Is there a good review on this game? I want to purchase it, I play single player game mostly. Is this the best 4x game?

[GnomeSlayer]

Thank you

[Eldritch Gentleman]

It is a good game.
It's not as good singleplayer as it is in multiplayer, as the AI isn't as clever as your average player.
Calling it the best 4X game is impossible, as there's a wide variety of them that all appeal to a different niche, and I wouldn't call it a 4X. You don't do much exploiting or exploring.

[Kamiyama]

If you make some custom awake pretenders with good stats you can set up single player games where you only have human players and load in your good pretenders. Then when the game starts you can set one of the players to AI control so that AI starts the game with a good pretender.

This goes a long way to having single player games which don't suck.

I like playing against MA Maringon. They have a conflict bonus to their dominion so it's really hard for my dominion to wipe them off the map, even if I'm building temples and recruiting priests.

My pretender for MA Maringon is an awake red dragon with awe. The red dragon also has fear, so it can easily conquer neutral provinces with the fear + awe combo and the fact that it's a freaking dragon.

Maringon also has paladins and the AI is good at recruiting anything and everything in its provinces, so it always attacks you with paladins. So it's not a pushover when set up this way.

[Draken]

Honestly, for the first dozen games or more the AI will probably be quite a worthy foe as you figure things out.
Dominions has a lot to figure out so even the not so smart AI should challenge you a bit.

[Kamiyama]

If you play against random AI it will generate random pretenders which some of the time just don't make any sense. Random magic paths, random scales, random blesses.

Worse it will have dormant or imprisoned pretenders and won't expand early game so you just step on them because your early game advantage just snowballs.

[Mormacil]

This isn't a true 4x game, this is a wargame with some 4x elements tacked on. If you truly want a 4x game look elsewhere. If you're looking for a strategy game, perhaps even a fantasy themed wargame this game is great.

But the meat of this game are planning battles and watching them get executed. Tech tree is essentially replaced with magical research. As the game progresses it's less about bumping mundane armies into each other and more having those armies be cover while mages duke it out.

Battles are very hands off. You give squads vague orders like attack rear, fire at flying units etc. Then you can give every mage up to five spells to cast. Afterwards they default to their own best guess. It's a rock paper scissor game in regards to magic.

If your enemy relies on a cavalry charge maybe cast Earth Meld that can immobilize them, then your infantry can easily kill them. Or maybe they rely on flying units while their archers pelt your lines. In that case you might want to cast Storm. The spell removes a portion of the projectiles in the air, reducing archer efficiency and at the same time prevent regular flying units from flying. Groundbound they're an easy target.

But maybe their mages are also strong in Air magic and actually don't mind the Storm spell. Because it allows them to cast Storm Power and now all their lightning spells are more powerful. This game if anything is about counter to counter to counter. And that's where the AI stumbles a bit. Some folks consider anything but peak play to be a waste of time. And no AI on modern hardware can reach peak play like a human can. But this is a solid SP game with a ton of content. Just trying out ever nation is dozens upon dozens of hours of content.

[the.lovewyrm]

SP: It's mostly very broad, not deep.
MP: Mindgames, mindgames, mindgames make the depth, but its still mostly broad.

What I mean with broad is:
Like Lego bricks, the 'gameplay parts' of Lego bricks are not deep, but the more different bricks you have, the more you can build from it.
Or perhaps the binary system, you have 0 and 1 but you're reading this on a highly complex machine that shines pixels into your retinas almost like magic.

In dominions you also have a rather shallow (basically a slur in the context of this game, since it has the stereotype of being "super duper deep and complex") set of actual gameplay elements, but from these basic blocks you can build an ocean of possibilities.

Even the more exotic nations who have actual gimmicks, like no recruitment, free spawn instead, or dominion that doesn't spread on its own (well, it does but weakly) unless you do blood sacrifices, they still all, at the core use the same stats for units, the same gems, the same abstracted recruitment points, resources and so forth.

I consider the majority of humanity capable of understanding those basics...but the true mettle is shown in what you do with that.

I might be splitting hair by not wanting Dominions to be 'complex' while it clearly isn't 'obviously easy' or anything, but it's like GURPS, it needs some PR so people stop being scared of it.
Likewise, GURPS at the core is roll three six sided dice and try to go below, or at some number your game master decides some current role playing problem has.

It really is just that, and everything else in the many many books is just application of it, and completely optional (but also fun)

That said, there is a pretty good review of it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdowq42PaDI

It's memey, but shows what truly is important about this game.
Its soul.

