Why such a high price?

[Richard]

Actually that's not necessarily true.

And if nothing else, after being warned, it's considered abuse to continue posting against a Boards policies. I can report him to his ISP for abuse.

I don't want to do that, but I won't tolerate the discussion of illegal activities on our Boards.

[Pocus]

about protection scheme, the best one I have found so far was the one implemented in Galactic Civilization. To retrieve each patch, you have to send Online your game key, which is unique. Even after retrieving a patch, there is embedded in them Banned keys (a growing list it seems, I suppose they ban a key if there is a mass download of patches with the same key).

Sure you can play a cracked galciv in 1.0 (I suppose, I own the game and can prove it ), but aside that you need a legit key to get the numerous improvements.

Thats one of the benefit of distributing games Online. Perhaps Shrapnel should establish a secure download connection for patches, with the request of having a legit key when you want to grab a patch. Personaly, thats would not bother me much, and whats more I think that the idea of all these pirates being fooled would give me much joy

[ September 23, 2003, 17:46: Message edited by: Pocus ]

[Richard]

Actually they don't need ot go that far. When you issue a patch it almost always breaks whatever crack someone has used. So the approach makes sense, but I doubt you neeed to spend all of that money to setup a special setup like that.

But in the end I think we pick up more audience by folks who can use our games on their laptops easily then we loose due to pirating.

[LordArioch]

This is off-topic again, but I finally realized what it is that I found AoW lacking...combinations of abilities and spells. I never saw much use for clever combos that made use of otherwise not great abilities...what i mean by this is:
In dominions, flagellants are decent cheap blessable attackers but are HORRIBLY exposed to missle fire.
Also the dom 2 blessing with air that protects against missile weapons is probably pretty decent on its own too.
However, when the two abilites are combined you have more effectiveness than just the sum of the two seperately.
I just didn't see many oppurtunities for that sort of thing in AoW and I am a great fan of that sort of thing, where you can take two potentially weak units/spells and get a great clever combo from them that is useful. I think this sort of thing is what part of what makes every unit in dominions useful where I found relatively few AoW units to be worth using.
Not to say that AoW is a bad game...I just like effectivly combining things...wolven winter (cold +3 modifier on target province) for another example is useless on its own almost but with the right situations can be wonderful

[Pocus]

yes true, any exe will be cracked in a matter of days.
to be precise, Galciv run without cd on a pc, so there is no hassle here. The filter comes when you want to download a patch.

Originally posted by Richard:
Actually they don't need ot go that far. When you issue a patch it almost always breaks whatever crack someone has used. So the approach makes sense, but I doubt you neeed to spend all of that money to setup a special setup like that.

But in the end I think we pick up more audience by folks who can use our games on their laptops easily then we loose due to pirating.

[Pocus]

Arioch : Indeed. I had identified why I found AoW a bit too dull. Because there is not much combos, compared to MoM or Doms. Thats were these games shines.

[WraithLord]

Talking/encouraging piracy in a dev/publisher forum, now that's a spit in the face.

About aow,
There is an excellent mod to AOW-II. Adding many units/spells/abilities and putting some sense into the protection scheme.

[Pocus]

i played AOW SM to the end of the campaign. I appreciated the extended scripting work they put in the campaign. But it was often rince and repeat. Most of the time you would use a good chunk of your mana to cast enchanted weapons on your best units for example.

And talking about play balance, they should perhaps take some courses. special city improvement for Orcs : drain life. Cool, now the most dreaded Orcs Warlords drain life. Special improvement for Elves : hide town. Cool, with the AI playing without fog of war (ie cheating), I really appreciate the **fine** (ahem) game equilibrium.

[WraithLord]

I was quite disappointed by AOW-SM.
Of the three added races only one has good units/abilities and feels unique(nomads).
The shadow demons are beefed up undead.
The syrons are sadly a ragtag of half thought units.

I once suggested in their Boards to add a doppelganger unit that can shape shift to slain enemy. I was very happy to get a changeling unit.
Alas, it's completely useless. It can only shape-shift to a slain enemy killed in melee.
so if it killed an archer it's stuck there. The AI will use it horribly, changing to low level units. I wish they would have given more thought to creating unique units.

[Edi]

I don't think �45 is a high price to pay for Dom II.

As for AoW, my thoughts: the original AoW was and still is one kick-*** TBS game. I played that a whole lot, and still love it. It was especially good on some of the excellent maps like Jason Hickman's Reign of Terror (Middle Earth), or Dix's Hunters of Blood I and II, and many others, and especially when you played with leaders off. Playing without leaders eliminated head-hunting strategies and the AI actually started getting aggressive and became a challenge. It was good, and some of those maps really had an epic feel to them.

AoW2 has no possibility of playing with leaders off and is nothing but headhunting (or otherwise just map-crawling) with repeating the same tactics ad nauseam. I didn't like it very much after playing about halfway through, and I'm not sure I'll buy Shadow Magic at all. Quite a few of the original AoW crowd have dropped out of sight for some reason or another, and many have shared my views completely or partially.

DomI on the other hand just rocks, and so will DomII. Can't wait...

Edi