This was a fascintating argument between yall. I would love to chime in, but I haven't really played too much D3.

I must say that some of the artwork in D3 is decent, but the sprites used for battles are simply atrocius. As you aren't forced to watch the battles that's fine, but for $50 I would expect just a little more effort on the graphical front.

Since I have nothing to add on the gameplay elements of D3, I do feel the need to comment on this as it somewhat offends me. Assuming that a Stardock game will have bad AI from the start just shows you haven't played Stardock games for very long. If Stardock is good at anything it is having a more than passable AI from the start. GalCiv is after all a single player experience.

That and the beta stage for Elemental is hella long. Stardock doesn't do normal betas, they do insanely long betas.

Moving on.

I actually signed up to these forums just so I could respond to this thread

I'm a huge fan of Dominions 3, and would highly encourage anyone that's interested in Elemental to give Dominions 3 a shot. It's probably the most unique, in depth, and entertaining turn based strategy game I've ever played. Not only that, but the game is fast paced - you usually enter your first battle within one or two turns, and there are endless ways to play the games in terms of military playstyle, magical playstyle, and hero creation.

The graphics look like crap, and the learning curve is huge, but do yourself a favor and play it. Furthermore, I truly hope that Frogboy and the other devs behind Elemental have played Dominions 3, and will take a few pages out of that game's book to make Elemental that much better.

To me Dom3 is the best MP TBS game I ever played. Talking about the MP aspect of the game based on what it looks like in SP is a waste of time. Obviously, the poor interface won't change, but as far as strategy is concerned, it's huge. The game is so rich that the ai just can't cope with all the possible strategies.

About the AI: Brad has coded a great ai in Galciv. However, if you look at what you can actually do in Galciv, you'll realise your tactical options are zero: Number of ships ans strength, which is wuite weak. Even in GC2 the rock-paper-scissors system is simplistic and laughable compared to Dom3's richness. I think that Elemental will likely have about a hundredth of the richness of Dominions in terms of spell flavour and statistics, just in order to be able to code a decent ai for it. A single thing like Communion Slaves/Masters for instance leads itself to tons of possibilites that are hard to counter. If Elemental offers a wide choice of spells, it's very likely that it will fail to make good use fo them on the tactical battlefield.

So I say Elemental will likely be much simpler than Dom3 in order to have a good ai. For this reason, it's probably going to be better for MP and worse for SP.

Regarding the orders given at the beginning of the battle and not during it, I think it's an excellent idea. RPG-wise, at these times, you could do little but prepare a battle plan and hope everything went smoothly. You could command your reserve and send it at a place and time you chose, but that's about all you could do. Giving the ability to fight the tactical battles looks nice but it's probably the thing I hated most in MoM and MoO: It led to silly battles where you bet the crap out of the ai where any human would have smashed you down easily. Stuff like running in circles around the battlefield for 50 turns after you shot your eight arrows because that was the only way and a 100% effective one, to keep your hero alive and eventually take a city single-handed in a few turns. You can also think of efficient use of black hole generators and warp dissipators in MoO.

And I'd like to say Dom3 is not a 4X too. There's little or no exploration in this game (scouting? come on, you know the map already, and black candles soon tell you where your opponents are). You have zero action to do to actually exploit the land. It's a wargame, period.

Again, I will preface by saying I have a very limited experience of D3. In regard to the simplicity in the battles in GalCiv, well, that's perhaps my least favorite part of the game, but D3 is a war game while GalCiv is a 4x game, so I would hope D3 has better war related options and AI.

As for Elemental, I have faith in Brad. The higher difficulties in GalCiv show that the AI is capable of exploiting weaknesses and building on strengths. Is it like playing a human? Not in the least, but does the AI in D3 even matter? Everyone hails it as a MP experience and in 99% of cases MP is always better than SP, which will probably be true of Elemental.

It's all in how you play the game, brother. Some people play Wii Sports sitting on a couch and flick their wrist. The idea isn't to just "beat" Wii Sports, but to play. To be fair, the battles in MoM were easier to cheat through than a Total War game (though running around the map works there too, if you leave the timer on).

