Newbie's first impressions

[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.

[PCarroll]

OK, I'm back--and this time I know what I'm talking about. I've read the manual, and yesterday I played (and won) my first full game of Dom2.

At this point, I'm wondering why it was such a hurdle to get used to the UI; actually it's pretty straightforward. I guess I've been away from board games for so many years that I'd forgotten how they're played; I've been spoiled by the blinking units and drag-and-drop features of modern computer games. But now that I've played my way through a whole game, the Dom2 UI makes sense and works just fine (though I'm still annoyed by the extra "Host" click required due to its being geared to multiplayer).

Is it good? Well, it captivated me enough that I spent most of the day yesterday playing it. Furthermore, I played it on our upstairs computer, because my wife had the other one tied up all day. Our upstairs computer is older and slower and evidently needs a new video card. I was unable to view any battles (because they play at a frame rate of less than 1 per second even with resolution set to its lowest), and there were serious delays in scrolling (which made me wish there were a strategic thumbnail map I could click on to quickly see some other part of the world).

I played Caelum, with Mictlan as an "Easy AI" enemy. After reading the manual, I finally found out how to choose a regular map instead of a scenario (my earlier attempts were all scenarios, unbeknownst to me). I chose a map with a "bottleneck," and I made a point of racing to that bottleneck and fortifying it--which left me free for the rest of the game to take my time conquering independent provinces and learning the magic system. The end of the game was anticlimactic; Mictlan was a pushover by then.

So, it's a good game. Kinda long, though. And I'm surprised how tough some of those independent provinces can be to conquer. Some highlights were hiring a mercenary assassin who managed to kill the enemy God; casting Hurricane on enemy provinces; summoning some army-enhancing creatures; and as a sidelight, building a "fish" army to conquer the surrounding oceans.

More later. My wife needs the computer again.

--Patrick

[Edi]

There is not necessarily any problem with the graphics card itself. If you're running Windows XP with native drivers, no wonder you have it slow, because those drivers do not support OpenGL. You need to update the drivers with the manufacturer's own instead of Micro**** ones, and then you also probably need to run a program called Refresh Force to take care of the refresh rate synching. That should fix things.

My own rig is a Celeron 500 one, five years old, and no problems running Dom2 as long as the detail is set to lowest.

You should find the thread where I wrestled with the same problem by running a forum search about display problems. It has all the links you need.

Edi

[Molog]

The AI performs worst with mictlan and best with ermor.

Shame that you couldn't see the battles, I like watching large battles.

[jeffr]

which made me wish there were a strategic thumbnail map I could click on to quickly see some other part of the world

You can use the Insert, Delete, Home, End, Page Up and Page Down keys to zoom the map in and out. Insert will zoom so that the entire map fits on the screen.

[PCarroll]

You can use the Insert, Delete, Home, End, Page Up and Page Down keys to zoom the map in and out. Insert will zoom so that the entire map fits on the screen.

Yeah, if my video drivers (or whatever) would cooperate. But zooming is as slow as scrolling. Maybe I'll try Insert next time and see if the map is too tiny to play on.

Anyhow, it was a pretty good game even with all the computer problems I had. And on our downstairs computer, the game runs perfectly. (Well, except for the time I was viewing a battle and had to switch to the desktop momentarily; when I returned, all the soldiers and commanders on the battlefield had turned to letters of the alphabet!)

Thanks.

[Cainehill]

PCarroll said:
Anyhow, it was a pretty good game even with all the computer problems I had. And on our downstairs computer, the game runs perfectly. (Well, except for the time I was viewing a battle and had to switch to the desktop momentarily; when I returned, all the soldiers and commanders on the battlefield had turned to letters of the alphabet!)

Heh. To avoid that, never run Dominions in full screen mode; instead add "-w" to the command line / short cut, and then resize the window as large as you want it.

[Ed Kolis]

[quote]
PCarroll said:

(Well, except for the time I was viewing a battle and had to switch to the desktop momentarily; when I returned, all the soldiers and commanders on the battlefield had turned to letters of the alphabet!)

Ah yes, the legendary nethack mode

[Endoperez]

EDIT: missed page 3.

I also found Dungeon Crawl through Illwinter's recommendation. They also like ADOM. I enjoy both.

And Crawl has lately seen some development, both "independent" patches and "official" upgrading. The newest beta has added some interesting stuff, and reworked old stats, and you can play as a Giant Fighter (debugging option for new big characters, will be gone from future versions).

I would like to add that Crawl handles religions wonderfully. Character worshipping certain god has to follow its principles, so priest of the Shining One shouldn't backstab or poison, healer god Elyvelon's worshippers should never kill anything while praying, warrior gods prefer killing creatures in their name and accept their corpses as sacrifices (you need a sharp tool to buthcer them, but not an altar)... And you can worship the RNG: Xom! Demonspawn Chaos Knights of Xom are crazy fun, one of mine was dying, and got healed, was ambushed and got few devils to help him, found mace of protection and armor +1 and got to level 3 in first 3 rooms, when he was hungry and wanted to butcher a corpse a magical broad axe just appeared... And then he stepped into a Zot trap that appeared too early due to a bug in the beta, *kaboom!*, dead. If that's not The random-number generator, it comes very close.