Looking forward to this as well.

It's currently 50% off on Gamersgate, from the Dominions Weekend Sale:
http://www.gamersgate.com/DD-DOM4TA/dominions-4-thrones-of-ascension

Since it's unlikely, for whatever reason, that the game will ever make it to GOG, I caved and bought it.

Strangely is was 66% off 2-3 days earlier on the same site... weird :)

That's what I saw in the Codex's Dom4 thread too. Too bad I missed the 66% off, but even with 50% off, it's still a really good price.

Now I just need to find time to play it :o

I've never heard of the Dominions games until recently and I've never played a Dominions game. What makes these games so special?

I have a few questions. Should I buy Dominions 3 now or wait for a better sale on Dominions 4? Do people still play Dom 3 multiplayer? How's the modding scene? What does it mean by "Other DRM"? I've heard that Gamersgate games are encoded as an extra layer of DRM, and that there is a workaround; if this is true what is the workaround?

Sorry, if that's a lot of questions.

People still play Dominions 3, as Dominions 4 has not been as extensively modded, and a lot of people have not bought Dominions 4 yet. That being said, expect to see people gradually moving away from Dom 3 in favour of Dom 4. Dom 4 is quite similar to Dom 3, but improves upon some aspects, and feels better balanced. It gives you more options when giving orders to your force, a better interface in general, more units, more spells and more factions. It also makes some changes to the rule system that are not obvious at first, but which becomes quite apparent when you try to use your old Dom 3 strategies. Also, there is a new victory condition which does not involve killing all other players.
So if you want to get Dom 3 depends on if you want to play it "NOW" or are willing to wait a few months. Dom 4 has already been 66% off once.

Also, in regards to the "other" DRM, it's a CD-key. As far as I can tell, it's the only DRM that the game has. It will prevent multiple people from participating in the same MP game of Dominions with the same key, but that's about it.

Also does Dom 4 have a demo? I couldn't seem to find one with basic googling.

Dom 3 has a cdkey check. I don't know if Dom 4 does, but I wasn't prompted for one when I started up the game; then again I should specify that I activated the game on Steam - Steam is not mandatory for the installation of the game if you buy it on Gamersgate, but I just did it for the sake of convenience, because I get faster download speeds on Steam, and also because I wanted to test if it works without Steam (it does).

In terms of gameplay, I've only played Dom 4 for 5 minutes so I can't tell you how different it is from Dom 3, but the most immediate thing I noticed, apart from how the interface looks, was that Illwinter made changes to the selection of Pretenders under each nation.

Don't think there's a demo for Dom 4 yet, but you can download Dom 3's demo and see if it's to your liking.

Just found it odd they offerred the same game within a number of days at different % off. Must have had better sales on it than expected i guess.....is the game that good?.Must admit the graphics put me off a bit (and im not much of a graphics whore...)

It's complex because of the options the game gives you at the beginning of the game, what with the selection of Pretenders and Nations, but it's not a very difficult game to pick up if you're used to 4X games.

Anyway multiplayer is where the game really shines. You should have seen our multiplayer game back then (involving me, AFnord, johnki, Alfie3000 and Smogg). There was plenty of backstabbery going on; it was great! One turn I was paying tribute to my immediate neighbour, Fnord, the next I was rallying troops to the chokepoint province, with my Vampire Queen leading the march. I was feeling pretty smug that I had advanced in magic research faster than most of the others.

I ended up losing that battle, along with the majority of my troops :(

Is there any interest in a MP game of Dom 4? I've never done a Play By Email game of anything, but I just picked up Dom 4 in the GG one day sale, and I'm definitely interested in that possibility.

I'm interested!