Dom 3 AAR

Hmm... that reminds me. I wanted to do an AAR on dom 3. Maybe I should work on that.

What we need are Elemental AAR. Just saying.

Cannot wait to Frogboy start posting some like in Gal Civ!

Nice AAR. Doms 3. is one of the best [if not the best atm] MP fantasy TBS game. It has it's weaknesses however...

1. The singleplayer part is bad because of the weak AI.

2. Unbalanced races & spells.

3. Most of the units & spells are not used at all in MP games, because they are worthless basically.

2. + 3. > Enforces powergaming.

Which spells are more useful and which ones are less useful, and how powerful are you allowed to get on simply a Demo?

I've played the demo, never could get into it because of the graphics (or was it the interface?). I love Master of Magic for goodness sake so I know it can't be graphics alone that turned me off from it. But I have to say, this makes me want to give it another shot. I think its because I never knew you could set up your troops before the battle, and have your pretender forge items and the like. I know Elemental isn't going the way of this game, with the complexity and all, but I think it would be neat to make an in depth mod with the graphics of Elemental and the gameplay of Dominions. AARs for me always make the game sound more interesting than it really is to play though I have no clue why. Only games I can't say that about are MoM and X-com.

Oh, the graphics are fine for me ... the interface is initially confusing however.

The interface is doubly confusing (for me) on the Demo because im not sure what I CAN and CANNOT get in the Demo vs the Real game, so its HARDER to find those features that im missing out in case im assuming (eh, guess its only in the main game). Therefore, I would like some help as to what all is possible in the Demo

It took me an hour or so but I went through it. It's pretty good. I picked up a copy of Dom3 a while ago but I haven't had the time to play it so this helped a lot. Now I have some idea of what I'm jumping into.

Dom3 has it's positives, but it also has some MAJOR weaknesses.

It is a powergamers delight, and if you want to just fiddle around in SP then you may or may not care, but as soon as you jump into the MP arena it becomes overly clear that some nations simply cannot compete, and it's near impossible to stop the run away once he starts running away.

The interface is also terrible for the amount of micro you will wind up doing if you want to remain competative in the mid to late game.

I played it for a couple years and then burned out on it, so you can clearly get your money's worth, and the way it handles various game elements are worthy to be seen, but ultimately I think it just gets stale, the same overpowered tactics are what the winners resort to, and the underdogs have very little chance to compete.

Elemental will definately be more Master of Magic than Dominions 3 in gameplay terms. Dominions 3 is one of those games that you can either get into in which case you love it, or you just won't get it. In the AAR I found that it was too wordy to follow all his troop movements from around turn 30, what it is good for is to see his use of summons and forged items. Also mercenaries, I always forget them when I play.

I don't like micromanagement games, for me my greatest friend in Dom 3 is the "n" key. It scrolls through all commanders who are doing nothing much. If you don't use this its too easy in the mid-late game to forget about commanders.

I think these are true, but you can have a good time against the AI while learning so the single player game is not absolutely useless. The races are unbalanced (ie early age good monkeys "Malaka" vs early age heavily armoured volcano people "Abyssinia". Unless Malaka gets "fire arrows" they are at a big disadvantage. Also Joton PD rocks!) but thats both flavor and fun.

I'm very interested in Elemental long term. I suspect I'll try and mod something like the strange and unique races like Dom 3, which most I can recognise from world mythology. Hey, how about a sea race in Elemental?

Jotun PD rocks?

Have they upgraded them in a newer patch, because my recollection was that Jotun PD sucked, horribly due to low morale.  And I don't think they had hurlers either... so no pun

It was the interface for me. Well, that plus the buzz that the game was built for MP and I prefer solo sandboxes (with legos, modeling clay, and maybe the occasional Micronaut).

Edit: Should also say that I wanted to get into Dom 3 on account of other buzz like the OP here and the AAR it mentions. Lots of the Dom 3-inspired talk around here suits my tastes very well.

Yea, I agree here completely. The game seems like something I would really be interested in. With the complexity and immersion possibilities I see I think I would really enjoy it. However, I have to agree with what has been said by many here so far: the demo doesn't help to show you how to do things, so you can't see how deep and rich it really is. They could have done a better job with the demo imo.

The frost giants? Big guys? I think 1 for 1 they are top quality PD.

There are alot of great ideas in Dom 3, but I won't argue that it lacks something in the implementation. I didn't like it the first time I played it, I hated the combat and the interface was clunky. After a lengthy uninstall I tried it again and something just clicked.

Hmmm.

Jotun Militia which you get, or maybe javileneers after 20, but neither are really very good because they rout far too easilly.  They are better than monkeys, but they really are not that good.  Certainly you can buy a point or two, but more than that is just wasted gold, as practically any ranged nation is going to rout them quickly.

They are easilly surrounded due to their size, they don't have a particularly high attackvalue, and after they start fatigueing (which happens fast for them if I recall) they start taking a point of damage here or there, face morale checks, and fail them since their morale is only 10 or so.

Fair enough.

What would you say is a noteworthy PD nation?

Oh, the AAR webpage is down..... Apparently that fairly common with the wiki.

Hey Michael, is that a plover on your avatar pic? U take that yourself?

Yes, thats a "Plover". Actually they are called "Masked Lapwings", from the the Lapwing family of birds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapwing

I'm just being picky, I called them plovers growing up and spent too many days harassing them so they would swoop us, oh the days...

No, I didn't take the pic myself, not for the lack of Lapwings in my neighbourhood. Just about every roundabout has their family of Lapwings, crazy birds.

Well it's been awhile since I played, but Abysia is a great PD nation.  I think Man is as well since they get long bows.  The monkeys all stink, the giants are mediocre to bad, and anything that is piles of militia is fairly crap.

If you get anything ranged (other than javelins) it's decent, but only in support of something else.  Caelean PD can be interesting as it flies, but that also means that it sometimes routs if it tries to jump on something tough.

The trick is to find what level of PD can repulse things like call of the wild or other lower level remote summons and stick with that.  Using PD to attempt to defeat actual armies is a waste of gold.

In response to this, I actually captured a Elemental AAR... unfortunately, I can't figure out how to convert the files and such.

You simply throw the pokeball on the ground, the Elemental AAR appears and they fight.

LOL

And btw, the DOM3 wiki seems to constantly go down... anyone else experience this? I cant even finish that aar its soo bad

For me its been down for a couple of days now. I am up to update 57 and am eager to finish it.

Ulm, midddle age.

Crossbowmen and armored infantry. If you optimize your kingdom to get much money, spend it on a few tens of PD (with a good priest and a mage) and it can defeat even some impressive enemy armies.

What type is a Elemental AAR? Grass? Fire?

hehe...poor little things, we used to have them nest on the property but the poor buggers lay their eggs on the ground. Hard to believe they've endured here with all the foxes we have.