Dominions Discussion and Ideas

[Mashugana]

So I am a big fan of strategy games and fantasy. One of my recent obsessions has been a game called "Dominions 4", which I purchased during the last Summer Sale. For those who aren't in the know, Dominions is a series of turn based strategy games that focuses on the player's civilization and religion being presided over by a player made "pretender deity" who is trying to become a real boy I mean God, since the previous God (known as the Pantokrator or something similar in the game proper) decided to go out for cigarettes one day and hasn't come back to the world in some time. Pretenders and the races/nations they rule over can take many forms. You can have a human pretender ruling over a human kingdom, a giant jellyfish presiding over the local Cthulhu monstrosities, or a zombified pale giant monster that lives in the caves ruling over a nation of bat and frog people, or other combinations.

Anyway, more to the point. How to make a strategy game that looks like this [link=]http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/ad3c5f1bec599a750e5ad9fad5d89ba1.jpg[/link] lewd.

This is purely hypothetical or for funzies, or to make an RP setting based in Dominions or whatever. I think it has some potential, but I just ate ribs and I'm too full and lazy at the moment to drop something right now and curious to how you lot would think of such a premise.

Also this is a really good strategy game and I really think it'd be great for people who like games like Dwarf Fortress and whatnot.

[AcetheSuperVillain]

That's actually something that I've been wondering about too. I like Strategy games, mostly Civilization, Space Empires and Hex Empires, but there's not an obvious way to turn them sexy.

I think the trick is to try and include more characters in the game if you can. Pornality aside, I think the human element (or giant jellyfish element) gives you a more memorable and immersive game. There are some examples I can think of.

- Civilization has its nation leaders and advisors. It's always rememberable when Ghandi calls you a douche-bag or you bro out with Atilla the Hun over joining communism. The advisors are mostly a glorified tutorial system, but you could maybe work in some kind of political drama trying to keep all of your advisors reasonably happy or at least under control.

- Warcraft and Starcraft were both pretty good at incorporating heroic characters into a strategy game full of mooks and expendables.

- There are the Strategy RPGs, Tactics games, Skirmish games, whatever you want to call them. Instead of gigantic armies, you field small teams, but you get to maneuver them more like a deeper strategy game. Final Fantasy Tactics may be my choice for best game of all time (NOT the FFT Advanced bullshit, not the Lion War retranslation bullshit, the fucking original. Surrender or die in obscurity, mother fuckers!!!) Disgaea in its many forms has sunk several hundreds of hours of my life into its netherworld of grinding, and it's one of the sexier video game series to my mind. You definitely feel something for your characters when you grind them from a measly lvl1 good-for-nothing into a lvl9000 death god capable of splitting a planet in half with a single finger. Also Shining Force. That was fun, right?

- There are a few games that sort of combine the personal characters of Strategy RPGs with the mass combat of a warfare game. Basically, you have squadrons made of mooks, but the squad leaders are important characters. Yggdra Union did this, and Langrisser did this. And apparently there's more than one Langrisser now, and the artwork is made by... that guy...

- Table-top gamers would also recognize the Strategy RPG formula as the way that skirmish level wargames work. If you ...even heard of skirmish games, which, okay you probably haven't, but these were/are an attempt to bring strategic wargames with hundreds of units into a more personal and manageable arena, and they eventually evolved into the table-top RPG, Dungeons and Dragons and its many descendants, and I know you've heard of that.

- And it's worth pointing out that GoRepeat actually did make a pornographic strategy game, SBT2, maybe also SBT1, don't know, don't remember that one.

[Lucky777]

SNT 1 was just side-scrolling fighter awesomeness, but SNT 2 had strategy elements... though it also had some (controlled) random chance deck-building elements.