The Gaming Den

Oh hi.

Yes Elemental :War On Magic IS in fact a Video Game. I may have the name ever so slightly wrong, but if so it is most certainly for some sort of reason... hmm...

But anyway this game due to it's insanity and it's relation to RPGs deserves it's very own thread and not just a brief appendix after a discussion that has devolved so badly that people are discussing League Of Incredibly Poor Optimizers.

Here is a quick Elemental : War On Magic FAQ.


Q: What of the what now?
Elemental is the latest game from obscure software publisher "Star Dock".


Q: What's a Star Dock?
Star Dock is an obscure niche software publisher on the internets, it has a history of basically two things.

1) Actually rather good DRM policy. I mean Star Dock basically does what Steam does, but without the DRM, and also without the RAW MALEVOLENT EVIL

2) Releasing moderately shitty niche games. Hello the incredible tedium of Galactic Civilizations (a MoO clone that can basically be described as "falling flat" in almost every respect) and to Sins Of A Solar Empire (The longest slowest paced multi hour space "RTS" you will ever play through to the bitter end of after it is decided by an insignificant tipping point that occurs five minutes in to the four plus hour game).

They are also noted for releasing (but not writing) Demigod (a game that was both brilliant and horrible at the same time, and noted for it's SPECTACULAR failure of a release). And for supposedly providing rather reasonable patching support for their products, eventually.


Q: Back up a bit, so what is Elemental and why do we care again?
Elemental is the big new "4X4" fantasy turn based strategy game. You know, the one TBS that isn't Civilization.

It is billed as the new Master Of Magic. It is a successor to games such as Age Of Wonders.

So hey you have turn based strategy, you build cities, you train armies, you run heroes around on quests, you cast shitty generic elemental magic spells on things, you know, basically D&D vs Civilization in a fight to the death to see which game concept smothers the other in a blanket of flavorless generic custard.

So all in all that sounds like a bit of fun. And very relevant to the local obsessions.


Q: Sounds Cool! Can you sell it to me?
Well, not if you are in Australia. Of course. You can't buy it here, yet, and possibly EVER.

And instead of addressing certain... pressing issues... Star Dock has abandoned all pretense of its "Gamers Bill Of Rights" and taken the time to somehow remotely disable pirated copies so...

Yeah if you AREN'T in Australia however lets talk about some of the selling points that Star Dock pushed.

1) Randomly generated worlds, customizable factions and leaders, never the same game twice baby, you know the drill, everyone ever has promised you this one before, but this time for sure baby!

2) Super duper magic and a deeply adaptive changeable world. Make volcanoes out of mole hills, sink continents into the sea, etc... Take all the super duper magic of Age Of Wonders and then like, DO MORE OF IT.

3) Map builders, modding tools, high customizability etc...

4) No DRM! LAN Play! All the nice things everyone else says PC gamers don't deserve to pay more than console gamers for.

Sounds good hey!


Q : OK I'm buying it then, that's a good decision right?
WRONG!

See Star Dock managed a screwed release of a REALLY buggy product.

The good news is that about 3 patches in pretty much as many days later, the worst bugs are gone. I mean sure half the stated mechanics of the game don't actually function as they say they do and you have to take every promise of a "+30% to Yo Momma Income" with a pretty hefty grain of salt, but the game kinda works.

But this thing is easily six months to a year away IF EVER from becoming a game I could recommend as a purchasable playable product for it's genre.

See they game just plain does not deliver on promises, or on playability.

Lets see...

1) Every Game is Different
It took them two patches to even have customizable factions, some patches REMOVED options from the customizable faction leaders (which were already A) incapable of selecting some options in the game and B) Not able to choose from much of anything).

There is not apparently an ACTUAL random map generator. There are just a certain number of maps the game knows that it randomly selects from. Well. Actually, the map editor has a random map generator (a crappy one) but the GAME doesn't use it...

Quests for heroes are so limited you will perform the same three quests again and again IN THE SAME GAME EVEN!

Factions are and leaders are largely identical, units are boring and similar and all basically "drab human in drab clothing and chunky ugly armor of your choice who hits things with a blunt stick of your choice". So there is basically NO variety in armies, factions, or leaders.

City construction is utterly un-strategic in nature, entirely bland, and you end up building the same five buildings over and over in every city forever because hell, WHY NOT? So no variety THERE.

I mean, this game does not even incorporate random events.

Even the monsters in the wilderness spawn based on well nigh compulsory and railroaded research tree events!

Ever game of this game is MORE the same than pretty much any other game that ever made promises about variety, content generation and re playability.

2) Super Duper Magic
OK, you like magic? You want guys who cast spells? Then there is LESS reason to play this than the MUCH older most recent title in say, the Age Of Wonders series.

OK so some land raising/lowering spells EXIST, should you ever make it through some serious playability issues into late game when the ability to raise or lower the odd individual tile or some crap. I saw them, I swear, I didn't research them because it's far too costly to bother and by then in any game you just don't give a shit anymore, I suspect them of having short range and massive cost, and hell I need to save my mana to cast level 0 flame bolts.

And YES I DO need to save my mana to cast god damn level zero flame bolts, those suckers randomly kill things (or do nothing) pretty much into late game, cost 2 mana and you only get ONE mana back per turn! (and only have like maybe 20 tops). They are often more cost effective than big burst fireball type spells which typically do about the same Zero to 5 damage and also happen to cost 5 turns worth of mana.

Really I mean you just don't get mana, the only spells you are likely to research or cast any time soon are either puny pewpew spells or ludicrously powerful "this is a ticket redeemable for one and only one small poorly drawn rockmonster/perfectly normal bear more powerful than the entire armed forces of your own and everyone elses kingdoms at this point in the game".

AND if that weren't enough you don't even get wizards. Yes that's right NO WIZARDS. Your leader is a wizard THAT IS YOUR WIZARD.

You CAN cast a spell that turns your other employees into wizards... but it only gives them like THREE mana. and it costs you, PERMANENTLY three of YOUR mana. Reasonably you could level up your mana with champ level ups to make up for it and ultimately get ONE slightly gimped leader wizard and up to maybe TWO heavily gimped "half a wizards" in an insanely long game.

Oh yeah and spells don't even work well. Remember how everything does like zero to 5 damage or something, well that's preeettty much the entirety of the magic system. FOREVER. I mean they are supposed to, among other things, power up with the more of a rare resource you control that cost a pile of research and money to "activate". But that mechanic apparently IS A LIE and doesn't actually happen in practice at all.

Well hey at least you have happy time funky monsters right? Well... not so much.

1) They patched out the monster conjuring options from leaders just like the other day. They were clearly too good for a game about drab poorly modeled peasants hitting each other with a selection of uninteresting blunt sticks.

2) You got an exciting selection of super dooper magical monsters to summon... like Bear, Black Guy, Black Guy with a Spear, and only EVENTUALLY such wonders as... Hunch Back Midget Black Guy, Rock Man, Blue Rock Man, Red Rock Man, Other Blue Rock Man, etc...

