Infernal Sword

[earwicker7]

Originally Posted by Ragnars Wolves

The manual (except for some few parts) is almost worthless with all the new changes over the years

I remember back in the day, when manuals were often 100+ pages, each new patch would come with a readme file which had addendums to the manual.

I wonder if Shrapnel would be ok with having someone be "deputized" and given access to the electronic version of the manual, with the specific task of updating it. This person could farm out some of the sections... "You're doing units, you're doing spells," etc.. People could then look at the addendum list and either buy a new manual (hint, hint, profit!) or just do what I did back in the day, which was go through and change it with a pen. What harm could there be? If most people acknowledge the manual is worthless, it can't really get much worse, can it?

I hear people say "I can't believe they charge so much for that game!" I'm one of those who believe it's worth twice as much as we pay, but it would be really nice if some of that money were invested in a new manual.

[JonBrave]

Originally Posted by Ragnars Wolves

The manual (except for some few parts) is almost worthless with all the new changes over the years

Just in case any potential purchaser happens across this thread, as a recent one myself I can assure you that the manual is far from worthless. I don't care if it has a thousand inaccuracies or changes, and I'm sure it should have been updated, of nearly any game I can think of the manual contains a huge amount to orient you as a newcomer.

[DeadlyShoe]

+1 to jonbrave. the manual was essential to understand the game as a newcomer, missing nations/out of date charts or not.

however if one is seeking to make a more up to date reference, the wiki is an obvious place. It's sorely in need of more work; I registered an account but as yet haven't made any significant contributions.

[earwicker7]

Originally Posted by DeadlyShoe

+1 to jonbrave. the manual was essential to understand the game as a newcomer, missing nations/out of date charts or not.

however if one is seeking to make a more up to date reference, the wiki is an obvious place. It's sorely in need of more work; I registered an account but as yet haven't made any significant contributions.

I agree that the manual is leaps and bounds above the current standard of "Here's five pages and our website!", but it would be nice to see an official update. The main problem with Wiki is that anyone can post, so there's no guarantee that the information is better, and it may even be worse.

[Ragnars Wolves]

By worthless didn't mean you should not read it or use some of the tables in it. If you were brand new, without it you would just wander around without ANY direction.

I mean it is worthless in the way of outdated...The only good I get out of it is some of the charts for artifacts, spells, and a general overview of a nation. Other than that even most of Nation guides (even the ones done by some VERY talented people) are way out of date because of CBM and other mods that are common place now.

It may be MY fault because I jumped right into MP and didn't play 1 SP game. But when I spend tons of turns, time, and effort to set up my plan....and then find out the artifacts don't even work as described so I have to scrap that plan and start again....it just becomes too tedious for me personally.

Others seem to have NP with it.

[earwicker7]

Originally Posted by Ragnars Wolves

By worthless didn't mean you should not read it or use some of the tables in it. If you were brand new, without it you would just wander around without ANY direction.

I mean it is worthless in the way of outdated...The only good I get out of it is some of the charts for artifacts, spells, and a general overview of a nation. Other than that even most of Nation guides (even the ones done by some VERY talented people) are way out of date because of CBM and other mods that are common place now.

It may be MY fault because I jumped right into MP and didn't play 1 SP game. But when I spend tons of turns, time, and effort to set up my plan....and then find out the artifacts don't even work as described so I have to scrap that plan and start again....it just becomes too tedious for me personally.

Others seem to have NP with it.

I don't see how you could expect Shrapnel to base the manual on mods.

If there are enough people interested who still play without mods, and we could get Shrapnel's OK, I'd be happy to help coordinate an army of volunteers to get the manual updated. I think that if you assign very limited things to each person ("You find out if the in-game descriptions of Thaumaturgy levels 1 through 3 match the book"), it would be something that could get done.

[Ragnars Wolves]

That is just what I mean...I DON'T expect ANYTHING from Shapnal. they have for the most part said there is going to be NO Dom 4 and they are working on something else and don't have the time or inclination to do anything with this except let it be.

