General Dominions 3 comparison...

[LDiCesare]

I love Civ 4 and loved galciv. Nowadays, I play Civ 4 and Dom 3 almost exclusively (with some NetHack in between).
Galciv shone with its great ai. Dom 3 ai is totally dumb in comparison.

Depending on what your friend is looking for, the game has great strengths and some weaknesses:
-Dom 3 has enormous strategic depth, far more than Civ 4 and Galciv 2.
-It's just the best mp game that I know.
-There is no turn where you just push 'end turn' or long phases of waiting to get tech X before you can start doing something. There's always something interesting to do each turn. You're not waiting one more turn because something cool will be built/happen next turn. You already had tons of cool stuff happen this turn.
-You can customize your heroes with items in a way that's much more fun than Galciv 2's ship design.
-God customisation is way way richer than your race customisation in Galciv 2 or Civ 4's traits and unique units/buildings.

However
-The ai is poor.
-Beating the ai doesn't help you much when you start playing mp.
-It takes a lot of time learning the ropes of the game.
-The user interface may repel many.

As Morkilus said, Dom 3 isn't about building stuff. There are only temples and labs, though site searching has some similarities with buildings in civ (compare a +25%gold market in civ to +gold sites for example).
Also, you have to balance the use of your mages (researching, site searching, forging, fighting), and that the scarcity of mages means you'll have to build forts and labs to get more of them, which requires some strategic thinking.

[Morkilus]

One thing I don't think has been said is the combat. GalCiv and Civ 4 have absolutely NOTHING on the combat model. Who cares about a simple stack of spearmen duking it out for a city compared to watching hundreds of lamias, zombies, werewolves, and horrors, each in squads placed meticulously clash and burn in a torrent of magefire while summoned imps and elementals ravage the rear guard? And to think that the combat model would fit well into a fantasy RPG. It's a beautiful work of art, all in a game.

[Saulot]

Comparing Civ games to Dom 3 is like comparing a swimming pool to an ocean. You can have fun in both, but you're very aware of the bottom/edges in the pool. In Dom 3, you choose how far out you want to go.

[jimkehn]

Saulot hit the nail on the head. This is the deepest game I have ever seen. And the most fun. The game has been very stable for me, in terms of crashes and freezes, also. I've not had one crash/freeze and have been playing for over a year.

But my opponents all tell me you'd never know I've been playing that long.

8^)

[Meglobob]

Just after say that there are no serious or even semi-serious bugs in Dom3, that interfere with playing the game. The bug list looks big but its all very, very minor stuff, its only because of Edi's hard work that the majority players probably even know about them.

I have played 18 months and Dom3 as never crashed or froze either. Its very, very stable.

[Cerlin]

I will have to agree. The only other kind of games I spent so much time on was MMO's.

As for strategy games, this is by far the most I have ever played one game, and for most of it I played almost all singer player. I have just started MP again and its a great experience. Even when I take over games and LOSE I learn great stuff and really enjoy myself. Lets be honest, I have only lost online so far and I still have a great time.

Once you make the leap you are never coming back. This is also one of the only games I can keep playing MP once im in Japan (hurray for international jobs.)

[Lingchih]

New Galciv expansion coming out in March, btw. Looks to be a biggie, and the last one was very good.

Now... if they only had multiplayer. Still, a great game, and the best AI I have ever seen, and it keeps getting smarter.

But 75% of my gaming time is still spent with Dom3. It's such an awesome game.