Incline Larian's Dragon Commander - Released

[MicoSelva]

F10 brings up the menu and pauses the game. You can't issue orders while paused, of course (exactly as in WarCraft/StarCraft).

 

[felipepepe]

Go to the options menu and change the speed to slow (or slowest).

 

[Gord]

Wow I am terrible at this game. I suck at RTSs generally, but this is the first one I've played in a while with no pause time option. My brain cannot handle this

You can adjust the game speed during RTS, though. "Ctrl" + "+/-", I think.
Also it gets much easier once you get the hang of it, which early on consists mostly of spamming units and later also in using the right ablities.

 

[MicoSelva]

Played my first short map (less than 1000 recruits) yesterday. Concidentally, it was also a three-way battle. Great, tense, fun, with factions desperately stealing recruits from each other and much more ephasis on effective unit and dragon usage vs. standard huge blob army that is usual for larger/longer battles with thousands of recruits.

I wish all battles were like this, with less units and recruits.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

Wow I am terrible at this game. I suck at RTSs generally, but this is the first one I've played in a while with no pause time option. My brain cannot handle this

You can adjust the game speed during RTS, though. "Ctrl" + "+/-", I think.
Also it gets much easier once you get the hang of it, which early on consists mostly of spamming units and later also in using the right ablities.

Actually I just researched Juggernauts and bulldozed the rest of the game. Ah well, the brief challenge early on was cool.

Not bad, can't help but be a bit underwhelmed by it. I was really looking forward to playing it and it sounded like exactly the kind of game I should love, but in the end, it felt a bit shallow even allowing for it being a mix of genres (RTS possibly excluded, I can't even tell whether that part was good or not) - maintaining 90-100% happiness with every race was pretty trivial even without trying to game it. Custom scenarios should be fun, though, definitely going to play a few of those and tinker with the options. Should provide decent replay value.

 

[MicoSelva]

maintaining 90-100% happiness with every race was pretty trivial even without trying to game it

It is doable. I, on the other hand, have antagonized the undead to 0% even before finishing the first Act.
It is cool that you are able to do either, but I have not noticed much impact on the gameplay.

 

[Heresiarch]

maintaining 90-100% happiness with every race was pretty trivial even without trying to game it

It is doable. I, on the other hand, have antagonized the undead to 0% even before finishing the first Act.
It is cool that you are able to do either, but I have not noticed much impact on the gameplay.

Low % really makes RTS in provinces with those races really hard to play as it direcly affect the maximum support you can have. With 10 to 20% you can have like only 200 support during RTS, which translates into at most 20 medium or heavy units in the field at the same time, while the AI can have a hundred or two. The AI will simply flood you over with superior numbers. It's even worse while playing on Hard because you need to hold out an extra minute before you can spawn as a dragon, and then even by the time you can spawn out the AI would probably instagib you with overwhelming numbers of Grenadiers.

Speaking of races and provinces, I find it extremely weird that there's no human race and human province despite major race in the universe is still human.

 

[Gragt]

Speaking of races and provinces, I find it extremely weird that there's no human race and human province despite major race in the universe is still human.

Check your human priviledges.

 

[MicoSelva]

Speaking of races and provinces, I find it extremely weird that there's no human race and human province despite major race in the universe is still human.

Yes, lore-wise this game makes little sense. It is also shoved into the Divinity setting rather artificially. Not that the setting was very coherent between previous games anyway.

 

[Gord]

I think you (i.e. the dragon knight) are supposed to represent the humans.
No idea about the provinces, though.

 

[Morality Games]

I think you (i.e. the dragon knight) is supposed to represent the humans.
No idea about the provinces, though.

Humans are everywhere. They're just sort of in the subtext.

 

[Name]

One common setting of the whole divinity series is the Seven civ races I guess.
In this game you represents human, the wizard represents wizard, and five councilman represents the other five fantasy races lol.

 

[J_C]

maintaining 90-100% happiness with every race was pretty trivial even without trying to game it

It is doable. I, on the other hand, have antagonized the undead to 0% even before finishing the first Act.
It is cool that you are able to do either, but I have not noticed much impact on the gameplay.

