Just a crazy great game if you like complicated strategy. Zillions of units and spells and factions. Much of the fun is learning what works and what doesn't, what's useful, what isn't. A valid criticism is that 80% of the units and items could be dropped and you wouldn't care because they're not terrible useful, but even using the 20% that are useful leaves a ton of stuff to explore.

The battle scripting is fiddly. The AI can't handle late game strategies. There are some clearly broken or over powered options in single player. Yea...so what :), it's still lots of fun. You'll need to set challenges for yourself, like purposefully using underpowered races or less than optimal pretenders.

Many folks will say it's really only a multi player game due to those limitations, but I put 600+ hours into it only in single player so there's plenty of bang for the buck without multiplayer.

600 hours in almost 3 years :-)
Before I have tried multiplayer I have never even read the tutorial or visited the forums. Basically that meant that I have played it using only the most obvious magic ( e.g. fireballs, summon elementals and such ) and concentrated on learning troop strengths + weaknesses and developing battlefield tactics. I've propably spend 200 hours playing one nation in one age: Machaka in middle age. Why? It was one of the first I have tried and it had Zulu like warriors riding giant, no sorry GIANT Tarantulas. I've read many reviews and nobody writes about the terrifing noice those tarrantuals make, when they chomp their victims...Or how almost every spell has its own sound so the battle is like a strange symphony :-)
Other things people don't mention:
1.The developers are commited to make the game even more deep and complex, BUT they are also commited to cut on micromanagement where only possible, for example: to reaserch magic, to buy a new mage (this with a castle 90% of the time), to perform a magic ritual ( e.g. send winged monkeys to enemy province and capture a comander; summon bunch of ogres or dragons ), to send a magic item from one end of a map to another, to access the gem treasury (gems are needed for summoning monsters, crafting magical gear and using more powerfull battlespells), to send blood virgins to the central dungeon (you'll find out yourself what THEY are for, you rascals, you), to make the magic gear and maybe for few other things as well,
you need ONLY ONE BUILDING in that province! In other games you would need to buy 7 different buildings because thats the way other games try to achive complexity.
Another example: those troops that have lost their armor during a battle (there are spells with that effect like Rust or Acid Rain) get it back automatically afterwords providing there is enough resources in the province - its so automated that most players have no idea it even takes place!
Another example: in Dominions 3 there was an craftable artifact called Burning pearl(?). It had the efect that the commander wearing it would lose one point of life a turn but you would gain one fire gem. You could give those Burning pearls to all your commanders( after 20 turns maybe 40 of them? ) and then try to keep an eye on them so that you take the magic amulet from them after 9 turns, so they do not die because of it. Imagine the level of micro if you had 150 commanders :-) In Dominions 4 this amulet got scraped, we got Fire in a Jar amulet, that provides the mage with one fire gem during a battle. Nice, elegant solution.

2.The diversity of the game is greatly increased by the aviable mods, especially NationGen. I am currently passionately playing a Hoburg ( essencially warrior hobbits) nation. The blessed, sacred unit is a boar cavalery.They have swords and throw Tomahowks; I gave them fire bless so the Tomahawks are on fire when they whirl towards the enemy! I am sure the Boar's gore attack has a fire element to it as well, but the grafic does not show it :-(
This nation has also a deer cavalery unit, Heavy Infantry with clockwork armour ( there is game mechanic connected with the properties of the armor), a scout that is an assasin as well, flying cavalery with giant hawks and bunch of mages, commanders and infantry which seem vanilla in comparison but would be crazy interesting in other games.
NationGen mod can give you unlimited amount of new, unique nations, including the one where Velicoraptors ride to battle on crocodiles!

3.There is a certain beauty in the way a battle progresses in the game, especially in multiplayer. Before battle you decide how big the units should be (one soldier minimum, I don't know if there is maximum - the biggest I remmeber was 250 soldiers), how many of them and what their behaviour during the battle should be e.g. attack closest enemy or wait 2 turns and attack the archers and so on >> about 20 possible combinations. Making those decisions, you will face tradeoffs like: do I make one extra small unit and order it to guard my precious commander but this will result in small morale penalty for all the soldiers this general has under him.
When battle replay starts (you have no control over the battle during the battle) you see how different units move on the battlefield, how when they touch some of them melt under the assault like snow on lava, others stand the groung like a stonewall. Units get mixed with each other; some catch fire others get paralyzed; buffing spells change their color or opaqueness; they get covered and traped by nets, vines or the earth itself. You see how a line of tough, armored, veteran infantry sloughters the cheap militia before them but there is 4 militiamen for every veteran. In the center there is 1v1 fighting but militia gradualy envelops the flank of veterans. The last warrior in line faces suddenly 5,6 militiamen- he fights and dies, then another, and another. You see how the flank of the falange is crumbling, you see how the militia is about to anihilate the veterans (while losing 50 % of their number) when suddenly 5 tarrantula riders charge the militia. Their god pretender blessed them with weapons that are on fire and they make use of it. The giant tarantulas cover the enemy in spider webs, inject them with poison and terrify you with otherwordly screeching. The militia breaks, runs away only to get massacred by the pursuing spider cavalery. The veterans break and flee to - from a 30 man unit there is only 6 left and every one has a battle affliction: missing eye, crippled leg or unhealable chest wound. One of them has 7 afflictions and his stats are worse than a blind militiaman's. If only there was a way to kill him it would be a mercy. But there isn't so in next battle he is going to be part of the Archer Bait Unit...

