Answering the Critics

[Leif_-]

There's no city building in chess either, yet I've never heard anyone accuse that game of not being deep enough. They might as well complain that Master of Orion 2 isn't deep because you can't equip your commanders with items.

Further they're confusing the terms complex and complicated. Dominions is complex, yes, but that's a good thing. It is not needlessly complicated (well, the GUI is, but the game isn't).

As The_Tauren13 pointed out, gold and resource points aren't the main resources in Dominions by far. In fact, by the late mid game they're not even important resources (well, true for Dominions 2 at least. I'm not entirely sure about Dom 3 yet.)

Just tell them to consider the magic aspect of the game as similar to the base building aspect of other 4x games. Then bludgeon them about the head with the manual until they see the light (or until you're hauled away by the police and charget with gross battery.)

[Chazar]

What's the difference between 'depth' and 'complexity' of a game in their view anyway? Without knowing that, you cannot answer them!

I think Leif_-'s chess analogy is quite good. Expanding it: What about strategic tabletops, like those block games or warhammer? Most have no economics at all, except for a point-buy in the start...

I recall that I got bored with "Master of Magic" just because of all the city building. It's fun to do for your capital, but it gets boring for me because you repeat the same process over and over again for each new province...

Well, I guess some have more fun to build up things in peace, while others have more fun to tear things down and devastate entire worlds in the clashes of epic armies...

Remember: [i]You cannot please (nor convince) everyone...but you might conquer anybody. Ouch!