Larian Studios Forums Dragon Commander Dragon Commander - General I loved the game, BUT... (spoilers!!)

... I was sure the last battle was going to be forced as Dragon Commander driven. Why? Because I tought Corvus would be there as a "final boss" of sorts. It would be certainly cool to have a final showdonw with Corvus in dragon form. Not sure how, though... maybe a final RTS battle in equal (50% more or less) units that let you fight another dragon (demon, in this case), driven by the AI, similar to big demons in Divinity 2?

Anyway, thanks fot he game! I really enjoyed it! ^_^

A lot of people requested it, but maybe Larian didn't want to introduce new gameplay mechanics at the last minute, because the game was designed to let you skip all the RTS battles, and even if you play them, you can skip playing as the Dragon too.

In their Divinity 2 behind the scenes video, they mentioned that initially, they wanted an RTS at the end to be part of the final battle, but that meant they needed to teach players the mechanics and such.

Having to deal with an enemy dragon on the final battle would have been fantastic and would have really finished the game off right. But Act III as a whole was pretty bad. Final battle I just dumped around 30 unit's on the country and it was over.

Course then the final insult from the Devs was not being able to speak to the wife after the victory was won.

I don't know if they just ran out of money or time or what, but a little more work and this game as a whole could have been bumped up a few notches in the ratings.

The victory conditions lead to games ending with a whimper rather than a bang. I'm not exactly sure what the answer is, improving the AI should help but you hit a tipping point as soon as you control more than 60-70% of the map at which point victory becomes an inevitability. Maybe it would help if there was a maximum amount of support you could have on any one tile at a time, so that one way or another you would become vulnerable to attacks on your capital. That limit would have to account for entrenchment bonuses of course but it would lead to games ending with a decisive attack on the capital more often.

It would make sense. I'm not sure how could be implemented without "killing" the game flow, but the idea of a final confrontation with Corvus is tempting ^_^



I have just finished the game and I agree about the little polish here and there... but frankly, I believe the final result it has been fantastic; maybe it's because I wasn't expecting much, but I have enjoyed it inmensely.

I liked the ending and the final chapter. Maybe I was expecting that final battle in dragon form... but I have not been disappointed ^_^

It kind of feels like the original concept would've worked better(with the huge airships and flying units and lots of dragon knights and lots of different dragons and battles). But during development they decided to scrap that idea and remade the game. And as a result, to me, it feels like the game wants to be something it isnt, and that features are missing. The game is fun, yes, but it also feels incomplete at the same time. It's as if they didn't have the time to finish the game.

If you have the imperial edition take a look at the prototype screenshots those look epic.

The thing about having other dragons flying around during RTS is that it would have really made it a different type of RTS game. While this game does bring the ability of becoming a dragon yourself during the RTS, the rest of the RTS is pretty standard and average fare. Now if I had to deal with average RTS, plus watch the moves of an opponent dragon, and get into dog fights with it when it move in to destroy my units ... that a whole new ballgame.

Currently though turning into a dragon is basically a automatic win card for me. I can take a battle that has 7%/95% odds and win by using the dragon form.

The rts part is pretty boring for me. I don't even micro manage, because its kind of useless, since i dont have 10 arms to use many skills each unit has, and also because the dragon form can be so op at times that it's just not worth using unit skills. It's much faster to just send ur units at the enemy while you support them with your dragon.

As i've said, it feels incomplete, because they switched over to a different concept in the middle of the development, while they kept many things from it(like turning into a dragon), but removed other parts(like enemy dragons and huge airships), also they reduced the scale to a normal below average rts, while with the original concepts, there were huge flying airships around that could take on a dragon, not to mention, those airships would make for good boss battles(used instead of capital building when fighting for someone's capital).

Also right now, looking into quite a few threads, it seems that ppl barely fight skirmish battles, many of them usually use auto calculate.

Well like I said I only use the dragon when the odds are really out of my favor. All other times I just auto resolve and use cards and/or generals as needed.

I'll be honest I generally fret a bit when I see that I'll have to do a battle in RTS to win. It's just not that exciting.

I also never use the unit abilities. I just grab some recruitment points, mass a few units, then just send them straight at the enemy and fly in behind with the dragon and destroy all their buildings. I mean it's not always that simple, but that is the basics of it. Another dragon on the field would have been a complete game changer.

