Dominions 3, Where to Buy?

That is the only place. I think now it is offered direct download in addition to buying a hard copy. $55 after all these years is a steep price tag, but the game is worth every penny. It comes with a 300 page user manual even. I have put more play time into it than Master of Magic and Age of Wonders combined... and that is saying a lot .

Yep, it was on sale a couple weeks back, guess you missed it

1500??????+ units/monsters, 600 spells, 300 magic items, many diverse nations to play, deep lore, real-world mythology based.

Immense amount of work went into the game which is being patched till today - you don't see that kind of dedication in throw-away commercial clones like Total War series or Battlefield.

Plus, the game is really unique in many aspects, I think it's worth the price because it can literally keep you busy for years of gaming.

Based on the hours of engagement you're likely to get out of it, it's a steal, even at $55. Dominions 3 is the only turn based game I've ever felt it was really worthwhile to play multiplayer. And that includes Civilization 4. Even SP is fun, but no strategy game offers the depth, the lore, the magic, the drama, the humor, and the overall fun as Dominions with other people.

Ah man i bought it on July 4 at $15 off.. its was for one day only so i was lucky.. but its a very deep game.. do recommend you learn the demo to begin with!

Also for those so inclined, I'm thinking of starting another MP game for those around these forums.

7 players, probably MA (definitely not LA). Noobs more than welcome, anyone more than welcome. Just understand that the game would be more for casual play rather than competitive play. Meaning? If you plan on playing a rush nation and rushing someone, don't sign up

Part of me has always wondered: under which method they'd more money on Dom 3? Perpetually keeping it at $50 and only offering it from their mainsite, or finally, FINALLY, putting it on Steam for around $25 and letting it be subject to sales. I suppose because they've never stopped updating it, there's a good reason to keep the premium price on it....but I'm certain there are 1000's of people out there that would enjoy Dom 3 but are gun shy about paying that much for a game that looks like that, from a tiny website that looks like it came straight from the 90s.

Quoting Kamamura_CZ,

reply 3

1500??????+ units/monsters, 600 spells, 300 magic items, many diverse nations to play, deep lore, real-world mythology based.

Immense amount of work went into the game which is being patched till today - you don't see that kind of dedication in throw-away commercial clones like Total War series or Battlefield.

Ok, first off the Battlefield games are the greatest games ever made. (notice there's a period at the end of that sentence) The Total War series is fantastic. Just because a game isn't made by a guy living in his mothers basement doesn't mean it's not good.

Second, plenty of games are constantly patched. L4D2 has doubled in size, TF2 made me turn off auto-updates on steam, elemental is having a good string of updates, minecraft, terraria, SoaSE, the witcher, tripwire games, I'm sure the list goes on and on.

I'm not arguing the depth of Dom3, but plenty of of deep games can be bought for under $20 (BG2 is 9.99 on GoG). Had dom3 been $20 I would have bought it just from how enthusiastic people are of it here. At $55, I've downloaded the demo, but will probably be hesitant to buy it even if I like it.

I agree with Nenjin, Dom3's website does look like s4!t, the type of s4!t where I'd rather not buy from.

Emerson, I will not be playing online. AI's ok?

(edited out profanity, for the children)

I won't defend the price they have Dom3 at, I don't think it's possible. Shrapnel is a shit site and a shit publisher in my opinion as well. But none of that has anything to do with the quality of Dom3. Granted, it's really not everyones cup of tea, then again what is?

I think the point which needs to be stressed for Dom3 is the massive amount of content. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, even comes remotely close. Some games (paradox bullshit) confuses you with overly complicated mechanics for content. Not that those games are bad per se, just that in this regard they fail massively compared to Dom3. Then again, the amount of content can also work against Dom3, for those who don't want to deal with it. As does the late game micro hell. As does the shittastic AI. As does the outdated (HA! understatement) graphics.

Well the AI is only there so you can test stuff in SP mode, it's not really meant to be challenging, and unless you handicap yourself, or play various mods it's not remotely challenging.

