Dominions 2 Demo Review

[Fyron]

>The mountain citadel is 100% useles. It is the same as the dark citadel in every way, except that it has only 10 admin instead of 20.

If you fought one you'd see the difference.
They are much stronger from the wall layout and arrow fire (the DC has no fire).

Then the layout needs to be made painfully obvious when selecting your castle type while designing your "player."

I disagree. Storming a medieval fortification the hard way should be difficult and costly, even with only a few defenders. Firing storms of arrows at defenders high on a castle wall protected by narrow stone arrow slits generally has very little effect. There are many historical examples of very small garrisons holding off massive numbers of attackers. This is a large part of why anyone bothered to build them, despite the staggering costs and build times.

Hmm... they were not even close to the wall, but well behind it in the court yard. There were other hidden troops at the wall firing those arrows at me... That is too much of a stretch for me. So is the fact that seiging only seems to open the gate, not scratch the walls.

As for game balance arguments, there are many ways to overcome castle defenses in Dominions. But castles are supposed to present strong obstacles to many. However you can always just take the province and not storm the castle, and starve them out (assuming they are something that needs to eat...).

Or if they have a commander with Nature magic... each level feeds 5 units per turn. Of course, starving them out is not very practical when you have a 40 turn limit in the demo.

Other than flying units, how do you overcome castle defenses?

Seems to me there is almost always a considered reason for the costs, even if it isn't obvious at first.

For some units, yes. But there are several Machaka and Jotunheim (the two nations I tried) units that increase in cost too drastically for what you get compared to the next weaker troop they have.

Maybe with low-morale units and fright-inducing effects (such as dead leaders, fighting monsters, etc), but that's intended. There are many spells, unit types, items, etc. which will very effectively reduce routing. I find the morale system extremely welcome and quite well-done. It would be a lot less interesting and less appropriate if everyone fought to the death regardless of circumstances. Terror and the ability to resist it is a major factor in war, especially when dragons and undead elephants are involved, etc...

But when you have no units with terror, they still route far too quickly...

> Adding the display of the nations' name to the territories they control will help a lot.
Thers a option in map-fliter,just have to press 9,8,7....till u found it.

Nope. None of those got the nation name. There is an option to display the territory name, but not the name of the nation controlling it.

[sergex]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron: Then the layout needs to be made painfully obvious when selecting your castle type while designing your "player."

I agree with this too. I don't have a problem with hidden information and self-discovery but this info is too important to leave out. It's dumb to make a critical error before the game even starts because of poor documentation.

Other than flying units, how do you overcome castle defenses?

I find that just using extrodinary amounts of numbers works fine. 100+ units should do fine in most cases before turn 40, but you are at the whim of the morale checks. If their god with Fear is inside the castle you most likely aren't going to have much success. Maybe capturing all the land around the castle and starving out the god's Dominion will make him weak enough to conquer. When I played the demo I just massed up for a final assault on turn 40 since the game was over anyway.

I don't think the demo was supposed to give you a complete game so this isn't really a fair criticism.

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Seems to me there is almost always a considered reason for the costs, even if it isn't obvious at first.

For some units, yes. But there are several Machaka and Jotunheim (the two nations I tried) units that increase in cost too drastically for what you get compared to the next weaker troop they have.

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I agree too. I play with abysia, and I do fine with just hordes of the weakest infantry. Having huge numbers of them makes it easy to route the enemy and to keep their own morale which outweighs the added morale of the units that cost 3x as much. Only problem is starving when in enemy territory, but I usually don't hang around in one province with a huge army for long.

But when you have no units with terror, they still route far too quickly...

Again, I think having all your guys into one or two really big squads helps with this. Only time my infantry route is when they get torn up by crossbowmen, but by that time, the second line of infantry (or fast troops like salamanders or nightmares) have reached the crossbowmen and have routed the enemy frontlines already. Number of units is the key thing in early game I have found after a couple dozen games. Later on, huge summoned creatures like Iron Dragons totally destroy all infantry so that strategy goes out the window If you play a nation like Jotulheim that uses small amount of troops, you rely on priests to keep casting Boost Morale, which doesn't seem to really help all that much, so you're screwed IMO when going up against huge armies of weak infrantry.

And, I agree about the GUI and graphics, but I don't think it takes away from the gameplay enough to worry about it. I just discovered the F1 screen and it really helps with managing the Unrest/Tax situation.

Pretty good review, but you really need to read a LOT of forum Posts to learn the hidden info to make truly informed opinions about many features.