3) You can, eventually, assuming you waste your time on really sub par and expensive research options, recruit things in your cities that aren't drab human peasants with spears. You can recruit such exciting things as... Spider and Sorta Arab Guy, and Sorta Arab Guy With a Scimitar and even Sorta Arab Guy with the most laughably useless psychic powers you could imagine (no really, like right now, in his "fixed" version he can like totally cast a spell that like trades 2 movement and some mana for... 2 movement!). THere is some sort of dragon related tech at the top of this but tech research is partially randomized and the odds of ever GETTING that tech and still caring about it are slimmer than the odds that the tech does anything even close to letting you recruit a dragon (I betting you get to recruit a mildly lizard like sorta Asian looking guy, possibly with a blunt wooden spear, cross your fingers and wish hard for the spear everyone!).

BUT even when you can for instance recruit Spider or Black Guy or Sorta Arab Guy, THOSE guys come with FIXED equipment options, and unlike the peasants CAN'T select "blunt stick of everything I attack is either missed or dead" and "drab armour of fairly ridiculous, but functionally useless due to crappy mechanical resolution defense stats".

4) The most powerful thing in the world is "stacked" units of drab peasants in drab armour with drab blunt sticks (or maybe sticks that launch smaller slightly less blunt arrow like sticks). See because instead of buying ONE peasant you can buy, three, or like a billion or something, and they become ONE unit on the field and just add all their stats and shit together directly!. I mean you have to BUY them like that because like no one in the world has ever apparently figured out how to repackage separately purchased peasants into groups larger than one...

Wait... I was doing another numbered list of points... yeah...

3) Mods and Map Builders and Shit
Well... actually the game is modable and has a map maker and some other stuff and that's kinda cool.

A pity they were supposed to be selling an actual GAME here.

Also a pity the map builder, (the only really important and usable part at this stage) is in fact significantly LESS stable and more bug ridden than the bug ridden game itself. I mean you can't regen your base map before editing it more than like TWICE without stalling your entire PC.

A pity also that the game is so terrible no one will want to work with it. The forums for the game had some suckers all eager to go with their own little sub forums on their little dragon lance mods and bullshit, and hey, you can hear the crickets and tumble weed in THOSE post free environments right now...

The only particularly active mods are one or two attempts to fix some of the most glaring deficiencies in the game. Like a mod that changes all the text on those buildings that are supposed grant an "improved 250% Yo Momma bonus" so they more accurately state "grant +3 Yo Mommas instead of +2". or the mod that lets you buy magic pew pew sticks for your lonely wizard. Because "sooper dooper magic game" did not think that MAYBE you might like your wizard to have a magic pew pew stick or magic wizard dress instead of say, you know, a blunt club or a shitty short bow and a suit of insanely chunky looking "light" plate mail or something.

4) LAN gaming! Multiplayer! NO DRM
The company that actually founded and RUNS a "Gamers Bill Of Rights" site... basically just lied outright about this one.

This came to a moderate head a day or two before release when their spokes person posted an article on their site about "This Game has No DRM and how to use LAN play!"...

... an article in which he cheerfully described the online activation DRM the game would be using and how the game would not let you run LAN play and everyone would have to connect to the internet to play so called "LAN" games and would all have to do so with individually purchased and online activated copies of the game.

Oddly enough there was some surprise and hurt feelings on the part of Star Dock when potential purchasers took some rather significant offense at this turn of events.

As it stands right now online activation IS required, apparently shutting down pirated copies of the game is a BIGGER priority than I don't know, FIXING ANYTHING ONE OF A MILLION PROBLEMS, and better yet not only is "LAN play" a mere "maybe in the future" but even the actual promised online multiplayer mode... IS NOT THERE AT ALL, and while promised at an undisclosed "soon" time even then it is promised with the proviso that it won't include certain single player features, like you know, ANY ACTUAL TACTICAL BATTLES AT ALL.


Q: Are you happy now, are you done?
HELL NO dear hypothetical questioner.

There is so much wrong with this game I couldn't even BEGIN to cover it all. I mean they didn't just fail on their big promises. They failed on really basic shit everyone just assumed they would provide. Then they made up some more shit no one thought of and no one promised, and then they failed on that too.

Tactical Battles
Take those tactical battles (no really, take them, please) that WON'T be in multiplayer, once it turns up...

They are boring, they are unbalanced, they are crap. They are ruled over by mobs of peasants with blunt sticks. Champions/heroes/etc... are weak as kittens. Ranged combat is ludicrously good at lower levels, as are spells which you can usually spam enough of to wipe the entire enemy before they can even take an action. Until late game when rising HP and NO scaling in bows or spells leaves you with nothing but armies of peasants with the latest and greatest blunt stick. (And really it IS a blunt stick, the forums are full of "Warhammers are OP!" threads that depresses me, where are all the "Giant Volcanoes exploding out of everyone's armpits are OP" threads that a super dooper magic game SHOULD rightly be having?).

And if that weren' enough auto resolution is... insane! I don't know how many times my super dooper super wizard leader got auto resolve killed by a single bandit with 2 HP and a blunt stick. Often simply because the auto resolver gives far greater weight to whether you bothered to equip your monarch with a dull wooden club or not than it gives to whether or not your monarch can cast 3 spells every turn for 3 turns that each individually has about an 80% chance of killing the bandit, including during the 2 turns it takes him to walk over to hit you with his blunt wooden stick.

And while I'm here... I HATE THOSE BANDITS WITH 2 HP AND A BLUNT WOODEN STICK. The fuckers are EVERYWHERE. Even if you kill them all they will be RESPAWNED by late game technologies. And they taunt you! With a randomly selected taunt from a library of... TWO WHOLE TAUNTS.

But anyway on the "screwing up a feature no one even thought of until they screwed it" front... Hidden in the options is an "auto resolve threshold" slider, anything fight below the threshold auto resolves without asking you. It is by default set to "far beyond the level of monster that will fucking kill you in auto resolve". Which is unsuprising since about the lowest level (and often alarmingly enough also the highest level) monster in the game is a guy with blunt stick and as little as one or two HP.


Having Some Guy's Babies
You have a female monarch/leader. You didn't turn off the tutorial option you didn't realize was turned on because it isn't sufficiently educational to even inform you that you are "benefiting" from a tutorial.

The tutorial comes in the form of a male champion who appears at the beginning of turn two and joins you without asking for the usual modest fee.

You spend maybe one turn escorting that fucking noble's daughter/son to a place precisely to strategic moves from where you got that mission (one of a whopping oh, say 4 or so missions that are available at "level 1" quest sites).

You now have a reputation. You click on the button that makes Mr Tutorial No One Noticed fucking marry you.

He stays home in the capital. Because if he dies you can never get married or have babies ever again. And anyway you need a guy with a blunt stick standing on your capital to scare off the 2 HP dogs and the 2 HP bandits with blunt sticks. You go adventuring. You never ever actually meet.

Sooner or later you get told you had a kid. You give it a name.

Word on the street is EVENTUALLY this kid becomes a fancy new hero who works for you and who MIGHT even be a wizard. I have even heard some rather alarming figures thrown about, like "2895 Mana score" and so forth, which wouldn't surprise me since apparently one faction inexplicably regenerates 50x the normal mana per turn, due to an utterly unintended undocumented bug, and the game is so screwed no one even noticed that until like 5 minutes ago.

But that's just hearsay because it seems to take an amount of time measured in hundreds and hundreds of strategic turns for your child to grow up and start hitting things with a blunt wooden stick. So I haven't ever actually seen it happen because generally the game is over due to stupidly easy victory, quit in frustration due to bug/dreaded 2 HP auto resolve bandit attack, or outright crash/micro management/memory leak melt down.

