Dominions SP is better than Shadow magic SP for sure...fighting the shadow magic ai is basically just killing lots of level 1 units and getting hit by random damage spells. Also as mentioned before there are only a few useful units despite attempts to fix the issue in shadow magic. And with the "AI ignores concealment" and protections being pretty much worthless there really arent many special abilites per unit. It looks like a lot until you realize fire protection, walking, and strike all mean nothing...charge is a generic attack boost more or less...with a few exceptions of pure non-physical damage the game basically becomes "stronger units beat weaker ones" with very little subtelty....and the magic is all add to stats, summon, or do damage...nothing really interesting to add strategic complexity
Maybe MP is better, but it just seems to add more time inbetween the boring turns to me
I admit the graphics are nice...but the music all sounds too similar for me. Honestly I find AoW more micro as you need to do combat after combat to keep your stupid ai from killing your units, without much thought in each of the battles.
And although more man hours were probably put into AoW, you have to consider that with the large number of copies that sell compared to Dominions 2 the profit/man hour ratio is going to be signifigantly higher even if they are the same price. And all because people want to stare at the nymph.
And I also believe in paying for quality
If somebody made a 6 hour long movie would you pay 3 times as much to watch that as a 2 hour long movie just because it took longer to make? I might pay more in the theory it offers more enjoyment, but not 3 times as much.