As other reviews have stated, a mix of Civ-style 4x gameplay with cities/settlers/workers, and some Dominions-lite gameplay via magic research and troop orders. It is not as deep as either, but runs smooth and quick and scratches a certain itch. Expect to hit end turn a lot while waiting for things to happen, especially in the first 50 turns.

City management is familiar with a few twists: buildings or units require Production to complete, cities population grows with enough Food, buildings and units have upkeep paid with Gold that you earn in cities. There are Raw Materials that you need 1:1 with Production; if you have 9 materials in city and 10 production, you will only reach 9 production points. You can ship food or resources from city to city (within 8 tiles over land, unlimited range but requires a harbor over sea), so it is viable to have a settlement focused on raw materials shipping its resources to a city focused on production.

Cities grow their hex radius they can work resources at 5 pop and 10 pop; these milestones also unlock 'Specializations' for their respective settlement. These are only locked in once you build a corresponding structure, and can be changed out (as long as you sell the structure. IE, Raw Material specialization unlocks a Lumber Yard. Once you have built the Yard, you are locked into that specialization until you sell the Lumber Yard). THE UNITS YOU CAN PRODUCE ARE TIED TO THE SETTLEMENT'S SPECIALIZATION VIA THE BUILDINGS THAT SPECIALIZATION ALLOWS. The Lumber Yard via Raw Material spec is required for tier 2 ranged units (Longbowmen and Crossbowmen), the Foundry via Industry spec is required for tier 2 melee units, etc. I did not learn this til my third or fourth game, though I was able to achieve victory with summoned units.

If you have played Dominions, the magic research tree will be immediately recognizable. As of this review (5/2/25) there are 6 flavors of magic (Astral, Death, Chaos, Water, Nature, Holy) broken into 3 schools of research (Conjuration, Evocation, Enchantment). Each school goes up to level 5 (rather than 9 like Dominions), which means it is likely that you will reach the end of at least 1 of those schools in a match. There is no crafting or site searching to find gems; all magic (and magic upkeep costs) are paid for with a universal mana resource, earned similar to Gold via cities. Battle scripting is also less indepth than Dominions.

There ARE neutral creep camps (respawn in Fog of War every ~75 turns by default) that can spawn small, roaming neutral armies that are mostly a danger to unescorted workers or weakly defended settlements. Conquering a camp provides resources (gold and mana), occasionally boosts to a nearby city (onetime injections of food or production), occasional recruits, and occasional equipment to be put on units. Equipment can range from 'Dwarven Melee Weapons' or 'Mithril Ranged Weapons' to minor magic/research boosters (Magic Tomes, +1 element and +3 research) and in between. I found equipment to be unexpected bonuses rather than something to be planned around.

There are naval tiles, including naval based creep camps/creeps. I did not engage with this mechanic at all, because the cost and difficulty of raising a navy strong enough to begin creeping. The primary issue is it might take you 6 turns to build a crappy ship, and another 6 to build a second one. By the time you get a second ship out, there are reasonable odds a wandering naval creep will float into your harbor and murder your slowly growing navy. Dev has mentioned this needs toning down, so I expect that it will be adjusted.

It is a less finnicky (but still somewhat finnicky) take on the Dominions formula married to the classic 4x hex based map style. There are currently some busy work QoL features that the dev has mentioned working on, primarily an easier way to continually cast Rituals (like summoning undead or something) that doesn't involve repeating the same clicks.

Ultimately, I enjoyed myself at a price tag of 8.99.