If you are anything like me then you hard drive will be cluttered with a vast array of real-time and turn-based strategy games but you will have never heard of the gem that is Dominions 3: The Awakening, let alone its less famous predecessors. Dominions 3: The Awakening is one of those games you stumble upon every few years, when you are trawling the vast depths of internet game review websites looking for that as yet unknown gem of a game that you know exists somewhere out there, that can capture your imagination and attention long enough for someone else to develop the next great game in your library.
Overview
Dominions 3: The Awakening is a turn-based strategy game that takes the genre back to its roots of minimalistic yet cute and appealing graphics and UI, while devoting the vast majority of its bulk to an extremely detailed, extremely rich, and extremely complex fantasy strategy game. It combines the visual cuteness and character quirkiness of a mid 90's Japanese RPG with the lore and atmosphere of a high fantasy novel like Lord of the Rings, and presents the entire World to the user as a deep and complex turn-based strategy game.
Dominions 3: The Awakening is a World where the Old God has died, and New Pretender Gods have awoken to stake their claim for the title of Sole Ultimate God. Each Pretender God is the deity of a specific nation, of which there are over 40 varieties spread across three distinct "ages" or game World "flavours." It is your task to assume the role of your Pretender God as Emperor and General of your nation, and to battle with troops and magic against every other nation and Pretender God for World Domination.
Dominions 3: The Awakening features extreme detail in almost every area of gameplay. This is its definative feature for it means that those put off by complexity will invariably hate Dominions 3, while those that enjoy and look for complexity will be lured into the details that make up an extremely rich and dynamic game environment. It also forces the game to economise on visual presentation, for battles between a few hundred troops can easilly force a medium range specification Computer to reduce the already minimal graphical detail.
To summarise: The player selects a map, chooses a nation to play as, designs a Pretender God for the nation, designs the features of the environment that the Gods religion or "Dominion" spreads, recruits troops, researches magic, constructs buildings, fights opposing nations and Pretenders and conquers provinces.
I will go into each of these in more detail.
Map
Dominions 3 maps range from the small to the vast. There is an upper limit of over 15000 provinces, although this size seems absurdly large. The largest pre-designed map is 600 provinces which is big enough for an all-nation game. There is a random map generator which helps to provide variety to the game worlds played in, although these lack the handcrafted detail of the more studiously and delicately produced custom maps available online, or available with a bit of programming and artistic skill.
Nations
Nations in Dominions 3 are a mixture of historical influence, religious myth, and developer artistic license. They are each custom designed to provide a completely unique experience in function, aesthetics and roleplay. The nation of Ermor for example is a take on Republican Rome with heavy infantry, strong arms and armour, and powerful magical priests. Then there are the cold loving mountain Giants of Neifelheim, massive and powerful giants adept in the magic of Death, Nature and Water. The nation of Hinnom is another example, taken straight from the apocryphal tales of the Watchers and the Nephelim, mixed in with some Carthaginian flavouring. These are gigantic offspring of Fallen Angels that rule over a pheonician like nation, whose appetites for blood lead them to consume the population of the provinces they reside in.
The Nations of Dominions 3 are all invidually crafted with a great attention to detail. It is the variety between the nations that provides the game with its greatest sense of depth, and that provides the complexity of strategy presented to the player.
Pretenders
Each nation needs a God. This is a non-recruitable commander type unit that is designed prior to the launch of the game. The design of the attributes and abilities of the God itself goes hand in hand with the design of the effects the God spreads, and has an enormous impact upon your nation.
The Gods you can customise range from vast giants and dragons to powerful warriors, mages, undead demons and even fountains or rocks. They can be designed to be individually powerful in their own right, as mighty "supercombatants" for annihilating armies, or fragile and frail centres of worship that bestow blessings and rituals and great prosperity to your nation. The design of your God, and of your Gods Dominion, has a massive impact upon the nation you play as. It is not simply an impact of pure strategy, but the strategic impact influences the overall atmosphere and flavour of your nation as you play it. Construct a fire breathing Dragon God of Doom and your nation will be centered around the march of your army of annihilation, invest in a fountain of blood and your nation will be fueled by terrible dark magicks from within the recesses of its depraved borders. Worship a monolith of natural power and your people will be blessed with good health and prosperity, bestowing eternal youth and vigour to your worshippers.
Dominion
As the name of the game suggests, Dominion has a central importance in this game's design. Dominion is an influence spread by religious items, whether that is a temple, a prophet or your God itself. Dominion has two components, strength and effect. The strength of your Dominion determines how fast it spreads from province to province, and how likely the features of that province are to change according to your Dominions effects.
Dominion strength is shown in candles, 1 to 10 with 10 highest. Dominion effect is shown by Dominion "scales". There are five sets of Dominion "scales" that the player can set at the beginning of the game. These influence five seperate features of a province under the influence of a Gods dominion. The fives scales are: Order to Turmoil, Productivity to Sloth, Growth to Death, Fortune to Misfortune, Magic to Drain. Each scale has six different settings, providing either a positive or negative influence to each effect.
A province under the influence of high Turmoil, Death and Misfortune will experience continued population loss with a high rate of extremely misfortunate events, such as famine, plague etc. Needless to say this Dominion is Hell for human nations, but heaven for the Undead.
