One thing I like about Dominions 3 is that when you take over another nation, you are not able to produce their units. In many other games where this is not the case, the feel of playing a distinct nation tends to be lost since in the end any player can produce any unit (like in AoW).
Similarly, I believe games should require permanent tradeoff decisions. The most fun is when you have to make a tough branching decision on a path for example that closes down other options. I am recalling some of the mechanics in, was it Disciples or HOMM, where once you decided on certain unit, you couldn't go back.
It might make cities more interesting for example if one specialized on calvary, another on archers, another on economics, etc.
It might be too draconian to do the same on magical research paths, but it might be interesting. Again the problem being that if all paths are available, then eventually everyone ends up with everything researched and the distinction between strategies is lost. Thus in Dominions, the endgame for most players comes down to summoning tartarians, wishing for seraphim, etc.
But the idea of choosing a path that eliminates other options, I think makes a game more interesting.
I definately agree with this, and hope that this is the design direction of the game.
However, even if they decide that anybody can create any unit or research any magic at any time, it will be much harder to have duplicate factions when you take into account the streaming, user-created, content.
I would imagine that when the modding community gets rolling, within months of release, games will have literally hundreds, if not thousands of race choices, spell paths, and unit types. Players will probably resort to choosing a "favorite" game style, because there will be so many options. It's unlikely any one player will duplicate what another player has, given all of the choices he will have in front of him.
There's a digression in the opening Ideas thread about this point. For Elemental, I find I'm in favor of exactly the kind of *game-changing* decisions you describe in the OP.
Gotta admit, also, that Ilumino's take on the possibilities of the online side of the game could end up leading to the same result, depending on how the type and rating systems work and what you do with them as a player.
I think if the designers of Dominions had allowed a nation to produce a conquered enemies' units it would have radically altered the feel of the game despite the huge number of nations and units available. For example, nations would probably race to conquer Niefelheim or Pythium to get access to frost giants and hydras, respectively and then produce those units exclusively. So I think they did great on how they handled units since you can never produce anything but your own troops (or indies).
But since all magic research paths are available, and magic eventually overshadows any national troops, the Dominions endgame is not as interesting as it could have been. Even with the tons of spells, in the end everyone goes for Tartarians. It is mitigated a little bit by access to magic paths (some nations may not have access to death magic at first). But eventually any nation can get the pre-requisites to summon Tarts.
Civ felt like that for me as well. Interesting at first, but with an endgame that was undifferentiated and boring.
I have a strong impression that Brad is *seriously* interested in tackling "The Tedious End-game Problem." One of the design goals for the new engine is apparently to support a world that you can thoroughly destroy in an end-game scenario. He's talked about end-game spells being "deliberately de-balancing," or words to that effect.
I think it depends on how it is handled but I'm not in favor of national units only
why ?
because if it follows a little MoM heritage then what will happen
you conquer a dwarven city with your dark elves magician armies and then can produce dark elf units in this dwarven city
bad idea in my book...
what I see possible is that high level units might be restricted by your "home" race, since the dwarf hates dark elves you wouldn't have access to the best dwarf units or you could perhaps raze the city and build a dark elf one
This "mixology" is one of the things that I really liked about MoM, and MoO2, and think is a major weak point of the GalCiv series so far. The main reason I didn't play the PC GalCiv 1 to death was that I did not like being limited to playing as Terrans. I played enough to not resent the money I spent, but I would not have gotten excited to hear about GalCiv2 without the addition of multiple, customizable player POVs.
I like the idea that creating some of the most outrageous units might require proximity to the channler's home (or another big juju locale), but what's the point of *conquering* a rival culture if not to exploit their strengths? At the very least, it seems like we should have a chance of retaining the local School of Spooky Badasses or War College for Giants. Might even be interesting to try working some asset-acquisition possibilities like that into the alignment and diplomacy layers.
You know, throughout history, conquering armies always absorbed the tech from the defeated foe. The attempt to assimilate foreign fighters into the conquering army often proved difficult due to difference in language, culture, etc. This meant that you almost never saw a barbaric warrior fight as a native barbaric warrior in the Roman army for example. It was also difficult to train that barbaric warrior into a modern Roman solder.
What does this all mean? Armies evolved and changed based in the tech they "earned" by conquering specific enemy armies. Not sure if it would even be possible but I would like to create new units on the fly based on this principle. If I play as a mounted elf and I conquer an Ogre horde (or what ever) it would be nice if I could create a new unit from the conquered city that blended aspects of the two cultures. Just imagine a mounted Ogre Melee unit with an elf crossbow!!
