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The Rally Point: It’s about time we did Dominions 3,4,5, and probably 6Return Pretender
Return Pretender
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Illwinter Game Design
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Illwinter Game Design
Dominions is a series where you can build the Ark Of The Covenant, which blinds everyone on any battlefield it appears on. Games where any soldier can receive a horror mark, which attracts unspeakable phantoms from beyond reality to randomly attack them, and if they survive, they’ll probably receive more horror marks. Games where I once deployed my entire military against an evil raven so large and powerful that I lost, leaving behind corpses that it fed on to grow even stronger. Games where a frog could, mathematically, kill god with one blow.
Dominions 6is due out in January, bringing with it changes so esoteric that I’d be better off talking about Dominions 3 toDominions 5instead. So let’s do that.
The first thing to concede is that they’re all very similar (though I’ve not played the first two). I mean that not as a dig, but to establish that if you fundamentally dislike a Dominions, you’ll almost certainly dislike them all. They are iterative sequels through and through, aiming to perfect, improve, and gradually expand rather than radically experiment or dive into total reinvention.
Each is essentially a wargame. Although unofficial diplomacy is common in multiplayer, and there are co-op options, this is about gods contesting a single title. Any alliance inevitably falls as in the end, there can be only one.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Illwinter Game Design
Much of your game is decided based on your first choices. To start, you design a god, starting with one of dozens of chassis, then defining their powers. Your god could be a giant golden buddha-like creature, or a fountain of blood, or a weird little guy riding a demon-monkey thing, or a decrepit old crone. Or a rock.
But even before this, you’ll have chosen a nation (faction), which are split across three siloed ages of the world. Some nations are present in each age, but drastically warped over time, or splintered or assimilated into others. And as with your choice of god, each offers unique advantages and weaknesses, and moreover,flavour.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Illwinter Game Design
Each nation offers unique units, and pairs better with some forms of magic, some types of god, and some dominion effects. The wacky bake Shinuyama hordes are a good fit for a god who spreads chaos and luck, while the “vengeful forest” Asphodel thrive in a dominion that increases both growth and death, creating more living things to kill and reanimate. You might lead with hoplites while mages summon waves of undead, or your god itself as a giant snake crushing and terrifying entire armies.
Setting that up, though, requires knowledge of the battle scripting system. Dominions lets you give commanders a basic list of standing orders. Soldiers are simple, but mages can be instructed to cast specific spells in order. This makes for a dizzying wealth of possibilities, and it’s why you’ll get absolutely obliterated in open multiplayer. My personal advice is to avoid people who play to win, and instead muck around with some friends who want to do some mad shit. There’s no formal diplomacy, but a lot of fun to be had playing your side as a character, sending proposals, threats, or inscrutable ravings via in-game letters. A player who’s memorised a heap of stats and efficiencies will crush anyone who’s not into that. Probably one based around maxing out blood magic, a famously powerful path with a dedicated school that acts as an almost limitless force multiplier with sufficient prep, but getting there takes a lot of rather tedious micromanagement.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Illwinter Game Design
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Illwinter Game Design
The biggest single change was probably the addition of thrones back inDominions 4, but the diversity of the game’s possibilities means even undramatic changes can be more consequential than they sound. The changelist for Dominions 6 is a plethora of small things, and even some obviously significant ones are too esoteric to get into here. The general trend, though, is towards bigger battles with more units both mundane and summoned. Illusion-themed spells, previously dotted about other paths, will be separated into their own dedicated path, and a few systems have been ported from sibling seriesConquest Of Elysium, most notably a layer of caverns beneath the world. There’ll be a bit more of almost everything, too, adding a couple of extra nations, spells, and so on.
It’s hard to name a standout feature that I’m excited about. But I’m optimistic about the combined effect ofhundreds of changes, and finally seizing the excuse to write about a series that once inspired me and several other RPS commenters (including co-contributorCaelyn Ellis) to write a diary that climbed to over 25,000 words of scheming, lamenting, joking, and taunting poems. There just aren’t manystrategy gamesthat so readily feed your imagination, and while it may be gradual, the 20 years of refinement going into Dominions 6 is one of the Good Things about an independent games scene; we’ve room not only for off the wall ideas, but for people persistently working on their own specific thing.
It may well take a few more iterations to sand off its kinda backwards UI and steep learning curve, but I’d have recommended the series even a decade ago, and even if the worst happens and 6 drops the ball, I’d probably just shrug and insist any newcomers try the older entries anyway.