Indeed. They really need to do something with the skirmish, because right now its not very good.

I'm not sure there's any good way to avoid tipping points, unless you greatly amp up the enemy's power the weaker they get (which makes no sense). It's just something that you have to accept as part of the mechanics of strategy games.

Act 3's layout is much weaker. It's not just because land inexplicably appears, but because that inexplicable new land provides a straight-line drive to reach the enemy capital. The AI is weak on land, and there's no alternate paths.

Some people keep talking about how the original concept looked better to them. I disagree, I was not a fan of the original all-air combat. It was two-dimensional and looked really shallow. I definitely didn't like the flea-sized fighters.

To you people who think the game is too easy by massing units and sending them in, have you not considered changing the difficulty?

It's all about the victory conditions, as it stands it's easier usually easier to take every unit on the board except the capital than to take the capital. That's what leads to the game being dragged out way past its natural conclusion. You don't need to stop the runaway leader problem if the game ends when a victor has been decided. Setting good victory conditions that are both satisfying and well timed is always tricky though and I can't think there of any good ones that could be introduced without new mechanics.



Unfortunately there's no way to disentangle the difficulty settings at the moment. If I set Hard difficulty then I pretty much have to forfeit the ability to play the RTS aspect of the game, as the Imperial Army drastically outclasses me.

The original concept actually included ground combat as well, as far as i know, they changed the concept because some problems came up with making combat work at such a large scale. In other words,there was ground combat in the original concept, it was just too hard to integrate with the large scale air combat, so they changed it. However, right now, ground combat doesnt really work, and there isn't much of an air combat.

Also i'm playing on max difficulty, and the problem isn't with how hard the skirmish battles are, its about how boring it is, because of how the dragon makes these battles rather unbalanced without any kind of actual air combat. Right now, its all about sending the units in, while you spam your dragon skills on the enemy blobs, and dodge their anti air fire. It's just not much fun, since there's not much else to do, and i dont have 10 arms to keep using every single spell or skill each unit has. There are no large air units that could counter a dragon, nor are there enemy dragons(except in multiplayer, but the multiplayer is shallow for other reasons). That's why some people, like myself say, that the original concept would've worked better(if they could've made it work). Right now, the skirmish is rather boring as it is, and in my opinion a below average rts phase. Take other rts games for example. In my opinion, starcraft 1/2 is an average rts, each unit has 1 usable skill, or maybe 2(max)and may have some passives as well, and not a gazillion skills you cant use because you dont have enough arms. Now take an above average rts like company of heroes for example, you even need to play strategically in that game(blow up bridges, move units out of the way of enemy arty fire, play smart), thats what STRATEGY games are, you need to use strategies (in sc as well). Not as much in dc tho, you just spawn in the mighty dragon and mow down the enemy that was hindering your advancing army, problem solved(ah but i actually use 1(one) skill the devastator besiege skill). Not much strategy involved, and that's why some people say that its all about who has the bigger blob.

And this shows since many ppl just skip skirmish battles altogether(with autoresolve).

The best solution would've been if they found a middle path between air and ground combat. Also before you say: but there's air combat, you mean those little things my dragon can blow up with a few shots? riiiight.
(Also this is just my personal opinion, but i think that the max height where the dragon can fly up to is a bit low).


No offense intended by all this, and i know that the game was just released, so i'll just wait patiently and see what the devs will bring in the future.

A series of losses for one side can tip the balance - especially if one such loss was a lot of your forces. I recently lost a custom campaign because of such a series of losses killing too many of my units. It's hard to say how badly one has to be down before victory is impossible.



Yeah, the Hard AI is really smart, but if you're already having problems managing your forces on normal, the enhanced difficulty wouldn't help. Do you think that would change if there were say, only half as many units on the field - both for you and your enemy?


Zolee - According to Swen's blog, they did want to include ground combat, but decided against it almost immediately because they were worried about the AI being too hard, and it wasn't until later that they re-thought it.

It takes a bit of practice to manage skills, but it can be learned. Not every single skill is active, nor are all of them always potentially useful in every battle. You could practice by lowering the difficulty and using groups of Shamans and Warlocks, and practice using their skills.

You can fly up pretty high with the Dragon, much higher than the normal air units can go. It's actually handy occasionally to use with F4 to move selected groups.

