TheEnemy42

Join Date 12/2007

New player - first impressions & questions

Hi all,

Firstly, I’ve split this post into two parts - the first being some initial thoughts and feedback to the developers (and anyone else who might be interested, perhaps other would-be new players) and the second being various newbie questions I hope some of you will help answer.

First impressions
To start a little back I’ve had my eye on Demigod for a while but couldn’t quite decide whether to get it or not. I’ve read about it having a bad launch, networking issues and such. In the end what tipped the scale and make me "take my chances" was Stardock’s no-copy protection policy - I wanted to reward a company that doesn’t incriminate its legal customers.

On the technical side I’ve so far had little trouble though I must admit I was a bit put back when I installed Impulse and it said my Internet Explorer might be too old (v. 6). I don’t use IE and don’t see any need to upgrade it and find it odd that third party programs use it. I ignored it and tried to register the game but it failed. After an IE update I tried again and it worked.
In-game I’ve had one crash to desktop without warning and a flag text "Flag text error" (or some such) so on the whole I think it runs pretty stable. Then again, I haven’t played online yet so I’ve yet to see about that.

As for starting up with the actual game... well, while it installed I flipped through the manual but didn’t get to the “Walkthrough” part (page 16). In it you write: "the two most annoying ways to learn how to play a game are the user manual and an in-game tutorial.". I disagree on the tutorial part, I for one love to get a quick tutorial to get into the basics and maybe get a few tips along the way too. I haven’t played DotA so my only knowledge of the gameplay was what I’ve read here and there, including the manual flipping.

When I started my first game (a simple skirmish, 2vs2 easy) I felt lost... which is a quite rare thing for me with a new game. I eventually got to walk around the base, use the Item shop, use my skill point, all of which involves a lot of reading. I managed to get up to speed and join the fight to help my poor AI ally. From that point on I had learned the gameplay and could begin learn the game in earnest but it didn’t have to be that hard. Please, don’t forgo a tutorial.

If there are any (potential) new players reading along, try watching this YouTube video as it’s a nice tutorial (I only found it today, a bit late for me): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ek55bIQwlo

I’ll just wrap this up with a few comments. All in all, this game rocks! Even while having only played single player I think it’s worth the pricetag. It’s beautiful, the visual style is great, the sound is good (I love the Unreal Tournament like announcer), it runs smoothly and the gameplay is addictive. There are a lot of layers and you can enjoy it both for casual and competitive play. Well done - I'll be playing this a lot more.

Questions and such
Having learned the basics now I want to get better at the game and learn more about the details. However it seems like it’s hard to find more in-depth information anywhere, despite having searched the forum and google (please, bear with me if I missed it). Questions:

- Where can I find a list of what all the announcer calls means? Some of them are obvious ("First blood", "Smiter", etc.) but what about "Apocalypse", "Wrathful" and so on?

- Likewise a list of what all the awards mean would be nice, though I think I’ve finally understood them all.

- Favor and Favor items - how does it work? It seems like you need to earn Favor to unlock the items. You earn Favor in each battle, is that managed by account? What about online play, is it just a matter of playing enough battles so you can unlock it all or what did I miss?

- Has anyone made a list of how much War Score is needed for each War Rank?

- The announcer sometimes says, "The Light/Dark Citadel has grown stronger". What does this mean? It seems unrelated to Citadel upgrades and War Rank. Sometime I see new buildings (at least Fortresses) spawn. Is this related to that?

- When does the AI purchase Citadel upgrades? It seems pretty random. Some games they don’t get anything, other games they seem to buy every one of them.

- Are the Citadel upgrades "Blacksmith" and "Armory" any good in the early game?

- Is it possible to see your current Health and Mana pr. second anywhere?

- Is there a key for taking screenshots in the game or do you have to use external tools?

I think that’s all for now. I hope you can find the time to help me out

PS: I’ll just share this little screenshot with you. It was my first hard tournament (having only played one on easy before and then some skirmishes). Prison with killing Fortresses. It was a bit of an uphill battle trying to help my allies all the time but we failed at the end. Funny enough I got the most favor and if you watch me below the scoreboard I was a couple of seconds away from destroying their last fortress
(desperate rush since my teammates were fooling about near the crystal)

Thanks for reading. Comments are welcomed.

demigod

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Favor items are saved locally for singleplayer ( i believe) and on stardocks network for multiplayer. So the truth to it is skirmish and online play have seperate favor, also pantheon has its own seperate favor if i'm not mistaken. The general concensus is most citadel upgrades are okay on the first tier after that you tend to be better off buying items for yourself(exception of cata and giants of course). If there is a place for health/second mana/second i believe it would be in the character menu, ('c'). AI is also multiplayer useless, giving up too much exp and gold when they just rush the enemy...

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- Where can I find a list of what all the announcer calls means? Some of them are obvious ("First blood", "Smiter", etc.) but what about "Apocalypse", "Wrathful" and so on?

These announcements are depending on the number of your kills, i think when you got 10 kills or more he just keeps saying "godlike" on every kill.

- Likewise a list of what all the awards mean would be nice, though I think I’ve finally understood them all.

