Turin Turambar
Member
I wanted to make a thread about Dominions 4 since a while, as it isn't a very well known game, even if perhaps the best fantasy turn battle strategy game in existence (and I say that as a fan of HOMM3, MoM or AoW). The recent top 50 list made by RPS, where it was situated in #14, made me remember the idea of making this thread. So here we are.
Dominions 4 is a fantasy TBS, as I said, a game where different fantasy nations expand and beat the crap out of each other until one wins over the rest. It's a bit more a wargame fantasy game than a 4X game, imo, as it's very focused on war and not in for example, building libraries, aqueducts or barracks in your cities, nor in trade or gaining culture points.
The game looks like this, which is perhaps why it doesn't particularly attracts a great following. Not the best looking game!
Though the art style of the map varies a lot, there others that look acceptable like these
Not only that, the game isn't without flaws, as it has a lacking UI, and the AI could be much better. And tutorial? Hah, the tutorial consists on reading a chapter in the pdf (or paper, if you are inclined) manual. If reading a manual is too much for you, maybe this game isn't for you. It can get very complex.
You can read the manual here in the official site, btw. http://www.illwinter.com/dom4/
Why all this? Well, it's an indie game. A very indie game.
Who made Dominions 4?
A Sweden game company called Illwinter game Design, composed basically of two people, Johan Karlsson and Kristoffer Osterman. Hell, you could say it isn't even an 'professional' indie game as game development isn't the day jobs of both devs. Kristoffer in particular is, I believe, a history professor, and it shows in the game.
Basic concept
Dominions plays in a fantasy world where the current God abandoned his place leaving a empty seat of power so different powerful beings (archmages, dragons, giants with divine heritage, immortal vampires, etc) fight each other in their ascension to godhood. Only one can be God! They fight both with mundane armies, great magics and the spread of their own religion based on themselves as the only true God.
Basic gameplay.
How is it played? Easy. You could almost say it's an "easy to learn, hard to master" kind of game.
The map you play is divided in provinces. You recruit units and commanders in your provinces with a fort. Your normal units need a commander to lead them and move in the map, like Heroes of M&M, unlike Age of Wonders or Master of Magic. You basically just build three buildings: forts to recruit people, labs to research and do magic, temples to spread your religion and hire priests that do the same, making the people of the lands believe in you.
The different sides move and act using a "we go" or "simultaneous" turn system, all at the same time with certain rules, with the battles themselves playing in a different "engine" like in Total War games. Said tactical battles are only automatic, you can't control them. But!! previous to the battle, you can setup orders to your armies like "fire archers", "hold and attack and hold", "attack rear", plus you establish the formation and initial position of each squad, and you choose what exact spells your mages will cast. It's pretty thrilling trying to do the perfect setup and then looking at the battle to see how it went.
When a player kills everyone, or spread his religion everywhere, or conquest enough Thrones of Ascension (special very contested provinces), he wins.
The numbers game.
Other fantasy strategy game say "we have six races to chose from!". Another one tries to outdoing them saying "we have 8 races!". And another one exclaims "We have 12 different sides! And 200 spells!"
Well, Dominions clearly wins the "numbers game".
-Dominions 4 have 80 different Nations, organized in three different eras (Early, Middle, Late Ages).
-Almost 2500 different units. Including 540 summonable units with magic, 175 special heroes and 211 different gods to choose as your avatar in the game.
-Every unit has 15 different stats, not counting the different weapons it can have nor the hundred different special attributes like flying, chill aura, spy, etc.
-900 spells, divided in 9 schools of magic.
-367 magical items to forge and equip with for your commanders.
-1000 different special sites to discover in the world that gives you magical resources and can have additionally different positive or negative effects.
-636 different weapons (or at least weapon effects*) and over 200 different armor pieces.
Just look here, the unofficial database-encyclopedia of the game http://larzm42.github.io/dom4inspector/
You can try to imagine with this the depth of the game. There are hundreds of possible combos and combinations and strategies and tricks. The experts are people which have played this series for years, because there are stuff to learn for years. Don't let that intimidate you, it's also a very enjoyable game for new people, as there are so many new stuff to discover as you "explore" Dominions playing it for the first games.
You can be a nation of bat people. Or lizard people. Or roman legionnaires. Or bird people living in mountains. Or giants born from ice. Or a Triton nation underwater, with sirens and shit. Your Pretender God can be a Dragon, or a sacred fertility bull or a Lich or a giant Kraken or a giant Eagle or a fountain of blood.
Putting Fantasy again in a fantasy game.
But Dominions 4 not only wins the numbers game, it also does it while doing a great job at it. You could think it maybe does a pretty crappy stuff with their nations or units or spells if it has so many of them, but it's the opposite.
