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Yodzilla posted:So as someone who is currently playing through Divinity II, how much does this game reference that and previous games? Or is it more just a general world and lore thing? General world and lore, basically. One character who comes up a lot in people's pasts in Divinity II is a major character in this game, but you could easily understand one without the other.
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# ? Sep 20, 2013 04:28 |
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# ? Jun 10, 2024 10:58 |
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Really Pants posted:Does all this brouhaha with elf weed activists and lizard republicans etc. significantly impact the ending? What about influencing my generals to be slightly less terrible people? Will Rivellon suffer for my encouragement of Catherine's serial-castrating strawman feminism? The ending is set in stone, but the influence and character development events will have an impact on gameplay itself. Side with the Undead a lot, for example, and while your units might be more expensive, you'll have a much higher chance of winning auto battles.
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# ? Sep 20, 2013 04:59 |
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Chomp8645 posted:Man you report this like it's mixed news but in my book Larian making money from Dragon Commander and not giving a poo poo about retail is a double positive. Obviously the fact the they made money is good for those of us hoping for a sequel/spinoff, but I'm just as glad to hear they won't compromise future titles just to meet the demands of a distribution method I couldn't care less about and consider archaic. Even if it takes them longer and I'd rather wait for a better game. That's my opinion at least. Yeah, throughout the beta, I've been impressed about how responsive Larian has been, and how much they seem to genuinely care about the quality of their game and the players' experience. I'm happy to hear that they've made a profit from this, and that they've decided to forego giving a poo poo about retailers' deadlines, and chosen to focus even more heavily on the quality of their product as a result of the experience. I also think it's cool of them to loop us in on their thought process, even months after the game is finished and out the door. I guess what I'm saying is, Larian, you guys are alright!
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# ? Sep 20, 2013 05:00 |
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:The lesson Swen learned is that catering to retail is not worth the hassle. Retail outlets require a fixed release date, and committing to it forced them to refocus some resources at the last minute to fix a problem, meaning resources weren't going to other areas.
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# ? Sep 20, 2013 09:47 |
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Cardiovorax posted:There are a lot of lessons they should have learned from this game, but this is really not the first thing that comes to mind. Well, technically, the main lesson learned is: Swen Vincke posted:You're right of course - the main takeaway is that if the ideal can't be achieved, it's important to focus on the important stuff. But what do you think is the main lesson they should have learned? I could pass it along. Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 12:28 on Sep 20, 2013 |
# ? Sep 20, 2013 12:22 |
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Well, speaking as a customer, not a developer or publisher, the biggest thing to take away from this is, in my opinion, to avoid Spore Syndrome in the future. I know you really like Larian and their games, but I was really disappointed with Dragon Commander for a number of reasons that I talked about in my previous post. It can be summed up, though, as a general feeling of the whole being smaller than the sum of its parts because they all felt only half-realized and not well-integrated with each other. "Focus more on doing only one thing, but doing it well, rather than forcing five different genres into one game," basically. I'm still optimistic about Original Sin, because it doesn't seem to be making the same mistake, but DC was a real let-down to me. Larian is at its best when doing conventional RPGs with lots of clever writing. They should play to their strengths.
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# ? Sep 20, 2013 12:40 |
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Cardiovorax posted:Well, speaking as a customer, not a developer or publisher, the biggest thing to take away from this is, in my opinion, to avoid Spore Syndrome in the future. I know you really like Larian and their games, but I was really disappointed with Dragon Commander for a number of reasons that I talked about in my previous post. It can be summed up, though, as a general feeling of the whole being smaller than the sum of its parts because they all felt only half-realized and not well-integrated with each other. "Focus more on doing only one thing, but doing it well, rather than forcing five different genres into one game," basically. Okay, that makes sense. I am a fan of Larian, but I can definitely see where you're coming from. I have disappointments with Dragon Commander as well.
