Dominions 3: The Awakening

Writing far from the future, this was the game that got me into the Dominions series; now at iteration 5. It's still a good game that holds up well in single player. If you haven't played any game in the series and want to try them out in single player, this is definitely a good option. A lot of fun can be had exploring the mechanics, which are deep and multi-faceted. In hindsight there's a bit of jankiness that later games solve, but I still prefer this to most 4x/GS games out there.

I really struggle to understand everything that is going on here and tutorials are not as helpful as I would like. This is the kind of game that I would typically enjoy, but I am at a loss on what good strategy is for this game. Sometimes, it looks like I'm doing well, but something outlandish happens and I instantly lose with no real explanation. Maybe if someone sat me down and walked me through every aspect, I could get better, but that shouldn't be the threshold for simply being able to play the game! The lack of decent graphics and sound doesn't do the game any favors either. You'll need to invest lots of time to learn the game, and by then, you may find out that you don't enjoy it very much. Overall: 2/5

it's good, but buy dominions 5 instead, or wait for dominions 6.

A bloated autobattler on sprite engine (early Total Wars look better) melted into a simplified map-coloring simulator (no building) with funny quantity of races & magic spells. All sequels in the series are the same, UI in this one is cooked, buy #5.

It's a fun mix of Risk and Heroes of Might and Magic with just a touch of Medieval Total War. Way too much micro management late game in really large maps. And definitely a time sink. But, a pleasing one at that, with a fairy original concept closest in style to Masters of Magic. Might not be a 10/10 but glad to buy it on a sale any day and spend hours on it in a lazy Saturday. PS: really really easy to mod. Great thumbs up for their support for easy mods, and generally great documentation!

This game has so much depth, don't let its oldschool graphic style trick you. The beauty of this is in the depth, variety of options, and strategy. The reference booklet is almost 300 pages. And its fun to read because you begin to realize how many factors are at play here. I know the newest one just came out, Dom 6, but I wanted to start with an older version, and get to know, before progressing forward through them. I've never seen a strategy fantasy game with this much depth that is from this vantage point of kingdoms. There are so many unique units, spells, gems, items, buildings. My favorite part was in completing the tutorial save, there was one troll that I had surrounded, he had mages that summon spectral wolves, and he's nearly immune to my damage, so I lost 4 battles against him. It was like 120 units on 5, but he was the last bastion in the west. Eventually, I overwhelmed him but the theme of this Troll holding back my armies was very cool.

what a price

The game plays extremely well on modern systems and is a joy to play. Turn based wargaming

Dominions 3 is a fun and interesting turn-based strategy game where you play as a pre-made god or one of your creation. In spite of the primitive art there's a tremendous amount of depth to the gameplay, particularly in which age you start in, the map, your faction and their prefered biome and units, and your god. The art is serviceable and the game runs very smoothly, even late game with tens or even hundreds of thousands of units moving around in stacks. Lots of inputs are bound to hotkeys, but there's no tutorial or guide (other than looking through the Options menu) to find this, such as "building units" (which you'll be doing a LOT). I'd recommend checking these out, as they'll save you a lot of clicking, especially over longer games/larger maps. The biggest two detriments I found was: late game tedium of building units, especially mass-rallying units you're building at territories and advancing them up to a certain chokepoint. It sounds trite, but when you're managing 10 stacks of units being made each turn, at 10 different territories, every turn for each front, it gets really tedious. The other big issue is the water/land transition. Water empires tend to be inferior to land ones because, and frequently dominate their lakes/oceans but cannot expand aside from raiding the coasts. This leads to them building tens or even hundreds of thousands of units on every single inch of water, and being basically unconquorerable, by land armies trying to invade in spite of the "famine" mechanic making them lose unit HP for being too congested. Another concern might be the similarities of Dominions 3 to "Dominions 4", which appears to be more an upgraded version of D3 than a full-on new game. If you're interested in this, I'd recommend checking out that instead, or perhaps even Dominions 5.

Set up your dream apocalyptic battle-to-the-death between a skyscraper-sized leviathan and a little old lady. [spoiler] Put your money on granny. [/spoiler] No joke.