I don't know how deep the battle system will be in Elemental, but it probably won't stand up to the depth of D3. Why? Because from what I can tell and from what everyone seems to be saying is that D3 is super deep, but as I said before, it isn't a 4X game. So in Elemental the depth of a battle system will probably be lessened in order to flush out a diplomacy system. And I for one am glad. I'd rather have choices and depth than just depth, which is why (so far) I prefer Europa Universalis over D3.

*facepalm* Your last sentence was that D3 is a wargame. You can pretty much ignore everything I just said.

D3 requires a CD key...Elemental will not. D3 is a good game but in the end, the CD key sucks. I Lost mine after 2 years and now have to purchase game again. Sorry but I purchased it once already thank you. That fact alone makes it a poor purchase in my book.

Yeah, but Elemental will require online activation, and likely through Impulse, which, currently, is a piece of software I would rather not talk about in order to remain polite. They both need copy protection, period.

Plus if you purchased D3 directly from Shrapnel, I'm pretty sure they could find you in their database and send you a new code.

The AI in D3 is capable of doing some stuff if you give it bonuses of the same kind it got in GC: Boosts. It can make solo play challenging and fun, although you'd better play a crowded map with many powerful ai's.

Now MP can be better than SP, but it's not always the case and I wouldn't say it's 99%, far from it. For instance, to me, Civ IV is a great SP game and a very bad MP one. In part because it's too long to play MP, in part because the simultaneous turns are poorly implemented, in part because in MP it reverts to a wargame too.

I thought Stardock games only need activation for updates.

Yeah, 99% was just a tad bit high. Some games have their design going against them (the aforementioned Civ) and Elemental may in the end be one of them, but I surely hope not. Anyway, I now stand at 95%.

Yeah, thats what I thought.  They have me in their records alright but they said I had to purchase a new manual that has a new CD key.  The money is not the deal...it's the fact they have a record of my purchase and still require me to purchase something again.  Anyway, I do not want to hijack the thread. 

Haven't read through all these posts nor do I care to change anyone's opinions.  I just want add my two centavos and say Dom3 is my favorite PC game of all time and I have played it solidly (close to every day) for over a year.  I don't play SP at all, but the MP game is amazing.  One way I use to assess a game is to look at the community to see how active it is and number of strategy guides, etc.  If you check out http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=38122  you will see the volume of material is amazing.  Price per hour of entertainment on Dom 3 for me makes the purchase price which initially seemed high, almost free when you allocate it over time played.  And I am not a shill, I am on the Shrapnel Forums.

Looking forward to see how Elemental evolves as well as I love the fantasy warfare genre.

Also from Shrapnel forums (Omni)

I Second DC.   The over 100 dollars of Stardock software I have purchased NEVER gets played, while I'm still playing Dominions 3 after years.  The reason is that it is truly in-depth strategy.  What this means for most games is layers and layers and layers of tedious _detail_.  Dominions 3 is actually minimalistic on the detail; it is true, like TRUE, TRUE FUCKING DEPTH; not just heaping on of more superfluity.

Come play and get humiliated for two years before you even begin to learn how to think about grasping the game and you will understand.  Add to that the real diversity represented in the nations, the subtle ceasuras that explode into global differences between nations.  After the years I've played I still only consider myself to be able to effectively play about five of the nations (out of 60!).  The richness of play is undescrible; arbitrarly minor differences within a game often end up determining who wins.

-Omni

PS. if you don't appreciate the graphics of Dominions you've never tried your hand at sprite art; KO's work is craftsmanship, most graphics, no matter how impressive, are just uninspired dross made to distract the attention of Ritalin-addled zombies.

Hard to make =/= good

no but the personal level detail that good sprite art represents is.  that's what dominions has that you've never seen in a game; personal level detail.  most people are so force fed with commercialized crap that they don't even know what that means anymore.  They're just drug-addicted monkeys that rush to the newest most improved soulless shiney series of blinking lights that gets waved in their face like some giant corporate cock that they can't wait to swallow whole.

Which still doesn't make their sprites good.

It's not important but since you seem the have to need the get all aggro about it, well, the art in Dominions 3 sucks. There exists good sprite art (nowadays mostly from Japanese devs and on handhelds) and the one in Dominions 3 aren't one of them.