The difference between our points of view is that you think that the game is less than the sum of its parts, but I think that they got enough right to make the game MORE than the sum of its parts, despite the weak areas. Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 13:54 on Sep 20, 2013 |
# ? Sep 20, 2013 13:49 |
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Dragon Commander was far from perfect but it was the only game I've ever played that really made it feel like you were the ruler of a nation during wartime. A lot of games, whether RPGs or strategy, have declared the player "king" or "emperor" when you're really just a glorified adventurer or general who has very little to do with politics at all. You quest or command like you do in any other game and it's obvious that you're a king in name only. I see Dragon Commander as an experiment, and more importantly I think it's proved that this type of game is viable. Yes, it is flawed, but many games that pioneer a genre are flawed because they're breaking ground no one has tread before. Demon Souls was heavily flawed but it did something nobody had done before and it led to Dark Souls which was an enormous critical and financial success and one of my favorite games ever. Mount and Blade is an incredibly flawed title but it offered great fun in a way many of us had never seen before and Mount and Blade 2 will likely refine it something even better. Hell, The Elder Scrolls series was wonky adventure in game-breaking and potion shenanigans for several titles until Oblivion and Skyrim made it the juggernaut it is today. The point I'm trying to make is that every game that does something truly unique is flawed, because the people making it have no example to follow. They are treading new ground. The original predecessors of many games we love today (Dark Souls, The Elder Scrolls, etc) were incredibly flawed, but they offered a new foundation for their successors to build upon. I'm hoping that Dragon Commander does the same thing for Larian (or if not them, whoever picks up the torch). Dragon Commander has flaws yes, but to me it's proved that a game that simulates all aspects of being a leader is viable, all it needs is refinement.
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# ? Sep 20, 2013 18:36 |
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I think they could have made a MUCH deeper and more involved game if they had gone VA & text, instead of just VA. They didn't have the budget for it, and it led to having some interesting initial plot lines, but some rather shallow and boring interactivity during follow through and between times.
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# ? Sep 20, 2013 18:48 |
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Drifter posted:I think they could have made a MUCH deeper and more involved game if they had gone VA & text, instead of just VA. They didn't have the budget for it, and it led to having some interesting initial plot lines, but some rather shallow and boring interactivity during follow through and between times.
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# ? Sep 20, 2013 19:16 |
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:I haven't been playing Dragon Commander in 3 or so weeks, simply because I'd been playing it for like 2 months straight from the start of July to the end of August. That's normal and I usually don't play any one game for longer than that - whether or not I've actually finished it. New features will probably bring me back to check on them. After my new computer (loving finally) arrives next week I'll be getting back to it as well. Multiplayer in particular.
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# ? Sep 21, 2013 17:34 |
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Harvested off of Tumblr, apparently from a 'clip art + comic sans video game covers' thing.
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# ? Sep 25, 2013 23:57 |
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Obviously, with Larian's entire team now focusing exclusively on Original Sin, there probably won't be any significant new content for Dragon Commander. EDIT: At least not immediately. Larian wasn't planning on making DLC in any case (except maybe the Imperial Edition stuff). Other than that, any new content they were planning to release would be for free (Larian doesn't believe in milking customers for nickels and dimes, even though judging from the Steam and Larian forums, there's a bunch of people already eagerly lined up and mooing). There is a patch in the works that will add some new features to the game, but what those are, I'm not sure. That patch is also more than two weeks from being released. Cardiovorax posted:I agree with that. If there was one thing Dragon Commander needed, it was twice the budget and development time. There are so many things there that could have worked well, but realizing all of them fully just wasn't within Larian's means. Doing every idea in the game justice would have meant developing a half-dozen games in parallel. There aren't even any big-name triple-A dev studios who could pull that off, never mind a comparatively small indie developer. That's pretty much exactly what Swen's response was to your post. Swen Vincke posted:For sure it has flaws and we're quite aware of them. But we wouldn't have released it if we didn't think playing Dragon Commander was a real fun experience, which I think it is. I played it over and over and enjoyed myself quite a lot. I aldo think quite a lot of other gamers enjoyed themselves equally. Most reviews are positive, and the few that are negative fit in the trend Fox pointed out - they focus on comparing the individual mechanics to other games that only do those specific mechanics, which is battle a game like DC is bound to lose, at least on the budget we made it on. Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 14:23 on Sep 27, 2013 |
