Opening moves and early recruitment.
Every game begins with the following messages:
I started ignoring them many hundreds of new games ago, but now I stop to read them properly they set the stage quite nicely. I like to think that every game of Dominions is set in the same metaphysical continuity, and that instead of a single Supreme God (or 'Pantokrator') whose disappearance sets the Ascension Wars in motion, there are many, each the winner of a previous game. The fact that every game begins with the words 'Now the Wheel has turned once again' supports this theory, suggesting that the world of Dominions runs according to a cyclical or circular concept of time. But I could be wrong about this.
Welcome to Ur!
There's quite a lot of information on this screen, but you can ignore most of it for now. The castle in the middle is Ur, our capital, and the yellow lines leading from it show adjacent provinces. They're all independent at the moment - you can tell from the white flags - and will be occupied by troops of varying quality but we can't see that yet.
On the left of the screen, under the province information box, you can see our starting commanders. Most every nation starts out with a basic troop-leader and a scout, and we're no exception: Carol leads a small force of Enkidu warriors, as denoted by the little sword in the bottom right of his square, and Sendak is our scout. We're ordering him to become our Prophet, which is a fairly standard first-turn move, and you can see this order in the bottom left of his little box. Finally, we have our Pretender God, the mighty Spike Jonze! Let's take a closer look.
Lots more information! I'll explain bits of it as it becomes relevant, but for now it's nice to see what the Solar Eagle is all about: in summary, he lives in the sky and is a badass. All 2000+ units in the game have flavour text like this! Although it's generally more detailed for Pretenders than for basic troops, of course. Most of the text above is to do with Solar Eagles generally, but the last paragraph is specific to Spike Jonze and lists his titles: Supreme Messenger Herald of the Gods, King of the North Wind, He Who Stole the Fire, the Most High. These are assigned semi-randomly based on your Pretender's magical abilities: we have Air and Fire magic, so we get windy and firey titles. We can view other Pretenders' titles right from the start, and so it's possible to make educated guesses about their magic paths and, from these, deduce something about other players' builds! Now that's strategy! I'm not gonna do that now though because I don't care.
If Spike was a terrifying dragon we could send him into one of the neighbouring provinces blind, certain that his scaly bulk would crush whatever forces awaited us there. It's a bit risky, though, and Spike's not the very toughest of giant monsters just at the minute so he's going to research up a battle-spell or two first. This will take two turns, and so turn two's orders will look much the same:
We have intel on the neighbours, now, and also our Dominion has spread a bit - that's those white candles. But wait! We have a new commander! Yes, I have recruited some troops, as can be seen on another information-filled screen that I'm not going to fully explain, here:
You can recruit in every province you own but generally you get the best stuff in the provinces you've fortified, and you need laboratories to hire mages and temples to hire priests and sacred units. Capitals come fully equipped, and also feature one or more special magic sites that give you a basic gem income and allow you to recruit some unique units. Here are ours:
The Entu and Ensi are powerful priest-mages we'll be getting lots of later, and the Sirrush is the big dragon-looking thing which we won't. There's no reason that these couldn't all be made available from one big combined magic site, except that it wouldn't make sense! The Sirrush are big swamp monsters, while the Ensi are the priest-kings of Eridu, the First City; we're hiring them both in Ur, the province, but thematically there are two separate reasons for them being available here. Similarly The Swamps of Ur give Nature Gems, which makes sense because they're magic swamps, while the House of Water gives Water and Earth gems because it's a temple dedicated to the Wise Principle of the Waters Underground. I found this out by reading the unit text on the Enki's Chosen, also made available by the House of Water:
This is fairly typical of Dominions: as far as gameplay goes, it doesn't really matter where my gems are coming from or why I get Earth as well as Water, but as soon as I investigate a little I can find an explanation. The flavour text is right in there with the unit stats, too, which are essential to gameplay. These are the troops I've been recruiting this spring, by the way - they're nothing too special but they're the best infantry I have available and they're sacred (you can tell from the little candelabra icon) so they have reduced upkeep, making them cost-effective elites. We've also been hiring my cheapest mage, the Gala:
You're only allowed one commander per turn per province, and the Gala is a cheap and competent mage-priest who will form the core of my research team and maybe get to do some fighting later. She has one level of Nature magic and one level of Holy (which is a little bit different from other types of magic but not very); she is also sacred, cutting down on upkeep, and has 7 research points (the piled-up books icon) which she can contribute to the Solar Eagle's to help us figure out new spells. She also has an ability that is, I believe, unique to Ur:
Elegist makes it much easier to call our god back from the dead - many nations don't have level 3 priests at all, let alone huge stacks of cheap ones sat around researching cheaply, so in the event that Spike Jonze flies into an enormous greenhouse and breaks his neck we'll be ahead of the game. Although I'll try not to get him killed at all, of course.
All in all a quiet start to the game. Spring is prime frolicking time for the Enkidus, of course, so it's appropriate that we're taking it easy. In Eridu, the First City, the Chosen of Enki are being fitted for war; the Gala gather in the House of Water and sing their mournful songs, while Sendak the Prophet walks among the people and marshalls their faith. Above it all roosts Spike Jonze the Solar Eagle, waiting for summer.
Next time: we have a Prophet? Also what units do, fun with random events, and Spike Jonze shoots fire.
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