Dominions II: Войны Восхождения

the Norwegian whaler
Dominions II: The Ascension Wars is a 4X turn based, computer strategy game. It was developed by Illwinter Game Design and published by Shrapnel Games. The game was released on November 14, 2003 in North America for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Dominions II: The Ascension Wars was the sequel to Dominions: Priests, Prophets and Pretenders. It was followed by Dominions 3: The Awakening in 2006.

Dominions II: The Ascension Wars is a 4X turn based, computer strategy game. The players play the role of the god of one out of 17 different nations and battle each other for the dominance of a fantasy world. At the most basic level, Dominions II is similar to Risk. It is also similar to Civilization. The world is divided into many provinces that change hands after a tactical battle. The players use armies of men and monsters to fight these battles.

Each player's turn is a process of assessing the apparent opportunities and risks, and acting to advance their plans for world domination. Recruiting new units, sending messages to other players, reviewing the provinces' tax and unrest levels, and directing magic research are all ways of directing the nation overall. Players also give specific orders to each of their commanders at the strategic level, such as attacking enemy territory (with any troops under their command); casting a ritual magic spell; forging a magical object; assassinating an enemy commander while hiding in enemy domain; or constructing a building (temple, laboratory, or castle). Planning for combat involves organizing troops under commanders and issuing up to five tactical battle instructions (such as magic spells to cast) to the commanders, and simpler orders to troop squads. Each commander can control up to 5 squads and his leadership skills limit the total and kinds of troops he can command. Leading magical, undead, or demonic troops requires appropriate magical skills. Troops and commanders are organized and a simple overhead view grid can be used to place them in specific starting locations for combat. Once all orders are set, the player sends his turn file by email or by TCP/IP connection to the host computer.

The host computer calculates the results of all battles and random events simultaneously and sends the result files back to the players. The players can now view the results of last turn's orders and events, watch the replays of the battles and proceed with the planning phase of the next turn.

Dominions II also includes AI for single player games. Supply and morale are modeled in the game world and play an important role. Dominion (how much a province believes in player's god versus another player's) affects not only combat morale but also the local settings of the province such as climate, richness, luck/bad events or available supply. Strategic preaching can not only shift the outcome of future battles; it can allow an "theological" bloodless victory: if a player loses his dominion in all his provinces, he also loses the game, but mighty his armies may be. Each nation and theme also have a set of national heroes, which may appear and volunteer to serve as leaders as the game progresses, unless that nation is unlucky. Different maps are available as well as (player made) mods. Much of the game is customizable with the help of a simple text editor and paint program.

Dominions II allows the player to make some tactical decisions for your units in battle, by setting the combat behaviour of each of their combat units ahead of time. When battle is processed, the player's troops will follow the orders they have been given. The kinds of tactical commands include whether to attack, delay an attack, retreat, fire missile weapons, use melee weapons or which kind of enemy to target. For commanders, more control is possible. Players can tell them exactly what spells to cast, or exactly how long to wait before performing another kind of action.

Dominions II was praised for its flexibility in allowing the player to command and customise his armies in a large number of ways. The editors of Computer Gaming World nominated Dominions II for their 2003 "Strategy Game of the Year" award, which ultimately went to Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic. They called it the year's best 4X title, and wrote that they "found it impossible to ignore the [game's] almost overwhelming depth of strategy".