The ai is still hard because it can micromanage every skill of every unit at the same time. You can't. So what changed? We would have had a hard ai with air combat and we have a hard ai right now, especially if the ai has researched all skills and abilities. Usually people buy a game to enjoy it and not spend hours learning how to micromanage skills.

Also only using warlock and shaman skills? Aren't there like 13 units? There are about 24 active skills of which about 16-17 can be useful.

except for 1 unit(imo), there are 12 units that have useful skills in combat(but only 10 control groups ctrl+0-9 or are there more?).

Although it's true that you don't always build every units during battle, it would be much better if they did something about skill management.

And also to add in a unit that's on par with a dragon(limited to 1/battle like a giant airship with cannons going by the prototype screenshots the models for it are already done and it doesnt need as complicated an ai as a dragon would). Not only would this add balance to the game(because this way the ai would make units on the same speed as the player does(on normal at least) and it would still have a way to counter the player dragon), but also an enemy unit that's actually as good as a dragon, while staying true to the story.

I said that you could practice getting better at using skills using Warlocks and Shamans, because all three of their skills are active. You could ease into that using custom campaign settings to reduce the amount of units you need to manage (by increasing the cost to build new ones).

As I said, not all of the possible active skills are useful at the same time, and some skills are toggles.

- Spoils of War is for capturing buildings, it's not something to do in combat.
- For the Empire is a one-time toggle
- Chemical Warfare could probably do with an Autocast option
- Immunity could probably also do with an Autocast, but in the meantime, you generally cast that before the battle starts.
- Teleport is specialized, but when used to bring troops into a battle it's generally a fire and forget. Only using it to take troops out of a battle requires micro.
- Public Transportation is fire and forget
- You're mine is rather specialized and generally used before battle
- Besiege is a toggle
... etcetera

And don't you want to use toggle skills more than once? you know some units like the devastator can't move when besieged is activated. You're mine can be used to mine outposts too not just before battle, Teleport can be used to teleport units behind enemy lines. I do aggree that public transport is fire.

...etcetera

Also im not saying that every skill should be auto cast, just the ones that are made for autocast, and also some way to manage the skills of more than 1 type of units at the same time.

I do so enjoy these discussions(not in a bad way) its quite enlightening sometimes.

Well I'm not sure what kind of patch could be added now to fix things.

Last night I started Act II by taking the opponent capital that was next to me on the first turn. The odds were literally 0%/100%, and I brought my dragon along. Over two hours later, all recruits gone, I finally won the battle. I used my dragon for most of the time just widdling away the enemy units. When those stopped producing I knocked out the turrets. Then I moved my small remaining army that I had been protecting in the far corner over the map to capture everything. It was actually a lot of fun ... but I wouldn't want to do it again.

It did prove though that if used correctly a dragon can when about any battle.

You're right that it's probably not possible to use every skill mid-battle. That's why you have to pick and choose. I'll watch the AI closely and see what it's doing.

I do think that some skills should have an autocast option, but I only have 3 skills on my autocast-recommended list (Chemical Warfare, Immunity, Fly my Flaming Pretties). Some are not on it for being situational. Others are not on it because the autocast would make the skills too powerful or the autocast would have to be deliberately poor to avoid being too powerful.




What difficulty were you playing on? The AI on Normal or Hard should probably react aggressively to odds that much in their favour.

Other than that, if someone is willing to spend an hour or two chipping away to win an otherwise unwinnable battle, I consider that their business, not a balance issue.

The point is I'm sure I wouldn't have been able to do it at all if there had been another dragon on the field, or some other feature. Granted it was hard keeping my dragon alive when I was out of recruits and knew I couldn't respawn him if he went down, but I just took my time. Cloaked Warlocks were my biggest pain in the side. I hadn't the chance to research any of the new stuff yet for Act II so I pretty much had the basics to work with.

As far as aggression, the enemy massed and took my starting position rather quickly. The dragon and the few units I could muster could not hold back the tide. Luckily I sent a unit up North to grab a base up there and from there I basically built up a defensive position (lots of turrets) and held on.

But now comes the hardest decision of all ... I have to pick a bride. Unfortunately the undead basically hate me and I really need to marry her (it is a political marriage after all) but I married her in my first game and want to try something different.