Dominions II

Tom: As a guy who hates spiders, I figure I��ll take a walk on the vile side and play as Machaka, the spider race. They��re adept with death, fire, nature, and earth magic, so I��ll lead them with an archmage, who can take advantage of multiple paths of magic. I name him John Spider because I can��t think of anything better to name him.

Since gold is precious early on, I boost my order scale all the way up to improve the income of my provinces. My spiders like heat, so I��ll use the Desert Sun theme, which increases my heat scale and spreads my sweltering climate to adjacent provinces. I plan on doing lots of research and spellcasting, so I boost my magic scale as well.

I want to spread my religion, so I improve my dominion to six. I spend the rest on a fortification for my castle, which should hold up under several turns of siege.

Bruce: I wish I could say I chose R��lyeh because of some inherent advantage. Or that I was able to scientifically determine this process, but the sad fact is, I just like the idea of playing a Cthulhu. If that makes me a dork, so be it.

One of the advantages of playing as R��lyeh is there really isn��t much trickery to be done in tactical combat. Lobo guards are the main part of my army. They aren��t particularly strong, but they are incredibly cheap. Best of all, they��re mindless, which means they��ll fight to the death, saving me the aggravation of watching a whole squad of units turn and flee.

As an amphibious race, I could start out by sticking to the water, but this would give Tom a head start on land, and I��m leery of letting him get his dominion out there. I��m going with an average dominion, so I expect to build a lot of temples. Since it��s going to be a while before Tom gets his feet wet, I should be able to take the underwater provinces at my leisure.

My pretender is a level 7 water mage and level 6 astral mage. All hail F��ubar, the lord from the outer void!

Year One

(The years in Dominions II run from spring to the following spring.)

Tom (spring): I anoint Msamaki, a Voice of the Lord, as my prophet, and I spend the next four months building up a force of spider knights to back my fairly weak Machaka warriors. Unfortunately, I haven��t started out near any lucrative farmlands, important for early income. While my army grabs the surrounding provinces to guarantee a steady flow of resources, I recruit a few Ears of the Lord to scout out the far territories. I need to find out where Bruce is going to crawl out of the sea to contain him before he establishes a beachhead.

Bruce (late spring): The continent of Urgaia is divided into a large western portion and a smaller eastern one, with a bay in the middle and a narrow, two-province bridge between them. Tom is probably on the far side of one of those two halves.

Bruce (autumn): No sign of Tom on the eastern half of this continent. My guess is he��s on the larger western half. I��m going to consolidate my position on this half by building a castle in the mountain province of The Great Feral. Any invading army has to come through these mountains. This province produces both heavy infantry and crossbowmen, so I��ll be able to construct a formidable defense here.

Tom (early winter): There it is��a R��lyeh banner to the southeast. I send Shaaboni to investigate. He��s a bane-spider assassin with a complement of half a dozen stealthy spider warriors.

Tom (late winter): Bruce has a castle up here already��so much for containing him before he establishes a beachhead. Since there��s a buffer of independent provinces between me and The Great Feral, I��m going to leave him be for now and hope he does the same to me. Shaaboni will skulk around and foment unrest, looking for assassination opportunities while my Ears and Voices of the Lord stealthily preach.

Year Two

Tom (early summer): While trying to take Ecnaphale, a rich farmland to the west, I lost my entire army, my prophet, and my summoned cave drakes to a swarm of independent infantry and crossbowmen. I essentially just pissed away several turns of precious income. The good news is that I found Bruce��s prophet in the castle he built in The Great Feral. This is a perfect opportunity for a bane-spider assassination.

Bruce (summer): I��m doing quite well on land in east Urgaia right now, and I need to think about expanding in the west as well. One thing I haven��t done is conquer adjacent underwater provinces. My spy report on the province of Soth Dagod to my east indicates it is being defended by hordes of Amber Clan tritons and guards. This game really needs a bestiary of some sort, because I have no idea what those things are. You either have to deduce all monster attributes from first principles using Kant��s Critique of Pure Reason or take a wild-ass guess. My wild-ass guess is I can kick the crap out of anything with the girly name ��Amber.��

Tom (late autumn): Bruce��s Illithid lord just mind-blasted Shaaboni, my poor bane spider, during the 1-on-1 assassination attempt. He never got within striking distance of the foul beast.

