I dunno, guys...

[Gandalf Parker]

I think they have more in common than first appearance. Anyone who likes the fact that it took them years to explore their own strategies for (either game) would do themselves a favor to at least take a look at the demo for (the other game)

[Elmo]

I bought Dominions II, but not Dominions I. It never grew on me, probably for most of the reasons Fyron mentions above. It's not a bad game, it just never worked for me.

Edit - SE IV is much better IMO.

[Slick]

deccan said:
Yippee! We got more defectors!

Captain Kwok said:
Traitor! [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Cold.gif[/img]

Indeed not!


Easy, big guys. I'm not defecting. There is no way I'll stop playing SE4. There is no harm in playing other games as well from time to time. It's just that I noticed one day when I clicked on "Who's Online" that there were a lot of people in the Dom II forum. Since then I check periodically and now the Dom II crowd seems to be growing quick. Could be a flash in the pan, could be a game worth getting. Thanks for the input. I'll check out the demo.

Slick. (here to stay)

[Slick]

First impression from the demo: I guess I need to spend some time on the learning curve, but so far, there isn't much action. Maybe I'll put in some time later. For now, I got some planets to invade.

Slick.

[Renegade 13]

Now you guys have got me curious, and I'm downloading the demo for Dom2. Unfortunately, it's going to take about 6 hours to download on my crappy dialup internet! Ah well, more time to play SEIV in the meantime!

[deccan]

Renegade 13 said:
Now you guys have got me curious, and I'm downloading the demo for Dom2.

I remember when I first played Dom2 for the very first time (SP of course) in December Last year. I picked Tien Chi (cos it's China and I'm Chinese), picked a sage as a pretender (cos it would be sort of thematic).

On the very first turn, I recruited a Prince General, and spent the next few turns recruiting a sizable army of archers and footmen, going for the fairly starndard pike-and-bow setup, and equipping my Prince General with a good assortment of early equipment. I didn't attack my first independent province until well past turn 10, and when I did, because of the big size of my army, I won handily and felt quite pleased with myself.

Over the next several turns, I conquered more independent provinces easily and spent a lot of gold building up provincial defense (PD). My empire consisted of like four or five provinces and PD built up to at least level 20 in each and I was quite happy.

Then I met AI Marignon after turn 20 or so, and I was shocked that he had about a dozen provinces. He came after me with multiple armies that tore through my PD like they were tissue paper, and attacked my capital with his own Pretender, a fire 9 Phoenix, and his fire darts dropped my own footmen and archers like flies while my puny human sage cowered in fear. His crossbowmen took down my footmen in droves while my archers seemed to be able to barely scratch his swordsmen and Marignon took my capital at about turn 25 or so.

After that, I was thinking that this game sucked and didn't touch it for another four or five months.

[Alneyan]

That reminds me of my own first Dominions 2 game (I went with a Great Sage, standard T'ien Ch'i, but actually expanded like mad with archers alone. Can you guess I love Man?). I had to leave this game though, as I couldn't connect to the server via TCP/IP any more, but the end result wouldn't have been pretty.

Out of idle curiosity PvK:

In single player or with a GM, you could even do it during play.

Do you believe any GM could be lured in organising one such game for Dominions? Or yourself? *Hint hint*

[Suicide Junkie]

I've been trying the demo lately.

Took me a while to get the first game started, and I promptly got myself killed against the first independent province.

Then I got wounded to uselessness on the next attempt.

Still slogging up the learning curve for the interface, I started to toss other people into battle instead of me...
Worked a little, but the easy AIs started swarming over the hill before I got more than a handful of provinces.

Finally, one on one I got my army marching... The territory I had was useless for production, and in short order, I had 1000's of gold that I couldn't spend as fast as it came in. Hiring mercenaries for more than they asked for, and then throwing them across the map was the name of the game.

Having sent myself and my little smithy guys around searching for treasure while my three armies (two mercs) went stomping to the west for fun and profit, I was making piles of gems and even more money that I couldn't spend.

When I encountered the enemy, I stomped through his empty territories and ganged up on big red X's which I'd recently figured out meant enemy concentrations.
I tried out the defenses, and tossed up 30-35 on four or five provinces near the front lines.
Once I saw what it did, I boosted that to 50-60. (did I mention that I couldn't spend the money I was making as fast as it came in?)

I basically stormed the enemy with conventional forces and was just now managing to gather enough cavalry to form an attack force.

I managed to forge a few trivial magic items, but they never got to see combat use, before I broke through and closed the noose around the enemy home province.

Even without magic, the battles were decent.

-----

Some comments/questions:
This game could use a tutorial, to lead you through a couple turns and a battle on a tiny map, say.

How does production work? Is there anywhere can I see the progress being made on the multi-turn buildtime units?

Is it possible to move units without a leader between friendly provinces? If not, why do these military warriors need a priest or other guy to hold their hands?

[deccan]

If you have too much gold and too little resources for production, then you haven't spent enough gold building fortresses. Provinces don't get access to their full resource allocation unless there is a fortress in it. Plains, farmlands have the least resources but are the best for gold. Mountains have the most resources. Fortresses also suck resources from neigboring provinces, so a fortress in a mountain province surrounded by other mountain provinces has mega-resources.

I guess that you were playing Ulm which has decent xbowmen for Provincial Defense. However, in MP game, massed missile fire can be dealt with relatively easily and any flying enemies will carve up missile troops. Ulm is generally considered the weakest of the nations.

And no, all units need a leader type to lead them and can't move by themselves. They will rout if they are left on the battlefield without a leader. That's just the way the game works I guess.

[Slick]

I haven't made it over the "hump" yet. By that I mean I haven't been able to put together a coherent empire before I got frustrated with things and restarted. Total time spent on the learning curve so far is about 4 hrs. The jury is still out, but so far I'm a little less than impressed enough to buy the full game. I think it will take a little more playing time before I have a clue what is really going on. Thanks Deccan for that info. I have gone thru the "walkthru" and read some of the write-ups but still have yet to put it all together.

Some of my complete unknowns (who, what, when, where, how, why):
- placement of troops for battle,
- "scripting" - I'm guessing this is a term referring to what you want your little warriors to do in battle vis-a-vis SE4 strategies
- what to apply my research to. I'm thinking this is a combination of discovering what my empire is good at, reading the spell lists and applying the research to get the best spells for my empire. I have done neither of these yet.
- and probably about a year's worth of other things that I don't even know about yet.

I guess I should start posting in the D2 forum, but I trust you guys here a little more for now. BTW, who are the gurus in the D2 forum? I'm thinking I could search for Posts by them.

I started lurking here almost a year before I registered in April '02 and I noticed that SJ was most knowledgeable and helpful to newbies so I searched for and read hundreds of his Posts. I never thanked you for that, SJ , but you really turned me on to SE4 unknowingly by answering other people's questions. Those where the same questions I had, of course.

Slick.