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...

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

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.

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disclaimer: i'm close to a year out of date, i doubt what I've said above has changed much but you never know

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 If  simultaneous turns, automated tactical combat, huge variety in races, ancient and outdated graphics, emphasis on war (as opposed to economy), robust and varied magic system, good RPG elements (lots of stats and items), and quaint UI are good for you,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 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!

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?

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.

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.