# ? Sep 27, 2013 14:21 |
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Larian Facebook posted:Do you like PC Gamer? Do you like GOG.com? Do you like Larian? If so, you could win this fantastic hand painted Divinity:Dragon Commander figurine. There's only 3 in existence, and all you need to do to win one is tell the world that… you like PC Gamer, you like GOG and you like Larian! Easy no? Dragon Commander is on sale now this weekend for -40% off, plus another -10% if you own Divinity II. That pushed it up to the top 5 of Steam's top sellers list. Behind the scenes of the Roar of the Dragon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljLLLo5Kh24 What kind of Ruler are you? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdeOvdAgko8 Larian Studios reveals the voting behavior of Divinity: Dragon Commander players: (See also: The Times) New patch is out. Lar_q posted:It's out now. There was an annoying bug blocking it for quite some time. And while it's true that most of us are currently on DOS, DC is continuing to receive love and you will be seeing new patches come online in the coming weeks/months with new features. We personally like DC a lot quote:Patch 1.0.124 - New campaign features, improved AI and more! I tried and I didn't seem to get the "FFA AI's always join battle" setting to work. Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 23:03 on Oct 10, 2013 |
# ? Oct 10, 2013 22:32 |
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I'd like to also note that, alternatively, Divinity II: Director's Cut is available in the Weekly Humble bundle, name whatever price you want and get it, as well as several other games. https://www.humblebundle.com/weekly
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# ? Oct 11, 2013 01:46 |
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So... how do I beat this (I'm red)? http://steamcommunity.com/id/Joshikins22/screenshot/558736503022071014 It's just transporters vs my Ironclads on an open sea battle. The transporters will always beeline to this one mountain island, drop one grenadier and just sit there. I can't reach that spot before they can. And my Ironclads are incapable of killing that drat thing. Resonance22 fucked around with this message at 11:41 on Oct 12, 2013 |
# ? Oct 12, 2013 11:30 |
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That's smart of the AI, because there isn't a way for Ironclads to attack anything on land or hovering. This is one of the stalemate situations that the game doesn't deal with well. You could kill the Transport and then try to retreat, but that can cost you units. Other than that, the other option is to reload the autosave from the last turn and maybe use a Transport mercenary. The fact that the AI can drop units off on a spot though, I've posted that as a bug on the Larian forums, because that does not seem right. Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 17:22 on Oct 12, 2013 |
# ? Oct 12, 2013 15:03 |
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Resonance22 posted:So... how do I beat this (I'm red)? http://steamcommunity.com/id/Joshikins22/screenshot/558736503022071014 If you can't do it manually, just have it autoresolve for you. If you're overwhelmingly populated compared to the enemy, you probably won't even take any losses.
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# ? Oct 12, 2013 16:32 |
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Turtlicious posted:Picked up Divinity Dragon Commander the other day and I'm getting loving stomped as soon as it switches to the larger map (this is after the baby map they let you toy with.) Is there anything I should have done, or could do to make the game less painful? Crossposting from the steam thread.
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# ? Nov 14, 2013 23:02 |
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You may have noted this already, but make sure you've got ironclads and transports researched before you finish the first map, since the second one starts you off on a tiny island, and the time it will take you to research the technology to leave said island gives the AI time to build up and curbstomp you. Also, it's tempting to open up chapter two by trying to take the island capital just to your east, but don't try, it's too strong. It's better to go west and capture territory to build yourself up and become strong. Just build up a little navy to keep the island AI off your rear end and he won't be a problem as you conquer the west.
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# ? Nov 14, 2013 23:07 |
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Yeah, that sucked and I wished that there was a bit more... preparation. can I just sit and farm units in the tutorial to have a larger lead in the second map? e: Corvus Spoilers: Is sacrificing ever worth it? I did the wife thing and it really was just some lovely cards.
