In Dominions 3 you control an entire nation of peoples who worship a "Pretender God." Y'see, way back when there was a bunch of gods who wreaked havoc on the world and whatnot, but then the One True God stepped in and told everyone to chill out. And all was cool.

Then, this True God kinda, I dunno, got eaten by a cybershark or something and now has left this realm, meaning once again we get the metaphysical brawl that makes playing a Pretend God so much fun.

The goal of the game is simple: Take over the world. You're a power-hungry God, what else is there to do? Of course, you can do this in a variety of ways whether it be by spreading your dominion [influence] as much as possible, conquering everyone else, forming alliances et cetera. And to achieve these goals, Illwinter gives you a plethora of options at your disposal.

The Dominions games are famous (or infamous, perhaps) for just how staggeringly large and complex they are. Dominions 2 was not just your average pick-up-and-play game unless you enjoyed being kicked in the face repeatedly by the AI and the interface. That's a plus for some such as myself who enjoy reading through manuals and PDF files and playing around with the game before actually playing it. Once you got past the archaic early nineties-style interface, there was a wealth of some good ol' fashioned strategy gaming underneath.

So it's expected that some longtime fans may cry out when Illwinter announced that it plans to "streamline" the game and make it more "accessible." I mean, those are the same terms used for games like Dungeon Siege and Deus Ex: Invisible War, and look what they turned out to be! Is there any reason why we shouldn't be worried that the evil corporate sellout developers are now to going market their indie turn-based fantasty PC strategy game to the homogenized mainstream?

If the sarcasm didn't hit you in the face hard enough, then I'll tell you in plainer terms: There's absolutely no reason to be worried about the game being "streamlined" and more "accessible" because frankly, Illwinter and Shrapnel know their market and their market, if anything, want the games to be deviously complex as possible. So then why try and streamline the game if the market is already happy with it?

I'll tell you why: It makes for a better game.

Dominions 2 for some was micromanagement hell, a fine-tuning purgatory of sliders and counters, a venerable gehenna of spreadsheets compressed into sprites - okay, enough Biblical allegories, but you get the point. While micromanagement itself isn't bad, too much of it can definitely distract the player from the actual game and get him swamped in a computer-game version of eigth-grade math class. Of course, without micromanagement strategy games would only consist of MAKE GUYS, MOVE GUYS, KILL GUYS (one might argue that modern strategy games do just consist of this). You need to find the right balance.

Dominions 3 does a wonderful job at finding this balance. There's still enough micromanagement to make all you Spazmos out there happy, but it's neither tedious nor does it overshadow the other parts of the game. For instance, auto-taxation is default but it can be enabled to be tweaked. You can set your mages to research and update things automatically along with making scouts automatically search the surrounding areas for enemies. Basic stuff that goes a long way to make the game a lot more enjoyable in the long run.

The interface has also been cleaned up. It takes up a lesser portion of the game screen now, without sacrificing information. You can now see what your commanders have equipped without having to go into their inventories. Just generally cleaned up. People may not like the sometimes clunkiness of using the mouse with the interface, so thankfully most (if not all) commands and options can be executed with the elegant simplcity of hotkeys and keyboard shortcuts. Also, it seems that the mechanic of choosing and customizing your own fortress has been reomoved, at least from this version. Hopefully it'll be back in when the game hits retail.

Okay, now that's out of the way we can get on with this preview.

Dominions 3, as you can see from the screenshots, isn't a complete and utter overhaul of Dom2 but it adds more than enough to distinguish it from a mere graphical update.

First off, we have the new "Age" settings. You can begin your game in the early ages, middle ages, or the late ages. The Age you begin in affects the type of independent armies you encounter, number of magical sites, weapon technology, resource values. Certain races and gods can only play in certain ages though Illwinter has said there's a possibility of making a huge freeforall type game.

Ages are neat because they catergorize races and gods in the game so that the player doesn't have everything thrown in their face. Instead of giving them everything at once, and thus allowing the player to be burnt out faster, it gives you the option to try things out at a slower and more manageable pace.

Speaking of races (and gods), Dom3 serves up the requisite new additions to an already large platter. There are more than 50 races in Dom3, up from the previous game's mere 17. Many of these new races have their roots in history albeit with a few fantasy twists. Ermor, for example, is based of ancient Rome while Kaliasa are from Hindu mythology.

Once you get bored of those, Illwinter has also been kind enough to add in the option of creating your own cutsom nation, but it takes a bit of modding know-how (as of now, you have to create you own custom files and place them in the directory and whatnot). Hopefully Illwinter will make it more intuitive when the game nears it's release. Not just races, but Gods also! That's right, you can create your own custom God and save him for later use. This allows for a great deal of not just customization and flexibility, but strategy, too. Create your custom God to balance your nation's weak points, make your nation buff up your God, et cetera et cetera.

Among the other updates are a haunting musical score by Erik Ask Uppmark and Anna Rynefors, hundreds of new spells (including some fun summoning spells) and units, and some really handy map filters.

All in all, this isn't a review so I'm not trying to be too critical or jump to conclusions but Dominions 3 is shaping up to be a damn good game. Perhaps not the most innovative it could be, and it still smacks a bit of rehash but when you compare it to the vanilla RTSes that are being pumped out by the gallon, it'll be a breath of fresh air come it's release in the next months or so.