[sergex]

Originally posted by Arralen:
@Imperator Fyron :
Concerning the targeting I must say I wonder if a bug has crept into the range formula - sometimes spells that have multiple effects "spray" all over the battlefield as if fired at max range, while they are in fact aimed at a much nearer squad (judging from the average range at which the effects appear). Found this especially true with spells of 0 or less accuracy, what is a good hint that there's a bug in the calculations. But that's not of great concern - the developers are known for their willingness to support their product. The first patch is due in short time and might already fix this issue. Until then, use mages with prec15 or more, eyes of aiming and spells with high precision (3+)

Speaking of spells - there are spells which give improved accuracy to mages and troops for the length of battle, as well as morale-boosting ones which will make your troops fight much longer, as well as the opposite.

This is really confusing to me about missile attacks and magic attacks. For example, is a Fireball a missle attack that uses the caster's precision stat OR does it use another formula to determine hit/miss? I assume level of the caster matters, like Fire9 mage should hit more with his fireball than a Fire2 mage right? Or does that just let him cast more fireballs in one battle?

The manual and in-game documentation isn't too clear about how to make your mages connect more often with their long-range attacks. I thought precision only matters for archers?

In terms of archery, I find the friendly-fire too much of a drawback that I don't even use any kind of archers or crossbowmen at all. Just hordes of infantry from now on, and I'm doing great with it. I hardly ever lose a battle with just ranks and ranks of infantry with some fast mounted troops and magical creatures that tear into the enemy line before the enemy archers have time to kill too many of my guys. Fast melee units seem to be the key to beating archer armies, and if you don't use any archers yourself, your casualities will be pretty low in general.

Friendly fire usually does more damage than good in my experience, so I don't even waste the resources on building ranged units. I use Abysia because their armies are immune to fire, so they don't get harmed by stray fireballs or poorly placed Clouds of Fire by my own casters

If they patched it so friendly fire isn't as MUCH of a drawback as it is now, then I'd change my strategies around that, but with the current implementation, I find it more effeicient to totally leave out missle troops from my armies.

[ January 12, 2004, 03:45: Message edited by: sergex ]

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
For some units, yes. But there are several Machaka and Jotunheim (the two nations I tried) units that increase in cost too drastically for what you get compared to the next weaker troop they have.

Between Machaka hoplites and Spider warriors/knights? Or between hoplites and normal warriors? For the spiders, it's because that spider comes with a ranged web attack, is fast, has two normal attacks, one of which has death poison. Then when the rider gets killed the spider hangs around for the rest of the fight. For the black hunters you get a spider that is blessable and hangs around even riderless for many turns. Spider knights are also almost twice as fast as infantry, which lets them outflank their enemies.

Machaka hoplites on the other hand are excellent heavy infantry, with both good morale, excellent protection, a defense of 14 against arrows, a hgih damage weapon, and escellent attack and defense skills. Remember that a single point difference can have a very large effect with the rolls as seen on the charts in this thread.
Die roll charts

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by sergex:
This is really confusing to me about missile attacks and magic attacks. For example, is a Fireball a missle attack that uses the caster's precision stat OR does it use another formula to determine hit/miss?

Every targeted battlefield spell is treated as a missile attack that always hits a target in the square where it lands. Some spells have a precision boost of 100 which means that the mage will essentially always hit the target they aim for. Spells use the mage's precision stat as the basis for determining the spread as they travel. A precision on the mage of 15 is pretty much necessary to make spells like fireball useful, which indicates that the effects might need to be looked at a bit.

I assume level of the caster matters, like Fire9 mage should hit more with his fireball than a Fire2 mage right? Or does that just let him cast more fireballs in one battle?

That just affects the statistics that have "+" or "-" symbols after them in the spell description, as well as the penetration bonus to overcome magic resistance for those spells which can be negated by such.

[Saarud]

I agree with Imperator Fyron on most parts. Especially the combat situation where your archers kills your own unit. I would like to see some additional orders for archers "fire at closest enemy NOT in melee" and so on. That would really be great.

However I do think Fyron is to quick to judge the unit situation. I love the fact that there is so much different units to choose from. I think that if we would ask a group of veterans which units they use for a specific nation I bet we would see a spread out result among most units and perhaps one or two Favorites.

[PvK]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
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I assume level of the caster matters, like Fire9 mage should hit more with his fireball than a Fire2 mage right? Or does that just let him cast more fireballs in one battle?

That just affects the statistics that have "+" or "-" symbols after them in the spell description, as well as the penetration bonus to overcome magic resistance for those spells which can be negated by such.

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Extra magic skill also divides down the fatigue cost, making it possible to cast many more spells with less effect on the caster.

PvK