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# ? Nov 14, 2013 23:12 |
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Turtlicious posted:Yeah, that sucked and I wished that there was a bit more... preparation. can I just sit and farm units in the tutorial to have a larger lead in the second map? I can't imagine that it ever would be, regarding your spoiler. By the time you can do it there's pretty much no point to it, seeing as you're pretty solidly leveled up naturally. I rarely even needed cards to supplement my attacks in rts mode - and I don't rts well. You can sit and farm units and gold and poo poo to a point in the initial stage, but you'll hit a gold/resource cap that's less than the cap at later stages. So yes, but up to a point - it'll let you know when to stop. Also, don't waste any dragon upgrade points on 1-unit power ups. There are a bunch, but I don't remember their names. Upgrade area buffs first, then your own buffs/area status attacks, and then point attacks when you end up having too many upgrade points to know what to do with them. Drifter fucked around with this message at 23:28 on Nov 14, 2013 |
# ? Nov 14, 2013 23:24 |
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I think there's a cap of 50 gold and 30 Research points when switching maps. Cards carry over as well, units do not. I wrote up some strategies for dealing with Act II on a Steam Guide. Basically grab your two Transports from southeast of your starting location and send them home, then send one of your Transports to land on another neutral land to seize it. The next turn, repeat with your other two Transports. You always move first, so as long as you don't try and move your Transports through tiles occupied by enemy ships, you can land safely. Speaking of single-unit buffs - I have on occasion used one-unit buffs, but those were in cases where I only had one or two units with which to fend off a larger number of enemy units. That does work, although it does require your attention, probably too much if anything else is going on. In any case, one single-unit buff that is worthwhile is the Dragon's Aegis skill, which is a more powerful version of the Shaman's Immunity. It's useful to protect a unit taking heavy fire or one which is polymorphed. There's no solid news on Dragon Commander stuff, but I added some more reviews. There's also this from October 29: Lar_q posted:Raze is right - development on DC is continuing and you can expect new content in the "near future" When that will be is hard to say, since Larian is focusing almost all their attention onto the Divinity: Original Sin Alpha, which is supposed to open this month.
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# ? Nov 14, 2013 23:46 |
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Turtlicious posted:e: Corvus Spoilers: The reward itself doesn't make it worth sacrificing a wife, but if you don't like how the plot line for your first wife is going, or if you finish it during the second act, you can sacrifice just to change wives and get another plot line going.
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# ? Nov 15, 2013 01:14 |
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Steam has Dragon Commander on for 33% off. Somewhat related, I'm also preparing a Let's Play of Dragon Commander. (Please leave any feedback on the LP Test post in the Sandcastle, not here.)
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# ? Nov 29, 2013 13:56 |
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Picked this up during steam winter flash sale (it'll come back at some point) and had some serious doubts, but drat I wasn't expecting the game to be this good. Usually when you have a mishmash of genres in a game, it ends up being all terrible, but DC somehow makes it work.
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# ? Dec 21, 2013 10:07 |
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Received it during the sale, played it, beat it on Normal like a titanic wuss. Is there any semi-decent footage online of people playing this game at all? Because I felt like I was doing it wrong at all times, yet constantly beat the living snot out of the campaign. Basically, any map where I did not begin with an overwhelming advantage I would 1: Grab all recruitment centers possible then 2: deflect, delay, and turtle until I could 3: turn into a dragon and single-handedly dispatch the opponent's armies, outposts, and defensive reserves, in that order before 4: mopping up the infrastructure with my army while slapping a lid on any units that spawn instantly with my dragon. I almost never interacted with the RTS gameplay beyond the crudest methods ("MAKE MANY MEN AND SEND THEM HERE," "LITERALLY EVERYONE ATTACK THIS POINT" "ONE GUY GO HERE AND CAP THIS HEY QUIT BEING REABSORBED INTO THE MAIN BLOB GROUP DAMNIT") and felt like my every RTS victory explicitly depended upon my efforts as a dragon. Which was really quite surprisingly fun and all (the first word in the title ain't 'Commander'), but I'd like to know if this is an attitude/playstyle that will lead to anything other than suffering on Hard mode. And if not, I'd like to get a lead on some footage that isn't YouTube SuperStars carefully reading all the menu text aloud for their audiences. Also, I cannot believe how impossibly disorganized this game was. I read all the reviews, I wasn't prepared, I played it, I wasn't prepared, I BEAT it and I wasn't prepared. Every single thing I like about it is in spite of something else, and everything I hate is made mostly irrelevant by entirely different things. I played half the game in a day, then avoided it like the plague for a week, then binged the other half. I can't decide whether to recommend it or never mention it again. EDIT: Also, gently caress Yorrick. He deserves a shittier voice than he possesses. EDIT EDIT: Hell with it, a few more scattered thoughts: the unit designs were as uninspired as their voice sets were awesome, the characteres were great fun and for the most part (generals, I'm looking at you) kept chatty, and the dragon's air controls are my absolute favourite; normally whenever I take flight in a game I find myself traveling in a series of broad, uncontrolled swoops very slowly, this permitted me to turn perfectly and accelerate as furiously as I wanted. Drakyn fucked around with this message at 04:49 on Jan 2, 2014 |
# ? Jan 2, 2014 03:26 |
Is there a decent newbie strategy guide for this game somewhere? Like of the "This dragon is good with this thing, research blue widgets right off for a boost if you pick a purple dragon" type thing?
