What is all the fuss on modding about?

[Chazar]

Edi said:
Thing is, if you've played Dominions extensively and know the ins and outs of different strategies for different nations, odds are you will be able to tell what effect a particular mod will have on a game, or at least make a relatively accurate educated guesstimate.

You should take some time to look at the mod...

The problem is that neither do I have the time (I can hardly play the three games I am currently in, since it takes more than 1h to complete a turn for me!) nor the experience to judge a mod, which is essentially why I am asking here. There should be enough experienced mod-Users around to share their opinion about some mods. Of course, this gives no guarantees, but guidelines...


The other thing that bugs me is that I do not understand why I should be the first to ask for Mod-experience-reports...

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@Alneyan: Thanks for the Version info! And yes, I am asking for opinions right here...

@PDF: Me and my friends care a lot whether the game is balanced, and we dont want to spend substantial time to built-up a game just to see that its over due to an imbalanced setup:
For me, the game starts to be fun as soon as the nations meet and fighting gets stuck somewhere. Its no fun to be rolled-over in an instant as well as rolling-over somebody else without resistance. Its the mid-game, when everybody agrees that its entirely unclear who will prevail at the end when the game is most fun.

And actually we consider the 17 nations to be quite balanced and so far everybody got his choice without any conflicts, but I agree that the balancing depends on the correct map size (~10 provinces per nation).

[Soapyfrog]

This is not an MP only forum... so why shouldn't there be extensive discussion of modding?

I don't think you have to worry about the supply of Vanilla MP games drying up!!!

[Chazar]

Soapyfrog said:
This is not an MP only forum... so why shouldn't there be extensive discussion of modding?

I don't think you have to worry about the supply of Vanilla MP games drying up!!!

I dont! I see that a lot of effort goes into modding, and I am merely asking how I might access all the work done...

[Gandalf Parker]

Chazar said:
I dont! I see that a lot of effort goes into modding, and I am merely asking how I might access all the work done...

Not quite all of the work but there is a stickie at the top of the screen which lists mods. and www.illwinter.com (the home site of the game developers) has a section listing most of them

[Chazar]

Gandalf Parker said:
Not quite all of the work but there is a stickie at the top of the screen which lists mods. and www.illwinter.com (the home site of the game developers) has a section listing most of them

I am aware of those and I am wondering why there are no postings about people's experiences in using them...

[Arryn]

Chazar said:
I am aware of those and I am wondering why there are no postings about people's experiences in using them...

Have you read my AAR? In particular, the early Posts?

[Chazar]

In reply to Arryn:

No, but I just took a look at the first page...
I dont usually read AAR's, as I found it to be quite time consuming. They contain a wealth of information, sure, but also mixture of random topics, while forum-Posts usually focus on a certain topic so that I can pick the info I desire...

Yes, I should sit down starting an overview over all does mods and doing a poll on each, but there
is so much stuff about Dom2 around and I just wonder why there is so few direct information on mods - maybe they are indeed almost unused in MP and maybe that will change once Mosehansen's server becomes capable of using mods...

(Edit: Which also answers Gandalfs next post which was written simultaneously. Yes, I am demanding things and maybe my tone is a bit arrogant, but I this is not what I intend. I dont want to annoy, I just want to understand why I am seemingly the only one who is interested in that information. My main goal is to enjoy a good game, but I also tried to be helpful when I read someone else's question here...)

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In reply to Gandalf:

Good point about enforcing house rules, this is indeed something I didnt think about.

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I am already happy about Zen's balance-mod, since its discussed intensively here and experience is gathered, but there is so much more out here...

[Gandalf Parker]

Chazar said:
I am aware of those and I am wondering why there are no postings about people's experiences in using them...

This is probably going to come off wrong but when I worked for an ISP I used to say often...
"This is Internet. You can find anything. If you do search and dont find what you want, then you found a need. Fill it! This is Internet."

Im also surprised that we dont have a single concise "review" of the mods now that there are so many. If anyone wants to tackle it then feel free. Im afraid that Im more interested in maps than mods.