable with the changed balance of forces and quit the game. This was while testing the demo. I suggest that you test the demo's AI few more times. It is easiest to test out on a small map, with perhaps just 20 provinces or so, but random maps that small are fast to create.

[Nerfix]

Endoperez said:I doubt I said anything generally to you, but I think I have mentioned that the general concensus amongst the blitzers, or those regular to the #dominion irc channel, is that Agartha, especially as far as national units go, is weak. That includes some of the betas. I'm doing my best in arguing against them, but haven't been successful yet. I'm not that good a player, though.

My latest try with EA Agartha was with Alteration-based research. Adding some protection with various Earth spells should work, Earth Meld should work against high-def enemies, Oracles of the Dead can cast Blight... Lots of interesting things in there.

Agartha also has access to Earth 4 mages, even the occassional Earth 5 mage. The same IRC crowd says that Blade Wind is one of the strongest damage spells in the Early Age, especially with Earth 4 or more mages... Earth Power makes Agarthan capital-only mages even more powerful, and happens to be at Conjuration 3, where Agartha gets two nice national summon spells. At Conjuration 5, Agartha can summon life-draining ethereal creatures that could be described as Agarthan Wraiths. At higher Evocation, Agartha gets Magma Eruption. There's also their ability to scry with their starting site.

Oh, sorry, I must have misunderstood.

For the record, I don't think Agartha is especially weak, it's just that getting their research started feels like...well, I have one crude and colourful term to describe how it feels.

One noteworthy thing is that you can use the Oracles as combat "mages" from the moment you recruit them...they can kill a number of thing with Smite and rack exp in the progress.

[thejeff]

Agartha gets nice Earth Mages for Blade Wind, but the mages have horrible precision, so it's not as impressive as it should be.

Buildings do cost the same across ages.

I do get the black screen for a few seconds before the fade in begins as well.