Units
The units of Dominions 3 is where you really get a sense of what you are playing. Rather than go with the idea of one recruitable unit equals one maniple or one division or one abstract representation of a fighting force, in Dominions 3 one unit is one unit. It makes no difference in combat gameplay terms, for it is still one set of attributes fighting another set of attributes, but it makes a vast difference in atmospheric and roleplay terms, for units in Dominions 3 grow old, they get ill, they catch diseases, they lose limbs, they gain traits.
Dominions 3 has a vast array of units. Each nation has a particular customised roster of recruitable units that suits both the roleplay flavour and the technical balance of the nation. There are also a large number of unique units, summonable units, national heroes etc. The units are very well presented and suit the flavour of the game. One can summon demons and devils and ghosts and vampires. There are massive sentient roots and mosses, vast demi-gods and keepers of the abyss. These can all be summoned or called or invoked or even wished for by the player if he has the required magical abilities.
The units themselves are highly detailed. Each unit has no less than ten basic attributes defining his combat capability, health, and the items and objects he is using. Dominions 3 also allows the player to customise his units by manufacturing objects and giving those objects to the units. A player can outfit his units with artificial hearts, magical eyes, strange armour made from the skin of those sacrificed on alters, huge swords and axes and pikes and polearms. It is possible, through the power of magic, to turn a favoured unit recruited early into a behemoth of combat power, able to single handedly take on small armies, and in small groups to take on massive forces.
The units of Dominions 3 allows the player to decide whether to fight enmasse with regular armies, or to invest in individual units and fight individually like Achilles or Hercules or any mythological and fantastical hero.
Magic
Magic is central and key to Dominions 3. It is possible to get along with minimal magic, and some nations are designed for limited use of magic, but it is magic that will ultimately define your nation.
Magic is seperated into seven different schools, with seven different paths. The schools of magic cover the effects and abilities magic confer, while magic paths cover the ability of your units to use these spells. In strategic terms, magic provides the player with the ability to custom design all aspects of their nation, from improving the prosperity and effectiveness of conquered land, to exploiting weaknesses in an opponents arsenal, developing counter strategies to an opponents advances, and embarking upon the quest for game altering effects, units and items. Magic ranges from battlefield attacks, battlefield effects, battlefield units and battlefield objects to strategic alterations in the players nation or the entire gameworld. Nations with powerful units can make each unit almost unstoppable, while nations with many weaknesses and a single strength can persue paths to make all attributes ineffective barring their own strength. It is even possible to "wish" for something, and the limits of wish appear to be equal to the game code, in that whatever you can imagine is possible in Dominions 3, and can phrase correctly can be yours, apart from absolute victory.
Combat
Combat in Dominions 3 takes the form of a "battle replay" in which the player has no direct control and can only watch a replay of events. Players can script units and armies with orders prior to combat, but as battle takes place between turns the player cannot actively interfere in combat once it has begun.
Combat is however extremely deep, as one might expect. Combat itself is turn based once the replay is entered, with units taking their turns one after another. The mechanics of each possible action involve complex calculations, ontop of the already high number of variable attributes. A singe hit on an opponent for example must defeat the opponents defense value, overcome the opponents protection value, and then can still be parried by the opponent if the opponent wields a longer weapon. Should the opponent be hit and take damage he can then recieve "afflictions" which are specific wounds that not only reduce hit points but can negatively affect all manner of the units attributes in various ways.
The actual depth and complexity of the combat mechanics is far too large to go into any detail here, but I would like to comment on one feature of Dominions 3 mechanics that really shows this game up for what it is.
Dominions 3 has a feature called "open ended dice rolls" What this means is that dice rolls of 1 to 6 are involved in many calculations to determine the luck or chance of achieving some objective. However in Dominions 3 a roll of 6 means that the 6 is kept and the dice is rolled again, with the next roll being added to the first. Thus it is possible in Dominions 3 for near impossible events to occur.
Provinces
Provinces as always are key to expansion and conquest. The provinces of Dominions 3 are relatively simple by the rest of the games standard, but do have their own complex behaviour rules. Provinces contain a population, which produces income and resources as well as supplies. Provinces can also contain a number of "special sites" which grant additional benefits once discovered. Provinces however are subject to Dominion and magic, meaning that their benefits and negatives can change profoundly during the course of a game. One of the nice touches in this game is that as the Dominion level in a province changes, so does it appearance on the World Map.
Conclusion
Balance. This is the essential ingredient in any real-time strategy or turn-based strategy that tries to do something radically different. It is the balance of Dominions 3 that turns a complicated fantasy game into the most detailed and immersive strategy game I have ever played. The atmosphere of roleplay appeals to me greatly, but like World of Warcraft this is not enough to blind me to its merits as a game. As a strategy game this is beautiful.
Graphics. (It has graphics!) 2/10 if you are looking for the latest and greatest. 10/10 if you can appreciate art.
Gameplay. 10/10 It has a depth you have never seen before.
Music. 8/10 I like it.
Final Thoughts
Dominions 3 is to turn-based strategy as EvE-Online is to MMORPGS.
Dominions 3 : The Awakening
Originally Posted by mishkin
