Right click on the tribute pad when the tribute tab is selected now auto sorts the tribute cards according to the Tom Chick method.

(from 1.3 patch notes)

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It does seem that turn 20 is right at the cusp of where you could start doing some interesting things, every time. I think even a small expansion of the limit to 25 turns would do more to sell the game. Of course, I’m notoriously slow at getting my armies/economy up to speed in TBS/RTSs, so it may just be me. :) I find myself saying “Oh, come ON! Gimme just TWO more turns to take that bastard out!)

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Really please with Solium so far, as well.

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Also to those put off by the learning curve, this game really isn’t that hard to figure out as you go along aside from a few things like unit and praetor combat. And this is coming from a guy who’s never been able to summon up enough autism to make it through a game of Dominions 3.

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That’s hilarious – the AI functions only until the demo would run out? :)

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That being said, I’ve been pleased with Dom3, and liked AE. Still, Arkham Asylum for $25. Couldn’t pass it up. Maybe some other time, SI!

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http://www.shrapnelgames.com/Illwinter/DOM3/DOM3_page.html

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1) The resource cards. This is just silly. I played a charisma-heavy character my first time out, raising Diabolism to 7 plus some perk increases. That meant that at some points, I was looking through as many as 80+ cards to find the eight I needed, all in a tiny rectangle in a 1024×768 window. Or worse yet, the more-than-eight I needed, which meant I had to spend multiple turns combining smaller cards into bigger ones to cast the spell. Not to mention the headaches with sorting and tracking 20+ manuscript cards. It’s an entirely unenjoyable bit of micromanagement, and the game would be infinitely better if they were just numbers.

2) The enemy AI is extremely passive, from what I’ve seen so far. In my first full-length game, after turn 20 or so, the enemy literally just sat there. They completely turned off, even leaving some points of power untaken (but surrounded and therefore inaccessible – they ARE clever about that). Now, I lost, so for at least one opponent, I guess I can’t be too angry. But for the other two – it reminds me of in college, when someone was losing really bad right off the bat, sometimes they’d be dicks and just go watch TV instead of playing to conclusion. The one who won was simply the AI that was high enough starting level to take his nearby points immediately. I never once had any of them initiate any military or diplomatic actions, and with “sloth” as my goal, I couldn’t, either.

3) The price is wrong. $20 max; at $15 I’d even recommend it before he fixes #1 and #2.

I liked AE, and purchased this one thinking he was learning. Instead, it seems some of the limitations of his design and the director platform are here amplified. I can relate, man – I wrote a roguelike in Flash once – but at some point you just have to sigh, wave your lovingly-crafted code goodbye, and start over with a real language.

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A few things I’ve found from playing the demo:
When you roll up a character, invest in Charisma. Seriously. 0 Charisma is barely playable – you have hardly any resources to do anything with. 3 Charisma as Kieron suggests will get plenty of resources rolling through the doors and won’t use up all your points.

When you start out in the big bad hellplane, you’ll want to grab an unattached Place of Power as soon as you can and start racking up Prestige Points. Places of Power, like other units, have three “fight” values – Ranged, Melee, Infernal. The way combat works is that first the ranged scores are compared, and the unit with the higher score damages the weaker unit by the difference, then the melee, then the infernal and then it goes to a second round. If you’ve opted for a Prince of Hell or similar your starting unit may be good enough to take out your local Place of Power by itself.

If your unit *isn’t* good enough to compete, you can still block other people from getting it by marking off territory round it so they can’t get to it. For your first few turns, whether you can take the nearest Place of Power out or not, you’ll be wanting to Demand Tribute and move your unit.

Then, save up, go to the Bazaar, and buy a Praetor or artifact which boasts something like “Melee +4″ or “Ranged +3″. If you look at your orders menu, it will let you manage your newly acquired Praetor or artifact on the next turn, and you can equip your default unit with it. This will hopefully make it tough enough to wreck Places of Power with impunity. Another option is to buy another unit and have it stand in the next hex when you attack; you’ll get half of its stats as “support” boosting your unit.

So, having established a toe-hold, what next? Well, you can move your nastiest unit up to a weaker neighbour’s border and start harassing him. If he grins and takes it, you get tribute or Prestige. If he bristles, war’s on and you get to wreck his stuff. You can do this either by putting up a Praetor champion to fight in single combat or by moving your troops into his territory; as long as they still border your territory at end of turn, you capture his land.

As long as you keep winning, Prestige keeps counting up.

Other things:
Every so often, if you have any skill in Prophecy (usually from points in Intellect), you may get an Event card. These have wide game-changing effects, and you can keep one in reserve until you either get a new card to replace it or decide to use an action and play it.
Gaining attribute points – takes an action as well, and is fairly cheap in resources for early levels.
Rituals:
Rituals have a range of handy effects; mostly they let you convert resources into various things such as information on enemies, damage to enemy units, fog of war over your territory, etc. These also take an action to use.

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