Dominions 5 - Warriors of the Faith

"re-release" the game with a couple of new features for full price yeah, no. bought dom5 because I wanted to support the devs but they're obviously pretty dubious with their pricing practices don't buy dom6

it is good but it is not much different than Dominions 3 which I also own...in a way you get to buy a patch or a small DLC for a full price of the game and it does not really motivate me to get the newer ones...

Dominions 5: Warriors of the Faith, developed and published by Illwinter Game Design, is a rare kind of strategy game—unapologetically complex, deeply rooted in mythology, and fiercely committed to systems over spectacle. At a glance, it may seem antiquated with its minimalist graphics and dated UI, but beneath the surface lies one of the deepest and most customizable grand strategy experiences available on PC. It demands patience, strategic foresight, and a willingness to immerse yourself in a world shaped by countless mythological inspirations and intricate mechanical layers. In Dominions 5, you take on the role of a would-be god vying to ascend to full divinity. This premise drives every element of the game, from nation selection and pretender design to magic paths and dominion spread. There are over 80 distinct nations to choose from, each inspired by different historical or mythological civilizations—ranging from Norse and Hindu to Mesoamerican and Lovecraftian horror. Every nation has unique units, sacred troops, mages, and national spells, making them feel distinct not only in aesthetics but in strategic playstyle. Before the game even begins, players craft their "Pretender God," choosing its form, magical affinities, and scales—abstract attributes that govern everything from luck and temperature to population growth and magic power. This step alone offers an almost overwhelming number of possibilities, and how you build your god directly influences how your dominion spreads and how your nation functions. For example, a dormant god with high order and production might create an early economic boom, while a powerful awake combat deity could rush early expansion and dominance through fear and military might. Gameplay unfolds on a turn-based strategic map, where you command armies, cast global spells, search for magical sites, and engage in diplomacy or warfare with other players or AI. Battles themselves are automated once commands are issued, meaning much of the challenge lies in preparation—positioning troops, scripting mages correctly, and understanding unit synergies. This might sound passive, but the depth of pre-battle scripting is such that you’re not just watching fights play out—you’re testing the effectiveness of your entire strategic vision. One poorly scripted mage or mispositioned unit can spell the difference between victory and total collapse. The magic system is an entire game unto itself. With paths in fire, air, water, earth, death, nature, astral, blood, and holy magic, spellcasting becomes a high-stakes balance of research, resource management, and long-term planning. Some spells can summon demons, others can alter the battlefield, and many allow for summoning new units, forging powerful items, or even reshaping the very laws of the world. Mastery of magic is essential, especially in the late game where global enchantments and super-combatant units become dominant forces. Meanwhile, blood magic—one of the game’s more controversial and morally ambiguous systems—requires the sacrifice of captives to summon eldritch horrors or unleash devastating rituals. Another major element is the dominion system itself, where the strength of your god’s presence (represented by white candles on the map) affects provinces under your influence. High dominion strengthens your units and weakens your enemies, while hostile dominion can cause economic collapse or rebellion. Spreading dominion becomes as critical as maintaining armies or casting spells, adding another strategic layer that simulates the metaphysical influence of religion and belief in tangible ways. While the AI is functional and offers a solid challenge, Dominions 5 truly shines in multiplayer. Diplomacy, backstabbing, alliances, and meta-strategic plays elevate the experience beyond the mechanics themselves. It's in these matches—some of which can span weeks or months in real time—where the game reaches its full potential. Players form uneasy alliances, wage ideological wars through dominion pressure, or unleash surprise rituals that dramatically change the map overnight. The community around the game is small but fiercely dedicated, with many creating custom mods, balance patches, and detailed guides to help new players climb the steep learning curve. Speaking of learning curve, Dominions 5 does not go out of its way to be welcoming. The interface is dense, the tooltips are sometimes cryptic, and the manual is required reading—not optional. But for those who commit to learning its systems, the payoff is immense. The game doesn’t hold your hand, but it respects your intelligence and rewards experimentation, adaptation, and deep understanding of its systems. Graphically, the game is utilitarian at best. Units are represented by 2D sprites that evoke the feel of old-school tabletop counters. Battle animations are functional but far from flashy. The sound design is similarly sparse, with limited voice work and ambient audio. But none of this detracts from the experience if you're focused on the mechanics and narrative potential. In fact, the minimalist presentation arguably helps keep the focus on what Dominions 5 does best: letting you tell your own emergent stories of divine conflict and world-shaping magic. Ultimately, Dominions 5 is a strategy game that makes no compromises. It’s niche, slow-paced, and aggressively mechanical, but for the right player, it offers nearly limitless replayability and strategic depth. Few other games let you roleplay as a spider god of darkness leading an army of enslaved blood cultists, or as an ancient tree spirit spreading growth and nature across a dying world, or as a shapeshifting astral titan bent on eradicating death itself. It’s not for everyone, but for those it’s made for, it’s one of the most rewarding experiences in the genre. If you’re ready to embrace complexity, dive deep into lore-driven world-building, and lose yourself in a mythic sandbox of divine war, Dominions 5 is an unparalleled strategy epic. Rating: 9/10