First, it avoids doing the trite fantasy stuff that other games settle for. You know, the already old and unsurprising LOTR - D&D stuff that doesn't raise eyebrows anymore. Instead, the game nations are mostly based in real ancient cultures and mythologies, with some fantasy thrown in it. Funnily how it improves the fantasy department getting close to reality.
So instead of orcs and dwarves have Ermor (Rome Empire). Arcoscephele (Ancient Greeks). Marverni (celtic nation, with druids), Tien Chi (Ancient China), Yomi (Japanese mythology), Lanka (Indian mythology), Hinomm (giants from the jew-christian mythos) or C'tis (Ancient Egypt, but being lizardmen!). You have also other nations like Agharta or Abysia that are pure fantasy nations, or R'lyeh from Lovecraft myths, or Caelum which is a fantasy nation but with some inspiration taken from Zoroastrian sources. Did I mention one of the devs is a history teacher? It shows.
Obviously even in the nations that are directly taken from real history there is magic and fantastic creatures thrown in there.
There are so many that sometimes it reminds me of some kind of ultimate history-fantasy deathmatch, like those docs imagining how european knights vs samurais would fight. Well, here you can pit Norse myths, Irish myths, celts myths, greco-roman myths, mesoamerican myths, african myths indian myths and asian myths against each other and see who wins.
Second, the game has a different 'vibe' of fantasy. You know how traditional fantasy is, very Heroic Fantasy, good vs evil, medieval kingdoms, etc.
Here, it has more a "sword & sorcery" or "dark fantasy" vibe. The wars are terrible, only one can win, the wold is usually razed off at the end of each game, you can summon demons and horrific beings from other dimension or simply, wish for Armageddon. Oh yeah, and one of the magic schools is Blood Magic, based on the ritual sacrifice of virgins you have to kidnap before. Fun stuff for all the family.
Third, again the history factor: there is history embedded in the game. And not in the form of a scripted campaign or cutscenes with narration. But just the with the description of each game and in the description of the units you can feel it's an alive world where things changed over the course of years.
And as I say, it's embedded in the game. You can play in three different eras and the nations suffer changes from one to the other. Ermor is a Roman Empire in the Early Age but in the Middle Age they got interested in death magic and a big necromantic ritual went bad and they turned into a Undead nation that plays totally different. And other new nations surge in the middle Age as splinter factions from the old Ermor. Other nations disappear as ages advanced, in the other hand.
A good example is Ulm. In the early Age there are a Barbarian nation, very in the style of Conan. In the Middle Age there are inspired by teutonic knights / proto-german medieval nation. And in the Late Age they are kind of Transylvanian inspired, vampires included.
In other cases a nation in the late Age can summon or resurrect as undead units they had readily available in earlier eras.
Nations are also designed to not be monolithic entities. It isn't race = nation. Here cultures expand and intermingle and people migrate and mix it up. Vanheim and Helheim are the same nation fighting a civil war. Berytos adore as divine beings giants from Hinnom, Caelum people expanded and funded colonies that turned in other factions like Nazca or Ragha. Atlatians units are in the Atlantis nation, but also too in Xibalba in middle Age or in Mictlan in late Age.
Magic wins
Yes, finally a game that takes up the torch from Master of Magic in making the magic powerful. You can send plagues. You can teleport to remote provinces. You can fuck up provinces with Volcanoes and evil demons. You can summon hundreds of magical beings, from small imps to powerful Angels to otherworldly Lovecraftian beings. You can cast spells that affect the entire world, like putting the world in Darkness.
A primer about the game
Keys to learn
r to recruit
t to setup army
c to see a battle report in the selected province
v to view the battle in the selected province
n is next commander, f is previous commander
m is the message (events) list
y setup army in the "destination" province
shift + M cast spell every month
shift + O forge item every month
control + move to province to force move order instead of sneak order
? to list all the rest of key shortcuts, which are different depending on what windows you are in that moment.
Multiplayer
The game is considered by a lot of people a multiplayer game. This is based on that the AI isn't very good, the game is too complex and deep for it, so you can't compare the experience of playing against humans that can do devious strategies and present complex diplomatic interaction (and basckstabbing!) with the dumb AI.
That said, I'm from the opinion that the game is still worth it even as a pure single player game. First, because basically there isn't a game like this in the market, second because as a noob you still will need a handful of games to reliably beat the AI at a decent difficulty level which can be translated to 60 hours or so (which imo is enough juice to get of a 15-25€ game). And third because against an AI that you are going to beat eventually the game is still fun because is a toybox full of cool toys. So many cool spells and units to try and discover!
Where to buy
http://www.gamersgate.com/DD-DOM4TA/dominions-4-thrones-of-ascension
http://store.steampowered.com/app/259060/
http://www.desura.com/games/dominions-4-thrones-of-ascensions
All the keys are Steam keys.
