Newbie's first impressions

[PCarroll]

Just finished another game. Played Man this time, with Ermor as an enemy (since somebody said the AI is best at playing Ermor).

Don't understand how the game ended. I won--somehow. Several turns back, I had stormed the Ermor fortress and demolished it, but the Ermor army took one of my fortresses, then another. I got my fortresses back, though.

At this point, Ermor was besieging two other forts of mine. I sent my God in with too small an army and tried to lift one of the sieges--but my God got killed in that battle. However, I guess Ermor failed to take the other fort, and suddenly the computer declared that I had won. My God who just got killed "ascended."

I guess that kinda makes sense somehow.

My impressions of the game at this point? Still mixed. I'm not sure I really like big, complicated games anymore. Too much to do every turn, and the game goes on too long. I used to like them because the size obscured my ineptitude: if I made a mistake or two somewhere, I could usually make up for it somewhere else. But now it just gets tiresome having to recruit new units every turn, keep track of mercenaries, and balance the various dimensions of the game (magic, economics, dominion, etc.).

And btw, I haven't yet seen dominion play a real role in the game. Maybe it has invisibly made my God stronger, but I haven't noticed.

So, I think I'm off to find a smaller, shorter, simpler game to play.

--Patrick