But anyway, apparently young "ScrBlugNock" (oh look a crappy random fantasy name generator, how neat...) eventually DOES (maybe) grow up. At which point you can have exciting adventures with your 21 year old son, which is odd because I'm told that by then your monarch is apparently officially about 25.

Just doesn't even, why am I, who, what am... AAAAAARGH!
This game is just plain unplayable. From turn to turn bugs, repetitive events, a computer AI that is significantly less intelligent and sane than than your average cow dropping, pointless micro management, LACK of micro management in those few places you actually want the damn stuff, undocumented mechanics, inaccurately documented mechanics, tedium, drab boring graphics, almost no actual magic, limited monsters and hell more things than I can think of right now just makes this game a frustrating mess of "WHY CAN'T I EVEN SEEM TO PLAY THIS SHIT, HOW IS THIS EVEN A GAME AAAAAAAAH!".

Each game is either insanely easy as you over run an entire enemy empire with your level 2 monarch, one blunt stick and a single magical bear thus exponentially expanding your economy into infinite wealth territory by turn 20 or so, OR is a mess of micromanagement, frustration, spammed enemy cities and endless armies of 2 HP neutral bandits and enemy peasant with blunt stick stacked mobs that number their HP and damage in the realms of dozens or even hundreds.

On the plus side this will probably mean that my expectations for Civ 5 will drop so deep into the earth that I will rather like it on release. You know. Assuming that it holds together for a whole fifteen turns or more of "well at least I have some idea of what I want this drab peasant to hit with his blunt stick and why that is achieving something important for my civilization right now".

Anyway feel free to ask more exciting questions, because I will have to say it is REMARKABLE how this game managed to be so VERY crap in so many respects I mean you can basically point at a feature and bam, like 100 words of "how elemental screwed that feature right the fuck up" instantaneously appears from the ether.

I mean dare I say "Resources" good god the horrible vermine that could crawl out from under THAT rock, or "City Building" or "Navies" or "Flight".

Well. Actually. Flight's an easy one.

There isn't any.

The END!

You can download Heroes of Might and Magic from Good Old Games. No DRM.

Word.

Thanks for the excellent review. Too bad you (apparently) had to spend money on the game to write it.
Anyway, the questions are:
(1) What's its relation to RPGs? From what I gather, they just renamed missions to 'quests' and called it a roleplaying element.
(2) Why can't it be bought in Australia?
(3) When they say they put some "rich lore" into the game thanks to Random House what do they mean exactly (or even approximately)?

PhoneLobster wrote:You know, the one TBS that isn't Civilization.

Dominions 3?

CatharzGodfoot wrote:You can download Heroes of Might and Magic from Good Old Games. No DRM.

Get HoMM2. I bought it as part of 5's collector's edition and ended up playing it more than 5 even though it wouldn't run properly on my machine.

Starmaker wrote:

CatharzGodfoot wrote:You can download Heroes of Might and Magic from Good Old Games. No DRM.

Get HoMM2. I bought it as part of 5's collector's edition and ended up playing it more than 5 even though it wouldn't run properly on my machine.

Haven't tried 5, but 3 is a lot of fun. And most games from GOG will run fine on more recent operating systems (I swear I don't work for them!).

Well, Galactic Civilizations II is actually quite fun ( although not as much as MOO2 and it doesn't have multiplayer because the main developer has a stick up his ass about it being a single player game ), but so far I must agree with you about Elemental having turned out to be a huge sack of suck.

The story ("rich lore") has been charitably described as "A fanfic written by the Stardock CEO".

Again, that's the charitable description.

...And back I go to Master of Magic.
Again.

Starmaker wrote:Too bad you (apparently) had to spend money on the game to write it.

And yet somehow I have tried it in a country where it is not yet available, and happen to know things about how they are spending time and effort shutting down pirated copies while not fixing actual problems with the game for their paying customers.

It's like I'm magic.

(2) Why can't it be bought in Australia?

Why indeed? Well see Star Dock, they are a not the biggest burliest publisher around. Getting their product in the stores at all is an achievement.

Australia is also the "hey lets see how much we can screw them this week!" entertainment market.

Combined together that means that stardock products trickle into Australian retail stores late, unpredictably, with ludicrously high prices and in very small numbers.

Official word from star dock is that Elemental MIGHT be on Australian store shelves in September. MAYBE.

Meanwhile you MIGHT be able to buy it online in Australia, MAYBE assuming your internet is run on something other than a network of Koalas grunting at each other in the tree tops. Which unfortunately is a subject tied up very closely in Australian politics, a subject I am led to believe was banned around here while I was busy not posting.

(1) What's its relation to RPGs? From what I gather, they just renamed missions to 'quests' and called it a roleplaying element.

Missions, quests, it's the same thing.

Elemental quests are annoying, trivial, and repetative. They come in five "levels" of quest. Quest giving locations appear on the map (with wandering monsters) when your faction (or maybe ANY faction, IT IS NEVER MADE CLEAR) researches certain techs.

But even after they appear (oh hey look there is a giant evil castle right next to the central tile of my capital, that no one ever noticed until now) you can only go to them if YOU (and this time definitely you) have researched certain techs, which might be DIFFERENT techs to the ones that reveal them.

Better yet while the techs do say if they reveal things they don't say what KIND or LEVEL of things they reveal, and the techs that let you actually visit a quest site of a given level (or even a free no risk goody hut of a given level!) are not labelled so when level 3 quest locations and level 3 notable locations appear but I can't go to them because I only have the tech to visit level 1 notable locations or level 2 quest sites I have to GUESS which "adventure" techs will actually let me visit which or indeed either at all!

Better yet if you are an "Empire" instead of a "Kingdom" your adventure tech is much more hideously burdened with the tech randomizing mechanic. So even if you magically divine WHICH tech you need in order to go to level 3 Notable Locations or level 4 Quest Sites you STILL MIGHT NOT ACTUALLY BE PERMITTED TO CHOOSE IT WHEN YOU FINISH PAYING THE RESEARCH COST FOR IT. (indeed in the case of empires "might not" actually should read "almost certainly won't")

Oh yeah, and until recently while you could reveal level 5 quests apparently it was far from a certain thing that you could ever actually get a tech that let you actually visit them (it was in the patch notes, they apparently fixed that "minor" oversight)

But anyway I digress. You have heroes they go on adventures. They are shit adventures like "visit three randomly placed absent minded witch huts" they are the same adventures over and over again (about 90% of all level 2 and level 3 quests appear to be "Alchemist gives you a map to his old lab, go there and get a free potion, no need to even fight anything and it isn't far").

Ultimately you can win the game by researching and then finding the "I win the game quest". I researched that sucker. Largely by accident, stoopid tech system, and anyway, then I went "ooh a level 5 quest location I can visit when I can't visit the others!" I thought hey, no big deal this game sometimes seems to have a strange multi-turn/"are you looking at it directly" lag for things like tooltips telling you if you can visit junk.

So in I went next thing I know I have started the end of the world quest, moments later, bam, piece one of five of the "I win the universe" item is in my hands, it was in a well, a well with no defences, just lying around.

