What kind of god we choose can have very serious effects on how our game plays. There are four aspects of godhood, which i will explain here. God creation is a point based system. We start with 500 points and spend those on the various godly aspects of our pretender.

- First you have to pick an avatar. It is the physical form your god will have. There is plenty to choose from really, ranging from the fragile old man to the big scaly dragon or even the lifeless statue. The forms vary greatly in point cost, depending on how strong the form in question is. The sage i choose is rather cheap and can easily be used as a spellcasting platform as it can cheaply learn new magical spheres.


- Magic is the second aspect you have to decide about. There are eight spheres of magic: fire, air, water, earth, astral, death, nature and blood. Spells in the game can belong to one or two of these spheres. The sage i will play has a rather general approach to magic, with almost every sphere at level 3. This will come handy later.


- Next step is selecting how our dominion looks like. Being godlike beings fighting to be the sole remaining god, faith is an integral part of the game. If noone believes in us (our dominion is reduced to zero), the game is effectively over. The lands where people believe in us are slowly turned into what we envision our world to be like. This is what dominion scales are about.

The candles on top determines the strength of our dominion. The stronger it is, the easier it can spread to distant lands.
The various scales in order from top to bottom are: order/turmoil, productivity/sloth, heat/cold, growth/death, luck/unluck, magic/drain.
Each level of the scale (3 levels in each direction) gives various bonuses or penalties, depending on what direction we adjust them. Eventually all the lands that follow our faith will have the bonuses/penalties set here.

-Finally we set how our god is going to start. We can forfeit the use of our god in exchange of extra points. Dormant means it takes about a year of game time for our god to wake up, while imprisoned means it takes about 3 years before we can use our pretender. A year is 12 turns in game.


When all of this is done, we give our god a name and we are good to go.

The fancy title we get is randomly generated

Forts in Dom3 collect resources from neighboring lands which then i can use for unit production, so what provinces are next to your initial fort becomes kinda important.

Units come in two types: simple soldiers and commanders. Commanders are special named characters that lead my armies or perform special tasks, while the standard soldiers make up the bulk of the army doing the dirty work.

The various unit statistics are as follows:
Hit points - Hit Points (HP) represent the amount of damage that a unit can withstand before dying. An ordinary human soldier has about 10 HP, a giant has about 30 HP and a dragon typically has over 100HP.
Protection - Protection indicates the thickness of any armor worn by the unit, including natural armor such as scaly skin. The protection value reduces damage. Light units have a protection ranging from 3 to 10, while heavy units can have protection values over 20.
Morale - A unit's Morale value represents the courage and valor of the unit. A typical human soldier has a morale of 10.
Magic Resistance - Some spells can be resisted and avoided by targets with an iron will. MR indicates how well the unit can resist such spells. A typical human soldier has an MR value of 10.
Encumbrance - The Encumbrance value indicates how fatigued a unit will get from one round of meelee combat.
Strength - Represents the phyiscal might of a unit. A typical human soldier has an strength of 10.
Attack skill - Represents the unit's ability to hit an enemy in meelee combat. A typical human soldier has an attack value of 10.
Defence skill - Represents the unit's ability to avoid getting hit in meelee combat. A typical human soldier has an defence value of 10.
Precision - Represents the targeting skill of the unit, which is used for ranged weapons and spells. A typical human soldier has a precision of 10.
Move - The two numbers represent the map movement speed and tactical action points of the unit. A typical human soldier has 12 AP, while a mounted soldier might have 25 or more.

Gold - How much gold it costs to recruit the unit. I will have to pay 1/15 of this as upkeep every turn as well.
Resources - How much resources the unit requires. Unlike gold, resources are not collected, but used up and renewed every turn. So if i have 100 resources to build from and i do not use those 100 resources, they are gone. If i use them all up, next turn i will have 100 to work with again.

Let's see what we've got:



Oh look, its the militia. Cheap and useless. Not something you would ever consider building.



Slingers lack damage, range and precision to be really useful in ranged combat. Nonetheless, they are our only ranged troops.



Warriors armed with a spear and a two javelins. They will get close to the enemy, then throw their javelins at them before engaging in meelee combat. They have below average protection, but their defence skill and slightly higher HP makes up for it to an extent. Plus the length of their spear helps them when fighting enemies with shorter weapons.



Warriors armed with just an axe. Axe has a higher damage than spears (more than double), but they have to get extremely close to their enemy to use it and they are not really that well protected. Nonetheless, against heavily armored troops, they might be our only alternative.



