Comment on Got any must-play games for strategy fans?
Thomrade@lemm.ee 4 days ago
I’m getting into the Dominions series, recently picked up Dominions 6. You take control of a faction and try to spread your pretender gods influence enough to ascend to be the one true god. Combat is auto resolved but you can watch the combats and the mechanics are very detailed. I made a god that was a sentient glyph that bestowed fire resistance and flaming weapons on my faction of desert dwelling spider riders. Another time I was a sentient fountain of blood with innate abilities to raise an army of mindless skeletons so I could stack troops in masse.
Its a little clunky in the interface but once I learned what did what it because very engrossing
veni_vedi_veni@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I can’t get over the UI, in sure it’s good like with Dwarf Fortress, but I would ask how long it took you to feel like you had a bearing on what was going on/fun?
Thomrade@lemm.ee 3 days ago
Oh not as long as original Dwarf Fortress, that’s for sure!
I had a friend who has some experience explain how to navigate the interface, and generally what each resource does, and after an hour or two of fussing about I got used to it. Some times I will misclick, because right click is sometimes “go back” and sometimes “show more detail” but aside from that its easy enough.
The core mechanics are very easy. Conquer provinces to increase your domain, build stacks of units to fight battle and test different strategies for what works against what.
I can go into more detail if you like?
tal@lemmy.today 3 days ago
I mean, it’s not beautiful, but for strategy games and other high-replayability games, I don’t find that eye candy buys that much. Like, I feel like a good strategy game is one that you should spend a lot of time playing as you master the mechanics, and no matter how pretty the graphics, when you’ve seen them a ton of times…shrugs I think that eye candy works better for genres where you only see something once, like adventure games, so that the novelty is fresh. But what you like is what you like.
If it’s too complicated – and the game does have a lot of mechanics going on, even by strategy game standards – Illwinter also has another series, Conquest of Elysium, which is considerably simpler, albeit more RNG-dependent. I personally prefer the latter, even though I know Dominions. Dominions turns into a micromanagement slogfest when you have a zillion armies moving around later in the game. Especially if you have one of the nations that can induce freespawn, like MA Ermor. Huge amounts of time handling troop movement.
It might be more tolerable if you play against other humans – I mean, if you’re playing one turn a day or something, I imagine that it’s more tolerable to look at what’s going on. But if you’re playing against the computer, which is what I do, it has more micromanagement than I’d like.
Trying to optimize your build is neat, though. There are a lot of mutually-exclusive or semi-compatible strategies to use, lots of levers to play with, which I think is a big part of making a strategy game interesting.
I think that Dwarf Fortress has a higher learning curve, but if you’re wanting a strategy game that has a gentle learning curve, I agree, Dominions probably isn’t the best choice. It also doesn’t have a tutorial/introduction system – it’s got an old-school, nice hefty manual.