*CRACK*
elf squad leader: *sighs* nonono for the upteenth time, it's not a mace, this crossbow should be used to hit your opponent from afar. Is it so ha..
*BONK*
...rd to understand?
*ogre sent the now half broken crossbow through the room into a rookie face*
===city gets -3 production for the next 10 turns because of lost materials during training===
I just realized what the online modding aspect reminds me of, a customizable card game. Out of the many many cards in one's library, to make a competative deck they had to choose a select few that worked well with each other. I'm not sure how I feel bout selecting a "deck" before the game begins (although some robust filters will always be nice, maybe favorite lists?). We'll see what is in mind as time goes on.
Hear, hear! I agree that some level of 'mixology' should be present within the game, especially since it was a part of MoM and this is supposed to be a spiritual successor. I also think GCFL nailed the entire concept in his post. After all, if I led my army of High Elves to conquer a Barbarian town, then I want to be able to recruit some auxiliary units of Berserkers.
I'd even argue that in doing so, you'd be adding more 'flavor' to the game by allowing armies to encorporate units from other races within it. Granted you do run the risk of people spamming the best units, but that's an issue for simple balancing to solve.
This is definately the kind of style I'm wishing for. If you cannot build anything but your national troops, you do get a feeling of strangeness, but if you can build everything your unique style will go to waste and be a meaningless decision. It would certainly be a lot of work to code, I'd think, since there might be a large variety of different races and if all of them get different troops from conquering others, it quickly accumulates to a very high amount. Unless you just make generic troops for conquered races, like "Ogre slave-trooper" that everyone who conquers them gets. Which would be an acceptable compromise to me at least.
And why not restrict it? You can only build tier 3 or less units (with for instance 5 or 6 tiers of units) from other countries. So when you choose a faction ou can build its powefful units and you'll be able to build the less powerfull from other factions. Or a spell can raise the level of foreign units you can create : "Assimilation spell" or something like that.
I think one should be able to make or take none native units to one level below their max native units without any magic or random benefits in general. Consequently if the unit gets to the max native unit level there should be some negative tradeoffs.
Getting back to the original post, I think Tradeoffs are key in any gap. Managing around weaknesses and gaps in my abilities as a player is one of the most fun parts of any wargame, but most games have abandoned this largely by the late mid-game at best.
Leaving a hole in my unit selection and/or kingdom abilities enhances replayability, and makes me work to discover different ways to win the game.
Great point, one I had not put my finger on but I think is part of why I really enjoy games that use branching exlcusive decision paths. Replayability becomes almost infinite when you have lots of exclusive decisions since there are so many permutations and it will take a long time to figure out what works best, and even then, what works best may just be circumstantial.
But having access to all units and all spells at the end of a game leaves less desire to go back and try something different since all paths lead to the same destination.
Access to every spells and units should be doable in every game however it sould be way harder to do than beating every others opponents. In fact the "completionist thing" should be left for the after beating all opposition.
I thought that each race had their own unique spellbook. I don't seehow everybody can have access to all spells by the end of the game.
Unless I am mistaken?
Possibly, or possibly he missed something
In today's thread on the 12 civilizations, Brad said "Each of these factions has its own technology tree and own spell book to make each faction play very very differently."
I suppose there might be some "tech theft" functions, but I'd be surprised if there aren't some things you just can't get unless you're playing a particular faction. Capturing an ogre town and being able to recruit ogre units makes sense to me, but it also makes sense that the channeler from a Land of Sweetness and Light would not be able to even touch a necromancer's spell book, much less learn from it.
The best games are the ones full of meaningful choices.
Having some choices be mutualy exclusive makes these choices harder and really puts the pressure on the player.
Sammual
I concur wholeheartedly.
Posssibly getting a city with another race could allow you to produce lower level units of that race (limited in how high they can train), but the morale is extremely low as a result of disloyalty (and a corresponding garrison must be kept in the city in order to prevent it from declaring independence). Perhaps you would have to shadow units of a hostile race in your employ by your own (say two of your own race for every one of a hostile race recruited in capured territory) in order to prevent them from defecting or rebelling. I think with significantly different and hostile races conquering one another, some type of loyalty system to represent the difficulties of conquering and holding onto a hostile population is a must.
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