Newbie's first impressions

[magnate]

Patrick - I've refrained from contributing to this thread so far, having pestered you so much on csipgs, but there's just one important question: are you a fan of magic in wargames? If you're not, I don't think you're going to get very far into this game before its UI limitations annoy you. If you are, do keep going with it. Magic is critical to the game, and gives it much of its depth. Battlefield spells, summoning spells, artillery spells, item forging, blessings, etc. etc. - all of them affect the war element.

Best,

CC

[PCarroll]

magnate said:
Patrick - I've refrained from contributing to this thread so far, having pestered you so much on csipgs, but there's just one important question: are you a fan of magic in wargames? If you're not, I don't think you're going to get very far into this game before its UI limitations annoy you. If you are, do keep going with it. Magic is critical to the game, and gives it much of its depth. Battlefield spells, summoning spells, artillery spells, item forging, blessings, etc. etc. - all of them affect the war element.

Best,

CC

"Are you a fan of magic" is kind of a strange question to me. I mean, we're not talking about magic per se, but about a dimension of game play.

First, for the record, I'm now into my second Dom2 game--the first one I started on my own. And things are going fine so far. Fifteen turns into the game I've conquered a number of independent territories, built a fortress, started a temple, and am into level 3 evocation research.

Apparently my first post sounded like whining to some folks. Didn't mean it that way. I'm brand-new to the game, but I'm learning and doing OK. I was just expressing my surprise at how unusual the UI is compared to other computer games. Makes learning more of a challenge, and it keeps me in the dark as to what's in store.

I guess I still don't quite know what to do with magic yet. The walkthru gave me the basics of doing research and gathering gems, but I still need to learn who can cast what spells where, when, and how. I haven't made it a high priority, since I'm just getting used to the UI. But I plan to get there. Discovering the F1 key helped a bit.

Will I like the magic dimension of this game? It depends. In Master of Magic, I liked summoning creatures, forging magic items, and casting protective spells on my units--and especially casting global spells. But after a while I decided I didn't like playing with White magic much, because it meant I had to painstakingly cast all kinds of protective spells on as many units as possible. That was time-consuming. Sometimes there'd be a big payoff, and I liked that. But all in all, I preferred to cast battlefield-wide spells like High Prayer or Blur, or global spells that affected the whole world. The more widespread the effect, the better; the more picky and specific the spell, the less I usually liked it.

But yeah--I liked beefing up Torin with all kinds of magic armor and items and spells, then sending him out to conquer the world. Similarly, early the in the game I liked casting Confusion and handily winning battles I'd have easily lost without magic.

Then again, in Age of Wonders, it was sometimes a pain in the neck to cast routine spells. Turn after turn I'd have my wizard cast Enchant Weapon on a few units in a stack, until he ran out of mana; and I never paid much attention to what effect it was having--I just knew enchanted weapons worked better.

So, I'm not the kind of gamer who gets into the nitty-gritty details of what's happening. I'll notice when my guys quickly tromp an enemy, or when (as just happened this morning) those lizard-looking guys chewed up my army and sent them packing. But I probably won't know exactly *why* any of it is happening. In that one battle, I noticed there was an enemy leader who cast "barkskin," so I guess the enemy troops had some kind of special armor for one thing--which means I'd better get some stronger troops or better weapons or armor or something before I go back into that province.

I'll build a temple because I know it's supposed to boost dominion, and that's supposed to be important. But I'll never pay attention to the numbers and see how *much* it improved things. If I need more money, I'll look for ways to get some; but I won't track the precise effect of taxation changes, conquering farmlands, or whatever. Numbers bore me too much.

So, I guess I'm more of a "broad-stroke" kind of gamer. Not much interested in finessing my way to victory; I'd rather bulldoze my way through. In MoM, the bigger a spell was--the more it accomplished all at once--the more I liked it. So the best spell of all was, of course, the Spell of Mastery (which, once cast, wins the game outright).

As to the other (nonmagical) part of the game, I tend to be an expansionist. It works in Risk, and it pretty well works in every Risk-like game I know of: get big! I always try to get big fast, and to keep my enemies from getting big. I've heard that some expert players were able to win MoM while having only a few cities; and apparently the trick was to manage those few cities VERY closely and carefully, squeezing every ounce of worth from each of them. I'd never have the patience for that. I always had to try to grab the lion's share of the map.

OK, so much for writing. Time to get back to playing Dom2.

--Patrick

[jeffr]

One thing I do during a battle replay to try and determine what is going on is to periodically right click on a unit I'm interested in. This will pause the replay and give you the unit's current status: hitpoints left, current spell effects (fire shield, paralysis, etc.) and weapons (if it's an enemy commander). If you right click on a specific stat (hitpoints, attack, etc.) at the top of the dialog, it will tell you how that number was arrived at).

So, for example, if you see that your defense is 0 and you are wondering why, right click and you might see that you have been blinded or are paralyzed.

Another use is to track the status of a particulary important unit in the battle (say, your pretender). I've watched my units lose hitpoints but then gain them back via regeneration, etc. It helps explain what's going on.

So, if you wanted to find out what Barksin did exactly, right click on the unit after it is cast. You'll find that it's basic protection (it's protection without armor, i.e it's skin/hide/whatever), has risen to 10. This has probably raised it's overall protection value by some value slightly less than 10, depending on the armor it is wearing. There is a description of how protection is calculated in the rulebook or one of the dom2 pdf guides on the net. It has also been made 25% more receptive to fire damage. The spell effects guide also has this info.

[Endoperez]

In Dominions, there are only few spells that can affect normal units, and none permanently (besides killing/harming them, of course). However, you can get spells that offer your whole side an advantage, Battle Fortune, Fog Warriors, Armor of Lead and AoGold, all in alteration, offer your whole side pretty hefty bonuses. Also, there are Global spells with big effects (Wrathful Skies, Ecovation), and others that can harm an army badly from across the world (Murdering Winter and Flames from the Sky at Evocation 9), and those with big but not so direct effects (Haunted Forest at Enchantment 8).
While it's impossible to cast spells on commanders, giving them items and making them cast buff spells and then wading in and killing whole armies can be done with most tough commanders, although recruitable ones rarely qualify. I think you will find some very interesting spells when you become more comfortable with how the game plays.

And while it would help to know the effects of the spells, the more common ones you will probably learn quite quickly as you research them. Press F5 to visit research screen, and click on the name of the researched school to see the spells, and again, click on the spells to see their descriptions.

[sushiboat]

Endoperez said:
Also, there are Global spells with big effects (Wrathful Skies, Ecovation)

Wrathful Skies affects the whole battlefield in one battle, but it's not a global spell. Perhaps you are thinking of Wrath of God.

[Endoperez]

Yes, indeed. Wrath of God is what I meant, but Wrathful skies might also interest PCarroll.

[Wish]

on the subject of getting big fast, I've found expanding slowly to be better, defensively. you move to fast and your enemies will sweep in behind you and take the unprotected provinces. so you end up playing cat and mouse.... but at the same time if your enemy gets to big then they can muscle your dominion out from under you.