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# ? Jan 3, 2014 04:49 |
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Lyer posted:Picked this up during steam winter flash sale (it'll come back at some point) and had some serious doubts, but drat I wasn't expecting the game to be this good. Usually when you have a mishmash of genres in a game, it ends up being all terrible, but DC somehow makes it work. This was a really good first attempt for a crazy game like this. I really wish Larian gets the funds to make a more polished sequel with way more of the political/story content.
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# ? Jan 3, 2014 05:22 |
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I might reply to your post in more depth a little while, Drakyn (I'm a little under the weather now). The AI is quite good and aggressive on Hard mode. Turtling is in general not a good strategy, because your income is based on the number of Recruitment Centers you control. Typically, if there are multiple countries in play, you should use your Dragon in the one with the lowest odds because the Dragon can turn it around easier than the generals or army can. On Hard, the enemy is very good at using the units special abilities (once it researches them), and that can be hard to handle. Hieronymous Alloy posted:Is there a decent newbie strategy guide for this game somewhere? Like of the "This dragon is good with this thing, research blue widgets right off for a boost if you pick a purple dragon" type thing? There is indeed. I was one of the people who worked on it.
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# ? Jan 3, 2014 19:08 |
Stabbey_the_Clown posted:I might reply to your post in more depth a little while, Drakyn (I'm a little under the weather now). The AI is quite good and aggressive on Hard mode. Turtling is in general not a good strategy, because your income is based on the number of Recruitment Centers you control. Arg. For some reason I can't access steam community, so I can't read that (even reinstalling steam didn't help). edit: maybe it did now it works! Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 23:16 on Jan 3, 2014 |
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# ? Jan 3, 2014 23:13 |
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:I might reply to your post in more depth a little while, Drakyn (I'm a little under the weather now). The AI is quite good and aggressive on Hard mode. Turtling is in general not a good strategy, because your income is based on the number of Recruitment Centers you control. I might have misrepresented my strategy... turtling has connotations of 'sit on your rear end, don't move;' a word I could emphasize instead is delaying. See, I worked out your advice on prioritizing autoresolve vs RTS battles somewhere near the start of Act II, and because of this many of the RTS battles started with me so far behind the enemy in troop-bulk that my goal ended up being to survive the 120 seconds 'till dragonspawn while still having enough of an army/base left to baserush once I'd napalm'd their armies. This was accomplished via a mix of deliberate over-expansion (capping as many points as possible early on, to deny the AI recruit income, distract it with multiple targets, and to make sure I had a recruit cushion for later disasters), the luring and waylaying of the opponent's initial expansion efforts (preferably into hastily-made turret nests and condensed blobs), and sometimes just frantically shuffling my forces around the map as if I were the Pied Piper of magic-mechs ('can't lose a fight you refuse to start'). It worked very well for all those times when a transport shuffled onto my beaches with three grenadiers and a hunter and I had a lone trooper and a merc card running border guard, which were distressingly frequent early on. Later in the campaign I was only picking one or two fights at a time and controlled their terms almost totally, but the armies involved on both sides had become so huge and complex that simply ramming them together resulted in the AI tearing me apart with its superior micro and macro skills. As a response to this, rather than trying to improve my own RTS abilities I stuck to a adaptation of my old delaying tactics, where the goal wasn't 'win fight' it was 'dodge fire and delay for the dragon, then mop up.' What I'm wondering about is if using these sorts of evade-and-destroy RTS-lite tactics constantly is (a) a legit way to go about winning Hard fights, (b) using an (unreliable) crutch to avoid a situation I should be able to win via superior RTS play alone, or (c) a sign I need to have a big enough army that these problems don't exist because autoresolve heals all wounds. Or (d) any combination of the above. Because let me tell you, if relying on the dragon to be the whole of your win strategy is workable farther on, I will ride that sucker 'till its wings drop off and the jetpack corrodes. quote:There is indeed. I was one of the people who worked on it.
