Recent reviews by ByteHammer

I'd suggest waiting for the full release, as there are some bugs to be fixed and some polishing to be done, along with the British campaign for all you Loyalists.

However, it's fun and it has a good deal of depth!

For the tactical battles, you sort of get what you expect from the Ultimate General series, but on a slightly different scale. You create Regiments out of companies, and the battles are fought on a company level instead of the brigade level of UG:ACW. Manage your formations, morale, keep your troops supplied with ammo and in good cover, attack fortresses, etc. Tried and tested, it works.

You also get naval battles you're familiar with from Ultimate Admiral. It has slightly less fidelity than Ultimate Admiral, but they're working on it, and it's still one of the best Age of Sail strategy games on the market.

The campaign map is where the game is much different. You still get the occasional scripted battle, but instead of choosing from a list of battles, you get a more Total War style experience, where your armies move around on the strategic map and conquer towns and forts. If one of your generals are in range of a conflict, you can take direct control on the tactical map and fight it out. The battlefields are more procedurally generated based on the surrounding terrain than the more lovingly hand-crafted maps we're used to from Game Labs, so there's probably some work here that needs to be done.

But, it feels good to start with a couple small regiments and build up to the continental army. The research trees could use some work, and the campaign mechanics absolutely need to be explained more, but once you get the hang of it, it's satisfyingly deep. They even took a couple elements from Hearts of Iron's factory system to handle production and logistics, which is neat.

The campaign also seems quite long. The area expands as time goes on. You'll start in New England and work your way both north into Canada and south to the rest of the east coast colonies. So, plenty of content.

I'd say if you're on the fence, wait until the game gets a little more development, but there's plenty here already if you're a fan of the series.

Dominions is one of the deepest strategy games I've ever played. It combines elements from 4x games, auto-battlers and RPGs. Yes, the graphics are outdated. But if you can get past that, you'll enjoy one of the most interesting and deep strategy games ever made. Seriously.

To start, the game has excellent character creation. You select from one of the dozens of nations from one of the three "ages" of the game. Each nation is unique and plays incredibly differently. They have different troops, heroes, play styles, spells, summons, and more. On top of that, you create your own pretender god by choosing a powerful unit and giving it powers, including its skill in magic paths, and how your dominion influences the land around you. This continues into the game, as you can research, forge, and create items for not only your god, but the various commanders you'll end up recruiting as you play.

Dominions 6 is the best version so far to play against the AI. The AI in this version is smarter, and the new diplomacy tools give you new options on how to interact with them instead of being in a constant holy war with them.

Dominions 6 is also great for multiplayer, for both long-form and short-form games. The multiplayer community is incredibly active on discord (check out Clockwork Hounds, Lucid's Discord, and others).

Finally, this LOOKS a lot like Dominions 5. Don't let that fool you. This isn't a glorified DLC. A huge portion of the game has been reworked, the meta has been entirely thrown into the air, many new nations have been added, old ones reworked, the entire magic system has been overhauled, the addition of PLANES has completely changed how maps are generated and traversed, and the price is ABSOLUTELY justified by the sheer amount of content this game has to offer.

Seriously. Try it. It's good.

You ever wonder how a game like this can get ~95% overall reviews despite looking like it was made in the early 2000's?

It's deep. That's how. Real deep.

You start by choosing an age you want to play in. There are three - Early, Middle, Late. In early age, magic is strong and there are many nations with strange creatures. As we move to middle and late, we see bronze and leather go out of style for iron and steel. Magic becomes weaker, but troops become stronger. Many nations become populated with less magical/divine creatures and more humans and mundane beings, but with more technological marvels.

Once you've chosen your age, you choose a nation to play. And there are LOTS. Each has its own unit list, its own national spells, its own playstyle.

But you're not done yet. The last step before you start is to make your own pretender god. You choose their form, you give them magic power, and you decide what life is like in their dominion.

Each of these pieces comes together when you start, and you attempt to conquer the world and spread your religion in your bid to become the new ruling god of the world. You could play hundreds of games and your build might never look the same. REPLAYABILITY, PEOPLE.