Bruce (late winter): Because R��lyeh is an underwater race, building surface castles doesn��t automatically allow me to recruit my nation��s monsters. Building castles in coastal provinces gives me access to hybrid soldiers, which, if you know anything about the Cthulhu mythos (I don��t, by the way), you will recognize as the offspring of humans and deep ones. That��s creepy.

Year Three

Bruce (spring): Watching for negative dominion is one way to tell where the enemy is. My province of Florien has been a pain in the ass ever since I conquered it. It currently has -3 dominion and almost 300 unrest. The people in that province worship another god, and they��re mad about my god occupying their land. Problematically, you can��t have a negative dominion unless another god is exerting dominion. There��s only one explanation: Tom Chick. I strongly suspect cheating. I don��t want to have to e-mail Jeff Green about this again.

Tom (summer): I start construction of my second fortification in Solian, which is to the southwest of my capital. Unfortunately, I see that Bruce has come ashore here as well. Looks like I��ll be fighting on two fronts.

Tom (early winter): As I��m clearing the provinces around my second fort, Bruce moves an army up through Oak Halls, the independent province that��s supposed to be a buffer zone between my territory and The Great Feral. Fortunately, my Machaka units can easily traverse my forested provinces, so they rush back to head off the invaders.

Tom (late winter): He moved into my capital and I��ve got him cornered now! That��s right, Geryk. I��m on my way to smash your soggy fish men into anchovy pat��.

Tom (early spring): The coward jumped into Devourer, a sea province north of my capital! I thought I had him pinned, and now he��s threatening Ecnaphale, my richest farmland.

Year Four

Tom (early summer): Now he��s come out of the Depths of Dago to the south and taken Pergami, one of my richer farmlands. I can��t let him continue to threaten all my valuable beachfront property. So I take a lesson from the 1977 movie Shock Waves, in which a Nazi fugitive played by Peter Cushing breeds a race of underwater zombies. This movie teaches us that although the dead can��t dance, they can swim��and therefore are an important part of any world conquest. I alchemize enough death gems to revive an undead mound king and cast a few Reanimation spells to muster an army of skeletons.

Tom (early winter): Sure enough, Bruce��s rampaging armies converge on my capital again. This time, I hold him off with wolves and bears (courtesy of the excellent but expensive Summon Animals spell), Scrofula the mound king, and earth and fire elementals. The wolves charged ahead, softening his lobo guards, the bears held the gateway after the wolves had been killed, and then the elementals mopped up. Finally, it was Scrofula and Bruce��s traitor king going toe-to-toe. The traitor king got his just desserts.

Bruce (winter): A battle in Devourer? Huh? That��s underwater! Oh man, Tom captured one of my underwater provinces! What��s up with that? I��m supposed to be the water lord! This sucks. I haven��t built up any defenses in my underwater provinces because I figured Tom was stuck on dry land. This could be bad.

Tom (winter): Scrofula easily took over Devourer, but now those damn fish are laying siege to my second fortification in Solian. Furthermore, Bruce has a huge force moving out of The Great Feral toward my capital again! Luckily, my dominion is holding fast, so maybe it��s time to just forget my borders and try to stamp out his religion by doing some good old-fashioned preaching with my prophet and priests. If I can choke Bruce��s dominion off the map, I��ll win regardless of how many armies he has. Kimweir, my second prophet, is going to move southeast to contest Bruce��s dominion around The Great Feral. My mound king will work his way southwest through the oceans to take out Bruce��s dominion in that direction. Good-bye, homelands. We can only save ourselves now by abandoning our own empire.