Low % really makes RTS in provinces with those races really hard to play as it direcly affect the maximum support you can have. With 10 to 20% you can have like only 200 support during RTS, which translates into at most 20 medium or heavy units in the field at the same time, while the AI can have a hundred or two. The AI will simply flood you over with superior numbers. It's even worse while playing on Hard because you need to hold out an extra minute before you can spawn as a dragon, and then even by the time you can spawn out the AI would probably instagib you with overwhelming numbers of Grenadiers.

Larian should have communicated this mechanics better, because it seems it plays a huge roles in the RTS battles.

 

[:Flash:]

Swen on the release of Dragon Commander: http://www.lar.net/2013/09/18/an-important-lesson/
Dragon Commander outsold Dragon Knight Saga 3 to 1 in its first month and will be profitable

 

[Haba]

Uh huh. I read a completely different story between the lines.

 

[Heresiarch]

OMG I feel immediately fall in love with Swen after reading that. I love managers who actually reflect on their own mistakes. Comparing to the excuses EA and M$ higher ups always make Swen is a fucking saint.

 

[Infinitron]

For Dragon Commander, at present digital sales make up 85% of our revenu and retail only represents 15%. If you take into account that the digital lifecycle of a game is a lot longer than its retail counterpart, and also a bit more profitable, then numbers like this tell the entire picture – if you have to choose where to put your effort, put it in the digital side. The mistake I made was that I had our studio do pretty much the opposite of that, for all the wrong reasons. As a consequence, a large portion of our publishing investments were done in the retail side of things and that automatically meant that certain digital opportunities were lost, because obviously, we couldn’t do everything. That wasn’t such a clever move.

I guess the thing I regret the most about my misplaced belief in retail was that I let it affect our flexibility so much. Small teams like us gain part of their competitive advantage from our ability to quickly make changes when needed, and I feel I was a fool for manouvering ourselves into a position that handicapped this flexibility.

Dexter This is relevant to your interests.

 

[J_C]

Uh huh. I read a completely different story between the lines.

What did you read?

 

[Metro]

You have to be delusional not to realize digital sales massively trump retail these days -- box and/or anti-DRM fetishes aside.

Also:

...and allowed us to focus on the core release, which a Steam release is in the modern day PC market.

GabeN uber alles. Swen knows what's what.

 

[Infinitron]

Swen knows what's what.

He does now. He has an old post where he said that retail sales are still important, yadda yadda. I always knew that was bullshit.

EDIT: This one http://www.lar.net/2012/01/29/should-indie-developers-invest-in-boxes/

 

[Brother None]

15% is higher than I would've guessed. In "our" market physical is just so irrelevant. No shock there. Oh well, as long as the game did well!

 

[Raze]

He has an old post where he said that retail sales are still important, yadda yadda.

The point of that blog post was to argue that retail wasn't so much worse than digital that it wasn't worth doing. It considered the lower margins and extra effort required compared to digital, but not the impact a retail version would have on the release schedule, etc, discussed in the latest blog post.

 

[Heresiarch]

Yup, despite how people often call EA and M$ alike crazy for promoting "digital future", the reality is digital is much more convenient to operate for all parties involved. No transport cost involved, sales can be made easily, marketing is easy, consumers can buy easily, etc. Of course the difference between EA and Steam is Steam games are mostly DRMless while for EA we all know their policy.

My last three games I bought with a box were Witcher 2, Shogun 2 and Diablo 3. But the only useful thing were the CD keys, and by now I've left all the box behind at my old home because I would simply not bring them along with me.

 

[Infinitron]

Steam games are mostly DRMless

I'm afraid I have bad news for you.

 

[Gord]

Yup, despite how people often call EA and M$ alike crazy for promoting "digital future", the reality is digital is much more convenient to operate for all parties involved.

Now I'm aware that I might be an anomaly, but I still prefer boxed copies from retail when applicable.
Why? Because DL'ing a 10+GB game takes fucking ages on my 6Mbit connection.