Dominions 3: The Awakening

I did some dabbling in it awhile back..it was interesting.  It is a difficult game to get into though...lots of things in it.

I love it. I'm intimidated to actually play it with real players, but I really enjoy it. It can get really intense though. I suggest you play 1 v 1 duel maps at first. I'm always launching into massive 26 player epics but these tend to drag, to be honest.

Any other newbie Dom 3 players? Maybe we should start a PBEM game...

its a nice game played it for some time

It's a very good game multiplayer, very good. Boring as hell in single player. There is a steep learning curve, beware, you will get soundly thrashed in your early MP games, and they take a while (typically play by email), but the community is good.

In terms of variety of items, weapons, spells, races, units, etc, it's a paradise. Absolutely insane. The manual is old school and brilliant

I played consistenly for about a year and then stopped. My main complaint is that late game gets very tedious, huge amounts of stuff to manage and very long turns. I never had the patience to look after all the detail and it always cost me againt some very dedicated players willing to spend hours a turn. The early and mid game were great fun

SP exists only for you to check out various start strats, and maybe end strats, though the latter is a bit boring as you are just cranking micro to finish research/acquire gems/whatever you are missing.

MP is truly excellent, if you are into that sort of thing.  The community is pretty solid too, or it was, been over a year since I last did any MP, I don't even know what patch they are on now

Anyway, if you can handle the low quality gfx, and some annoying UI related micro issues then it's an excellent game.  If you get hung up with that stuff in the demo, well, it only gets worse when you actually have the full compliment of options available to you.  Read the nation guides though, they give you a good taste of all the different options available, and might sell you on it.

I concur, nation guides by the community are a good way to get a feel for the game. You can find them here.

Also, solo play is fun too, though less than multiplayer.

Very deep game, but beware of the start, you will obviously be lost at the beginning

my advice is to pick one nation to play with for a while, experiment a bit, read the nation guides, play some more. Don't try a different nation each game, they play very differently

the early era nations are probably easiest, Niefel is fairly one-dimensional while still reasonably strong, especially in the early game

I played mostly Abysia when I started, as they are fairly simple. unfortunately they aren't very strong after the early game without planning to use blood magics extensively, which increases the complexity and micromanagement hugely. You may as well pick something decent

oh, also, note that it is a very mod heavy environment. The devs didn't even try to balance it, they left that to the community. The most common mod is CBM (Conceptual Balance Mod), which a lot of games are played under, certainly more tha Vanilla Dom 3. I'd recommend playing that mod from the start with your single player games, there is a big adjustment from vanilla to cbm and it's not worth the pain

disclaimer: i'm close to a year out of date, i doubt what I've said above has changed much but you never know

Doms3 is one amongst the best & most complex fantasy TBS games, but it is multiplayer oriented.  [The AI is horrible. :)]

Tormy summed it up succinctly: Excellent MP fun. If  simultaneous turns, automated tactical combat, huge variety in races, ancient and outdated graphics, emphasis on war (as opposed to economy), robust and varied magic system, good RPG elements (lots of stats and items), and quaint UI are good for you, then this game is it. If you need an AI, or decent graphics, or simple mechanics, or dislike micro-managing hundreds or thousands of troops, then you might want to look elsewhere.

I wish we could get that amount of depth in Elemental, this game would be Emperor of Gameland for years to come!

Especially the magic system is awesome! Just wait until you get kidnapped to Tartarus (I really miss this sort of thing in Elemental )

I agree with everything said here. I played Dom3 for about a year. Dom3 is a great mulit-player PBEM/server game. Not super balanced by any means but lots and lots of fun.

I keep hoping/wishing they make a sequel!

I played Dominions for a while.  It's a fun game that seems to follow the balance philosophy that Marvel vs. Capcom does: if everything if broken then nothing is unbalanced.  It's amazing how powerful some of the end game spells and units can get (A single properly equipped epic summon can destroy armies without getting injured), but everyone can get them and part of the strategy of the game is getting to one of the world-breaking powers first. Actually, in many ways the magic system in Dominions is what I'd like to see Elemental's become like. Currently (especially because the shards are broken) magic in Elemental feels weak sauce compared to what my pretender can do in Dominions. I haven't come back to Dominions in a long time, but I really did enjoy it for a few months. 

Exactly I'd love to see Dominions Magic system in Elemental.

Eyes of Oedipus! Anyone remember that spell and it's dare I say "blinding", counterpart?

Indeed.  Though if you remember Dom1 and 2 (and even FoE) then you realize just how far Dom has come.

By the time Elemental gets to III it should be the aforementioned emperor of gameland

It might even get there a bit faster if you count expansions as new versions...

Though at this moment I'm really glad I didn't pick up elemental, because from reading the support forum and the other general threads I just don't think it's in a state where I would remotely enjoy it.

Some players like myself like to play solo, but it's then more about playing against the map that against other players.

Solo play is also a great way to at least familiarize with the nations and to learn the basic army counters (the AI is good at making a big army of cheap units, and can crush you before you learn how to manage it)

At http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3302467 you will find an AAR that is very informative, and it has been designed to be read by people that are new to the game.

Even playing solo only, you can play for months and still haven't see all spells, events or units yet.

There are also some very good mods that add new nations to play.

The game might not be for everyone, but it is a classic and will be on all my machines for years to come until they do a dominions 4.

I also have the feeling that, at the risk of sounding elitist, it attracts a lot of more educated people. 

Or atleast older people, this was something I hadn't experienced before DOM3. A community of the elderly 

Well, that may because the game isn't immediately rewarding. It has a steep learning curve, outdated graphics, and automated combat. It's hard enough to get into that you will lose, a lot, in the beginning. It's a deeply complex game with a truly insane number of variables. It may well be that the community seems older because it takes a much greater level of dedication and patience than most other games out there, and those who stick around to the point where the game really starts to become rewarding happen to be older, more mature players.

It seems to me that TBS and Grand Strategy type games, in general, attract an older audience.

Also: I'd also rate Dom3 a great game. The multiplayer is fantastic, the single-player is difficult enough to hone your skills, and the content never ends.

Educated?  Well that excludes me.

As for a community of elderly gamers, there are a couple of those out there.

TOG - The Older Gamers
http://www.theoldergamers.com/

A Website for the Older Gamer - 2old2play
http://www.2old2play.com/