Then hey protector golems kept materializing from nowhere and attacking me. They fell below auto resolve threshold and died to my army of Mr Bear and the Michelin Men Pallet Swapped Rock Elemental Friends.

Then I saw a notable location that was a tree covered in spiders, and thought hey spiders are easy and notable locations are just loot without threat...

Then the unexpectedly large army of insanely high HP spiders defending what I did not realize was the second end of the world item piece ate me. Ruining the longest running game I had played of that crap.

Oh sure, load an auto save you say. But really at that stage that pretty much required a reboot to avoid a stall, and might not work even then. Not to mention the memory and bloat issues in the game made it laggy and mildly unplayable by that point anyway.

(3) When they say they put some "rich lore" into the game thanks to Random House what do they mean exactly (or even approximately)?

Yeah, like that guy said. The CEO wrote a fan fiction book and sold it to fan boys who fan drooled all over fan it.

And that IS the charitable way of putting it.

Here is an overview of the "rich lore" as I gather from the following sources 1) The poorly animated and thoroughly misleading opening sequence 2) Race select screen 3) What little of the single player campaign I played before my ability to continue doing so was inhibited by my head exploding in anger and frustration.

IN THE BEGINNING. It was a magical mystical er... magical world. Some doods in spikey armour called "Titans" who all looked the same were really good at magic and they put all of the magic into magic crystals so they could rule the world.

Apparently there was no one around to bother stopping them, or maybe no one cared, or maybe EVERYONE was a dood in spikey armour called a Titan, I dunno.

Anyway then one day there were Channelers. These guys could also use the magic of the crystals. For no obviously discernible reason.

This apparently lead to a war with the Titans, also for little to no discernible reason.

This war involved images of epic struggles between monsters and gleaming knights with massive magic that melted mountains and tore the world asunder. Which is a bit confusing since the game seems to be about small numbers of drab peasants clubbing each other over the head with blunt sticks and wizards casting spells that would be best approximated in both special effects and actual damage by means of shoving a small lit fire cracker down someones pants.

Anyway the Titans lost, the world was destroyed a few new channelers are mysteriously still around for reasons as totally undescribed and stupid as their first appearance in the lore and...

THERE IS MORE!

Because you know "Wizards emerge from the chaos ITS ON, FIGHT! FINISH HIIIIIIM!" is not a good enough setting for this material, oh no...

Inexplicably the world is divided largely into two continents. On one continent the races of Man and his allies, Also Man, are dominant, their newly formed Hope Kingdoms are all Hopey and Kingdomy.

The other continent is ooooh aaaaah shrouded in meeeeeessssterrryyy.

But no even THAT is not a good enough setting to stop at, so the Meeeeeeesssterrry is IMMEDIATELY DISPELLED.

Some drab peasant guy from hopey kingdom continent has already traveled to meeeeeeesssterrry continent.

And oh no! It is run by another race, the race of.... MAN!!!!!! (dum dum dum dum) only its an Evil Empire Man, maybe even THE man! And THE Man is cutting deals with the other evil empires the evil old empires of old, who are evil, because they are old, and because they ARE NOT THE RACE OF MAN!!!! (dum dum DUM DUMB!) Only they kinda ARE the race of man because they look just LIKE the Man races, only with like slightly worse shades of pastel for their skin colours. Oh, and one mob are very slightly lumpy. But are otherwise exactly the same as the Man.

So anyway boring explorer man has already been and discovered these guys. And worse he discovered they were EVIL. And they were plotting to invade hopey kingdom continent and... er... steal all their hope or something.

BUT THEN HE WAS IN A SHIP WRECK!

Queue campaign start with YOU playing the exciting role of boring explorer man as he plays the exciting role of washed up raving beach derelict who everyone inexplicably gives a small kingdom too and easily believes.

The campaign is NOT an introduction to the game. It removes key elements like SPELL RESEARCH and technology and quests and well PRETTY MUCH EVERYTHING. For a game already lacking in content in "normal" games you find yourself deeply confused when it SEEMS the few remaining options means the campaign wants you to found a village. Build like TWO WHOLE BUILDINGS and then churn out the very lowest level peasant with the very lowest level blunt stick for about FOREVER as your drab hero runs around fulfilling his incredibly drab quests.

And oh boy what drab quests they were. Here is an outline of how the campaign went for me until I said "screw it there must be a REAL tutorial in here somewhere..." (I was wrong).

Wash up on beach. Meet dood. Dood is a farmer. He joins you. He teaches you how to found a useless city. You found it. You build two buildings then are set up to churn out peasants for the next 100 turns.

Free Tutorial Guy No One Even Realises is Tutorial Guy turns up. Because you know, you haven't turned him off in the options yet. He joins you but never actually provides any Tutorials, because even he doesn't seem to realize that is his actual job in the game.

You, Farmer Guy, your first peasants and Totorial Man, kill some 2 HP spiders (assuming they don't limbo under the auto resolve bar and autoresolve kill you) and then beat up the brigands (2 HP peasants with dull wooden clubs) maintaining a knee high blockade standing between you and the rest of the universe.

You meet the queen of england. She doesn't believe you. She is a bit a of a bitch. She wants you to kill some village of innocent "darklings" (aka short caricatured black guys, aka peasants with two HP and not even any blunt sticks). She says they were besieging the fishing village I say they were innocent fishermen.

She doesn't believe you. But opens the knee high blockade that was so far preventing you from going and talking to a monarch who cares about the impending invasion.

You meet... I dunno, some other monarch. He believes you immediately. But needs you to bring evidence to convince the Queen of Bitchyness. So THEN you remember "Hey I had a hand written letter of "we will invade you, signed, evil empire doods" on my boat, MAYBE I SHOULD CHECK THE WRECK!!!!!???"

So you do that. You give that guy the evidence, HE does NOT show it to the queen but he now extra more super believes you AND better yet points out that the knee high blockade in the nearby mountains has now been unblockaded.

You go through there, meet some other hopey kingdom chick and she (or was it he, or maybe there were two of them, they were very drab and blurry togethery) She/he/they/it want you to rescue some club wielding peasants from oppressive ogres, ogres apparently being bigger, tougher peasants with pretty much the same clubs.

You do THAT and then the next knee high barrier, this one made of trees opens up and then, hell then I didn't care, I mean that took like 150 turns or some crap. Nothing was happening I had at the time little idea how to play the game at all, I had two cities churning out peasnts with clubs, and could easily have had about 30 cities doing the same for NO REASON and had no idea if I should be doing either of those things and AAAAAAH.

DEEP LORE STORY OVER!

Dominions 3?

I was speaking of the genre collectively because it tends to blur together and releases are spaced far enough apart that it might as well be one franchise.

But let me take the time to say no not really Dominions three, that game fucking sucks too.

Ignoring the poor graphics, ignoring the VERY poor interface, dominions lacks transparency, depth, observable immediate goals and indeed sensible interactive strategic decision making in general.

It is pretty much definitional NOT a strategy game it is a rambling purposeless poorly made muddle of a SAND BOX game. And it is indeed ALL sandbox and NO strategy.

BUT It has one up on elemental because elemental has exactly the same problem AND lacks the one thing dominions excels at, which is customization, choice and content.

So anyway I was thinking more, Master of Magic, Heroes of Might and Magic, Warlords, and Age Of Wonders.