Anyway, Dom3 is one of those games which tests that maxim, that it's not what it looks like, it how it plays. Granted, everyone has a different threshold for that, but if multiplayer complex TBS in a fantasy setting floats your boat, the it's really hard to beat Dom3. Unless you expect some RPG nonsense in your TBS games. Well even that is kinda in Dom3, just not really done in a particularly meaningful way, since it's not the point. Though once you get to the point where you can forge all kinds of good equipment and summon up your SC badasses... well they are one man armies, laying waste to 100s of units. Kind like what we thought Elemental was supposed to do... heh.

So in short, be careful with this game. If $55 is a lot of money for you to spend on a game (and it is for me) you better be damn sure you know what you are getting. The demo doesn't really give you the full flavor either, because it's limited to just a few (couple?) nations. Don't recall if it also limits turns or research, but it does give you a feel for the basic mechanics. Just that the basic mechanics are the tip of the iceberg. Because past those, once you grok them, you can play with all the various combinations available to find the path you want to take to bend those mechanics to your will.

@Othello

As much as I love Dominions 3, if you're not going to play it MP, I wouldn't get it. Don't get me wrong, I've had a lot of fun playing it SP myself, but only now that I've gotten into playing MP have I really felt it was fully worth its cost. The AI is, as shadowtongue says, just there so you can practice and try out strategies and ideas for when you later play human players. You know you have a good strategy not when you can win against the CPU, but when you can win easily.

I will say though, that I really am a non-MP gamer. I don't ever plan on playing Elemental (once it doesn't suck) online, and I've never really gotten into any other MP strategy game. But Dominions is different... It's worth the PBEM waiting between turns, the managing complex human diplomacy, the crunch of trying to get your turn in on time... All the stuff that normally keeps me away from MP strategy games is trivial compared to how awesome the game-play experience is.

The one thing I'd like to point out, is that not one person has chimed in that it's not an awesome game - on this or any other thread that I can remember reading (I can't possibly be right about that?). That should tell you something. Personally I have no problem with the $55 price tag, it has given me far greater returns than many, many much prettier and more recent games that cost as much, and I only play SP (I can't imagine what would happen to what is left of my time if I tried MP).

I only played the demo, I didn't like what I saw. Although I would still have to agree that the price tag is warranted, it has some insane amounts of (well-made) content. My dislike was more on a personal level, I simply don't enjoy games where the gameplay is focused in that kind of strategic domain.

White Bull goes moooooooooooooh!

I don't say that everyone must love dominions 3, I just wanted to point out that it does some things extremely well - the synergy between magic and troops, the depth and volume of lore, the diversity, combat system.

In certain are, it's weaker - interface, AI.

However, Battlefield and Totalwar both suffer the commercial syndromes - shallow gameplay, unfixed bugs that last for years. I remember that it took years for CA to fix bugs like shields subtracting from defense instead of adding, problem with long 2h animations, blatant stat errors, units that did not have sense, horrible AI. Each game was saved by Darthmod, which is really a bad, bad indication of CA QA level - basically, totalwar games is shovelware in my eyes. Empire was broken in so many ways... The only exception is Shogun 2, and it delivers only because of heavy simplification of the sieges and insane AI cheating bonuses.

Battlefield series is the same commercial shooter shipped again and again, shallow and uninteresting. I will play Arma2 over it any day.

Dominions 3 is a great MP experience. For SP, I would rate it 3 out of 10. A lot of the other things that Shrapnel sells is really not my cup of tea, but not everything there is an experiment from mom's garage. If you are looking for a bargain, Othello, look elsewhere. If you want to play PBEM MP, you will probably get your money's worth if you can look past its few flaws (UI, graphics). If you are looking for something SP/MP hybrid, I'd not recommend it.

Interesting. The points made are right on BUT... Ive played Dom3 for years and play almost entirely SP. Not in vanilla mode anymore but with maps and mods and 3rd party programs designed to making the AI better. Not fantastic of course but then for someone that likes SP I dont think any game is. MP will always provide more of a challenge. If the SP is rated against MP then Id agree, but if its SP against other SP games then personally I still consider Dom3 to provide enough to bring the price per hour of play way WAY down. As to where to buy it, you can buy it on Amazon and other sites. But its no cheaper and Id recommend buying from Shrapnel for the support if something goes wrong. And Id avoid the download option unless you are overseas. Its no cheaper and you get less.

Yeah, I have also been waiting for the price to go down.

You can buy it on Amazon (US) a little bit cheaper than from Shrapnel; but with the shipping cost (outside the US) it isn't worth it (and $49.99 is still too expensive anyway).