[GnomeSlayer]

Thank you very much everyone. This is really helpful.

[Kamiyama]

I would say it's a 4X.

Explore - scouting provinces, searching for magic sites
Expand - conquering provinces, building forts
Exploit - income, research, crafting, summoning, boosting mages, gearing thugs
Exterminate - destroying the enemy

I would also argue it's one of the most deep and complex 4X I've ever played. Compare this to popular 4X like a Total War or Civilization title and it's no contest. Sure there are really complicated 4X out there like Stellaris which could be more complicated. It's maybe middle of the road? But Dominions is far from being shallow.

I can spend hours tweaking the perfect pretender and tweaking the perfect research queue and early game for a particular civ. It's a lot of fun.

[Mormacil]

I don't think we agree on what a 4X is if you consider Total War a 4X. Merely building forts with no real control over the economy doesn't count as Expand and Exploit to me. For that I need to be able to tweak taxation, build an economic system, optimize resource production etc.

[👁]

It's a good game with a horrible user interface, very badly designed and very hard to learn, but once you learn it's a good game.

It never stops being clunky though.

[onomastikon]

You will find a bunch of decent reviews for this game, some of them right here on steam. Here is mine:
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198010926144/recommended/722060/
While the UI certainly needs work (see https://steamcommunity.com/app/722060/discussions/0/2570942392190924316/), it is by no means "horrid" nor is it badly designed -- there are far, far worse out there.
That being said, I also second the claim that this is less of a 4X, instead it is a wargame with almost zero infrastructure management and mild resource / economy management, but with lots of room for RPG-like micromanagement (each commander in the game has a paper-doll-like card which can be outfitted with stuff, and you will probably spend time doing that).
While almost everyone here plays multiplayer, you CAN enjoy single-player as well. I know I have. This is one of my favorite games, and it is really bizarrely unique.

[GnomeSlayer]

Originally posted by onomastikon:

You will find a bunch of decent reviews for this game, some of them right here on steam. Here is mine:
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198010926144/recommended/722060/
While the UI certainly needs work (see https://steamcommunity.com/app/722060/discussions/0/2570942392190924316/), it is by no means "horrid" nor is it badly designed -- there are far, far worse out there.
That being said, I also second the claim that this is less of a 4X, instead it is a wargame with almost zero infrastructure management and mild resource / economy management, but with lots of room for RPG-like micromanagement (each commander in the game has a paper-doll-like card which can be outfitted with stuff, and you will probably spend time doing that).
While almost everyone here plays multiplayer, you CAN enjoy single-player as well. I know I have. This is one of my favorite games, and it is really bizarrely unique.

Thank you - will check them out.

[laaketeknikko]

If you're looking for a 4X for single player, I'd say look elsewhere. In fact, I'd say you should under no circumstances get Dominions for single player at all.

It's fine for a few games, but all the AI can do is get hordes of dudes and walk them over you. Higher difficulties get bigger hordes of dudes. But the later the game gets, the less and less meaningful hordes of dudes are in this game. Some nations can very easily thwart any AI armies with a few early game spells, and once you get the key combat magic of your nation online, there is pretty much no point in playing at all, because the AI has no answer to anything, except bigger hordes of useless dudes.

In my opinion the single player is extremely unsatisfactory. It's always fun to start, but it's a very quick spiral down in enjoyment. If you're looking to get into multiplayer, then Dominions is a very good game with annoying flaws, like idiotic spellcasting AI, extremely limited spell scripting, a horrendous UI and lots (lots) of pointless micromanagement you have to do.

In fact, for any normal game the amount of work that has gone into making the game less of a micromanagement hell or into AI improvement over the years would be completely unforgivable. The latest things we got was "pool blood slaves" and waypoint movement, which was 5 years ago.

People are willing to overlook a lot to play the multiplayer. That's how good it is. But single player? Just don't do it. You want to, I get it, but respect yourself, just don't do it.

[Mormacil]

I disagree the game is bad for SP. The AI has clear flaws but I don't rate it any less competent than say the AI in Total War games.

Not only that simply mastering each nation is dozens if not hundreds of hours of content. That's more than the majority of SP games out there.

[ÆtherNomad]

Yeah, people tend to claim that because they prefer multiplayer on this game singleplayer is just bad. This is a very narrow way to look at things, in my opinion. There's a large number of players who only play singleplayer, even after hundreds or thousands of hours playing the game, and still prefer it to multiplayer. This is just a matter of personal preference. People really should stop saying Dominions isn't a good singleplayer game.