CatharzGodfoot wrote:You can download Heroes of Might and Magic from Good Old Games. No DRM.

HoM&M 3 and I think 4? are OK, 5 is a nightmare of badnesses. But the whole series is just a bit inferior.

Warlords has ALWAYS beaten out the HoM series for quality and playability.

So if you intend to go retro for your TBS fantasy game get yourself a hold of Warlords 3: Dark Lords Reign or even regular warlords 3 (but no so much 4, it wasn't so cool and NOT the battle cry spin off it had serious crapness issues) anyway dark lords reign at least is arguably one of the very best of the genre EVER.

Failing that Age Of Wonders II and it's pseudosequel are both very good too.

for a moment I thought you where talking about
www.elementsthegame.com (A MtG clone)

anyone playing that?

Wow, it's surprising that Stardock screwed the pooch so badly.

Phone Lobster, on Dominions 3 wrote:Ignoring the poor graphics, ignoring the VERY poor interface, dominions lacks transparency, depth, observable immediate goals and indeed sensible interactive strategic decision making in general.

It is pretty much definitional NOT a strategy game it is a rambling purposeless poorly made muddle of a SAND BOX game. And it is indeed ALL sandbox and NO strategy.

See, this kind of shit makes it super hard to take you seriously. Now granted, Dominions 3 has terrible graphics and a learning curve that looks suspiciously like a brick wall. It's virtually the definition of a game which is not to everyone's tastes. If you don't like it, that's totally reasonable.

But... no strategy? Seriously dude, what the fuck are you talking about? That game has five spell casting scripts that you write from literally hundreds of spells. There are dozens of entirely different ad distinct empire/production/invasion plans that people complain about being too good. It has the basic strategic considerations of Diplomacy and Master of Orion II at the same time.

I'm totally on board with people who say that game is too complicated to play. But to say that there isn't any strategy is to betray an ignorance of the subject so severe that it calls into question all of your other reviews. That's literally the opposite of true. The complaint is that strategy is very complex and the computer doesn't do it at a particularly high level, so honing personal strategies takes actual years because it requires multiple multiplayer games that are still played at a rate slower than one per turn precisely because strategy and diplomacy are so complex in that game.

-Username17

Frank, your opinion on gaming mechanics is no longer worth respecting after some of the shenanigans I have seen you pull around here.

So you know your "oh but hey if you dig through the thousands of poorly interfaced options in the game there are like totally 5 or six "strategies" that are "really good" is not exactly something worth listening to.

Even in it's own right it is not a valid criticism of the "all sand box no strategy" angle.

And then it comes out of your mouth, so it's even more worthless.

Calibron wrote:Wow, it's surprising that Stardock screwed the pooch so badly.

Yeah, I was surprised, too. GalCiv2 is great fun, lack of multiplayer and tactical battles non-withstanding. That I don't play it much anymore is more from a lack of time for a game which can last entire days to finish, than from a lack of desire. Well, that and that certain winning strategies are much too likely to work.

But Elemental... wow, it is quite bad so far. And the graphics want me make scratch my eyes out, which is quite hard for a strategy game to do. I know that Stardock is an independent publisher, but compared to even HOMM5 the graphics are terrible.

I guess they should stick to space 4X games.

My understanding of Dominions 3 - HAVING NOT PLAYED IT! - is that there's a lot of cool stuff, but that most of that cool stuff is only for single player fucking around, and that the multiplayer game is significantly more concentrated on an apparent "Zerg rush" mentality: that the best strategy is to do just enough for victory.

Now, that's not a bad goal for a game to have as it's wise, it's just that I've HEARD ONLY! that between where that point of victory is and where the upper bounds of the game is a very large gap, and that point is at various depths for various factions, some clearly sooner than others.

Comments?

I tried it a few times, and just couldn't get into it. I'm very much a Battle for Wesnoth sort, not a Dom3 sort.

mean_liar wrote:My understanding of Dominions 3 - HAVING NOT PLAYED IT! - is that there's a lot of cool stuff, but that most of that cool stuff is only for single player fucking around, and that the multiplayer game is significantly more concentrated on an apparent "Zerg rush" mentality: that the best strategy is to do just enough for victory.

Depends on how you set up the map. The game can be played with up to about 23 players unless you use the "Mega Age" mod that allows players to choose nations from different time periods in the same game, in which case it goes out to 70 or so. There are "blitz games" that people play with about 4 players or so on fast research, in which the goal is to roll out the nastiest juggernaut you can as fast as possible in order to win - because the first war is likely the last or second to last war and the game will be sewn up by turn 20 or 30. In those games there are a number of "bless rush" factions that rise high, but there are other countries that do well with non-sacred troops or even just splitting up and raiding (it's one thing if you can't beat the enemy army in the field, but it's quite another if you have three smaller armies taking a province a turn and avoiding it).

In larger games that really isn't true. The victors from the first set of wars will actually still be like 10 players, and with so many factions running about some players may manage to sit the first war out altogether or end up in a multiplayer gang stomp so one sided that it doesn't much impact their growth curve to have been involved. Sometimes someone will emerge so victorious from early aggression that they will have an insurmountable economic lead, but often they won't. Late game spells do impressive things. Larger games are generally actually decided by breaking the morale of the other players through impressive displays largely unrelated to early troop movements (although it is still required to survive those early wars of course).

For example, one multiplayer game I didn't get the final alliance to surrender to mine until I had:

• Turned the sun off, causing people to stop generating much money from taxes - so only factions that knew I was going to do that had enough cash to pay the upkeep on their armies.
• Let loose the scourge from Earthdawn (this is an actual spell in the game, called Astral Corruption that makes Horrors attack people when they use powerful magic), catching our enemies with their pants down because they did not know that was going to happen, let alone when, and outright killing the biggest casters of the other factions when they were using their own late game magics.
• Fought off Marignon's own late game army which was based on a host of angels that they had summoned an outfitted with powerful late game artifacts. As I recall, I used my own sorcerers to call a huge storm to keep them from flying about and then froze the battlefield until they developed enough fatigue that I could overwhelm them with tiny men who I had transformed into mist.

Only then were they sufficiently demoralized to deliver a surrender, having been outmaneuvered in world destroying late game magics and defeated on the battlefield of no-holds-barred high magic late game conflict. But yes, the early wars I had involved doing fairly standard shit like using flying troops to take provinces behind the lizardman army while simultaneously fighting the lizardman army with a bunch of fear causing effects and lightning bolts, so that when they ran away they had nowhere to go and could not regroup. Having eliminated the field army of the lizards, I then invested their capitol for a while until I could bring enough reinforcements to win the final siege and then made it out of the first round of conflicts with two empires worth of provinces.

---

As for Blitz games, yes they exist. I won the last one I played by being the cave dwelling Agarthans from the late era. We had some very heavily armored troops and some half blind crossbowmen that we supplemented with a large ravening horde of bullshit undead and a smaller horde of elite incorporeal giants and golems. Victory was in that case an economic affair, where I had a higher productivity, so holding off the bless rushers for a period of time (in this case by slowing them down with crap undead until they were too tired to fight through the competent blind ones) left me with an insurmountable lead in army size and research base, which I used to stomp all over the other three factions. But I really don't enjoy those games that much, for all the fact that they are over in a day or two most times.

