Answering the Critics

[Unwise]

I'll take a shot at this. Have your buddies try and look past the "Civ IV City = Dom 3 City" thing and try to have them see what aspects of the game are actually equivalent.

Improving Something
Really, the Dom3 equivalent to a Civ4 city is a commander. You buy it, you assign units to it and you provide it with upgrades. In Civ4, an upgrade would be an aquaduct. In Dom3 the improvement would be a Sword of Sharpness. In each case, the improvement is based on resources and also on where you are in the resource tree.

Economics
As others have pointed out, gold and resources are not the Dom3 economy by any stretch. You have to add in the seven gem types, blood slaves and dominion effects. This is pretty much on par with Civ4's gold, resources, luxury sites and special resources. It would be tough to call either model more or less complex than the other one... though I think that the dominion effects would tend to tip the balance towards Dom3.

Research & Technology
The Civ4 tech tree is roughly equivalent to the Dom3 spell research grid. How you research is a bit more complex in Dom3, but not too much more. In Civ4 you get to build new units and buy new structures after gaining a new tech while in Dom3 you summon new units, cast new spells, and build new items for use with your commanders. Pretty much dead even.

Globals
In Civ4 the globals are "cast" by building wonders that you gain through research and pay for using gold and resources. In Dom3 you cast globals as spells that you gain through research and pay for using gems and blood slaves. Not much difference there. Dom3 adds a slight layer of complexity to the formula in that just completing the research does not guarantee that you have the proper commander/mage necessary to cast the spell.

Nations
Civ4 makes nations unique by giving them a single unique combat unit and provides the nation one or more advantages ("industrious", "militaristic", etc.). In Dom3, all races are given "unique" units for all purchasable units and provides some nations with special advantage/disadvantages (blood sacrifice, scrying, etc.). Tough to make the case that Civ4 is anywhere near Dom3's level of complexity here. Comparing the differences between England and Germany is laughable if you compare the differences between, say, Ulm and Mictlan.

Combat
Another area where the differences are pretty severe. First, comparing a IGO-UGO system to a WeGO system is apples-to-oranges... you'll never come up with a "winner" because they aren't playing in the same ballpark.

That said, it's hard to look at Dominions' dozen or so combat statistics (including poison, fatigue, morale, strength, precision, and others) combined with the tactical battlefield (range, temperature, positioning, castle walls, etc.) and compare it with Civ's fairly straightforward combat system.

[Tim Brooks]

MythicalMino:

You know alot of people's criticisms of a game, any game, when you listen to them, comes down to this:

"I want Dominions 3 to not be Dominions 3 but game X - change it."

Now insert for Dominions 3 the name of any game being criticised.

What you have to tell them is that, this isn't game X, this is Dominions 3. The real question should be: Does Dominions 3 do what it was designed to do well?

That usually equates to, in simpler terms, is it fun?

I think we all know the answer to that one!

[Gandalf Parker]

Tim Brooks said:
That usually equates to, in simpler terms, is it fun?
I think we all know the answer to that one!

Now Im curious. Have you ever cracked it open yourself?
Come on. Some of the staff has to have gotten curious a long time ago.

[DominionsFan]

MythicalMino said:
I have had a few ppl (one on another forum on these boards, among others I know/work with) that say Dominions is not a very deep game.

Eh? This is just making no sense, if they are saying anything like this. Doms 3. is the most complex TBS on the market. Even an FPS player could figure it out.

[Tim Brooks]

Now Im curious. Have you ever cracked it open yourself?

Okay great Gandalf, put me on the spot.

The answer is of course. Although I haven't gotten to delve deeply into it like you lucky folks. My gaming time is quite limited. But I have a copy on my desk. Next chance I get I am going to go through the tutorial turn by turn. Something I never did with Dom2.

I have read the entire manual though!

[Mortibus]

I don't really "get" the complexity of the Dominions magic system yet, I'm still learning it. It's the most complex magic system in a strategy game I've seen.

As to the graphics complaints, I think Dominions would do well do just ditch them completely and go boardgame. I'd rather read a more extensive report and dodge the battle graphics, using simple army and character counters.

More detail and complexity and less graphics would be fine by me.

[alexti]

A lot of good reasoning was posted here, but my observation about people complaining about Dominions bot being "deep" is really about its "shallow" micromanagement. For example, to control research, Dom has just on/off switch for every mage. Compare it to something like Civ system when you can move the worked tiles around, tweak research rates, set specialists etc... Other areas (and in other games as well) are set up similarly. There is many more opportunity to achieve more or less the same goal objective by doing wide variety of clicks. For example, Dominions could have set up magic gem collection in a similar style: Let's consider the following model: each magic site needs to be worked to collect gems. For that we would need special cheap worker unit. It would be possible to let a real mage to work the site which would yield small bonus (let's say 3% per corresponding magic level). Then the mage proficient in another path could have collected gems of that type (with some conversion penalty of course). I don't think such scheme would change the game significantly, but now everybody would have tons of option to setup the most efficient gem collection (that would need to change every turn, of course).

[Evil Dave]

Gandalf Parker said:
Everything has its pros and cons.

What are the pros and cons of saying everything has its pros and cons?

[Evil Dave]

Arralen said:

Btw., I think its much better suited for MP because of that - no endless turns with nothing happening, no 6 hours of play before the first and deciding battle ...

This is true for SP also. I hate the early turns of Civ-like games because there is often *nothing* to do but hit "next turn" for a while.

[Unwise]

For example, to control research, Dom has just on/off switch for every mage. Compare it to something like Civ system when you can move the worked tiles around, tweak research rates, set specialists etc...

But that compares almost directly to the Civ research system. Your mages are the "tiles" -- do you use them to research, site-search, cast rituals, or lead armies? Once you decide what you want your mage/tile to be, you can set it up as a "specialist" with the appropriate gear (quill for research, boosters for summons, combat items for leaders, etc.).