Continuing about complex games. The most complex board game is Go, and it has what? A board and stones, that's all. Still, "Go is noted for being rich in strategic complexity despite its simple rules." AFAIK it's also the oldest competitive game that is still popular today. Somehow, you don't need a Dominions 3 game rules complexity so to have a strategic complexity (that i called depth). And that game survived the time, so a simple design with a strategic complexity is destined to live forever.

I think it's you who don't understand how MtG combo decks work. It's called COMBO for a reason. You have cards that are so-so to absolutely useless by themselves. Say, link: Necropotence card was deemed absolutely useless, it was rated 1/5 by the most respected players. Later it emerged as a primary card in a dominating Necropotence deck. That's because such "worthless" cards in a combo with other cards become extremely powerful or just flat out win the game for you.

Compared to that, Dom3 has generic magical effects, exactly what i said. Like, mass delayed kill ("all units in the world to age 12 times faster"), mass domination ("take control of every enemy unit that fails an easy saving throw"), teleport etc.

Dom3 should have had combos if it had spells like "all units in the world age 12 times faster" so everyone wants to attack you, but you also has a spell that seals your border and another spell protects your global enchantments from disenchant. That will be an MtG-like combo, you complete it and you either win or you're in a very favorable conditions for a win.

So, as we see, i do know Dom3 but you don't know MtG. It was a bad idea to compare Dom3 magical effects to MtG magical effects.

Wow, obvious pairs are somehow equal to combo decks. Don't make me laugh. Say, in Civ4 you can give a unit a "city defence" promotion that is absolutely useless by itself. But when you defend a city, it gives you a bonus! Wow. You see, i proved that there are such "combos" in Civ 4 too, not only in Dom3 like you claimed.

Besides,  Communion Master and Communion Slave are just two parts of the same spell as they work only with each other and they were designed to be that way. Howver, you can't cast spells on two/three etc. chosen units so you're casting that spell one unit at a time.

Fine, fine, but is it a viable strategy? No. You need high-lvl spells from different magic schools, some specific map layout and a lot of gems. And end result isn't that good. You'll not win the game with something like that. So, no, Dom3 doesn't have something like MtG combo decks.

I said that some MtG cards were considered worthless but they weren't because of combos. It has nothing to do with Dom3. So, what the hell do you want to say by that? It doesn't make any sense.

P.S. Reverse communion relies on primarily using communion slave's spellcasting instead of comunion master's spellcasting in dangerous situations IIRC.

Nah, MtG combo decks are obviously Expert-level (MtG terminology, not mine) and beginner's decks are Beginner level. Beginner's decks are very simple, with simple cards and simple effects.

However, in Dom3 the first thing you need to decide is how to design your god in a way that reminds me about classical RPGs (they're effectively dead too, by the way). Before you even started, you need to figure how your god's strengths/weaknesses will work together with your race strengths/weaknesses and how that will lead to your victory. Not an easy task for a new player.

Instead, in MtG you can take several Beginner's level decks and play with your friends, probably not even really looking in the rules at first, or not looking at all if at least one of the players played MtG before.

In Civ 4, you're playing for a historical figures so you can pick, say, your country and the leader you know from the school days, instead of figuring how "old empire of something" differs from "new empire of something" in Dom3.

Ok, but Dominions 3 is a game that shows how it should NOT be implemented. So, if that was your point, you picked the wrong game.

I was referring to interface limitation for enchantment spells that you cast and target yourself on the main screen, like Commune. Not auto-cast/auto-target spells that are being cast in combat.

It's called "micro", not "strategic". It's kinda hard to argue with someone who doesn't know such basics of the basics.

Who exactly wants more micro? Some nonames on a forum? Just about any gaming forum is full of such loud-mouth complainers. Blizzard doesn't listen to such players and they're lessening micro requirments for Starcraft II so it's irrelevant.

Of course you have them in chess and especially in go. You don't change your strategy every time you move some pawn in chess. That's exactly the same micro, you're making many moves per one strategic decision.

