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.

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.

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.

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. 

Hard to make =/= good

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.

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).

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.

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. )

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