Dominions 3 - The TCancer Review

[Jason]

<strong>[ Review ]</strong>

YourConscience had a chance to delve into the wacky world of <a href="http://www.shrapnelgames.com/Illwinter/Dom3/1.htm" target="_blank">Dominions 3</a> and file this review.
<br/><br/><strong>Read: </strong><a href="http://www.tacticularcancer.com/content.php?id=36">Dominions 3 - The TCancer Review</a>

 

[AZ]

Positioning your squads and giving orders is pretty important and can decide a battle. The combat is very "real", every unit has moral and the injuries are detailed like they can loose limbs, eyes, get poisoned, diseased. And there is an experience system. I think the review fails to show how detailed the game is, just say that looks complicated - but it is really easy to start, just make units and get the nearby independent provinces, and crushed by the ai. Then then learn from your errors.

The interface is really ugly, so I will advertise here my interface mod. - www.guimod.fw.hu

 

[Jason]

I'll definitely be giving your mod a try later. But the only thing that really bothers me visually is not being able to tell units apart without right clicking to bring up the info. Many times, a spearman will look just like a slinger who looks just like a bandit and so on. That sort of info is important when positioning units so it would be nice to know what's what at a glance (mainly in the army setup screen).

 

[amarok]

newbie questions

Great review! It makes me want to give D3 a try even though I had some issues with D2. I had a hard time with the learning curve, and my ego didn't like being beaten all the time.

I think I would have stuck with it if the save game system had been a little easier to use. I would take a turn, suffer some setback and then want to immediately go back and correct things, but I found the save game system very cumbersome (almost unusable) I think because it was designed with multiplayer in mind. (Or maybe I just didn't know what I was doing - Other people have similar problems? Advice? - On using saves or getting over the learning curve?

Any word on if that (save feature) has changed? Or other significant changes from D2?

I'm so glad I came across this site - it's reassuring that somewhere old-school gamers still reign!!!

- amarok

 

[Jason]

The save system still saves whenever you end the turn so there's no easy way around that. But if you know you're going to do something risky, you can always back up the savegame (default path: C:\Program Files\dominions3\savedgames) to somewhere else and use it to overwrite the newer savegame if disaster strikes. Kind of messy, but it should work.

The best way to get over the learning curve is to download the Dom3 demo and play along with the included tutorial walkthrough pdf written by Bruce Geryk. It's very easy to follow and should give you the basics. He also wrote one for Dom2.

it's reassuring that somewhere old-school gamers still reign!!!

That's only because we can't afford (or are too cheap for) decent computers.

 

[Yeesh]

I've been hooked on DIII since around January, and hopefully it's starting to wear off because, let's face it, we've all got shit to do and that is one addicting game.

Let me say this: I like the save system, which is actually NO save system. If I'm playing Civ, and I suffer a setback, I do indeed tend to reload. That's not good. That's just making me WEAK! But DIII teaches me to be strong, like BULL! When my prophet dies, what are my choices? Start a new game, or tough it out! I can appoint a new one in a few turns anyway. Lose a province, lose an arch-devil or queen of elemental air? Recapture, re-summon! Fall back and regroup.

I haven't touched the MP aspect, which of course also keeps me weaker, but at least with the no save system you learn to overcome obstacles instead of reloading them out of existence.

This is not high praise for the game, but some of the reason that you can survive the occasional crushing setback is that the AI is not so good at pressing its advantage. It can certainly take you down on impossible (note that the AI gets double money and resources at that level, which explains it), but in general you can live to fight another day. In a game like Civ, IIRC, the AI is less forgiving.

Although, it's also worth pointing out (unless I'm wrong) that there's no AI alliance system in DIII, so the AIs are always busy watching their backs and have trouble concentrating on the real menace of your SP empire. So maybe the Civ AIs just have it easier.

What-EVER. Point is, it's a great game. And scripting is the key to battles, and really needs to be tailored to situations to get the most out of it. Sometimes I wish it really WAS just a matter of dciding where the troops set up; because SP turns can start to take 30+ minutes if you start getting obsessive...