It is a good game, and it has a LOT of depth. But most of the guides are written in 2008 to 2009, long before CBM or any of the other mods. And while I don't want a complete walk-thru on how to win...it sure would make it a little easier if the guides if the guides still didn't tout the GORGON as Sauros main pretender design.

Someone said that the old timers on here know which artifacts are not what they are described at so no one has put together anything (I see FL and Trumanator have attempted to put at least SOME cohesion out there..thanks guys!!). Even Baalz, whose guides I have read are still good on basic strategy, but you better be prepared for a month of SP to find out how the changes effect them or on turn 58 your gonna find out the hard way.

I am sure there are a lot of guys willing to put in the work to help update the book or at least the posts. I just personally don't have the patiance or desire to spend 6 hours on a turn making sure everything I want to do, and it says I can do ...I really can do.

Great game..great modders...old info.

A lot of new guys on here play it, but say you are used to Strategic games and not so much Tactical. You can get by to around turn 30 or so and then you better figure out magic in a hurry. I think that is the killer for me.

I just think I will finish my games and get into something I can understand in a few months or so.

[Hrum]

I hear what you're saying about the inconsistent documentation - it can be frustrating. This game doesn't appear to have been made with casual gamers in mind. The audience that the Illwinter guys seem to have been designing for is the modern day monk acolyte (ie. the math major, or the coder, or detail oriented minutiae researcher). If spending untold hours researching in a library and then searching all over Europe to find the correct 9 plates to open The 9th Gate a la Johnny Depp in that Polanski film is not your thing, you may find that you never become awesome at Dominions.

For what it's worth, I'm fairly certain that I will never become awesome at Dominions, but in my case it doesn't matter - I enjoy playing it anyway.

I think that's key. You have to enjoy playing it when things don't go your way (and you have to abandon your carefully prepared strategy and suddenly adapt). You have to enjoy playing when you're being crushed by that player who is obviously more experienced (maybe you can learn something from how he's destroying you). Playing when you were foolish enough to take Misfortune 3 and get turn after turn of bad events on your capital in the first year (Misfortune is Misfortunate!).

For me it comes to down to the cackle-worthy moments. When I first started sending mages out with my armies in SP games, the evocation school generated it's share of cackle-worthy moments for me. I just couldn't get enough of blowing away AI chaff armies. The first time I successfully made a thug was a cackle-worthy moment. But even in a game that isn't going your way you can have these little moments when you make things much more difficult than necessary for whoever is stomping you. They've already won. You're going down in flames. But you make it take them 3 more turns than it should have. This causes cackling.

Sometimes, the game seems to be cackling at me rather than the reverse, but I enjoy those moments too. So many of the random events and even some of the heroic traits (Heroic Obesity?! Ugh!) seem to have been added to the game when the Illwinter guys were in a particularly puckish mood. I can just see them cackling over this stuff as they coded it in. So many spells in this game are evil! And the items! Eye of the void isn't even all that bad, but when I first encountered it I wouldn't go near it. Replace the commanders eye? Gives an affliction and a chance for a horror mark?! Sure, this item has it's uses, but the entire game is riddled with stuff (traps!) that may or may not be useful in certain niche situations. Playing this game is like being Indiana Jones in an ancient temple full of traps. There are goodies that are definitely worth it, but there are also spiders dropping on your head. And spikes coming up from below. And a cute little old lady offering you chocolate mouse* and the opportunity to play host to something unholy.

This is a really involved game - it's also evil. It doesn't fully reveal itself to the casual player, and you may never know all of it. But that means there's always more to it, and that's what's great about it. Not everyone is going to feel that way, though.

*"As long as she ate the mouse, she can't see nor hear. Now sing."
http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0010586/quotes

[thejeff]

Also, the in-game documentation, item descriptions and the like, are in large part flavor text. They generally give you a good idea what the thing can do, but they aren't intended to describe mechanics.
The game might be a little simpler to play if the flavor text was replaced by the manual descriptions, but it would be a lot less interesting.

Where they're wrong, they should be changed, but more often they're simply imprecise.