Dominions 4 is a fantasy TBS, as I said, a game where different fantasy nations expand and beat the crap out of each other until one wins over the rest. It's a bit more a wargame fantasy game than a 4X game, imo, as it's very focused on war and not in for example, building libraries, aqueducts or barracks in your cities, nor in trade or gaining culture points.
The game looks like this, which is perhaps why it doesn't particularly attracts a great following. Not the best looking game!
(edit: hell, and it sounds worse than it looks, and in movement you will notice a little thing... there aren't proper animations, every unit only has 2 frames, normal and attacking)
Though the art style of the map varies a lot, there others that look acceptable like these
Not only that, the game isn't without flaws, as it has a lacking UI, and the AI could be much better. And tutorial? Hah, the tutorial consists on reading a chapter in the pdf (or paper, if you are inclined) manual. If reading a manual is too much for you, maybe this game isn't for you. It can get very complex.
You can read the manual here in the official site, btw. http://www.illwinter.com/dom4/
Why all this? Well, it's an indie game. A very indie game.
Who made Dominions 4?
A Sweden game company called Illwinter game Design, composed basically of two people, Johan Karlsson and Kristoffer Osterman. Hell, you could say it isn't even an 'professional' indie game as game development isn't the day jobs of both devs. Kristoffer in particular is, I believe, a history professor, and it shows in the game.
Basic concept
Dominions plays in a fantasy world where the current God abandoned his place leaving a empty seat of power so different powerful beings (archmages, dragons, giants with divine heritage, immortal vampires, etc) fight each other in their ascension to godhood. Only one can be God! They fight both with mundane armies, great magics and the spread of their own religion based on themselves as the only true God.
Basic gameplay.
How is it played? Easy. You could almost say it's an "easy to learn, hard to master" kind of game.
The map you play is divided in provinces. You recruit units and commanders in your provinces with a fort. Your normal units need a commander to lead them and move in the map, like Heroes of M&M, unlike Age of Wonders or Master of Magic. You basically just build three buildings: forts to recruit people, labs to research and do magic, temples to spread your religion and hire priests that do the same, making the people of the lands believe in you.
The different sides move and act using a "we go" or "simultaneous" turn system, all at the same time with certain rules, with the battles themselves playing in a different "engine" like in Total War games. Said tactical battles are only automatic, you can't control them. But!! previous to the battle, you can setup orders to your armies like "fire archers", "hold and attack and hold", "attack rear", plus you establish the formation and initial position of each squad, and you choose what exact spells your mages will cast. It's pretty thrilling trying to do the perfect setup and then looking at the battle to see how it went.
When a player kills everyone, or spread his religion everywhere, or conquest enough Thrones of Ascension (special very contested provinces), he wins.
The numbers game.
Other fantasy strategy game say "we have six races to chose from!". Another one tries to outdoing them saying "we have 8 races!". And another one exclaims "We have 12 different sides! And 200 spells!"
Well, Dominions clearly wins the "numbers game".
-Dominions 4 have 80 different Nations, organized in three different eras (Early, Middle, Late Ages).
-Almost 2500 different units. Including 540 summonable units with magic, 175 special heroes and 211 different gods to choose as your avatar in the game.
-Every unit has 15 different stats, not counting the different weapons it can have nor the hundred different special attributes like flying, chill aura, spy, etc.
-900 spells, divided in 9 schools of magic.
-367 magical items to forge and equip with for your commanders.
-1000 different special sites to discover in the world that gives you magical resources and can have additionally different positive or negative effects.
-636 different weapons (or at least weapon effects*) and over 200 different armor pieces.
Just look here, the unofficial database-encyclopedia of the game http://larzm42.github.io/dom4inspector/
You can try to imagine with this the depth of the game. There are hundreds of possible combos and combinations and strategies and tricks. The experts are people which have played this series for years, because there are stuff to learn for years. Don't let that intimidate you, it's also a very enjoyable game for new people, as there are so many new stuff to discover as you "explore" Dominions playing it for the first games.
You can be a nation of bat people. Or lizard people. Or roman legionnaires. Or bird people living in mountains. Or giants born from ice. Or a Triton nation underwater, with sirens and shit. Your Pretender God can be a Dragon, or a sacred fertility bull or a Lich or a giant Kraken or a giant Eagle or a fountain of blood.
Putting Fantasy again in a fantasy game.
But Dominions 4 not only wins the numbers game, it also does it while doing a great job at it. You could think it maybe does a pretty crappy stuff with their nations or units or spells if it has so many of them, but it's the opposite.