I tried it a few times, and just couldn't get into it. I'm very much a Battle for Wesnoth sort, not a Dom3 sort.

That is totally fair. Battle for Wesnoth is a fun little game. I can't get in to the multiplayer though, it just doesn't seem deep enough. But I do appreciate the fact that the single player campaigns are pretty decent. An more importantly: actually represent the whole game (as opposed to in Dominions 3, where the computer will basically never launch an Utterdark strategy or make a fully equipped Angel or Tartarian army).

-Username17

No idea about Dominion. Frank's description makes it sound interesting enough to give it a try, and I'm a big enough grongard to grit through bad graphics and interface. However...

-----

Warlords 3? Better than HoMM? Seriously? Maybe better and more polished than 2, but it's certainly not better than HoMM 3 or 4.

I found Warlords 3 (Reign of Heroes - the base game) to be extremely boring. Largely because the unit variety is limited, city management is all but non-existent, and you did nothing but sit down and watch while your fantasy armies duked it out.

And in the campaign, one can generally win by simply spamming one kind of unit. In easy difficulty, just reduce the production time of Pegasus from 2 to 1, and spam Pegasus. In harder difficulty, spam Knight champions.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I'd rather go Fantasy General than Warlords given what I experienced.

Korwin wrote:for a moment I thought you where talking about
www.elementsthegame.com (A MtG clone)

anyone playing that?

My husband plays (Essence). He's currently the Master of Water.

PL, what is your definition of "sensible interactive strategic decision making" if Dom3 doesn't have it but Warlords 3 does? I'm puzzled; does it require a grid map or something?

Well it looks like this has been derailed into a discussion on the genre in it's entirety.

Not at all what I wanted to see.

But regardless

Dominions 3 is totally deep and good! Honest! I LIKE IT DAMNIT!
Here is an example of precisely where Dominions goes horribly wrong.

I'm going to discuss a SINGLE "simple" mechanic.

You have wizards/magic users. One action on their long crappy UI of an action list is "look for tresur" sorry, I mean "search for magical sites".

So presumably on thing you might want to do some of the time in the game is have SOME amount of "wizards" wandering around the countryside "looking for tresur". Presumably doing THAT and the degree to which you do that and the WAY you do that is a strategic game play choice.

So all we need to know now is the costs and benefits of the thing and as a player you should be able to make a strategic choice.

Cost) - You need to manually move your wizards, manually tell them to search, there are significant bad UI time costs in this. And this ties up game resources, like you know, your damn wizards, for turns and turns on end.

Further you have no idea or indication I am aware of as to where you have searched already. Further still I have no idea if an enemy searching an area reveals things and I have never seen any indication that searching for tresur is something the enemy even DOES.

Further still and perhaps more importantly frequently the result tells you you have found nothing and a "more powerful" wizard will need to search.

But I do not know what the hell it even MEANS by a more powerful wizard. A wizard can have what? 9 or ten points in any of what seems like a BAJILLION different magical disciplines. So is a more powerful wizard A) A wizard with more points in ALL disciplines or B) A wizard with more points in their BIGGEST discipline.

On top of that magical sites have different flavours that MATCH with different magic disciplines. So does that mean that the site finding difficulties are tied to specific magic types or not? Does my Fire 7 wizard find Water 6 sites or not. I HAVE NO IDEA. The game gives not a squiz of a hint.

So to summarize. The strategic cost is pretty much entirely mysterious. And if you look away for five minutes you won't even know how much you have already spent because there is no record of it.

Benefit - Right so anyway. I find some sites. Mostly findable sites seem to give one specific sort of thing. Magical Crystal resources. The sites seem to just trickle the income in, but as far as I can see you don't need huge amounts of these crystals (but what the hell do I know, I can't read the INSANE LABYRINTH of this games mind, and it isn't giving me any kind of aid to inform me what it wants).

So there are... a lot... of different magical crystal resources. Like piles of them, something close to one each for the bajillion magic disciplines. Except for maybe the one that eats blood slaves and don't even get me going on THAT bullshit.

You primarily seem to use small handfuls of crystals on magical items that give moderate but nice little bonuses to your heroes and generals stats.

But. That STILL requires even MORE wizards navigating the bad UI and spending even more game time making the damn items, at a lab site, AND you then need to hand the damn items off to the jerks who are going to use them, which MIGHT be the wizards themselves but PROBABLY will be a whole additional tier of generals and heroes.

Further still in order to make a magic item you need EXACTLY the right sort or worse MULTIPLE SORTS of crystal and the sorts of crystal sites you discover is down right random and selects from a BIG list.

Further FURTHER still your wizard needs to have sufficient points in the matching magic disciplines. MANY recruitable wizards get their magic discipline points RANDOMIZED. Not that they get many points at all. There is a... somewhat arcane... mechanic/UI option to boost your skill in magic disciplines, but it burns magic crystals, and apparently A LOT of magic crystals, like really, a lot more than you will reasonably have pretty much regardless of crystal production site discoveries.

And on top of that I am also FAIRLY sure (but fuck it at this point WHO KNOWS?) that you need to ALSO research the items by unlocking higher levels of magical spell groups at your lab. Which is ANOTHER arcane and horrid and uninformative MESS of an UI with little to no information. It takes forever to research new levels of spell knowledge, and spell knowledge is broken into ANOTHER Bajillion categories that ARE COMPLETELY INDEPENDENT OF THE ORIGINAL BAJILLION MAGIC DISCIPLINES!!!!

Edit) Oh yeah and this requires another whole batch of "wizards" or "sorta wizards" sitting on their asses performing research actions turn after turn as well. At your lab. Expect to have a big old mess on your hero selection UI anywhere you are doing this, and remember having your wizards out searching instead of researching the utterly horrific spell knowledge mechanics is ANOTHER utterly opaque cost of "looking for tresur".

So to summarize the "benefit" of this "option" is complex, indecipharable, mysterious, and significantly randomized.

Alternative Options)
Instead you could spend your hero making time and resources on generals, or even have the "wizards" just BE generals (if they are wizard/generals which a lot are) and go around kicking things teeth in. Which seems to be basically what the computer does.

You could also have your wizards follow real generals around to provide spell support in battles, but that is a mechanic which compared to "look for tresur" is not a "simple" option, which by this games standard means it is basically a giant year long fuck you of bad UI, randomized spell knowledge and utter mystery.

Alternatively, and here is the real kicker. Random events will regularly just GIVE YOU MAGIC CRYSTALS. Like... all the damn time. And you could totally just be a leader who's domain increases random event likely hood and the likely hood of random events being beneficial.

And here is the thing YOU HAVE KNOW WAY OF KNOWING WHICH OPTIONS ARE BETTER. The game just does not provide a HINT of insite into the actual values involved, the costs and benefits are utterly mysterious. Is my empire able to gain a sufficient income from the random event manipulation? Is the benefit of NOT having my "best" (whatever best is) wizards wandering around wasting time searching WORTH it for me to go the random event path instead?

At what stage of the game should I have how many wizards of what quality searching where. If the answer isn't "at a certain time all at once with the best possible" then how the FUCK do I know where and by how good a wizard has been searched in prior search phases?

