Dominions II
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| Dominions II: The Ascension Wars | |
| Developer: | Illwinter |
| Publisher: | Shrapnel Games |
| Release date: | 2004 |
| Genre: | turn-based Strategy Fantasy |
| Game modes: | Single player, Multiplayer |
| Platform: | PC (Windows / Linux) |
| Media: | CD (1) |
| Contents |
Type of game
Dominions II is a turn-based, computer strategy game. The players play the role of the God of one out of 17 different nations and battle each other for the dominance of a fantasy world. At the most basic level, Dominions II is similar to Risk: The world is divided into many provinces that change hands after a tactical battle. The players use armies of men, monsters and mages to fight these battles. Each turn of the game is split into two phases:
Game phases
The planning phase
- The players can issue move orders to their armies and are allowed to specify up to five tactical battle instructions to the commanders and units of the armys. The recruiting of new units, forging of magic items, sending of messages to other players, administrating of the provinces and the directing of magic research take place in the planning phase. Once all orders are set, the player sends his turn-file by email or by TCP/IP-connection to the host-computer.
The execution phase
- The host-computer calculates the results of all battles and random events simultaneously and sends the result-files back to the players. The players can now view replays of the battles and proceed with the planning phase of the next turn.
Special features
Dominions II is most fun to play against other human opponents, but also has acceptable AI for single players. The graphical representations of each unit (monster, warrior,..) are comprised only of 2 bitmaps, scaring eye-candy seekers away from the game. The music is nice but can get old very quickly. The sound effects are useful, but nothing special. What makes the game stand out from other, more polished products is its very high complexity:
There are over 1000 different unit types, all defined by different statistics, that can participate in combat. Mixing them with over 500 spells and over 300 magic items offers endless variations of army composition, tactics and counter-tactics and results in a very high replay value.
Another notable feature of Dominions II is the rich athmosphere of the written descritptions for each unit, spell, artefact and nation. Unlike other games of this genre, Dominions is based on an impressive variety of traditional or historical myths - and not just Orcs & Elves.
Supply and morale are modelled in the game world and play an important role. Dominion (how much a province believes in your god versus another player's) affects not only combat morale but also the local settings of the province such as climate, richness, luck/bad events or available supply. Strategic preaching (preferably using stealthy priests deep in enemy territory) can not only shift the outcome of future battles; it can allow an "theological" bloodless victory: if a player loses his dominion in all his provinces, he also loses the game, however mighty his armies may be.
The 17 playable nations don't just differ in the statistics of their recruitable troop types; different tactics like guerilla warfare, magical supremacy and amphibious / flying / undead armies offer endless variations with the different forms of the available gods. Each god-type costs design points which can be spent on the god's dominion properties, his/her magical abilities, or on the national castle type. It is possible to make a god who excels at magic and magical research but is physically weak, as well as a near-unkillable combat monster god with barely any magical powers at all.
Different maps are available as well as (player-made) modifications (mods). Nearly every aspect of the game is customizable with the help of a simple text editor and paint program.
Hardware Requirement (minimum)
- 64 MB Ram, 250 MB disk space
- OpenGL accelerated graphics card (geforce or equivalent is recommended).
Supported Operation Systems
All Versions of the game are on the same CD-Rom
Similar (computer) games
- Master of Magic from Microprose
- Age of Wonders games
- Medieval: Total War game (no magic)
- Heroes of Might and Magic games series
- Risk a board game with several computer game versions
- Combat mission (computer game) series(second World War thematic, but similar tactical battle system design)
External links
- Official
- http://www.illwinter.com Homepage of Illwinter Game Design: news, maps and mods download
- http://www.shrapnelgames.com Distributor, official Web-Forum, official Downloads (patches, demo version)
- Places to buy Dominions II
- http://www.gamersfront.com/ Distributor
- http://www.tuxgames.com/ Distributor
- Fan sites
- http://www.dom2minions.com/index.html Gandalf Parker's page with news, links, and downloadsde:Dominions 2