How do YOU play the game?

[Wauthan]

If sandbox players are thematic roleplayers then I'm the fourth kid in Prince Megahertz example. The one hiding behind a rock out of fear that his carefully decorated sandcastle might get ruined by hurled rocks and stomping feet.

For some reason I have very little drive to actually win games. I just want to create something I find interesting and see if it works. If it's really competitive I tend to go for the quickest win possible just to get back to empire building. I think I'm running about 22 mods on Dominions now for the sole purpose that I want the game to reflect my vision on how the factions ougtho behave. If they ever make a Civilization spinoff from this game consider one copy sold already.

It's greatly annoying that noone seems to be interested in creating the ultimate game for a player like me. It would be something like a Dominions/Master of magic/Alpha Centauri hybrid. But the future seems to be all realtime 3D hackfest were the fastest and most focused tactics win all the time.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Wauthan:
It's greatly annoying that noone seems to be interested in creating the ultimate game for a player like me. It would be something like a Dominions/Master of magic/Alpha Centauri hybrid.

Well, such a game would be sadistically massive, and playable only in single-player, as most multiplayer folks can't stomach that kind of enormous slog. As such, the AI had better be pretty awesome, and this ain't easy to do, as computers, by their nature, are inherently stupid.

But the future seems to be all realtime 3D hackfest were the fastest and most focused tactics win all the time.

Hmm. I wouldn't go so far as to say THAT. I wouldn't exactly say that the "fastest" tactics win all the time, either: My tactics are widely regarded as being a slow, grinding, slogfest. Although certainly focus is important: It's kind of hard to win a game if you're stumbling around aimlessly with no plan or objective beyond "look at the pretty lights". Depending on the game settings and general aggressiveness level and crowding, it's certainly possible to maintain and hold an empire of reasonable size just kinda plodding along trying to stay alive into the end game, though: Inevitably, however, a lack of any plan will not bring you to ultimate victory, no matter what the game is: Any game where somebody can win without an objective or plan is one which requires absolutely no skills and is functionally indistinguishable from playing Rock, Paper, Scissors over the Internet.

[Maltrease]

My only small wish for the game is that there would be more "Builder" style stuff.

I like to make long term investments in the economy and infrastructure of my empire. You can do a little of that now by picking a high admin to cost fortress (such as wizard tower, castle) and plopping it down in a rich province. Or by collecting clams and other gem producing items. Early site searching, Archaic Record, represent this as well.

The Builder vs Momentum (conqueror) play style is yet another control bar for the strategy game player.

[HJ]

I'm also a sandbox player, so to speak, although I do enjoy the challenge that the AI can present. I don't like to play vs. people, as that's too stressful and I play the games to relax from the real world stresses. I like to lay back and try out things for the sake of trying them out, and without any competitive drive behind it. If I were to approach the game in any other way, it would lose it's charm, and instead of having a beautiful toy that I can enjoy with a (somewhat naive) fascination of a child, I would have to reduce it to a cookbook with recipes on how to win it as efficiently as possible. And I don't like cooking, so....

[ June 04, 2004, 20:32: Message edited by: HJ ]

[Karacan]

On a sandbox/gamer scale I am at sandbox+2.

I wouldn't like Dominions at all if it featured modern military units like tanks or fighterplanes, even with the same game mechanics, the game context is always very important to me. The only 3D-Shooter featuring pre-WorldWarII-units I really really like isn't Wolfenstein but BloodRayne - not because of the mechanics, but because of the setting. There is something about being a rogue vampire lady secret agent. That's about the same feeling when I Gift Of Reason a Doom Horror or Abomination (though I admittedly haven't managed to summon an Abomination in DomII yet), and that's the major part of why DomII will survive on my harddisk until physical failure.

[fahdiz]

I'm definitely a sandboxer, but occasionally I have gamist tendencies.

[Taqwus]

I'm definitely a sandboxer, but one with a strange predilection for role-playing the eccentric, impractical or downright insane. Why yes, the gods must indeed be crazy!

[Vynd]

I'm a gamer!

[Norfleet]

My style defies classification. I play for survival, thus my noteworthy slow, grinding combat style: I'm not actually trying to win, it just happens as a kind of side effect of outLasting everyone else. While a gamer would likely commit himself to crushing the other opponent, I tend to be less concerned with that and would rather keep a sizeable reserve to defend against surprises....although I guess they're not really surprises when they're expected.

Many think that I'll use anything to win....but that's not truly my goal. This has resulted in some confusion.

[Mad_Lear]

I actually think this is the greatest strength of the Dom II universe- it's so big, there's room for everybody. I could play forever sandboxing against the AI- experimenting and playing with all of the possible spell/hero/event possiblilities- and those people out there who love to match wits against their brethen can play the exact same game and get just as much satisfaction out of playing for keeps and trying to maximize the massive amounts of variables towards the desired results.

I actually think one of the marks of genius of this game is how almost any strategy will work at least a little bit, sometimes. I mean, imagine one player gets beat by another player, so perfectly and completely, that the only damage the losing player does to the winning player is to injure one of his archers slightly, putting out one of the poor fellow's eyes. Imagine if the winning player doesn't notice the injury and then moves the same archer into a pitched battle against another player of equal strength. Imagine that the resulting battle is perfectly balanced- the results of said battle could very well balance on weither or not a single arrow hits or misses its target. Suddenly, the "token" resistance of the first player becomes important!

An extreme and rather silly example, I know, but the point is simply that the game is so big, small things matter. This game has it's own mini Version of chaos theory, y'know? The butterfly flaps his wings, and the whole landscape changes...

Which means sandboxing isn't always useless, and no amount of power gaming can assure victory, simply because little things matter...

Anyway, just rambling. The main point of this speil is that this is a game so wide and deep that it can be played like Chess or like D&D, and I think that's just plain awesome