Dominions

Dominions is a fantasy game about gods wanting to become the supreme lord of creation. And not the lazy, stay-at-home gods that getting fat off prayer and ambrosia. No, it's about angry gods who are willing to take a shit on the entire world to become head honcho. Much like the Soviet Union, the various nations despised each other but were held together by a powerful leader known as the Pantokrator until he disappeared. By killing everyone else or claiming the Thrones of Ascension, they can become the true god. Your life is measured by your belief dominion (represented by white candles)and the number of provinces you control. Once you hit zero in either, it's game over.

Anyways, what's unique about these gods and the factions they lead is that they tend to be more based upon world mythology and culture than your Tolkien-esque elves and dorfs (though it could be argued he stole it from Norse myth anyways). So there's your Irish Fae, Greek Hoplites, Roman Legionaries, German barbarians, Egyptian er...Lizardmen and mummies, Irish giants, Norse giants, Biblical giants, Sumerian giants, Japanese oni, and more! The exception being most noticeably R'lyeh and their Aboleths and Illithids.

And yes, you can have totally ridiculous battles like Cthulhu vs Spanish Inquisition vs Monkeys vs Zombie Jesus. And yes, you can cast totally ridiculous spells like making a second sun (or turning it off), freezing the oceans, accelerating time so everyone ages to death, poisoning all the magic in the world so horrible horrors eat all mages, etc. Battles in the game tend to start off pretty tame with small armies hitting each other with weapons, then big armies throwing magic at each other, and then huge armies led by insane undead gods. A logical progression in a war of gods.

It's primarily a multiplayer game, since the AI is too dumb-dumb to comprehend what to do and just throws shitty units at you.

The Magic

There are 8 (technically 9) paths of magic and 9 schools of magic. Magic rituals are fueled by magic gems (or virgins) and take a monthly action to perform. You get these magic gems by mainly searching the land with your mages for magic sites. Once found, they automatically generate these gems once a month. There isn't really a mana system in combat, as most spells use fatigue instead and sometimes gems.

The Schools

Conjuration

Summoning magical monsters mainly. They vary from fire drakes to bane lords to otherworldy abominations. Most notably, the spell Tartarian Gate is in this school, allowing you to summon insane undead gods to fight for you.

Alteration

Changing yourself, the battlefield, or reality itself to fit your needs. Many buffs and debuffs are located in this school, like Ironskin and Petrify. The absolute gamebreaker spell is Wish, which has a rather wide utility. No, you can't wish to win. But you can wish for girls!

Construction

One of the schools that is pretty much mandatory, though getting it up to level 8 is sort of a give or take. It primarily deals in the forging of magical tools, weapons, and armor. There's also your giant golems and mecha dragons, which make pretty decent combatants.

Enchantment

Sorta a brother to Conjuration and Alteration, this school is notable for letting you flip the bird to all the other player through the use of global spells like flooding all the coastal provinces or drilling a hole to the earth's core to harvest its riches. Many mass defensive spells are also included from keeping your guys safe from fire, or shielding an entire province from enemy spells. Also, enchanting corpses to give them false life(as upposed to Conjuration which brings pre-existing undead from their native realm).

Evocation

The school of zapping, burning, and icing motherfuckas. Start out shooting sparks and end with lighting the entire battlefield on fire. Ritual spells include making volcanoes erupt, hurricanes rage, and tidals waves wipe out population.

Thaumaturgy

The "gimmick" school. A lot of it is based upon fucking over or seizing another faction's magical or undead creatures and fucking units with low magic resistance. Most famous for the Communion spells, that allow your mages to combine their powers to become one mega mage.

Blood

Both a school and a path, it deals with mainly the summoning of demons. Demons are nothing to sneeze at and are a LOT harder to banish than undead due to having generally higher health and magic resistance. There are also spells that can completely fuck a nation's production through Rain of Toads or Send Horror.

Divine

The only school you can't research, as all the spells are researched already. While some nations have their own unique Divine spells, divine spells are generally casting blessings, banishments, and smites. Blessings are the real thing here, as depending on what your Pretender has for magic, it can either be a minor aid or the focus of your nation.