The answer NO ONE FUCKING KNOWS BECAUSE THIS IS NOT A GAME ABOUT INFORMED STRATEGIC DECISION MAKING.

Now I am SURE I made mistakes in the description of this process. It is basically the nature of the game and it's most massive and utterly damning flaw that it is well nigh impossible to understand and describe even it's simplest processes like this. There MAY be some (well hidden) information I am missing. But I also am SURE that the vast majority of that information really ISN'T given to the player by the game and I damn well know that all this has a turn/UI navigation and general hero/resource cost, and over all long term impact that rolls into the UTTERLY ABSURD.

Frank says "hey we turned off the sun and summoned an army of angels". Do you know how long and how hard that stuff is to do in this game? JUST in the cost of sheer number of clicks and poor menu navigation, screw the strategic difficulties, JUST the manual UI navigation. I'm amazed Frank managed it and was left with time to breath before turning 70.

So yeah there you go. An overview of just ONE aspect and at that a SIMPLE aspect of the supposedly strategic options that are offered to you turn to turn in Dominions. And it's basically a giant mess of total crap. And that's a SIMPLE and minor option. No really!


HOM is better than warlords!
Graphical and technically HOM has typically been behind the times for warlords 1 through 3.5.

But that isn't the big deal. The big deal is richness of STRATEGY.

HOM wins on richness of TACTICS. HOM has Tactical battles warlords... mostly doesn't (sort of). Mind you HOMs tactical battles are still shallow and pointless and largely decided by longer term strategic resource management/causality minimization.

But strategy wise HOM is VERY shallow. Build your (usually SINGLE) army as big and bad as possible. Attack the smallest enemies possible to get the most benefits with the least losses, profit more than you lose, profit more than your enemies, win the game because when you meet the really big armies your army is bigger. The end.

Warlords involves running multiple armies on more numerous fronts, more interesting heroes and army mixes. Things like choke points, front lines, production lines and even things like times when yes, you might just bring 3 infantry instead of 1 dragon (or as you generally choose to do if doing HOM right, all three infantry AND the dragon, or if you can, 5 different dragons instead).

Seriously in warlords you can and WILL have things like front line defense forces. In HOM, basically the fight is where-ever your (or the enemies) one giant blob of army resources is at. About the most complex strategy in the game is having dummy slave heroes ferrying reinforcements to an in the field "one gigantic army blob" so it doesn't have to go home as often.

Now warlords 4 sorta breaks all that because they went all retro warlords 1 style with it. Oh boy was THAT a bad idea. I mean ultimately warlords 4 boils down to "get an undead hero or two with vampirism, then win" and does so for basically every faction. That was unfortunate.

Then the company developing the game got obsessed with an RTS spin off (some nice big ideas, but basically failed on all the small things, like playability) and ultimately got addicted to publishing DS and mobile phone puzzle games instead and raking in the cash (damnit).


Gal Civ 2 Was Fun
Not half as fun as MoO 2. Which is sad.

Main reason it wasn't as fun as MoO 2?

Same problem elemental and dominions have. Utterly unexplained and undecipherable mechanics.

I was reading an elemental review the other day. It was written by the guy who wrote the manual for Gal Civ 2.

He talked about the rather alarming process by which he wrote the Gal Civ 2 manual. The most telling bit?

The part where he admits that to this day he has no fucking idea how the Gal Civ 2 economy mechanics actually function.

Because the game doesn't tell him and even after working hand in hand with the programmers AND running tests to try and divine it's function both the programmers and the tests were incapable of actually explaining how or why the economy works the way it does (however the hell it works that is).

That's NOT a good thing.

And oddly the strange and often intractable economy is my primary issue with Gal Civ 2, which is otherwise a mildly acceptable if shallow game in it's genre.

That and the fact it really really fails to one up MoO 2 in any department whatsoever.

It's a bit hard to get past that last one. I mean damnit. MoO ONE was better.

Orca wrote:PL, what is your definition of "sensible interactive strategic decision making" if Dom3 doesn't have it but Warlords 3 does? I'm puzzled; does it require a grid map or something?

Hilariously it looks like I accidentally answered half of that already.

Dom 3 lacks strategic decision making because every decision is a decision about a secretive weird and insanely complex mechanic that interacts mysteriously and strangely with MANY other incredibly and needlessly complex mechanics all within an almost impossible to use UI that tells you jack shit about what is actually going on.

Warlords three provides all the information about what it is doing and what you can do to you directly. You can make informed decisions. Better yet you can do that on a turn by turn basis, while even a single decision in Dom 3 is going to take you a RIDICULOUS amount of both game turns and real time as you navigate the nine million pieces of bad UI required to implement it. Then you won't actually know what the decision did for another infinity-jillion worth of game and real time after that, if ever.

There is a reason why the relatively simple mechanics of chess makes a game with relatively deep decision making compared to the mess of rules, cards and mechanics in monopoly.

And that is why Dom 3 sucks (as a strategy game) and Warlords 3 is somewhat successful.

PhoneLobster wrote: I'm going to discuss a SINGLE "simple" mechanic.

You have wizards/magic users. One action on their long crappy UI of an action list is "look for tresur" sorry, I mean "search for magical sites".

So presumably on thing you might want to do some of the time in the game is have SOME amount of "wizards" wandering around the countryside "looking for tresur". Presumably doing THAT and the degree to which you do that and the WAY you do that is a strategic game play choice.

Yes. Site searching is a strategic gameplay choice. As opposed to leaving them in labs researching new spells, using the gems you already have to cast spells or make magical artifacts, or marching them off to war. There is also a set of spells that can find magic sites for you, which allows your spellcasters to find sites more efficiently, but at the cost of gems and requiring you to research up to level you can cast them.

Further you have no idea or indication I am aware of as to where you have searched already. Further still I have no idea if an enemy searching an area reveals things and I have never seen any indication that searching for tresur is something the enemy even DOES.

Every province has each type of magic it has been searched for by agents of your empire clearly labeled on it both when you are in the main window (the current active province has a series of colored numbers representing the nine types of magic searching that can be done); and also in the nation summary (where each province has a list of the magical disciplines you have searched it for an the level you have searched them at - also each leader in the province is listed with their magical disciplines in the same order, so you can with a quick scan see if there is anyone in the same province that has the ability to search for things that haven't been searched out already).

The enemies also searches for magic sites, but you are not told what level they have searched for - you only see the results in the form of magic sites they uncovered that you get if you conquer the provinces.

Further still and perhaps more importantly frequently the result tells you you have found nothing and a "more powerful" wizard will need to search.

But I do not know what the hell it even MEANS by a more powerful wizard. A wizard can have what? 9 or ten points in any of what seems like a BAJILLION different magical disciplines. So is a more powerful wizard A) A wizard with more points in ALL disciplines or B) A wizard with more points in their BIGGEST discipline.

You could RTFM on this you know. There are nine types of magic and each magic site is associated with one of them and rated on a scale of zero to four on what level of magic is needed to uncover them. When you use one of the spells that uncovers "all" of the sites of that type, it just puts a "9" in that box to emphasize that you aren't going to do better than that (although in reality, it's not really any different from just putting a "4").

On top of that magical sites have different flavours that MATCH with different magic disciplines. So does that mean that the site finding difficulties are tied to specific magic types or not? Does my Fire 7 wizard find Water 6 sites or not. I HAVE NO IDEA. The game gives not a squiz of a hint.

