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Author Topic: Dominions 5 - the DF of strategic games?  (Read 5554 times)

Sean Mirrsen

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Re: Dominions 5 - the DF of strategic games?
« Reply #30 on: January 12, 2019, 01:29:47 pm »

I don't know, to me it feels far more complex than, say, SotS. SotS is almost entirely combat, all the time. Other than building ships for battle, your money only really goes toward building more freighters, to make more money to make more combat ships later. 

Dominions shouldn't be lumped with "wargames" just because of how it looks or seems to work. It's far more complex than you seem to give it credit for, and most of that complexity isn't on the battlefield. It has far more in common with the likes of Master of Magic - a game officially defined as a "fantasy turn-based strategy 4X game" - than any of the examples you've provided. Just because all combat is automatic, does not make it less of a 4X strategy, just as Master of Magic or any other 4X wouldn't be any less a strategy game if you used "autoresolve" for every combat - indeed Dominions is even more of a strategy game than that, as it gives you a degree of control over how a battle "autoresolves" that no other 4X strategy game does.

fake edit: When you're not at war, you prepare for the next war. You research better magic, equip your mages and commanders, amass gems and deploy enchantments, scout the everliving and everunliving crap out of your neighbors to see what they're doing, plant spies and assassins (if you have them), shore up your province defenses and patrols, build temples on every unoccupied patch of land, finally pursue that story event chain you've been putting off for years because the pointy-eared bastards to the east wouldn't stop trying to murder your commanders in their sleep, etc. And since Thrones of Ascension, you no longer have to exterminate everyone to win, so you can plan what moves you have to make to take the thrones you need, or who you have to avoid attacking so that you can together prevent another nation from winning.

Ultimately, all 4X games are about the conquest, be it diplomatic conquest, military conquest, or scientific. Dominions doesn't have diplomatic conquest because the premise of the game prevents it - a holy war leaves no option for coexistence, but you can still choose to pursue either a direct military win, or pump your research until you can overpower anyone on the way to the thrones, or you can go for a ridiculous option and "kill them with kindness", a dominion victory where your enemy ceases to exist because their influence is snuffed out. Dominions, is no less a 4X game than most games of the genre.
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E. Albright

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Re: Dominions 5 - the DF of strategic games?
« Reply #31 on: January 12, 2019, 03:16:48 pm »

If we're talking older strategy games, my temptation would be to compare Dominions to Fantasy General (which I can't imagine anyone calling 4x) long before comparing it to MoM. We're well into YMMV territory at this point, though.

[On reflection, one of the big reasons Dominions doesn't feel 4x-y is the lack of randomness outside events. Fixed map, fixed nations; what varies is what your opponent does.]
« Last Edit: January 12, 2019, 03:42:29 pm by E. Albright »
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Sean Mirrsen

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Re: Dominions 5 - the DF of strategic games?
« Reply #32 on: January 12, 2019, 04:16:12 pm »

(it does have a random map generator, and the fixed nations can vary wildly in strategies employed based on the chosen pretender god and his/her/its dominion effects; which is more actual mechanical variety than I can think of being present in most if not all 4X games' nations, which are more often than not designed with "balance" in mind, and thus are intentionally highly similar with just a few tweaks and a couple standout unit/structure/something types per nation.)

(I often think to compare the game with Magic:The Gathering, of all things. On top of the superficial similarities in magic types/colors and spells/summons/enchants/whatever, there's the idea of you being keenly aware of what "cards" you have available to you, but the game dictates when and how you gain access to those "cards", influencing your play in unexpected ways. Random events drive most of it, but they play into the same idea. You know what can happen, you just don't know when it will, and whether it will happen soon enough to matter.)
« Last Edit: January 12, 2019, 04:18:43 pm by Sean Mirrsen »
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Frumple

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Re: Dominions 5 - the DF of strategic games?
« Reply #33 on: January 12, 2019, 05:35:01 pm »

Besides the scouting (which I think Il Palazzo captures perfectly - that doesn't feel like exploration), the part of Dominions that feels the least 4x-y for me is: what do you do when you're not at war? There's no peacetime development, nor does it feel like there should be.
I mean, you research, make gubbins and figure out new and interesting ways to get their wearers killed, roll around in the massive pile of spells to see what happens. Probably better than half the time I sink into SP (well, for earlier dominions since I don't have 5, yet) I spend huddled up behind massive piles of PD tooling around with... whatever. Effectively ignoring the "war" the AI desperately tries to wage. Dominions is as much a playground as it is a battleground.

