From what I have read, Dominions had part of its inspiration from pen and paper rpgs, example: vis in the files as the name for gems?
I think Dominions has more overlap with other board games, such as Warhammer (and other stuff I have no experience at_all with).
Dominions would be workable as a setting, for instance, someone tried to create DnD4e races based on Dominions
here.