"How it started."

[Endoperez]

Gandalf Parker said:
Started with "Conquest of Elysium"
Grabbed Dominions (one) early on and became a fanatical "fanboi" in the usenet newsgroups about it. Kindof strange actually since its not really "my kind of game". But that meant I explored facets of it that the main gaming group didnt.

Fought the changes in Dominions 2 for a long time. But finally developed a trust of the programmers even though I still wish some of the original features had been kept and builtup more rather than removed. Became just as fanatical about Dom2. Especially scripting random maps.

I will probably fight the changes in Dom3 but it will most likely be a shorter "battle" this time.

Gandalf Parker

Almost the same for me. Except that I was maybe 14 years old when I played Conquest of Elysium, and never ordered it. It was still fun...

I was really into fantasy at that point, and Dominions was "cool". I had no close friends with which I could really talk about fantasy, I spent too much time on my computer, and then used too lot of time playing Dominions.

I haven't felt the same kind of exploring feeling with DomII, because I already knew the nations and units so well. But I never thought it wasn't worth the price I payed, or the wait of half a year. I didn't even notice the fact that maps were static at first, but it's understandable, and the news maps were beautiful. I miss the old "story" maps much more. The Coven is much better than the Eye, IMO.

[Chazar]

More than two years ago, as I did often at that time, I was travelling back home for the weekend in an InterCityExpress train in Germany and started the demo of Dom2 on my laptop. I had been greatly disappointed by WarlordsIV, which I had anticipated for soooo long, and someone on the Warlords forum had recommend Dom2. This led me to download the demo before I went on the train, so that I had some amusement during the four hour train ride. Little did I know about what awaited me in this file...

The amazing music and the cool descriptions of the pretenders kept me immediately spellbound. I was captivated by the non-tolkienesque mythology and read each pretender's descriptions with delight before playing at all. My first steps then as clusmy Ulm were quite pathetic, but I liked the interface and the graphics of the Aran map. It was all so refreshingly different! So deep! There was always more to explore and behold! I also liked the simultaneous PBEM turn concept: I had tried PBEM with WarlordsIII with my friends who also liked strategy gaming, but it was hopeless since it took to too long for a turn to return to oneself (I also despise the awful mixed realtime-yet-turnbased network play of WarlordsIII ). Now Dom2 was at last a fantasy strategy game that could be succesfully played against my friends. Hence I immediately decided to order the full game...

When it eventually arrived I was at first disappointed by the lack of additional music tunes and the crappy manual (Who needs all those stupid item descriptions anyway, where you cannot find anything you are looking for, if you can have Zen's formidable MagicItemQuickReference document?!). However, my tries as Caelum became fruitful. Caelian magic suited me well. With the help of the scribes of this forum, my power steadily increased. Spell after Spell was researched and mastered. Eventually, my Blood-Fountain incarnation lead a Frozen-Blood-Caelum to utterly defeated my enemies (five strategy-gaming friends I had recruited meanwhile). Even their Alliance right from the start of a game could not defeat the electric wrath of my caelian storm troops! Ascencion was mine...BUWARHAARHAAARHAAAAR!


PS: Nowadays, I do not like that bloody GUI of Dom2 anymore. I also play without music. However, sometimes I like to put on the Falsobodorne CDs that I now own and revel in the memory of that train ride through a dark rainy afternoon, where everything was flavor and not just stats and probabilities...

[WraithLord]

I used to play MOM back at 95 and I have enjoyed this game so much that many years later I was looking for a fantasy TBS in it's caliber.
I think I've probably tried most of the fantasy TBS created. Be them freeware, shareware or commercial, but I didn't find that one game that has depth and character as MOM had.

That is until I d/ld dominions-I demo. I've heard about it in a MOM fan site and decided to check it out.
I've installed the demo, didn't understand what was going on, closed it and didn't look it again for six months.

When I did try it again I was willing to put more effort in understanding the game. My first nation was atlantis on the old world map. I remember being so frustrated with not being able to recruit the top troops and mages... Since then I was and still am ensnared in the dominions universe

[Agrajag]

Chazar said:
I had been greatly disappointed by WarlordsIV, which I had anticipated for soooo long, and someone on the Warlords forum had recommend Dom2.

It might be worthwhile to mention the fact that the one that recommended Dom2 was quite an annoying person and flame-warrior. In fact, he recommended Dom2 as (this isn't a quote) "A game that kicks the **** out of WarlordIV you lamorz".
Atleast, if we're talking about the same guy.

Anyway, my memory is pretty bad, so not only do I not remember much of the days of WarlordsIV, I also don't remember my "early days" with Dom2.
I do vaguely remember the flame-warrior having a Diablo avatar and being called something with UN, and being a cheater (that got caught, with his hacked dwarf Wodan). Or maybe I'm confusing him with the Warlords: Battlecry 2 flamer...

