Dom3 will be what?? Some annoying questions

[tinkthank]

Hello, I was away for quite some time, returned to see dom3 "announced" -- yet when I try to find out more information about it, I come up blank.

I searched the forum here and found my own thread, here:

my question on dom3 annoucement on this board

in which Mindi kindly posted this link

here
to the Shrapnel announcement, but that no longer appears when one clicks on the link.

So basically, I cannot see the press release anymore. I saw it only once, then I had to return to my RL-ness and my absence of dom2 (also partly due to dom2 burnout, but like the phoenix, or maybe just like a ghoul, I am back), and I only remember vaguely what I had read. Illwinter has still not updated their site.

My vague memories of the press release have it down as this:
Dom3 will be like dom2, except that there will be 20 nations, and a couple of new goodies.

I am sort of confused as to what this means. I wanted to refresh my memory and re-read the press release, but I find nothing but wish lists.

Now I feel bad about asking the next question, because I really love dom2, I love Illwinter, and I support them and Shrapnel with much fervor. Maybe I dont support Illwinter as much as Gandalf and the mods and others do, with so much resources and websites, but I do what I can.
I remember debates back in March or whenever when I had proposed making an "expansion pack" for dom2, and this was shot down nearly unanimously by most fans here, most explicitly and strategically by Arryn, who said expansion packs were just ways for companies to make an extra buck.

Well, what I dont understand is: Why dom3? From the press release, which I can no longer quote, it sounds very much like an expansion pack in the sense that it describes a dom2-like atmosphere, but just a bit bigger (20 nations instead of 17, IIRC). (There will not, for example (unless I am gravely mistaken) be new graphics a la Warcraft III, or whatever.) So what exactly will make it a new game? Am I justified in thinking to myself that this will be much like an expansion pack?
A discussion like this, as annoying as it may be to you, would be helpful to me in gauging what I should consider as a helpful and meaningful contribution to dom3 wishlists and in understanding the way that dom2 will be further developed.
Thanks very much

[Tuna]

I feel your pain.

I would gladly pay for Dom3, if they did not add a single nation/trinket/unit/whatever, but spent all their time improving the UI. Simple stuff like chaining any orders, placing more than one mage in the recruit queue, taking money only for the troopers recruited this turn, not everyone in the queue, autotax feature, some way to automatize sitesearching (giving sitesearch spells more than one target and they cast it in all those targets until they run out?), having commaders yell "hey, I'm unoccupied!" when they are, filtering the message list from the same screen, ete etc.

I can but hope at least some of that gets in.

[PDF]

Shrapnel uses some weird linking to their press releases (a given link goes to the n-th Last announcement), so the Dom3 announcement slipped out of the main page links, and is now at :
http://www.shrapnelgames.com/News/pr_09.htm

However nothing more was said since by the devs and publishers unless I've missed stg ..

[johan osterman]

The game will be better in general. Comparable perhaps to the improvements from dom to dom2. Some improved graphics better and less opaque UI. More content. More features. Less micromanagement.

[Zen]

The only thing I think I will say regarding this is: In Dom2 I believe IW learned quite a bit about their own code, it's limitations, what it can and can't do and the amount of "quickfixes" that were involved with it. At the very least the changes in Dom3 will make certain things code friendly and thus make certain features implementable or things that they have wanted to do, but were unable to, possible.

Example: The "Theme" code in Dom2 was cumbersome and was noodley, hard to utilize, patch, or tweak with. If I was to take an educated guess, my guess would be that the Dom3 Engine will be built with Themes, and other foreseeable potential changes or additions in mind while it's being built in order to allow the game to progress.

[Tuidjy]

I'm not anywhere close to bored with Dom II, and I have been playing it without
interruption for an year. In the meantime, I went through Far Cry, Sacred,
Kohan II, Halo, Bloodlines, Pirates, and probably a few games I have totally
forgotten... only Rome: Total War comes close to holding my attention in the
same manner.

I have gotten enough of my money worth, even considering I have bought four
copies, and would happily pay another fifty bucks for a some improvements.

If there is one thing I could wish for, it would be for a true client/server
mechanism, in the sense that all orders would be checked by the server, as
opposed to the way it is now. On the other hand, I realize that this is
unlikely, unless IW expands its staff to work on a brand new game engine.

[tinkthank]

Hey thanks for the replies.

Btw, in no way did I want to imply that I am "not getting my money's worth" -- I hope I made that clear, if not, sorry. I love dom2, it was the best money I ever invested in a computer game, I think. (I for one would have supported a dom2 expansion pack, so that the hard-working dom2 team would make some money off it, but this was shouted down. What surprised me was that there seemed to have been a huge consensus that expansions packs are "bad" (I still disagree), yet no-one blinked an eye when dom3 was announced.)

Thanks especially for the clear-ups, Zen and JO. I hope to give some constructive feedback then, if desired, for the planning of dom3.

[Foom]

Tuna: You can cycle through commanders who don't have explicit orders by pressing the "n" key repeatedly.

To you Illwinter people: I love you guys, really, but if you're going to work on a new game in your flagship series, don't you think you should at least mention it on your official homepage? The way you practice publicity is totally Zen (not the booyah guy, the philosophy) but it's weird for us customers, and you're throwing away a chance for free advertising.

[Johan K]

Good point Foom. There is a very short notice about Dominions III on our web page now.