Games like Dominions

[denyasis]

I do enjoy Dominions a lot. I also enjoy science fiction/fantasy a lot too. I sometimes wonder if there is a "Dominions in Space!!!"

I'm not really into RTS, so I've bounced off of games like Star Ruler 2 and Stellaris (more the latter than the former). I also tried Aurora 4x and it seemed needlessly complicated. Distant Worlds seems cool, but it doesn't jive with my OS and is rated borked/garbage. I guess dominions hits that sweet spot where the game play loop is pretty tight (no diplomacy, no unit design, simple research system), making it not too hard to get into.

I think the closest I've come to finding a similar game is Space Empires IV + mods.

Do you have a side-TBS for when you're not feeling in a Dominions mood? What do you like about it?

[oldrocker99]

Lost Technology is slightly similar, similar enough that I bought it.

[Slice]

Right now, Shadow Empire is at the top of my list.

[CHOO CHOO]

Shadow Empire is a beast. Completely different genre and setting and game mechanics, but absolutely a favorite.

[garegoylant]

Stars! is in many ways similar.
+ : It's PbEM, TBS, in space, simple research, no diplomacy, no control over units during battle but you can script them on previous turns, has somewhat complicated rules (but simpler than Dominions, I'd say) that lead to extremely deep gameplay. Just read guides on autohost to get an idea how deep it is.
+/- : has unit design and it's absolutely essential
- : it was written in 1995 and had no graphics and poor UI even by standards of that day; multiplayer community consists of 29 people, I guess the rest died of old age :(
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stars!
https://starsautohost.org/stars.htm

[meglobob1]

Galactic Civilizations 3 (or 2), its not as massive as Dominions but still very, very good. GC2 AI is great. You can pick up GC2 universal (all updates expansions really, really cheap), GC 3 will cost considerably more with all dlc and is a massive resource hog so you will need a proper gaming PC to get the most out of it. GC2 on the other hand play while having 23 other apps running!

Sid Meirs Alpha Centuria is still a all time classic as well.

[CHOO CHOO]

Field of Glory: Empires is another really neat game with a focus on economy-building and trade.

[Twogun]

Originally posted by CHOO CHOO:

Field of Glory: Empires is another really neat game with a focus on economy-building and trade.

do you play with/need the other game to do the battles?

and are you playing FoG I or FoG II? i think there is a second one? or am i out of my mind. that game has been on the periphery of my radar for a long time.

i've always liked the idea of a less magic-y dominons

[Twogun]

also, i've been looking at a game called stellar monarchy.

never played it, but it looks a little like dom in space

[Mali Belizec]

Distant worlds universe is my all time fav space game.

[CHI LONG QUA]

The original Age of Wonders. Good artstyle, good mechanics, and fairly good balance now that I've modded it. Still has a PBEM scene and I just made a massive map for it over the past 6 months.

[Twogun]

Originally posted by Negative Social Epistasis:

The original Age of Wonders. Good artstyle, good mechanics, and fairly good balance now that I've modded it. Still has a PBEM scene and I just made a massive map for it over the past 6 months.

i loved the original. couldn't get into the sequels

how did you mod it?

[CHOO CHOO]

Originally posted by Twogun:

do you play with/need the other game to do the battles?
i've always liked the idea of a less magic-y dominons

I own FoG2, which FoG:E can be combined with, and I have played a few battles that way. But there's a perfectly serviceable automatic battle resolution system implemented in FoG:E, so you don't need FoG2 at all if you don't feel like interrupting your empire-building for hours-long manually controlled battles.

That said, it's nothing like dominions, and not just because it lacks magic.

Distant worlds

I really like many of the ideas behind the game, but the actual moment-to-moment gameplay always felt somewhat lame, for lack of a more precise term.

[CHI LONG QUA]

Originally posted by Twogun:

Originally posted by Negative Social Epistasis:

The original Age of Wonders. Good artstyle, good mechanics, and fairly good balance now that I've modded it. Still has a PBEM scene and I just made a massive map for it over the past 6 months.

i loved the original. couldn't get into the sequels

how did you mod it?

There's two main ways of modding it. Modding with AoWEd is easy and has resulted in maybe a dozen mods over the years. However, it's more about simple changes to unit stats, spell research/mana/upkeep, and hero levelup cost of skills, as well as handling graphics.

To alter more fundamental mechanics like hero attribute levelup costs, atk/dam stats of ranged attacks, unit upkeep formula, city upgrade cost per size of city, unit production time, base vision range, base racial relations, you need to hex edit.

For 20 years there was only one hex edit mod, Warlock's Ruleset, as well as AoWEd-made submods made by other people. That changed about 6 months ago when a certain 'And G' released a hex edit mod, and when asked, showed me and IniochReborn how to mod it that way. We don't have his technical knowledge, but we've developed a nice big list of which parts of the code are used for which mechanics. It mostly only requires patience to find more - reading the text of aowepack.dpl with PE Explorer's disassembler, and then editing the code with a hex editor like HxD. I made a spreadsheet which auto-calculates the offset and tells you where to look in the hex editor based off the address in the .dpl file.

After And G's initial AoW+ mod, IniochReborn released his AoWx mod, and then I released my Ziggurat Engine mod.

The hex editing stuff is important since it allowed us to address fundamental balance issues like heroes rushing to 10 DEF, Spellcasting being too costly at levelup (multi-level skill costs can't be altered with AoWEd), archery being too powerful, city upgrade cost being too high for small cities, and so on. Also, it means Humans and Dark Elves can finally hate each other like the lore demands they must.

Here's an invite to the discord server https://discord.gg/2YMyfa2 although there's explanations on the GoG forum too.

Compared to Dom5 Age of Wonders is a bit prettier, a lot easier to play, and has more of a sense of adventure rather than managing an empire. It has up to 3 map levels and fog of war/exploration mechanics. And no communion/blood micro...

[CHOO CHOO]

I also played a deal of AoW back when it came out, but never got into the sequels until AoW3 and AoW:Planetfall. I found AoW3 strangely un-fun; but couldn't explain it to myself. Wasn't it much like the original? Planetfall, then, was a complete disappointment. Truly just a cheap sci-fi mod priced as a full game, and worst of all styled after Alpha Centauri much like Civilization Beyond Earth before it, and failing in the same vein.

[CHI LONG QUA]

Originally posted by CHOO CHOO:

I also played a deal of AoW back when it came out, but never got into the sequels until AoW3 and AoW:Planetfall. I found AoW3 strangely un-fun; but couldn't explain it to myself. Wasn't it much like the original? Planetfall, then, was a complete disappointment. Truly just a cheap sci-fi mod priced as a full game, and worst of all styled after Alpha Centauri much like Civilization Beyond Earth before it, and failing in the same vein.

I think AoW3 is decent, but between bad writing, streamlined mechanics, and godawful civ5-copying artstyle I never played it much.