Building your pretender god
Dominions 3: The Awakening is a turn-based fantasy strategy game where the Old God has left the world and pretenders are waking from hiding to compete for true ascension. Before the campaign starts you design your own pretender god, and that choice shapes everything that follows: it can be a magically powerful arch mage, an ancient kraken, or a mystic monolith that people pray to. Your god's dominion influences provinces and your sacred units, so the design you pick sets the tone for how your nation expands and fights. The game runs across three Eras, with the Early era leaning toward magic and the Late era toward technologically advanced armies with good steel weapons and armor.
Playing it with friends
Multiplayer uses simultaneous turns for up to 23 players, over network or Play by E-Mail, and AI opponents are available for both single- and multiplayer games. Each player runs their own pretender and nation on a random map, so a group can spread out, scheme, and resolve turns together rather than waiting on one person at a time. Remote Play Together is supported if you want to share a session. The scale is large: more than 60 nations to choose from, ranging from Marignon with its paladins, witch hunters and inquisitors to underwater nations like the Lovecraft inspired R'lyeh.
What to know before starting
This is a dense game. There are 1500+ units, over 600 spells, more than 300 magic items, and a wide spread of special abilities, plus global rituals that affect the entire world and blood magic powered by human sacrifices. Unique magic artifacts are contested by all players, and once forged no one else can make them. On the map you build castles, temples and labs, buy mercenaries on a global market, and watch for scouts, assassins, spies, seducers, corruptors, werewolves and illusionists sneaking through your provinces. Battles carry permanent afflictions, and the game is tagged as difficult, so expect a learning curve. A 300 page PDF manual with a tutorial and a spell and magic item reference ships with the download, and the 2D graphics make the game easy to mod. It runs on Windows, Mac OSX and Linux, with a medieval score by Erik Ask Uppmark and Anna Rynefors.