Again, this is in the manual. Fire 7 would find any sites that were associated with Fire 1, Fire 2, Fire 3, or Fire 4. If you added some special mod site that could only be found with Fire 7, it would find that too.

So to summarize. The strategic cost is pretty much entirely mysterious. And if you look away for five minutes you won't even know how much you have already spent because there is no record of it.

Summary: Phone Lobster has not read the manual and did not notice that giant red 7s appeared both on the province header and the nation summary every time he used a Fire 7 caster to search for magic sites in a province.

Benefit - Right so anyway. I find some sites. Mostly findable sites seem to give one specific sort of thing. Magical Crystal resources. The sites seem to just trickle the income in, but as far as I can see you don't need huge amounts of these crystals (but what the hell do I know, I can't read the INSANE LABYRINTH of this games mind, and it isn't giving me any kind of aid to inform me what it wants).

Conjuring a single host of Angels costs 144 Astral Pearls and they come unequipped. Building up to the late-game effects requires a lot of gems.

Further still in order to make a magic item you need EXACTLY the right sort or worse MULTIPLE SORTS of crystal and the sorts of crystal sites you discover is down right random and selects from a BIG list.

Further FURTHER still your wizard needs to have sufficient points in the matching magic disciplines. MANY recruitable wizards get their magic discipline points RANDOMIZED. Not that they get many points at all. There is a... somewhat arcane... mechanic/UI option to boost your skill in magic disciplines, but it burns magic crystals, and apparently A LOT of magic crystals, like really, a lot more than you will reasonably have pretty much regardless of crystal production site discoveries.

Yeah? You need Earth and Fire gems to make Firebrands. Those are very good, and the mainstay of most army killing "Thug" units if they are available. Thus, factions that have Earth/Fire casters in them have a noticeable advantage over factions that do not.

So to summarize the "benefit" of this "option" is complex, indecipharable, mysterious, and significantly randomized.

The only random part is where you don't know what magic sites your empire will have or where they will be at the start of the game. The things gems do are not random. Players of the game know how this shit works and work towards item and conjuration combinations that work for them.

You could also have your wizards follow real generals around to provide spell support in battles, but that is a mechanic which compared to "look for tresur" is not a "simple" option, which by this games standard means it is basically a giant year long fuck you of bad UI, randomized spell knowledge and utter mystery.

To summarize: Phone Lobster does not know how this shit works. The spell knowledge is not randomized. You get the same spells at the same levels every time you play the same faction. In fact, most of the spells are on everyone's list, meaning that they will be the same every time you play any faction. Now, different casters will only be able to cast the spells associated with their picks of magic, but again that's entirely deterministic. Awesome buff spells like Mistform and Quickness stay awesome on different playthroughs of the game, and retain their path costs and research tree positions.

Alternatively, and here is the real kicker. Random events will regularly just GIVE YOU MAGIC CRYSTALS. Like... all the damn time. And you could totally just be a leader who's domain increases random event likely hood and the likely hood of random events being beneficial.

If you are relying upon the events where you find 4 earth gems in a badger den for your spellcasting needs, I feel sorry for you. It takes like 20 Earth Gems to field an Iron Dragon.

And here is the thing YOU HAVE KNOW WAY OF KNOWING WHICH OPTIONS ARE BETTER. The game just does not provide a HINT of insite into the actual values involved, the costs and benefits are utterly mysterious. Is my empire able to gain a sufficient income from the random event manipulation? Is the benefit of NOT having my "best" (whatever best is) wizards wandering around wasting time searching WORTH it for me to go the random event path instead?

Well, obviously since you haven't read even the (admittedly titanic) manual on this subject, no. You will never in fact know the value of searching for magic sites. The game is actually pretty damn arcane. But the information on that is actually totally available. People have produced spreadsheets detailing the relative costs of doing things by various means. Functionally, it means that if I have mages like the Tien Chi Master of the Five Elements who searches for six sites at once, I'm generally going to do that. If I am Bandar Log, and my mages have just a couple of big paths I get better returns off of casting spells like Haruspex.

The bottom line is that Phone Lobster is unfortunately demonstrating himself to be an unreliable narrator. Because he took "I personally didn't figure out how this subsystem works and stopped playing before doing even the most cursory reading on the subject in the game instructions" to mean that no one knew how the system works and there was no documentation. I understand that the game has a huge amount of information in it and not everyone has the patience to slog through it all, but that's not the same thing as the game not having player skill in it. Actually, it's exactly the opposite. Phone Lobster's tirade shows may levels upon which gaining increased system mastery opens up the ability to make informed decisions to improve one's standing in the game.

-Username17

So... to summarize Frank.

Go sift through "titanic" complex manuals and written materials external to the game up to and including arcane and complex spreadsheets derived to compare different options.

Arcane and complex spreadsheets which are actually specifically required because the game itself is incapable of describing and representing the options in a way that permits you to directly measure and compare them.

And then to top it off Players, just like me, are at fault for failing to fully navigate the incredibly poor UI of this game, one so bad he himself admits it freely to be utterly shit.

Like I said. The most damning flaw is that after hours and hours trying to puzzle this game out, I WILL make mistakes trying to describe even the simplest of options available. Because the game is SO BAD that hours and hours DON'T GIVE YOU THAT INFORMATION.

System mastery my ass. I'm a god damn computer scientist and a long time follower of complex game rules sets and their function. I put in time and effort and this game remained a pile of Opaque shit. Franks answer is "start reading lengthy tomes and dissertations and throw an endless amount of good time after bad I PROMISE YOU IT GETS BETTER AFTER ANOTHER COUPLE OF HUNDRED MAN HOURS".

My response to that is "fuck off". This "game" FAILED HORRIBLY at 40+ hours. Its a fucking game. There is a limit to acceptable complexity and poor interface and it is LIGHT YEARS beyond that limit.

The "good money after bad brings good returns!" is a common promise by idiots and liars on a hundred topics, most of which are political so I can't mention them. I am not a chump I will not be cheated from any more of my time by Frank's very poor recommendations on what a TBS fan should spend their game time doing. I would like to spend it playing functional TBS games, he wants me to spend about half a year of it learning a game that already seems very very bad but which he promises will get good eventually.

Utter bullshit.

The dom3 manual is hard to translate into useful knowledge, and actively misleading a couple of times, but it's hardly the only source of information out there. You're on the internet, after all!

Most of the possible strategies have been in there since the game was released, it's not like Elemental which still requires extensive patching to be fit for use.

It is kind of weird what Stardock's done. It's like Microsoft releasing an operating system which is so bad at first that ever since even their fans warn against using their OSs until at least the first service pack comes out - wait, that happened too...

Actually something just came to mind.

Frank is choosing to tie his credibility not only to Dom 3 as being good (a bad idea) but also choosing to tie MY credibility on Elemental as being bad to my opinion of Dom 3 as being bad.

And in turn ultimately tying his credibility to me being wrong about Elemental being a bad game.

Fine. Frank and any Dom 3 fans out there (crickets chirp, tumble weed rolls by, someone says "Dom what now?")

Put your money where your mouth is. Buy Elemental. Buy the collectors edition. Buy it today. Buy it twice. Watch me laugh and laugh and laugh...