Dominions (video game series)

I wanted to talk about this game a bit because it was the inspiration behind why I use the word ‘Dominion’ in my own brand. I had debated a few other options including Universe, Dimension, and Domain, but this game series made me realize that Dominion was the right word.

For this post, I’m talking about Dominions 4 and 5, the only two I have played. Since 5 is a straight-up upgrade over 4, I see no reason to go back and play 4, although the bulk of my time addicted to the game was technically with 4.

Dominions is a game series, made by Illwinter Game Studios, that doesn’t quite fit nicely into the usual genre categories. It’s a strategy game that sorta looks like a 4X game, where all your focus is on battles, but you don’t directly fight. You issue commands to your troops before the battle and let the madness play out.

I bought Dominions 4 on a whim one Christmas Steam sale years ago, played it on a whim, got addicted, and played the ever-loving fuck out of it. So you’d think that after putting so many hours into it, I’d be really good, right?

Actually, no. I’m bad at this game. Really bad. Oh sure, I can defeat the AI easily enough, but the AI is infamously bad. It focuses on building large armies of chaff rather than scripting intelligent magic-users. It doesn’t build super-combatants. If you think of your army as a quantity vs. quality thing, the AI goes for pure quantity.

So what makes this game so good? For me, it’s the sheer amount of amazing and yet completely skippable LORE in the background. The games feature about 30 nations in each era, each one based upon a historical or mythological place and then given a twist to make it unique. You’ve got Xibalba from Mayan mythology, T’ien Ch’i from China, Arcoscephale representing ancient Greek humans while Pangaea and Asphodel represent Greek woodland myths and Atlantis has the Greek undersea myths. Tir na n’Og and Ys are inspired by Celtic myths. Norse myths have plenty of representation in the form of Vanheim, Niefelheim, and Helheim. There’s even R’lyeh bringing Cthulhu mythos to the game.

In the game, you play as a Pretender God trying to defeat the other Pretenders to become the Supreme God, the Pantokrator. You can choose many different Gods to pick from, and nations have some specific to them, fitting their aesthetic. Some of them are quite silly. This amazing Carp God is playable in many of the East Asian-themed nations:

Each nation has their own units which add even MORE lore to the game. So your magic-user isn’t just “this guy uses magic.” No, it’s more like:

The game is all about the battles, but within the scope of battles, there’s SO much to do. You can summon a hundred different entities, use hundreds of magic spells, enchant your units in so many ways… I could go on forever. Each nation has optimal builds, or at least certain elements that they are best at using, but it’s possible to branch into other elements if you learn how the system works.

The graphics are incredibly basic, but I’m not one to care much about that sort of thing. Given the sheer amount of units and magical effects you can have on the screen at one time, I’m willing to forgive the game using low-intensity graphics. Armies don’t often get this big, but Ermor is the “skelespam” nation and can field massive armies of skeletons and other undead

With graphics being what they are, it puts less stress on the game processing all these units’ movements and orders.

Where the game really shines, and the reason I claim to be bad at it, is multiplayer. The AI isn’t good enough to put up much of a challenge, and the game was clearly meant to be played by humans against other humans. Despite how small and niche this game is, it has a dedicated fanbase and players of all skill levels. I don’t play MP games much since they typically need to be played for months at a time. Late-game, if you’re still alive, your turns can take over an hour. Getting good at Dominions requires time, attention, and energy that I sadly do not have at this point in my life, although I wish I did. The game is so damn fun to me that I’d love to dive deep enough to consider myself an expert. Alas, I have too many other games, hobbies, and life goals on my plate.