The Paths

Fire

What does it sound like? Mainly oriented around flinging hot stuff at enemies, it's the premier path for battlemages. Heat nations like Abyssia benefit from the battlefield wide spells like Heat from Hell and Fire Storm which fucks everyone without fire resistance.

Water

Water is a bit more niche. Often called the weakest path due to the fact that a lot of nations can't use it effectively, it does offer some pretty good ice based battlespells and defensive buffs. If you're playing a cold nation, then spells like Murdering Winter, Niefel Flames, and Living Water (water elementals become ice elementals in colder environments) can trash unprepared armies pretty well. You can also UNLEASH THE KRAKEN.

Air

Air focuses on zapping foos with lightning and messing with heads with illusions. The two big spells are Storm and Call of the Winds. While relatively low level, Storm completely ruins projectile accuracy and buffs all air mages. Call of the Winds is an incredibly annoying spell that sends a flock of giant birds to harass provinces.

Earth

Flying boulders and sharp blades when it comes to battle. Most notably known for having the best when it comes to forging and construction. You can also summon tons of trolls.

Nature

Revolves mainly around summoning big dudes that can take tons of damage, and then berserking and buffing the mofos. You can also summon tarrasques, and if you really want, you can make them wizards.

Death

Zombies, skeletons, disease, rot. Pretty much what you think necromancers are. Some of them are actually "good" like C'tis necromancers, practical like LA Agartha's necromancers which use them for domestic labor, or omnicidally against the living for MA Ermor and LA Lemuria. Spells mainly revolve around summoning the dead, and making the living die in mass numbers.

Astral

The "first" magic, and where you get all the nifty spells like communions. Mainly based around mind control and debuffs/buffs. Body Ethereal, Luck, Curse, and Horror Mark are the most commonly used battle spells. Other ones like Soul Slay and Magic Duel are instant death to a single target. The true power comes from the super strong rituals like Wish, Acashic Record (reveals all magic sites in a province), Gateway (mass teleport) Arcane Nexus (you get a fraction of all gems used to cast spells), and Mind Hunt (assassination spell) are the big game changers.

Blood

Unusual as you don't require gems, but rather female virgins. Virgins can be found anywhere as long as you guys got hunting for them. Since your people don't really see eye to eye with their daughters (or sons) getting rounded up and sacrificed to infernal forces, you have to know how to juggle unrest and hunting so your income doesn't go down the drain. Blood spells are all in the Blood school, so you don't have to split up your research for it, which is useful considering it's a massive investment. Blood can do a little bit of everything. It can heal and it can hurt. But it's speciality is summoning demons, which are pretty beefy and cheap. Rain of Toads is also a good spell to completely fuck someone's income and recruitment at a capital. Claws of Kokytos/Infernal Prison will send someone straight to hell where they have a 99% chance of not surviving. It's also can't be resisted.

Factions

There are three ages in the game: early, middle, and late. They progressively get more grimdark and less magical as time goes on, though the legions of undead and void horrors might make you think otherwise. Mythical races get replaced by humans and steel becomes more common.

Early

Ermor

The "main character" of the game, they're essentially Rome right after they adopted Christianity as a state religion. The fire worshipers from before got kicked out and were replaced by the church of Eldregate. They tend to have better infantry than average, so they can mow through the early game pretty well. Their priests are pretty strong, and their mages have access to mainly fire and astral magic. They also enslaved lizardmen and learned some death magic from them.

C'tis

A race of Egyptian lizardmen that perform necromancy. Unlike most races though, they tend to perform it responsibly and know when to show limits. Doesn't mean you can't cause accelerate aging in the entire's world populace and have them die off in a few years, but all fair's in love and war amirite? They're lead by powerful priest-kings and Sauromancer mages. For troops, they have your skink-like lizardmen soldiers and the more dinosaur-like slaves troops. Got pwned by Ermor earlier and was forced to teach them said necromancy.

Arocsephale

Ancient Greece. No hoplites yet, but super heavy infantry, chariots, and pegasus riders. Their mages are pretty powerful, and are great and sieging and defense. One of the more unsual commanders is the sceptic, essentially a stealthy atheist that reduces dominion.