You get awards for different things, most kills, least deaths, most citadel upgrades bought, most flags captured, really simple if you are the best on a certain thing you get the award at the end of the game.

- Favor and Favor items - how does it work? It seems like you need to earn Favor to unlock the items. You earn Favor in each battle, is that managed by account? What about online play, is it just a matter of playing enough battles so you can unlock it all or what did I miss?

You get favor after every game, 75 favor for winning the game and +15 for each award you get at the end of the game.

The favor points in singleplayer and multiplayer are saved separately, once purchased you can use the item as many times as you want.

- Has anyone made a list of how much War Score is needed for each War Rank?

Not sure about that, I usually just check the "score" ingame to see how high the warrank is, and listen to the announcer.

- The announcer sometimes says, "The Light/Dark Citadel has grown stronger". What does this mean? It seems unrelated to Citadel upgrades and War Rank. Sometime I see new buildings (at least Fortresses) spawn. Is this related to that?

As far as I know it is directly linked to the warrank, for example you get the first upgrade on warrank3 that gives you archer towers on warrank8 you get fortresses, also the health of the citadel increases.

- When does the AI purchase Citadel upgrades? It seems pretty random. Some games they don’t get anything, other games they seem to buy every one of them.

I think it's random, if they got more money they probably purchase more upgrades.

- Are the Citadel upgrades "Blacksmith" and "Armory" any good in the early game?

Not really, I wouldn't recommend getting these ugprades before you got priests.

- Is it possible to see your current Health and Mana pr. second anywhere?

I dont think so.

- Is there a key for taking screenshots in the game or do you have to use external tools?

Not sure. But "print" works in most games for screenshots.

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1) The announcer says "apocalypse","wrathfull", and things like that when a player has killed a large number of DG. It's just a warning that that player is getting a lot of kills.

2) http://demigod.wikia.com/wiki/Favor

3) You earn favor by playing matches, and use that favor to buy favor items. Once you buy a favor item you unlock it and don't need to pay for it again to use it again. I think favor is based on account(if you make a new profile your favor won't carry over), but I'm not 100% sure. Also, the single player and multiplayer favor is seperate.

4) Rank 1: 0

Rank 2: 810

Rank 3: 1620

Rank 4: 2430

Rank 5: 3240

Rank 6: 4050

Rank 7: 4860

Rank 8: 5670

Rank 9: 6480

Rank 10: 7290

5) It's related to war rank. Archer towers and forts spawn on some maps as your war rank increases. When you citadel grows stronger it gains more health and gets bigger.

6) Everything about the AI is completely random as far as I can tell.

7) I would get the first ranks of building health and damage upgrades instead, as well as the gold mine upgrade. Save the blacksmith and armory upgrades for when you've bought at least priests.

8) I don't think so. It's easier to just add up the hps that your current items give manually.

9) No idea.

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This two links may help: http://www.scarylogic.com/demigod/items.php

http://forums.demigodthegame.com/349958

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you can see health per second and mana per second by hovering the mouse over the health / mana values in the character screen where all the other stats are

pretty sure you can adjust the screenshot button in the game controls under options

best early game upgrades to buy are currency 1 (as soon as you hit war score 3) and the building hp + hp regen upgrade

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Also...if u hit the ` key about 5 times, it will cycle thru showing hp over all units. The first time u hit only puts a bar above you, a 2nd does it above friendly units...I think the 5th time puts hp markers above all units, friend and foe. Just a lil thing I found, sure tons know about it, but a nice thing to have.

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Just a guess because I've never considered the possibiltity and paid attention, but the "Wrathful," "Apocalypse," etc. announcements are probably directly related to the "Kill Streak" endgame favor award.

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Having learned the basics now I want to get better at the game and learn more about the details. However it seems like it’s hard to find more in-depth information anywhere, despite having searched the forum and google (please, bear with me if I missed it). Questions:

- The announcer sometimes says, "The Light/Dark Citadel has grown stronger". What does this mean? It seems unrelated to Citadel upgrades and War Rank. Sometime I see new buildings (at least Fortresses) spawn. Is this related to that?

The fortress has grown stronger is related to the currency tier! It takes sometime to implant but the voice comes everytime.

- When does the AI purchase Citadel upgrades? It seems pretty random. Some games they don’t get anything, other games they seem to buy every one of them.

AI- Artificial intelligence: basically saying that you can't rely on it and what it does it quite random. Which is good, since u shouldn’t be able to foresee what the AI is supposed to do?

Only game I've played where the AI has been truly a challenge is in fact Defence of the Ancient! You never know what they are up to, and they often teams up to gang you which always surprises you

- Are the Citadel upgrades "Blacksmith" and "Armory" any good in the early game?

This is the part where tactics comes inn, depends on several factors! Are your creeps pushing or holding on? Do you get killed easy? Can I afford to spend the money? etc etc. There is no really true answer to this and there will never be, those who say otherwise lies

- Is it possible to see your current Health and Mana pr. second anywhere?

If I wanto check out my mp/hp I open my character screen and hold my mouse over mana and health down at the right side where u see your information about it

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A lot of your questions have already been answered, so I'll just touch on the ones I know well and which I don't think were answered fully.

