Disciples II

[Comrade Tribune]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
At least Civ 3 has interesting ideas.

Dunno. Can´t think of much except Resources and Culture.

Resources: Infinitely better: ImperialismII.

Culture: Infinitely better: EUII. (With Domestic Policies, Cultures differ in quality instead of quantity. You don´t have 'more Culture' or 'less Culture'; instead, the question is: What Culture does your nation have?)

[yin26]

There's a big holiday coming up here in Asia (Lunar New Year), so I'll have some solid days of gaming bliss. I hope to gorge myself on Disciples 2, so I'll get back to you then. I'm just glad I have a game to look forward to come the holidays!

[Comrade Tribune]

Happy New Year!

[yin26]

Thank you, sir! You know, in China, they get like 3 weeks off! Can you image 3 weeks to play computer games? At least I'll get 5 days to play D2 ... I shouldn't complain too much I guess.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Jeffrey Morris FIRAXIS
"The AI is really stupid. "

You can definitely trick the AI to bounce between two cities by defending one and not defending the other, then reverse.

I have seen other, even stupider things. For example, the computer players have a tendency to attack netural monsters. I don't know if there are any in D2, but there are many of them in the original, blocking roads or guarding treasures.

Anyway, the CPs tend to send waves after waves of stacks to take on these neutral monsters, even if they keep getting slaughtered.

Originally posted by Jeffrey Morris FIRAXIS
I'm still playing the second mission, which is getting pretty frustrating. Not only is it like a 8 hour affair (unless I'm doing something wrong, which I may be), but I just ran into the undead faction, who are invulnerable to my attacks!

How so? the undeads weren't anything special as far as I can tell. The werewolf unit, IIRC, is invulnerable to physical attacks. Yet another good reason to use the Archmage. Besides, you want a leader who can use the many artifacts that are lying around.

Originally posted by Jeffrey Morris FIRAXIS
I really wish there was a list of the objectives required to win the game, since the 'briefing' is really more of a movie than anything else.

Usually, the objective is to wipe out the other side. You can't go wrong with that Seriously, usually it's either convert a certain percentage of the land or to capture a certain town. I think there's a menu option that tells you what the objective is.

Originally posted by Jeffrey Morris FIRAXIS
My favorite Empire pack was the knightish leader, with two archers and a squire. The multiple attack spellcasters were neat, but it seems really important against higher level enemies to be able to destroy the ranged units first. Since then, archers (and all their flavors) are my favorite units.

Archers are good against spellcasters, but my experience is you don't need more than one. I use my archers against enemy archers to preserve my own spellcasters. Enemy spellcasters can usually be taken out by your spellcasters since they are low on hit points. Also, since the Werewolf unit is immune to physical damages you will need magic - and lots of it - against the undeads.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by yin26
This is true of most any game. What's important is how long it grabs you, and whether or not the community has the tools to keep things fresh.

The problem with the game is there are just too few variables to be interesting. For me, it was interesting for about 1 1/2 scenarios, the rest was more of the same.

[yin26]

I may well experience the same problem if the scenarios aren't interesting enough. Supposedly huge effort was put into them, but that could well be just hype.

[jackshot]

I've been impressed with the units, everything is useful. The scripting language is interesting, maybe still a bit primitive but a big change from D1. Another change from D1 is allowing the units to advance past their max upgrade, it works well and cuts down on all the creature swapping you had to do in the first version. You now want to keep the stack together.

I'm knee deep into the undead saga; I've got a Nosferatu with a necromancer, a deathdragon, and a dark lord - I rack up 150+ HP on each square on the board every turn, not to mention the dark lord who whacks some front row big guy for another 100. Of course bring death immunity to the party and watch my guys all run away...

I think they have a winner here. The biggest complaints I've heard so far center around the limited nature of the system, but IMO the simplicity is deceiving. Under the hood, the creature/leaders all seem modeled well and advance well, and the way all the elements (spells, weapons/attack, combined arms) so easily add up to a neat system - that doesn't make you go through drivers ed first - is no mean feat.

They are definitely trying for the TBS/RPG hybrid, some of the little scripted events look a lot like something from Bioware if you squint and let your cat distract you while they happen.

[Grumbold]

Disciples 1 was an interesting game that I felt was more of an advance on the Warlords game than anything else. It had its faults but in 3 seperate sessions (separated by months) I completed all four campaigns. My biggest beef was the later game scenarios when one enemy spell could kill all the non-fighters in a group. You had to use bait-and-lure tactics (and reload) to make sure your prime stack did not get eradicated because clever defensive casting was not sufficient. Similarly one nuke of yours would turn the enemy's best stacks into easy pickings.