First, it avoids doing the trite fantasy stuff that other games settle for. You know, the already old and unsurprising LOTR - D&D stuff that doesn't raise eyebrows anymore. Instead, the game nations are mostly based in real ancient cultures and mythologies, with some fantasy thrown in it. Funnily how it improves the fantasy department getting close to reality.
So instead of orcs and dwarves have Ermor (Rome Empire). Arcoscephele (Ancient Greeks). Marverni (celtic nation, with druids), Tien Chi (Ancient China), Yomi (Japanese mythology), Lanka (Indian mythology), Hinomm (giants from the jew-christian mythos) or C'tis (Ancient Egypt, but being lizardmen!). You have also other nations like Agharta or Abysia that are pure fantasy nations, or R'lyeh from Lovecraft myths, or Caelum which is a fantasy nation but with some inspiration taken from Zoroastrian sources. Did I mention one of the devs is a history teacher? It shows.
Obviously even in the nations that are directly taken from real history there is magic and fantastic creatures thrown in there.
There are so many that sometimes it reminds me of some kind of ultimate history-fantasy deathmatch, like those docs imagining how european knights vs samurais would fight. Well, here you can pit Norse myths, Irish myths, celts myths, greco-roman myths, mesoamerican myths, african myths indian myths and asian myths against each other and see who wins.
Second, the game has a different 'vibe' of fantasy. You know how traditional fantasy is, very Heroic Fantasy, good vs evil, medieval kingdoms, etc.
Here, it has more a "sword & sorcery" or "dark fantasy" vibe. The wars are terrible, only one can win, the wold is usually razed off at the end of each game, you can summon demons and horrific beings from other dimension or simply, wish for Armageddon. Oh yeah, and one of the magic schools is Blood Magic, based on the ritual sacrifice of virgins you have to kidnap before. Fun stuff for all the family.
Third, again the history factor: there is history embedded in the game. And not in the form of a scripted campaign or cutscenes with narration. But just the with the description of each game and in the description of the units you can feel it's an alive world where things changed over the course of years.
And as I say, it's embedded in the game. You can play in three different eras and the nations suffer changes from one to the other. Ermor is a Roman Empire in the Early Age but in the Middle Age they got interested in death magic and a big necromantic ritual went bad and they turned into a Undead nation that plays totally different. And other new nations surge in the middle Age as splinter factions from the old Ermor. Other nations disappear as ages advanced, in the other hand.
A good example is Ulm. In the early Age there are a Barbarian nation, very in the style of Conan. In the Middle Age there are inspired by teutonic knights / proto-german medieval nation. And in the Late Age they are kind of Transylvanian inspired, vampires included.
In other cases a nation in the late Age can summon or resurrect as undead units they had readily available in earlier eras.
Nations are also designed to not be monolithic entities. It isn't race = nation. Here cultures expand and intermingle and people migrate and mix it up. Vanheim and Helheim are the same nation fighting a civil war. Berytos adore as divine beings giants from Hinnom, Caelum people expanded and funded colonies that turned in other factions like Nazca or Ragha. Atlatians units are in the Atlantis nation, but also too in Xibalba in middle Age or in Mictlan in late Age.
Magic wins
Yes, finally a game that takes up the torch from Master of Magic in making the magic powerful. You can send plagues. You can teleport to remote provinces. You can fuck up provinces with Volcanoes and evil demons. You can summon hundreds of magical beings, from small imps to powerful Angels to otherworldly Lovecraftian beings. You can cast spells that affect the entire world, like putting the world in Darkness.
A primer about the game
Keys to learn
r to recruit
t to setup army
c to see a battle report in the selected province
v to view the battle in the selected province
n is next commander, f is previous commander
m is the message (events) list
y setup army in the "destination" province
shift + M cast spell every month
shift + O forge item every month
control + move to province to force move order instead of sneak order
? to list all the rest of key shortcuts, which are different depending on what windows you are in that moment.
Multiplayer
The game is considered by a lot of people a multiplayer game. This is based on that the AI isn't very good, the game is too complex and deep for it, so you can't compare the experience of playing against humans that can do devious strategies and present complex diplomatic interaction (and basckstabbing!) with the dumb AI.
That said, I'm from the opinion that the game is still worth it even as a pure single player game. First, because basically there isn't a game like this in the market, second because as a noob you still will need a handful of games to reliably beat the AI at a decent difficulty level which can be translated to 60 hours or so (which imo is enough juice to get of a 15-25€ game). And third because against an AI that you are going to beat eventually the game is still fun because is a toybox full of cool toys. So many cool spells and units to try and discover!
Where to buy
http://www.gamersgate.com/DD-DOM4TA/dominions-4-thrones-of-ascension
http://store.steampowered.com/app/259060/
http://www.desura.com/games/dominions-4-thrones-of-ascensions
All the keys are Steam keys.