And if somehow you get bored of what you have, the modding community is active. There are several compilation and overhaul mods that add hundreds of new units, spells, pretender forms, events, and even entire nations.

And if you SOMEHOW get bored of all those, someone literally wrote software to generate entirely random nations, even going so far as to generate new sprites for their units, national spells, etc.

And the dev is active. Between this and Conquest of Elysium, Ilwinter consistently releases updates and sequels.

This is a cult classic for a reason, fellas. Get in here and try it. If you put in the time to learn the mechanics, the game really opens up. I've been playing since Dominions 3 and I'm still learning new ♥♥♥♥ about this game every week.

Fight for Emp'rah. It's a good life.

I cannot understand the praise for this game. I absolutely adored previous editions, but this is just... empty. It never should have seen the light of day.

Here's a list of whining I made while playing it.

- The menus suck. The entire game is unintuitive. Even the F1 help menu lacks key details (more on this later).
- The game seems to have eliminated your reputation for individual characters unless they're an office-holder, and the rest is replaced with some moral system with three axes. How generous/greedy you are, how nice/mean you are, and how honest/cunning you are. Anything you do that helps your businesses increases your greediness, for example. No nuance whatsoever. You wanna be less greedy? Drop 4k at a church.
- I can't for the life of me figure out how to improve my relationship with individual office-holders short of trying to ♥♥♥♥ 'em. I can't even bribe them unless they're indoors, even if it's legal. I looked throughout the F1 menu for how to manage this, and it tells me that there are MANY ways to do it, but elaborates on NONE of them.
- Your "skills" seem to be mostly dynasty unlocks. Each character has a set of attributes, but the things that effect your career are no longer character-specific. For example, in The Guild 2, you could start as a farmer and marry someone who can make a tavern. Can't do this anymore; you need the influence to unlock that career branch.
- Speaking of Dynasty members, they're absolutely braindead unless they're in your party.
- Equipping characters is a chore. I can't seem to equip my henchmen by buying gear at the market, for example. Unless it's a dynasty member or a transporter, I just can't buy anything. So I have to get the head of the dynasty to run to the market, buy some gear, run back, put the gear in storage, and then give the gear to the henchman.
- Applying for an office is a chore. Each office has an election time. And, if you're like me and thought "I bet I can apply for the office and get in on the next round of voting!", you're dead wrong. There's a specific timeframe you have to apply in. If you miss it, you're ♥♥♥♥♥♥ for 4 years. Why can't we just apply for any office we meet the prerequisites of and be present in the next election for that office? Why do I have to show up between 1401 07:59-15:59?
-Why the ♥♥♥♥ is there a guy screaming out the time specifically at 1AM, 2AM, and 3AM in-game time? People are sleeping you disrespectful jerk.
-Not even the graphics are a saving grace. It seems to be just about the same or as bad as The Guild 2.

In short, it feels like a game by small team of D-level game developers in the late 2000's. It's clunky, it looks bad, it plays bad, and it's entirely unintuitive.

And GOD DO I WISH IT WAS GOOD. I wanted SO BAD for it to be good. But I can't sit here and cope about how the devs went through hardships to release this steaming pile to us. I'd rather the game had just been cancelled.

EDIT: More I came up with:

- On maps with multiple cities, you can't really tell what city you're in unless you, like, find the town hall in it and look at its name. It isn't even on the damn MAP.
- Each city has districts, which are color-coded, which is important for certain jobs (like the merc patrol job). The only way to find the district you're looking for is to check the map, see the district color, click on a building in the district, and look at the district under its name. The screen for the job just lists the district names, like you're supposed to know the names and boundaries of all of them.
- The Guild 2 was famously saved by its mods that fixed a lot of the game's issues and made content in it more engaging. This doesn't even seem to be possible with The Guild 3. And I doubt the game will ever be made to be moddable. Feel free to prove me wrong on that, devs.
- Most buildings no longer have interiors. Even the ones you sort of expect to have interiors. Like hospitals, for example. But nah. You have sniffles? Injuries? You get treated on the front lawn. Barber? Better hope it isn't windy when you get that haircut. I get that there may be a technical limitation here, but the execution here is bad. Even if we can't see inside, certain jobs should still be done inside.