This is, like the rest of the entries into the Dominions series, a really odd game to try to review despite the fact that it's incredibly fun to play. The graphics are ancient, the gameplay is both detailed and hands off, and what actually happens during a combat is sometimes hard to figure out without doing a significant amount of maths on the fly. That having been said, I've spent hundreds of hours on this and its predecessors, and will pick up the most recent game once I've finally finished the three matches I have running on this! If you are the kind of person who likes putting plans into action and watching them play out it's incredibly fun, and although I've only played it vs AI the multiplayer scene is reportedly even better. There's just something indefinably rewarding about watching the right blessings turn merely average sacred troops into unstoppable juggernauts, or when a correctly geared SC wipes out armies of hundreds as they stand awestruck in front of him. Extra marks for the incredible array of mods out there, and if anyone's struggling to make sense of it all then there's a lot of information out there in LP's, the wiki and manual. It's also really worth turning on the most detailed level of combat report and setting the game to half speed to understand how the values for the various stats actually come together. There are a lot of ways to influence combat and it takes a while to work out if a combatant or situation would benefit from stacking defence or armour or repel, or adding stun or paralysis to reduce incoming attacks, or fear to debuff morale, or....

WARNING! There is no tutorial, it´s way too much micromanagement for me. The UI is a big mess. This game is only for fanatics. Maybe it´s much better then CoE but that is just too much for me..sorry.

This is an excellent strategy game. If you can get past the trashy 1990's graphics there is a beast of a 4x fantasy game underneath. Basically it is what Total War: Warhammer 3 wishes it could be. If you want to play multiplayer with randoms you will have to get the latest version (Dominions 6), but there isn't much change at all between Dominions 3/4/5/6 etc, just a cash grab by the developer. There are literally thousands of Spells, Units, Mages, Commanders, Nations to play all with differant play styles. Very fun if you like choice and 4x.

Great for people who want a "game" with Terry Davis vibes, along with the enjoyment of curling up next to a roaring fire with a 388 page book about how to play a video game, since there is no tutorial - that would be for people who are not already a God

Dominions 5 at first turned me off by the dated graphics, bad UI, etc. But beyond that is a deep and very satisfying strategy game. What is amazing is that even at full price it is worth it, because these developers have never introduced DLC like other studios. There is already so much content in the game that it surpasses even those with lots of DLC that costs $200 (e.g.,Paradox games). $45 is a fair price for all this content because you don't need endless amounts of DLC to get the full game. 900 spells plus all the ways they interact with other things. This game is crazy good and worth it, especially on sale.

Я не понял игру

almost 100 hours in and still don't know what the F i'm doing