Oh and whoever had the idea to place sprites in such an uninspired 3d enviroment, hadn't much luck with the execution. We don't expect high-def render art, but a fitting and coherent art style is something one can expect, even from an indie dev.

Btw. insulting StarDock fans of being graphic whores is a bit... silly, isn't it?

It wasn't directed at Stardock's fans, it was directed at "most people" that "are so force fed with commercialized crap that they don't even know what that (personal level detail) means anymore".

The vast, vocal, majority that are regulars on these forums seem to have a very good grasp on the differences between graphics, art, and beauty. But it wasn't addressed to them.

Edit: And Dom3's sprites are great, although the object of "beauty" is entirely subjective. I, just like you seem to do, tend to prefer the stylistic Jap/Older Handhelds style, but it doesn't stop me from appreciating the amount of detail that are squeezed in on a 60x60px surface.

Sprites of dom3 aren't so ugly, but they are far from great. The real bad art choice is to draw sprites on a 3D map. they should have been consistent : or eveything 3D. Or everything 2D. They could have made some "top" camera like in most wargames, and the 2D sprites would have fit well( because there's no smiluation of height so who needs the z axis?)

Yes, scouting is very improtant, but it's not eXploration like trying to know the landscape while avoiding barbarians or animals or enemies. If I remember correctly, the original Civ is a 4X but has no scouting option (invisible units - even diplomats were visible).

Mens rea much?

I'd say that's somewhat like putting a red arrow somewhere on the globe and say "Here be dragons", and then go in guns ablazing; "We don't need no stinking scouting!"

But no, Dom3 definately isn't a 4x game.

Fuck, why is anyone still even arguing over the graphics? It's such a minor point, graphical quality is so unimportant in a game that's fun to play. If you think D3's gameplay is good, you shouldn't give a damn how it looks, let alone how other people think it looks, unless you're a shallow braindead graphics whore yourself (just one who happens to have a hard-on for SPRITES instead of LENS FLARE)

I devoted 2 sentences to pointing out that they suck in my original post, and later a broad statement (Hard to make =/= good), which applies to much more than just graphics, and you're actually arguing the point, when the real problems I was harping on were gameplay related.

Nah, the problem is not the graphics but that some people seem to think insulting large groups of gamers is something good.

And I've got an aversion to such rude behaviour. But anyway, that's offtopic.

I didn't not like Dominions because of the graphics (hey, I play Dwarf Fortress ) but because of its interface and gameplay mechanics. (And the AI.)

Lol.

(My Lol-response was about as good as yours. In other words, worth nothing. )

Gameplay and graphics are related. It's hard to know what to do to improve the battle skills in dom3 because it's hard to understand what's happening. When you get used to the graphics, lots of gameplay issues vanishes (you can even get acustomed to the weird UI).

Yes, it's an independent game.

Yes, it's made by a team of 2-1 programmer, and one guy who makes all the content,including the graphics-and occasional help from a few of their friends. And they both do it in their spare time, while holding down jobs.

Yes, the game itself will run quite well on a 10 year old computer. I seriously doubt Elemental will, when it comes out.

Those things aren't necessarily bad things, when you consider that most of the games out there are made by teams of dozens of people, for millions of dollars, and you're really lucky if you get 30 hours of entertainment value from them. 50$ for a game is pretty laughable when you consider most games that cost 50$, and then go down to 40, 30, 20, 10, you'll play a handful of times and then forget about. Isn't that the way it seems to work? I've played Dwarf Fortress, for free, for far longer than I have most of my Playstation 2 games, combined. And I've played Dominions for far longer than I have Dwarf Fortress.

As far as graphics go, first of all we're talking about a game with several *thousand* different kinds of units. I think the game shipped with 1500+, but the developers have added atleast 5 entire factions/nations since then, and updated a bunch more. You try hand-drawing 1500 sprites, all by yourself (it's one guy), and let's see how your quality control is.

Second of all, the graphics, considering that it's ONE GUY drawing thousands of them, are surprisingly good, overall. I guess it's all the practice...Some are great, some are iffy, but all of them work, and if you don't like them, you actually have the option to quickly and easily draw your own versions. You can make your own units, your own nations, your own pretenders, spells, magic sites, maps, etc. If you think you can do better than that busy man from Sweden, you have that option.