As you can see, these guys are more expensive, but they do make up for that in normal and special abilities. They have the same good defense, but they also got a slightly better protection value as well. Whats more important is that they are stealthy and can fool their enemies in combat using illusions that makes them harder to hit.
The icons you see below their stats are: stealthy, glamour, forest survival, darkvision. Meaning - they can enter enemy provinces undetected, they can create false images of themselves to confuse the opponent in combat, they can survive in forests without food, and they can see in the dark. Despite the spear being a low damage weapon it is, they are a decent choice for mass production, as their higher survivability might make them more cost effective on the long run.



Our only sacred soldiers available for recruitment. (the candle under the stats tells us they are sacred and as such can be blessed) Since we have no bless bonuses from our god, a unit being sacred means little to us. While they have nice stats, its unlikely we will be including them in our armies.

Commanders
Commanders have an extra stat:
Leadership - The leadership value indicates the maximum number of troops that a commander can lead.
Also they have the equipment bar (gray icons underneath stats), which we can later fill with all kinds of fancy stuff we forge.



A simple scout character. Scouts are just that.. scouts. They can enter enemy territory which gives us a better idea of whats there. They will not be able to lead our stealthy units, as they have no leadership skill of their own.



One of our general characters. Has a rather low leadership score and no special abilities.



A significantly better general, with plenty of special abilities and even some magical skills. (the sphere icon followed by the number represents the levels of magical knowledge the character has. The candles represent the holy sphere, which is unique to priests)
More importantly, this general along with the rest of them is stealthy, meaning that he is able to lead our stealthy units into enemy territory.



Similar to the previous commander, but better magical abilities and a mount.



A wizard chick. Much the same abilites as the previous one, but literally no protection value to speak of. Not someone you want to see in the first line of a battle. The question mark icon represents a random sphere, while the books represent the research speed of the character when doing magical research.



While the character has no protection and less magical skill variety, it is stealthy and can assassinate enemy commanders. (last icon) In assassination mode, only the assassin, and the target commander get to fight. Might make a good assassin later on, when i got some research done in combat magic



A decent priest/wizard on a mount for leading the troops.



Without question the most powerful of our wizard characters, with only limited leadership skills.

Spells in Dom3 are categorized into schools. Spell research is done by allocating the available research points to these schools with a slider system. Right now, 100% of my zero research points are allocated towards conjuration, which is fine to be honest.



Each school has 10 levels, ranging from 0 to 9. Once you unlock a level, you can access all the spells from that level, given you meet the sphere requirements.

Information about enemy units is automatically collected for any province next to one of our provinces. This information however is extremely unreliable, unless we have a scout there. Since the forest is the first target for expansion, it is sensible to send the scout there to gather information.
I could of course send the army as well, but since i know nothing about the forces there, it would be a reckless act, that - if unsuccessful - would cause a severe setback in expansion.

In recruitment you can see the 9 soldiers lined up, with the 9th being slightly faded. This means that my resources only allow 8 to be recruited this turn.

Any commander can become a prophet, but there can be only one prophet of a faith at any given time.
Prophets are powerful priests that are exceptionally good at spreading our faith.

Positioning is shown by the red and white boxes in the green area.
White is the current squad / commander,
Red boxes show squads of units other than the current one.
Blue boxes show commanders other than the current one.

A commander can have a maximum of five squads regardless of leadership abilities. The squad can have any number of soldiers though. It is generally wise to not have squads with less than 4-5 soldiers in them, as squads so small can rout easily.

Unexpected events can be both good and bad. Since we are playing with a high turmoil scale (it lowers our income and increases the chance of random events) we will probably see quite a few of these. Thing is, we have a neutral luck, so there will probably be just as many good as there are bad events.

Hurricanes kill the population of the province, and cause some unrest. Unrest reduces the gold and resource production of the province. Unrest above 100 makes recruitment impossible.

Lower taxes (<100) increase growth and reduce unrest, while higher taxes (>100) increase unrest and tend to kill population.

Patrolling can help spot sneaking enemies, but it also decreases unrest in the province. The patrolling forces are looking for people opposing our ways, kill them so we can have a chat with them about proper behavior

Since there is no way to disband units in Dom3, you have to be creative when it comes to getting rid of unnecessary units. We do not need Cuirithir or the militia, so we send them to the front lines hoping for an.. ehm.. accident.

When a unit routs in battle, they end up in one of the friendly neighboring provinces randomly choosen. If there are no such provinces, the units are considered missing in action and are lost.

There are quite a few of these abilities, and when a commander gets onto the list, they get one. The ability keeps getting better and better as long as they manage to stay on the list.