... any case, Dominions is definitely a strategy game, and if it's not of the 4x variety I'm not sure what it is, exactly (though I guess it doesn't really matter what the most accurate label is, either, since it's plenty fun and the rest is icing on the holy war cake). There's nothing saying the four Xs have to be particularly balanced in X allocation, and its broad strokes are pretty similar to plenty of other province-ish based TBS games that iirc got shoved into the 4x pile (I'm thinking of a couple old 95/dos era fantasy games off the top of my head, but gods know I can't remember what the blazes they were called. One had real time combat where you controlled a unit, I think?).
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Il Palazzo

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Re: Dominions 5 - the DF of strategic games?
« Reply #34 on: January 12, 2019, 05:42:31 pm »

One had real time combat where you controlled a unit, I think?).
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Frumple

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Re: Dominions 5 - the DF of strategic games?
« Reply #35 on: January 12, 2019, 05:45:10 pm »

Nooot even close. A unit. Singular. Much more DOS-y graphics, too. Think it had fantasy in the title...?
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Wiles

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Re: Dominions 5 - the DF of strategic games?
« Reply #36 on: January 12, 2019, 05:52:35 pm »

Fantasy Empires. Had a lot of fun playing that when I was a kid.
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Frumple

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Re: Dominions 5 - the DF of strategic games?
« Reply #37 on: January 12, 2019, 06:01:00 pm »

Aye, that's the one.
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Il Palazzo

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Re: Dominions 5 - the DF of strategic games?
« Reply #38 on: January 12, 2019, 06:13:48 pm »

Was the combat layer optional in this? Could one just auto-resolve or something? I distinctly remember playing it, but only on the strategic map.
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Wiles

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Re: Dominions 5 - the DF of strategic games?
« Reply #39 on: January 12, 2019, 06:35:11 pm »

It has been a couple of decades since I played but I'm pretty sure you could auto-resolve. I seem to remember getting better results through fighting the battles myself though, your heroes could get pretty powerful.
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sambojin

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Re: Dominions 5 - the DF of strategic games?
« Reply #40 on: January 13, 2019, 10:33:24 pm »

Dominions shouldn't be lumped with "wargames" just because of how it looks or seems to work. It's far more complex than you seem to give it credit for, and most of that complexity isn't on the battlefield. It has far more in common with the likes of Master of Magic - a game officially defined as a "fantasy turn-based strategy 4X game" - than any of the examples you've provided. Just because all combat is automatic, does not make it less of a 4X strategy, just as Master of Magic or any other 4X wouldn't be any less a strategy game if you used "autoresolve" for every combat - indeed Dominions is even more of a strategy game than that, as it gives you a degree of control over how a battle "autoresolves" that no other 4X strategy game does.

I don't know. Not that you can't play MoM on a strategic level, auto-resolving everything, but so much of the power and beauty of the game was from tactical combat-level shennanigans. It's not the only way to play, but it was the way it was meant to be played for it to be a fulfilling experience.

I see Dominions as more like Stars! (an old space "4x"). In that, the stars you explore, colonize, defend, capture, etc, really were just a part of the machine of your war economy. Resources were king (with current available minerals determining easily available makeup of fleets), for everything, including research, exploration, defense, and aggressive moves. Combat was similarly automatic, but composition and particular ship components had huge impacts on how battles played out.

But the strategic layer wasn't *just* about throwing more resources and minerals at the problem. Especially in MP. Race type, race design, galaxy parameters, overall strategy, colonization spread/focus, fleet type/specialization/add-ons, extra defensive/attack layers (minefields/mass packet launchers/stargates/scanning ships/cloaking) all had a massive part to play in the outcome of any match. Not to mention the diplomatic shenanigans going on behind the scenes in anything greater than a 1v1, because of the different needs and acceptable environments of different racial builds.

And likewise to Dominion games, it became immensely enjoyable, immersive, strategic and tactical in multiplayer games, to a level that you'd never really ever realize if you were just playing SP against the AI, as it was essentially at war with you by default.

Was Stars! a 4X? Yes. So is Dominions 5. But they're ones that don't lose out from not having a specific "player controlled tactical battle" section. I feel MoM does lose a lot if you don't utilize that part of the game. Where as those two are "tactical", but in a different way.


Playing cat and mouse with minelayers to sweepers with counter-incursion patrols in place, as you try and thread your cloaked incursion fleet through their scanner zones is certainly "tactical" in Stars! But you got there by overarching "strategy". And you'll never give your fleets an order when combat does begin other than what they were already set to when you hit "end turn". But you'll definitely have "tactically" moved them, with the "strategic" layer of the game being of a far greater scope.

Dominions is kind of like this too. But not like MoM, despite the genre similarities. In many respects it actually loses some of both these tactical layers for a more "meta/matchup-path" style gameplay, but is still "tactical" in just how you move and match-up those forces against your foes. Stars! was far simpler than Dom5, but had a far more fluid tactical layer in movement, even though they really are just about "lots of army thrown against the enemy due to my BS economy" on the strategic layer. But how do you get there? And how will it be used? You'll be using your strategy to inform your tactics, and vica-versa. If you're any good and know what you're doing, that is :)
« Last Edit: January 13, 2019, 10:55:24 pm by sambojin »
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