As far as Ermor goes, forget about Ermor. Every single nation, out of 60, is unique. Every single one has a different look, a different feel, and several different ways to play it. Some of them even have more than one strategy guide written about them. And when you make your own nation, you can make it unlike anything else in the game, too, because Dominions has that kind of depth and that level of options. There are user-made nations based on superheroes, on Warhammer factions, on science fiction, on steampunk, on historical empires, on other computer games, on graphic novels (including '300'), on Lord of the Rings (and Dominions is anything *but* schlock-fantasy, it's a lot more mythology than Tolkien's elves and orcs-for that matter, there *aren't* any orcs, very few elves and dwarves, and the elves and dwarves in the game are there as facets of Norse Myth.).

Hell, forget about the 60 nations the game comes with, most of the user-made nations are unique and interesting and fun to play. A few of *them* even have strategy guides written about them.  

If you ever wanted to make your own faction in a turn-based game, and control practically every aspect of it, Dominions is your game.

Yes, it's designed more to be played socially, as a multi-player game, but we're talking a game where there are just too many options for the computer to realistically fully handle, even if it had the best AI programmers in the world working on it. As a player, I'd rather have more ways of playing, and more choices, and more freedom, than I would a humiliating ass-beating by a suped-up calculator. If I'm going to lose a really epic strategy game (and yes, Dominions is epic, and yes, you will lose a lot at first in multi-player), I'd rather lose to another human being.

And, personally, I *like* the single-player experience. I'm not too proud for it. Not for the challenge, I admit, but for the opportunity to test-drive the incredible, unfathomable diversity Dominions has to offer. There's really nothing like it. You can get lost in it.

Yes, there are things that aren't optimal. The user-interface is clunky, I admit, and the battlefield AI could certainly be better, the music-although it is very good-there isn't a lot of it, and the sounds aren't a whole lot better than what you'd expect from an Atari 2600, but a *lot* of things about the game that could be improved are *being* improved by people like me, the customers, who put our own time and effort into making the game better, and who enjoy the game enough that doing so is a relative pleasure. And-incase you haven't picked up on it yet-we're *loyal* to the game. How many games can you name that you'll spend a lot of your spare time promoting, for free? How many people do you know well enough on another game forum to know that they'd promote it, too?

The forum is friendly, active, and usually very polite, and the mod community is extremely active. People enjoy the game. They enjoy playing it, discussing it, and adding to it, because you can do more with it than with any other game around. Coding mods is a straightforward process, and you can make graphics for the game in Windows Paint, if you don't have anything else. And some of the graphics that the modders have made are absolutely beautiful. As good as anything that can be done with the medium.  

I'd love if the guy who made the AI for GalCiv made an AI for Dominions, and I'd love if Toady from Dwarf Fortress went to work on it, and maybe Aaron Hall from Malfador Machinations, too. They all make great strategy games that don't depend on showy graphics, but Dominions is unique, and comparing it to another turn-based strategy game that hasn't even come out yet is like comparing World of Warcraft as it is today, to a massive multi-player that hasn't even come out yet. It's got more, and more, and more, and more, than anything else out there. There's just too much content, too many layers, and too many people involved in continuously expanding it, to seriously talk down to it, until you've actually taken the time and effort to know what you're talking about. Another game might get better, someday, after it's been out for a while and worked over by a good community for a year or two, but I don't realistically expect to pay the 50$ I spent on Dom3 and get so much more than my money's worth again, any time soon.

Certainly, Dominions isn't for everyone-I won't pretend it is-but for those that try it and play it and enjoy it, Dominions has come closer to having everything than anything else out there. It's raised the bar way higher than it's graphics, user-interface, or AI problems would otherwise indicate.

~7es/HBadger

I have played dominions I, II and III. All are great games if what you're looking for are depth, replayability and charm. Yes, charm, the game has all those little touches and details that make it unique. The game also have a very friendly and lively MP community.
Now, since these are exactly the things I look for in a game I do think dominions III is an awesome game.
Those are here that are not familiar with it should definetly check out its demo.

(But hey HBadger said it much better )

Also, I'm not sure there's much point in comparing to a game that still doesn't exist and that doesn't even have a final feature list.