This thread convinced me to return to DE after a year hiatus and these videos were a great refresher.
One nice surprise is that the in game wiki appears complete.
This video got me to (re) purchase the game after bouncing off it during the sale, but I’m still not really convinced it’s a game for me. For one thing, selected units “blinking” is so stupid - just give them a nice outline or something? Aggravating. It may never be something I did but I will say this - I love the game exists, I love the passion people speak about it, and I want to support strategy games like this so I did pick it back up. I’ll try to find some beginning tips/tutorial type stuff, launching the game and picking new game options is an intimidating way to dive in, I suspect.
The blinking allows you to see what terrain the unit is on. My biggest gripe with the game may be just some of it clunkiness.
@KevinC - DE is much less clunky than D5. Late game D5 is so tedious to do a turn. They’ve improved on it with every generation, but it is still painful. I still prefer D5’s scope, but they are so different in gameplay that they provide a fairly different experience.
DE is inspired by Master of Magic. It is MoM on steroids, super crunchy, lots of info displayed via loads of tool tips. And it is very stable. Though it lacks the graphical charm, IMHO although I consider it more charming than Dominions.
Compare Brax from MoM
To my lesser hero Migr. I can equip Migr with magical items and healing potions. And you will notice that this is page one of three pages of stats. Deep dive.
Another thing I appreciate about DE is that you can make your best units “core” units and if they die in combat you can summon them back with a spell. You have a limited number of core units based on souls taken and soul gems created, but I like being able to bring back my best units and keep leveling them up.
Also summoned units can level up, too. Baby Ice Dragons grow up in the most delightful ways.
Thanks that was actually very worthwhile, esp for someone like me who is way too lazy usually to delve into that stuff.
Having read this thread, some of the Steam forum stuff & watched a few videos, it’s making a lot more sense, at least at the intro level.
Double rightclick to bring up the unit stats in combat…duh.
I like the Dominions games but SE and Dominions really are not that similar. The bones of DE is MoM with some changes and a lot of extra stuff added. But, you still have city founding and city building. You have deep tactical combat. You have spell schools, spell research, heroes with equipment, units with equipment that level up. Basically if you liked MoM you should like this if you stick around long enough to learn the ropes and how it differs from that game. Dominions is not really that similar to this at all.
I played the game quite a bit more than a year ago, and have picked it up again this past week.
The upside potential of the game is better than any AAA strategy game I know of, WAY beyond what Master of Magic ever was. An incredible array of options and decisions, and they matter. Battles are interesting, city development is interesting, magic system is interesting, items are interesting. Level ups are excellent. Terrain really matters. And so on. Graphics are not a plus, but they do not bother me a bit.
However, the documentation and interface drive me batshit crazy. In many ways, this reminds me of OOTP Baseball in this regard. Experienced players just know where things, multiple levels down in the interface. They know where things are defined or explained. But very little is easily accessible when you start out.
Petty example: You need both resources and production to build anything – units or structures. For the newbie, this is not particularly clear, but okay, you figure that out. Then you go into any given city and see that there is a nice section at the bottom of a city’s first page, spelling out that city’s production and resource harvest… But gotcha! Resource production isn’t necessarily the limiting factor – you need to be looking at “stored resources” which is “conveniently” on a different page.
On the same page, you can see that your city is giving you x% magic research and x%civic research. Hmmm, x% of what number?
Go into your building queue and see that you can construct buildings for trade goods, or to increase taxes. The marketplace gives you 20 trade goods, which you quickly come to understand means 20 gold. Fine. But it also increases gold from food or resources sold by 5%. How do you figure out the numerical value of that? Meanwhile, the tax office would increase taxes by 10%. 10% of what? How the heck is a player supposed to decide whether buildings like the marketplace or buildings like the tax office help more?
If you wish to play the game competitively, expect to spend a great deal of time tracking down lots and lots of these sorts of things.
The core problem is that the game has two competing methods of sharing information, neither of which is all that efficient:
The F1 key brings up a Help Manual. There is a somewhat eccentric list of topics to click, covering some things, but leaving out many others. Some of the other stuff is unsorted, under “tips” and “frequently asked questions.” But none of this is searchable… Meanwhile, some other things are very thoroughly explained through a right click. But lots of things are not. :) Or are explained in unexpected places.
Even stuff like deciding what size map to use with how may AI opponents… you are on your own, and can easily devote many hours to a game, only to find out that this initial decision has stunted gameplay seriously.
Maybe someday he will put out a release version that is user friendly, but honestly, I’ll believe it when I see it. I think he’s going to keep making systems deeper and more interesting, but, like Markus at OOTP, really hasn’t a clue when it comes to usability. Before you buy you want to decide if “deep but all over the place” is your thing.
Well, I have played Dwarf Fortress…
One thing I can’t figure is how to use a healing potion. Is it possible to do so in combat?
You’re supposed to drink them.
(this is not a real answer :P)
I’m so tempted by the idea of MoM on steriods but I’m a bit worried that I’ll find it impenetrable and just get frustrated by it. Choices, choices…
I will echo this.
Some things are still opaque to me, like what exactly is “meditation” and how does it work? I think it is essentially world mana and battle mana is for combat but that meditation acts as a throttle. Yep, no idea.
And the resources/production mechanic needs to be made more transparent.
The gist is if you can put up with the obtuseness of the game, there is a very good game to be had. But it shouldn’t have to feel like so much work.
Yes, the mechanic is mixed in with the spells.
Oh, and I just noticed your flicker. Excellent!
Yeah, it has a couple uses. 1) It is what is used to cast world spells, but 2) It is also used to refresh battle mana – so if I use all 40 of my battle mana this turn, it only refreshes all the way to 40 for next turn if I have 40 meditation… which makes a pretty good example of the complexity of the game, for any fence sitters.
Yeah, meditation is essentially the size of your mana tank. That’s why I usually take the ‘meditater’ deity perk at startup.
We really need a flow chart or mindmap showing the interrelation all of these sorts of things.
Can you use a healing potion outside of combat? I don’t see a way to do so.
The file help_manual.txt in your install folder contains (I’m pretty sure) all the same language and is searchable, fwiw. Not a pretty manual, but at least it can be searched.
Are you referring to the Japanese wiki or something else?
I haven’t played this for a while but my main issue was that I didn’t much like the tactical battle maps. They were too big and
Took too long with a very limited feeling set of choices. But I never played a game all the way to the end. Do the battles get good at some point?
Thank you! I will be looking for that. Searchable is much more important than pretty!
You can set the size of battle maps in your preferences.
I have taken it way down, and dungeon battles are pretty ideal now. Surface battle maps are still a bit big, but they have come a long way in differentiating units, so it would affect balance to make them any smaller. (Fighting certain ranged or mobile – or ranged and mobile – units on a hilly or forested map can be extremely difficult with very high quality melee units, for example.)
Does it seem like the AI plays by the rules, or if it doesn’t it is discreet about it?