combat

[snake]

I played the DOM 2 demo and was quite intrigued enough to consider purchasing DOM 3.
My question is: Do you have any control over combat? I mean, I would love to have some control of the tactical battle like Age of Wonders.
In DOM 2 I could only replay a battle and watch which, to me, is rather lame - why waste the time after a few viewings.

[NakedLunch]

No, combat is automated but there are many things you can do to affect the comat. For instance, you can set your units to do specific tasks like guard the commander etc. Formation also plays a critical role in combat so it's good to get acquainted with it.

The reason I watch all my combat replays is to see where I went wrong if I lost and try to fix that.

I hope you can overcome the lack of interactivity because there's a whole lot more to the game besides that and it's a shame if you skipped all that just because of the combat.

[Fate]

You will notice there is some control over combat in dominons (enough that strategies are built around it).

First of all, there are tactics in squad mixing, as archers with infantry will not fire unless commanded to (which would cause the infantry to just sit there). Also, while larger squads have more morale, smaller squads can create longer fronts, and thereby inflict more casualties.

Also, in the squads menu, you can click on the green, white, and red colored block to position a squad's starting position. The white block is the squad, the red block is other squads under the same commander, and the blue blocks are other friendly squads.

You can also click on the squad's orders (next to their name) and change them. For troops, possibilities include "guard commander" (making them bodyguards for the commander in case of an assassination attempt), and various forms of attack, with optional targets. For commanders, you can also script their first 5 turns of combat, especially usefull for mages, before giving them similar general commands.



Anyway, I consider this enough control, and any in-battle control would not work with the game's P(lay)B(y)eM(ail) multiplayer.

As for watching battles, I sometimes need to (possibly from my niavity - is that spelled right?) to see how the enemy wooped me. I also enjoy the movie-ness of just having to watch the battle, without any involvement.






Besides all of this, if you got this far, I know of no plans to drastically increase combat control. A little more leeway has been requested, but I am not sure how much will make the cut.

[NakedLunch]

As for watching battles, I sometimes need to (possibly from my niavity - is that spelled right?) to see how the enemy wooped me. I also enjoy the movie-ness of just having to watch the battle, without any involvement.

Heh, yeah. I do that too sometimes, especially if I won and I just get to watch my army stomp all over the other and in my head I'm hearing Braveheart screaming "FREEEEEEEDOOOOOMMM!"

[Edi]

I also happen to like not having total control over everything, because that is how things would be in reality. The general commanding the army issues orders and the troops will execute them if able. The general does not control each soldier individually like puppets, which is the case in AoW.

Not to say that AoW is bad or anything like that, I liked the original even if the sequels weren't as good, but it's a rather different type of game than Dominions in many respects.

Edi

[Argitoth]

Edi said:
I also happen to like not having total control over everything, because that is how things would be in reality. The general commanding the army issues orders and the troops will execute them if able.

Dominions is extremely limited compared to real life. Just think about it.

[DominionsFan]

snake said:
I played the DOM 2 demo and was quite intrigued enough to consider purchasing DOM 3.
My question is: Do you have any control over combat? I mean, I would love to have some control of the tactical battle like Age of Wonders.
In DOM 2 I could only replay a battle and watch which, to me, is rather lame - why waste the time after a few viewings.

Age of Wonders style tactical combat is impossible in Dominions. Why? Because in AoW you had a couple of units in a battle. I think the max size of an army stack was 8? You can attack from multiple hexes there, but that means, that there was like 9x8 = 72 units on the battlefield maximum if Im correct, but it was hella rare. Typical AoW battle had like ~32-40 units.
In Dominions there are hundreds of units in the battlefield, sometime 1000+, it would be impossible to control a tactical battle. Also tactical battles are giving a hard time for the AI again. ["exploits"] This is why theres no tactical combat in GalCiv 2. AFAIK for example.

[NakedLunch]

Well, that could be fixed by simply controlling large groups and not just single units, but I feel that making combat manual would shift the focus away from the rest of the game and as a result it'd feel less "Dominions-y" to me.

[Archonsod]

The only addition to the combat I would like to see is the possibility of direct control on characters, especially priests and mages. Kind of makes sense that you could tell your prophet what to do
As it is, as soon as your spellcasters revert to AI control you get something of a mixed bag. Sometimes they'll cast some useful spells, other times you'll end up with a level 10 mage, full fatigue and plenty of gems wasting his time casting some low level missile spell or similar ad naseum, or casting various shield spells despite the fact that they are nowhere near the fight.
It might just be me though If not direct control, I'd like to see some kind of targetting for scripted spells. It would be nice to tell your mage to target the big beasties with the uber damage spell, rather than going for the nearest militia.

[NTJedi]

Archonsod said:
As it is, as soon as your spellcasters revert to AI control you get something of a mixed bag. Sometimes they'll cast some useful spells, other times you'll end up with a level 10 mage, full fatigue and plenty of gems wasting his time casting some low level missile spell or similar ad naseum, or casting various shield spells despite the fact that they are nowhere near the fight.

The biggest annoyance I see are the weak 10 hitpoint mages casting fire shield or astral shield. Such a waste considering the mage will die 99% of the time from one strike anyways.
It would be nice if we could tell our mages ahead of time what battle spells they are banned from casting.