Newbie's first impressions

[PCarroll]

After getting lots of recommendations at comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic, I finally broke down and bought Dom2. I had played the demo several months ago but was pretty well turned off by it. Yet--there's this huge fan base, and so I figured there must be more to the game than meets the eye.

Well, it installed cleanly, and I like the fact that you don't have to have the CD in the drive to play. But startup is amazingly non-intuitive! It's as if the designer wanted to make sure only the initiated would be able to play.

But, thanks to the "Walkthru" I downloaded, and a willingness to learn by trial and error, I managed to play fifty turns or so of a game.

I must say, Dom2 is about the strangest game I've ever played. Not because of its theme or overall structure; in that respect it's just an ordinary fantasy-themed conquer-the-world game. It's strange because on the surface it looks like almost nothing ever happens. Whereas most games these days go to great lengths to impress the player with dazzling eye and ear candy, Dom2 looks about as plain as a game can be.

But from what I hear, there's a lot beneath the surface. Unfortunately, it looks like it's going to take a good deal of time and effort to delve into those depths.

I suppose I should start by reading the manual. I haven't done that yet; I just followed the "walkthru" and then experimented on my own from there.

The thing is, I've already forgotten half of what I learned during the walkthru. Once I set out on my own, I immediately lost track of what kind of research was being done back in my home province; where my income was coming from; where new units could be recruited; what gems have to do with spells; and everything else except movement and combat.

Before long, there were enemies everywhere, closing in on me. The battles that had been so easy during the walkthru were now so tough that I kept losing turn after turn.

I found an enemy (Ulm) fortress and decided to send my big armies there, in hopes of at least taking out one of the enemies. But it turns out I didn't know how to do that, so I left my armies there for ten or fifteen turns, just besieging and waiting for the fortress to fall. Finally, after shutting the game down in frustration, I flipped through the manual and was reminded that you have to change the commanders' orders. So this morning I loaded the game and reset the commanders' orders to "Storm the Fortress" (the gate had been smashed ten or twelve turns before), and took over immediately.

Actually, it was kinda cool being able to change the commanders' orders like that. It's a simple mechanism and fits with the player being in a position of making high-level decisions.

That indirect control over commanders and battles feels pretty weird, though, after years of playing games where I had *direct* control over tactical battles. It's funny: when I first encounted that kind of game (which I called "split-focus games" because the player has to keep switching between the strategic and tactical dimensions), I hated it. But now that I'm so used to it, it's hard going back to a game where the player *doesn't* have direct control over the minutia of tactical combat.

And yet--as I was flipping through the manual, I kept coming across nitty-gritty details and wondering how in the world they could possibly come into play. One section is telling how long weapons have an initial advantage over short ones--and I'm thinking, "Yeah, but once a battle starts, arming the troops is already a done deal, so. . . ."

I guess that kind of detailed info helps when deciding what kind of army to build when you're up against a cavalry-dominant enemy or whatever. But as a rank beginner, I've just been building armies wherever I can find them, out of whatever kinds of troops are affordable and strike my fancy.

Another thing I find strange is the lack of diplomacy; it's a multiplayer free-for-all with no alliances. That's annoying enough that I may stick to two-player games for a while. Last night I felt hopelessly ganged up on. In games with alliances, at least I've got some friends to counter the gangs of enemies.

Besides all the behind-the-scenes stuff (the economic and magical dimensions), the most annoying thing about Dom2 so far is the difficulty of establishing defensible borders. In my trial game, provinces changed hands the way they do in Risk; and that got old in a hurry. Nothing is more frustrating than making a successful attack, only to find that the enemy has meanwhile snuck in and taken over a couple lightly defended or undefended provinces behind your armies. That situation soon starts to seem hopeless.

Evidently--judging from all the posts in this forum and elsewhere--there's a LOT more to Dom2 than meets the eye. I'm just hoping I discover some of it before I shrug the game off as too plain-looking and frustrating.