Year Five

Tom (spring): Abasi the Hero showed up at our gates to join Machaka. Hey, thanks, Abasi, but you��re a bit late, and you really should have brought an army along with you.

Bruce (late spring): Tom is definitely going after my underwater provinces. I just lost Antediluvia. I��m sending an army of mindless magic units under the command of Inutho, one of my Starspawn priests, to clean up this mess. As long as Tom stays in the water, he doesn��t have much room to maneuver (and he can��t take my sunken capital), but my defenses in southwestern Urgaia are pretty weak.

Tom (late spring): My mound king was just defeated by a Starspawn throwing Banishment spells. I should��ve seen that coming. Tagg Klaatu, a summoned undead bane, was running around the remnants of my empire, gathering fled armies. He��s got a few spider knights, some bears, and a handful of Machaka warriors. Now he��ll head south to grab undefended R��lyeh territories and take up the slack left by the banished mound king.

Bruce (early summer): Aaah! Tom is invading the eastern half of Urgaia! I��m not quite sure how he got here, but I��m not in a position to kick him out right now. Fortunately, I have a large force concentrated at my fortress in The Great Feral. The walls are high and strong, but I just need a few turns to recruit reinforcements. He��s not getting out of here alive.

Tom (summer): OK, the gates are down in Machaka. Time for some last-ditch summoning to see if I can hold out. My gem supply is sadly low since I��ve been losing magical sites while Bruce snatches my provinces. John Spider spends my last 20 nature gems on Summon Animals. I have four black sorcerers who summon a fire drake, a cave drake, a wight, and a handful of skeletons. Here goes the Battle of Machaka.

Bruce (summer): Here is my second try at storming the Machaka castle. I suspect I��m going to need my pretender here, but due to the huge, negative dominion penalty for fighting in this province, he has a whopping total of 17 hit points. I��m not thrilled about getting my pretender killed because he��s weakened by the fact that people don��t believe in him. I feel like I��m playing the Tinkerbell role-playing game.

Tom (late summer): Bruce��s heavy cavalry drives off my spider knights, my bears drive back his cavalry. A handful of Machaka warriors are all that��s left. Bruce even has his pretender here, a void lord named F��ubar. He totally fatigues himself summoning water elementals, at which point my towers peg the bastard with a volley of arrows. HA, take that! In the end, I hold Machaka. It comes down to Abasi the Hero, who lives up to his name and chases F��ubar away.

Tom (late autumn): More R��lyeh armies are moving toward my capital. All I can manage to summon are a few vine men, a few more skeletons, and a single cave drake. I lost most of my spiders, and Abasi was able to venture out and round up only a few who had fled before he had to dart back to Machaka to avoid Bruce��s advancing armies.

Tom (winter): I didn��t think Bruce would attack me in the southeast, where I was razing his temples, so I had split my forces in two to cover more ground. But sure enough, he attacked my divided armies, cornered my prophet, and killed him. In the southwest, Tagg Klaatu was overrun by reinforcements moving toward Machaka. It��s an ugly thing now, this map. It��s dotted with tall, regal white candles of my god��s dominion, but each one was marred by the ugly black flag of R��lyeh.

Year Six

Tom (spring): It��s down to my pretender and a handful of black sorcerers in the fortification of Machaka. They are besieged by an army of more than 100 lobo guards, Atlantean spearmen, and heavy infantry. In the distance, I can see more armies moving in. The end is nigh.

Bruce (early autumn, turn 66): Machaka is conquered! Because I won, I get to say this: Cthulhu f��tagn! I don��t even know what that means, but I win, so it doesn��t matter.

Publisher: Shrapnel Games

Developer: Illwinter Game Design

Genre: Turn-based Strategy

ESRB Rating: None

Required: 64MB RAM, 250MB install, OpenGL accelerated 3D card

Recommended: Plenty of patience to read the tome-sized manual Multiplayer: Internet, e-mail, hotseat

Copyright © 2003 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in Computer Gaming World.