About 100 hours before I could say "Ok, I understand everything I'm doing in this game" and 50 more hours before being able to say "Ok, I've beaten this game" (single player). I had never experienced this in a 4X game before and I LOVED the challenge !

And this is just the game mechanics experience. Despite the (very) low quality graphics, the huge diversity of nations, units, and the various associated gameplays was a lot of fun. I kept on playing just to see what kind of units I had not seen, just to FEEL the spirit behind each specific nation.

I also loved creating various gods, with different approaches (fighters, spell-casters, buffers, ...), as well as exploiting the game mechanics to create almost unbeatable gods in battle. And I really liked the fact that it is always a "almost", because there's always a way to kill a unit even if buffed up like hell.

I can imagine that multiplayer must be incredible, but 150 hours in single player is rare enough for me to be praised.

I'm not sure if they've actually fixed the AI to the point where it makes for a better tutor, but so long as you've got some people to PBEM with, this is a really, really, really good game. Feels like a huge board game / tabletop RPG hybrid with terrific depth and no chance of knocking over all the tiny pieces. A game can sometimes last for for a very long time (depending on how it's set up and played) though players will be eliminated as it goes.

Just pretend the graphics are crappy miniatures or cardboard counters or something, at least they're animated... if you can imagine a world where Caligula actually DID declare war on Poseidon and invaded the ocean, strategically speaking that's what we're dealing with here. It's fun to just sit and read the manual for half an hour and *scheme*.

Best rpg per turn blended with 1000 possibilities to develop tales as a writer

I still suck at this game... but the level of depth in this game, on more levels than that of the gameplay itself, is amazing. I would not be surprised if I've only ever finished a single game of Dominions 4, before roleplay goals I set for myself before I started to play were achieved. I can't support the developers enough, in the hopes that one day Dominions will blow up and get a game with the level of depth we currently have but also with the aesthetics such a game deserves.

Mutant chess on steroids) Very deep and complex, makes your brain work a lot)
Oh, one more turn and i am going to sleep -> ♥♥♥♥ it is 4 am -> start panicking and try to sleep cause you actually need to wake for work soon)
Also reading ARRs on desura`s forums is kinda fascinating, so much deepness in the game.

Dom 4 is an extremely deep fantasy 4X that captures the grandeur of magic, godhood, and empire management. What the game is in a nutshell:

-You are a god; you must vanquish other gods and conquer their dominion, while maintaining control of your own

-The game's lore is mixed with history and fantastical mythos. There are no elves or dwarves. There are byzantines with hydras (hydra cataphracts), undead roman legionaries, demonic samurai, and conventional vikings, greeks, English knights, HRE-style armies, aztecs and more.

-There is a massive roster of magical units and monsters you can add to your army. The game is a good depiction of how mortals would fare in battle against giant cyclops, phoenixes, dragons, and more. Every mythical beast under the sun is in one form or another in this game.

-Magic is devastating; swaths of fire can swallow entire platoons of mortal soldiers. However, the backbone of your armies will still be conventional forces until the late-game.

-You don't control armies in battle; you set pre-battle orders and the battle is automatically resolved (though you can watch it play out to analyze why you won or lost).

-AI is actually rather competent and ferocious in war. For some reason, while there is utterly no alliance system, certain AI choose not to attack you while you're fighting in your own war. Perhaps they were busy fighting someone else; but my point is that it feels smarter than the AI in CIV. But forget about trade or diplomacy - there is only war in Dominions 4.

-You truly understand what war of attrition means in this game. It is a GRIND to defeat another nation; you will lose many, many soldiers and officers and provinces will change hands often. Strategic placement is vital; you have to leave strong garrisons at certain strongpoints. Sieges are lengthy. By the time your large army smashes through the remaining enemy defenses, you will find that your men are 8 years older, many losing limbs and walking on a limp, and slowly dying from disease.

-Every single unit has permanent stats: if they lose an arm in battle, they will fight one-handed for the rest of their life. You can equip officers with magical equipment. Also, if one of your generals gets horror-marked, his fate is sealed. Demons from another dimension (the strangest looking demons I've seen in any fantasy game) would periodically attack, and one of these things are strong enough to destroy entire nations. Very rare, but dom4 has bizarre events like these.

The only problems I have with the game are that the logistics are quite clunky. You can't route your army to a far away location; the maximum routing distance is an adjacent province. Battle orders are also very finicky. Graphics of course are not the game's strong suit, but that's a part of the package.

Recommended for meticulous and patient 4X gamers who want to feel the immersion of empire building and strategic war of attrition.

This is probably one of the best strategy games of all time. It takes a long time to master though.

I have only begun to scrape the surface of this magnificent game. The gameplay is extensive and deeply rich. I find myself drawn to the lore of the nations; designing armies and strategies based on what I would expect from them.