Quoting ,

quoting post

On the technical side I’ve so far had little trouble though I must admit I was a bit put back when I installed Impulse and it said my Internet Explorer might be too old (v. 6). I don’t use IE and don’t see any need to upgrade it and find it odd that third party programs use it.

That's a huge security hole, whether or not you use IE for browsing. A large number of programs use IE during their normal operation. You shouldn't be running an old version of IE, whether or not you use it.

The announcer sometimes says, "The Light/Dark Citadel has grown stronger". What does this mean? It seems unrelated to Citadel upgrades and War Rank. Sometime I see new buildings (at least Fortresses) spawn. Is this related to that?

At certain tiers (can't remember exactly which, I'm pretty sure warscore 5 is one) the citidel changes, going from a basic citidel all the way up to (warscore 9 or 10) a glorious citidel. The animations are pretty cool actually, though most of the time you'll be in battle when they happen so you'll miss them. Everytime the citidel grows stronger (on other side) the appropriate announcement is made.

Are the Citadel upgrades "Blacksmith" and "Armory" any good in the early game?

Not really. The best lvl 1 upgrade is the health regen for buildings (the upper left upgrade, lvl 1), then currency 1 (warscore 3). Blacksmith and armor aren't all that useful until priests, at the earliest. I don't buy them till angels, and then it's just because there's enough minions that the bonus is worth the cost.

Is it possible to see your current Health and Mana pr. second anywhere?

Not that I know of, though it would be really, REALLY useful

Welcome to the community

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Just wanted to mention one last thing the others did not.

Not many, if any people will have all the favour items for multiplayer. They will get reset every so often as a new tournament "Epoch" approaches. It's happened only once for that reason so far.

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First impressions:

The entire concept of the game is a rip off of Warcraft: Frozen throne player made mod games.

The only thing that keeps online play interesting is the ladder, or would be the ladder, if the game was balanced. It's not.

Unbalanced DG's, unbalanced teams, broken experience and matching system that is all too happy to add AI.

This game is still in beta stage at best.

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You can see your Mana and health per second on you character screen (C key IIRC)

Welcome and see ya on the battlefield

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I'm also a new player having fun with the single player so far and tuning up my game so I can venture online a bit and not embarass myself. Are online skirmish and pantheon games random maps/victory condition or does it default to a certain condition?

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One thing you might consider is "Friending" the names you see in these forums that are helpful, then chatting to them online to see if they want to play a MP game.

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First impressions:

The entire concept of the game is a rip off of Warcraft: Frozen throne player made mod games.

That for a first impression is probably correctly. However, the OP has already mentioned that he does not have DotA experience. On a closer look, Demigod has numerous differences that sets it apart from them. Besides, aren't those maps just rips offs from each other, and from the early Aeon of Strife and Three Corridors maps? One can say that these maps are rip offs from the original Starcraft Aeon of Strife custom map to build this mold.

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Quoting QuestGAV,

reply 13

I haven't tried them yet (just Custom Games) but looking over some random games on the stats pages seems to indicate that they are indeed random maps/victory conditions. Though I think a couple of the largest maps will never be picked (e.g. Mandala).

First rule of both the game and forums: Don't be a feeder!

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Quoting Lonous,

reply 11

First impressions:
The entire concept of the game is a rip off of Warcraft: Frozen throne player made mod games.
The only thing that keeps online play interesting is the ladder, or would be the ladder, if the game was balanced. It's not.
Unbalanced DG's, unbalanced teams, broken experience and matching system that is all too happy to add AI.
This game is still in beta stage at best.

No real reply is needed to this, I just wanted to point out the stupidity of this post incase anyone missed it.

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Quoting ZehDon,

reply 17

I haven't played many games and I am a Demigod fanboi

Yeah, we get it.

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3/10 Lonous, you can do better than that

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Hi all,

Many thanks to all of you for your help and friendly welcome too Lots of good answers - it's very much appreciated.

@PurplePaladin
Thanks for the links. I'll look into them - the item list is a really nice to have.

Quoting PurplePaladin,

reply 14

One thing you might consider is "Friending" the names you see in these forums that are helpful, then chatting to them online to see if they want to play a MP game.

Good idea. I'll probably do that once I go online. For now I'm just enjoying learning the different demigods and killing the AI

Quoting Binksy,

reply 9

Yeah, you're probably right but that's why I am considering it a bad habit for third party applications to use IE, which was my point in some vague hope they might steer away from it

PS: Isn't there a preview button on the forum? I like to check my post before I post it to the forum ensuring it looks at least ok-ish.

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Oh, and a couple of new questions if you’re up to it

1) Do any of Citadel upgrades affect minions (the generals’ pets)? My guess is no but I’d like to double-check.

2) I’ve seen the word "Morale" being mentioned on the forum. What’s that?

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1) Not that I can remember.

2) Morale is an upgrade for the Generals, it upgrades the health and damage of your minions.

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Ok. Thanks Starkiller.

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a fish being helped by a hedgehog now i have seen it all

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