Re: Comparing it to Civ 4..
Since we're talking great games for hardcore gamers, I'd like to mention Empire of the Fading Suns. Now that game had some serious potential (mind you, it had massive flaws too, but to me it possessed the qualities of elegance and genius that only the best board games ever approach-it just needed a lot more TLC, and as a gaming experience, it was a lot richer than Civ 1 upon which it was based.).
Alpha Centauri was indeed the finest Sid Meyer-style game ever made, especially with the expansion pack. I'd have very much liked to see a second expansion and a sequil-I've never ever heard any serious gamer give a bad review of the game, my experience has been universal applause.
If Illwinter really chooses not to persue Dom 4 (which would make all the poor starving orphans in the world really, really sad) then ideally, I'd love to see them take the same Dominions concepts and apply them to a Steampunk sortof game, something like Europa Universalis (which I bought but never got to play, since my computer wouldn't run it, even when my hard-drive was still alive-same goes for Civ4), only with real world mythological and Lovecraftian concepts set from say 1492-1945.
You've got everything from the Conquistadores to the Thuggee Cult. Real live Pirates of the Carribean, opening up China and Japan to the rest of the world-and the tragedies of the opium wars. Religious schisms, Nazi Occultism, witch burning, the golden age of Science Fiction. Everything from the Inquisition to the Victorian age of fairies to the spiritualist movements and subsequent supernatural horror of the 19th and early 20th century. And ofcourse, you've still got all the myths to play with that are present in Dominions.
The game could include such things as the British Empire allied with Faerie-both seelie and unseelie, the Nazis turning their backs on both Christ and Odin, and in league with Cthulhu, Norse Ice Giants alongside Arabian Djinn, Jewish golems and African zombies being sold into slavery as physical machines and components of industrialization, and the power of blood magic only accessible by real-world serial killers, such as Jack the Ripper, Elizabeth Bathory, Giles De Rais, H H Holmes, the Lalauries, etc.
The goal would be to take what innovations Dominions has already made, and advance them one step further beyond the normal midieval fantasy concept, into a time when mythological and traditional beliefs were in direct competition with science, innovation, and evolving social mores. I think it would be a lot of fun to both make and to play, and wouldn't require totally scrapping Dominions, since it could draw from the basic game already in place.
You'd see your sword-weilding infantry gradually adopt crude pistols, rifles, the bayonette, better fortresses, cannon, ships, diplomacy, a trade economy, colonization, cures for disease, and eventually things like tanks and planes, with magic and myths evolving right alongside.
The focus would shift from the Pretender-the source of all magic-to the Prophet, in charge of leading the nation, who may or may not ultimately choose to become independant. And the more changes the nation adopts, the more difficult it would be to preserve the relationship between the Nation and the Nation's patron Pretender. And maybe your Prophet is a real live historical figure. Maybe he's Leonardo Da Vinci or Rasputin or Abraham Lincoln.
All sorts of moral questions would present themselves, with real impacts in the game-well, do I want to put a maniacle serial-killer on the payroll, just so I can summon demons? If anyone finds out, it's going to be a major scandal-and in this game there *would* be coups and rebellions, competing religions and major societal shifts.
Do I want to improve my technological level so I can outfit my armies with rifles, but in the process alienate and ultimately wipe out my magic-user base, or do I want to research magic exclusively, oppress my people back into the stone-age, and turn my back on a dynamic, technological society in favor of an agrarian utopia?
I think one of the major reasons that the middle ages (really, the dark ages, atleast until the invention of the printing-press) are so often used as a backdrop for fantasy tropes is because they're a "safe" area.
There aren't *that* many questions to ask. Society's evolution and the unpredictability of technology, new forms of government, religion, etc. didn't come into it, and even if they did, we don't know that much about them anyway, because it was so long ago-but not so very long ago that we can't paint an acceptable picture and do some reasonable conjecture.
The poor downtrodden people in your typical fantasy story don't want or need major upheavals and reforms, they just need a strong, competent king with a magic sword and a few less dragons eating their kids. Diseases weren't going to be cured for a couple hundred years, and only Jews and Muslims bathed. Hardly anybody read, and there was only Catholicism to worry about, so getting rid of the big bad ogre is a nice immediate bandaid on the plague sore, and it makes everyone feel better about their miserable lot in life.
A pure, simple, stupid land, in to which never need enter any messiness of real-life complexity or human pathos.
And, ofcourse, human beings were simply technologically incapable of systematically destroying the Earth, which is also very comforting.
It would be wonderfully refreshing, after Illwinter has already thumbed it's nose at all the plastic dragon/elf masturbatory fantasy and given us our rich, glorious, human mythology back, to now go forward with it into a setting that is still romantic, still mysterious and capable of containing anything the imagination might require, but has a little bit more flavor than the backwards armpit of ignorance and infection that was the middle ages.
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