When Disciples 2 crosses the pond I'll be happy to spend moneyto try it out. Warlords Battlecry was such a disappointment it can only be better

[yin26]

I just completed my first quest (leaving the saga for later). Some things I learned is that I needed to power up ONE group, plants rods ASAP, and actively seek the enemy's power stack early (and it seems the comp is not as good at doing the above, so you have an advantage early). I had the enemy hemmed in (on his very doorstep) within some 20 turns, after which I just powered up a bit more before finishing him off. Call it a TBS rush.

Still, I find the pacing to be a challenge, as has already been pointed out. You really need to settle in for a good, long haul if you want to complete anything in one sitting. The thing that makes it worth it, though, are the wonderful production values and some solid strategy elements. For example, do you try to pick off the enemy group on its way to sell some treasure (and thereby really hamper his ability to produce more units) or do you retreat back, power up and not risk losing your best units?

Lots of little decisions like that keeping you on your toes. I noticed they even tried to keep the game somewhat interesting by having pirates show up. While that was a nice touch the first few times (since I wanted to bring over a spy across the map but lost him to pirates), it really doesn't add too much of a meaningful challenge and only serves to draw out the inevitable. Of course, my game was a bit lopsided, so I can see how these neutral bands can really throw a wrench in the works.

Man, the graphics are just awesome! That's not what a strategy game should be based on, of course, but when I saw my stone golem for the first time, I really felt that I *earned* seeing him in his brutal splendor.

[Zealot]

Oh, now I remember, I played Disciples 1!
I just wasn't getting that it was that HOMM clone you were talking about!
So, the D2 is substantially better, huh?
It better be; otherwise it won't stand a chance to face the upcoming HOMM 4!

[Pembleton]

Originally posted by yin26
I just completed my first quest (leaving the saga for later). Some things I learned is that I needed to power up ONE group, plants rods ASAP, and actively seek the enemy's power stack early (and it seems the comp is not as good at doing the above, so you have an advantage early).

One group: something that is still *behind* HOMM in gameplay "technology". From what I understand, and it makes sense from the design, HOMM4 will no longer feature the "superhero" or in D2, "superparty" strategy. From 1 to 3, the general strategy 95% of the time was to produce one superhero and the other heroes were defenders/errand runners.

Rods: it depends on the locations of the mines and if it's worth spending 450 gold early (300 for unit + 150 for rod) or to wait 2-3 turns to get the mine "indirectly". In one game there was a town right above my capital that I didn't take right away in my first game. Instead, I planted a rod south of my capital immediately (well it took a day's worth of movement).

In the second, by accident I decided to clear the path to the town north of the capital first, and noticed that the spread of "control" from my capital increased much faster, and the mine to the south was under the capital's influence in about a day anyway, thus saving 450 gold. You get +50 gold per day from a mine, so in essence, you "lose" 350 gold by not waiting the 2 days.

If the town to the north isn't taken, it took much longer to have the mine to the south under control. I noticed this, because I also tried to take a different mine farther to the east first to see what effect that would have on the early game.

I'm still not sure how this functions precisely in how the computer calculates rate of player control, but I've stopped playing the game, so I don't think I will be investigating the matter any further.

As a further side note, in my trips to the SF forum, and elsewhere, I have heard absolutely no mention of any bugs or crashes so far. SF decided to delay the game a *long* time, as I believe it was supposed to be released sometime last summer, and that has paid off (hello, Firaxis?). Of course, my issues with the game are very specific and detailed, and I won't go into them here.

[yin26]

I rather like the 'one group' approach. It adds a certain RPG element and makes you have to really think twice about when and where to attack. One of the things I didn't like much about HOMM is that 300 units die in a battle oh well I'll buy 300 more thing.

Having said that, HOMM also has outstanding production values and atmosphere, so no doubt I will be buying HOMM4 when it comes out.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by yin26
I just completed my first quest (leaving the saga for later). Some things I learned is that I needed to power up ONE group, plants rods ASAP, and actively seek the enemy's power stack early (and it seems the comp is not as good at doing the above, so you have an advantage early). I had the enemy hemmed in (on his very doorstep) within some 20 turns, after which I just powered up a bit more before finishing him off. Call it a TBS rush.

Ah, you're getting the hang of it.

In some sense it's very TBS like that you have to grab all the resources, just to deny the enemy from having them. You can try to "starve" your opponent by taking all the mana resources from the computer player, so it can't cast spells on you.

Empire has an advantage because it's rod planter is the flying archangel, which allows her to cross waters easily. Actually, I used her as a scout since she's cheap.

Later in the campaign the computer "bad guy" will have some rather disgusting stacks around.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Grumbold
Disciples 1 was an interesting game that I felt was more of an advance on the Warlords game than anything else

Hm, my take is Disciples 1 is inferior to Warlords 3, with far fewer strategic options.