What is Dominions II?

[magnate]

PrinzMegaherz said:

Indeed I would like to see closeups of the commanders faces and some statements before battle, to give your units more personality (like an Abysian Salamander with fiery eyes "I'll burn you to cinders", or an charging ulmish knight commander "For [enter god name here]".

Thanks - you've just given me my next pretender's name: Aiur.

CC

[Leif_-]

Dominions II is a very large and extremely well-balanced turn-based strategy game on a province level, set in a fantasy world based in real world mythologies.

[Pickles]

Dominion2 is a turn based 4x strategy game in a fantasy milieu with magic research replacing the usual technological research. It has a simple core system with massive emergent complexity & depth. The races are strongly characterised & draw from mythology & mythologised history rather than the usual fantasy stereotypes. While it is a very good game it is poor software.

Pickles

[magnate]

Pickles said:
Dominion2 is a turn based 4x strategy game in a fantasy milieu with magic research replacing the usual technological research. It has a simple core system with massive emergent complexity & depth. The races are strongly characterised & draw from mythology & mythologised history rather than the usual fantasy stereotypes. While it is a very good game it is poor software.

Why is it poor software? Apart from the message interface, which needs improving, the software is easy to use and nice to look at. It also does what it says on the tin. What more do you want?

CC

[Pickles]

magnate said:

Why is it poor software? Apart from the message interface, which needs improving, the software is easy to use and nice to look at. It also does what it says on the tin. What more do you want?

CC

The whole message thing is very poor. The graphics are indifferent I do not find them nice to look at but they are not offensive. The layout is pretty clear & good in that respect. I am perfectly happy with them but they are also massively demanding on hardware - which for graphics of that quality makes it bad software.
The interface in general is not very good. It is not consistent & it can be hard to find units or provinces sometimes. Micro could probably be reduced too though is somewhat a game issue rather than an interface one.
Similary spell use in battles.

Pickles

[Gandalf Parker]

Pickles said:
The whole message thing is very poor. The graphics are indifferent I do not find them nice to look at but they are not offensive. The layout is pretty clear & good in that respect. I am perfectly happy with them but they are also massively demanding on hardware - which for graphics of that quality makes it bad software.
The interface in general is not very good. It is not consistent & it can be hard to find units or provinces sometimes. Micro could probably be reduced too though is somewhat a game issue rather than an interface one.
Similary spell use in battles.

Well the game is good.

As to things like graphics and interface its not too different than any game which runs on so many platforms.

And the devs are here so if you have specific suggestions feel free to mention them. If they arent quick fixes then it might wait for Dom3 or something like that. But thats OK. The patches tend to be pretty full. Im not sure that anything is in need of Johan spending full time so that only 1 major change is made in one patch. Id rather see all the little tweaks and surprises.

[J Henry Waugh]

Why is it poor software? Apart from the message interface, which needs improving, the software is easy to use and nice to look at. It also does what it says on the tin. What more do you want?

Dom2 is a great game but there are many UI problems and aesthetics & graphics quality are poor.

* Unable to use hotkeys to scroll popup lists (forced to use mouse) and unable to sort on F1 nation screen (like you can do in the Civ series).

* Right-click on province instead of left-click is unintuitive but not too bad once you get used to it.

* Random map generator, though I'm working on one myself and I know there exists a random map generator. The maps that come with the game arn't all that great IMV. Still, a superior approach would be one built into the game and "generated on the fly".

* Better font - yeah, it's probably just personal taste & all.

* Need to incorporate a built-in help facility - Dom-o-pedia or something to display the battle mechanics and other stuff (though some stuff like spells are accessable...).

[Pickles]

Gandalf Parker said:

(snipped)

Well the game is good.

As to things like graphics and interface its not too different than any game which runs on so many platforms.

I do not know - I only play on one platform & it is far worse than any other interface from recent times. This is the problem really - I am far less a computer geek than most people here (I reserve my geekiness exclusively for games) & I am used to good windows interfaces. I would rather the game was produced slickly for one platform only (& penetrated the mass market) but this seems unlikely...

Gandalf Parker said:
And the devs are here so if you have specific suggestions feel free to mention them. If they arent quick fixes then it might wait for Dom3 or something like that. But thats OK. The patches tend to be pretty full. Im not sure that anything is in need of Johan spending full time so that only 1 major change is made in one patch. Id rather see all the little tweaks and surprises.

I think most of my issues are unpatchable eg why is the thing so resource intensive? Also everyone knows how poor the in game message system is both as a relay of ingame info & as a inter player messager.

It would be nice if dom3, if there is one, was rebuilt from the bottom up somewhat to address this sort of issue.

This is not really a criticism of the developers BTW. They are only 2 and do most of the truly important stuff well meanwhile the whole thing has an amateurish feel to it.

Pickles

[Gandalf Parker]

Pickles said:
I do not know - I only play on one platform & it is far worse than any other interface from recent times. This is the problem really - I am far less a computer geek than most people here (I reserve my geekiness exclusively for games) & I am used to good windows interfaces.

There are slick interfaces available for any system. Unfortunately if its for 4 different systems then its hard to find common ground. Not much good to have buttons doing things on one that cant be done on the others.

I would rather the game was produced slickly for one platform only (& penetrated the mass market) but this seems unlikely...

No not too likely. But isnt it nice that they compiled a Windows Version? (it was made on linux)

I think most of my issues are unpatchable eg why is the thing so resource intensive?

The same thing I think. Less resource intensive games on Windows let the windows dll's take care of alot of the overhead. That way each program isnt loading and using modules for common things like how to draw the screens or how to display fonts. But everything has its pros and cons. Not going that route allows it to make the best use of linux abilities for things like hosting games.

Also everyone knows how poor the in game message system is both as a relay of ingame info & as a inter player messager.

Thats kindof standard for a PbEM game. Its easier for people doing blitz games to use voip, or irc, or emails than to have the game put something like that into it. Thats kindof the other side of the resource thing.

This is not really a criticism of the developers BTW. They are only 2 and do most of the truly important stuff well meanwhile the whole thing has an amateurish feel to it.

Most of the best strategy games do. No game will cover everyones preferences. Arguers on the other side of "has an amateurish feel to it" might word it as "will not appeal to the xbox set"

Its definetly a niche market. Whether or not they would do better continuing up the path of "deep and well balanced strategy play" or do better trying to jump in the pool with all of the shelfware stuff is a debate between them and their publisher.

I dont want to seem too defensive. Its just that Ive already gotten used to the interface. Except for little fast improvements to make it easier for new players, I tend to be against alot of time spent on the UI. Id rather time was spent on the AI but its in the same boat as the UI. Not really prime target for the game.

[Sheap]

Gandalf Parker said:
There are slick interfaces available for any system. Unfortunately if its for 4 different systems then its hard to find common ground. Not much good to have buttons doing things on one that cant be done on the others.

No one is complaining that the window borders look funny. None of the UI issues that are being brought up have anything to do with what platform the game is running on. I could give a list but I don't want to turn this thread into a rant session

The same thing I think. Less resource intensive games on Windows let the windows dll's take care of alot of the overhead. That way each program isnt loading and using modules for common things like how to draw the screens or how to display fonts.

Whatever is going on to make Dom2 more resource intensive than usual doesn't have anything to do with module loading overhead. But whatever the reason, it hardly matters. Do I really need my fire darts to run at 60 FPS?