[atul]

A friend of mine had been asking me to join him and his friends in playing various games online. UO was one of them, some space strategy game (VGAPlanets? Some SE? Can't remembet) the other. I had told him I've got better things to do with my life than play computer games several times when he brought up Dominions. "Okay, how bad can it get?" I asked myself and joined their PBEM MP of demo version of Dominions1.

...If I only had known...

Every one of us was a total newb and if I remember correctly I hardly had played even a test game before creating my MP pretender. Okay, Marignon, those flagellants probably have a proper attitude. Hm, I'll pick a pretender who can kick ***... that flaming head looks like a tough one. I'll probably beat everyone up with him easily.

One of my first lessons was that the Baphomet is immobile and such units can't move. D-oh. Learning happened on the fly, we had six or seven players on the Urgaia map so there was quite a lot of action. On turn 2 C'tis had conquered the sole province separating our capitals. That time we agreed for a peace to last all ages, but as by turn 10 all the indies had been conquered I and Abysian player agreed to fight each other "just to find out how it is done".

While I was happily sieging Abysian capital, Caelum declared a "peace keeping" mission and landed on my capital (our capitals were a flight's distance apart). When my Baphomet swept the floor with the winged blue berets a cease fire was made with Abysia and I proceeded to drive the flying menace to the sea. Immediately after Caelum was purged from the map by the Righteous the treacherous saurolich of C'tis led his army on my capital and renewed Abysian forces blocked my army's way back home.

By turn 25 or so the skin of the slain saurolich decorated some public loo in Marignon, nearly all the mages of Abysia were kille by the lucky flagellants and we had to agree that none had any standing army to speak of anymore. So, we'd be better off starting a new game. Properly this time.

Those were the times. Hooked from the first try, several of us ordered the game right away.

We played, what, two or three games with that group. Then came Dom2, and as I was the only one of us to buy it, the move to international circles was an obligatory one. I was first put off by the graphics (what, no more possible for a chessboard view of the provinces?), but I've grown to like them. It just takes a bit time. (In other words, where are all the promo pics of Dom3?!?!?!!1 ;p) Besides, now it's even easier to order the game as I've got my visa, no more hassles with international money transactions (really, cheques. How... 70s...).

My first encounter was, what, in the early 2002? And it's 2006 now... geez.

[Boron]

I discovered Dominions in the Paradox-Forum .
There was a thread about "your desktop" and one of the guys had a Dominions 2 shortcut in his desktop and then a lot of ppl said wow Dominions 2 that's a really good game.
I then quickly looked up a review and got the demo and instantly fell in love with Dominions 2.
Before Dominions 2 i already liked fantasy strategy games a lot. I played much Lords of Magic, Heroes of Might and Magic Series, Age of Wonders Series and the old MTG game from Microprose.
For me Dominions was what Age of Wonders and HoMM should have been. Dominions is quite similiar to them but much much better because it has real variety and some really cool unique features like the upkeep free summons.
If you remember when i was a newb i complained that summons should have upkeep but meanwhile i think the dominions system is better.
Now i am really looking forward to Dominions 3.
But in the meantime i am still very content with Dominions 2

[PDF]

For me it was in the Spring and summer of 2003.
In Spring I was, as often, seeking the Holy Grail of fantasy strategy games, as for some years before since MoM... I stumbled - don't remember where - on some web resource directing me to the deep buried IW site . It was Dom:PPP time still ! But as I read the game description I was mislead by all the religious references and thought it was some sort of "god game".. Quit without trying it !

Instead I bought AoW2... Played it some, then, in july or so, get bored by the lack of "epicness" of it. But I roamed the AoW2 forums, and some guy (can't remember who..) started a thread on other games, and talked about Dominions. The thread growed and other posted infos and bits about the game.
Now it looked better, I went back to IW and tried the demo.. I think I was hooked nearly instantly, the game smelled of untold deepness .
I played solo for a time, then quickly roamed csipg ng, contacted the smallish French speaking Dom community of the time (namely Fa, Nagot Gik Fel, Pocus and Sunray), and had my first MP game, still with the demo !
It acted as some permanent binding spell - I was crushed in this first MP but still remember the first big battles between my proud army of Arco hoplites and elephants and a much smaller Vanheim army... that had much more mages, my hoplites were decimated by Van lightning, my Elephants wounded by Dwarves'Wind Blades, then they routed and trampled my survivors ... ugly !
At that time I realized how deep and rich it was, and I voluntarily bought Dom:PPP just a couple months before Dom2 was released just to "help" IW .
Needless to say I wanted to get my hands on Dom2 as soon as possible ! I get it and immediately played it MP.
Since then I've always played Dom2, with 1 to 6 simultaneous Pbems going, never got bored.

Still enthralled and waiting for Dom3 !