Here is a link:

http://www.amazon.com/Dominions-3-Pc/dp/B000K0OSFS

Quoting tanafres,

reply 11

The one thing I'd like to point out, is that not one person has chimed in that it's not an awesome game - on this or any other thread that I can remember reading (I can't possibly be right about that?). That should tell you something. Personally I have no problem with the $55 price tag, it has given me far greater returns than many, many much prettier and more recent games that cost as much, and I only play SP (I can't imagine what would happen to what is left of my time if I tried MP).

I'm pretty sure it tells me that the price and lack of marketing have ensured that the only people giving it any kind of look are the demographic most likely to like it despite all the flaws.

Quoting Tridus,

reply 17

I'm pretty sure it tells me that the price and lack of marketing have ensured that the only people giving it any kind of look are the demographic most likely to like it despite all the flaws.

A fair point, but one which is true of any game. The difference being that when there is lots of marketing the shit storm on the forums when the game sucks (EWoM for example?) is much worse than anything Dom3 ever saw.

Though Dom3 was what it was from conception to delivery, not much to be disapointed with if you followed it a bit. Not everyones cup of tea, that's for damn sure.

It is expensive, but I've gotten more enjoyment out of it, and sunk more time into it, than any AAA title since... Goldeneye.

My take on the price is not that it *was* expensive, but that it's 5 years old and still going for the same price it ever has had (or damn close to it). Still, the fact that the game was never built around the kinds of things which tend to suffer with age (heavy gfx or other useless bells and whistles) allows me to 'justify' (as much as anyone would care about my opinion) the reason why the price is still the same.

Monopoly still costs whatever the hell it costs even though it's decades old. yeah yeah, digital media is different, let's not go on that tangent here.

Either $55 is too much or it's not, just the fact that the game has been out for so long and it still costs the same thing is enough to put some people off, I get that too.

Chess is out for hundreds of years, and it makes it no worse a game, nor are the chess sets getting cheaper - quite the contrary

Dominions does a damn good job at what it does (interface issues aside). What it does does not appeal to everyone. Whether or not it is worth the price is going to depend on the individual.

As it stands, they must make enough money at the current price point to justify keeping it there. People are not likely to buy it on a whim. The people who are going to buy it are more likely to be the target audience. If it was cheaper, there would probably be a lot more people buying, then complaining about what they do not like.

I really cannot think of a comparable game (though I do not have a lot of knowledge of the TBS games available).

And there is so much variety: you can play a race of shirtless barbarians, demon monkeys, Lovecraftian abominations, undead legions, amazons, lizard men, man-eating giants, and many, many more-even regular human soldiers. However you like to play, you should be able to find a race that fits that style. Strategy constantly evolves as the game goes on, as magic research opens up new, game-changing options. By the end of a game, you are playing completely differently than the early game.

Quoting tanafres,

reply 11

The one thing I'd like to point out, is that not one person has chimed in that it's not an awesome game

Alright, I'll bite. Dominions III is not an awesome game.

My experience is with the Dominions II demo. I only started the game though and as soon as I saw it was menudriven (it's not like Master of Magic, Age of Wonders or HoMM) which means you can't move units around I got a baaad feeling about the game and clicked around some. After a minute or so I realized it was one of those indiegames with absolutely HORRIBLE userinterfaces and crap graphics so I quit and uninstalled. Ok, before that I went to their site to get info about the game and what I found was a walkthru of how to play the game....Was thirty steps or so....shook head, closed site and uninstalled.

If they can't ATLEAST make their game accessible then I can't be bothered to play it.

So without having played it, you'll chime in.

Besides the caveats included by everyone about it are pretty freaking clear. I think the point is more that no one who has bought it doesn't think it's awesome.

Which is kinda a pointless statement, but meh, people do their homework on it, and if they aren't stupid, then they buy it only after they are convinced it will give them what they want.

It is *not* for everyone, no one suggests otherwise.

Funny thing when I make posts sometimes. I know what I want to say, but since I think alot faster than I type, whole sentences are left out. It's fixed now though.

However, I can give it one LAST try by getting the Dom III demo and trying that.

If I had FRAPS and some such I'd record it and upload to my youtube channel. The language and style would like The AVGN.

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