More so, you said "strategy games", without specifics, and on a computer-related forum. That was a HUGE mistake on your part. Most Starcraft matches end in 20-25 minutes. If you'll try to start a multiplayer game in most computer strategy games (especially TBS), you'll need hours and hours. Most likely dozens of hours. That's because most computer TBS require MORE micro than Starcraft, not less. There are exceptions like Spectromancer (something like MtG redesigned for online play), but you'll be swamped by micro if you'll try to play Civilization, Europa universalis, Total War series or even most wargames.

So? I won several Starcraft tournaments and i had a friend who was a 2nd best player in Russia. And i knew most other top players in Russia at that moment.

The logical conclusion is that there is a game with SupCom's UI and economy It's SupCom itself Since you can easily beat even the best players in such a game, do you want to say that you're a world champion in SupCom?

Besides, that's the whole point of micro in Starcraft too. You can either control vultures at some point in the game or make more workers or make more units. A relatively advanced concept is that you have "obligatory micro" and "non-obligatory" micro at each moment of the game (i don't remember exact name for such a micro, but i know the concept). Say, you need to order the next upgrade at the very moment previous one finishes. You need to order a worker the very moment your build queue is empty. But you can harass enemy economy with a drop when you don't need to do any obligatory micro. If your enemy has some obligatory micro at the moment you're harassing him, you're merely trading your "attack micro" for his "defence micro" (maybe you gain some micro advantage, maybe you don't), but you're having significant gains over your opponent in "obligatory micro". That gives you economic advantage.

Nah i was the strongest Future start player in Civilization 4 international multiplayer ladder for a while http://www.civplayers.com (though that was several years ago)

Sure, i invented some tricks and found the better way to grow an economy faster. But my biggest advantage was that i was able to control more workers than others with the same time limit per turn. I'm a former Starcraft player so i out-microed pure TBS players. I also was on the first place of that ladder twice. So i think i'm more qualified than others to say if it's the same micro or it isn't the same micro, especially in multiplayer.

In either case, the limit is how fast you can make decisions, finger dexterity is important but it isn't nowhere near as important as decision-making, even if it's RTS-style micro.

Hell, i'm beating younger myself in a pure 100% clickfest program called PieGates (you may search for piegates.exe). Your only task is to click on the randomly appearing targets, your score is equal to a number of hits per minute. 10 years ago my record was 248, recently i got 260-266. Unless you believe that i'm somehow becoming more dexterous with age (IMHO it's physically impossible to be more dexterous at the age of 29 compared to the age of 19), even in a pure clickfest game physical dexterity is not the most important factor.

This is why I like turn based games. I do not want my time/dexterity/attention to be the key resource in the game.

Dom3. ... I love that game. Yes, it has one hell of a learning curve, but it also has such an information rich interface that you can learn everything about it. That's key, I think, in any game that models that kind of complexity. What, afterall, would be the point of tracking experience and wounds and equipment by individual units if you couldn't drill down far enough to actually make use of that?

At any rate you guys are kind of discussing two different things. On the one hand you have games like Go and Chess which have simple rules and emergant complexity that grows from the interaction of the rules/structure. On the other you have structurally complex games like Dom 3 or Starcraft where you have hundreds of units which are each individually complex and can have many independantly affected and affecting attributes.

Elemental will obviously be a structually complex game, but IMHO it's always best if the complex structures are either intuitively obvious attributes like strength or age or if they have a clear and well documented internal logic.

Frogboy, if you could use your contacts with the civ guys and make civ 5 be able to work with either steam or impulse... so that we could play civ5 without steam, you would make a gazillion people very happy over here. (seen the scratch civ5 off my list thread? if you counted they "yays" and the "Nays"  of civ+steam, and figured out the precentages you could present a very, very compelling argument to the civ people. (i mean, if they lost 1/2 thier audiance due to steam, i think they might be upset... and you might make them very happy if you gave them that 1/2 back (not to mention, giving impuse a sizable market share))

You make a good point, one I'd missed.  There's a reason I don't play Civ in MP very often.

Ironically, it's because I usually end up waiting, having made all my moves long before everyone else finishes, but...

necro much?