I haven't played dominions, so I can't make firm arguments there, but AoW involves minimal research, minimal resources, and involves a theatre rather than a world. It is played as scripted scenario rather than endlessly on generated maps. More importantly though is the more qualitative judgement that it plays far more like Panzer General than Civilization.

*shrug* This is why I don't sell things.

Well if it's as good as MoM and bugless, I'll buy it. But no grid combat?

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I haven't played dominions, so I can't make firm arguments there, but AoW involves minimal research, minimal resources, and involves a theatre rather than a world.

Look, I'm not trying to harass you here, but there aren't really any substantial differences between the games. There is a lot of research in AoW2, easily enough to put it in the same ballpark as MoM. Resource management is also similar - defended magic nodes (of varying types) are in AoW2, just like MoM. There is settlement growth in both games. AoW2 can be played on a number of different maps, and those can be big world maps like MoM's. It even has multiple map levels like MoM..

There isn't really any reason you could call one 4X and the other not. Now I'll admit that the AoW series doesn't really represent great 4X gameplay, but I wouldn't write it off, because players of those games will make up a large part of your market.

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Original post by Argus2 Quote: I haven't played dominions, so I can't make firm arguments there, but AoW involves minimal research, minimal resources, and involves a theatre rather than a world. Look, I'm not trying to harass you here, but there aren't really any substantial differences between the games. There is a lot of research in AoW2, easily enough to put it in the same ballpark as MoM. Resource management is also similar - defended magic nodes (of varying types) are in AoW2, just like MoM. There is settlement growth in both games. AoW2 can be played on a number of different maps, and those can be big world maps like MoM's. It even has multiple map levels like MoM.. There isn't really any reason you could call one 4X and the other not. Now I'll admit that the AoW series doesn't really represent great 4X gameplay, but I wouldn't write it off, because players of those games will make up a large part of your market.

True, you are right folks who like AoW will likely fill my target audience [assuming they can get over the de-emphesis of combat], and didn't mean to write it off as much as exagerate for effect.

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Well if it's as good as MoM and bugless, I'll buy it. But no grid combat?

I would be thrilled if the game were as good as MoM [gameplay, and art].

I am leaning heavily against grid combat, but could be convinced otherwise. I am going to try and code combat nice and modularly so it could be dropped in later with little trouble, but...

Two major arguments against:

1. Grid view combat will likely require art/AI resources beyond my ability.
2. It's counter productive to a good multiplayer experience.

I had exactly the same design dilemma while trying to work out my MoM-style game. Reliance on grid combat is horrible for multiplayer, and even if you supply an "auto-battle" function for multiplayer, players still get annoyed that the battle doesn't go the way it would if they were at the helm (AoW series had problems here).

The two alternatives I looked at were auto-resolution only, and combat on the main board. Auto-resolving battles is ok, but opposing forces must then be represented as being in the same "place" on the main board, which might not fit in nicely with the rest of the game. Having combat on the main board means that there are scale problems - if I have archers who can shoot 3 squares on the main board, that means 3 squares on the main board can't really be very far in terms of distance.

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Original post by Telastyn After taking a quick look though this recent thread and in particular sunandshadow's fine design doc (.doc, 355k), I was motivated to create a design document for my hobbyist project.

Oh, thanks for the compliment. :) Ironically, I'm actually in the middle of restructuring my design doc, splitting it up into intro, technical, story, art, music, and appendix sections.