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# ? Jan 4, 2014 06:34 |
Drakyn posted:Picked quite a few useful things out of this. That other guy sure liked imp fighters, didn't he? Personally, I'm vowing to pay more attention to my navy next time. Ironclads aside, every time I had a juggernaut I loved the damned thing, so I'm hoping to use them as more than giant autoresolve murderfists. Yeah, it was a really good guide, thanks! I tried a mix of both strategies and took out Act II faster than Act I. The real advantage of imp fighters is they can move from your home island to wherever the fight is in a single turn; because they're so mobile you don't need quite as many of them as that guy was talking about. Ironclads are very useful at first but the imp fighters are more versatile by far since they can also bolster your land units. For the navy, the trick seems to be waiting till you get one of those "75% off naval units" cards. I used one of those to buy 11 Juggernaughts in a single turn. Overall it seems like the dragon is most useful in the early phases when he can turn the tide of small battles, but later in the act when battles are larger he just gets toasted too fast and/or you lose track of the rest of the fight while dragoning (all your units get caught in a gas cloud, etc). One thing I really, really don't have the hang of is using the dragon as a buffer/healer/troop protector. I also really wish: 1) The game would auto-discard cards that give me upgrades I already have 2) my own troops could be set to auto fire their special abilities like the AI does. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Jan 4, 2014 |
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# ? Jan 4, 2014 20:29 |
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I do agree that it can be really hard to micromanage the battles, and by default there are too many units. You can get used to it with enough practice (you might need to lower the difficulty level until you get better). I tend to use Custom Campaigns with settings doubling the Recruit Costs for things (cost to build units and spawn the Dragon) and increasing the starting recruits to 70 so you can barely afford to build a second Recruitment Center and Battle Forge.
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# ? Jan 31, 2014 14:12 |
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Jesse Cox knows how to work the system in Dragon Commander: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vejayAkO9PM
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# ? Feb 27, 2014 00:18 |
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Dragon Commander is the weekend deal on Steam. 66% off, 76% off if you own another Larian Studios game. That's a fantastic price on a game with a lot of replay value.
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# ? Apr 11, 2014 02:43 |
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Awesome, I missed previous sales for this game. Anyone know the difference between the regular and imperial edition on steam?
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# ? Apr 11, 2014 04:53 |
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Imperial Edition: - A unique development documentary video - An extra campaign map that has dragons fight for control of the Earth - A golden skin for your Dragon Emperor - A beautifully remastered version of the soundtrack by Kirill Pokrovsky It's only one Campaign map, but it is the largest campaign map in the game, with over 100 countries to conquer. It's also refreshingly not symmetrical like most of the other maps. Arguably the soundtrack alone is probably worth the extra money. The documentary video is really mostly showing how the appearance of the game changed over time set to music, it's not so much a documentary. Not the greatest. The skin is nice looking, and you can turn it off if you get tired of it.
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# ? Apr 11, 2014 05:05 |
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:
I find the Dragon gets really handy again in the late game, because you can use Eye of the Patriarch to wipe out a really good-sized group of enemy forces to swing a lopsided battle in your favor. Pillar of Fire is great, too, because its area denial aspect can help buy time for you to get some reinforcements to your lines. If the enemy doesn't hold back or try to go around it, they'll take enough damage that your units should be able to start killing them off effectively.
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# ? Apr 11, 2014 12:20 |
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# ? Jun 10, 2024 10:58 |
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:Imperial Edition: Anyway to add this on assuming we purchased the regular edition?
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# ? Apr 11, 2014 14:08 |